Bad Boys of London: The Complete GYPSY HEROES Collection (49 page)

My heart feels heavy.

‘There are all kinds of memories hiding in the curves of your breasts,’ he murmurs. His eyes flutter shut and then snap open. He is maudlin. Vulnerable.

His other hand comes up and cups my breast. He rolls my nipple between his fingers and I feel the familiar itching between my legs start. His eyes darken as he thrusts his knee between my thighs. I push my sex against the hard muscles and feel his cock pressing against my hip, straining to get to my wet heat.

‘Oh, Ella,’ he groans, and, lifting me up, clumsily carries me to my bed.

He drops me on the bed, and, with haphazard urgency, removes his shoes and clothes. He lands on the bed heavily and immediately rolls onto his back.

‘Ride me. I want to watch your face when that hot little pussy of yours stretches wide for my cock,’ he growls.

I clamber over him and sit on his thighs.

He pops the two little pearl buttons on my nightie. My breasts spill out and he slides his hands over the flesh and massages them.

‘You really are so ripe and beautiful,’ he mutters to himself.

I arch my back to push my breasts into his hands.

‘Get naked,’ he orders.

I pull my nightie over my head and fling it to the floor.

He takes a deep, satisfied breath, curls his hands around my midriff, and pulls me down for a kiss. I spread myself flat over his hardness as his mouth claims mine. He smells of alcohol and something broken. I don’t know him, and he won’t allow me in. The thought is extraordinarily painful. A lone finger strokes the swollen lips of my vulva as the kiss goes on. It makes me melt into him until he digs his fingers into my hips. I pull away from his mouth and stare down at him.

‘Come, sit on my face,’ he invites.

I knee-walk along his body and turn to face his feet. Hovering over his face, I slither and snake my body like a belly dancer so he can see what a gooey puddle my pussy has become.

‘So eager, so wanton,’ he growls.

Cupping the globes of my bottom as I gyrate teasingly above him, he lifts his face and extends his tongue. It flicks my clit and I whimper with the velvet heat. He pulls me lower and lets his tongue worm its way through the damp undergrowth.

As soon as he tastes my syrup, he pulls me all the way down, and I helpfully spread my thighs as wide as I can. I reach down and let the tip of my tongue flick and tickle his cock. He shudders under me and glues my vulva to his face. I feel my juices flow out of me and drip into his mouth.

Down his throat they go.

Fisting the base of his shaft, I take the meaty pillar deeper into my mouth, curling my tongue around it. I bob up and down, my eyes shut. The rest of the world melts into nothing. There is only his mouth on my pussy and his cock in my mouth.

My orgasm comes suddenly, without warning. I push my palms into the mattress and climax hard with his cock buried deep in my throat, my nipples throbbing and tingling, and my whole body singing.

In all the rush and uproar, it occurs to me that I am hopelessly addicted to him. That I’ve been addicted from that first fix, when he threw me against a wall and shoved his cock into me without asking my permission.

A drop of slippery liquid touches the roof of my mouth. Ah! I start to suck really hard, as if I
’
m milking him. He comes in a thick, frothy spray, which I swallow willingly. Strange, how I adore my own sense of complete and utter submission to this man. I wriggle my hips.

‘Don’t you dare move,’ he warns.

I don’t. Very gently, I keep sucking the semi-hard flesh in my mouth. I work on it until it starts to stretch and grow and become rock hard. I take his cock out of my mouth, and, crawling down his body, poise my pussy over his erection.

‘I want to hear the animal noises you make,’ he says.

I hold onto the base of his shaft while he groans with pleasure as his erect cock slowly fills me up. Once all of him is inside me, I ride him with rhythmic, languid thrusts, and animal sounds fill the bedroom until we come, gripping each other so hard he leaves marks on my skin.

‘I don’t want to sleep the whole night,’ he whispers fiercely.

‘Why?’ I whisper back.

‘Just this one night I don’t want to close my eyes. All I want to do is make— Fuck all night.’

‘OK,’ I say, but we do fall asleep. Curled up against each other like two puppies in a basket. And we sleep soundly until the wee hours of the morning when a large hand crashes into my ribs and shocks me awake.

I sit up and see Dom thrashing his legs and moving his hands restlessly.

I switch on my bedside lamp and start shaking him and urgently calling his name. His eyes fly open. They are wild with horror. They fasten on me and widen with shock.

He rises off the pillows and grabs my upper arms, but I have the impression that I
’
ve become part of the nightmare that he
’
s still locked into. ‘I thought you were dead,’ he says in a strange voice.

‘I’m not,’ I say.

At the sound of my voice he suddenly lets go of my arms. He falls back on the pillows and covers his eyes with his forearm.

‘Oh! God!’ he howls. The sound comes from somewhere so deep and pained that I become frozen with fear.

A few seconds pass before I shuffle closer. ‘Tell me, please, Dom. Just tell me what
’
s wrong?’ I beg.

He puts his arm down and looks at me. ‘You’re a good person, Ella. But I just can’t do this anymore. It’s a lie. All of it is a lie.’

He vaults off the bed and begins to dress.

‘You’re going to leave now?’ I ask in disbelief.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, and, without looking at me, walks out of my door.

I sit there stunned. I have no idea what the hell has just happened. Has he just fucking broken up with me?

Bang, bang, my baby shot me down!

TWENTY

I
stand at the window in a daze and listen to his car come to life with such an explosive sound that it makes me jump. I don’t go back to bed after he speeds off. Maybe because I cannot believe that he will not come back.

We were going so good. It seems incredible that he would raze the city and salt the earth just like that. Over nothing. Nothing earth-shattering has happened. I stepped onto the road without looking, but it wasn
’
t like I was in any real danger. It would be a stretch of the imagination to even think so.

It doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense.

Unless it is in some way connected to that terrible grief that lives deep inside him. The one I accidentally glimpsed when I went back into the restaurant for Rob’s umbrella that first day. When I found him so curled up with pain that he reminded me of a wounded beast. The kind of suffering that is so blind and raw that approach is dangerous and any attempt to help would be suicidal.

I pace the flat incessantly, stopping only to throw a double vodka down my throat. I find myself back at the window looking down at the deserted street, as if in disbelief. We’ve never spent a night apart ever since the first night I spent at his house. After two hours of waiting, I finally admit to myself that he’s not coming back. Not tonight, anyway.

I go and sit dry-eyed in front of the television. I recognize that I’m watching a movie, but beyond that I don’t register anything. All I can see before my eyes is the moment he ripped my chest open with a knife by saying, ‘I just can’t do this anymore.’

Do what? I haven’t pushed or tried to get from him anything that he didn’t want to give. I switch off the TV and put on my CD player. Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ comes on. It grates on my nerves. I switch it off with a grunt. The flat becomes horribly silent.

I rush to fill it with sound. I pick Vangelis. It’s Dom’s favorite. Beautiful, dramatic music fills the air, but for some reason the only thing I want to listen to is ‘Stairway to Heaven’. The wistful longing and mysterious lyrics suit my mood. I listen to Heart’s rendition of the song.

In my condition it seems to me that the arrangement of music is in timeless layers that open up like a flower to reveal a yearning, fragile soul calling for something almost forgotten.

When Heart’s version ends, I move on to Dolly Parton’s. As soon as I’ve listened to her, I put on Led Zepplin’s original version. Then I go back to Heart’s version. Obsessively, I open my laptop and look at street performers singing the song. Again and again I return to Heart’s version. I listen and I listen. As if the solution to my problem is hidden in the song.

But there is no solution.

I am the woman who thought that everything that glitters is gold. The one who was building a stairway to heaven, but, as Dom once told me, my stairway is whispering in the wind.

When dawn breaks in the sky I am still listening to music.

Dom doesn’t call even in the morning.

I go to work, a wreck. I open the door to my office and look at my desk with dread. I hate this temporary job I took last week where I have to field on-line complaints all day about packages that have not arrived, are delayed, lost, or damaged. My job is to calmly absorb their frustration and send them on the relevant department.

The dreary drudgery of it has to be seen to be believed. At least when I was at HMRC I felt I was doing something good. There was always that feeling that I counted for something.

Here, I’m a cog in the wheel.

I truly count for nothing. Perhaps I should have listened to Dom. Perhaps I should have taken his offer of money and waited until I found a better job. But I couldn’t bring myself to do that. I was too proud. And now I think, Thank God I didn’t take his money.

No matter how bad this job is, at least it pays my bills.

I sit at my desk and jump every time my phone rings. Sometimes I stare at it as if I can metaphysically make him call me. I wait and wait. Until lunchtime, until I can bear it no more. I pick up my phone and call Jake.

‘Hey, Ella,’ he says. His tone is surprised and cautious.

‘Hello, Jake. I … uh … Can I talk to you … um … alone?’

‘Of course,’ he says immediately, and his tone tells me what I suspected. He knows exactly what’s wrong with Dom.

‘Thank you, Jake.’

‘No problem. We’re in the country tonight. Want to come over for dinner? I can send a car.’

‘No, no. No need for that, I’ll borrow a friend’s car. And I won’t disturb you at dinnertime. I’ll come just before that.’

‘All right, see you about six thirty.’

‘That’ll be great. Thank you.’

‘You know how to get to mine, right?’

‘Yes. I’ll see you then.’

‘See you later.’

‘Jake?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I really appreciate this.’

I hear him draw in a sharp breath. ‘That’s OK, Ella. I’m always happy to help.’

I park Anna’s company car next to Lily’s Mercedes-Benz and walk up to the front door. Smoothing down my hair, I ring on the doorbell. Lily opens the door with a smile.

‘Hello,’ she greets.

‘Hey,’ I say awkwardly.

She opens the door wider. ‘Come on in,’ she invites.

I step into her home. Lily is one of those women who have it all. Happiness, beauty, love, wealth.