Bound to You by Nichi Hodgson Page A

and Jane were being ineptly chatted up by two guys who looked barely out of sixth-form. Jane, I could see, was even getting her ID out to show them her age in a bid to put them off.
    I wanted to dance, but in these shoes and this dress with this much alcohol inside of me it was probably a bad idea. Where was Gina?
    Suddenly I had a sense that I was being watched again. I spun round.
    ‘Hi.’ It was him. The man with the marble eyes. He had snuck up behind me.
    ‘Lovely earrings you’re wearing there.’ He was close enough to admire Christos’s birthday present. ‘Where are they from?’
    I opened my mouth to say, ‘I don’t know, they were a birthday present from my boyfriend,’ then changed my mind.
    ‘Greece,’ I replied.
    ‘Ah,
akrivos
, I’m half-Greek!
    Oh, God. How is that once you know one Greek you seem to attract a dozen others?
    ‘Are you Greek?’ he asked me.
    ‘
Oki, alla milo ligo
,’ I replied. No, I just speak it a little.
    I could tell he was impressed. His smiled. He had tight little dimples beneath those tantalising eyes. I was running out of safe places to gaze.
    ‘Would you like to dance?’ he asked me.
    ‘Can you?’ I asked back. I don’t know why. Why did it matter if he could dance? I wasn’t entirely sure if a dance was what he was really asking for.
    Then I got a grip, gave myself permission. ‘It’s your belated birthday night out, I told myself. You like dancing. You can have an innocuous dance with an attractive half-Greek man without it meaning anything.
    ‘Sure.’ I said and got up and followed him.
    A minute later and it was clear I should have trusted my instincts. Wasting no time, he put his hands on my backside and pulled me in towards him. I should have said something. But I didn’t. He smelled good. Some kind of musk aftershave but I didn’t recognise it. I looked at his eyes again. His seascape irises had all but receded and been replaced with two black buttons.
    ‘What’s your name?’ he asked me. Was he slurring? He was drunker than I was. Which, right now, took some doing.
    ‘What’s yours?’ I threw it back at him.
    He smiled. He didn’t reply. No names, then. Instead, he slid his hand up my back, underneath my hair. He tugged at it clumsily. I shook my hair out of his grip.
    ‘Don’t pull my hair,’ I said. ‘That’s not nice.’
    ‘Oh, sorry,’ he smiled. ‘You’re vanilla, then.’
    What did that mean?
    He leaned into me. I could sense things were getting out of hand but I was so drunk I felt as though my body and mind had parted company hours ago, that nothing I thought had any bearing on what I did. I could taste the musk and alcohol on him, could feel the beat of his lust. He bore into me with his now-onyx eyes, came so close that I could feel his lashes graze my face, then stopped his lips a centimetre before mine. ‘Kiss me,’ he murmured.
    ‘I can’t,’ I said.
    ‘Yes, you can,’ he replied. He elongated the ‘can’ until it sounded like a yogic drone, and slid the hand that had been in my hair up to the nape of my neck, gently swaying the whole of me from side to side.
    How can you? I should have asked myself. But I didn’t. Right then, in that moment, I knew that I could.
    After what felt like two hours later, but must only have been thirty minutes, I came to on the cold, damp bathroom floor of the bar. Gina was leaning over me, scooping me up. ‘Come on, Nichi, we’re going home. We’ve been looking everywhere for you. What happened?’
    I shook my head, touched my fingers to my lips. They felt as though they’d been bitten.
    ‘Well, anyway, it doesn’t matter now. Just as long as you’re safe. I would not like to be waking up as you tomorrow!’
    On Sunday afternoon Christos texted. ‘OK if I call you now, Golden Egg?’
    ‘Yes,’ I replied. I couldn’t manage an X. A traitor’s kiss.
    The phone rang. My heart thumped in my chest like a drum ripping its skin. I paused before answering it.
    ‘Hi,