Angel of the Dark

Tracey Stone was in her late twenties, with short, spiky red hair, dark brown eyes and a skinny, boyish figure that looked quite preposterously sexy in her black-and-white maid’s get-up. She’s like a human matchstick, thought Piers, sent to light me up.

And light him up Tracey did.

When Tracey agreed to go on a date with Piers, her friends thought she was crazy.

“He’s about a hundred and nine, Trace.”

“And posh.”

“With a cock like a burned cocktail sausage thanks to you.”

“It’s disgusting.”

Piers’s friends were equally scandalized.

“She’s younger than your daughter, old boy.”

“She’s a waitress, Piers. And not even a good one.”

“She’ll rob you blind.”

Neither of them listened. Tracey and Piers knew their friends were wrong. Tracey wasn’t interested in Piers’s money. And Piers couldn’t have cared less if Tracey’s parents were as cockney as Bow Bells. She had switched on a part of him that he had believed long dead. As the burns on his groin slowly began to heal, all he could think about was going to bed with her.

On their first date, Piers took Tracey to dinner at the Ivy. They roared with laughter through three delicious courses, but afterward Tracey hopped into a black cab before Piers could so much as give her a peck on the cheek.

On the second date, they went to the theater. It was a mistake. Tracey was bored. Piers was bored. Another cab was hailed and Piers thought, I’ve lost her.

The next morning at seven A.M., the doorbell rang at Piers’s flat on Cadogan Gardens. It was Tracey. She was carrying a suitcase.

“I need to ask you summink,” she said bluntly. “Are you gay?”

Piers rubbed his eyes blearily. “Am I…? What? No. I’m not gay. Why on earth would you think I was gay?”

“You like the theater.”

Piers laughed loudly. “That’s it? That’s your evidence?”

“That and the fact you never try to shag me.”

Piers looked at her incredulously. “Never try…? Good God, woman. You never let me within a mile of you. And by the way, for what it’s worth I don’t like the theater.”

“Why’d you go there, then?”

“I was trying to impress you.”

“It didn’t work.”

“Yes, I noticed. Tracey, my darling, I would like nothing more than to try to ‘shag’ you, as you so poetically put it. But you’ve never given me the chance.”

Pushing past him into the hall, Tracey dropped her suitcase and closed the door behind her. “I’m giving you the chance now.”

The lovemaking was like nothing Piers had ever experienced. Tracey was silken hair and soft flesh and pillowy breasts and wet, warm, delicious depths that craved him like no woman had ever craved him before. When it was over, he proposed to her immediately. Tracey laughed.

“Don’t be such a tosser. I ain’t the marrying kind.”

“Nor am I,” said Piers truthfully.

“Then why’d you ask me? You must stop asking me to do things that you don’t even enjoy yourself. It’s a bad habit.”