One
lake Law Barrington drops a cube of sugar into the Bcreamy face of his espresso, stirs it with the dinky spoon he finds on the saucer, and glances at his platinum Greubel Forsey Quadruple Tourbillion. Acquired at Christie’s Important Watches auction last autumn for a cool half a million dollars.
Eight minutes past eight.
He has a party to go to, but tonight he will give it a miss. It has been a long day. He is tired. He has to be in New York tomorrow. And it will be one of those incomprehensibly dreary affairs, where he will invariably feel he has stepped back in time, and any minute Winston Churchill could walk through the door. He takes a sip— the coffee here is always superb—and returns the tiny cup to its white rim.
Summoning a waiter for the check, he senses the activity level in the room take a sudden hike.
Automatically, he lifts his eyes to where all the other eyes, mostly male, have veered to. Of course. A girl. In a cheap, orange dress and a lap dancer’s six-inch high plastic platforms.
You’re looking for love in all the wrong places.
A waiter in a burgundy waistcoat bearing the bill has silently materialized at his side. Not taking his eyes off the girl—despite the impossible shoes she has a good walk, sexy—he orders himself a whiskey. The waiter slinks away after a right-away-sir nod, and Blake leans back into the plush chair to watch the show.
It is one of those exclusive restaurants where there are transparent black voile curtains hung between the tables and discreet fans to tease and agitate the gauzy material.
There are three curtains between him and the girl and he experiences a flash of irritation that he is unable to see her face properly.
Minus the shoes she is perhaps five feet five or six inches. She has the same body type as Lady Gaga, girlishly narrow with fine delicate limbs, and her skin is the color of thick cream. His eyes travel from the waist-length curtain of jet-black hair to the swelling curve of her breasts and hips, down her shapely legs to those awful, bright-orange platforms. Very nice, but…
At twenty-nine, he is already jaded. Though he watches her with the same speculation of all the other men in the room she is a toy that no longer holds any real excitement for him. He does not need to meet her to know her. He has had hundreds like her—hot, greedy pussies and cold, cold hearts. It is always the same. Each one hiding talons of steely ambition that hook into his flesh minutes after they rise like resurrected phoenixes from a night in his bed.
Safe to say he has realized the error of his ways.
But….
Something about her has aroused his attention.
She comes further into the room and even the billowing layers of curtains cannot conceal her great beauty or youth.
Certainly she is far too young for her dining companion who has just barged in with all the grace of a retired rugby player. Blake recognizes him instantly. Rupert Lothian.
An over-privileged, nerve gratingly colossal bore. He is one of the bank’s high profile private customers. The bank never does business with anyone they do not check out first and his report was sickening.
Curious. What could someone so fresh-faced and beautiful be doing with one so noted for ugly games? And they are ugly games that Lothian plays.
He watches three waiters head off towards the new arrivals and the fluid, elegantly choreographed dance they perform to seat and hand them their menus. Now he has her only in profile. She has put the menu on the table and is sitting ramrod-straight with her hands tightly clasped in her lap. She crosses and uncrosses her legs nervously.
Unbidden, an image pops into his head. It is as alive and wicked as only an image can be. Those long, fine legs entangled in silky sheets. He stares helplessly as she pulls away the sheets, turns her mouth into a red O, and deliberately opens her legs to expose her sex to him. He sees it clearly. A juicy, swollen fruit that he wants. Blake sits forward abruptly.
Fuck.
He thought he had passed the season of fantasizing about having sex with strangers. He reaches for his whiskey and shoots it. From the corner of his eyes he sees a waiter discreetly whisper something to Lothian. The man rises with all the pomposity he can muster and leaves with the waiter.
Blake transfers his attention to the girl again. She has collapsed backwards into the chair. Her shoulders sag and her relief is obvious. She stares moodily at the tablecloth and frowns. Then, she seems to visibly force herself away from whatever thoughts troubled her, and lets her glance wander idly around the room until her truly amazing eyes —he has never seen anything like them before—collide with his unwavering stare. And through the gently shifting black gauze his breath is punched out of his body, and he is seized by an unthinking, irresistible call to hunt.