“I quite enjoy the banter actually. I mean, you don't meet many females who can come back at you as fast as you can throw it out at them. I prefer a more graphic dialogue as a forerunner to sex though: if they have the guts to spell it out for me in glorious Technicolor that always gets my interest.”

“Lifting, smiling back at her giggle, her relief, I tease, “If you want to bleed sweetheart, I can make you bleed. I promise if I do it will be way more fun.”

“He follows me down, catching his weight on either side of my head so he can leer his face into mine, coiling muscles and immobility at me, “I want you to lay into me. Fight me.”

“Lifting the bedcovers I see out of my one operational eye that my trousers are still wrapped around one leg and I now have a tie on. Now that was a neat trick – how’d I manage to get my shirt off without talking off the tie first?”

“You can only push me so far little slakax, and then I will do what has to be done, with or without your permission.”

“Levelling my stare at him I drop a hint like a penny into a well, “You mentioned you were tied up. Win, you should have reserved that privilege for me.”

“Now more than ever I wish I had a cup of oblivion. But there is no mercy for the people who have left the darkness for the light. The darkness lingers until you stand naked in the light and let it fill you up, in every corner of your soul.”