Chapter 8 #2
She could feel herself thickening, her climax building, and pressed down harder on him, wanting the pleasure to go on forever.
Their kisses slowed, and then their mouths stopped moving for anything but breaths, lips barely touching as the thickening contracted into a tight ball before exploding in waves of indescribable pleasure that rippled through to her every crevice.
Crying her pleasure into Niccolo’s mouth, Georgia closed her eyes and rode the blissful waves for as long as she could, the sensations relighting when his hands tightened on her back and he went rigid, thrusting hard into her with a strangled groan she felt as deeply as anything she’d ever felt before.
Niccolo stood naked at the bedroom window, peering through the gap in the curtains.
There was little cloud cover that night, the moon shining down on the vast garden, illuminating it in shadows.
He got why Georgia had refused to let him open any of the curtains or blinds.
For twenty-four hours, the windows’ covers had given them the illusion of being cut off from the world.
If not for the calls from Dante, they could have fooled themselves into believing it really was only the two of them in the world.
It felt like his world had gone into reverse.
Paris hadn’t been the only instance where they’d hidden themselves away in a bed for days at a time.
Their appetite for each other had been limitless, and now it felt like he’d stepped back in time to that same place, their craving for each other a drug that needed constant feeding.
But their cravings had a darker hue than their lovemaking from before, foreboding of what awaited them outside their cocoon no longer spoken about but there in every kiss and touch.
Hearing the door open, he closed the curtains as Georgia slipped into the room carrying medical supplies.
She was wearing another of Benjamin’s shirts. Her curves looked incredible in it. She could only look better if it were his own shirt she was wearing.
“Time to change your bandage,” she said softly, sitting on the bed and patting the space beside her.
The bandage didn’t need changing. He knew that. But he’d seen the anxiety drawn on her face all the other times she’d insisted on changing it and the flashes of relief when she peeled the bandages away. This was Georgia reassuring herself that his wound hadn’t become infected.
“How’s it looking, Doctor Thomas?” he asked when she’d removed the latest bandage, striving for lightness because he wanted nothing more than for her to forget that she’d been the one to inflict the wound.
She gave a lopsided smile. “As healthy as an amateurly stitched-up stab wound can look.” The smile dropped. “Are you still in a lot of pain?”
“No.” It helped that Georgia had gone on a hunt for stronger medication and had found Benjamin’s stash of co-codamol, a much stronger painkiller than what she’d been able to buy at the pharmacy.
She’d practically force-fed the first two of them into his mouth.
The initial paracetamol and vodka had taken the edge off.
The co-codamol took the edge off the edge.
He didn’t even need the edge taking off now.
“Some pain?”
“A little,” he admitted, because he could not lie to her. “Nothing I can’t live with.”
“What about your head?”
“Not even a dull ache now.”
“Well, that’s something.” Her smile returned. “I might even be able to stop panicking about you getting a concussion.”
“I have a very hard head,” he assured her with a wink.
This time she smiled with the whole of her face and looked about to make a quip back when her eyes suddenly widened and she grabbed his hand and placed it low on her abdomen, under the shirt.
“Can you feel it?” she asked, holding his hand in place. “Butterflies beneath my skin. It feels stronger than the others.”
He concentrated hard. “I can feel…” His heart leapt. “Something.”
Beneath his hand, the slightest of ripples, like there was something alien living under Georgia’s skin. His heart made another leap, a leap that landed like a punch.
That alien thing was his baby. He could feel their baby.
Meeting Georgia’s dancing pale blue eyes, a sense of wonder overtook him. He could feel their baby. “That’s incredible.”
Her teeth gleamed. “Isn’t it? The first time I felt it, I cried.”
The ripples stopped, but he didn’t move his hand. “Just incredible,” he repeated, completely awed. He’d just felt their baby.
She cupped his cheek and rubbed her fingers over the beard that had sprouted in their time there.
The smile he could feel on every millimetre of his face dimmed as an unwelcome thought intruded.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, noticing.
He could barely bring himself to say it, afraid of what the answer would be. “All our lovemaking… Could it have caused harm to the baby?”
Eyes brimming with softness, she shook her head and pressed a kiss to his mouth.
That was good enough for him. Georgia refused to drink a single cup of coffee for fear of the caffeine damaging their child, not even budging when he’d told her his own mother had always regaled people with how she’d drunk six coffees a day through both her pregnancies without any harm to her children.
All the harm his mother had inflicted had come after the births.
Georgia, he knew with marrow-deep certainty, would never harm their child or allow harm to come to it.
She would protect it with her life. She already had when she’d fought him that night in Bayswater.
The wound above his hip that she looked at with mortified shame, he regarded with pride.
The scar he would be left with would be a mark of her abiding love and protection for their child.
He couldn’t love her more.
The time wasn’t right to tell her the depth of his feelings; wouldn’t be right until this whole damned mess was over, but he could damned well show her.
Slowly sliding his tongue into her mouth, he gathered a fist of her silky hair and slid the hand on her abdomen lower down to gently cup her pubis.
She moaned into his mouth, the moan deepening when he slid a finger inside her and coaxed her flat on her back.
By the time his tongue had stroked her to a climax, her moans of pleasure had soaked into the walls.
The next morning, Niccolo reversed Benjamin’s Land Rover out of the quadruple garage. It was safer than taking the hire car: the Espositos would be on high alert for the first sign of it.
As well as his friend’s car, Niccolo had also helped himself to his wardrobe, namely jeans, a shirt and a sweater, all of which were too small for him.
The first thing he would do when they reached Zurich would be to buy himself some new clothes.
Georgia, too, who was also wearing another of Benjamin’s shirts.
She’d put their own clothes through the washing machine – Niccolo had never worked a washing machine in his life – but the blood stains on his shirt and trousers and her blouse were too deeply ingrained to be shifted.
Once the car was clear of the garage, the shutters closed. A minute later, Georgia appeared through the front door, wearing Niccolo’s jacket. He’d insisted. It made him feel better about seeing her dressed in his friend’s shirt.
After depositing the spare front door key into its box, she climbed into the passenger seat.
“You set the alarm?” he checked as she secured herself with the seatbelt.
“Nine, three, nine, seven,” she recited promptly.
He met her stare. “Ready to do this?”
She didn’t waver. “Yes.”
He kissed her, a hard, meaningful fusion she returned, and then he put the car into gear.
They left Benjamin’s estate at the exact time planned. Dante, Niccolo knew, would be poring over real-time maps of the route they would be taking, all the timings he was coordinating at his end taking into account everything his screen was showing as happening.
The drive back towards London was conducted mostly in silence. They’d gone through the plan so many times that there was nothing left to say about it.
But not talking about it didn’t mean not thinking about it, and even though Georgia had found a decent radio station for them to listen to, Niccolo was certain she heard nothing of the music being played.
All the sensuality they’d shrouded themselves in was over. Their time had come.
What they’d planned was dangerous; there was no getting around it. Every eventuality had been discussed; precautions and alternatives made… But what of the eventualities none of them had thought of?
He couldn’t think of anything they’d missed, but instead of this reassuring him, it increased the angst growing exponentially in his chest with each passing mile. If anything they’d failed to prepare for happened, they were unprepared for dealing with it.
Two hours after leaving Benjamin’s, at the exact time planned, they drove into the suburban town Georgia and her sister called home and entered the pub car park off the main road.
A handful of other cars were already parked there, presumably belonging to staff or diners who were either working or enjoying a Tuesday lunch cooked by someone else.
Presumably wasn’t good enough, though, and with his handgun loaded and secure between his thighs, Niccolo drove past the vehicles slowly.
Vaguely satisfied the cars were all empty, he reversed into a space that faced the main road.
Along with everything else, they’d planned for the traffic, and it seemed to be paying off.
Traffic was light. The thinking was that drivers and passengers would be less likely to notice anything out of the ordinary if they were moving freely.
One hundred meters further up the main road, something very out of the ordinary was occurring.
A delicate hand touched his thigh and squeezed. He covered it and squeezed. Gazes fixed forward, their fingers laced together.
There had been many times in Niccolo’s life when it had felt like life had slowed to a crawl. The hours before his first date. The weeks before Christmas. The months before he could escape his turgid family for England. Those times were nothing on the speed the world had slowed down to now.
The clock on the dashboard showed that six minutes had passed since their arrival before an ordinary, grey, nondescript hatchback turned into the car park. It had felt like six hours.
The car pulled into the space beside theirs. Niccolo flicked the safety catch on his gun and held his breath.
A squat, burly-looking man wearing a red cap got out of the driver’s door.
Niccolo and Georgia squeezed hands in unison. He put the safety catch back on and relaxed his hold on the gun.
“Ready?” he asked.
“I bloody hope so,” she muttered back.
“Then let’s do it.” He opened his door and stepped out. The man had left the hatchback’s engine running.
“Any issues I should know about?” he asked the man casually as they strolled past him.
“None.”
And that was the extent of the conversation. No more was needed.
A brown leather holdall had been placed on the hatchback’s passenger seat.
While Niccolo made quick adjustments to the driving seat, pushing it back as far as it would go to accommodate his long legs, Georgia rifled through the holdall, plucking out one of the two burner phones they’d been promised.
“Everything’s there,” she said, relief ringing in her voice. “Do you want to call Dante now?”
“Let’s get out of this town and then call him.”
With a nod of thanks at the driver, who was now in the Land Rover and moving the driver’s seat forward so he could reach the pedals, Niccolo put the hatchback in gear and set off to the airfield, following the route preprogrammed into the satnav for them.
A side-eye of Georgia’s flat as they drove past showed nothing out of the ordinary.
Finally, Niccolo could breathe.
“Everything went as planned Dante’s end?” Georgia asked once Niccolo had ended his call to him. As with all their other conversations, she’d understood not a word of it.
Indicating to turn onto the motorway, he nodded. “The dogs have been taken care of and will be in no position to speak to their masters until we’re long gone from this country.”
“Hurt but not killed?” she clarified, not because she quailed at the thought of their lives being snuffed out but because any death increased the likelihood of police involvement. This was suburban England. You didn’t just hide dead bodies here and expect people not to notice.
Georgia had no idea what her future held – no idea if she even had a future – but she knew she didn’t want to spend it under police investigation.
She’d never imagined she could be so emotionally blasé about the potential ending of another’s life, but those men had been in her flat, waiting for her, and not because they wanted to enjoy a nice cup of tea with her.
“Broken bones but no broken necks,” he confirmed.
Three days ago, the thought of anyone’s suffering would have made her heart ache, not make it gladden, but that was before her life, Niccolo’s life and the life of their unborn child had been threatened.
But then, three days ago, the thought of inflicting any form of physical injury on a person, as she’d done to Niccolo when she’d thought he was one of the Espositos’ dogs, would have horrified her.
She supposed this was what motherhood did. Turned you into a tiger. Made you more than you were.
“Did he say if any of the Espositos were there?” she asked.
“He would have mentioned it if they were, but it was always unlikely. It seems the family is staying tight and getting their dogs to do their dirty work until the funeral.”
Which was coming in two days. Endgame day.
It went without saying that if the dogs captured them before the funeral, they would be smuggled to the family. The dogs wouldn’t do any of the real dirty work. The real dirty work was for the Espositos to enjoy.
The private airfield took them forty minutes to reach. They were expected.
The legalities were taken care of on the short walk to the small jet waiting for them.
In less time than it took Georgia to walk from her car into the airport terminal when making her duty visits to her parents, she was seated on a plush leather seat with so much legroom that even Niccolo could comfortably stretch his legs out.
They’d barely strapped themselves in before the jet was taxiing down the runway.
Minutes later, they were in the air, and Georgia could finally breathe.