Aurelia Cruz is a well respected club owner and madame in London, but she has things she holds very sacred and sacred things that hold her.
Thomas Shelby is a Birmingham gangster making his way up in the business world, and is trying to expand busin...
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Thomas took her hand and looked at the blue silk that kept him from feeling her skin. "Beautiful gloves, Ms. Cruz." Thomas comments before his free hand is lightly tugging at each finger then slipping the glove off. He gets a grasp of her hand again and those lovely sparks alight on contact. "But this feels much better." He rubs his thumb over the back of her hand before letting her hand go and he takes her other hand and takes the glove off that one tucking her gloves in his pocket before grasping both her hands and guiding her to the dance floor. The two swayed to the song on the gramophone, Thomas' right hand on her hip, Aurelias right hand in his left while her left rested on his shoulder. "So do I ask why the woman in a wig next to Ada looks like she wants to kill me, or do I wait for her to try first?" Aurelia leans into him more to as she talks. Thomas sees Lizzie starring at Aurelia in jealousy, but the moment Lizzie noticed that Thomas saw her she looked away.
"Lizzie is my secretary but before that she was a uhm..." Thomas tries to explain but the smile growing on Aurelia's face showed him that he wasn't doing well. "She was a prostitute? Who you went to?" Aurelia asked again taking far more joy in poking Thomas' buttons. Thomas cleared his throat looking around the room; "Well, uh..." He started but Aurelia cut him off by moving the hand on his shoulder to the back of his neck while the one in his grasp moved gingerly to his left cheek turning his face until their eyes met. "Thomas, it's alright. I own a brothel for god's sake." She said giggling making him laugh. His hands both relaxed on her hips while both hers rested over his shoulders one of them playing with his hair the other had her thumb making soothing circles on the nape of his neck. "Truth be told she probably is looking at you like that because I haven't been seeing her since my brothers and I came back from holiday." Thomas confesses. "Mm. You must have been one of her favorites. I think I know why too." Aurelia speaks with such normality as if they aren't talking about him paying a woman for sex.
"One of her favorites, eh? Why do you think that?" Thomas asks amused by the notion completely. "You're powerful, handsome, and you fuck to let out frustration. Being a powerful man must leave you with a lot of frustration. You fuck differently when you care though." She was saying things he already knows until she said the last sentence. With a frow of his brows and the tilt of his head she elaborates. "When you fuck a prostitute, you fuck her from behind so you can pretend she's someone she's not, so she doesn't see you vulnerable. You're in control, maybe once you're finished, you'll hold a polite conversation before leaving the money on the table." She starts before moving closer to him; their bodies were still swaying but now he can feel her whole body against his, the warmth of her driving him crazy and sedating him all at once in a flurry of tension. "When you care for the girl, you're face to face, maybe she's even on top. You let yourself be completely at her mercy because that's just one of the ways you show you care for and trust her. You love looking her in the eyes as it's happening, hearing what you do to her drives you crazy. When it's all over you like keeping her close and maybe you even like talking." Aurelia relinquishes only the truth from her red painted lips while looking Thomas in the eye.
The tension between the two is palpable, the eyes of on lookers only makes the atmosphere burn harsher. Everyone who glances at the two can see it, the fiery feelings the two are miserably failing to dampen are only growing larger flames by the second. Their exchange of body heat, even through clothes feels like petrol being poured into their flame. Thomas' resolve was melting, and his eyes slipped from hers to her full lips then traveled back to the previous. Aurelia's nerves had become ash and the flickering embers of want were getting warmer with every breath she took from Thomas' lungs. Just as the two were almost close enough to doing something they'd never come back from; "Aurelia! Phone for ya!" Arthur calls washing ice cold water over them. "I'll be back." Aurelia promises before walking into the empty room where the phone was thanking Arthur and taking her call. Thomas doesn't show his emotions simply goes, and takes another shot, but Polly sees it, she saw all of it and though she hates Tommy's guts at the moment he is still her nephew she helped raise.
Polly told her dance partner to excuse her for a moment before following Aurelia. "...I just thought something had happened with the club or with you know who. I appreciate it Dougie, really, tell your mother and sister how thankful I am for tonight. Alright, I'll see you all tomorrow. Goodnight." She hangs up the phone and lets out a deep breath with her hand over her abdomen. "Fuck. Alright it's alright, Aurelia, everyone is okay." She says to herself before turning to return to Thomas. She jumps back at the sight of a tipsy Polly observing her. "Oh Mrs. Gray, you scared me." The panic that was in her eyes while frantically asking questions on the phone hasn't left only dimmed; Polly has seen that a few times before. When her sister found John crying with a bloody nose at six years old, when Polly herself had her children taken from her and again when she had been told the boys were leaving for war. It was a mother's worry.
"Boy or girl?" Polly finally asks after a few moments of silence. Aurelia feigned confusion. "I don't under-" "Your child, the one you're keeping from Thomas, are they a boy or a girl?" Polly interrupts not wanting any lies to spew from the woman that her niece and nephews hold on a pedestal. Aurelia's blood had been replaced with stress at Polly's brutal release of the truth. "Girl, she's nearly five." Aurelia admits with agitation. "You have to understand I'm going to tell him I just... the parts of my past leading up to her are complicated and I don't know how to do this I've never- I haven't been- I-." Aurelia tries to understand put the anxiety in her belly is traveling up her throat and the air around her thins.
Pol wants to hate her and while she is angry at her all she sees is herself after she had Michael and she was alone with two kids. "Relax, Aurelia, Thomas and I aren't talking at the moment. As a mother I understand your hesitance to tell Thomas, but whether you like it or not you are falling for him. He must know the truth. All of it or I will tell him myself. What he will decide after that I don't know." Polly tells her, Aurelia nods in understanding trying to even out her breath. "Does Ada know?" Polly asks out of curiosity. "All of it." Aurelia confesses. Polly nods and goes to leave, just as she's about to leave out the threshold of the door she stops and turns to the single mother. "I actually quite like you, Aurelia. Far more than I liked the last one." Polly says then leaves. Aurelia collects herself for a moment or two then makes her way back to Thomas by the bar, her eyes meet Ada and Polly, she nods and smiles at them before setting her sights back on Thomas determined to tell him the truth tonight, eventually.
