Trust (8 page)

“–own it,” I finished for him. “I know.”

We walked through the crowd, and it was perhaps the strangest part of a very strange evening. Here I was in this primitive indoor arena, the atmosphere pumped with adrenaline and testosterone. I had no doubts that most of the men around me featured prominently in the city’s underworld subculture. And here I was, holding hands with Dean – a man I barely knew – like a soppy teenager.

I wasn’t the kind of girl who held hands, or went for any other kind of public display of affection, even if I was with someone for whom I actually felt, you know,
affection
.

I tried to pull my hand away, but he held it tight.

So instead, I held my head high and walked like I owned it. Like I owned him, like I owned this entire place.

Outside, the air had a cold bite to it. After the hubbub inside the warehouse, there was a sudden stillness, even though there were shady figures milling about among the cars.

We took a few more steps, then I felt Dean slump. He turned to me, still holding my hand, drawing me in, his bloody cheek close to mine again so that I felt a smear of wet heat, a scrape of stubble. I must look a picture, I realized.

For long seconds, he wouldn’t let go.

“How’s Lee?” I murmured, and that broke the moment.

Dean gave one last hug, then stepped back, finally releasing my hand.

“He’s okay, I reckon,” he said. “Dr Malik’s a good ’un. He’ll sort him.”

“Who
were
they?” I asked now. “I recognized Putin and his friend, but those guys at the end...?”

“They used to be on our side,” said Dean. “Reuben and his crew organize events like this, provide a bit of security here and there, give a bit of protection to us when it’s needed. Us Baileys have always been in with them.”

“But clearly not now.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not easy.”

“They were just...” I tensed, remembering the sight of that fist poised to strike. “All this.” I waved a hand to indicate the warehouse, the cars. “If the police got wind of this they’d be all over it like flies.”

Dean looked at me oddly.

“The police?” he said. He nodded towards the warehouse. “Reuben and his crew – they
are
the fucking police, darling.”

§

It took me a short time to believe he meant that literally.

We made our way back to the car Dean’s cousin had provided. The driver was standing outside, thumb-tapping the screen of his phone. Dean exchanged a few words with him, and then he held the door as I climbed into the back seat.

As the engine purred into life, Dean turned to me.

“You mean the
actual
police?” I said.

He nodded, an insane grin suddenly pulling at his features. “Mad, isn’t it?” he said. “But this world... it just can’t operate without a bit of cooperation, some greasing of the wheels, you know what I mean? That’s always been the way. I’m not sure if we’re in their pocket or they’re in ours, but either way, it’s how the world works.”

I shook my head.

When I turned back to him, he was holding a handkerchief out. “Sorry,” he said. “I made a bit of a mess of you, darling. You might want to...”

I took the square of white linen, and dabbed at my face. The cloth came away red. I could feel the blood was drying already.

“You could do with some fixing up, too,” I said. He scrubbed at his face with the back of a hand, winced, and then suddenly we were giggling like schoolkids, an abrupt release of pent-up... I don’t know what: energy, tension, adrenaline?

I tipped back in my seat, my chest hurting from laughter.

I turned to him and he was looking at me, something in his eyes.

He put a hand to my cheek, and for a moment I thought he was going to try to clean any remaining blood away, but then...

His touch. It was gentle, almost imperceptible. Fingertips on my cheek.

His hand moved to cup my jaw, forefinger against the lobe of my ear, a sudden, electrifying touch as his fingertip tugged on my earrings. My response surprised me, my sensitivity unnaturally heightened.

The adrenaline thing, I realized. Was this the fight or flight phenomenon Dean had referred to earlier? Coming down from the adrenaline rush, the aftermath of danger... he’d said it heightened everything: responses and needs.

He kissed me.

His lips tasted of metal, that coppery tang of blood.

His hand slipped round to the side of my head, fingers sliding deep into my hair, gripping and steering me, as his tongue pressed, almost delicately, between my lips.

I pulled away.

I wasn’t ready for this. Wasn’t ready for
him
. A man
like
him.

His hand fell away from my head, knuckles brushing against my thigh. He straightened, moved back from me.

Light flashed in from outside, another car’s headlight beam sweeping across us. Our limo was following the convoluted road through this old industrial estate, one in a line of dark cars heading away from the fight.

In that arc of light I saw the tension in Dean’s jaws, the dark flash of his look. He clearly wasn’t accustomed to being turned down.

“I...”

I don’t know what I’d been going to say, so I fell silent again.

“You can stay,” he said. “No strings. It’s late, and I guess you don’t have anywhere to go, right? That place I took you to before? There’s nobody stopping there at the moment. It’s a place we keep, just in case. It’s yours for as long as you want.”

That explained why the house had been so immaculate. Inside, it had felt more like a show-home than somewhere lived in. Was that really a no-strings offer?

I peered at him in the dim light. He had visibly relaxed, as if forcing himself to do so.

I couldn’t work out what it was, what he
had
.

Maybe it was just the adrenaline, coming down from the primitive energy of the fight. Not just Lee’s fight, but Dean’s too... the way he’d taken the Russian out with a single blow, the way it had taken three of that man Reuben’s thugs to subdue him...

Maybe it was as simple as that.

An animal response to danger.

But I knew there was more, too. The complex mix of things that made him what he was. The raw threat of his life, his choices. The protectiveness – the way he’d shielded me from the Russians before, the way he always seemed to be looking out for me, an automatic response for him – but also the chivalry. He was a man who opened doors, who stepped aside for me, who made sure my glass was filled, who made me tea and talked me down after Russian thugs had waved a gun at me in the street.

And more than anything, it was the way he’d taken my hand back there. Me, a girl who never held hands, a girl who shied away from any kind of display of affection. It had been a protective thing, my hand in his, a sharing of strength and defiance. It had been intimate, a small thing in a big, brash setting.

It had been a statement, one he’d been willing to make in front of those men without hesitation.

She’s with me. Don’t fuck with that. Ever.

I kissed him.

It was a reversal of his kiss from moments before. It was my hand that went to
his
blood-smeared cheek, my forefinger that brushed against
his
earlobe – a brief contact, but one which elicited a brief tensing in response.

I recognized that thrill.

I recognized the taste of his lips when my mouth pressed softly against his, recognized the soft yet firm pressure of
his
lips.

The roughness of his stubble.

The pressing response of his tongue against mine.

My whole body responded, every sense heightened. Adrenaline or not, I didn’t care.

My breasts pressed against him, soft against hard; I felt trapped in the tight constraints of my leather jacket.

More tightness in my belly, and lower down.

He kissed back. After a second or two of hesitation – surprise? – his tongue met mine, pressed and slid.

We twisted to face each other, and his free hand went to my waist, slipping inside my jacket, pulling the fabric of the vest-top suddenly tight.

I became intensely aware of my nipples hardening, pressing against the inside of my bra. Tiny pulses of pleasure, thrilling through me at every touch, every pulling and tightening of clothes, of contact.

He pulled me to him, and I tipped my head back, breaking the kiss to release a long sigh that was almost a moan.

Instantly, his mouth went to my jaw. The scrape of his stubble was electrifying, the scrape of his teeth against the taut skin of my neck, the press of his lips and tongue...

The hand moved up across my ribcage, thumb finding the swell of a breast, sliding around the contour.

He moved to cup that breast, thumb against the hardness of my nipple through the layers of top and bra.

I was gasping now. I couldn’t remember feeling so turned on – so urgently, so abruptly.

I reached for him, trapping the hand under my moving arm so that it squashed the softness of my breast.

I found his jacket, pushed it aside. His shirt – so thin and insubstantial!

I ran the back of my hand across his ribs, the hardness of a tiny nipple; found his neck-tie and gripped the knot, pulling him even harder against me.

Just then, the car bumped over a ridge in the roadway.

I pulled away a little, turned to look forward. The driver seemed oblivious to us – either genuinely so, or he was the model of discretion.

I still had a hold of Dean’s tie, and now I pulled him to me again.

His face came to mine, cheek to cheek, his breath hot on my ear and neck, face buried in my hair. The hand that had been cupping my breast moved down, flat against my ribcage, then gliding down the curve of my waist.

I’d turned away slightly, and now I moved to face forward, so it was natural for his hand to come to lie on the flat of my belly.

I felt that touch resonating
everywhere
.

A focused pressure on my belly piercing.

The warmth spreading out, the sensitivity, the responsiveness.

Suffused across my skin.

Penetrating deep in my abdomen.

The pull of my top, trapped beneath his hand as I breathed so it tightened across my breasts.

The slight pressure of the side of his hand resting against the waistband of my jeans.

I arched my back, pushing up against him, like a cat hungry for attention.

My entire body was alive to his touch.

To the heat of his breath against my ear, my neck.

To the press of his body where it came into contact with mine.

To every slight movement.

He pulled his head away a little, so that I could see his eyes, that tensing in his jaw again. Eyebrows slightly raised, he was watching me, studying my reactions, reading my responses.

His hand moved down, until now it rested on the front of my jeans, thumb hooked into the waistband – an abrupt, hard point of pressure – the flat of his hand pressing on my lower belly, just above my sex, fingers splayed, the leading edge of that hand resting across my mound...

He rocked his hand, just a little, and sensations stabbed through me, a surge of pleasure, of response.

His eyebrows raised, fractionally, as I sucked my lower lip in between my teeth and my body tensed.

He pressed again with that leading edge of his hand, and my jeans pulled tight against my sex.

I squeezed my thighs together, and then, eyes locked on his, eased my legs slightly apart.

His hand moved down, turning so that his middle two fingers could press between my legs, driving the hardness of the seam of my jeans against my clit.

My heart was racing, my breath coming in short gasps.

I parted my legs further, one knee up against the car door, and his hand drove deeper, the heel of his thumb hard against me, fingers spread as if to encompass me, fingertips pressing lightly against my ass.

His mouth was partly open, his eyes still studying me.

I kissed him, delicate butterfly kisses on the lips, brief brushings of the tongue and then pulling away.

He started to roll his hand from side to side. The seam of my jeans flipped across my clit with each roll, sending crazy new sensations dashing through me.

I wasn’t going to be able to take much more of this, but I couldn’t tell if I was going to climax or pass out with the intensity...

Then I felt it building, deep inside.

An increasingly urgent tensing of muscles in my abdomen, a clenching in my ass and pussy, a sharpening of those stabs of pleasure radiating through my body from the hard nub of my clit as he pressed and rolled and yawed his hand against me.

I was biting my lip so hard now I was frightened I would draw blood of my own.

I was so close!

And still, he pressed and rolled, not varying the pressure or the pace, relentlessly taking me to the edge and keeping me there, teasing, holding, controlling my responses – owning my response just from his reading of my body, of the expression on my face...

He pressed just a fraction harder, and this time I did taste fresh blood from my lip as I bit down to stifle a cry.

Orgasm tore through me, an involuntary response. Everything tightening, surging. I clamped my thighs together, trapping his hand, never wanting to let it go. Arched my spine, grinding my head back into the soft seat.

He pressed, held, keeping pressure in just the right places so that my climax drew itself out and I’d forgotten to breathe and I felt blackness seeping in from the corners of my vision and still I... couldn’t... breathe...

I slumped.

Sucked air deep into my aching lungs.

Still clamped my legs together.

Wouldn’t let him go.

Not yet.

§

The car pulled up outside the house we’d visited earlier for tea. The one the Baileys owned. The safe-house. Mine for as long as I wanted, he’d told me.

He led me by the hand, as if he didn’t want to let go.

He was an enigma, this Dean Bailey.

Full of himself. That all mouth and no trousers thing.

Then, when I started to discover the world he occupied, it had been chilling. Nobody reaches that kind of position without having been involved in some seriously unpleasant activities. It made me sick, even to think about it all.