Trust (9 page)

And now, clinging onto my hand as if he was frightened I might dissolve into the air if he let me go for even a moment.

He fumbled with the key at the door, then stepped back to let me enter first, finally relinquishing my hand.

I didn’t understand what was in my head, just then.

I’d stepped into another world.

§

Inside, he took my hand again, and suddenly I was up against a wall, his hard body against me. He pinned that one hand above my head, against the wall, and his other hand moved down to my waist, holding me hard against him.

He kissed me, full of hungry passion where before it had been all about the tenderness and newfound intimacy.

His tongue drove deep, teeth clashing hard against my lips. He caught where I’d bitten my own lip earlier, just as climax had taken me – I flinched, grunted at the renewed pain, and briefly that broke the moment.

He slowed, drew back, lips now soft against my mouth, eyes wide open, locked with mine.

He broke away. Turned from me, then back again. Came to stand with hands flat against the wall, either side of my head. Something intense in his look, a darkness, even.

He shook his head.

“What is it?” I asked, confused.

He shook his head again, as if trying to dislodge something, his eyes remaining locked with mine.

Finally, he said, “I don’t do this.”

He turned his head away, then back to me once more.

“I think I’ve just fallen head over heels...”

There was only one point that evening when Dean Bailey had been truly scared.

Not when Putin and his limp-dick bodyguard had confronted him. Nobody was armed in there, and he knew Putin wouldn’t dare do anything more than sneer and look menacing.

He hadn’t been scared when Reuben’s boys had stepped in and started to dish it out to him. He’d known that was coming: you don’t stir things up at one of Reuben’s nights. They all knew the unwritten rules. He’d known he was crossing that line when he’d taken the first swing, and he’d known well enough that Reuben could never let something like that pass.

He hadn’t even been scared when Lee had taken his beating at the hands of Maliakov. When he’d seen his kid brother lying there in the ring, unresponsive. He’d been concerned, of course: they’d known the risks, known what could go wrong.

He’d felt all kinds of things at that moment, but the kind of fear that chisels away deep inside you and threatens to tear apart all the things you believe you are...

No.

He’d only felt that at one point.

It was when she’d come to him.

Jess. A bundle of furious, self-righteous energy, throwing herself between him and Reuben’s boys.

It wasn’t even that he’d feared
for
her at that moment.

It was the look.

A brief flash of something, and suddenly everything else dissolved away.

Her. Standing there in her ripped jeans and that leather jacket hanging open. The fall and rise of her chest. The look in those pale blue eyes. The
connection
.

She was totally fucking gorgeous.

§

Later, at the house. The memory of how he’d played her body like a fine instrument in the back of Ronnie’s car still fresh. The small sounds she’d made and tried to suppress. The hardness of the fabric of her jeans, the softness beneath, and the hardness, too.

Trying to turn away, to stop himself getting drawn in.

Turning away from her, then back.

Those eyes again. The lips slightly parted. Her face flushed with passion and need.

She was a siren.

There was no turning away.

Now, he led her upstairs to the bathroom – a wet room. Everything was tiled in dark gray granite flecked with flickers of quartz. Whoever Owen had hired to fit this place out had done a decent job.

“You’re covered in blood,” he said. A broad red smear was still spread across one cheek. More – just a smudge – on her neck.

Like war paint. Something very primitive about it all, and only adding to the animal intensity he felt, and was desperately trying to rein in.

And he knew she felt just the same.

The look in her eyes. The way she touched him. The way she responded.

“So are you,” she said. His nose was swollen, one eye puffy, half-closed, from the brief beating he’d taken.

She reached for his neck-tie and pulled at the knot. Feeding the tie under his collar, she pulled it clear and dropped it to the floor, even as his hands slipped beneath her jacket and eased it back across her shoulders. She let her arms hang, so he could slide the jacket clear, and immediately his right hand went to a breast, taking its weight, sliding the thumb across a stiffening nipple.

She pulled at his shirt, fumbling with the buttons. When she was three buttons down, he just reached for the shirt and pulled it up over his head.

For a few long seconds they paused. He looked down at the swell of her breasts under that flimsy top, the narrow straps of the top, the lacy strap of her bra. Her eyes roamed across his body, and she bit at her lower lip again.

Then she reached for his waistband and drew him closer.

He reached around her, set a tap running in the basin, found a cloth. Moistened it and raised it to her cheek, gently dabbing at the blood until it was gone.

Moved to her neck, then allowed the damp cloth to move down across her collarbone to a breast again, soaking through her top so that when he let the cloth fall the fabric of her top clung tight.

He dipped his head, mouth following the course that cloth had taken from neck to collarbone to breast, kissing her through the damp fabric.

He pulled at her top, sliding it up so that she had to raise her arms to let it pass. He dropped it to one side and in a single smooth movement as his hand fell back down, he hooked finger and thumb into the catch of her bra, released it, pulled it aside.

Her breasts were full, the nipples stiff, inviting.

He pressed his lips around one hard stub and flicked with the tip of his tongue. Cupped the other breast in a hand, and teased his thumb around the areola.

He guided her back against a tiled wall, his leg coming to press between hers.

He reached down, found the button of her jeans and freed it. Found the zipper.

Slid a hand inside the tight confines of her jeans, the flimsy fabric of her panties. Found soft, wet heat.

She was crying aloud now, a low, guttural groan. Growing more intense as he sucked that nipple in hard between pursed lips.

Her hands... One on the back of his head, clamping him hard against her. The other, lower, the thumb still hooked into his waistband. Fingers pressing downward.

He felt a button give, and now her hand shifted and it was her turn to find a zipper, tug urgently.

That easing of pressure as his trousers parted, and then she touched him down there for the first time... The flat of her hand against his belly, fingers pointing down, sliding inside the taut fabric of his shorts.

Her fingers in that coarse tangle of hair. A fingertip hard against the base of his shaft, fingernail pricking at the skin.

Her hand moving down, fingers moving along either side of his hard shaft. Twisting to curl around him, steer his erection sideways and then up, flat against his belly.

He pressed his own hand now, deep in her jeans, his middle finger parting her softness, finding the tight, muscular opening of her pussy.

Pressing.

Pushing inside.

Her breath was hot on his cheek and neck. The fine tangle of her hair against his face.

That focus of sensation: her hand flat against his shaft, pressing it against his belly, fingers along its length. Pressing and rocking against him, just as he had done to her in the car.

He straightened, reached across, flipped the shower controls, and jets of hot water erupted from the big shower head, near to where they stood.

He stepped back, kicked off his shoes and socks, pulled his trousers and shorts down, and then stood there, naked before her.

Her eyes were fixed on him. Roaming and exploring his body, before locking on his gaze, skewering him with her look as she dropped her bra, kicked her shoes away, reached for her jeans, pulled them down those long, slender legs and then, finally, came to stand there, naked.

She was slim, but beautifully proportioned. Full breasts, slender waist, belly with that delicious, so feminine curve to it, pussy shaved to a finger-wide strip a few shades darker than her hair.

He went to her, then, bent a little so he could slide an arm under the back of her legs, another around her shoulders, lift her. Hold her, his erection standing high beneath her, the head nudging against her back as he moved.

He carried her across to the hot jets of the shower and moved under the water with her.

Hot water cascaded over them. As if rehearsed, they simultaneously tipped their heads back to catch the full blast. The weight of her body in his arms felt like nothing, no effort at all, yet at the same time its solidity reinforced that thing inside him. The knot that was some kind of tension, some of that fear he’d felt earlier when he’d realized he was falling, a sharp hunger.

Slowly, he lowered her. She twisted, turned against him, wet limbs and torso sliding down his body. His hard dick was pulled sideways, down, as she slid against him, then she eased back and it sprang up between them again.

She started to move, pussy against his balls, the smooth wetness of her belly sliding against his shaft.

His hands found her ass, cupped her, lifted her again, this time moving her backward until she was against the wall again, one foot on the ground, the other lifting as he moved a hand under her knee, drawing that leg up.

Bending at the knees, he slid himself down, until the head of his dick dragged along that narrow strip of hair and down, finding softness that yielded, parted.

He pushed up and held, barely inside her, poised.

Eyes locked on hers.

Water streaming down over their bodies.

“I don’t do this,” he said. “I don’t...
fall
.”

And then he pushed again.

Upwards. Slowly, so slowly, until he was fully inside, grinding against her, pushing up until he took all of her weight on that point where their wet bodies joined.

“I just...
don’t
.”

§

The next morning he woke early, sore and confused.

His face hurt. His lip was swollen, the socket of an eye aching – he’d need to get that checked out by Malik. His jaw was stiff, too. He put a hand gingerly to his face, winced, and withdrew it.

Now, he became aware of
her
. Jess.

How had he got himself into this? How had he failed to see it coming?

He turned his head to the side.

She was lying with her back to him, hair spread behind her on the pillow. He studied her slender neck, the neat line of her shoulders, the smoothness of the skin, pale where it wasn’t etched with that birds in vines tattoo that started from just right of her spine between the shoulder blades and twisted up to wrap a short way over her left shoulder.

Lower down, where her outline curved in at the waist, her skin was pale and smooth, and then a tangle of sheets covered her lower body.

He was hard again, just looking.

He remembered the salty taste of her, the way she gasped when he found her with his tongue.

Remembered the way those pale blue eyes had locked on his as she’d taken him into her mouth.

Remembered that moment when she’d been on top of him, arching her spine to bear down hard against him, head tipped back, that magnificent line of her chin, neck, breasts.

His dick ached... from over-use, from the intense hardness of his erection, from renewed need.

He’d never felt like this.

She was all-consuming.

Suddenly...
everything
.

He turned his head away, rolled onto his side, pulled his legs clear of the bedding and swung them down so he was sitting. Hands to either side, hunched forward, erection stiff against his belly.

He went to the wet room, shaved and showered, the water cold, icy rods knocking some kind of sense into him.

He had a change of clothes in the bedroom, and when he had dressed he left a wardrobe open so she’d see that there were clothes there, too. All sorts. You never knew who might end up using a gaff like this at short notice.

She stirred, finally, as he was knotting his neck-tie – slim and dark blue to match the spare suit.

She rolled onto her back, and his eyes were drawn to the spread of her hair, the bounce of her breasts, the way her body moved and arched.

The pale blue eyes as they opened and fixed on him.

He leaned in to kiss her softly on the cheek. What had got into him?

“Got to go,” he mumbled. “Stuff to deal with, know what I mean? Stay here as long as you like, okay? Use whatever. Catch you later?”

Then he straightened, turned away, left.

§

Catch you later
.

Soft git.

The BMW was sitting outside the house, repaired and immaculately valeted. Malik had a surgery by Victoria Park in Bethnal Green – not far, but it took Dean more than twenty minutes in the traffic. He parked under a row of lime trees by the park railings, crossed the road and entered the terraced building.

A short time later, he was sitting with Lee in a second-floor room with a view over the road to the trees.

It was a relief to see the kid sitting up in bed, empty cup and plate on the table to one side.

“Hey, Lee.”

His face was a mess: split brow that had been neatly sutured together, the eye blackened and half-closed with swelling; the bruising spreading across the cheek and nose; more stitches in his lower lip.

“Deano.” A nod, that grin of his. “Right pair, eh?”

Dean put a hand to his own battered face. He hadn’t taken the beating Lee had, but he knew it didn’t look great. He shrugged. “Reuben’s lot,” he said. “They didn’t like that I took out Timoshenko.”

“You took him out?” Lee gave a short laugh. “Good man.”

“He made a mess of my Beamer.”