You Don't Own Me(155)

Slowly, I rotate my hips toward him and leaning back on the palms of my hands in the vague, probably futile hope that my stomach will stretch and look flatter than it really is, (there was a time I couldn’t give a monkey’s what anybody thought of my body but it is impossible to be like that when you are around someone as impossibly beautiful as Jaron) I smile slowly and open my legs.

‘Fuck, Billie. That’s beautiful.’

‘What?’ I ask innocently.

‘My cum leaking out of you. Makes me want to fuck you all over again.’

‘Forget that. I’m already burning.’

He puts his hand out and inserts a long finger into me. I inhale sharply.

‘Does it hurt?’

‘Like hell,’ I reply and we are interrupted by a sound downstairs. I start and look at him questioningly.

He grins. ‘Relax, that’s only Ian, my housekeeper. Feel like breakfast?’

I take his finger out and close my legs. ‘Yeah, but not eggs and bacon.’

‘I know. A bowl of jam.’

I stare at him in disbelief. ‘You’ve had me investigated?’

He links his hands behind his neck. Casual and unrepentant. ‘I only wanted your address, but Drake was a bit more thorough than I expected.’

The phone rings again. He picks it up this time. ‘Yeah, you can bring it up.’

He jackknifes into a sitting position and I am reminded again how agile and light he is considering his mountainous size. He stands and, naked, walks to a cupboard. He opens it, takes two fluffy toweling robes out and hands one to me. It is very large and I have to fold the sleeves.

‘Come on,’ he says and takes me up to the roof. A small, dapper man in a gray sweater and black trousers is already there. Jaron introduces him as Ian. Ian greets us both and starts to serve. I take the chair Ian holds out for me to sit on. Even though I have a balcony it has never crossed my mind to have breakfast in the fresh morning air. It’s actually nice—very nice.

My bowl of jam is served to me on a silver tray with a teaspoon set next to it. Jaron is having the works—bacon, sausages, hash browns, eggs, beans and toast. After Ian disappears Jaron takes a sip of his orange juice and regards me over the rim of his glass. I put a spoon of jam into my mouth.

‘I never would have believed it if I had not seen it,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘Jam for breakfast. I thought Drake had finally cocked up.’

‘Everybody makes such a fuss. I like jam. Why shouldn’t I have it?’

‘It’s not exactly good for you.’

I have a few choice answers to that but I don’t want to spoil a perfectly fine morning. Besides, he looks insanely fucking sexy in the morning light. ‘So, tell me, what sort of business is it that you do? This place can’t exactly be cheap.’

‘What if I told you I’m an arms dealer?’

I look him dead in the eye. There is a tight, horrible feeling in my stomach. I’d rather he dealt in drugs. ‘Are you?’

He chows down a piece of bacon dripping with the egg yolk: absolutely disgusting.

‘No. I’m in property development.’

I exhale the breath I am holding. ‘So what is it that you do then?’

‘Did I not say? Property development.’

I nod. ‘You must do very well.’

‘I do OK.’ He smiles. ‘It pays the bills.’

‘And you are trying to break into the fashion business,’ he says, very smoothly changing the direction of our conversation.

‘Drake is very thorough.’ I spoon a mouthful of jam. ‘I was curious about something. Why did you go to that dive where we met? I mean, you obviously don’t take tainted Es and hardly drink…’

‘I went there because I like the music.’

‘And you never want to get high or drunk?’ I ask him curiously.

‘That’s not how I get my high.’ He takes his phone from the pocket of his dressing gown, hits a few buttons, scrolls through a list, and uses his index finger to click on something. ‘Here,’ he says passing his phone to me. ‘Watch this.’

I take the phone from him and look at it. It looks like snow-covered terrain taken from the air. The angle changes and I realize that it has been taken from a helicopter. I can see its shadow on the snow.

‘That’s me wingsuit surfing a thousand feet over the highest mountain peak in the world, the summit of the Himalayas.’

The camera pulls back to a man standing at the door of the helicopter. He is wearing a blue helmet and it is impossible to see his face, but I can tell that he is Jaron. He simply drops out of the helicopter and the video shows him simply free falling against a blue sky. Shite. That looks fucking dangerous. Suddenly the feed changes back to one of those gopro cameras and it looks very much like Jaron is falling to his death on some snow-covered mountain called the Himalayas.