Out of Control

"The lights that move sideways and up and down/The beat takes you over and spins you round/Our hearts steady-beating, the sweat turns to cold/We're slaves to the DJ and out of control"

The music is so loud it deafens out all other senses. I see the beat in the pulse and sway of the dance floor and feel it in my feet and hips and hands. My body moves regardless of me and sweat and slicks up my whole body. My thighs are moist where they run together as I sway and my hands encounter wetness as I run them down my bare sides.

The dance floor is packed and hundreds of bodies move and grind in time, in unison. I feel connected and I feel alive. Everywhere around me people are bumping and swaying against me. A girl and a guy are making love on the dance floor, she is sliding up and down against him and every time she comes down she brushes against me. The music and the heat and the smoke and the stench of lust in the club is driving me crazy. Every time I lift my eyes, animal eyes are there to greet them and suck them in.

The music catches momentarily as dark, thumping bass vibrates in my internal organs. Then something soft and spicy and Spanish begins to play. My hips sway voluptuously of their own accord. The dance floor materialises behind me.

His hands are on my waist. They are huge hands. They almost encircle my middle. He moves my hips and they sway and when I lean back, I am moving in time to his body. All I can feel is his height and the firmness of his body and we sway and sweat. The music is seducing me. I am dripping.

The song finishes an indeterminate time later and something with heavy, African drums begins, pounding, relentless. His hands turn me and I look up, up, up and my stomach drops and I see his blue, light blue, impossibly blue eyes. His hair is black and long, tied at his neck and escaping in straggly wet strands down his face.

When I reach up I can barely bring my hands together behind his neck. He takes my weight and eases me against his body. His hard arms circle me, his hard thigh against mine, the tautness of his abdomen. The beat commands us and we dance as one.

I don't realise what is happening. People are bumping and grinding against my back in the full club. Someone bumps harder than normal and the man moves me out of the way. The girl continues to fall drunkenly to the floor. Her margarita glass smashes. I feel something wet against my foot.

The man leans down and picks the girl up. Hey eyes are half open and vacant. Another man takes her and half carries her off the dance floor. People around us have cleared a little space for the incident but continue dancing.

I look down at the wetness on my foot and in the pulse of the strobe light I see it is bright red. I rest my hand on the large, hard chest of the man and try to examine my foot. I can't feel a thing. Is it even my blood?

He sweeps me off my feet, literally, and carries me out into the windy, salty night. The surf crashing is suddenly audible with the pounding of the club behind. He carries me like I weigh nothing. My face is on the level of his chest and I can smell the fabric of his shirt and his cologne and his sweat and it is a heady combination.

He puts me down on a wooden table of an empty restaurant and kneels before me. Slowly, tenderly, he unties the ribbons of my high heel and unwraps my foot like it's a present. Blood has soaked through the ribbons on the outer side of my foot and run down the heel. He turns my foot tenderly and examines the cut. When he turns his icy blue scrutiny up to my eyes, my heart does a little flip flop. I want to say something but my tongue dries out and my throat closes.

"We're gonna have to clean this up." His voice is deep. It melts me. I want to say something but my vocal cords refuse to cooperate.

He picks my up effortlessly, even carrying my shoe along, and starts down the steps that lead out of the building and onto the windy sidewalk next to the beach. Drunk kids are weaving in and out of the building and somewhere on the beach a drunken party is causing a ruckus. The wind is warm and tastes like seawater on my lips. I want to protest but I really don't want to.

I float in his arms down the block, two, three blocks, and then we turn up a narrow side street. Cars are everywhere and as we get further from the main street, the noises quiet down. Squat coastal trees reach their knobbly branches together to form a dark tunnel over the street. I can hear the man's heartbeat. It is slow and steady and reassures me. Surely serial killers' hearts would beat faster?

We carry on for several blocks and his heart doesn't change, his breathing remains comfortable. This man is a bull. I suddenly think to get a little bit scared. I wouldn't stand a chance. He stops outside a small house with a Frangipani tree in the front and puts me down ever so gently. I balance on one foot and look up at him. He smiles and I can't breathe. His smile is beautiful and open.

He unlocks the gate and carries me over the threshold over to a dusty wooden bench with peeling paint. He locks the gate again. I might just die tonight. But I feel that would be okay.

I can't see much as he unlocks the front door and then carries me into the cool, dark interior of the quiet little house. "Careful." He murmurs as he carries me past dark shapes in the darkness and finally into a cramped room. He puts me down and I realise it's a bathroom and then he flips the light switch.

I'm blinded. But when I can see again, I realise he is still impossibly beautiful. I notice that his long nose is slightly crooked and his beautiful eyes are a bit small. Not conventionally beautiful then, but good enough to be my knight in shining armour for the night. The bathroom is very tiny and I am sitting on the closed toilet. The walls are ridiculously pink and peeling. Everything is a little dusty. There are water stains on the ceiling and upper walls.

He reaches up into a cupboard and brings down a large black box. Then he folds his huge body into the tiny space between the toilet and the bath and examines my foot again. He runs a finger next to the cut and looks up at me. "Does it hurt?"

I shake my head wordlessly. Nothing could hurt me tonight.

He smiles a little. There's a small gap between his front teeth. Analysing his physical flaws makes me feel a bit better in light of the way my body melts at his touch.

"I didn't think so. There's still some glass in there. I'm going to clean it up for you and then put in some stitches ok?" He glances up at me from unpacking medical supplies from the black box. "Advantages of meeting a med student hey?"

I finally find my tongue. "We haven't actually met."

He stops and looks up at me. Then his stunning smile transforms his face and he holds a hand out to me. "Hi. I'm Marcus."

I can't smile, I can't think. His effect on me is intensely physical. I shake his hand very formally. "I'm Cassandra."

"Nice to meet you." He says softly. He looks into my eyes. I'm paralyzed. Then he breaks the spell and continues taking stuff out of the box.

I am reassured and mesmerised by the sure way his hands work with everything. He takes a large needle and a small vial and injects my foot even though I can't feel a thing. Then he puts gloves on and cleans my foot with something that smells like alcohol. I watch in fascination as the needle threads in and out of my skin and the careful, concentrated way he ties every stitch off exactly in a whirl of complicated knots. I'm glad he's sober enough to be doing this.

Only three little stitches and then he applies ointment and puts a plaster on my foot. A small shard of bloody glass lies on the towels he set out and there's bloodied, crumpled gauze everywhere. I am overcome by his mastery.

He picks me up carefully and carries me through to a bedroom, laying me down on the unmade bed before switching on a bedside lamp.

"I'll be right back." And then he disappears. His room is very small, dominated by the messy double bed. Two bookcases overflowing with books and textbooks and files and papers take up the remaining space in the room. The walls are dark and there are hangings covering two walls. Wooden blinds hang crookedly in front of the only window.

He comes back with two bottles of water and some pills. "These are paracetemol." He shows me the bottle. "I'm not sure what you've had tonight, but if your head feels in danger of splitting open, these may help a bit. Drink lots of water."

I nod. He smiles.

"Are you sleepy?" He asks.

I shake my head.

"Okay. You can have my bed. I'll sleep on the couch. Later." He moves to the foot of the bed and takes my other shoe off. Then he moves across the small room to sit against the wall on the floor.

"Come lay by me." I hear myself saying.

He runs a hand through his hair and over his face and smiles a despairing smile. He stretches out on his stomach on the bed next to me. God he's big. At least two heads taller than me. I run a hand experimentally down the muscles on his back. He's built like a rugby player.

I shift on the bed and untie his hair. It's incredibly silky and about as long as mine. I run my hands through the length in wonder. It's beautiful, shiny and black. I brush the front behind his ear.

I scoot down the bed until I am leaning on one elbow and our faces are almost level. My fingers trace his face, the strong line of his jaw. I run them experimentally over his check with hard stubble just starting to come out and over his long nose. My fingers trace the shape of his lips. His beautiful blue eyes close as I outline his eyes lightly with my fingertips, feeling his thick, soft black lashes. When my hand reaches his mouth his lips part slightly and I feel his warm breath on my fingertips. The tip of his tongue runs over my index fingertip and I feel warmth flood through me. It's intensely erotic. When he opens his eyes, they are different, I know now I've aroused him and he's looking at me with lust. I lean over to kiss him and it is like thunder, like lightening, like a storm breaking. Whatever else happens tonight, I know there is no longer any going back.

His lips are impossibly soft on mine, impossibly tender, impossibly warm. His kisses are soft and slow and sexy. He pulls away from me often and our tongues dance or our lips rub tantalisingly against each other.

My breathing is picking up and my heart is pounding in no time. I can feel my groin burning.

My elbow is eventually killing me and I shift so I'm laying flat on my back. He moves so that he's leaning over me and we make out more. I run my hands through his hair and down his back and over his broad shoulders. I want more, more, more, I want it all.

He pulls his lips away from mine and lays his face against mine. He groans softly. A large hand comes up and twines itself in my hair, holding my head against him so I can't move.

"What's wrong?" I whisper against his ear and run my tongue along his earlobe.

He chuckles. "Nothing's wrong. It's just too right..." He moves and stares into my eyes. The intensity scares me. Whatever shreds of reserve I had melt away under his stare and his slightly upward curving lips.

"I think... I'm going to go take a cold shower and go to sleep on the couch." He says but doesn't move.

I kiss him again, hungrily. Don't go, I want you, I need you tonight.

When the heat between us gets too much, he pulls away again. He smiles and shakes his head, "Hmmm." He murmurs in appreciation. "I really should go..."

I smile. Then laugh. "You're not going anywhere tonight."

He laughs and arches an eyebrow at me. His expression becomes lustful again as I let my wandering hands slide down to his waist and snake in under his shirt. I run it over the tight muscles of his stomach and then, bravely, down to the belt of his jeans, and the bulge poking up behind it. He breathes in sharply as I brush over it.

"Woman... Cassandra... What are you doing to me?" He breathes hard.

He holds the back of my head and kisses me hard, hungrily. I run my hand up and down his crotch over his jeans, trying not to be intimidated by the length of his large erection.

He rolls away abruptly and brings his shirt over his head in one smooth movement. His eyes meet mine and I am again struck breathless by their brilliant blueness.

Surprising myself, I sit up and straddle him, bringing myself down on the long hard bulge. I slip my small top over my head and he takes my breasts in his hands and in his mouth and after that the world melts and dilates in a haze of heat and lust and pleasure. Our bodies are both coated in sweat as our clothes are removed and our cries and moans of pleasure set the beat to that other, more primitive dance. My logical, analytic brain is suspended above the feelings of pleasure and heat and pounding. My pleasure peaks and explodes in heat and screams and then he slowly starts to rebuild my momentum. Time loses all meaning.

Finally, in the dark, early hours of the morning with sweat sodden sheets around us and the scent of lust in our nostrils he looks into my eyes and in the intensity of his beautiful gaze, we reach the highest peak together.