He kicks the front door shut behind him. The house is semi-dark and his footsteps echo. He obviously doesn’t use this place much. There is a lamp lit in one of the rooms, its light spilling out into the hallway. He takes me up the stairs, opens a door, and lays me down on a very large bed. Silently, he moves to the fireplace and lights it. A gas fire throws up dancing flames and the sparse room becomes full of shadows.

He turns to me, an odd expression on his face, as if he is stunned to find me in his living space. There is almost an animal-like quality about him. Like a wolf that is crouched and tense, ready to spring on its prey. I drink him in, mesmerized by how large he is, how desperately I want him. He hesitates, as if his next move matters, then walks up to me and says, ‘Play with yourself until you are wet and hot.’

‘I’m already wet and hot,’ I gasp.

‘I want to see your pussy dripping. I want to be able to smell you from here. Can you do that for me?’

He emits heat like a radiator. I feel his power flow from his skin and envelop me like a mist. I don’t know why, but I do not feel the slightest bit shy. I lift my skirt so he will have a clear view and, spreading my legs, slowly slip my hand into my panties and over my mound. I look up at him and deliberately push my finger deep into my slick channel. My sex is so swollen and engorged with lust that a moan oozes out of me. The sound is thick and so full of need that it is a revelation even to me.

He stands very still, a stranger, watching me avidly. As if this is the first time a woman has ever opened her legs for him.

‘I’m dripping,’ I groan, my legs squirming. I’ve never been so hot or so wet before.

‘Show me.’

The ache is so strong it feels as if I am bruised between my thighs. I slide my panties over my legs and feet.

He catches me by my ankles, pulls my legs apart, and looks down at me. No man has ever looked at me the way he is looking. As if he is looking at the most beautiful thing he has ever seen in his life. Possessively and with pure, unadulterated yearning. It is addictive. I feel as high as I did that time I had a puff of weed behind the bicycle shed with Willow and her boyfriend. The knots in the thick muscles of his shoulders tell me how much control he is exerting over himself.

His gaze travels back to my face and our eyes lock. His are deliberately hooded, the half-moons holding a force that seems unsuitable for a junkyard dog willing to mate with anything in a skirt. It’s more like something you would encounter in a slow-moving, achingly beautiful dream. I want him to enter me so bad my entire body feels like one exposed raw nerve.

‘Take off your top,’ he growls.

I pull it roughly over my head.

‘Lose the bra.’

That went the way of the top pretty damn quick.

He grasps me by my waist as if I am a doll of little consequence or weight and turns me on my face. I hear him unzip my skirt and pull it down my legs. He turns me back around.

‘I want to see you play with your nipples.’

I rub my fingers in circles and then catch them between my thumb and forefinger and roll them. His eyes widen.

He kneels down and a shock of black hair falls onto his forehead. My body rises off the bed as my hand moves helplessly to it. I claw my hand through his hair. He remains still, silent, powerful. I like to tie girls up and suck their pussies until they scream.

‘Make me scream,’ I whisper.

‘Thought you’d never ask,’ he says and slips his palms under my buttocks turning my crotch into a sort of plate or bowl and brings me to his mouth. For a second he looks like a beast about to devour me. And that aura of dominance turns me to mush. I cream. Slickness runs down the insides of my thighs. He extends his hot tongue, swipes it along the crack, and swirls the tip over my plumped, engorged folds.

There is not an inch he does not explore, tease, or brush. Down one side, up the other, this way, that way, a poke here, a brush there … until my pussy is on fire and I am out of my mind with need, squirming and begging for release.

He sucks my clit and the molten heat of his mouth is such a shock to my system it makes my whole body shake. I come so fucking hard I scream. He doesn’t take his huge head away from my oversensitive, pulsating clit and the orgasm goes on and on. The muscle contractions come and come until my head spins. It is raw, primal, and violent, unlike anything I have ever experienced.

‘Whoa, that was amazing,’ I whisper, in my stupor.

‘Good. Because I’m ready to fuck.’

He pulls his t-shirt over his head and I gape. Holy shit! He is covered in tats. My brothers have them, but not like this. I let my eyes rove over them. Angels, demons, patterns, and the words No Fear blazing across his chest. He unbuttons his fly and his trousers hit the floor. He pulls down his underwear and his cock springs out. My eyes widen. Holy shit fuck! That is the biggest, angriest cock I have ever seen in my life. Swollen and decorated with throbbing veins it is literally jerking with aggression and animal vigor.

‘So this is what all the fuss is about,’ I say wonderingly. Now I know why he wanted me to be dripping wet.

‘Don’t fret, hun. Just spread your legs a bit wider,’ he advises as he rolls a condom over the massive shaft.

Eagerly I splay my legs as far as they will go. He lifts both my wrists over my head and traps them under his large hand. Staring in my eyes he slowly sinks his massive cockhead into me, forcing my pussy to accommodate him. He is so big my mouth opens in a silent cry of shock. I’ve never been so stretched before or so damn full.

‘Fuck, your cunt is incredibly tight,’ he rumbles deep in his throat.

Unable to talk, I take a shallow breath, and he uses that opportunity to push himself even deeper into me.

Oh God. Yes.

‘You like having a big dick inside you, Princess Layla?’

Vulnerable and totally exposed, I nod.

He pushes again. And he is balls-deep inside.

I expel the breath I was holding.

‘You took it all like a good girl,’ he growls and, bringing his mouth to my nipple, bites it.

‘You fucking animal,’ I curse and it is like playing with fire. The beast inside him takes over. He withdraws from my pussy and slams back in so hard my breasts quake, and my whole body shunts upwards. I feel the jolt in my bones. It is like being drilled into. I grunt.

He rams into me again, but this time I am ready for him and I enjoy it.

‘Is that all you got?’ I goad, squeezing the splendid thickness inside me.

It isn’t. He turns my insides into molten lava. I think my clit is alive and will burst into flames. Trapped under this giant, I fucking lose it. Ferociously, I jam my hips upwards, tangle my legs around his ass, and scream like a foghorn as he continues to thrust into me.

When it is over, I gaze up at him mistily. His cock is buried so deep inside me I think I own it. It must be mine. It is a shock when he pulls out of me suddenly. He releases my hands and falls on his back on the bed.

‘Now ride me,’ he orders.

I cannot wait to fulfill that command. I crawl to him, greedily lower myself onto the glorious pillar of hard meat and lock my muscles around the throbbing goodness. Impaled on his cock, my body sighs with possessive pleasure. This man was made for me. I lean forward to balance myself and begin to move on his thick shaft. Each hard slam makes him shoot deeper into me.

‘That’s it. Ride me hard.’

He comes like a raging bull, his body heaving, his head thrown back, his lips curled back in a snarl, and his eyes glazed and unseeing. I ride him through it all. When he stops exploding and becomes still, I can see the wavy heat rising from our joined flesh. I rub my pussy on him restlessly. I don’t want his cock out of my body.

‘You want more, Princess?’

‘I do,’ I say, but in fact, I feel completely drained and sleepy.

He holds me and rolls himself so we are both lying on our sides facing each other. Slowly, he slips out of me. My legs feel cramped and stiff and I straighten them with a sigh.

He touches my hair. ‘So silky,’ he mutters.

My eyes droop closed for a second before I realize that I am falling asleep. I force them open and look at him. It is astonishing how awake and alert he seems to be.

‘Aren’t you sleepy?’ I ask.

‘Nope. I have a high metabolic rate. I don’t tire fast. In fact, I hardly ever sleep.’ He eases off the condom, ties it, and chucks it over the edge of the bed.

‘Really? That’s amazing.’

‘It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. I spend too many nights when everyone else is asleep wandering around like some night creature.’

‘Is that why they call you The Bat? Because you’re up all night.’

He gives me an odd look, as if he is deciding what to tell me. ‘No, that’s not why.’

I get up on my elbow and look at him curiously. ‘Why then?’

In one smooth move he is on his haunches and has pulled me upright on the bed. We stand facing each other. ‘Because when I was 15 I didn’t know how to control my rage or my power and that made me fierce and vicious. This is how I fought then.’

He tucks his chin down to his chest, rounds his shoulders, and moves his fists as if he is throwing punches to the sides of my body. They only touch my body, but I get a measure of how lightning-fast his delivery is, and how impossible it must be to try and evade them if he was doing it for real. In seconds, I feel disorientated and I don’t resist when he grabs my shoulders, swooping down to touch his open mouth to the side of my neck. He lifts his head and stares at me.

‘I bit them hard enough to draw blood. At the end of every fight, my mouth was always dripping with their blood and sometimes I even spat out flesh.’

I stand frozen with shock. ‘Why were you so angry?’

Something flashes in his eyes. Something that hurt him badly. It shocks me to see him so vulnerable. And then a veil comes over his eyes. He had accidentally revealed too much. ‘I didn’t bring you here to talk. You’re here to fuck and to suck cock,’ he says, pushing my shoulders downwards.

I get on my knees. His cock is already rock hard, but just a moment ago I saw something in his eyes. Some terrible pain.

‘It’s a nice cock. I’ll enjoy sucking it,’ I say, softly looking up at him.

I lean forward and lick the smooth head. He rakes his fingers through my hair, fists them, and fucks my mouth as if I am a prostitute he picked up on a street corner. But I understood, even when I was getting on my knees, that it is the hurt, the terrible hurt that I reminded him of that is driving him.

He comes in my mouth without asking if he can.

I get it. He has just made me submit. Made me swallow his cum. He has owned me. I look up at him, my mouth still full of his softening flesh. His shoulders heave. He pulls out of me, crouches down, and we stare at each other. And I know that something has changed.

‘I have to leave,’ I say.

‘Stay the night.’

‘I can’t. Dominic is taking me out to breakfast.’

‘Sorry, I can’t let you go just yet. I haven’t had enough of you yet.’

‘I’m too sore, BJ.’

‘I know,’ he says softly, his voice husky. ‘I won’t hurt you.’

I feel my stomach lift.

He puts me on my back, pins me to the bed with his body, and kisses my eyes. What he does afterwards can only be called a worship of my body with his tongue and mouth. He covers every inch of me kissing, sucking, licking, nipping, biting. Neck, hands, fingers, legs, toes, breasts, nipples, stomach, hips, back, buttocks, asshole, and—finally, finally when I am shivering with arousal —clit.

The result of so much attention is an orgasm like I’ve never had. The kind where there are stars at the back of your eyelids and you really think you are going to pass out, or perhaps you even actually pass out. No wonder the French call it la petite mort, the little death. It is so consuming and powerful I feel almost melancholy and tears slip out of my eyes.

He looks at them curiously, bending his head to lick them.

The gesture is so innocent, so without guile that it makes me feel unreal. At that surreal moment I believe myself to be merely a reflection on a shiny surface or part of a dream. It is in the play of light from the flames in the fireplace on his face that pulls me back. I see him for what he really is. A totally misunderstood, half-man, half-beast, hiding a suffering heart. And I feel as protective over him as a mother bear of her cubs. I could never let anyone hurt him. And I know, in this moment, that I must never, never bring harm to him. I must guard him from the wrath of my family.

I touch his scar and he flinches.

‘What happened?’

‘Someone bit me,’ he says quietly, but I know it was not just anyone. The scar is still alive in his mind. And sometimes when I look at him, it even seems so to me.

‘A scar is a special thing. It means you were stronger than whatever tried to hurt you.’

His eyes widen. He stares at me in wonder.

‘What?’

He shakes his head. ‘You’re just different than what I thought you would be.’

I smile. ‘What did you think I’d be?’

He shakes his head again and looks away. ‘Not like this.’ He sits up. ‘Are you hungry?’

‘Starving actually.’

‘Come on. I’ll feed you and then take you home.’

We dress quickly as if we are leaving the scene of a crime. I have a great desire to stroke his cheek and make it better. But what am I making better? We have nothing but sex between us. There can be nothing between us, but secret passion. He looks at me, his stance, waiting, watching, patient.

I tie my skirt over my shirt, shrug on my jacket, and slip into my shoes. ‘Ready,’ I declare.

* * *

He takes me to a Chinese restaurant, one of these places that stays open all night. He orders what seems to be the entire menu.

‘Are you really going to eat all that?’

‘I burned a lot of calories tonight,’ he says with a grin.

The food starts arriving almost immediately. He has ordered all kinds of food, but I feel full after a helping of Kung Po chicken and ginger prawns on half a bowl of rice. It is actually too late to eat.

Feeling lethargic and satiated and happy, I lean my chin on my hand and watch with sleepy detachment as he goes through the pile of food. In the car, I yawn and lean my head back against the head rest. He turns towards me.

‘Meet me for dinner tomorrow?’

‘I can’t. I have to be in bed early. I have a job interview on Wednesday.’

‘I’ll call you and we’ll meet for lunch instead,’ he suggests.

The feeling of contentment disappears. ‘Let me call you,’ I say quickly.

‘Why?’

I bite my lip. ‘Jake doesn’t approve of me dating you.’

He leans away from me, his eyes grim. ‘I’m not going to sneak around behind anyone’s back.’

I feel the happiness ebbing away. ‘I was using the word approve euphemistically. He promised all-out war.’

He runs his hand through his hair. ‘Let me talk to him.’

‘No, don’t. Please. Don’t. It’s better if you don’t.’

‘I’m not afraid of Jake, Layla. I’ll fight anybody for what’s mine.’

I stare at him in shock as a flare of pure joy zings through my body. ‘I’m yours?’

‘Yeah, you’re fucking mine. And I don’t take kindly to anyone standing between me and my woman.’

‘He thinks you’re a drug dealer and he wants better for me.’

‘Too fucking bad. I don’t tell him how to live his life. If I want you, I’ll fucking have you.’

‘Maybe if you weren’t dealing in drugs, Jake wouldn’t be so against our relationship?’

He looks at me. ‘I do what I do because this is what I am. This is what I know and this is what I am good at. I won’t change for Jake.’

I sigh. ‘But what you’re doing is dangerous. It’s only a matter of time before you end up behind bars.

He shakes his head. ‘You have to trust me. I deal only in class 3 grass where the sentence is light and I have set it up in such a way that it never passes through my hands.’

I feel suddenly heavy hearted and tearful. Jake is right. What future is there for me with someone like him? He won’t change.

I drop my face. ‘Anyway, what we have might burn out quickly and we would have upset everyone for nothing.’

He grabs my chin. ‘You don’t get it. I don’t give a shit about upsetting everyone else. You’re mine and the sooner everyone knows it the better.’

‘Don’t push me, BJ. I love my family and I don’t want to hurt them. I’ll tell Jake when the time is right. You have to trust me that I know my brother better than you.’

His jaw is set hard. A pulse throbs in it like a heart. ‘Don’t delay it too long, or I’ll have to take it into my own hands.’