Even though it’s dark and pouring with rain, I hesitate before climbing the steps to the imposing London townhouse. With the orange glow of streetlights, shiny black tarmac, and low dark sky flickering around me, I run through my options again. I search desperately for a better alternative than throwing myself at the mercy of my ex-boyfriend’s dad.
Cold water seeps between my toes and fogs my brain. Mr Crosse was always kind to me, in an offhand way. He’s a bigger, grumpier, intimidating version of his son. Generous too, encouraging Tom to treat me with gifts and telling me I was welcome here anytime. He meant as Tom’s guest, I suppose.
I’m testing that statement tonight.
Who else have I got who I can ask? I’ve walked miles across London and cannot afford pride. I mount the steps and press the bell, huddling a bit as a gust of wind tries to snatch my hood and succeeds in plastering it against my face. Ugh. December in London is miserable.
As the door opens, I ready the speech I prepared on the walk over. All about how I know Mr Crosse—or rather his son Tom—and please would they let Mr Crosse know I’m here and why I need his charity in the form of a bed for the night.
“Miss Kendrick.” Framed by the yellow light, Mr Crosse takes up the whole doorway and my throat goes dry. My lips are gummed together. The carefully crafted speech slices into my tongue.
He remembers me. Even as a drowned rat in a waterproof coat, he knows who I am?
My eyes take a second to adjust from him being a massive shadowed presence, to a man I’ve seen many times.
But none of them like this. I saw he was handsome before, but only in an abstract way. I didn’t want him. My core didn’t tingle. Somehow I missed Mr Crosse’s raw sexuality.
He’s dressed in a dove grey shirt undone at the neck and rolled to the elbows, revealing muscled forearms with a dusting of black hair. But his face. I don’t know how I didn’t see how handsome he is, how aggressively masculine he is with his stubble, hard jawline, and severe nose. How did I ever breathe when he was around? I guess he was just my boyfriend’s dad.
But he’s not anymore.
He stands back, silently inviting me inside. I follow him into the house. I haven’t been here for two years, since Tom and I left school and went to university. He broke up with me in our first term apart. We’re still friends. We were just friends, really. Never even kissed properly. I tried, but Tom only hugged me and gave a peck of a kiss. I think he liked the symbol of a girlfriend and the reality of a friend.
The Crosse house is just as understated traditional luxury as I remember. Thick wallpaper in creams and blues, with intricate patterns of leaves, flowers and birds. And I’m standing here, in my cheap waterproof and yoga pants that are soaked over the thighs.
Kill me now.
“Sorry.” I shrink back, dripping on the front mat.
Mr Crosse takes me in, a sweeping look from my soaking canvas shoes to my hood, covering the strands of beige hair that worked out of the ponytail as I walked.
“Tom’s not here.”
“I know,” I whisper miserably. I would have texted him if he was, but we’ve sort of lost touch recently. He’s always too busy to talk to me now.
I meet Mr Crosse’s gaze, expecting to find distaste in the grey eyes he gave to Tom, but no. It’s not that. Just a curiously intense expression.
I’m shedding water everywhere. I shouldn’t have come, it was a humiliating mistake. “I’ll go—”
“Best get you out of those wet clothes,” he interrupts as he reaches out and draws down the zip of my waterproof.
My breath clogs in my throat.
It’s nothing. Only him undoing my coat, but I’m peeled like a banana. Exposed and my cheeks heating, as he grasps the lapel and slowly lifts it.
He hasn’t touched me. He’s totally respectful and appropriate as he helps me out of the soaked garment. He’s not interested in a girl half his age with no experience, who used to date his son. It’s me who is being weird. My body is bubbly all of a sudden. I’m a bottle of fizzy pop that has been sitting on the shelf, inert and dull, then seeing Mr Crosse has unscrewed the cap. There’s sensation everywhere. Little crackles as Mr Crosse’s eyes glide over me, bursts of awareness of my clothes on my skin.
Wet yoga pants are not erotic. They aren’t. Just objectively. But my pussy is defying that law of physics and is heating as Mr Crosse eases my coat from my shoulders. The bedraggled garment is hung up while I watch, so confused and turned on, I can’t bring myself to say or do anything but press my thighs together.
“Come.” He turns and strides away and I’m left trotting to catch up. We twist through the house to a room I’ve never been in. It’s a cosy library and I barely repress a gasp. The walls are covered with dark wood bookshelves and a table has old maps unfolded. Flames flicker in a large fireplace and two plush chairs are placed on either side. Mr Crosse gestures to one chair and folds his massive body into the other, taking a glass of amber liquid from a side table and swirling it thoughtfully.
I sink into the seat and struggle to begin my explanation of why I’ve turned up at his house. But instead of a coherent story, what emerges is, “I need somewhere to stay for tonight.”
Mr Crosse nods slowly, goes to take a sip of his drink. Whisky? But he stops as the glass touches his lips, lowering it again and swallowing hard. His hand encompasses that chunky glass—I bet it’s crystal—like it’s nothing. A toy. But I can see it would be solid if I lifted it.
What would it be like to be touched by his hands? So strong and big.
“Do you mind my asking what happened?” His voice is a calm rumble, and though he couched it as a question, it’s not. It’s a command.
I guess he’s used to not having to ask twice.
Mr Crosse is a huge deal. Country girl that I am, I didn’t know anything about the London mafias when I was going out with Tom, and when he told me his dad was the kingpin of Westminster, I scoffed. Ridiculous.
Not ridiculous, as it turns out. My mafia-obsessed housemates have been swooning over Westminster, the most influential of the London mafias, as well as giggling about the Bratva. Even I’ve seen photos in the gossip magazines of mafia bosses. And if I looked a bit longer at the ones with Benedict Crosse in them… I’m only human, alright? A virgin, not a pot plant.
And if I had any options, I’d be literally anywhere else.
The truth is, he’s still the only person I know in this city. I assumed a lifetime of being a scholarship student at a posh boarding school had prepared me for university, but it didn’t.
I’m shy, I guess. I don’t know how to make friends, and have no family. None alive who want me, anyway. My aunt and uncle were happy enough to ship me to boarding school and there was never a good time for me to see them, so I stayed there for holidays too. Until Tom asked me to be his girlfriend, and I finally had somewhere to go. I thought being in London would force me to be more outgoing, but it’s all so expensive. I’m left working shifts at a coffee shop and falling into bed having done nothing but work and study.
“I have to get some sleep tonight. I’ll lose my bursary if I don’t.”
He doesn’t say anything and his excessive patience is in big black capital letters. MR CROSSE IS WAITING.
I curse myself. I had this all worked out logically, but seeing him has me out of whack. “I share a student house with five girls. It’s in Whitechapel and it’s really cheap.”
Nope. Still not making any sense.
“Five. And currently, around forty of their closest friends and more bottles of vodka than I’ve ever seen in my life.”
A huge Sunday night party I first heard about when the music was turned up at eight. Two hours later, I was about ready to tear my hair out. I know by now that there’s no point in asking them to keep it down.
“I tried to stop it, but…” No one in that house listens to me. When I switched the music off I got elbowed out of the way and shouted out of the room. I called the police, but they said they couldn’t do anything.
Last night they had a massive party too, and if I’m not on my A-game tomorrow, I’ll be kicked off my scholarship, and so the end of going to university. Two years of work and student loans wasted. That means I won’t have my dream job of being a plant geneticist and I’ll probably be working in the Lazy Bean coffee shop until I’m eighty.
You know, I should have gone with that. It would be better than Mr Crosse’s look of polite confusion.
Or I could have opted for the slightly less apocalyptic choice of getting a hotel room. But I did that yesterday, and last Saturday, and payday isn’t until next week. I’m more terrified of debt and failure than I am of severe Mr Crosse and the feelings he evokes in me.
I am.
Probably.
Scary mobster or not, I’m out of options.
“I have an exam tomorrow. If I don’t get any sleep tonight, I’ll definitely fail.”
“Mmm,” he says, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “I’ll find you alternative accommodation.”
“There’s no need,” I rush to assure him. I cannot afford to get a new place. The landlord will take my deposit and the whole year of rent, and I’m broke enough as it is. “I just have to have somewhere for tonight. The house is usually fine.”
He stares me down. “Evidently not.”
“Except for the parties,” I concede. And that most of my housemates loathe me. But lalalala, let’s ignore that since I can’t do anything about it. The rent is super cheap.
He scowls and runs his fingers around the rim of his glass.
Lucky glass.
I lick my lips and remind myself that lusting after your ex’s dad is not the behaviour of good girls who study hard and have successful careers studying plants.
Mr Crosse—Benedict Crosse the gossipy article said, and I obviously cannot allow myself to think of this gorgeous man as anything as intimate as just his first name—folds his arms over his chest and looks into the fire. He glances back at me and for a second I’m sure it’s an admiring look, speculative, yes, but not in the “what am I going to do with her” way. More, “what wouldn’t I like to do to her”.
Then it’s gone, and he unfurls himself, standing so much taller than me. He approaches and my mouth waters. He’s big, and my head is level with his crotch. I could…
Stop it, Anwyn. He won’t ever think of you like that. But my mind does a slideshow of smutty images anyway, blurry as they are since they’re based on books rather than reality.
“I’ll take you to your bedroom now. And in future, when your housemates are having a party, you come here.”
