‘Something like that. Have a seat,’ he invites, and I sit on one of the tall padded stools next to the bar.
He goes behind the bar. ‘Do you want champagne?’
I shake my head. ‘I’m a bit sick of the smell of champagne.’
‘What would you rather?’ he asks softly.
‘Whiskey.’
He nods, grabs two glasses, puts them on the bar and reaches for a bottle in one smooth move. It tells me he has worked a bar before. He tips the whiskey bottle the way bartenders at swanky nightclubs do, from up high and continuously. The bottom of the bottle finds its way to the bar surface with a thump. We lift our glasses—there is no toasting—and drink. He downs his and picks up the bottle and refills his glass. A pulse throbs at his throat and he looks restless and edgy.
‘So this is your idea of a date?’
He takes a large swallow. ‘At this time of the night? Yeah.’
I really have to stop staring at him. Even if he is heart-stoppingly beautiful. ‘If it wasn’t this time of the night?’
He looks at me with those amazing, bottomless green eyes and pours the rest of the whiskey down his throat. ‘I’d have tried to impress you by taking you to a fancy restaurant.’
He pours another glass.
I look at the glass and back up to his eyes and try to remember him as he was on the beach, the warmth of his smile, and I can’t, because the man in front of me seems so far removed from that man. About him is an air of danger and expectancy. My skin sizzles with it. I know just lurking underneath our apparently meaningless conversation are deep sexual undercurrents.
‘Should you be drinking so much? You still have to drive me home,’ I say to cover my awareness.
‘I’m not driving you, Lily. If I drive you somewhere I’m going to end up fucking you.’ He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his predatory eyes. At that moment he looks sexy as hell.
I hurriedly look down at my drink. My thighs are clenching like fists.
He rests his elbows on the bar and leans forward. ‘So, tell me about yourself.’
I look up and lick my lips. His eyes drop to my mouth. ‘Not much to tell, really. A life wasted.’ I pick up my glass and empty it. The alcohol goes straight to my head.
He frowns, picks up the bottle and refills both our glasses. ‘Where are you from, Lily?’
‘I’m a runaway kid who didn’t make it good, OK?’
He didn’t seem even the slightest bit affected by all the alcohol he was consuming. ‘You’ve made it just fine.’
‘Not many people would agree with you.’
‘Doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. You did fine.’
I finish my drink and put the glass down with a thud. ‘I’m a stripper, Jake?’
He chugs his down, refills our glasses and pushes mine toward me. ‘That’s OK. Gangsters and strippers go together like toast and marmalade. We keep the same hours, the tax man doesn’t hear much from us…’
I grin. ‘Are you trying to get me drunk?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Yes.’
He shakes his head.
‘So what’s with all the whiskey?’
‘You don’t have to keep up with me. I’m trying to dull the urge.’
I keep my breath steady. ‘What urge?’
‘At the risk of sounding like a compulsive, obsessive possessive fool, the urge to fuck you, of course.’
I feel the heat rush up my cheeks. ‘You’re the kind of guy every mother warns her daughter about.’
‘Did yours?’
Suddenly I am on shifting sand. ‘She didn’t get the chance.’
‘Don’t you ever want to go back?’
‘No.’
‘Have you brothers, sisters?’
Here is the test. Here is where Lily passes with flying colors. I lock eyes with him. ‘I was their only child. Can we quit the questions now?’
He looks at me with an unreadable expression, his lashes wickedly long and dark. ‘I’m not actually one for talking. I thought you wanted to.’
I slide off the stool. ‘Let’s go back to your place.’
My chest rises and falls at the excitement that flares in his eyes. He comes around the bar, grabs my hand and we leave the way we came. As if by magic the car is already waiting outside. We slide into it and roar through the empty streets.
NINE
We stop outside a town house in Bloomsbury. He turns off the engine and looks at me and I feel a sharp thrill of pleasure run through my body. I open the passenger door and step out. The night air is deliciously cool. He comes around to my side and, taking my hand in his, pulls me up a short flight of stone steps.
He must have found a key and put it into the door—there might even have been some sort of alarm set-up he had to turn off—but I am in such a haze of lust that the only thing I recognize is when he grabs my body in an iron embrace and bruises my lips with his. The sensation of being overpowered and taken is so great my body starts to tremble violently.
He pulls away from me. ‘Are you all right?’ His eyes glitter with the look of a man possessed, a man who can barely control himself.
Warmth glows in my guts. I open my mouth and no words come. Perhaps I am possessed of the same lust. I nod wordlessly.
For a second he stares at me oddly, his shadowed face lit by street lamps from outside the windows, then he swoops down again on my mouth and I am vaguely aware that hard hands are sliding inside my top and unclasping my bra. I moan helplessly. It feels as if I have been starving for a lifetime. Cool air touches my skin and warm hands cup my breasts. My nipples harden against his palms. My mouth clings desperately to his. Between my legs I ache desperately for him. Suddenly he takes his mouth away.
‘More,’ I beg hoarsely. Like an addict.
He gets on his knees and his hot hands roughly drag my skirt upwards. Hooking his fingers into the sides of the skimpy triangle of cloth stretched between my hip bones he pulls it down my legs. Then he parts my thighs and with his fingers opens me up and stares hungrily at my naked, slick flesh.
‘Beautiful,’ he breathes. His voice is thick with lust. ‘So damn beautiful.’
He dips his head and, dragging his tongue over the slit, laps up the juices dripping from it. And that simple greed is far more erotic than sex. He has claimed my body in a way that no other man has. He has drunk my juices as if they are nectar. He looks up into my glazed eyes. There is no need for words. He bends his head and devours me with the hunger of the damned. I buck wildly against his gorging mouth.
There is no time to tell him that I want him inside me.
The rough, sweet drag of his tongue through my soaked folds sends me over the edge quickly. I come violently, screaming, my fingers grabbing his head, grinding his mouth against me. It is not pretty and it is not feminine. It is animalistic. It is basic. It is Jake fucking me with his tongue and me losing control to a man for the first time in my life.
And for the first time in my life I don’t just come: I fall away. I feel my body start falling backwards and would have fallen too if strong hands had not caught me. It’s safe, Lily. It is totally safe to let go. And so I come in his mouth the way he planned it all along and go to a place where there is no me and no him, no one lives there. Only bliss. When I return to my body he is standing up and holding me tightly. I feel too raw to look him in the eye. I try to move away, but he grabs me tight.
‘It’s my turn,’ he growls urgently, his lips glistening from eating pussy.
And suddenly I am galvanized. I don’t feel as if it is an obligation, as if I have to return the favor. I don’t even feel mildly resentful that the delicious lull after my orgasm is going to be interrupted. And I certainly don’t feel what I always felt, as if he should have a wash first. In fact, I want him,
every inch of him, unwashed and raw. Let him taste like old wine, bitter and enticing. Dark like the taste of danger.
I don’t even want to do what I always do, tell him he can’t come inside my mouth. I want him to spill his seed down my throat. For the first time ever I don’t fake wanting to give a man a blow job. I want to pleasure him. I get down on my knees and open my mouth so it looks wet and open and hungry.
I hear a quick indrawn breath as I reach for his belt, fumble with it, open it, slide down the zip, and see his muscular cock thrusting against his briefs. I put my hand into his underwear and find the skin hot and silky. I bring the thick throbbing length out and gasp.
His cock is inked. Fabulously so.
Fascinated, I pull his hips into a patch of yellow light and look at the artwork. The skin around the massive head has been tattooed to resemble an apple. A black and yellow snake holds that apple in its mouth while its body coils around and around the entire fleshy rod until its tail disappears into the nest of pubic hair above.
‘It’s fucking beautiful,’ I tell him.
With a shiver of anticipation I grab him by the base and stretching my mouth open greedily take the man, the snake, and the red apple between my lips. I watch him close his eyes and throw his head back in pure ecstasy. He swells further in my mouth, making me gag, so I slide him out and swirl my tongue around the snake’s head.
The taste of him coats my tongue and I feel my own juices leaking out of me. I start sucking him slowly and feel a strange sense of power and pride. On my knees pleasuring him feels good. I start bobbing my head faster and faster.
Until he can stand it no more.
He grabs my hair and fucks my mouth. When he looks down our eyes catch. Something ancient passes between us. He holds my head tight to his groin, emits a harsh cry, and erupts in my mouth. Hot liquid gushes down my throat. He jerks and more salty semen discharges into me.
He holds my head in place and watches me suck him clean. Then he pulls me upright and slides his hand between my legs. I am so ready and wet, I moan. His gaze is watchful and unsated. We are both unsatisfied. Hungry. Starving hungry.
He takes my hand and we hurry upstairs. He opens a door and I see a white room with a massive red chandelier and a very large black bed with white bedding. It is glamorous and strangely soulless.