‘I usually eat at my desk.’
‘Christ, throw me a bone, will you? Come and eat with me.’
‘No.’
‘Go on.’
Ruby looked at her watch. ‘I suppose I can spare an hour…’
‘Terrific.’ He stood up. ‘Let’s go.’
Three hours later, lunch was over and they had checked into a room in the same hotel. Ruby was feeling a little tipsy from several glasses of Merlot but mostly she felt drugged with lust. The moment they were inside the room, Thomas Knox pulled her into his arms and kissed her very thoroughly. Ruby responded, dragging her hands through his hair, inhaling his scent, her tongue touching his. When they fell apart, they were both panting.
Thomas leaned back against the door and folded his arms over his chest.
‘You ready to play ball then?’ he asked, his voice husky with desire.
Ruby shrugged, her eyes playing with his.
‘Are you ready to do what you promised, give Kit your full support?’ she asked.
‘I already said so.’
‘Say it again then.’
‘All right. I will.’
‘I ought to get back to work.’
‘You’re such a prick-tease. And the firm won’t founder because you’re not there for an afternoon, will it.’
‘Joan will wonder where I am.’
‘Joan will know where you are, because while you were getting your stuff together I told her you would be spending the afternoon with me and you probably wouldn’t be back in.’
‘That was presumptuous of you.’
A flicker of a smile. ‘As you said, I’m a bastard. So come on. Let’s do this deal. The top. And don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m saying, not this time.’
Ruby felt suddenly reckless. She took off her jacket. Then, her eyes holding his, she slowly unbuttoned the front of her crisp businesslike white cotton blouse, then the cuffs.
‘And…?’ he encouraged, making winding-up motions with one hand.
Ruby slipped the blouse off her shoulders and let it drop to the floor. She was wearing a lacy white bra, her burgundy skirt that matched the jacket she had already tossed aside, black tights, white pants, high black court shoes.
‘Nice,’ said Thomas. ‘Go on.’
Ruby unhooked the bra, slipped the straps off her shoulders, let that too fall to the floor. His eyes were on her nude full breasts, and she felt her nipples rise and harden in response. Suddenly she felt breathless, flushed, weak.
‘Better,’ he said. ‘Don’t stop there.’
Her fingers fumbling, feeling awkward, Ruby reached up under her pencil skirt and yanked down the tights. Stepping out of her high-heeled shoes, hotly aware of him watching every move she made, she tossed the tights aside.
‘And the rest,’ he said.
Ruby stretched a hand behind her, freed the button on the waistband of her skirt, unzipped it. The silky lining slithered down her legs, and she stepped out of it, feeling smaller, somehow more vulnerable without her day-to-day armour, her work uniform. Her eyes met his. He looked so much bigger than her now that she was out of her heels – so tough and threatening, so invincibly male.
‘All of it,’ he said.
Ruby took a gulping breath and hooked her thumbs into either side of the white lace briefs she wore – her own label, everything she wore was her own label, the suit, the blouse, the bra, everything, and what was she thinking about that for at a time like this?
She pulled the briefs down over her long tanned legs and kicked them off. Stood there naked, trying to get her breath, while he was still fully clothed. She felt so aroused, flooding with wetness, ready for him.
Thomas stepped forward, came right up close to her, looming over her. He reached out a hand, cupped one breast, rubbed his thumb almost thoughtfully over her rock-hard nipple.
‘Oh God,’ groaned Ruby.
‘Good?’ he murmured, bending to kiss her throat. His teeth nipped hard at her shoulder, and she gasped with shock.
‘You said you didn’t bite,’ she managed to murmur.
‘I lied. Get on the bed.’
As if in a dream Ruby turned, feeling him touch her buttocks, smoothing over them, delving, slipping deeper…
‘Oh… oh Jesus…’ she moaned as he caught her around the waist, nearly snatching her breath away. He held her there against him for long moments, her back pressing into the front of his body so that she could feel how hard he was. Then he let her go.
‘Go on. Hurry.’
Ruby went to the bed and lay down. He would take his clothes off now, she wanted him to take off his clothes and be naked with her, but he didn’t. He got on the bed with her, pushed her back, opening her legs.
‘Please…’ she murmured, and all sense of shame was gone, to be replaced by heat, desire, total readiness. This was what he had wanted, all those times he had watched her, and now she wanted it too, she was weak but she was also powerful, enticing him, drawing him into her. ‘Thomas, oh, Thomas please…’
But he didn’t take off his clothes. Still fully dressed, he knelt between her legs and unbuckled his belt, unzipped himself, and plunged into her.
‘Oh, you bastard,’ shouted Ruby.
Thomas only laughed.
What was supposed to be lunch turned into a long day. Late in the afternoon they went back to Thomas’s house, and after eating fruit and cheese in the big barnlike kitchen Thomas gave her the complete grand tour, finishing up in the room that housed a huge swimming pool surrounded by fake Corinthian columns and blue-skied, green-ivied trompe l’oeil. The whole effect was of a fabulous sunlit Roman bath house.
Ruby gazed at it, and laughed. ‘For God’s sake! A little bit extravagant, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Extravagant?’ Thomas looked at her. ‘Nah, I enjoy a swim, it’s heated and it came with the house. I thought of changing it, but then I thought, what the hell? I like the idea of living like a king.’
‘I can imagine you would,’ said Ruby, smiling uncertainly. She didn’t know this man. And she had fallen shamelessly into bed with him. Somehow, he had seduced her completely. Taken down her guard, smashed it to smithereens. But she still thought he was scary. And unknown. And – oh God – extremely sexy.
He started loosening his tie, unbuttoning his shirt. ‘Coming for a dip then?’ he asked.
Ruby stared at him. ‘I don’t have a swimsuit.’
‘Sweetheart,’ he said with a roguish smile, ‘you don’t need one.’
72
At seven years old, Bianca was forced to face the fact that her family was different to those of many of her school friends. It was brought home to her quite horribly. Bella and Astorre got her a puppy from Battersea Dog’s Home. He was a Labrador crossed with some other thing, God knew what, with a flat silky ginger coat and a wide grinning face.
Bianca christened the puppy Joey, and she loved him absolutely and completely, grooming him, feeding him, poor little unloved mite. He’d been just like her, in an orphanage just like Mama Bella had told her, scrawny and unwanted; but now look. He was home. He was safe.
It was true that at first Bianca had thought her adoptive family was the same as any other. They were Italian immigrants, and her father and brothers were out every weekday and most weekends doing business.
When they were in, they muttered around the kitchen table and she heard snatches of their conversations, about money going through the businesses, ‘laundering’, they called it, and she gathered that there were three stages to this process – placement, layering and finally integration. At seven years old, she didn’t know what the words meant, but as she grew, she listened, and she learned.
Tito told her that Daddy Astorre was Camorra from the streets of Naples, but there’d been big trouble and they had to flee or die. Now, there was peace. There was church on Sundays and at least an illusion of security.