Jessie Keane - Lawless

‘Send them up, will you?’

Doris had done so.

Tessa and Julie, no longer so full of cocky swagger, had come into Ruby’s office and told her that Daisy had laid into them over nothing, a bit of teasing, that was all.

‘Teasing?’ asked Ruby.

‘Just a bit. Nothing serious.’

‘What sort of teasing?’ asked Ruby, watching them with cold eyes.

Tessa swallowed hard. ‘Nothing, really…’

‘Nothing? Are you sure about that?’

‘It’s her voice. Her accent,’ blurted out Julie.

Tessa shot her a shut up look.

‘What about it?’ asked Ruby, but she could see it now. Daisy sounded ‘posh’, and she was the boss’s daughter. These two had decided to make her suffer for it. ‘Look – do you think that was a kind thing to do?’ she said, fixing them with an icy stare. ‘Mock someone over the way they speak? Do you?’

‘No,’ said Julie meekly.

‘No,’ echoed Tessa.

‘I ought to sack you both on the spot.’ Ruby was furious; she hated the thought of Daisy being victimized in this way.

‘Oh, don’t. Please. We’re really sorry,’ said Tessa.

Ruby stared at them for a long, frosty moment.

‘Get back to work,’ she snapped, and they scuttled out of the office.

‘Why didn’t you tell me they were picking on you?’ said Ruby now, arm around her daughter’s shoulders. ‘Am I really that unapproachable?’

‘No. It’s just that I wanted to manage it on my own, that was all. And in the end I didn’t. I lost my temper.’

Ruby was silent for a beat. ‘You could come back, work in another department, if you wanted to.’

‘I don’t know.’ She’d been so relieved when she quit, and until Simon’s death had blighted everything she’d been relishing the prospect of spending time with the twins. But now her mind was in such turmoil, trying to come to terms with his suicide, that she couldn’t concentrate on much else.

Resolving to drop the subject for now, Ruby sighed and glanced out onto the drive where Reg was patiently polishing the Merc. ‘Reg does his best, but I miss Rob about the place. Don’t you?’

Daisy could only nod. Oh yes, she missed Rob. So much. But with Kit away, Rob was busy filling in for him, keeping the business running smoothly. Rob had more important things to worry about than two bereaved women.

‘Rob’s Mr Sensible,’ said Daisy bracingly. ‘He’ll look after everything until Kit gets back. He can rely on Rob.’

Still, she wished both Kit and Rob were here. The world seemed a safer more secure place when those two were about. Even if Kit was reeling around drunk, or being rotten or neglectful to Ruby – and he often was – she wanted him here.

‘Rob said Kit would only be gone a few days, but it’s nearly a week now,’ Daisy fretted.

‘He’ll be back,’ Ruby insisted. But she felt a tiny shiver of unease as she said it, Vittore Danieri’s words reverberating in her mind: You and yours.

Bianca was moving ahead of Kit up the stairs as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was doing, her legs feeling shaky beneath her, her mind focused totally on what was to come. How often did she do crazy things like this, take a complete stranger up to her flat with the full intention of going to bed with him?

Never, that was how often.

She was wary of men. With good reason. They always tried to screw her over in business, she was used to that. And her brothers Vittore and Fabio – resentful, she knew, of this little principessa who had suddenly been brought into their exclusively masculine conclave – had made her painfully familiar with jokey male put-downs of the female species from an early age. Not Tito, though. He alone had been kind to her.

What she absolutely never did was act impulsively. She didn’t know this man. All she knew was that she had seen him once, fleetingly, and thought Oh my God, will you look at him? Now by some miracle he was here, and she couldn’t let this moment pass by. She was moving as if in a dream, her mouth dry with apprehension, her body weak. She had never, not once in her life, felt this way before.

Kit was kissing her before she even had the door open, his tongue exploring her mouth, his teeth nipping at her lips. They all but fell through the door, Kit slamming it shut behind them. Blindly, Bianca reached out and shot the bolt. Gasping, panting, they kissed and clawed at each other like adversaries, Kit struggling with the zip on her dress and then giving up, fuck the dress, and instead he did what he had been dreaming of all evening since that moment when he’d accidentally thrown his drink down her front; he pushed the damned dress up, out of the way, saw the lacy panties there, white, of course they were white, and he ripped them off her, paused, saw the swansdown powder-puff of white-blonde curls. It was the most erotic thing he’d ever seen.

‘Jesus, Bianca,’ he groaned, turning, pushing her back against the closed door.

She was pulling at his belt, unzipping him with trembling fingers. He helped her, tugging his pants out of the way, letting his cock spring free. Bianca touched him, and he felt he was almost on the point of losing control. He shoved her hand away, lifted her, spread her legs, felt her wetness with the tip of his cock and, groaning, he thrust up and in, deep in, and she cried out, locking her legs around his waist, while he drove himself furiously into her.

‘Oh God, yes, yes ,’ she moaned, half-crying, and that was it, that was enough.

Kit came, the exquisite sensation of orgasm shaking his entire body. Bianca wrapped her arms tight around his neck, muffling her scream of delight against his throat.

Oh Jesus what was that? Kit wondered, coming back down to earth. His breathing slowed, steadied.

No Durex. I bloody forgot to use a Durex. What the hell…?

He didn’t care. Maybe she was on the Pill, anyway. He felt euphoric. Nothing on earth had ever felt as good as this. Still lodged inside her, he carried her over to the bed and sank down on it with her wrapped tight in his arms. Slowly he kicked off his shoes and socks, slid off his trousers and pants, moved away from her to get rid of his shirt, tie and jacket.

Naked, his hands now steady enough to do it, he unzipped her dress and Bianca knelt up and wriggled out of it.

‘No, let me,’ he said, when she reached back to unclasp her white lacy bra.

Her hands fell and Kit reached behind her, undid the bra, pulling it off and down her arms.

‘Christ,’ he murmured, staring at her. She was so beautiful – full-breasted but with tiny nipples of the softest shell-pink. He cupped one breast in his hand, feeling the weight and coolness of it, and the contrast between his dark skin and hers, so white, was starkly erotic. She moaned at his touch and he felt her nipple harden.

He felt himself harden too, so quickly. Kit pushed her back, opened her legs and entered her again. This was heaven on earth. Which was kind of funny, when you considered where they were, in a club called Dante’s, all painted red and black like an inferno – like hell.

But this wasn’t hell. This was bliss. He felt he’d die of it, just before he came again, emptying himself into her carelessly, without thought, without a single solitary qualm.

Fabio’s break into big-time drug dealing came when a Jamaican business acquaintance approached him and said he’d been stitched up.

‘In what way?’ asked Fabio, all ears. This boy was a big dealer in the Camden Lock area, well respected; Fab couldn’t imagine anyone trying to go toe-to-toe with him. Cross him and he’d be at you with a ruddy great machete, splice your head wide open and use it for a cup to drink out of.