One corner of his mouth crooks up. I love his mouth. The way he says ride is slow and sexy. I bet he can give me a ride. Silently, I watch Ria glug her champagne down as fast as is humanly possible. Her eyes drift longingly to the bottle, but she stands and comes towards me. I allow her to hurriedly air peck both my cheeks and watch while she does the same to BJ. Then she is gone.

And I meet his eyes. ‘There’s no emergency is there?’

Utterly unperturbed he grins. ‘Of course not.’

I stand up.

He looks up at me. His eyes are no longer lazy, and tame. They are unblinking and burning with a fire-like intensity. ‘You’re all grown up now, Layla. You don’t really need a chaperone, do you?’

‘No, but I don’t appreciate being manipulated.’

‘Would you have come on your own?’

I pause. ‘I guess not.’

‘Do you want me to call Ria back?’ he asks gently.

My shoulders sag. Of course I don’t. I know what I’m here for. My anger is totally irrational, a result of nervous energy.

‘Sit down,’ he says softly. ‘I promise it’ll be the best fried chicken you’ll ever eat.’

I take a deep breath and reoccupy the chair I’d vacated. He smiles.

There is something about this man …. Even when he was 15 and I had convinced myself that I thoroughly disliked him, he was still that tough insouciant who stared at me. Now that he’s all grown up and forbidden to me, his magnetism whispers and beckons irresistibly. I want him. I want him more than I’ve wanted anything else in my life. I want him so much it’s an ache somewhere deep inside me.

‘Are you hungry?’ he asks casually, the tone totally at odds with what I see in his eyes.

The reptilian brain lurking inside my head is not in the mood for pillow talk or cuddles or food. It wants what it wants. And what it wants is a fuck. A mindless fuck of epic proportions.

I shake my head and stare at his sexy mouth hungrily.

He lifts his eyebrows. ‘You’re radiating sex right now.’

My breath comes faster. ‘Oh yeah?’

His nostrils flare. ‘Yeah. You’re giving me a raging hard-on.’

God that was delivered deep and sexy. Strange, my family made me believe I was made of sugar and spice and everything nice, and I have turned out to be made of an inner itching that makes me lewd and lusting.

I stand up and walk over to the door to turn the lock.

He stands up. ‘Come and show me how wet you are.’

I walk towards him. When I am about three feet away, I leap up on him, loop my arms around his neck, and curl my legs around his hips, making sure to rub my damp panties against the hard bulge in his jeans.

His large hands curl around my thighs. ‘Now you’re talking, Princess.’

I lick my lower lip slowly.

He groans. ‘Holy shit, Layla.’

I lean closer to his ear, my breath hot. ‘What about the fried chicken?’

‘Fuck the fried chicken.’

I look up at him from under my lashes. ‘How about that ride then?’

‘Time you were in my bed, young lady,’ he growls and carries me with my wet pussy stuck to the fierce erection in his jeans. We go through a second door in the room that leads to a dim, narrow corridor lit only by an emergency light. I clasp my fingers tightly around his neck and feel like a tick hanging on to the neck of a huge beast.

His skin is warm and he smells wild, like the sea when it is stormy or the forest at night. And ale, I get a whiff of that too. I lay my cheek on his chest and hear his heart beating fast and loud under his clothes. The corridor leads to another emergency door that opens out to the cold night.

Snowflakes fall on his cheeks. I reach up and lick one. His skin feels hot. He leans imperceptibly closer. There is naked need in his eyes. I stare up at him and watch as his breath frosts before it reaches my face.

‘When I find something I want to keep, I never let go,’ he says quietly.

I smile.

He lifts my shirt and puts his fingertips on my belly.

I shudder. ‘Cold.’ But I don’t jerk away. I don’t want him to take his hand away.

He stops in front of a massive, souped up four-wheel drive. More lorry than car. He opens the passenger door and deposits me inside as if I weigh no more than a child. He closes the door, gets into the driver’s seat, turns on the noisy engine, and we hurtle through the cold streets of London.

‘Where are we going?’

He glances at me before returning his eyes to the road. ‘Do you really care?’

He’s right. I don’t. We don’t say a word after that. Sometimes I look sideways at him, but he has his head turned towards the traffic and his profile is stern, his jaw clenched tight. When he briefly looks at me his eyes are glittering and as cold as that of a serpent.

I wonder what he is thinking. I don’t ask. It feels like this is what we were meant to do. Always. The dislike was a temporary cover for this volcano of passion and lust.

When we reach his house, he turns to me. In the light of the street lamp, his eyebrows are a straight line under which pools of blackness have gathered. The scar on his face seems alive. He is the most intimidating and magnetic man I have ever met.

‘Last chance to back out,’ he warns. In the strange shadows his entire body seems to be crouched, tense and waiting. The potty-mouthed bastard is gone. I’ve never seen him look so grim or so apprehensive. At that moment I know that this is one of those times when I hold all the cards. When my decision will change everything forever.

Both of us know this cannot and will never be just a one-night stand. There will be no going back from this. It will be messy. Other people will get involved. And the inevitable break-up will be heartbreaking. My family will be hurt. I blank out the implications even as Jake’s face swims into my consciousness. Make no mistake. He is a criminal. This is a guy who gets laid a lot. I close my eyes. It can be a secret. It can be our secret. No one else needs to know. When it burns out, only I will suffer.

‘No thanks,’ I whisper.

His body becomes slack with relief. He got the girl again. He nods. ‘Thank God,’ he says savagely triumphant. ‘My balls are aching like they’ve been sucker punched. I need to have my cock in your hot little cunt as soon as possible.’

He hauls open the door on my side, scoops me into his arms, and carries me off to his lair. I look up into his face. Who’d have thought?

Him and me.