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This had always been the case in the past.

It is intoxicating to experience so much pleasure, such incredible intensity. The human mind cannot fathom it, does not know how to process it. Even our minds struggled with it sometimes. The truth was that because so few physical pleasures were still available to us, sex became almost of paramount importance. But finding someone that could light that fire was not as simple.

Our tastes become more eclectic as the years go on.

We become particular about the kind of person we are able to be with, that we want to become intimate with.

For me, it had been a long stretch of being alone.

Too long.

I met Charlotte at a party. We started talking and found we had a lot in common. She was not the typical Hollywood starlet; she didn’t want relationships and commitments, and didn’t trust anyone from her world. She liked that I had my own life, my own money and an entire world that was as far removed from her world as possible.

She also hated daylight, which suited our arrangement.

She liked to stay up at night, sleeping until late into the day.

She was a demanding actress, known as a diva and many producers refused to work with her. But her beauty and star power was unaffected. Her mere name was enough to draw huge crowds to the cinema. Ironically, she played a vampire in one franchise. It was a ridiculous fiction in which the vampires were either monsters or pathetic romantic types. The reality was more complex, I tried to tell her. Vampires where as diverse as people were. Some were evil, others were not. It wasn’t as simple as the old stories made it out to be. She wanted to know details but I wasn’t keen to tell her about it. This was my life, not material for some Hollywood show.

“Do you have no feelings at all?” she’d asked me.

Oh, we have feelings.

As I stood there, my head was in turmoil, all I could think about was Kaya. I wanted to get over to her house and check in on her. Something was telling me that I needed to be with her.

“I’m afraid this weekend won’t work,” I said to Charlotte. “I have to go out again now.”

“Now?” She frowned.

“And I’ll be busy all weekend. I’m sorry you came out all this way. You should have warned me.”

She put her hands on her hips.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you weren’t happy to see me,” she said in a low voice.

I was in no mood for games, though.

I walked past her. “If you like, go to the Molton andtake the penthouse suite. I’ll let Natania make the arrangements.”

I didn’t wait for her response.

It was time to end things with her, I thought.

Now that Kaya had arrived in my life, I had no time for anyone else.

The night air was delightfully cold and I enjoyed gliding through the darkness, finding Kaya’s house on the street behind the woods. I walked up to the house and when I saw the dark windows and drawn curtains, I wondered if she was home.

I had hoped to find her awake, to perhaps surprise her.

Women liked to know you were thinking of them afterwards.

I couldn’t leave anything to chance with her.

I sensed that Kaya was not like other women, she did not look or dress like them and she had been very hostile to me initially. Our sexual attraction had been strong enough to force her to drop her guard but perhaps she would put it up again. I was prepared for that. I was willing to work on this relationship, to wait for Kaya.

She was worth it. I had no doubt about it at all.

She was that rarest of creatures that came into your life only once, perhaps twice in a life. A true partner who could be a mate in every way. Unlike Charlotte, who was superficial and artificial, Kaya’s beauty came from inside, from a fierceness at her core. There was a natural wildness to her that spoke to my more animal side, the predator in me recognized that she was not a victim or a weakling but a potentially strong ally. She could be more than a lover or a girlfriend. She could be a wife, a true companion.