She clasps her hands together, her eyes shining with gratitude. ‘Thank you. Thank you so much, Shane. I promise on my two children’s lives I’ll never let you down.’
‘Good.’
As if unable to contain her excitement she bounces out of her chair like a puppy.
‘Go home, Bubbles. I’ll have a word with Martin later.’
She comes close enough for me to feel the heat coming off her body and, tipping forward in her flashing wedges, plants a feather-light kiss on my cheek. I cock an eyebrow and she lets her heels drop back to the ground and, slowly, licks her thickly glossed lips. Yes, Bubbles definitely has something.
A ripe, tight, eager pussy. Very predictably, my cock is interested, but my cock is always full of bad fucking ideas. Girls like Bubbles, they look like they’re figuring on a cheap thrill with a hot, hard dick for the night, but that’s like watching a snake slither up to you and thinking, Awww … look, it wants a little cuddle. Take it from me, they don’t even give you a chance to take the condom off before they’re making wedding plans in their heads. Me, I like a little bit of Angela, Pamela, Sandra and Rita.
I pull a fifty from my shirt pocket and hold it between my index and forefinger. ‘Take a taxi home tonight,’ I tell her.
Disappointment flashes in her chocolate eyes, but she takes the hint and deftly plucks the note from my fingers. The same action has been performed ever since man first invented currency, and its primal nature tugs at something in me. Have I really done Bubbles a favor today? She’s naïve and innocent now, but one day she will learn all the things that strippers learn about men, and their greed, and their lust, and their ugliness. She will learn to exploit those qualities and she will make lots of money, but will that really be a good thing?
‘Don’t do anything the little voice inside you tells you not to,’ I tell her.
She nods slowly. ‘You are a very beautiful man. Not just your face and body, but your heart too,’ she whispers. She pauses for a moment. ‘I promise you will never regret this decision.’
Then she walks out of my office and closes the door quietly behind her.
Two
SHANE
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
—Steven Wright
I hear her shoes clatter down the wooden stairs as I light a cigarette and take a deep drag. Walking over to the large one-way mirror, I look down at my club. My eyes look for and immediately find Nikki. She is sparkling like a diamond. Sitting next to a man, her pose provocative, she raises perfectly manicured fingers and over the thin material of her gown, sensuously rubs her nipple. Her mark—I can tell straight away he’s got a cock full of bad fucking ideas too—stares, transfixed.
You have to hand it to her, she’s good, she’s real good.
She even had me fooled once.
With girls like Bubbles you see them coming. But when Nikki approaches you, you don’t even see the snake, you just see the grass moving. Nikki is poisonous even when her legs are splayed wide open and she is moaning, in that crazy Russian accent of hers, ‘It’s so deep, baby. Oh yes, fuck me, baby. Fuck me hard. Show this nasty pussy who its owner is.’
She crashed a vase into a mirror when I ended it. Good thing I’m an old hand at ducking. Sometimes, I still catch her watching me with a strange mixture of frustrated lust and venom, but she refuses to leave. Why, I don’t know. Any club would welcome her with open arms. I could have fired her, but why spoil a good thing? She’s the club’s highest earner.
I am suddenly distracted by a flash of white that appears in my peripheral vision. My eyes shift to follow it. A girl in a shimmery white dress is moving across the floor in the direction of the toilets. Her walk is slow and sexy, effortless, and her bone structure is very fine and delicate. In the dog world she would be a Saluki bred by the Bedouin to race across the desert sand during a hunt. A dog considered too fine to be called simply a dog.
Her skin is very pale and her hair is raven black. It pours thickly down her back like an oil slick. Normally, I would have been put off by the combination of pale skin and long black hair. It reminds me too much of the chalk-white, black-wig-wearing female demons in the Japanese horror flicks that my sister and I used to secretly watch until the early morning hours when we were really young, but something about this woman …
I exhale smoke.
A strobe light catches her face and my eyes widen.
Whoa! She is far more stunning than I had imagined. In the blue light she looks almost unreal, like a creature from a fairy tale. So pure she cannot be tainted by vulgarity or coarseness even when she is surrounded by it. The quality is so rare I don’t feel her call in my cock where most women make their presence felt, but deep in my gut. A tendril of excitement twists up my spine.
I want that woman.
Badly.
I kill my cigarette in an ashtray on my desk and leave my office. I take the stairs two at a time, stride down the corridor, and enter the club. Cool air from the vents above hits my face. Dillon Francis and DJ Snake’s track ‘Get Low’ is playing. I position myself by the Chinese bar with its blue and white porcelain tiles.
An acquaintance grasps my hand and pumps it. ‘Hey, Shane, how you doing? Let me buy you a drink?’
‘Thanks,’ I say with a smile, ‘but I’ve got one coming.’
He wants to talk, but I turn away from him and watch the door that leads from the toilets. My drink arrives and I take a gulp. The door opens. A woman comes out. The door shuts again. I am holding my breath. I let it go in a rush. Why am I behaving like this? My skin prickles, as if it knows something I don’t.
The door opens once more and she walks out. Her stride is still a slow sway, but up close she is even more breathtaking. And again I have the impression that she does not belong in this place. As if she is a shimmering water queen risen from a river, able to transform boredom into a feast of the senses.
As she gets closer I have the impression of something exotic. It could be her nose or the straightness of her eyebrows. But blood from distant lands flows in her veins. Her lips are full and painted some spicy color, a mixture of turmeric and chili. Her eyes are elongated and look straight ahead.
She would have passed by without noticing me if I had not shot out an arm and grasped her delicate wrist. Her reaction is strange because it is so deliberate. She stops walking and lets her gaze swing slowly from my hand wrapped around hers up to my eyes. This close, her irises are light green and liquid, the pupils flaring. They are almost ethereal. I have the weird sensation that I am waking her up from a dream. It is disconcerting.
Inside the circle of my fingers, her bones are as fragile as a bird’s. I stare into her deeply mesmerizing eyes. They make me want to know everything about her. About what has made her so fragile and otherworldly. They make me want to possess her.
‘And who would you be?’ I ask, flashing her my most charming smile.
She stares up at me for a few seconds longer. Then she frowns. ‘I’m probably not what you think I am.’
What surprises me is that she did not mean her answer to be provocative or flirtatious. That instantly makes her the most interesting woman I have ever met. My cock is pulsing and crushing against my jeans like crazy, so, naturally, I promise myself that I am going to fuck her. I’ll be damned, I can’t remember the last time a woman had me this strong. I widen my grin. ‘What do you think I think you are?’
Her lips move and words quiver out. ‘A random pick-up.’
‘Wrong. I think you’re the most beautiful woman in this club, and I’d like to take you out.’
‘Where would you take me?’ she asks curiously.
‘The woods.’ My answer irritates me. Bravo, Shane. You sound like a fucking serial killer.
But the first flicker of interest appears in her eyes. ‘The woods?’
‘Yes. I have an old chateau in France. It is very beautiful this time of the year. At night the fireflies come out.’
She inhales with surprise. ‘Fireflies?’
‘A sight to behold, they are. I never tire of watching them as they blink around the garden. There used to be more, but there are fewer and fewer of them now.’
‘I have never seen fireflies. They seem more like the stuff of myths. How magical to see them for real.’
‘Then you must come to Saumur.’
‘Saumur,’ she murmurs, tasting the name on her tongue.
‘I promise you’ll love it. There are crickets and bull frogs and wild boar, and occasionally a peacock looking for a mate will wander into the grounds.’
Her mouth parts with wonder. ‘Really?’
‘Scout’s honor.’
‘Will I have to sleep with you to see all this?’
I am still holding her hand. I stroke the silky skin on the inside of her wrist with my thumb. ‘Not if you don’t want to,’ I say.
She smiles slowly, sexily. When she smiles she’s as beautiful as a field of fireflies.
‘We can just be friends?’ she asks cautiously.
My eyebrows shoot up. That’s a new one for the books. I honestly don’t think anyone has ever said that to me. ‘We can be whatever you want us to be.’
She leans closer, her eyes suddenly alight with mischief. ‘Are you wearing mascara?’
I laugh. ‘No.’
‘You have very fancy eyelashes,’ she says solemnly.
‘I could say the same about you.’ I swear I have never had such a weird conversation with a woman before.
‘But I’m wearing mascara,’ she says with a grin.
‘Do you have a name, mascara-wearing babe?’
‘My name is Elizabeth Dilshaw, but everyone calls me Snow,’ she says as she gently tugs her wrist out of my grasp.
I don’t want to but I let go. ‘Really? Snow?’
‘Yes. I was born in India where almost everyone is dark-skinned, so when I was born so fair and with such a full head of midnight-black hair, all the nurses started calling me Snow White. The name stuck and I became known as Snow.’
I smile broadly. She did step out of a fairy tale, after all. ‘Skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony.’
‘And you are?’
‘Shane.’
‘Yes, I think I’d like to see the fireflies and have you as my friend,’ she says softly.
Izzy Azalea and Rita Ora’s ‘Black Widow’ is playing. There are people brushing past us; I can smell their perfume and cologne. They serve as a backdrop for her. Someone calls my name, but I don’t turn to look. ‘Can I get you a drink?’
She bends her head and shakes it, and her beautiful hair moves like a silky curtain around her face. ‘No, I’m with … friends. I have to go back to our table.’
I take my phone out of my pocket. ‘What’s your phone number?’
She lifts her head and tells it to me and I key her number into my phone. Not taking my eyes off her, I press the call button. A bird starts chirping from inside her bag.
‘Now you have my number too,’ I tell her.
‘Yes, now I have your number,’ she says slowly.
The moment is strange, surreal even. Full of undercurrents and deeper meanings, it doesn’t belong in the middle of a club relentlessly dedicated to the pursuit of the pleasures of the flesh. All the clever words and witty remarks have deserted me. I don’t want to let her go.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. I ignore it. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ I say.
She nods slowly. ‘Yeah, maybe you will.’
For some odd reason her voice is sad. As if this promise has been made before and never kept, even though I cannot even imagine a scenario where a man takes her number and does not call. She is impossibly intriguing. I resist the temptation to reassure her that I will call.
‘Well, then. Nice to have met you,’ she says and, turning, begins to walk away.
‘Snow,’ I call.
She turns around, one charcoal eyebrow raised.
‘I will call you,’ I promise. It has never happened to me before. I have never cared to reassure anybody that I will call. If I felt like calling the next day, I called. If I didn’t, well … c’est la fucking vie.
One side of her mouth lifts, and then she turns away and carries on in her path, again an incorruptible fairy tale creature. When she disappears from my sight I can’t stop smiling. I take a triumphant sip of my drink before tilting my body slightly so I have a view of her table.
And that moment is like that video of John Newman’s track, ‘Love Me Again’. Do you know it? Where a boy and a girl meet in a dreary club. They escape from her wannabe gangster boyfriend and run out of the back doors. Hand in hand, full of hope and excitement, thinking they have outrun the bad guys, they get out of a narrow alleyway and dash straight into an oncoming vehicle. The video ends abruptly on a black screen.
I guess you are supposed to infer that they die.
Snow’s table is Lenny the Gent’s table.
The fairy tale takes an unexpected and unwelcome turn. Lenny ‘the Gent’ is not the wannabe variety but a real gangster. What they used to call a mobster. They call him the Gent because he is always so fucking polite. He would say ‘please’ or ‘do you mind’ before he hacked off your face. The Gent is surrounded by beautiful, giggling women vying for his attention, but he gazes at Snow’s approach with the kind of hunger that makes me sick to my stomach.
Fucking hell. Straight into an oncoming vehicle!
Snow is Lenny’s woman.
When she reaches his table, he stretches out his hand. For a second she hesitates then she opens her bag and gives him her phone. He pockets it, and taking another phone out of his pocket gives that to her. She puts it into her bag and sits down beside him, and he places his hand on her thigh.
I try to make out her expression, but her face is as smooth as a statue. Like a man in a daze I start walking toward her. My mind is blank. Fortunately, I collide with a waitress.
‘Sorry. It was my fault,’ she apologizes.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I tell her, my hypnotic trance broken.
I stop where I am standing and look at Snow. She is staring vacantly into her drink, her numb face the perfect frame for her empty eyes. The emptiness is total. I recognize its significance instantly. Her frozen body and expression are an instinct to survive. She has locked herself away in a place where she cannot be corrupted by the baseness and degradation around her.
A nearly naked woman is writhing her flesh close to Lenny the Gent’s face, but, like mine, his eyes are glued on Snow.
There is only one way this thing is going to end. Badly. But I don’t care. I have always gone where angels fear to tread. The blood expands in the veins of my forearms.
Snow will be mine.
The second mouse will get the cheese.
Three
SNOW
Better keep yourself clean and bright;
you are the window through which you must see the world.
—Lucien Bernard Shaw
‘Are you ready to go?’ Lenny asks. As if it is ever my decision to stay or go.
I turn my head in his direction and feel like a deer that has stepped out of cover. It stops and stands, motionless, nose to the air, watching, smelling, ready to flee at the least sound. A million years of evolution has taught it how to sniff out danger.
He looks back at me, his eyes totally blank. It is the thing that I find most unnerving about him: how dead his eyes can be at certain moments. Then he smiles and his face fills with human emotions and I forget that momentary disquiet.
‘Yes, I’m ready to go,’ I reply.
‘I’ll be coming up with you tonight,’ he says, watching me for my reaction.
I become cold inside. The deer would have bolted, but I don’t. My face cracks into a smile. ‘Of course,’ I say quietly.
He stands and holds out his hand. I take it. At the next two tables men are standing up—his minders. We walk out of the club
followed by them.
What a mistake it was to talk to that impossibly gorgeous man, to flirt with him and pretend that I could ever go out with one such as him. Shane. Beautiful name. But it was stupid and careless to walk back with some of his warmth still wrapped around my wrist and his cocky smile lighting my eyes.
Lenny knew straight away. He sees everything. Eyes like a hawk. I am his possession. He doesn’t use me too often, usually twice a week, sometimes thrice, but I am his, just as much as the hammock he uses only in the summer is. He will sleep with me tonight because he wants to exercise that ownership over my body.
He is actually furious.
We get into the rear of his Rolls-Royce and he leans back and runs his hand along my inner thigh. I inhale sharply. It is an involuntary gesture and his hand freezes. My gaze swings nervously to his eyes. With a cold, hard smile on his face, he moves his hand relentlessly upwards.
I suppose it is my fault, really. If I had not allowed the other man into my head. If I had not come back thinking of fireflies. If I had just been a little better hidden, he would not be doing this now.
‘Open your legs,’ he instructs.
I part them slightly. His fingers pull away the material of my panties and brush at the seam of my core. I flinch inwardly. Outwardly, my face is calm. I stare straight ahead as if nothing is happening.
‘Dry,’ he murmurs. ‘You’re always so damn dry.’
I swallow hard. ‘I have lubricant at home.’ My voice sounds suddenly panicked. I don’t know where the instinctive horror of him comes from. He has never hurt me—at least, not yet. Perhaps, the revulsion comes from the frightening emptiness in his eyes, or the smooth hairless skin on his back. Like a reptile.
‘Hmmm.’ He takes his hand away and I close my legs with relief.
The car stops outside my building and we get out. In the lift, I know he is watching me steadily, but I cannot look at him. Here the lights are too bright, God knows what he will see. The lift doors open and we step out onto plush maroon carpet. We walk down the corridor and he opens the door with his own key. It is a small one-bedroom apartment. I live here. He pays the rent and all the bills.
You Don't Own Me: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (The Russian Don Book 1) Page 17