He reaches down and, sliding his hands along my bare thighs, pulls them down my legs and flings them over his shoulder.
Hungrily he looks down at me lying naked on a bed of money. I gaze up at him, and slowly biting my lower lip, grab two handfuls of money, and throw them up into the air. They f
all over and around me.
‘Hello,’ I say, covered in his dirty money.
He nods slowly, formally. As if he approves of my actions. We continue to stare at each other. I could have stayed there looking up at him forever. I actually feel faint with longing. He is so beautiful, I want to reach out and touch his skin to see if he is real.
‘Do it again.’
I lift handfuls of money and pour them onto my body. One note lands on my mouth. I blow it away. Here I am, an undercover cop, bathed in money, about to fuck a criminal, and not wanting to be anywhere else in the world.
He gets down on his haunches and cupping my buttocks in his large hands, lifts my hips bodily and, bringing my open sex toward his face, deeply sniffs in my female scent. I have been walking all day and I imagine the smell to be scandalously strong and musky. But I am not embarrassed. I know he likes dirty sex. This is the man who thinks warm raw sea urchin tastes good.
He lets his tongue swirl between the pink folds. The velvet brush is succulent, bringing with it whispers of sensations. Deep within I begin to tremble indescribably. My body instinctively arches, and my hips grind into his mouth, feeling his teeth, and begging for more and more. He slips his fingers into me. I grab his head and force it against me. With his fingers impaled inside me, his tongue works my clit.
‘Get up on your elbows and let me look at you.’
I obey his demand and look into his eyes. They look stunning. He gazes into my glazed ones. Suddenly, I can’t hold his gaze. I am the dirt that has betrayed him. I close my eyes.
‘Open your eyes and look at what I am doing to you.’
I open my eyes and, unable to meet his eyes, watch his mouth fasten down on my sex and suck it like a hungry babe at its mother’s breast. My body feels no guilt. It pushes me on until I break apart with a stifled cry inside his mouth, his fingers deep inside, his eyes trained on me, my head thrown so far back it touches the wings of my shoulder blades.
I lift my head slowly.
He is watching me, his lips shining with my juices. ‘I like watching you lose control.’
I flop back down on the bed, roll over, and getting on my hands and knees, money sticking to my damp skin, offer my throbbing, eager sex up to him.
‘Lay your face on the bed,’ he growls. The sound wells up from deep inside him.
I hear the sound of his trousers hitting the floor as I lie on my cheek. The scent of money rises into my nostrils: soiled ink, slightly disagreeable. He grabs my hips, and, with a snarl of hungry desire, plunges into me. His cock feels more swollen than usual, voluptuous. I marvel at the sensation even as my muscles ripple around him to accommodate the intrusion. Coated in hot, slick juices he pushes in harder. I tilt my hips so he slides in deeper.
‘Who does this hole between your legs belong to, Lily?’
‘You,’ I gasp, as another thrust makes more notes detach from my body and rain down on the bed.
Another thrust. ‘Say it again.’
‘You,’ I pant.
‘And who do you belong to?’
‘You. I belong to you.’
And with that he explodes inside me, wild, hot cum shooting into me.
I hear him breathing hard. With me still speared to his body, he leans forward, his body barely brushing my back. He kisses me on the base of my neck where there is a little nerve that makes me shiver, and whispers in my ear, his breath hot and moist, ‘You can keep all the money you can hold in your hands.’
Baffled, my spine prickling, I turn my head back to look at him. Is he…?
But his face is innocent.
He moves back and pulls out of me. My body immediately misses him. I watch his eyes latch onto the blood-engorged, reddened flesh between my legs, his milky seed seeping out.
I can read his mind. If I stay in that position one moment longer he will slide his fingers into me. I crawl forward and sit cross-legged on the money. There is a note stuck to my calf. I peel it off, thinking of Melanie, thinking of her saying, ‘I take their money and spend it and that is my revenge.’
Dust motes are swirling magical specks in the last rays of the evening’s sun pouring in through the windows.
I let my gaze travel over the notes. They are mostly tens and twenties. There must be at least fifty thousand pounds I am sitting on. I could ask where the money has come from, but I remember Robin saying, Let some chances to ask for information go by. Don’t even appear curious. Lull him into a place of complete trust before you sink the hooks in. So he wants to play the games low-level gangsters employ to show off to their women? When again our eyes clash my face is calm, my thoughts hidden.
‘Do I have a time limit?’ I ask.
‘Nope.’
‘OK.’ I start gathering the money, carefully, in bricks. Afterwards, without looking at him, but knowing he is watching me, I slide the bricks together. Six bricks. I double them so their height will be slightly higher than my palm and fingers spread to their fullest. I push them together and notice a note lying on the floor. I look up at Jake, standing with his arms crossed over his chest.
I arch an eyebrow. ‘Do you mind?’
Wordlessly he bends, picks it up, and holds it out to me. I take it and, putting it on top of my pile of bricks, lift them all by pressing them together on either side of the tower with my spread palms. The whole thing comes up in between my palms.
I look up at him, fifty thousand pounds richer.
He grabs my hand—the bricks fall down on the bed in a heap—and pulls my naked body to his. ‘Do you know what I am thinking?’ he mutters.
My heart somersaults. I take his lower lip between my teeth and pull it experimentally as far away from his face as I can while my hands start undoing the top button of his shirt. He drags his lips in a trail of fire along my throat and my chin and catches my mouth with his. His tongue delves in, seeking mine, like a grounded child whose friend has come to knock on the door to ask if he can come out to play.
‘Someone should bottle you,’ he says softly, much, much later.
NINE
Jake
The sound of a bird chirping wakes me up. Shit. That’s no fucking bird in my bedroom. Immediately I tense. It can only be bad news. I feel Lily moving in the pitch dark. Her bedside lamp comes on. She blinks and squints blearily against the glare of the light. I lay a hand on her shoulder.
‘Go back to sleep,’ I say softly, and quickly go out of the room holding my phone. The light clock flashes 3.50 a.m.!
‘What is it, Dom?’ My voice is not sleepy. It is a bark, at once urgent, worried and irritated. I run down the stairs.
‘They’ve only gone and torched Eden, haven’t they?’ He sounds like he has been drinking.
My stomach lurches. My first thought: ‘Where’s Shane?’
‘He’s all right,’ my brother says instantly.
I feel almost sick with relief.
Without drawing breath Dom carries on ranting, ‘It was the Pilkingtons that did it. I fucking know it was that big bastard. No one else would dare.’
I get into the living room and start walking toward the window. ‘Calm down, Dom.’
‘Calm down? Calm down?’ he bellows. ‘I’m gonna kill him. I’ll fucking kill the ugly vermin. These motherfuckers need to know who they’re messin’ with. I say I get some of our boys to Red Ice and turn it into a nice bonfire tomorrow night.’
This is not good. Dom is in one of his volcanic rages. I can picture him, his lean, wiry body crashing about whatever room he is in, his neck popping with purple veins, his mind an unthinking red mist. I need to calm him down. The situation is bad enough without another bonfire. Outside it is beautifully still.
‘Take it easy, Dom.’
‘Are you kidding me? That lowlife scum is trying to muscle in on our patch and you’re asking me to take it easy? He’ll be dead meat before I call this feud between the Edens and the Pilkingtons over,’ he screams into my ear.
‘Shut up. Your head is fucked,’ I snarl furio
usly.
That gets through to him. He goes silent.
I take a deep breath. ‘Let me think. We need to remain calm and focused,’ I say seriously.
‘And then what?’ he spits, still boiling, but disaster has been averted for now.
My temples begin to throb. This silly generational feud. Will I never be free of it? Still, I’m in no mood to argue.
‘And then I decide. I’m the head of this family and don’t you forget it.’
Dom subsides like a soufflé that has seen daylight too early. ‘OK, I hear you. I’m sorry. What do you want me to do, Jake?’
‘Take your boys and go down there and see what the gossip is and report back to me in the morning.’
‘All right, I’m gonna do what you ask, but this needs to be sorted quickly. I’m not gonna let that cocky cunt walk all over us—’
I terminate the call and fling my mobile across to the couch. Shit, fucking shit. The last thing I need is for Dominic to go crashing into this delicate truce between the Pilkingtons and the Edens. Nobody can even remember anymore why our two families are feuding, but we are. We stay out of each other’s way. Why on earth would the Pilkingtons decide to reignite the feud now? There is no sense to it. Neither of us wants an all-out war. I call Shane.
He answers on the first ring. ‘Dom called you?’ He sounds stressed.
‘Yeah. Where are you now?’
‘At the club.’
‘Is the fire out?’
‘Yeah, looks like it.’
‘How bad is it?’
‘They firebombed the front and the back. There was hardly anything to burn in the front and the sprinklers contained the fire but the kitchen looks bad.’
‘Do you need me to come there?’
‘Nah. I got it under control. The police are here now.’
‘Right. I’ll see you in the morning.’
I flick on a light switch, go to the bar, and reach for a bottle of Scotch. I pick it up to down it and see Lily is standing at the door. I take a swallow, my fingers gripping the cold glass.