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“Are you cleaning me up or trying to get me dirty again?” I gasp.
The corner of his mouth slightly tilts up in a sexy smirk just before he takes my lips. I hold on for dear life, completely lost to the man and the torment of his charm.
Somehow we manage to leave the bathroom after an hour and once again I am sat on the counter as Brand dries me up. My stratagem is simple. A pout and a soft purr of ‘my arm hurts’ and I get taken care of like a baby. How I wish Pierre is still around just so I can give him a big hug for his “advice”. I don’t even dare mention him, lest I trigger Brand. I don’t want to risk my current state of euphoric bliss. Once I am bone dry and feeling like a cat that got the cream I pick up his lotion and begin to rub the light liquid all over his perfect face.
“I'm jealous of your skin,” I say to him, turning to the bottle and reading the fine print. “What is this that Lindy has bought for you? Whoa! Korean snail essence?”
He smiles. “Do you know I couldn’t read or write until I met Lindy.”
I turn to look at him. “You really owe a lot to that woman, don’t you?”
He nods slowly. “Yeah. I don’t know what I would have become without her.”
I take his drier from him and begin to blow dry his hair. Our time together is quiet and we are both still mindful of straying too far into forbidden topics, but it is oh, so wonderful.
I am worried though about the time he has spent with me. “Won’t you be leaving the house today?” I ask as casually as I can.
“Later on,” he says to me and that is a good enough answer.
“I’ll make you breakfast then,” I say to him.
He instantly shuts me down. “No need, I’ll order something in.”
“Oh,” I say and watch as he pulls on his pants. I’m in a towel and about to head to my room to get changed, but just before I pull the door open, I change my mind, and decide to be bold. “I’m making you breakfast, Brand Vaughan,” I say to him. “Nothing in this world beats my blueberry pancakes so you better be damned psyched to try it out.”
He is startled at my sudden outburst, and for a few moments I am not sure if my move was smart or just plain overbearing so I sheepishly add, “You will be forever changed. I swear it.”
Brand nods, as a small smile plays on his lips.
Trying to control the warmth swelling in my heart, I exit the room and hurry to get changed. Brand unsettles me. I am not sure what Brand’s true personality is. He used to be cruel and sardonic, but now it seems as though he is calmly watching it all, watching me … but for what or why I am not certain.
Chapter Forty-Two
Brand
9 years earlier
For almost two horrendous weeks I was taken to other stately houses for ‘parties’ where other monsters had the same ideas for lubrication.
Then I realized how I could escape.
When Havant came down with his taser he saw me lying prone in bed. He fired his gun at me and saw me jerking around on the bed. When he was certain I was incapacitated he came in. Imagine his shock when I attacked him from behind.
I was hiding behind the door. The person on the bed was a dummy I had made using my clothes and the mattress filling. I had connected it to a piece of wood I had broken off the bed so I could jerk the dummy around from behind the door.
I had waited four hours for the bastard to come down.
Naked and almost blue with cold I was almost out of my mind with fear and rage. I kicked the shit out of that low life. He was a real coward. He pissed and shat himself. Once he was unconscious I got dressed and made my way to the first floor. When I found no one there I ran as far away as I could from his hellhole.
I began to live on the streets. I’d beg at the train station and sleep in the dumpster at night. A couple of times I got robbed and once beaten up by a gang of thugs, but then I found out about this place you could go to for a hot meal. There were a lot of do-gooders there and a lot of unwashed drunks, but that was also where I met Lindy.
Two weeks after moving in with Lindy, a man approached me in the street. He said he needed a runner. Nothing dangerous. Mostly carrying money from one club to another. Someone to do little things. Someone under-aged who the authorities would go easy on.
After a week, he offered to send me to school. He told me to be a criminal I needed to have an appetite for violence. Pain, he said, made a man weak and I had too much pain inside. Long story short, he didn’t think I had it in me.
Shit! I was surprised. He was actually offering me to go straight. I thought of his generous offer, but I decided not to take it. I didn’t want to become another tax paying cog in the machinery.
No, I wanted to be as rich as Jake Eden. I started hanging around with other young, ambitious gangsters, but I had something they didn’t. Raw, undiluted anger. After what those men had done to me I took to violence like a duck takes to water. The need for revenge was like a disease in my blood. I went back to Havant’s house and torched it. The next day Lindy read the newspapers and told me that a man had died in the blaze. I would have dearly loved to pay a visit to some of those sick men who abused me, but I was always taken in the back of vans and did not know how to return to those great houses.
Just once I saw one of them. The creep was with his wife and kid. She was blonde and so up her ass, I wanted to go up to her and tell her what her husband did for kicks when she was not around.
I walked up to him and pretended to spill my cup of coffee on him. He jumped up furiously, cursing and ready to lash out. Then he looked into my eyes and suddenly he went as white as a sheet. He fell back in his chair and mumbled his apologies.
I smiled very slowly.
I got him a job feeding the fishes at the bottom of the Thames. But before that I taught him all about lubrication.
Yeah, well, so goes life. I never saw my father again. He died of a broken heart in prison, but my rise as a gangster was nothing short of meteoric.
Chapter Forty-Three
Liliana
As I sprint down the stairs, I can see him already at the bottom of the stairs on his phone. He has on dark slacks, and a sky-blue jumper and it makes him look so elegantly sexy that I feel a rush
of pride. That’s my man there! As I reach the last rung of the staircase, I spread out my arms and jump straight at him.
To his credit he reacts fast. Catching me while still keeping his phone in his hand. Even so my jump is so sudden and unexpected he staggers a few steps backwards, his back hitting the door. I feel like an overly exuberant sibling in the arms of an incredibly patient brother, but I can see that he has no experience being playful.
He is staring straight into my eyes with an odd expression.
“Straight to the kitchen, young man,” I command in an impervious voice.
Shaking his head at my silliness, he indulges my request. Putting me on my feet he goes to the table and takes another incoming phone call. I head over to the fridge and start gathering all the ingredients I’ll need. When I glance at him, I see him watching me intently as he listens to the speaker on the other end of his phone.
While he takes out a pad and pen and starts scribbling down notes I make a start on the big breakfast I’d planned to impress him with. When Brand rounds up his call, he comes over and takes the can of baked beans I was about to open and starts to do it for me, saying, “You shouldn’t be straining your hand.”
Ah yes, my hand. Pierre wouldn’t approve, but I go behind him and slide my arms around his waist. “Actually, my hand doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“No?”
“No,” I say, reveling in his warmth. I have to admit my interest in cooking has diminished somewhat since I put my cheek on his back.
“Let me see your hand,” he says.
I allow him to raise my wrist and inspect it. “See, it’s all better.”
“Hmmm …While I am here I might as well make myself useful. What do you need help with?”
I look towards the onions with which I plan to make an omlette.
“Want to help me chop those?”
“Onions?” he says with a smile.
