Wounded Beast (Gypsy Heroes Book 2) by Georgia le Carre Page B

sheet harder and laugh nervously. ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘Taking something to remind me of you.’
    The sheet slips down my body.
    ‘Open up,’ he says, looking down at the triangle between my legs.
    I spread my thighs and he inserts his finger into me. Unbelievable, but I ’ m already so wet that it just glides into me. He takes his finger out and sniffs it. ‘That’ll do me,’ he says.
    He kisses me on the mouth and then he ’ s gone.

    After the door shuts, I lie unmoving in the quiet of the empty apartment for a few seconds. Then I jump out of bed and run into the bathroom to see what I look like. I freeze with shock to see the state I ’ m in. Jesus! I ’ ve honestly never seen myself look more unattractive.
    I shower, get back into my clothes and go downstairs. A man in a black jacket gets up from one of the sofas by the plate-glass windows.
    ‘Miss Savage?’
    ‘You’re Brian?’
    He smiles and nods. ‘Where can I take you?’
    I give him my address and he takes me home in a beautiful dark blue Bentley. As I get out of the back seat, the parking attendant who admired Dom’s Maserati passes me.
    ‘Does this one belong to the same guy?’ he asks.
    ‘Mmm,’ I say, and, smiling like a cat who got the cream, run into my building.
    My flat seems poor and cramped after his luxurious apartment. I quickly eat a bowl of cereal then take the Tube to my parents ’ home. My mother looks at me strangely.
    ‘Are you all right, dear?’
    ‘Yeah, why?’
    ‘You just seem a bit pink. As if you ’ re coming down with something.’
    I cough. ‘I’m fine, Mum.’
    ‘Come through. I’ll make us a cuppa.’
    We have tea together, and I try my best to pay attention to my mother’s chatter, but it ’ s very hard going, and after a while I tell her I have to go meet Anna.
    Anna and I meet in Starbucks. She peers at me closely. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asks.
    ‘Nothing’s wrong with me,’ I say with a sigh.
    ‘You look like you’re catching the flu or something,’ she insists.
    ‘OK. I slept with a man.’
    ‘What the fuck?’ she screams, so loudly the people at the next table give us a disapproving stare.
    ‘Speak up, won’t you? I don’t think the people in the next street heard you,’ I whisper fiercely.
    ‘Tell me everything,’ she orders, and takes a massive bite of her egg sandwich.
    ‘There’s not much to tell. He’s just a guy. It’s just a sex thing.’
    ‘When do you do a sex thing?’ she asks with her mouth full.
    I grin at her. ‘When he looks like a Greek god.’
    ‘Who is this guy?’
    ‘Someone we ’ re meant to be investigating.’
    Her mouth drops open and I see partially chewed egg and bread and something green. She swallows hurriedly and says, ‘Jesus, Ella. Is this like the invasion of the body snatchers? You’re sleeping with a tax dodger? You HATE tax cheats.’
    I bite my lip. ‘I don’t know, Anna, I’m so confused. Everything I believed in for so long now seems like a badly thought out illusion. I can’t explain it. All I know is I just have to be with him. He has something that pulls me to him.’
    ‘Wow!’
    ‘I know. Can you believe it? Me saying something like that?’
    She shakes her head. ‘So, it’s serious?’
    ‘No. There ’ s no chance of that happening. He doesn’t want anything more than sex from me.’
    ‘What?’ Her brow is furrowed.
    ‘Yeah. He has walls like an impenetrable nuclear bunker. I think he’s had some terrible tragedy happen to him. The first time we met, I walked in on him when he wasn ’ t expecting me to, and he looked totally tormented. I have never seen anybody suffering in that way.’
    ‘Not another fucking loser, like that psycho Michael.’
    ‘He’s not a loser. He’s just had some kind of tragedy that he hasn’t got over.’
    ‘Oh no. You’re going to fall for this guy, aren’t you?’
    ‘I won’t.’
    ‘You won’t? You’re already more than halfway there.’
    ‘I’m not,’ I insist