ONE: Hello, Stranger.

BRITNEY ASTON.

9:36pm. Friday, May 13th, 2022. An electric night at the club.

You might be surprised I still remember the exact date and time. How could I not? It was the first time I felt that strong attraction towards someone in ages.

Tall, fair skin, dirty blonde air, icy blue eyes that shone in the multicolored disco lights the club had to offer and well built body well decorated with tattoos- his body was no joke. The type to make you lust and immediately lose your senses. The type to make you do things you never imagined doing. The type that made a 19 year old innocent girl like me lose every last bit of innocence left in her.

Clubs weren’t my favorite places to be. But when you received a request, okay not a request, an order, from your mum asking you to move out of your apartment in New York simply because she had gotten remarried and now wanted to live as a happy family, it definitely became a must go place.

My mum and I never got along well resulting in me living the majority of my life in New York while she frolicked around the world in search of true love. It was always a hilarious quest for me considering how hurt she was after my dad left her. Apparently, he couldn’t stand her lifestyle which was exactly the reason he married her in the first place. And instead of changing that “lifestyle”, she simply became more prominent in it and spent the majority of her days wandering of in search of a new lover.

And apparently, her search had paid off. She finally found love. In an entirely different country at that. London.

“Oh my Goodness, Britney,” my best friend, Jane, gushed by my side, realized the guy I’d been staring at finally turned to give me a not so quick glance. “He’s looking at you. Oh my God, he’s walking over here!”

“No way,” I shook my head refusing to look in his direction. “He cannot. And how do you know I’ve been staring at him?”

“Because I have eyes, duh,” she rolled her eyes. “I saw you eye-fucking him ever since we walked into the club. Come on, don’t be so boring. We graduated high school and heavens know when next we’ll get to be like this again. Let’s just loosen up and try to have the best fun of our lives tonight, huh?”

She was right. I should just ignore the fact that it was my last day in the city I loved and last night with my best friend before getting shipped off to a country obsessed with tea and kettles.

“Sure,” I mumbled and immediately caught him indeed walking towards me. Shamelessly, I blushed bright red and on noticing my reaction, Jane skillfully danced away from my side to give room to handsome guy who was now in front of me. “Shit.”

“Hey, beautiful.”

For heavens sake, even his voice was just as attractive.

“Hi, handsome,” I gave flirting a try as I raised ny head to meet his eyes. Like it was magic, the minute our eyes met, I felt every word I had rehearsed in my head go up to smoke, replaced by about a million butterflies erupting in my stomach. “Oh, um, hi.”

“Are you alone?” He took a sip of the beer in his hand, my eyes glued to his Adam’s apple for a while as it bobbled.

“Um, no,” I shook my head, grateful I was still able to come up with words. With every second that passed, he seemed to be closing the distance between us, consciously or subconsciously, allowing my body ooze an unexplainable kind of heat. “No, i came here with a friend. Jane. Jane, is her name. A girl.”

God, I was so embarrassing but I couldn’t help it.

“Oh, I see,” her corner of his lips raised up in a smirk and I could swear I immediately swallowed, my mind racing at the thought of the other things those lips could do other than form that perfect, gorgeous, smirk. “I asked the wrong question then. Are you single?”

“What?” I stuttered, finally catching him as he took another step towards me. There was finally almost no distance between us, his bottle of beer being the only significant object keeping our bodies away from each other. To make it worse, he held it close to his chest, having my eyes immediately lurk around his chest.

He had a black shirt on, the buttons clearly having no use as i could see his well defined abs on display. Either from sweat, the light, or just another one of his numerous attractive features, his chest was glistening in a way that made me imagine if my hands would be smeared with glitter if I ran them through it.

“Oh, um, no, I-“

“Okay, wrong question, again,” his smirk was accompanied with a chuckle this time. “Are you a virgin?”

I almost choked on my saliva.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” he continued with a light laughter. “I noticed how you’ve been staring at me ever since you walked into the club. Sure, I know when someone wants my dick but you just looked more of fascinated. Is this new for you? Clearly, you can’t take your eyes off me. Even now, your eyes are fucking my body so yeah, are you a virgin? Do you want me? Do you want to- you know. I could help you with that.”

“That is, of course, if you’re down. No strings attached. Just two attractive people giving into the law of nature.”

And just like that. All it took was a couple of sentences from him.

I wasn’t drunk. No, it wasn’t the few sips of alcohol I had about an hour ago. It was something completely different. An attraction I’d never felt before. A spark that ignited into a fire so alive, it consumed every bit of me.

In no time, we were in his hotel room. Few minutes in, we were kissing. And in a couple of seconds later, it transformed into a fully blown make out session.

The way he kissed me. The way his tongue explored every corner of my mouth. The way his hands roamed every single of inch of my body and how I arched my back in pleasure at his every touch.

The sequence in which it happened would forever be a mystery but the next thing I knew, his hands were tugging at every piece of clothing on my body until he completely stripped me naked. Shamelessly, I did the same, taking short moments to appreciate his body that looked like something that came straight out of a Calvin Klein ad.

By the end of the night, we were entangled in each other’s arms, my breathing heavy from the several rounds of sex we had. Every inch of my body was sensitive from his skillful touch- my nipples, my bud, my lips, my neck- to name a few.

It was absolutely magical and for a great deal of time, I was sent into a land of nothing but euphoria, forgetting the dramatic turn my life was about to take. He kissed my forehead and I pressed my head on his chest, the two of us enjoying the warmth from our naked bodies as we bathed in the afterglow of mind blowing sex.

I wished it could last longer but the following morning, the minute my alarm rang, I was pulled back into my senses.

And like a lost puppy, I scavenged the room for the last bit of my clothes, threw them on and immediately took to my heels to run out of the room.

For heavens sake, I had a flight to London set for 8am.

And definitely, having sex with a guy whose name I didn’t even know barely twenty four hours ago was not going to be enough reason for my flight and new life to get postponed.