Everything happened in a sort of slow moving soundless daze after that. As though I was the one who'd been beaten to a pulp, my brain clunky and foggy, and my thoughts jumbled.

Jake's demeanour had shifted the instant I managed to shake him from his cloud of rage; a businesslike detached poise coming over him immediately. He hadn't looked back at Kevin again, not even the most cursory of glances, before he whisked me out of the office by the main door and pulled me with him in great purposeful strides along the carpeted corridor.

When we reached the top of the stairs I'd stopped moving and he'd turned to me with wary and expectant eyes. But I hadn't said anything.  I'd held out his suit jacket to him, dipping my eyes to the blood-stained collar of his shirt and the bourbon soaked left-hand sleeve. A flicker of something had moved over his face and I thought he might say something or do something, maybe offer some words of comfort or explanation, or maybe pull me into his arms and kiss me hard. But he'd done neither. He'd just taken the jacket from me and pulled it on before retaking my hand and pulling me with him down the stairs. Halfway down he'd retrieved his mobile from his trouser pocket and proceeded to allay a set of instructions to whoever had answered. Kevin was to be taken out of the back entrance and to the hospital — something I thought may or may not be a futile exercise given his state when we'd left the room - and a car was to be waiting for us outside in the next five minutes. He'd offered no kind of explanation to the person on the other end and it didn't even sound as though the question had been asked.

The club was busy and we'd drawn the look of the occasional member of staff and reveller as we made our way to the front door. Nothing curious in the looks, I suppose there was nothing curious about us. We were just a well-dressed couple to Jake's guests, and the boss and his girlfriend the staff. No one here knew what had taken place a few floors above and I was certain this would be handled quietly and discreetly to ensure it stayed that way.

We were then driven away from Surgery by a man I hadn't seen around Jake before. Well dressed and good-looking but skittish to the point of anxiety, he had looked at Jake with a kind of wide-eyed wonderment as we approached the car.  He opened the back passenger door of the dark car with a small nervous smile. He reminded me of the waiter earlier at Hakasaan — eager to please and overly polite.

Surprising me, Jake had opened the front passenger door of the car and got in there, choosing not to sit in the back with me. I'm not sure what to think about it and so I spend a large portion of the journey trying to decide what to think about it rather than thinking about Kevin and whether he might at this moment be dead in Jake's office and whether I'm now an accessory to murder.

Jake glances at me only briefly throughout the brisk ten-minute journey from Brick Lane to St Katherine's Docks.  He spends the time chatting in an easy conversational tone with the young driver who he appears to know rather well by the looks of it. The chat is entirely superficial in nature, topics which feel grossly out of place to my tense busy head. The new signing at Chelsea, Sunderland's new manager, West Ham's pitiful performance on Wednesday, the new bar two doors down from Surgery, the car itself which Jake likes — Jake was getting a new one next week apparently. I resist the urge to gape at him in disbelief — after all, it wasn't like we could discuss how Jake had just beaten his best friend into a coma.

But something told me he knew. This young eager to please driver knew exactly what we'd just walked away from, I was almost certain of it. He had appeared only minutes after we'd arrived downstairs and Jake had gone to him and whispered something in his ear and he'd rushed off to bring his car around to the front of the club.

As I listen to them chatter inanely I stare out the window and try to sort out my thoughts. What could I have done? Before, after.  Realistically? Kevin needed a hospital. There was nothing I could have done for him. Nothing you wanted to do. I feel a touch on my leg and I jump, turning my head to see Jake's hand between the seats as he strokes his fingers over the bare skin of my knee. His eyes are focussed straight ahead still, his shoulders relaxed and his head resting back against the headrest. The only outward sign of anything wrong is the slight tension settled on his jaw.

As we pull into the quiet cul-de-sac street and stop outside the entrance to his building, the driver leaves the car idling and Jake gets out to open the door for me. Reaching in to help me out of the car, his eyes are inscrutable as they meet mine. I don't know if he's looking for something in my stare or if he's trying to tell me something with his. Both I think.

As soon as he closes the door the car drives off and we walk in a heavy silence to the front entrance of his building. In the lift, I open my mouth to speak but I find my throat scratchy and raw and completely empty of any words. My thoughts are louder and far too numerous to articulate; a confused noisy blur of images and sounds I'd rather forget. I try again to decide how I feel about what I saw, what happened, whether I could have stopped it or changed the outcome. I saw it coming but I simply had no way of preventing it.

Jake was a tornado. I was merely a bystander.

I look over at him to find him staring straight ahead and thinking hard.  He looks calm, relaxed even, but there's a tension to his shoulders and his face and his back is very straight.  He looks devastatingly beautiful.  A dark dangerous beautiful that robs me of all other thoughts and reason. 

I know I should feel horror, regret, disgust. But I don't. I feel things like relief, satisfaction, gratitude, and of course, love.   Love which was extremely close to unconditional now it seemed. I feel stronger from it, solid and fully formed. As though my love for him has forged me into someone new, or made me over into a stronger version of myself.

Jake unlocks the door of his flat and holds it open for me, watching me closely as I pass. I walk directly to the kitchen and set my bag on the worktop before going to fill the kettle. Behind me, I hear the sound of the fridge being opened and the sound of bottles being dislodged, and then Jake is beside me searching the drawer by the sink. He pulls out the bottle opener and uncaps the beer, drinking deeply for a few moments before tossing the cap onto the counter and leaving me to go to the living room and take a seat on the sofa.   I lift the cap and put it in the bin and then go get two bowls from the cupboard by the cooker.

While I wait for the kettle to boil I fill one bowl halfway with ice, then I take a clean dishtowel from the drawer by the sink and drape it over it. When the water's boiled, I pour it into the smaller bowl and add a few shakes of salt to it before topping it up with cold water so that it's lukewarm to the touch. Then I carry them both through to the living room and set them down on the coffee table taking a seat on it facing him.

As I dip a large corner of the towel in the salted water, turning the material over to submerge it, I feel his eyes on me, tracing a path across my face and down while he lifts the beer bottle and continues to drink.

When I look up he lowers the bottle but keeps his stare fixed firmly on me. His eyes are slightly narrowed - with focus rather than any anger - and the green of them glitter under the dim light of the large contemporary lamp hanging over the end of the couch. Carefully squeezing the water out of the towel, I slide myself off of the table and onto my knees so that I'm between his open legs. I reach out and lift his right hand which is resting flat on his thigh. Then I drop my eyes to my task and suck in a quiet breath at the sight.

Three knuckles on his right hand are bright red and bleeding, the skin split apart to reveal the shiny vulnerable fleshy layer beneath. Blood has run down and dried there and so this is where I start, wiping the wet towel down between his strong looking fingers. Applying pressure only when I'm far enough away from the ragged circular wounds, I work quietly and slowly, dabbing very gently at the area around the open cuts across the swollen knuckles. When I touch each metacarpus I study his face for anything that signals pain or anything that might tell me whether he's broken anything. He doesn't flinch. He just continues to watch me carefully and quietly while taking the odd sip of his cold beer. The only discomfort he shows is when I dab the saline solution directly over the angry open cuts. He shifts and bites the inside of his lip and his jaw clenches tightly. It makes me concerned that maybe I've over salted the water but he makes no further protest when I soak the towel and touch it to him a second time.

"Can you clench your fist for me?" I ask. When he doesn't do it immediately I lift my head and give him an instructive stare and I feel his fingers retract into a fist without much effort. "And splay the fingers out," he does it. "And again."

I nod, satisfied, and turn to lift the bowl of ice from the coffee table and slide the rim under his left wrist so that his now clean hand drapes into the cubes at a relaxed angle, knuckles submerged. The other hand isn't anywhere near as bad but there's some more blood and the sight of it there as he drinks casually from his bottle makes me feel a little queasy.

When I reach forward to take the bottle from him I expect him to resist me but he doesn't, and so I turn to set it behind me on the table before moving to wet a different corner of the dishtowel in the cooling salt water. As I reach out to take his other hand he moves quickly, gripping my arm just above my wrist and I flinch a little with surprise. His touch is hot and firm and I watch his blood covered fingers curl around my wrist. Then I feel him squeeze gently.

"Alex, stop," he orders quietly. Immediately my eyes move to his and his expression changes; going from narrow to open, warmth seeping into the green. "Say something, baby please."

"What do you want me to say?" I ask.

There's an odd sort of desperation in his eyes now and it squeezes around my heart. Like a grip from a strong bloodied hand. "Tell me you love me," he replies.

I drop my eyes to his fingers where his knuckles are bright red and angry but trimmed with white from the force of his hold. "I love you," I tell him. When I try to retrieve my wrist he grips harder and sits forward in the seat.

"Look at me and say it." He says firmly. I see a flash of an image then - a powerful body moving with purpose and rage to protect and defend me. It causes such a feeling of pure unbridled love to surge through my body that it steals the breath from my lungs momentarily. I lift my head up and meet his eyes.

"I love you, Jake. You know that." My voice is as firm as his.   The words have the desired effect; he lets out a loud breath, drops his shoulders and sits back in the seat and releases my wrist. "Now, can you please let me look at your hands properly? I don't want you to have to go to the emergency room. I know how much you hate hospitals — and doctors." I give him a small reassuring smile. He glances briefly down at his fingers and licks his lips before offering me his other hand.

When he's cleaned and dried, I move to sit next to him on the sofa, my body sideways so that I can look at him in profile. Our stance is an odd throwback of the night in my living room all those months ago when I held the ice pack to his face after I'd hit him. His head is resting on the cushioned back of the grey sofa but he turns it to face me and narrows his eyes in careful focus, searching my own.

"What happens now?" I ask gently, reaching across to smooth the lock of sandy brown hair back from his eyes. I draw my finger across his forehead and over the small white scar on his eyebrow wondering not for the first time how he got it. He has a small very faint scar on the underside of his chin too that was only visible under certain lights and from certain angles. His nose was very straight, though, meaning he'd somehow managed to get through life, his life, without breaking it or having it broken at least once.

He frowns, confused. "What do you mean? Nothing happens now."

"Nothing happens? Really? Won't Dan have something to say? What if he..." I can't find the right words. I don't really want to say them anyway. Any version of them. However since Jake doesn't seem to be picking up on what it is I am trying to say, I'm going to have to. "What if Kevin dies, Jake?"

He doesn't react. Not at all. Not a flicker of emotion crosses his face at the notion. I literally have no clue how he would feel if he had committed murder tonight.

"That isn't going to happen," he says, turning his head away from me again.

"I don't know," I reply. "He wasn't moving a whole lot. He barely even fought back..." the image of Kevin's bloodied battered body isn't one I'm likely to forget in a hurry. Sustained head trauma like that wasn't something people just walked away from. Did I really just leave him there? What am I? No kind of doctor that's for sure. I feel a familiar spread of white hot panic move through me, a flapping in my ears and chest, loud and violent. How can I live with myself after just standing by? After leaving him there like that? How do I go on practicing medicine? I'd pushed this thought down when it had risen earlier, swallowed it whole and hoped it would go away. But it was back. Likely it would always come back.

"He won't die Alex."

I frown. "How can you be so sure?"

"Because I'm not that fucking lucky," he replies. After a moment of silence, he turns to look at me again, his eyes sweeping over my face and down before arriving back level with my own. "What happened before I got there?" his voice is a few shades darker. "Did he threaten you? You said he didn't touch you?"

I swallow and shake my head, dropping my eyes from his. "Not exactly," I close my eyes and think back to how he made me feel but my memories of before Jake's arrival are blurred. I only remember Kevin's size and his tone and his smell. The way he made me feel. The nausea rolls over me as a friendly reminder. "He insulted me I suppose, made me feel stupid and small and afraid," I bring my eyes to Jakes again. "He looked at me like I was a piece of meat."

Jake lets out a low rumble of rage, his nostrils flaring and his mouth stiffening. "I should have fucking killed him..." he says. His voiced is dark with contempt and he sounds far away, as though this is a thought or a consideration he has had many times before. "I wanted to kill him. I fucking would have..." He turns to me suddenly, a weighty stare levelling on my face. "I never wanted you to see that. I wanted you gone Alex, why didn't you fucking leave when I asked you to?" He sounds annoyed again.

I give him an imploring look. "Because he's a bloody animal and I was worried about you," I say. It seems ridiculous now given what followed.

"Yeah and I told you, didn't I? Don't worry about me," He flares.  "When will you just fucking trust me, Alex? When will you just do what I ask you to do?"

When I speak again my voice is calmer. "Jake, I do trust you. But you can't just tell me to stop worrying about you and assume that I won't. I can't just turn that off, I worry about you all the bloody time. Can you blame me?" I say pointedly.

His nostrils flare and he lets out a breath to signal his irritation at the notion. We're both silent for a moment before I speak again. It's a rhetorical thought spoken aloud more than anything else, I don't think I really expect him to answer.

"I don't understand why he would bait you like that?" It's something I'd wondered in the moments right after, as I'd been whisked off the premises in a daze. I still hadn't come up with a plausible reason. "He knows what you're capable of - he knows you. He must have known what would happen?" Kevin had claimed to know Jake better than I ever would. He must have known which buttons to press and what the outcome would be if he did.  I'd felt the tension and the atmosphere in the room. I'd known exactly what was about to happen. 

"He knew," Jake says flatly. "He just didn't give a shit. He likes playing with people — he's twisted, always fucking has been," he shakes his head and keeps staring straight ahead at some point on the wall above the TV. "I've been cleaning up his shit for years, dealing with the aftermath of whenever he goes off. He doesn't think, or if he does, he decided a long time ago that he doesn't fucking care."

"Exactly like an animal then," I say. Jake doesn't respond, he just lets out a breath. "So he hit Gemma? That was the emergency Rachel called you about?"

A lick of his lips as he shifts. "Yeah." He nods.

"Why?"

"They were seeing each other for a bit. It didn't end well." Suddenly Kevin's words about he and Jake having the same tastes in women makes a little more sense. Of course, I'm basing all of this on my assumption that Jake has in fact slept with Gemma. I'd never had that confirmed of course. But since there's a look on his face now that suggests more than just an average boss/employee concern, I'm certain my suspicions are right. Jake's circle of conquests was growing around me like some sort of blast radius of aggrieved and damaged women.

"I see.... . So what did you do?" I reach down to switch out the bowl of ice and move it across to his other less damaged hand, settling his fingers gently under the slowly melting cubes. "How did you 'clean' up that mess exactly?"

He lets out another breath. He doesn't meet my eye when he speaks. "I apologised. Promised her I'd sort it - sort him. I sacked the other girl he was fucking around on her with. Then I told her to take a holiday, said I'd pay for her to go away somewhere until I dealt with it."

I gape at him, horrified. "You paid her off?" His head twists around to me, his eyes narrow and serious again.

"I can't have the police sniffing about my club Alex. I can't. You know why I can't?"

"But I thought the club was completely legitimate? That's what you told me?"

"It is. But I'm not. Kev sure as fuck isn't. Something like that happening on my premises would only bring them to my fucking door. I can't have that happen, not right now...," he shakes his head.

I stare back at him as I digest this. Jake was paying a high bloody price to keep his club free of the dark taint that coated the rest of his life. I'm not sure where it stands morally speaking, but part of me doesn't blame him for it. It was the first legitimate thing he'd ever had. He loved it I suppose. And he protected the things he loved.

"You slept with her, didn't you? Gemma?" I ask him quietly. The change of direction takes him by surprise I think. "Before me," I add for clarity.

A flicker of what looks like guilt moves over his eyes. "That's not what any of this is about baby," he says carefully.

"I know," I nod.

I can see he's considering his next words carefully before he takes another of his deep breaths. "She's twenty years old Alex and she works for me - I was supposed to look after her. She thought this kind of bullshit — mine and Kev's bullshit — was glamorous.   I encouraged it: him and her," he clarifies.  He looks extremely sorry about it. "All because I wanted her off my fucking back. So yeah, it's my fault... I feel..."

"Responsible." I finish.

He gives me a look of uncertainty but doesn't deny it. He looks only like he might be worried about how I feel about it. But as I stare at him, his perfectly unmarred face, drinking in the smooth tanned skin of his cheeks and the soft arch of his full mouth, the wide glittering green eyes that stare back with need I know how I feel about it. I love him for it.

Shifting across the couch towards him, I bring my hand up and place it flat against his cheek and scratch my fingers lightly over the short beard of his face. Then I slide my hand down his face and slip my fingers inside the collar of his shirt, massaging the tight muscles of his neck and shoulders until he drops his head slightly to the side and closes his eyes on a groan. When I bring my mouth down to meet his and slip my tongue between his lips I feel his hand press against the small of my back to pull me close to his body. I peel my lips from his and look down at his closed eyes and the way his eyelashes lie thick and dark against the golden skin of his slightly flushed cheek. "I love you so bloody much Jake Lawrence," I tell him in a whisper.

In response, he pushes his mouth onto mine again with a new kind of urgency pulling me down to angle me across his lap. It's an awkward position so I sit back up and to straddle him, kneeling on either side of his thighs. I press myself down deeper onto his body and begin moving against him as the desperate need of some friction grips hold of me. With his hand still flat on the base of my spine he grabs a handful my dress and slides it up so that the material bunches at my hips to expose my behind. His touch is rough and hot and his breaths quicken exponentially as he drags his mouth down to my neck and throat and sucks at my skin. He digs his hand into my behind with a firm grip and moves up and down over his erection. His length presses against my core and I feel the space between my legs ignite and begin to throb harder.

"God Jake..." I pant, my eyes closed as his mouth continues to nibble and nips and bites at my throat. His breaths are fast and hot and when he finds my mouth again I reach down between our bodies and graze my palm over his cock and moan quietly with want. He's shockingly hard, large urgent need pressing against the soft rich material of his trousers. I wrap my fingers around him and squeeze the thick hot length in a tight fist which makes him growl against my tongue.

"Baby," he whispers.

My blood feels like it's on fire and my head body moves in slow sensual needy motions against his. His groan as I begin to move my hand over him is deep and raw and it causes a rush of pressure to press at my tummy and at the space between my legs. I'm desperate for him now, I want him inside me and his skin on my skin and I have the sudden overwhelming urge to bite him somewhere, mark his skin, leave myself on him. I move my mouth to his throat and scrape my teeth down it and then around to the crook of his shoulder where I sink my teeth gently into the hard cords of muscle there. He tastes salty under my tongue and he growls deliciously in the back of his throat as I grip his hair and pull his head back. All the while I continue to massage his arousal with my body and my hand.

"Yes baby like that, grip it harder, yes, fuck..." he breathes against my lips, his tongue dipping in and out of my mouth in maddening wet swirls. His voice is scratchy and rough with desire as he pushes it against my mouth and his taste explodes over my tongue and in my veins. I will never get enough of him.  I feel drugged. Intoxicated. His strength courses beneath his skin and from his lips and through his fingers as he grips hold of me, grabbing tight to the back of my neck to pull me closer. Power.  I'd always suspected the power before, but now I know it's there. I've seen it. I watched it played out before me.

My heart thunders a loud hammering tattoo in my chest and my breath feels dangerously fast as he pushes his erection upwards into my hand. He wants me desperately too and that gives me a power all of my own. I hear the sound of ice being dislodged and I gasp when I feel his very cold fingers stroke the outside of my knickers. When he scratches his fingernails over the thin scrap of material my knees tremble uncontrollably, my body almost spasming above him. I'm not sure I can hold my body up for much longer. He shoves the delicate material aside and an instant later they're inside me, hard freezing fingers pushed deep into the heat of my body. "Oh my god Jake," I gasp.

He sucks in a breath, "Jesus christ Alex you're so fucking hot here, your cunt is so fucking warm baby..." he says between kisses as his fingers move in and out of me in languid rhythmic thrusts. Oh god... I'm going to come.  I'm going to explode. The guttural scratch of his voice against my skin and the deep touch of fingers will make me explode if he keeps touching me like this. The cold sting fades quickly as he fingers me and the temperature evens out so that he's more like my own. I can't wait for him a second longer. "I need you inside me now," I tell him. 

As I reach down to unbuckle his belt, my hands begin to shake and I feel a light sweat break out across the back of my neck. The room is warm but he's warmer, scalding hot, and the scent of him makes my mouth water with a need to taste him again. Pressing my mouth back to his, I reach inside his trousers to take him in my hand before pulling up to look into his eyes. He drops his head back against the couch and fixes his green stare on me breathing ragged and fast as his fingers slow to a delicate flick across the top of my clitoris. He's sublime.  My breasts feel heavy and hot and my nipples hard and sore and my legs work hard at keeping me upright in my kneeling position over him.

As I drag my eyes down over his face I see it, from the corner of my eye, a bookmarked reminder; the wine colour of Kevin's blood on the left-hand side of his shirt, the dark blue stain on his shirt sleeve. I get a flash of the events that led to it then, a fast forward violent blurred loud reminder but it doesn't matter. None of it matters now. None of it takes even the smallest edge off of my need for him. The sheer amount of desire I feel is almost suffocating. I love him. He's still everything. He's mine.

I angle the tip of his cock to me and move it over me a few times, teasing him.  His eyes blaze and his breathing hitches before he grips the edge of my knickers and pulls them roughly to the side. The instant our bodies touch skin to skin he lets out a very low sound from the back of his throat, raw and unhindered and as his eyes seem to ignite completely. I slide down onto him slowly, savouring every inch of him as he enters me. He's scalding hot, thick and large, and I feel every ridged part of him throb inside me. Perfection. That's what he was. That's what he made me. That's what we were. Nothing and no one would ever change that.

"You're so fucking beautiful..." he says in a low tone.  The look on his face is one of awe and love.   "I love you, tell me you know that."

I begin to move over him, rocking my hips back and forth slowly. "I know you do. I know." I whisper, my breath dancing across the space between us.

***

I awake to the early morning light streaming in through the large focal window into the bedroom, a bright clear morning light that promises more sunshine like yesterday. I turn onto my side towards him, achy and sore as was the usual way of things after a night like last night, and find him still fast asleep. He looks almost childlike in sleep; devastatingly innocent in the way his mouth pouted in relaxation, his lashes long and thick around his peacefully still eyelids.

Immediately, I glance down at his hands, the right one is resting flat on his chest, the other by his side. The knuckles of his right hand have done their weeping overnight and dried out, the skin hardening and crusting over the angry gashes. There's some bruising around them too, the right hand far more than the left, but they look okay considering what he put them through. No serious swelling either which was good.

We'd peeled each other out of our clothes downstairs before he'd carried me up to the bedroom and so it's completely naked that I slip out of the bed and pad across the thick carpet to his large walnut wardrobe and pull open the doors. His clothes are hung neatly and arranged in a neat orderly fashion and it makes me shake my head in wonder. He was a tornado of a man but his clothes were still pressed and ordered by colour and item. I reach in and pull out the first shirt I see, white with a thick blue pinstripe, and hastily pull it on. He's still fast asleep when I close the wardrobe and tiptoe downstairs to see what I can muster up for breakfast.

As I retrieve the eggs and bacon from the fridge I think about our newest potentially life changing predicament. Whether Kevin is likely to be alive or dead. Alive is better I decide with a cold detachment I don't even recognise. I have no clue who I am now, but what I do know is that Jake's safety and freedom is all that matters. I need him with me and our baby needs him, and so I want Kevin alive because the consequences of him expiring in Jake's office is a threat to Jake himself. And if he doesn't die and the police begin asking questions about what happened to him? Well, I reason that someone like Kevin must have been in hospital a few times before, beaten and bloody, and so he wouldn't raise too many questions if he was wheeled in like that again. It's a lifestyle choice for people like him surely.  And certainly for all of his beastly unpredictability, I very much doubt he will lead the police to Jake's door by pressing charges. The only thing left to consider is the repercussions which Kevin may decide Jake deserves. This though gives me the least amount of worry. Mainly because I have a very vivid memory.  Jake can most certainly look after himself where Kevin is involved.

I've finished cutting the rind from the bacon and I'm whisking the eggs when I hear the doorbell go, followed up by a purposeful sounding knock. I think maybe I've misheard it, something from through the wall next door maybe, but I put down the bowl and move toward it anyway. It occurs to me that it might be Susan again, back to try her luck with her son once more. Oh, christ I hope not. It's early and turning up at his house again at just after nine am on a Sunday morning would be very brave of her. Especially after yesterday's reception.
However as I peer through the spy-hole, the odd fish eye angle confirms immediately how utterly wrong I am. My stomach almost empties out onto the floor and I regret hoping a moment ago that it wasn't her. I'd take his mother now. Christ, I'd even take Kevin now. I feel sick.

I pull back from the door and take a deep breath, resting my hand flat at the base of my throat as my chest moves up and down erratically. My nerves are live with a powerful high voltage current, my entire body feeling more like a giant circuit board than flesh and blood and bone. The knock is more adamant the second time and I almost take a full jump back away from the thing. I look behind me for a means of escape and then back at the door with a morbid sort of acceptance.

With another deep breath I close my eyes and reach for the handle, turning the latch to unlock the door as I do. Just before I pull open the door, I fix on my most genuine smile; the one I use for Mrs Goldman and my aunt Audrey — and apparently the one I use for him.

The steely blue gaze as it meets mine, does nothing for my breathing or the stability of my legs, or for the deep churning fear in the pit of my stomach. His eyes widen a little, his mouth too, faint surprise causing soft crows feet to appear at the sides of his ice-blue eyes.

"Ahhhhhhh, and you must be the lovely Alex?" he says in a soft warm tone I was not expecting. Not at all. As my eyes blink in surprise that he knows my name he just continues to stare. His stare isn't leering at all, it's just filled with an unguarded and blatant sort of interest, like I'm an item on a shelf in an old curiosity shop. "Jake about darlin'?" he asks, casting a look behind me into the flat. I have to resist the urge to close the door, lock it twice, and then run upstairs to Jake.

"Um, actually he's still in bed," I say with a small smile, hoping desperately that he'll politely go and come back later.  For good measure, I tuck a hair behind my ear and offer him a shy look.

"Yeah I bet he is," He chuckles softly, skating his eyes down my state of undress and back up. So shrewd are those eyes, ice blue and piercingly clear like a hardened crystal glass. I'm certain I can see the calculated movement of his brain through them. "Well if you wouldn't mind waking him up that would be fucking fabulous, tell him Dan's here will you sweetheart'?" he says before stepping over the threshold into the flat without invitation.

The two huge men that follow behind him give me only a cursory glance as they brush past me.