He strokes my hair.

Just once.

But it is enough for me. He cares. Maybe just a little, but he cares. My grandmother used to say, everyman, even the most hardened criminal, has a soft spot in his heart. Maybe, just maybe I can be that soft spot in this man’s heart.

I lift my feet up on the table and get into a crouching position. Reeking of sex I drag my breasts up along his body until my erect nipples brush his face and I am standing a head taller than him. Bracing my hands on the planes of his hard chest our faces loom, dangerously close, separately only by the cast iron bars of mutual distrust. His eyes, so radiant they are azure, stare back into mine.

Unnerving. Beautiful. What is he seeing, I wonder.

Feverishly, I cup his cheeks between my palms and press my mouth against his. A long trapped moan escapes. We kiss. Kiss? No, He opens his mouth, our tongues entangle and we hold on tight, and fucking drink. So deeply it is as if we are desert nomads who have travelled for weeks to find a vein of cold water in the ground. Succulent. Succulent. He is.

We flood our senses with each other and the room disappears. The whole world stops spinning. Raw desire courses through every fiber in my body. It is madness. It is obsession. We fuse irrevocably and indisputably. Time passes in our singular state. Eventually, I raise my head breathing hard, and look into his eyes. They are impossibly dilated. My breath hitches.

‘Have you ever heard the story of the scorpion that asked a frog to help him across a river?’ he asks, his voice low and strange.

I stare into the crystalline eyes. They are inscrutable crystal worlds. Fabulously beautiful but inhospitable to carbon based creatures. Slowly, I shake my head and feel the strands of my hair brushing my bare shoulders.

‘The frog said, ‘No. You could sting me while we are halfway across the river and I will die.” The scorpion said, “If I sting you I will die too.” That logic made sense to the frog so it said, “All right. Climb on my back and I’ll give you a ride.” Halfway across the river, the scorpion stung the frog. The frog cried out in mortal pain. “You stupid scorpion, now we are both going to die. Why did you do it?” And the scorpion replied, “What do you expect I’m a scorpion. That’s what I do.”’

I feel an eerie sense of calm permeate my whole body, perhaps even my soul. He doesn’t know it is too late to turn back.

‘The frog should have learned to fly. He should have taken the battle to the air where the scorpion would have been disorientated,’ I whisper, my jaw tight.

He smiles sadly. ‘You’d have made a good mafia general,’ he says.

‘Actually I got the idea from Olga,’ I say.

‘I take it back. You’re far too truthful to be one.’

‘I’ve told my share of lies. Ask my mother,’ I say lightly.

‘I’m a ruffian and a murderer, Dahlia.’

‘Difficult to tame, I know,’ I say softly, ‘but not impossible.’

He stands immobile and as tense and sprung as a fully stretched catapult, ‘I don’t want to break you.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll bend.’

He lifts me off the table. I curl my thighs around his hips and he carries me to the bed and lays me on it. I lie on my back and look at him shedding his clothes and think, you are mine. You don’t know it yet, but you are mine. For ours is not a monkey love. It’s pure and beautiful. One day he will realize that jut having animal sex with me is not enough.

He lies down beside me.

‘I own you, Dahlia. I own every inch of you,’ he states possessively.