I should have slept soundly after all the terror and drugging stuff. And I do. But it’s punctuated by the feeling of Benedict’s warmth and his hard frame. When I awoke, he did too, his mouth finding mine, languid and sweet, and his hands skimming down my body. I don’t know how many times he fingered me to orgasm last night.
A lot.
I’ve had many unexpected wakings in the last forty-eight hours, but this one is the best. Ben is asleep. I get to look at him, up close. The sheet is around his waist and he’s naked, sprawled on his back, one arm loosely clasping my shoulder.
I carefully lever up onto one elbow, moving slowly so as not to wake him. My kingpin is even more gorgeous than I had realised and I catalogue each part. The black stubble that covers his jawline and down to the protrusion of his Adam’s apple. His eyes are closed, long lashes fanned on his cheeks. The eyebrows which are usually pinched down in a scowl are relaxed. The lines of silver at his temples glint. His chest is gloriously naked.
That happy trail… Ugh so good. Dark hair down his sculpted abdominals like that should be illegal. He’s practically a honeytrap. Irresistible physically, but add in his smooth dark voice, the way he told me I’m his good girl, gives me dinner, and listens to everything I say, I’ve no chance. And I’d be lying if his power wasn’t heady. He’s the most noteworthy mafia boss in London. The man everyone looks to for permission to do anything.
And he wants me. A nothing-special girl with no family, who likes books way too much and is a bit—alright a lot—of a nerd.
My first proper kiss. My lips are tingly and plump from the force of his passion. The ones on my mouth, yes, and also the lips at my core. Benedict Crosse demanded I ride his face until I came, and I did it.
Who is this Anwyn, because I’m pretty sure she’s not me.
Or, a little voice suggests, maybe this is you, and no one else has ever seen you like he does.
The daring voice that could get me into trouble.
I run my hand down his chest, tracing the soft and wiry hair of that happy trail.
The sheet has a lump in it. His cock. My mouth waters as my fingers brush back the fabric, so near to touching him as I’ve longed to do. Finally.
“Anwyn.” A dangerous snarl, and Ben traps my wrist between his palm and his belly. “That’s enough.”
“I can make you feel good,” I say, desperation beating in my heart. I can’t leave him, having made me twist up with pleasure, hard and unsatisfied. He has to break apart too. “I want to lick you.”
“It’s morning.”
I don’t understand why his tone is harsh and why that’s significant for a moment.
Then it rushes back.
He’s my ex’s dad. This is taboo. Wrong.
No. I don’t accept that, and he doesn’t want this to be over. I can tell by the gravel in his voice.
“It’s still the night if we haven’t got out of bed yet,” I try, rubbing my thumb over his skin.
For a second our eyes meet, and I swear I see the world reflected back to me. He’s trying for stern and unfeeling, but there’s a tumult of pain and desire in his expression.
Then he shutters, a wall of black onyx crashing between us. “One night, Anwyn.”
He puts my hand away from him and rolls off the bed, stalking across to a wardrobe where he’s pulled on boxers and is buttoning a shirt before I catch up.
“That’s it?” I whisper.
“Yes.” He doesn’t look around.
“We’re going to pretend nothing happened?”
“No one can know.”
I’m dried out and brittle, dead. I’m a leaf cut from a tree, wilted, scorched, then crushed beneath Benedict Crosse’s well-shod heel.
Fuck him.
Really. Fuck him for making me love him even more, floating me up into the air, high on pleasure, then cutting the spell and letting me crash down to the ground.
I find my pyjamas and when that’s not enough covering, I don’t even ask. I barge him out of the way of his wardrobe and the first shirt that reaches my hand goes over my head.
It smells like him and my heart aches.
“Are you going to call someone to get the key and let us out?”
He doesn’t answer and after a few seconds I look at him. Standing in his usual pristine suit, this one pale grey with a white shirt. He has fully dressed, tie and cufflinks included, and transformed into the immaculate, controlled mafia king of Westminster, rather than my patient lover of last night.
This is not a man who would call me his good girl and give me orgasms.
“The key,” I repeat.
A muscle ticks in his jaw and he strides to the bedside cabinet and yanks it open.
“You had a spare all this time?”
“Of course,” he replies calmly.
“You arsehole!”
I don’t know why I’m so angry about this. He’s the one who threw the key out the window after all. I was always the captive. But knowing it was there makes it all feel sordid. Like he was humouring me.
“Give it here.” I snatch the key from him and my hands are shaking as I unlock the door and try to flee. I storm downstairs, and it’s only as I get to the generous hallway that my brain catches up. His room is right next to mine. That’s why it was so easy to find my way out of this otherwise impenetrable house.
All this time when I’ve spent the night here, he was just next door. A few feet and a whole world away.
I hate him.
And love him. Tears prickle behind my eyes and the room swims as I drift to a halt. The front door will be locked. I have no shoes, money, or key to get back into my house. No phone, either. I’m wearing nothing more than Ben’s shirt. If I could even get out of here, I’d be stuck walking two miles home across London streets that if I’m lucky will cut my feet but not give me a deadly infection.
Yay. So potentially, I would have survived one kidnap and escaped another, only to be brought down by a lack of street cleaning and inadequate public health measures. Fun.
“I bought you a house.”
I turn to find Ben right behind me, cool as you like. Fucker. He’s silent as a cat. I’d put a bell on him if he were my pet.
But he’s not mine, is he? And I don’t know what he’s on about. A house?
“Let me out.” I’m resigned, trying to be as unfeeling as he is, when I’m overflowing with emotions. I’ll take my chances with the walk.
“Not while the Bratva still know where you live, and have access from your housemates.”
“I’m going home,” I insist. “Today.”
“You are ho—” He cuts himself off, shoves his hands in his pockets and takes several deep breaths, head bowed. “Tomorrow. The lawyer said your house would be ready tomorrow, and I’ll deal with the Bratva…”
My expression must be as thunderous as I feel, because he sighs and adds, “Alright. Today. This evening, you get a new home. I’ll get George to pick up your things—”
“I can get my own stuff,” I say, instead of asking why Benedict Crosse bought me a house. I wonder what it’s like? A property only for me, that I could go to whenever I want? Mad.
“No. You can’t.”
I remember the last time I was in my room, and shudder. Yeah. Okay, maybe he’s right.
“I don’t want to lose my deposit,” I mutter.
He nods. “You’ll get your deposit back. Or the equivalent. And if you stay here until tonight, you’ll have a place of your own.”
“Payment for my compliance, and not reporting you to the police?”
“If you choose that interpretation. The police do what I say. But I’m offering you safety, Anwyn, if you can just be pliant enough to take it.”
It’s not security I desire, it’s him. I bite those words back. “Fine. I want breakfast,” I grumble.
A sad smile tugs at the lips I kissed last night.
It’s much like our Sunday mornings together, except I’m aware of what he looks like without clothes on.
Which, you know, is an issue. It makes me hungry, but not for the treats he sets out. Sweet and milky Darjeeling tea, toast with lashings of butter and marmalade.
Over the past six months, a wall between us had come down, chipped away, brick by brick.
We’ve lost all that intimacy. Every casual laugh and shared smile. We’d started telling each other truths and revealing details of our lives without even noticing. I’d told him about my studies and he’d spoken about the petty squabbles of the other mafias that he adjudicated.
It’s only when we sit across from each other in silence but more physically aware than ever before that I feel how far we’d come and how much I long for its return.
I spread deep red cherry jam over a piece of toast. Ben’s eyes follow my hands as I take a bite. He’s staring at my mouth as I chew and his eyes go dark when I lick the jam from my lips.
It’s lewd and forbidden, how I feel about him. But we said one night, so although I’m desperate to ask what his watching me means, I don’t. I sip the tea he made me and consider the last thing he said.
“Tell me about the house.” Because rich as this man is, buying me a home is still… Significant. To someone like me, whose main family has been a boarding school and primary home—homes—shared with dozens of others, it’s the promise of spring after the longest winter. I love visiting Ben here. Powerful kingpin he might be, but his house is always calm and quiet, unlike anywhere I’ve lived before. Just him and me, despite the fact I know he has dozens of staff.
“It has a big garden.” He frowns. “Trees and stuff.”
My hand stills halfway in bringing toast to my face. A garden. A place to grow plants of my own and sit in the sunshine. My throat goes dry.
“There’s a breakfast room with French doors that lead to a terrace with long stone troughs full of plants.”
“Herbs?” I choke out, because in my imagination that’s what a fantasy house has. Fragrant pots of lavender and rosemary and mint, and a deckchair that I lie in. An umbrella so I can see my laptop screen as I work, bare legs stretched before me.
He raises one eyebrow in an eloquent statement of how would I know, you’re the plant expert. “I noticed the purple one that you like.”
Lavender then. The rest of the house might be a wreck, but I’m already entranced.
“Is that why you bought it?” I joke.
“Yes.” A simple reply, his expression serious. I don’t know what to make of it, because yes, he’s observant. I told Ben I liked morello cherries once, and the next Sunday morning there was this jar on the table.
Nothing escapes his notice.
But maybe this is more than his professional diligence?
“It’s just outside London,” he continues.
My heart jumps again. Close enough that I could visit him. I could continue to see him.
“So you can finish your studies.”
Oh.
My heart snaps, a tender shoot from a seed broken off before it can reach the light. This doesn’t make me special.
Probably lots of girls would be too proud to accept a gift like a house, but I’m not going to argue when someone is offering me what I’ve wanted since I was old enough to comprehend what a home was, and that I didn’t have one. Just a place to live.
Many things have changed since the time I first dreamed about a home and a family to love. Not least, all those fuzzy dreams have sharpened into focus. Not just a home, but a townhouse in Westminster. Not just a family, but children with big grey eyes. Only one person to love me: him. Ben.
“Thank you, Mr Crosse.”
There’s a beat of silence.
“Back to this,” he mutters. “You called me Ben last night.”
“You gave me orgasms last night,” I retort.
He sighs and runs his hands through his hair in a gesture of such frustration I almost feel sorry for him. Almost.
Then I remember that he thinks I’m too young and girlish to deserve more than one night of his attention.
This tension between us is horrible.
“When did you get the house?” I ask, more to fill the silence than anything else. I expect him to say it was part of some mafia deal and he had it lying around like normal people have a scattering of coins. Might have found it down the back of his sofa. Ah! That’s where I lost the gold bullion and a four-bedroom house.
But he doesn’t. He gulps tea and says, “Yesterday morning. I searched online for hours while you… It took me a while to find what I wanted. I’d been thinking about it for a while, not actioning it because…” His mouth twists and he trails off again, so unlike him. He’s usually crisp and concise with his words. “It was imperative. I saw I’d already waited too long.”
He bought me a house while I was asleep in his bed.
“Trying to get me out of here.” I attempt a laugh but I’m just broken and trampled. I thought… I was so sure last night that he felt something for me.
Turns out that something was guilt.
“Trying to keep you safe, darling. From the Bratva. And from myself,” he adds softly.
Safe from him? I’m not a child to be dictated to. Of all the arrogant things. And to call me by a sweet endearment, teasing me with everything he’s withholding? That. That’s the worst.
“Don’t call me darling unless you mean it.”
“I mean it.” I look up and his eyes lock with mine across the table. He sets down his tea and focuses entirely on my face. “You are my one good girl. My darling. My queen. Even though we can’t be together, Anwyn, you’ll always be my darling.”
The heat of my anger grows into a blaze of love and arousal, only tempered by the acknowledgement that we can’t be together. “Really?”
“Yes.”
And yet in the way he stands straight and folds his arms I recognise he’s not going to change his mind. The honour of Westminster and the legacy of his son mean more to him than being with me.
“I’ll arrange some clothes for you, and whatever else you need. Then this evening, I’ll take you to your new home.”
I nod my acceptance and tentatively, we’re friends again despite all that has happened in the last twenty-four hours.
It’s less than an hour and a whole wardrobe’s worth of clothes arrive for me. Everything I might want, all in my size. I pick out a white sun dress with buttons down the front to wear, and brush my hair so it flows over my shoulders.
As we relax into the day, me stealing books from his library and him having a series of phone conversations that amount to plans to kill the Bratva, I see how it could be. It’s just as comfortable as it’s been all along, but with the extra intimacy that has developed since last night.
I love him.
I can’t go back to seeing him only once a week.
We have lunch, and Ben fusses—if that’s the right description for dark scowls and pointed looks—over whether I’ve eaten enough. The day goes by far too fast, and anxiety puts out suckers in my tummy, twining and curling around me, trying to choke the air from my body.
The evening, he said. He’d take me to this beautiful house he bought me, and I won’t have an excuse to visit every week.
I thought I was okay with this plan.
But the edge of the cliff is approaching fast. The moment when I’ll never see Benedict Crosse again. And that is when I change my mind. I have only a few hours left with him then I’ll be out of his life forever.
There’s only one thing to do: what he did to me.
Last night he undid me with sheer pleasure. My body was no longer my own. He showed me that no one will ever make me feel as good as he does, and covered me with lines of his come. He made me his in all the ways that matter, except one.
He claimed me.
Turnabout is fair play. I’m going to claim him.
