The Billionaire Banker (16 page)

He produces a spoon from a drawer. It is the smallest spoon she has seen. He scoops a tiny amount of caviar and holds it out to her.

She crinkles her nose. ‘Fish eggs?’

He shakes his head in disgust. ‘Philistine,’ he chides.

She opens her mouth and he inserts the spoon. Little salty balls explode intriguingly in her mouth.

‘Good?’

She smiles. ‘Tastes better than it looks. A bit like you,’

she teases.

He throws back his head and laughs.

‘You work very hard, don’t you?’

‘All rich people do.’

She watches him spread pâtè on a slice of toast.

Watches his even, strong teeth bite cleanly into it.

‘You should eat something,’ he says.

She stands up and makes herself a jam sandwich. While she is eating it, she thinks Rosa was right. Jam sandwiches should be made with white bread. They simply don’t taste the same with healthy bread.

‘What do you feel like doing now?’ he asks.

‘Don’t you feel like sleeping?’

‘Eventually.’

‘Shall we play a game?’

A smile curves that straight mouth. ‘What kind of game?’

‘Let’s see who comes first.’

His eyes flash. ‘What are the rules?’

Billie didn’t mention anything about rules. ‘It’s quite a simple game really. We take turns to make each other come. We time ourselves with an egg timer. The one who lasts the longest in the hands of the other wins.’

‘What’s the prize for winning?’

‘The winner gets to ask the loser for anything they want?’

‘What if the loser is unable to provide that thing?’

‘Within reason and nothing dangerous, obviously.’

‘OK, do you want to go first? Or shall I?’

‘I will. You can do me first.’ She stands up and swipes the egg timer off the counter. He stares at her. She reminds him of a child. They go into the bedroom. It is easy to make her come. Then it is her turn.

‘Why did you let me win?’

‘How do you know I did?’

‘Because you’ve never come before me.’

‘So why did you want to play this game then?’

‘Because I had something special up my sleeve, but I didn’t even get a chance to use it.’

He laughs. ‘Something special. Is it another technique from Billie?’

‘As a matter of fact, yes, but you haven’t answered the original question.’

‘Because I wanted to know what you would ask for.’

‘Why?’

He shrugs. ‘Well, what do you want?’

‘I want you to cook for me.’

He lies on his side and props his head on his palm.

‘Why?’

‘When I was fourteen, I read a book where the hero sent the heroine to have a long soak in the bath while he cooked for her. He grilled two steaks and tossed a salad. It was a really romantic. He wore a black shirt and washed out blue jeans. I remember he had just had a shower and his hair was still wet. Oh, and he was barefoot.’

‘And what did the heroine wear?’

‘Er… I can’t remember.’

‘Dinner tomorrow?’

She smiles. ‘Dinner tomorrow. You won’t burn it, will you?’

‘Maybe just the salad.’

Twenty one

he next day drags slowly. Mr. Nair arrives at ten a.m.

Twith his mug and they have a little chat. He tells her about his family in India. Before he worked in the coffee shop, he was a Hindu priest in a temple in India. He is interesting, but his break time is quickly over and he leaves.

Lana is required to idle away her days, but idling alone in a sumptuous flat, she realizes, is no easy thing. There is not much activity in the part of the park that her balcony faces, and daytime television has always bored her. How many times can one watch reruns of Wonder Woman?

She is also lonely. Without her mother, Billie or Jack she feels quite lost. She wanders around the large flat alone and bored. Idling, she finally decides, requires thoughtful planning and effort—diligent effort. She orders some books from Amazon.

It is nearly five o’clock when Lana is able to Skype Billie. Lana sits cross-legged on the bed and looks at Billie’s dear face come alive on the screen.

‘Guess what?’ Billie shouts enthusiastically. ‘We flew first class.’

‘What?’

‘Yep, we arrived at economy check-in and we were bumped up to first class. Both your mum and me!’

‘How can that be?’

‘Must be banker boy. They said it was all arranged and paid for.’

Lana is speechless. Could it really have been Blake who paid the difference? But he didn’t even know which flight they were on.

‘Anyway,’ Billie says, ‘it was bloody brilliant. They called us by name and acted like we were celebrities or something. I drank nearly two bottles of champagne, and your mum got to sleep most of the way.’

‘How is my mum?’

‘She’s here. I’ll put her on.’

‘Hello, Lana,’ her mother says. She looks so white and fragile that Lana almost bursts into tears. When the call is over Lana lies on the bed and wonders why Blake did that.

He is a strange man. So cold and distant sometimes and so incredibly kind and generous at other times.

At seven o’clock, Blake arrives. She runs out to meet him at the front door.

‘Did you pay for my mum and Billie to fly first class?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

He shrugs. ‘I liked your mother,’ he says shortly, and sends Lana into the Jacuzzi bath.

‘Dinner is at seven thirty sharp,’ he says. ‘Don’t come out before.’

She climbs into it and closes her eyes. It is heaven. She has bought Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and puts it on the corner ledge. Blake comes in with a glass of red wine.

‘To get you in the mood,’ he says.

‘This is not in the scene, but impressive improvisation,’

she says as she accepts it.

She takes a sip and opens her book. Fifteen minutes later, she smells it. Burning. Before she can wrap herself in the toweling robe, the fire alarms go off. She rushes to the kitchen dripping soapsuds.

Blake has opened all the windows, and is standing on a chair waving a magazine at the smoke detector in the corridor. His hair is slightly wet, he is wearing a black shirt with two buttons undone and a pair of stone washed jeans.

He is also barefoot. She begins to laugh.

‘Did you burn the salad?’ she shouts, above the racket.

He scowls down at her.

She goes into the kitchen and sees the blackened pieces of meat. She bins them. Shaking her head, she pops a piece of tomato from the salad into her mouth, and immediately spits it out. Salty. The salad goes the way of the steaks. The alarm finally stops blaring. She looks up and he is standing at the doorway.

‘You’ve never cooked, have you?’

‘No,’ he confesses. ‘Do you want to go out?’

‘No. Why don’t we just have some chip butties?’

‘Chip butties?’

‘Oh. My. God. You’ve never had a chip butty? You don’t know what you’re missing. You have to have one.’

‘OK.’

‘Let me get ready and I’ll pop over to the shop and get the ingredients.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ he offers.

They walk together to the local fish and chip shop where she orders a big bag of chips.

‘No fish?’

‘No fish. Now we need to go into the corner shop for some bread.’

‘Don’t we have some back at the flat?’

‘Nah. We’ve got the good stuff back there. This is poor people’s food. For this we need a loaf of cheap, white bread.’

She picks out a loaf of sliced white bread and Blake pays for it.

‘That’s it,’ she says.

‘Are those all the ingredients you need for our meal?’

‘The rest we have at home,’ she says, and with horror realizes what she has said. She has called the flat home.

But he says nothing. She hopes he has not noticed.

In the kitchen, Blake sits on the counter and watches her liberally butter four slices of bread, load two up with chips, squirt tomato ketchup in a zigzag pattern over them, sprinkle salt, and close them into two chunky sandwiches.

‘Voilà. The famous chip butty.’

‘That’s it?’

She pushes a plate towards him. ‘Taste it.’

He eyes it without desire.

‘Go on. I tasted caviar for you.’

‘That’s true.’ He takes a tiny bite and begins to chew cautiously.

‘No, no, that’s not how you eat it. You have to attack it. Like this.’ She opens her mouth and takes a huge bite.

He follows suit. It is strange watching him eat with such abandon.

‘Well?’ she demands.

‘Not bad actually. Kind of satisfying.’

‘This is what a lot of kids on the estate live on most of the time.’

‘Did you?’

‘No, my mother never had a drinking or a drug problem so she didn’t have to dip into our food money to finance her habit.’

‘Did you have a happy childhood?’

‘Yeah, I guess so. Until my mother got sick I was very happy.’

‘How come you never had a boyfriend?’

She wipes her lips with a paper napkin, swallows, and grins. ‘All the boys were scared of Jack. And after my mother got sick and my father left any thoughts of boys were gone.’

‘Who’s Jack?’

‘He’s the closest thing I have to a brother.’

‘Why were they scared of him?’

‘Because Jack is not only big and strong, he is also utterly fearless. When we were growing up there was nobody he was scared of. Everybody knew Jack had taken me under his wing. And nobody wanted to mess with him. Once Billie, Leticia, Jack and me went to a club, and a guy there wanted to dance with me. He wouldn’t take no for an answer so Jack said, “You heard her. Now scram.”

Of course, he didn’t take that too good so he waited with his mates for us outside the club.’

Lana stops to pop a fat chip into her mouth. ‘And surrounded us. One of them had a knife. I was so frightened. I remember Jack looked at me and said, “Shhh… you know I got ya,” and then he smiled. That Jack smile. And I knew it would be all right. I walked out of the circle and they closed in on him. I can still see them now. Tattoos, broken teeth, rings where there should be none. But what shocked me was Jack. He was like a stranger. I couldn’t recognize him.

‘All those years I thought I knew him, warm and friendly, an unshakeable rock, and suddenly I see this fiend turning on himself, snarling, “Come on then. Who’s first?”

They advanced in a group. He kicked the one with the knife in the throat and another he punched in the nose, bled like crazy. Then he felled another two guys, I don’t know how, it happened so fast, and then it was over. The last coward ran away. It was like watching a movie. And you know what the first thing he said to me was? “Are you all right?”

‘Unusual guy,’ Blake says. ‘Did you never want to go out with him?’

‘No, he is my brother. My safe harbor. I’d do anything for him, though.’

He nods. There is no expression in his face. ‘How long has your mother been ill?’ he asks, and takes another bite of his sandwich.

‘Just before I turned fifteen. And that was also when my dad left. I was so scared she was going to die. If not for Jack, I don’t know how things would have turned out. He came around every day and did what my father should have done.’

‘And you’ve never seen your dad since he left?’

Lana shakes her head.

‘Did you not want to?’

‘No. I heard he married again and had more kids, but he really doesn’t interest me anymore. He ran out on us.

He thought my mother would die and he would be saddled with me.’

‘Hmmm… You’ve never had an orgasm until you met me, have you?’

Lana is certain her face must be bright red. ‘Was it that obvious?’

‘A bit. You never had a boyfriend but you must have masturbated while growing up.’

‘You don’t know what my life was like. For most of my life I’ve been terrified of losing my mother. Whenever she was ill, I slept with her. And when she was not—which was not often, and I returned to my own bed I could never do anything—my mother is such a light sleeper she will wake up if a pin drops.’

Blake takes his last bite and pushes away from the stool.

‘Got some work to do. Can you amuse yourself for a bit and meet me in an hour’s time in the bedroom?’

‘OK.’

In the bedroom she reaches for his trousers. She wants to give him pleasure the way he taught her.

‘Easy, tiger,’ he says and spreading her legs, he latches onto her clit covered in its sweet juices and begins to gently suck it. The sensation is indescribable—delicate ribbons of pleasure rise from his mouth and enter her being. She trembles against his mouth. She forgets to think, she becomes an extension of her sex, her core. He is teaching her sex, what it can be. Her nails become claws that dig into his shoulders. Her mouth opens and her muscles begin to contract with anticipation of the explosion that is coming.

But when he judges the train wreck is almost upon her he deliberately slows his movement, brings her back down only to begin again on that velvet-soft swollen flesh. His eyes monitor her reaction. Again and again until she is holding his head in her hands and begging him to let her climax.

‘I can’t take it anymore,’ she pleads.

And this time he relents. He lets her come. It shocks her by its intensity. She screams his name, but strangely, he refuses take his mouth away from the painfully sensitive blood-engorged sex. She tries to wriggle away but his grip is steel. Then, suddenly she is no longer pushing his head away and begging him to stop, but pulling him back in; the waves of ecstasy are coming back. And again. Three times in total she jerks, shakes, trembles and soars before she falls from her great height. Her hands flop to her sides, spent.

She feels him take his watching eyes away from her and lay his cheek for a moment on her stomach and listen to her ragged breathing.

Then he bounds up, full of coiled energy and picking her up lays her on the pillow. She is so spent she looks at him with hazy, passion-filled eyes. She wants to tell him that she has never experienced such a thing before. She wants to tell him how beautiful and awesome it has been, how complete he has made her feel; perhaps she might even have blurted out that she is in love with him and has been for some time now.