We’re transferred to a small bus which drives us towards a hangar that’s hidden away. I’ve learnt now not to anticipate Ruben, but to go with the flow. Once this—whatever this is—slows down, then I’ll question it and pull it apart with analysis. For now, I hate to admit it, but I feel like I’m on some kind of adventure.
We make it to a private plane which is warming up, the engines roaring, ready. There is luggage being loaded into the bowels of the vessel and I look at Ruben, wondering what the hell.
“Are we flying with other people?” I ask, confused.
“Trust me, Freya. We’ll be alone for this flight.”
“I do trust you, but I’m… shocked. This is… I mean… you planned this, didn’t you?”
“Let’s just say, he never would’ve seen this coming, not the morning after our big bust-up last night.”
For a moment I’m assaulted by that familiar feeling of wanting and needing to run. I’ve definitely been captured and dragged into this life of his. All these months, I thought he would never make a move, and now I’m convinced he would’ve made one earlier had he been able to. He’s been waiting for something to happen, that’s why we only just got together—something recently came into line for him.
We board the plane and when he starts buckling up, I do the same. It’s a lovely jet with ivory leather seats and light décor. Is it his? I daren’t ask.
The doors slam shut at the back now the luggage has been loaded. Did he get my paintings? What about my dresses? How did this happen?
We taxi out of the hangar and head straight for a runway. The captain comes over the tannoy and announces, “Good afternoon, Mr Kitchener. We’re ready for take-off and the weather looks good. We hope to land in approximately two hours and fifteen minutes, give or take. Until then, enjoy your flight.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. It seems as though we’re staying in Europe, or at least you can’t get far on a short flight.
“Is this your plane?” I ask Ruben, finally having drummed up the courage to ask.
“It’s one of them, Freya. Just relax. After take-off we can go into the cabin suite and work out some of your tension, if you like.”
He squeezes my hand and grins. The man who welcomed us at the airport appears as if from out of nowhere and seats himself just a few rows ahead of us on the other side, where there’s a couch.
“That’s Roy,” Ruben tells me, “he’s my employee. He’ll look after us on this flight. Don’t worry, he’s a good guy.”
Roy looks seriously scary, as if you wouldn’t mess with him. He’s wearing generic black trousers and a white military-style shirt, but he could be anyone. He might be Ruben’s private protection officer for all I know, otherwise he’s just a very hard-faced, one-man band who constitutes as Ruben’s cabin crew.
“Hi Roy,” I yell, above the sound of the engines.
Roy turns his head and looks up from the newspaper he’s reading, giving me a quick nod before getting back to his news.
I snigger against Ruben’s shoulder and he squeezes my hand before the plane jolts to a stop at the top of the runway. The engines rev and before we know it, we shoot off like we were just released from a catapult.
“Short runway here,” Ruben says, and almost as soon as he speaks, we begin a steep climb into the sky, turning almost instantly too. In a small private jet, everything feels heightened.
After a good ten minutes of juddering through turbulence before finally making it above the clouds somewhere, the seatbelt lights go off and Roy leaves his seat. He walks up to us and looks at Ruben.
“Drinks, sir?”
“Freya?”
“Uh, I’ll have a gin and tonic if you’ve got it.”
Roy turns his eyes to Ruben, never doubting for a second he doesn’t have gin and tonic on this thing.
“I’ll have a beer, Roy, thanks.”
“Certainly.”
Despite seeming as tough as old boots, Roy has a soft voice and manner, but maybe that’s just because we’re not on the ground anymore.
Perhaps in the air is the safest place to be right now.
While our drinks are being procured, I turn to Ruben.
“Where are you taking me?”
He leans in and brushes his nose against mine.
“I want it to be a surprise.”
“Okay.” I kiss him softly.
“We’ll be okay now,” he says, breathing a sigh of relief.
“I know.”
“I do love you.”
“I love you.”
Our drinks arrive but we take only one sip each before heading straight for the cabin suite.
As soon as the door to the onboard bedroom is locked, Ruben tugs me into his arms and kisses me, his tongue immediately entwined with mine. I haven’t been with anyone on an aircraft before, but I bet he has. Still, I believe he never loved anyone as much as me—or else, why has he gone to all this trouble of getting us safely out of London?
We fall in a heap on the bed and I can’t help the noises coming out of my mouth as he kisses my mouth, then my throat, my cleavage… my hand.
I grab hold of his hair and pull him back to me, needing his kisses, his arms and his weight on top of me. For a moment I forget we’re even on an aeroplane, but then we bank left and my stomach flips. Ruben chuckles when I touch my stomach, grimacing.
“Don’t tell me you’re travel sick.”
“Not since I was little… let’s just say, lying flat on my back on an aeroplane is a new experience I’m going to have to get used to.”
“I know a way of making you forget where you even are.”
He unbuttons my jeans and pushes his hand inside my knickers, sliding his middle finger through my seam until I part, giving him access to the delicate flesh of my inner folds.
“Pull this over your head,” he growls, biting at my sweater.
I’m more than happy to rid myself of it, only the clouds in the sky outside the oval windows bearing witness to what’s going on inside this tiny cabin. Plus, I’m as hot as sin, lying here beneath him with all these clothes on.
Ruben slips his finger into me the moment I have my sweater off, his teeth toying with my nipple through the lace of my bra. I lie back with my arms above my head, eyes closed. I know I can trust him to make sure I’m safe, satisfied and secure.
He rubs his finger in and out of me, then adds another finger, the heat that’s building in me powerful and quick as he uses his thumb to agitate my clit simultaneously.
With his free hand, he tugs down my bra strap and uncovers one nipple, deep-throating my naked flesh until I come with a shriek, contracting several times against his hand, right before the plane does a little dive and almost makes me puke. A pocket of air pressure, no doubt.
Ruben doesn’t seem to notice or care that I feel dizzy and nauseous, gripping the back of my jeans to get them down at the same time as my knickers.
He has my bra undone and my body entirely naked within a few swift moves.
His hot, eager tongue laps between my legs for a taste before his lips scour my belly. Then his teeth dig into my hip and I forget I was feeling dodgy at all.
I’m lying on the bed with my legs wide open and his head between them without a care in the world. Why can’t it be like this all the time? He is all I have ever wanted.
He works on my clit with the breadth of his tongue and I moan and writhe beneath him, grabbing onto his hair, then his sweatshirt, tugging until it starts to come off over his head.
“I need you inside me,” I gasp, “I need to feel you deep in me, Ruben. You’re all I need.”
He wipes his mouth on my inner thigh before crawling up the bed. I grab his belt and unbuckle it, pull down his zipper and help him wriggle out of his jeans.
The sight of him so hard, the glans taut and pulling away from his foreskin, the veins popping and pronounced… makes my mouth water.
I wrap my fingers around him as he lowers onto me and direct him towards my ope
ning, his cock sliding all the way into me in one swift, clean move.
He gathers me to him and kisses me tenderly, rocking into me like only a lover can, without urgency but also without reservation.
I experience something for the first time as he’s kissing me and possessing me wholly…
I yearn for a baby to hold in my arms, at my breast… his child. I yearn to have a part of him grow inside me and swell my belly. I want something that binds us together, some kind of promise that we will go on forever, through this simple and miraculous gift of nature.
Digging the heels of my feet into his lower back, I cling to him, my arms around his shoulders, my face pushed into his chest, my teeth digging into his skin.
That thing that happened last night happens again, where I feel this overwhelming love for him and my heart burns, my stomach aches and it feels as if I’m welling up with desire and need.
It’s out of my control completely as my womb and my eyes weep, his body and the protection it provides the only thing keeping me together right now. I can hardly speak as I flood around him, giving him everything I have to give. He pumps into me one last time and grunts, his muscles taut and tense as he explodes into me.
When I open my eyes, he’s holding me against his chest, his fingers twirling in my hair.
“It happened again,” I whisper.
“What did, honey?”
“I came just because I love you. That has never happened before.”
“For me, either.”
His entire body shudders and at least I have that—some relief that we’re truly in this, together.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Hotel Brawl
When Freya landed the job of Hotel Manager at a mere twenty-four years of age, she was determined to do everything by the book. She was reformed, a better person, and there was no going back. Her suicide attempt wouldn’t be repeated. All those eyes staring at her… their pity. Their misunderstanding. She didn’t need that again. She’d wanted to follow through, she hadn’t wanted to live another second, but damn she couldn’t seem to manage to kill herself. Better that she not try to repeat it, or else she’d be facing the pity brigade—including her father—all over again. All of that long behind her, she’d regained her self-esteem inch by inch by going back to school, and now this job was the proof she did have what it took to actually function in the world.
One Saturday night, not many weeks since she’d landed the top job, a raucous party took place in the main function suite and trouble broke out. Security was called and the fray broken up, but as manager it was Freya’s job to show the police to the scene and assess the damage before writing a report.
There were chairs, windows, tables and bits of floor to replace or fix, not to mention she’d have to take account of how many glasses and plates they’d lost that evening. It was a mess. The people whose function it was—the Kitcheners—were going to have to pay, unless there was some legitimate reason this could all be done through insurance.
Freya hadn’t been involved in booking parties for a year or more, not since she landed deputy manager, and now, her current role. Dealing with functions was the job of her events team, so she never knew anything about the people hiring rooms, just names on invoices and the digits of their credit cards. She always made sure things were just so the night before an event, more as a courtesy to her staff than to anyone else—because her approval meant something to them, and that was special, actually.
That night as she watched Fred Kitchener being handcuffed and carted off, she knew there was something odd about him. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but he was all wrong.
The party was for Kitchener’s youngest son who had just finished Eton and had a place at some fancy university lined up (according to a couple of members of staff she’d overheard gossiping earlier that day). Now she thought about it, Freya decided it was strange for the hotel to have received this booking for a Saturday night graduation party in high summer, when usually the main suite would be weddings and nought else, all summer long. It was some weight to put on the kid’s shoulders, especially as the party had to have been planned for months, so the parents must have been sure of their child’s success. Either that, or the party was a chance to brag. In Freya’s experience, most proud parents around this neck of the woods paid out £200 per A-grade and grudgingly signed off on a parentless trip to Ibiza as a celebratory gift. It didn’t need to be shouted from the rooftops so much, not when that would seem uncouth. Far more in vogue to pack them off to Ibiza and scoop them up with a shovel when they got back.
Freya stood around idly watching people sift through bits of broken glass, spilt blood and torn curtains, too (adding that to her mental list). With the clean-up well underway, she found herself distracted by the young gentleman whose party this had been—especially as he was being questioned by police. Gliding across the floor but not stepping near enough that it appeared she was earwigging, she overheard what was being said.
“My mate Freddie, who I’ve been at school with for years, just told me tonight that we have the same dad. Just came out with it. Says he’s known for years. I punched him and my dad broke us up, but then I confronted him about Freddie’s claim… and my dad went white. Then Freddie’s dad came over and heard what was going on, looked at his wife and then at my dad, and put it all together. That’s when… you know… everyone just started brawling. I never meant for this to happen!” the youngster sobbed, completely traumatised. “It wouldn’t have happened if my brother was here! He could’ve taken them all, but he’s playing football in France… and I need you to call my brother. And my mum! She’s home sick and doesn’t know anything about this. I can’t… I don’t…”
The police officer put his hand on the young man’s shoulder and whispered some words before telling him, “Come on, I’ll give you a ride home. Don’t worry, none of this is your fault.”
Freya watched as the young man was escorted off the premises, ashen-faced though not to blame for any of this. Obviously, the other three had been taken away in handcuffs: the Kitchener father, the man who’d been in the dark all these years and the alleged half-brother of tonight’s guest of honour who’d caused all this and had likely wanted a fight.
Freya’s one consolation working in hotel management was that half the time, the lives of other people she came across in such a trade always seemed just a little bit more messed up than hers.
It gave her pause for thought. Some days, she just had to be happy she had an uncomplicated life. Her dad stayed out of her way most days, she worked long hours so she wasn’t home much, plus she didn’t have a boyfriend trying to bring her down all the time.
Freya left the function suite and walked the long corridors back into the reception hall, which was cool and calm now the party had gone and most of the hotel guests were in bed, either partied out or preparing for an early-morning flight. She didn’t usually work this late but tonight it had been one demand after another from the Kitcheners, and then, this. It was almost midnight.
Freya positioned herself behind the reception desk and checked on her night manager. “You okay, Bruce? Think I’m gonna go home now and collapse.”
“Yeah, you got an inventory of all the crap that got broke tonight?”
She tapped her head. “More or less. We’ll squeeze ’em, I think they’re good for it.”
“Have a good one,” he said as she walked away towards her office, even though there was nothing left of the evening.
She should have called a cab to take her home, it being late and all. She should have taken the quicker route too, but there was something about walking alongside the river that always helped her switch off after a long shift—maybe the water had healing properties, and most evenings she found herself going the longer route home just so she could stare at the lights bouncing off the water. So as she was walking home in the dark, all alone, the roads empty, the night still warm, it was probably fate or something darker that had a hand in w
hat happened next.
Freya started out along the riverside path but only got as far as the Harvester pub before she saw two men standing around in the car park. One was the Kitchener bloke she’d seen not long ago in handcuffs. He hadn’t made it to the police station, then. That was interesting.
The second man she recognised.
He was one of London’s most notorious pimps.
Well, less pimp, more blackmailer.
Freya pulled her hood over her head before either of the men saw her face. She wore trousers and a hoody beneath her jacket but she would look like nothing more than a bartender going home from the pub, if she just kept going and didn’t stop to gawk.
The problem was, she wanted to gawk. She needed to.
She raced past the pub and continued down the road until she came to a hedge. Ducking behind it, she chased down a narrow path running between houses and remained concealed behind this hedge. Benefits of having lived here all her life—knowing the ins and outs. She went along the length of this narrow cut-through before she found a gap in the hedge and went chasing into the rear car park of the pub. Bombing it through the car park, she kept to the sides of the deserted pub until she came to a place where she could crouch behind a low wall, just in earshot of the conversation the two men were having.
“I’m running out of people who will take payoffs,” one of them said.
She didn’t know who it was, but she’d hazard it was Kitchener.
“You should have kept them apart, you knew the risks.” As soon as she heard his voice, she recognised it. Joey the Great, they called him. Her personal assessment was less favourable.
“I wasn’t having either of my sons missing out on the best education money could buy.”
“Yeah, and what about your eldest? He went to a normal school.”
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