The Billionaire Banker(42)

‘Would you like to go shopping with Fleur again tomorrow?’

‘No.’

He turns to look at her. ‘Why not?’

She shrugs. ‘I’ve still got things I haven’t worn yet.

Besides, I’d like to spend some time with my mum before she leaves in the evening.’

He nods. ‘What kind of cancer?’

‘It is in her lungs, liver, femur bone and pelvis.’

There is a flash of something in his eyes. He does not believe her mother will make it. He drops his eyes to his drink. He takes a sip, puts it down on the glass table.

‘Come here,’ he says.

She scoots closer, but he lifts her bodily by the waist while she squeals, and puts her so she is sitting astride him.

Her pussy comes in contact with the bulge in his trousers.

She stops laughing. She can feel herself becoming wet. She bends forward and runs her tongue along his ear. When she reaches his earlobe she takes it between her teeth.

‘Hey,’ he says and pulls her away from him.

She looks at him surprised.

‘Where did that come from?’ he asks.

‘My best friend Billie taught me the technique, but I probably did it wrong. Did I bite too hard or something?’

‘Or something.’ He rubs her plump lower lip absently.

‘I can’t believe an innocent like you still exists,’ he says.

Then he lifts his eyes to hers. ‘Here, let me show you a much more useful technique,’ and that night he unzips his trousers and teaches her how to take his silky cock entwined by its two angry green veins and pleasure him with her mouth.

She awakens in the dark and knows immediately that she is not alone. For the first time, he has stayed the night with her. She feels the heat from his body and hears his deep, even breathing. Carefully, she eases her body away from his and as silently as possible gropes across the surface of her bedside table. She finds the remote control and switches on the bathroom light.

Light filters through and dimly illuminates his face. She turns her head and for a long time simply watches him asleep on his side, facing her. The lines that hold his face so tightly during the day are relaxed and soft. Like this, he is heartbreakingly beautiful. She has an irrational desire to run her index finger along his stubby eyelashes. She doesn’t. Instead, she slips out of bed and slipping on a large T-shirt, heads towards the light.

She closes the door behind her, uses the toilet and waits for its quiet whirling to end before she opens the door.

Her trip to her side of the bed is interrupted by the sight of his wallet lying on his bedside. She stops and looks at it.

Once, when she was very young, she opened her father’s wallet to look inside and was saddened by what she found inside. Two five pound notes, the coin purse bulging with small change, a petrol receipt, and no photographs of either her mother or her.

She had taken it to her nose and sniffed it. Many years after he left them, she would come across other men’s wallets and wonder what they kept inside theirs. She finds herself moving towards Blake’s wallet. As her fingers connect with the expensive hide, a steely hand clamps down on hers. She gasps with shock and lands on the bed beside him, her startled eyes flying to his face. His are alert and watching.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Nothing,’ she says lamely. Her face is flaming.

‘Ask if you need money.’ His voice is cold and distant.

Suddenly, it occurs to her what it must look like to him.

She shakes her head in horror. ‘I wasn’t trying to steal your money. I just wanted to see what was in it.’

For a moment he looks at her curiously, the way a dog will tilt its head when it is trying to figure out what you are trying to communicate to it. Then he takes the wallet and tosses it into her lap. ‘So look.’

His eyes move to her mouth as her teeth worry at her lower lip. ‘What? With you watching?’

His eyebrows rise. ‘Would that spoil the…er…

experience?’

She swallows, sits up and opens the wallet. It is slimmer than her father’s, the leather wonderfully soft. And it smells new. There are no photographs behind the plastic of his wallet either, only the deep red card that it came with. She runs her thumb along the stitching and down the credit card sleeves. There are only five credit cards in it, none of them from high street banks. One seems to be from Coutts, another is an American Express Black, and the other three she does not recognize. There is a wad of fifty-pound notes that have the look and feel of freshly-minted money. No small change at all in the purse section.

She closes it and returns it to the bedside.

‘Well?’

‘You wouldn’t understand.’