I take great gasping breaths: my lungs are on fire. Suddenly I hear men’s voices chanting, low and guttural, and I immediately start running towards the sound. They are gathered around a large bonfire in a clearing not far away. All of them are in long black and red robes with hoods, which are pulled so low down over their faces, it is impossible to see them. There is an air of menace about them. I remember them. I have seen them at that party. They all know more than they will tell.

They are the brotherhood of El.

Far away in the distance I see a lantern. I should have gone towards the lantern. But it is too late. They have all turned to look at me. I stare at them, appalled, and terrified, and consumed with horror. They begin to advance. I turn around and run. I hear them behind me. They are faster than me. I hear them closing in, their heavy grunts. They are almost upon me.

I stumble and fall on the ground among roots and creepers. They surround me. I look from one faceless figure to the other with abject fear.

‘You cannot escape.’

I freeze. Oh God. No! That voice. I know that voice. I look into the darkness inside his hood. There is movement. Shiny black eyes moving to look at me. I recognize those eyes.

‘But you are dead.’

An unpleasant wet, rasping sound comes from him. The rest of the group fall on me. Hands everywhere, on my breasts, between my legs. I kick and struggle, but it is no use. The clawing and yanking are impossible to resist. They make a whispering sound. Insidious and unspeakably horrible.

They are taking me down, down into the freezing pits of hell.

Suddenly I hear a cry. A baby. My baby. My Sorab.

The hands still, and they turn towards the voice. It is not me they want… It was never me.

I see Blake standing there with Sorab.

No, no, no. Quick, quick, do something. Run. I open my mouth and scream to warn him but no sound comes. They have taken my voice. It’s too late. I’m too late. I begin to howl silently.

I feel hands on me. ‘Wake up. It’s just a dream.’

My eyes snap open and Blake is peering down at me. I stare at him in confused terror, my head full of gravel and evil. Then I throw my arms around him and clutch at him desperately.

He tries to lay me back on the pillows, but I can’t let go of him. I pull back just enough to look at him. ‘I am afraid for you.’

‘There is nothing to be afraid of.’ His voice is tender. He cradles me in his arms and gently sweeps away the hair sticking to my damp forehead and cheeks. ‘It’s over. It’s over,’ he croons.

But I am full of terror. The dream had been so real. ‘The men. The hooded men… In the woods. Who are they?’

He frowns. ‘What men?’

‘They want you back.’

‘It was just a nightmare, Lana. There are no hooded men. You’re safe. There is—’

‘Your father. He was alive.’

A bleak look comes into his eyes. ‘My father is dead.’ His voice is flat and lifeless.

I rest my forehead against his chest and begin to cry.

Again and again he reassures me, ‘It was just a dream. Just a nightmare,’ until I fall asleep clasped in his arms.

When I wake up again it is with a premonition that something is wrong. Raw fear. I glance at the bedside clock. It is the early hours of the morning. A warning burns in my head. I don’t dismiss it. I scramble out of bed, pull on Blake’s discarded shirt and run into Sorab’s room. It is still early and the child is fast asleep. Softly, I open the door and hurry down the corridor. Blake is in the dining room working, bent over a piece of paper. He lifts his head, sees me, and gets to his feet suddenly.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ I say, but I run towards him and throw my arms around his waist. It is true nothing is wrong. So what is the little prickling at the back of my neck, as if someone was watching me, all about then? Is this the calm before the storm? I feel my stomach in knots.

‘Don’t become a slave to your fears, Lana,’ he whispers into my hair.

As if by magic I feel the fear slinking away. Everything is all right. Blake is fine, Sorab is fine and I am fine. Nothing is wrong. It must be just my own overwrought senses. I know it is because I don’t have all the facts. There is so much I don’t know.

I look up into his face. ‘Shall I make you something to eat?’

‘No. The only thing I am hungry for is you,’ he says, taking the lobe of my ear between his teeth. ‘I simply can’t seem to get enough of you. I want to devour you all the fucking time.’

It is tempting to let him fill me up. Make me forget. My lips part with invitation. ‘Devour me, then,’ I whisper throatily.

He lifts me by the waist.

I wrap my legs tightly around his hips, encircle his neck with my arms, bury my face in his throat, and let him carry me to the bed. I unwind my legs and he lays me down gently. For a while he stands simply looking down at me, his eyes dark and grimly determined. Then he starts unbuttoning his shirt while I watch from under heavy eyelids. My veins are suddenly full of urgently pulsing, hot blood when he rips open his button fly, unzips, and stands before me naked. My eyes move to and remain fixed on his penis: big and proud and pulsing with its own supply of hot urgent blood. I lick my lips—I crave it inside me, its length, its brutal thickness, its relentless power.

Its dark promise.

I want to be fucked senseless, but more important is the desire to be the only thing he sees, feels, wants. To obliterate everything else for him but me. To capture him inside my body. To make him mine. To watch his eyes lose focus, turn so deeply blue that it is almost violet with sexual euphoria. And to watch his powerful frame shudder and convulse as his mouth helplessly calls my name at the moment of climax.

What he does is the opposite of what I imagined.

He lands on the bed on his knees, grabs me by the waist and turns me over, the same way someone would upend a bottle. Without warning I am folded over and positioned on my hands and knees. I feel his hands push the shirt I am wearing upwards, until it is bunched around my armpits.

While I am still finding my balance he ducks his head into the overhanging shirt and sucks one of my nipples. The other he rolls between his thumb and forefinger. The unusual position and the greedy sucking—as if I am a four-legged beast feeding its young—makes my head rear back and my spine arch. Immediately, he removes his mouth as if that reaction was the only reason he had nudged his head into the shirt flap in the first place.

I whimper restlessly, but he places his hands between my shoulder blades and pushes me face lower down, so my chin and mouth are buried in the pillow and my buttocks and pussy are horribly exposed. But even that offering he deems insufficient. He yanks my hips higher until my knees lift clean off the mattress, and with a manacle-like hold of my thighs, rams into me. I cry out with the shock of his ferocious entry and the surprising depth his shaft has gone to.

The pillow muffles my scream.

For a few seconds I hover between pleasure and pain. And then the pillar lodged deep inside me begins its outbound journey. I close my eyes, open myself to accept all of him, and wait… Even though I am anticipating it, the second punishing plunge makes me bite the pillow.

The wild violence of his thrust is shocking and yet I welcome it. I want him to use me in this primitive way. To use my body to rid himself of his demons. I am in awe of his power and my ability to withstand brutality of his need. So he fucks me with ragged breath, as if with each pump he is releasing all the pent up tensions in his body.

The frenzied battering makes my sex feel raw and tender, but I squeeze his cock as if I am milking it. Suddenly he makes a sound—feral, triumphant, inexplicably male. And for the first time since I have known him he allows himself to come before me. It tears through him and he climaxes as he always does, long, hard, agonized, calling my name, as if it is a prayer. His cock jerks and spurts its hot seed into my desperately clutching cavity.