Chapter Three

      His voice came as a shock, deep and husky and inflected with an accent I didn’t recognise, lilting and rapid, almost sing-song. And the way he said ‘fuck’ was quick and joined to the words after it, as if they were one.

      But something about his voice and aggressive tone injected me with flight instinct. I had to get out of there. This was not how it was meant to be between us. Fate hadn’t planned this kind of confused, dishevelled meeting. I had to erase it, now, quickly, before it became irreversible.

      Clutching my bag, I turned and covered the side of my face with my palm. How could I let him see me for even another second? My mascara was no doubt running down my cheeks – I could imagine its black dribbles streaking over my wet, burning flesh. My clothes were wet and scrappy. My battle with the shrubbery had left its scars – a small rip in the knee of my jeans and several leafy twigs poked from my socks and sneakers.

      I picked up a rapid pace, slapped one foot in front of the other on the pavement, not daring to look backwards for fear of doing even more damage to our destiny. But with each step something told me that I’d just met my Liuz. I couldn’t deny what I knew in my heart. Not only his accent, which could be Polish, but also the layout of his bedsit was exactly as I’d imagined. Masculine, sexy, and so damn alluring in a sleazy, impersonal, functional way.

      After pounding around the corner, past a paper shop, a hairdresser and a tanning parlour, I finally slowed. His long, toned body screamed athletic. He would be swift, energised. If he truly had wanted me, he would have caught me.

      A double-decker bus came with merciful promptness. I stamped up the steps, hurled myself onto the empty backseat and slunk low. Shutting my eyes, I cursed the drips of rain snaking down my neck and soaking through my jeans. Behind my lids, the image of him masturbating came to mind. I swallowed a glut of realisation. The darkly stubbled jawline I’d just seen was in keeping with his picture, as were his long limbs. The wall behind the bed in his room was a dirty, murky green, the bedcovers a nondescript mud-brown. That was where he’d been when he had clutched his cock, worked his shaft, spunked out his cum. He hadn’t been at a friend’s bedsit at all. He’d been at home, on that bed. The bed I had just seen with my own two eyes.

      Why had he lied? Did he rent it from his friend, was that it? Or was he ashamed at the state of the place so didn’t want to admit it was his?

      I dropped my head into my hands and sucked in a breath. Torment twisted within me. Everything I thought I knew about Liuz was up in the air yet at the same time it was all exactly as it seemed. Exactly as I’d hoped.

      His face, dark, brooding, dominant, was the mirror image of the one I’d dreamed of night after lonely night. His body, controlled, honed, was the stuff of my horniest fantasies. Both fear and delight seared through me, jumbling one lust-infused thought to the next then winding it with the knowledge that I’d been dealing with a man so gloriously beautiful, so innately masculine that he surely wouldn’t be interested in me.

      How could I have entertained the fact that I wouldn’t be attracted to him?

      The bus jostled to a stop and I stared out the window, gathering my bearings. Lights glowed from houses and lampposts as evening spread over London earlier than expected because of the rainstorm. I was getting nearer to home, moving further from him. Another ten minutes and I would be back in the safety of my apartment, away from the dismally orchestrated meeting with the man I wanted to fuck me more than I wanted to take my next breath.

      * * *

      My pillar-box red sweater was made of the finest cashmere, an indulgence born from a lucrative story in January, and as I pulled it down over my bare breasts the fluffed material tickled my nipples and smoothed over my flat belly like a soft cloud. I scraped back my hair and snapped it into a bobble, hitched up the base of my favourite sweats and sank my shower-hot toes into woolen socks. I had long since mastered the art of booting up my computer and checking for my emails as I went about mundane tasks such as dressing and drinking.

      Sipping a glass of Merlot, I checked for a message from Liuz.

      Nothing.

      I set down the wine and reached for my pale-blue artist’s coat. It was thin cotton and dotted with every shade of acrylic paint imaginable. After shrugging into it, I squeezed out several generous blobs of paint onto my board. I had to commit the images swimming around my head to canvas. The compulsion to do so gnawed at me. If I didn’t I wouldn’t be able to eat, rest or work.

      I stared at my blank canvas collection and nibbled on my bottom lip. Nothing seemed big enough. My desire was to have Liuz as large and as real in the room as possible.

      I glanced around.

      With a flourish of decisiveness, I tugged off a poster I’d bought recently in New York of the Empire State Building. Ripped at a signed picture I’d had for many years of Paul Weller playing his guitar.

      A tall, thin unit, bursting with books, stood to the left, by the door. I heaved, tugged and shifted it to the centre of the room, finally freeing up a large, plain cream wall.

      The perfect canvas.

      I reached for a dense brush and daubed it in dark-brown paint. Lifted up high and splodged an outline of Liuz’s head. Just the barest shape, no detail – that would be added later.

      I carefully angled the brush to create the sharp line of his jaw and the dent in his chin, leaving a space where I would come back to his ears. My heart raced and sweat popped between my breasts. For the second time that day, anticipation reeled within me. Soon I would have him before me, in my room.

      His neck was next; not too thick, not too thin. I loaded up more paint and with steely determination squared out his shoulders, my breaths rapid. I was hot, the jumper no longer comfortable with all my twitching, stretching movements.

      Frustrated by the necessary interruption, I dropped my brush and pulled shut my curtains. Peeled off my artist’s coat and dragged my expensive sweater over my head. Tossed it into a corner. Next came my pants and underwear, and finally my socks. Not bothering to put on my paint-speckled coat again, I lunged for my brush.

      Naked and free, I set about painting a chest that rose outwards from the sternum, showing off broad pecs. A neatly tapered waist, lean and stretched. When I reached my favourite place of all on a man’s body I paused, rubbed a paint-stained hand across my hipbone and sucked in a breath. Even from a distance and through rain I could tell Liuz had adorable oblique muscles.

      As