“You’re sure you feel up to going in?” he asked me, changing gears in the Audi – the muscles bunching and flexing as he took complete command of the car. I’d never noticed how sexy it was to watch a man drive before.
“I’ll be fine today,” I said, honestly. Despite barely three hours of sleep, I felt energized – it was the first time I’d ever slept next to a man for a whole night. He’d kept waking me up, granted, but I hadn’t complained – my thighs ached from clenching around his waist for most of the night, and it made me feel decadently alive. My body throbbed with the after effects of an arousal slaked – at least for the moment – and it was more potent than caffeine.
“You want to talk it through before we go back in? We could go grab some breakfast once you’ve changed?” he turned to me at the traffic lights, the engine vibrating beneath us, and it struck me at the pit of my stomach just how sexy and powerful he was.
And completely mine. Temporarily, granted, but I was determined to enjoy it.
We’d woken up an hour before schedule, so that we could run by my apartment to change, and I could fix my face to look like I hadn’t stayed up for most of the night fucking the Managing Director. There hadn’t been time for more than a quick coffee once we’d finished in the shower, and I was ravenous.
“I think it’s only fair you pick up my energy levels again,” I said slyly, watching him out of the corner of my eye, “But I think there are a few more interesting topics to be discussing than me.”
He growled, pulling the car back into gear as the lights changed.
“Like your saucy little mouth around my cock?” he shifted slightly in the seat, and I got a little thrill that the thought alone could make him a little edgy with arousal, “I disagree though, there isn’t a more interesting ... topic on the planet than you.”
It was quite pathetic that almost every word he said to me had me preening like a kitten, wasn’t it?
“You coming up?” I asked, snapping my seatbelt when he pulled up haphazardly in front of my apartment building – Cayden drove like he did everything – dangerous, but controlled.
Parking was apparently a different story – he just stopped, for the most part, wherever he liked. Life with valet.
“I’ll wait here,” he drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, cold eyes calculating every aspect of our surroundings, before turning back onto me, darkening, “If I come up with you, I’m going to see a flat surface and need to fuck your brains out over it.”
I flushed, my eyes self-consciously flying to the window, as if anyone out there could hear what he was saying to me. My face must have been beetroot, despite the warming tingling thrills that were firing through me.
He chuckled, dropping a chaste kiss on the tip of my nose.
“Go on, princess, I’ll be here waiting.”
********************************************
I don’t think I’ve ever got ready quicker for anything in my life than I did for that breakfast. So quickly in fact, that we sat in a little bistro at the side of the Thames no less than half an hour later. I’d thrown on a white shift dress, in light of the scorching heat wave that we’d been having recently, swept my hair up into a sleek ponytail, and dusted my face with foundation before slicking on some mascara and a lick of vivid red lip gloss – with the same patent sheen as the red court shoes I’d matched to my Chanel bag.
I thought I did well in seven and a half minutes, even if I was still pulling on a shoe, and fastening the band in my hair as I was shutting the apartment door behind me.
I was so relieved he’d stayed in the car.
He was relaxed in the wooden slatted seat at the bistro – his legs kicked out beneath the table, crossed at the ankles – an Americano in front of him. We’d ordered a small, quick breakfast of bacon sandwiches, which he’d lathered with ketchup before devouring wholeheartedly.
“Hungry?” I quirked an eyebrow at him, nodding to his empty plate not two minutes later.
He chuckled, sitting back with his coffee to watch me beneath a hooded gaze.
“Seems I had this sexy little bitch in my bed all night, worked up quite an appetite. The woman is insatiable,” he was drawing out the words, letting them linger over my nerves – taunting me.
“Oh, really,” I quipped, playing along, “Anybody I know?”
He watched me quietly – a brooding settling into his calculating gaze – before he looked out at the river.
“I’m not even sure I do.”
I put my sandwich back on the plate, wiping my mouth on the crisp linen napkin. My lip gloss had left an angry red stain against the white, and for a few seconds, while I was working out what to say to that, I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
“My mother called,” I said quietly, my teeth clenched, a part of me not wanting to let the words leave my lips.
I could feel his eyes on me, but I didn’t dare look up into them, I felt like I’d freeze if I did.
My fingers plucked at the sandwich, tearing off shreds and bringing them to my mouth. I couldn’t taste it – it was like cardboard against my dry tongue, but I needed something to do with my shaking hands.
We stayed like that for long, drawn-out moments.
“What did she want?” he asked me quietly, breaking into my jumbled thoughts.
I shrugged sulkily, still unable to look him in the eye.
“She left a voicemail – she fucked my entire life and then left a fucking voicemail.”
“Look at me,” he commanded me softly.
It took a few seconds, but I finally managed the courage to do as he said. He looked regal sat across from me; fingers steepled beneath his chin, his head slightly reclined against the highest wooden slat on the back of his chair.
“You’re hanging your head again.”
“I’m sorry,” I started, with a frown. I felt like a child.
“Don’t apologise,” he leaned forward onto his elbows, pulling my hands between his, “I just hate to see it. So that was the reason you were so upset yesterday?”
I nodded, swallowing back the bile rising in my throat; I couldn’t believe I was giving him so much of myself.
He was silent a moment, his eyes dark and thoughtful as they looked back into mine. His features were so beautifully compassionate that I could feel tears brimming up behind my eyes – I just felt that pathetic and weak.
My mother always had this effect on me.
“Jimmy killed my mother,” he started quietly, looking out across the river as though it was a canvas for his memories, “They met when she was fifteen – he was almost thirty. He fucked about behind her back, got her into hard drugs, and basically ruined her. She lost every part of herself the night he and his friends gang raped her on her own kitchen floor.”
My eyes widened as I instinctively reached across the table for his hand. Cayden always looked isolated to me – like he somehow surpassed all of the mere mortals around him – he was too primitive, too virile, too ... alive to be a part of their world – but that was the first time he’d ever looked lonely.
“That was the night I was conceived, apparently, although nobody really knows to all intents and purposes. She didn’t give a shit after that, she was fucking all of them because that was what Jimmy wanted, as far as she was concerned. She was too strung out to realise that the rape had been about power, not sex. He didn’t do it to give her carte blanche to become the club whore, he did it to show her that she belonged to him.”
I was getting a chill that he could read so much of this – see it from Jimmy’s perspective – something about the bitterness in his voice. I tried to pull my hand away.
“I went to see him,” he said quietly, his fingers tracing a path over the fluttering pulse in my wrist, “That’s how I can say all that – it’s not me looking through the eyes of a rapist, Jodie, don’t ever think I could do that.”
I shook my head, telling him silently that I couldn’t think that – I didn’t want to speak past the lump in my throat – suddenly realising exactly why he was telling me all of this.
“I had that over my head my entire life,” he said bitterly, looking down at our hands on the table, “They held it over me like some dirty cloak – every fucking one of them. I went to see him because I wanted answers before I took over my legacy because I couldn’t think of anything worse than ending up like one of those filthy fucking bastards. They destroyed her, and they wanted to do the same thing to me.”
There were shadows on every plane of his features – dark demons wrestling to the surface – fuelled by angry memories and hostile bitterness.
“What are you saying?” I said softly, knowing what the answer would be.
He linked our fingers together – holding our palms together almost like we were one body in prayer underneath the rising sun.
I felt empowered by it.
“I’m saying that nobody should ever make you hang your fucking head in shame for something like that, princess, and the only way you’ll put an end to it is to make her look back inside her and see how she failed you. I’m not saying that it will heal anything, or that she’ll really look into the mirror you hold up to her, but you’ll walk out of that door knowing that you don’t deserve any shame for her mistakes, or for your brother’s – and if she has any part of a soul, then she’ll feel enough remorse to leave you alone.”
He was threading steel wool into my spine, but I couldn’t change the habits of a lifetime over bacon sandwiches – my mother always twisted things.
It could potentially unravel everything I’d worked towards.
“What if it doesn’t work?” I pulled my cup towards me with my free hand, taking a quiet sip.
“Then what have you lost?” he shrugged.
“My freedom? My sanity?”
The sound he made was almost a laugh – without a single ounce of humour – it was dark and twisted, and it scraped into the morning sun like a deep, ragged scar.
It sounded like a sanctuary.
“Then it’s in my hands.”