FORTY-ONE
BJ
I buy her flowers and watch her stroke them as if they are hurt children she is soothing. Since that night in the caves with Jake, I don’t tell her anymore how much everyday hurts. She is dying right before my eyes and there is not one damn thing I can do about it. I want to bellow. I want to howl. But it would frighten her. She looks at the calendar with joy. She is another day closer to her goal. I look at it with terror. I am another day to closer to finding out how much of her the cancer has eaten.
How much is left.
She hides things from me. I know she has written letters for Tommy. Eighteen. To be given to him on his birthdays. She gave them to her mother. I accidentally overheard her conversation. The intolerable pain of that discovery is impossible to describe. I wanted to go and fight ten men. I wanted to hurt someone the way I was hurting. I went into the bathroom and made a hole in the wall. It hurt like a mother. But it dulled the other pain.
Sometimes, when I have to share her with her family, I feel resentful. I feel as if they are stealing my time. What little is left.
I don’t know how much more I can take of any of these feelings.
Everyday she makes me touch her belly. But I don’t know how I feel about Tommy. He’s my flesh and blood. He’s mine and there is a connection, but there is no love in my heart. There is no place for him. For me there is only Layla.
I cannot love anyone else.
Not now.
Not yet.
Maybe because my heart has been ripped open and I’m bleeding. Maybe that’s it.
After that night at Heat Exchange, I’ve never gone to a club or a strip joint. We entered the VIP room. She got out of her little dress, opened her legs wide, showed me her pussy, and asked if I wanted to touch it outside of work, and I felt nothing. Just disgust at myself. My dick was limp. I paid her and left. I knew when I walked out of that door that I had gone to the wrong place. What I was looking for could not be found in a bar or a strip club. Instead I retreated to a place where I’d found solace in the past. Somewhere I could not be found. In the darkness of the old smugglers’ caves.
Bob Marley is singing, No Woman No Cry. The calendar reads Ten Days More. And oh yeah, its got a drawing of a happy face next to it.
FORTY-TWO
Layla
Tomorrow is the big day. Because I opted out of a biopsy that could cause me to miscarry, it will be like opening Pandora’s box. They will do a biopsy on everything in my uterus to assess how bad the situation is. Immediately after, they will operate to remove the baby and perform the hysterectomy.
They don’t know how long I will be out. The cesarean will only take 45 to 60 minutes. It’s what needs doing after that’s the unknown factor. I think I am too numb to feel afraid.
My bag is packed. It is an optimistic bag. There is chewing gum to help speed the process of bowel function returning to normal after a cesarean birth, compression stockings, sanitary towels, and a pair of champagne glasses.
How strange, then, that it feels as if I am packing never to return.
We have a quiet dinner early, as I am not allowed to eat after 8pm. I eat lightly and BJ doesn’t eat at all. We talk a little. We stare at each other a lot. As if we are never going to see each other again. We end up in the bedroom. That afternoon I had taken the time to scent the place with aromatherapy oils, scented candles, and made the bed with silk sheets that I ordered from the Internet. By the bed there was tray of fruit and a big beautiful box of chocolates.
‘Do you know?’ he whispers to me. ‘The sexual texts from The Ming dynasty regarded a woman’s sexual organs as a crucible or a stove from which a man could cultivate vitality.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ I say biting my lower lip.
‘Yeah. Want to try something Ming?’ For a moment the old BJ glitters in the candlelight. Tonight he is strong and powerful and I am putty in his hands.
‘OK.’
‘Get totally naked, then shake your whole body; your legs, your head, and your sweet ass. Afterwards, sit down cross-legged on the bed and invite me into your body.’
So I shake my entire body, sit down, and ask him to come into me. He takes off his clothes, muscles rippling across every part of his body, and his cock standing to attention like a good soldier. He comes to sit in front of me.
‘When I exhale, you inhale and vice versa. Pretend that you are able to take that breath you inhaled from me down to your sex organs.’
As he breathes out, I find myself breathing his breath into my body and down to my sex. Up so close he nearly takes my breath away. He is such a magnificent specimen.
Slowly, I become conscious that I am sharing all of me with him and he is doing the same. The realization makes my skin super sensitive, as if an electric current is running through my body.
He stares into my eyes. ‘Now kiss me and share your breath with me.’
So we kiss and kiss and kiss and the strangest thing happens. I don’t believe woo-woo stuff but suddenly, amongst the scent of the candles and aromatherapy oils and the silk sheet under us, we become one person. And I’m not even talking about BJ and I. I’m talking about BJ, Tommy, and I. Suddenly we are joined in a kind of magic circle. All of us linked forever. No matter what happens after tonight, we will always be together.
And then I am back in my physical body, on my hands and knees, reveling in the muscular caress of his shaft. He is like he was in the old days, before the cancer. Raw and unbelievably passionate. I feel his large hands on my body. Touching, claiming, branding. It is as it was on our very first night.
The orgasm when it comes is so shattering, so incredible, so crazy I can’t even scream.
‘Wow! That was so … mind blowing,’ I pant breathlessly.
He turns his raven eyes to me. ‘You’re mind blowing.’
‘So are you going to honey talk me now?’ I tease with a smile.
‘Why not? You are everything I could have dreamed of. You’re a cool, cool girl, Layla.’
I look into his beautiful eyes. How I love this man. I take his warm, rough hands in my own. ‘No matter what happens tomorrow, you know, I’ll always love you.’
Something sad and dark crosses his face, but he hides it as quickly as it showed itself.
‘Are you ready for your goodnight kiss?’ he asks lightly.
As he has done from the day we got married, he opens my legs and lingeringly kisses me right in the middle of my sex.
‘Good night, my darling,’ he whispers softly into my core.
“Jump into the angry abyss with a smile on your face.
This how magic has always been created.”
—Shamans
FORTY-THREE
BJ
Her eyes look like they are lit up from within and her skin is actually glowing. I remember something that scares me out of my wits. My grandmother once told me that a few hours before death the person always glows. You think they are getting better, but they are really just preparing for the final journey.
We are at the hospital. Her family is gathered outside. They have said their well wishes and now it’s my turn. Only I can’t say anything. I am too afraid I will break down. I can feel my insides sloshing hotly. I have never been so frightened in all my life.
‘You will tell Tommy that I love him and I always will,’ she says. There is slight tremor to her voice and fear in her eyes. She is just as terrified as I am.
Fuck, I can’t do this. ‘Fucking tell him yourself,’ I say.
‘Say something nice to me,’ she says softly.
But I can’t. If I stop being a son of a bitch I’m going to howl my eyes out. ‘When you get out of here, I’m gonna fuck you so hard you’re gonna need stitches.’
‘I said say something nice.’
‘It’s hard to say something nice when you are bleeding out.’
‘Oh darling.’
The nurse comes in. ‘It’s time,’ she says.
I grab Layla’s hand.
&n
bsp; ‘Don’t be afraid,’ she whispers. ‘I’m not.’
I want to cry. I want to envelop her in my arms and not let them take her away, but I let go of her hand and watch them wheel her through the swing doors. I stand there, lost and frightened in the empty room. I am so fucking frightened my breath comes out in a huge heave through my body. I feel a hand touch me. I turn around.
‘Come with me,’ Jake says. His voice is firm and authoritative. And like a lost child I follow him outside. I feel hollow and emasculated. I let her go. She could die on the operating table.
I should have told her that she is one in a billion.
EPILOGUE
BJ
“Not to dream boldly may turn out to be irresponsible”
—George Leonard
There are fresh flowers on the grave. My mother must have visited earlier. I stand by the headstone and I feel a sense of serenity. For the first time in my life I feel at peace. There is no hate, no anger, no pain, no hurt.
All the lost jigsaw pieces of my life have come together in a brilliantly beautiful mosaic. Only now, I can see why that red piece happened, or why that blackness had to be right there, where I thought it should not be.
Now I see how perfect it all is.
There is a small ladybug on the black marble of my father’s gravestone. I get down on my haunches and watch it. A gust of wind comes and it flies away. I touch the stone. It is warm from the morning sun.
I never thought the day would come when I would forgive my father. It reminds me of what a man once told me. He was a heroin addict.
‘I am not to be reviled. I’m to be pitied. You have to walk in a man’s shoes before you judge him,’ he said.
I didn’t understand him then, but I do now. I know that given the right circumstances, I could have been my father. Maybe I wouldn’t have battered Tommy, but I wouldn’t have loved him. Without Layla, I would have been dead inside the way my father was.
He was not to be reviled, he was to be pitied.
I turn away from the grave and walk towards the car. I have to stop by the local store and get a carton of organic milk for Layla. I haven’t told you what happened, have I? They wheeled her into the operating theater to do the biopsy, only to find no tumor during the ultrasound. It had shrunk to nothing. They couldn’t believe it. They probably still can’t. They didn’t even have to perform a Cesarean. Layla had been right all along. She never stopped believing. She made the miracle happen.
Layla carried our baby to full term.
Tommy was born a healthy, lusty baby weighing 8lb and 2 ounces. A bundle of joy.
It’s a beautiful day, so I park the car and walk down the road to the corner shop.
‘Coming for your milk, Mr. Pilkington?’ Mr. Singh calls.
‘Yup,’ I say picking up a carton.
‘Tell your wife, organic yogurt coming next week.’
I grin. ‘That’ll make her day.’
‘Yes, yes, your wife very interested in organic things. She always looking for seeds. I tell her, I bring from India for her.’
‘Thanks, Mr. Singh.’
‘No problem.’
The bell jangles when I close the door. I light a cigarette and smoke it on the walk home. I kill it outside the front steps and chuck it into the bushes. I fit the key into the lock, open the door, and step inside.
Layla is coming down the stairs. She breaks into a smile.
‘Hey,’ she calls gaily and runs down the rest of the way.
I watch her approach, a sunburst in my heart. ‘You look good enough to eat.’
‘Never mind that now. I’ve got a secret to tell you,’ she whispers.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
She giggles. ‘It involves adding to the world’s overpopulation problem.’
My eyes widen. I feel ten feet tall. I put the bag of milk on the floor and move closer. She smells of milk and baby powder. She starts laughing as I pick her up by her waist and whisk her into the air and whirl her. Round and round we go until we are both dizzy.
‘You made me dizzy,’ she says laughing.
Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.
She. She is the meaning.
-The End –
This book is dedicated to
Gianna Beretta Molla.
Took the same decision as Layla, but did not survive.
Gianna was canonized as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church in 2004.
“Lord, keep your grace in my heart. Live in me so your grace be mine.
Make that I may bear everyday some flowers and new fruit.”
— Gianna Beretta Molla, 1922-1962
If you enjoyed Sexy Beast and want to know how Jake met Lily you’ll find it here:
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Cover design: http://www.ctcovercreations.com/
Editor: http://www.loriheaford.com/
Proofreader: Nicola Rhead
Masquerade(One Wild Night)
Published by Georgia Le Carre
Copyright © 2014 by Georgia Le Carre
The right of Georgia Le Carre to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the copyright, designs and patent act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN: 9780992996994
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Oh, Sinnerman, where you gonna run to?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn5tiuZU4JI
One
Billie Black
‘Fucking kids,’ I swear and bury my head under the pillow, but the irritating ringing of the doorbell continues mercilessly. The desire to go out and throttle them is so strong it makes me grit my teeth.
I pull myself out from under my pillow abruptly and frown. Hang on a minute. I no longer live in the poor end of Kilburn, and there are no kids roaming the corridors annoying people on Sundays here. Also, I have no debts left so it can’t be debt collectors either. Not that those lazy fuckers will work on Sundays.
I get out of bed and, walking barefoot to the front door, curiously put my eye to the spy hole.
Whoa!
I draw back hastily, and press my hand to my belly. What is out there is far worse than any debt collector. By far worse. The bell rings again and holds. The sound is jarring loud and…insistent. It’s not going to go away. I turn my head and look at myself in the mirror on the wall. My hair is a spiky rat’s nest. I pull my fingers viciously through the unruly mess, but it does not improve. The bell goes again. Oh, fuck it! Whatever. I don’t care, anyway. I take a deep breath, rearrange my face into one of tight exasperation and fling open the door.
Cor… Look at that, though. Tight black T-shirt packed hard with muscles, he fills the corridor like the Incredible Hulk, only he is all blond, and he makes little kitty clench tight even on a Sunday. Damn this man to hell. How can anyone look that good at this time of the morning?
He removes his finger coolly off my doorbell and smiles a severely attractive smile, before letting his gaze, all wicked and sexy, start roving down my body. It’s like having melted chocolate poured all over me. I want to lick myself. Ke
ep it together now.
‘What do you want?’ I demand aggressively.
‘To fuck you senseless.’
I don’t succeed in stifling the gasp that rises into my mouth. The cheek of the man is astounding. Last night he brazenly introduces me to his girlfriend, and this morning he stands on my doorstep wanting a legover! I feel a fine rage in my veins.
‘Fuck off, you cheating skunk,’ would, as Ali down the sweet shop would say, be giving him too much face. ‘Piss off, I don’t want you to fuck me senseless,’ would be a lie. So: I nod, and move quickly to slam the door in his lazily smiling, smug face. With lightning speed he lays his palm firmly against the wood and resolutely pushes his way in. I am engulfed by the smell of his freshly showered body. Probably washing off her smell, I think sourly. I don’t do the undignified thing and attempt to fight against such a male show of strength. I decide to decimate him with pithy wit instead.
Inside, he looks as out of place as a rhino in a China shop.
‘The polite thing to do would be to offer me some tea,’ he says, one blond eyebrow arching.
I cross my arms over my chest. ‘I’m actually not feeling very polite at the moment.’
He flashes a pearly white grin: wolfish in the extreme. The guy is a walking sex bomb. ‘That’s just grand,’ he says. ‘We can be impolite together.’
Pithy wit deserts me. ‘Don’t make me punch you in the face.’
‘You were the best lay I ever had.’
My eyes widen. The surge of pleasure I experience irritates me. I pretend to laugh dryly. ‘Is that supposed to be some sort of compliment?’
‘Yeah, and a goddamn fine one too.’
Before we go any further, let me first tell you that this man is good in bed. No, make that really, really, really good. Like out of this world good. He butterflied my legs and went to work on my girly bits with the precise dedication of a Swiss watchmaker until I nearly fainted with pleasure. And believe me, I’m the expert in muff diving, since I have been for most of my life a lesbian.
You Don't Own Me: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (The Russian Don Book 2) Page 37