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‘Art history or “Alien Superstar”?’

‘If we do it in a Tuscan villa, maybe both at the same time.’

I reach over for my tablet and scroll through the meticulously detailed pages on which I’ve been focusing all my attention instead of job enquiries.

‘Art history is on page twelve, and Beyoncé is page five. I’ve contacted the RSPCA and PETA and apparently you can’t cover an actual horse in silver bodypaint.’

My best friend gasps with faux dismay. ‘What the hell?’

‘I know. It could be argued that denying an animal the opportunity to be part of something so iconic is therealanimal abuse.’

‘You should be a lawyer.’

‘Sis, I’ve been sayingsince.’

‘I mean, your bum was created for a pencil skirt.’

‘Right?How To Get Away With Slaying. Speaking of,’I say through our cackles, ‘let’s talk looks.’

And I proceed to pour all my energy into convincing her that she doesn’t actually need eight costume changes to signify the Greek modes of love. (‘Red for Mania to represent us being Crazy in Love,’ my best friend said.) It takes time to whittle it down to three, and I’m grateful to redirect my energy from figuring out how to not feel emotionally disembowelled at the sight of the man who stole my heart for, it seems, the sole purpose of breaking it.

Chapter 3

Words of Affirmation

‘Marry me,’ Malakai’s gravelly voice rumbled into my ear, sleepy and molasses slow, ‘All you need to do is say when and I’ll drop to my knee.’ It sent tremors through my sinfully spent body, prompting me to turn to him. The sight of him was like a warm knife through butter: melting me, rendering me into easy softness. It still tripped me up after five years, the firm luxuriance of his mouth, the depth in his eyes calling me to come dance with its light. My heart, as always, skipped a beat and fell into his rhythm. I smiled into the dark silk of his skin, let it turn into a kiss and tasted the salt of his sweat, or my sweat– of our sweat– and ran a hand down his chest.

‘Awkward. I thought this was casual?’

His lips curved against the folds of my ear and nipped at it, the rogue flash of teeth and tongue more of a reason for the quickening of my breath than the proposal. Malakai proposed in varying iterations, periodically.

‘Baby, PETA’s gonna hate me for the amount of goats I’mma lay at your feet for your dowry,’ his playful voice would tease, or, ‘I think I need to make a visit to Mr and Mrs B. I have a question I gotta ask them. It’s cognac for your dad and red wine for your mum, right?’ Or, ‘Tell Aminah to answer my texts on time for once in her life. I need her help on a shopping trip.’ A pause. ‘Don’t tell Aminah that verbatim, just tell her topleaseanswer my texts on time if she feels like it. I wanna go ring shopping.’ Or, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to walk down the aisle to “Thong Song”?’ Or, ‘I don’t ever want to stop doing this with you,’ whispered into the tender stillness of our post-coital calm, to which I would reply, ‘You sure you got the stamina?’ and he would pull back and arch a brow and his voice would make like Christina Milian and dip dangerously low as he asked, ‘Scotch, what did you just say to me?’ and I let my smile be wicked and my face be serious and say, ‘Oh sorry. My voice is a little hoarse—’

‘You’re welcome—’

‘From karaoke last night—’

‘You actually don’t rate me.’

‘Anyway, Isaid, are you sure you have the stamina to—’ and he would shut me up by proving he had the stamina to, proved it with his mouth and proved it with his hands and the thick and thickening part of his body that was surely proving itself against the cushion of my behind as we spoke, which actually was my whole game anyway. Sucker. Or maybe that was me, because every time he did this, made some intimation that he was so sure one day he would be my husband, that he was so sure of me, of us, that five years on I was still it for him, that he didn’t regret the utterly fucking insane thing of standing in front of our university peers at a giant ball and declaring his love for me at twenty years old, my heart forgot what it was supposed to do for a few seconds, suspended in the sweet knowledge that the love of my life wanted to spend his with me. The knowledge was theoretical for now, of course, I was twenty-four and he was twenty-five, with so much to do and to learn and to become. The reality of it was further in the future, but, still, the weight of its existence anchored me to us.

Malakai slid his hand down my stomach and then below my waist, where he sought purchase to press me closer to the firm flame of his body. Moaning at the pressure of his palm against me, I bucked as he pushed a finger into my heat. A taut arm secured me to him as he went deeper, added a finger and a maddening motion that saw a building pleasure begin to ripple restlessly through a body that suddenly was no longer tired. I was grateful Malakai had an empty flat; I could be as loud as I wanted to be.

Malakai’s lips moved against my left lobe as he whispered again, with the best kind of cruelty, with the power of someone who literally has your pleasure in the palm of their hand, ‘How casual does this feel, Scotch?’

I sighed. ‘I hate you.’

‘I know, baby.’ His lips were hot and soft against my neck, in turn making me hot and wet, a tropical storm, and I pushed into him in response. ‘So it’s a good thing this is just a fling, innit.’

I smiled through my quivers. He was such a dick. I loved him. I wiggled around and freed myself enough to reach back round and hold him there. He hissed and tensed as I stroked slowly while he firmed further in my palm. My eyes began to blur, heady with power and pleasure as his hand signed our language into me, his motions making my thoughts a sensual smoothie, and just as I was about to guide the length of him into me, galvanised by his groans, my diminishing gaze focused on the time glowing on the laptop screensaver on his desk across from the bed. Why hadn’t my alarm gone off? My eyes drifted to see my phone off the charger on Malakai’s bedside table, presumably dead, somehow disconnected through last night’s athletic antics. My molten body stiffened.

‘Shit.Shit, shit, shit!’ Malakai reluctantly released me as I detangled myself from his comfort, leapt out of bed and contemplated if a three-minute shower was enough to get the scent of sex off me, and whether I could get away with lotioning in the bathroom of Jupiter Press before the Monday-morning town-hall meeting.

‘Shit, where’s my bra?’

‘I think–’ Malakai’s plush lips curved in an annoyingly satisfied smile that made him look obscenely sexier as he reclined, chest taut and topless, looking like some Yoruba deity– ‘somewhere on the corridor floor.’

I rolled my eyes and dipped out of his room to scoop the black M&S lacy number from the floor. I’d do a whore’s bath. Is that what they call it? That didn’t sound right. Sexually Empowered Woman’s Quick Cleanse. Unless, it was a reclamation of ‘whore’? Either way. Pits and pussy. And teeth. I needed to brush my teeth. I’d shower properly at the office gym at lunch. I came back to the room as I clasped my bra on and Malakai groaned in an entirely different tone to a minute before. ‘Take the day off.’