He runs his tongue up my neck, nibbles my chin, then bites my lips harshly. The car jerks, rocking me against his solid crotch, teasing me through my thong. We both turn to look out of the tinted window. The traffic is stationary, a bumper-to-bumper jam of red lights.
I turn my gaze from the stream of cars to Gregory as he curses beneath his breath. “I’m having you now and you’re going to take everything I give you.”
“You infuriate me, Ryans.”
“Baby, the feeling’s mutual. Nobody defies me continually. No one steps out of line and gets away with it like you do.”
“Maybe if your lines weren’t so unreasonable I wouldn’t cross them.”
His fingers shove my thong to one side and invade me. My head rolls back as his thumb draws a slick circle around my clit.
“Can Jackson see us? Can he hear us?”
Gregory’s only response is to drag his fingers forcefully against my G-spot with an animalistic growl. Whether he could hear us or not, I don’t think I’d have the strength to stop now.
“You’re always ready for me. Even when you think you’re pissed at me, you always want me.”
I cry out as my body responds to his punishing fingers and his rough grip on my breast. Damn him. Damn me and every goddamned thing that I can’t control.
His words, his touch, his velvet lust-filled voice, his smell. Everything about him consumes me. I drop forward and bite his neck, my mouth and teeth working up to his ear. I pull his lobe through my teeth and push my hips down, taking his fingers deeper inside me, greedy to feel the pressure of his tense, fisted hand against my entrance. He works his fingers in circles, pressing harder when he strokes my spot and keeps the rhythm of his thumb in sync. My hips start to move, slow and controlled.
“Gregory.”
“Is that what you want, baby? You want me just there?”
I nod through my heady breaths.
“Tell me. Tell me, baby.”
I can’t. I can’t breathe. I bite my lip, not wanting to submit to him. Pushing my hands to the ceiling I lift my hips and he holds himself as I crash down on him, finally feeling his cock filling me. Through the rear window I can see the face of the driver in the car behind and rows of traffic around us. No one can see us but the knowledge that they’re there has a strange effect on me. More people who just can’t leave me the fuck alone.
I rise and pound down on Gregory, taking him to my end. He pulls my hair again, forcing me to look at him.
“Tell me.” He grabs my hips, grinding me against him in the rhythm he wants. I stop fighting. I relent to his command.
“I do. I don’t want to but I need you, Gregory.”
I’m on the cusp of falling apart in every way. He grabs my arse roughly and spreads my cheeks, his fingers applying pressure to my rear hole, the move stretching my vulva and increasing his friction against me.
“Oh, God, Gregory.”
He lifts me and yanks me down, impaling me on his angry cock.
“Fuck!” He holds me still.
I lean into him, grabbing his hair. Taking him in, the feel of him, the pressure of him against my clenching insides. I’m pulsing around him but I can feel him too, he’s not far away. I need more. I attempt to move my hips but his hands grip me tighter. He’s too strong for me. “Fuck me,” I demand, dissatisfied, impatient, irritated, annoyed.
He doesn’t move. I shift my head to look into his smouldering eyes. He’s enjoying this. My mouth drops open, needing to scream but knowing I can’t.
“I love watching you like this. Desperate for me. You’re so fucking beautiful.”
“Please. Gregory.”
He releases his grip and pushes his pelvis up. Our mouths lock as we moan into each other. I slowly rise and bare down on him, hard.
“Jesus!” he barks.
I rise again and crash down on him, feeling him reach the top of me. He takes hold of me, moving me round until we settle into a fast, deep, mind-blowing rhythm.
“I’m close.” My words are hoarse.
“Let go, baby. I want to feel you come for me.”
He moves us faster until my body can’t take anymore. I throw myself forward and bite his chest through his shirt. My hips thrust uncontrollably as he continues to turn his swollen shaft inside me. My scream is muffled but it takes him to the edge. He slams his cock up into me and throws his head into my chest, his fingers digging painfully into my waist. He fills me as quietly as his release will allow.
* * *
I can’t bring myself to look at Jackson as he holds the door open for me in the basement car park. The three of us ride the lift in silence. It must be written all over my face. I feel ravished, dirty in a way that’s a total turn on. My vexation is now lost in a sea of lascivious thoughts.
The lift pings at the sixty-fourth floor but my mind is in a state of trance, thinking about that fuck. In the middle of the road, in the heart of London, with Jackson in the front seat. Gregory’s hands rest on my shoulders and he guides me out of the lift. We follow Jackson into the apartment, Gregory moving me forward with his palm on the small of my back.
“I’ll take these to the office,” Jackson says, holding up my laptop bag and documents.
“Thank you,” I manage.
“Hello, darling, you must be shattered. Gregory said you worked all night.” Amy takes in my tousled hair.
“Erm, yes, I’ve got a deal going on.” That isn’t a lie. I was working on Mr. Ghurair’s upcoming deal but I miss out the part about spending most of the night doing not much at all, my head in a spin.
“Can I fix you something to eat?”
“She needs breakfast, Amy,” Gregory answers for me. “Go and take a shower,” he says to me, “then come and eat.”
As much as I’d like to argue with him and fire off some smart quip, I’m suddenly very tired. I take myself off, not because he’s directed me to do so but because I actually do need a shower. I needed a shower before he made me all sticky between the legs. Now I definitely need one.
I scrub myself clean then roughly blow dry my hair before dressing in a pair of leggings and an oversized jumper. Gregory is in his office when I tiptoe across the landing.
“Fuck Nick! He’s not getting a penny.” Through the ajar door I can see the top of his head, his leather chair facing out of the window into the low autumn-winter sun. “I’m paying people off left, right and centre right now as it is. I’m damn sure that bastard isn’t getting anything. Tell him if he wants money he should get out and fucking earn it.”
He slams the Blackberry down on the desk and drags a hand furiously through his hair.
Slipping through the door, I ask sheepishly, “Is everything okay?”
It’s a stupid question really, and one with an obvious answer but he doesn’t snap at me. He lifts his head. “It’d be good if the CPS made a decision sometime soon.”
“It would.” He rotates his chair sideways as I move towards him and I crawl onto his lap. “Is Nick Henshaw trying to fight his termination?”
“It was a resignation, not a termination, and yes. But he’s not going to get anywhere with it. He’s just an itch.”
“And the other people you’re paying off?”
“Press. I don’t know how they’ve found out.”
I lean my head into his chest. “I guess these things make for good gossip.”
“Ja, but Sydney said she hasn’t seen the interest so high and all at once like this before. She thinks someone talked.”
“Nick?”
“I can’t see it. He might not be scared of me telling his wife about Sydney but he knows that...he knows not to test me.”
I close my eyes. I don’t even want to know what that statement alludes to.
He leans back, the leather chai
r rocking a little. “But the only other people who know are the police and...people who wouldn’t say anything.”
“Us. Sandy and Jackson. Your mum and Lawrence. Williams and Amanda. The guys in Jackson’s team that night. Would they say anything?”
“Not a chance.” He sighs. “What about Amanda?”
I sit back quickly, my hands pushing against his chest for leverage. “Of course she wouldn’t. She’s my best friend, Gregory.”
“Alright.” He plants a kiss on my brow then lifts me to my feet. “Breakfast. Now. Go.”
Chapter Fifteen
Practising corporate law means accepting that your life will be a constant navigation through peaks and troughs. One day you’re riding high on the buzz of closing a deal or taking a cheap thrill from getting one over on another lawyer. The next, you’re back to mundane documents or a pissed off client because your opposite number has managed to screw you in a negotiation. It might be fair to assume therefore that I’d be seasoned to life’s highs and lows, might even put them within one of those vague stereotype categories like normal or ordinary. But life with Gregory is like taking up an extreme sport. Not like diving or skiing. More like cliff diving or ice climbing without a harness.
The thing is, I’m addicted. I’m addicted to the adrenalin rush, the thrill of being with him. Bad days, in fact, utterly shit days, like today, make the high days like Monday at Primrose Hill and Wednesday’s kinky home-working day, seem even higher. He’s in my veins, he’s in my blood and I’m starting to think he might be the only thing keeping my heart beating. But I don’t know how many more days like Tuesday, Thursday and today I can take. I find myself sitting at my desk, as I am now, wondering whether it’s all worth it. What I’m wondering right now is whether those three words I’m so desperate to hear him say would justify everything.
Yesterday had started like any other day. We woke at five-thirty and Gregory went straight out for a run whilst I messed around on the punch bag with Jackson, quizzed him about Sandy until he blushed then moved on to the spin bike, making way for Gregory and his fine torso to beat up the punch bag. We had morning kinkiness which meant I had to take breakfast on the move. Jackson dropped me at my office, where I deposited a second bagel with Paul, albeit with a scowl. I still haven’t forgiven him for snitching on me, telling Gregory I was hiding out in Caffe Nero on Wednesday morning.
The cliché goes, bad luck comes in threes, well, my first bout came via email. It pinged through to my inbox around nine thirty. I was finishing off the latte Margaret had left on my desk and Neil Wallace’s name—accompanied by a rather awkward looking headshot—appeared on my screen. Mr. Ghurair was apparently very impressed with the due diligence report I prepared for the first in his series of imminent deals. Concise, commercial, pragmatic. That’s what Neil wrote. I’m not sure if it was a direct quote. Then came the catch. Because I’ve done such a concise, commercial and pragmatic job of the due diligence report, Mr. Ghurair is now not just keen but adamant that I’m the person to take up the Dubai secondment. Neil tells me he needs my decision by Friday next week but it’s obvious he still thinks I’ll do what everyone expects and say yes. That’s why he isn’t pushing and that’s why telling him no will be ten times worse than if I was any other lawyer under his management.
I was still pondering the prospect of Dubai when Gregory’s name danced across my iPhone.
“Hey baby,” he said. I knew from his tone that it was about the case. “I’m about to join a conference call but I wanted to let you know John Harrison called. The results on the second print from the gun are going to be back tonight or tomorrow.”
Just like that. That’s how he delivered the news, as if it was completely within the scope of ordinary. Perhaps it is in the scope of our ordinary. I’m beginning to understand the parameters of our ordinary are much different to the norm. I thought about that for most of the day. Even when I wasn’t thinking about it as the main event, it remained a subplot in my mind all afternoon. I worked on Gregory’s joint venture with Shangzen Tek—at least that’s one thing that seems to be ticking over according to plan—but at six thirty, I gave in. I couldn’t sit at my desk and feign normal any longer. I also didn’t want to go back to the Shard and continue the charade. So I wandered. I had no aim in mind, I just headed west and found myself in Covent Garden where the Christmas lights—a giant Christmas tree hung with red LEDs, and an enormous sparkling white reindeer—drew crowds of tourists doing early Christmas shopping.
It was after nine when I took Jackson’s call and he came to pick me up. He dropped me at the entrance to the Shard after I insisted I really couldn’t come to harm navigating the vestibule and one lift. He watched me into the building before heading off to see Sandy.
Gregory was on his phone, still in his navy suit, his crisp white shirt open at the neck, one hand tugging at his hair. He paced in front of the lounge window, the city lights bright behind him.
“They asked about her? About her specifically?” His voice was raised and laced with something, irritation or anxiousness perhaps, but he wasn’t shouting. “That much is on police record, Mother, they were bound to bring it up. Did they...did they ask how she—”
He took a deep breath as he listened, his upper body rising and expanding. Then he slumped, defeated, onto the edge of the sofa and leant forward with his elbows on his knees.
“They’re trying to establish motive. Trina? She’s supposed to be off the case.” He shook his head and his cheeks puffed out with his breath. “Look at it this way, the CPS are going to see that this whole thing has sent that sick bastard where he belongs.”
Sick bastard! I’ve heard him growl those words once before, in exactly the same way. Last time they were aimed at Jack Jones, my old boss and the man Gregory beat until he confessed to sexual assault. Gregory was beyond livid then too.
Quietly, I placed my bags down on the floor and pressed the front door closed.
“Stop crying. Please. I know that. I’m sorry you got dragged into this and I’m sorry that they brought her up. Yes, I know she has a fucking name and I’ll do everything I can to keep her out of this, Mother, you know I will.” He stood up abruptly, then turned and found me on the opposite side of the lounge, not daring to move from the doorway. His irises were black and piercing.
“You’re drunk,” he snapped into the phone. “Stop drinking. Now? Fine. Stop drinking, I’m on my way.”
“Hi,” I said. It was all I could think to say. His rage was clear.
“I need to go out.”
“Now?”
He walked towards me and dropped his lips to my nose roughly. “Yes.”
He collected a set of keys without saying another word and he was gone. I thought I heard the front door open and close in the middle of the night but he never came to bed. I don’t know what time he came home. The first I saw of him was in his sweat drenched grey T-shirt this morning when he returned from his run. When I asked if he was okay he lied. “Of course,” he said. Then he showered and spent most of the journey into work on his Blackberry to Sydney, agreeing to ever-higher sums of money to keep the press schtum.
Now, I’m sitting at my desk, turning my pen between my fingers, mulling over the events of yesterday, wondering who she is, why Lara was questioned and fighting with Gregory about her, and why Gregory is so desperate to keep her name off the case. He can’t say he loves me, he tells me to leave, then he tells me he can’t walk away. The only thing that’s certain is there are things he isn’t telling me.
How long can we continue like this? What if my love isn’t strong enough for us both?
Dubai. A break and a clean slate. I’d be giving up an opportunity for nothing if he won’t let me in. Six months, a year from now, would I be left regretting my decision not to go?
I think about whose print is on the gun and I will the phone to ring to put an end
to the uncertainty.
My iPhone lights up on my desk. An unknown number scrolls across the screen. “Scarlett Heath speaking.”
“It’s Gregory.”
“Oh. Hi. Your number didn’t come up.”
“I’m not on my own phone, the damn roaming is knackered.”
“Roaming? Where are you?”
“I’m in Frankfurt, baby.”
“Frankfurt. Frankfurt, Germany?”
He chuckles. I’m not in the least bit amused. He’s hardly spoken to me for the last twenty-four hours and now he’s in bloody continental Europe.
“Something came up and I had to fly out. I’m going to try to fly back tonight but it might be tomorrow. Depends how long things take here.”
“Oh.”
“Listen, that’s not the reason I called. I have some good news.”
“Do we get good news these days?”
“Well, good in our screwed up way.” He laughs and despite myself I let out a short, sadistic chuckle. “The print on the Glock was Jackson’s.”
My sense of humour fails in a nanosecond. “That’s a good thing?”
“Yes, angel, it means you’re not associated with the gun. John thinks it helps corroborate our story. The police know that Jackson has handled the gun in the past so it makes sense for his print to be on there. It doesn’t necessarily implicate him because it’s only one partial print, it doesn’t look like he gripped the gun. Do you see?”
“Ah, yeah, I guess. So it doesn’t put Jackson in the frame?”
“No. And it means no matter what the results of the ballistics report are, there’s no evidence to back up anyone else being involved. Our stories still all point to me pulling the trigger.”
Still he fails to understand why that doesn’t please me. Not even a little bit. Not at all.
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