As if on cue, my room door bursts open, and in comes a girl. She's short, round in the face and has caramel skin; the ends of her natural, curly afro hair are died turquoise, and brown eyes lined with navy blue liner stare at me with curiosity, relief, but most of all, love.

It's as if I've never seen her before in all my life, but I know her.

I don't even have to ask who it is, or wait for an introduction.

"Evetta," I breathe, but from the way that her lips curl into a smile, I know that she heard me.

***

Caleb Winters wakes from a coma after a horse riding incident which he cannot remember, with chunks of his memory missing. He is impatient for his memories to return, and begins to worry that they never will. He has become disoriented, frustrated and angry; a far cry from the joyful, playful boy that his parents claim he was before the accident. He has become paranoid; he trusts no one.

No one, except for his guiding light; a girl named Evetta, whom he has no memory of, but somehow knows inside out.

Evetta brings out the best in him; gets gets him to smile again, laugh again, choosing humor over anger.

She teaches him what happiness feels like again.

We stand in silence, as I sip my water, and he watches me do it.

Finally, he breaks the silence.

"I'm sorry if I... offended you by sleeping in your bed last night. This morning. Whatever."

"It's fine. You didn't do anything."

He nods, his eyes far away, as if thinking of how to word his views.

"I didn't do anything... but I wanted to. I wanted to so badly."

I nearly choke on my water. I don't know what's worse; his confession, or how nonchalantly he says it, as if he's reading the weather.

"Come again?" I say, thinking that I must have heard him wrong.

But I can't deny the fact that my nipples perk up under my cotton t-shirt the second he mentions sex.

He shrugs. "I want to fuck you." Again, he is as nonchalant as ever.

I just stare stupidly, my mouth agape, and my panties dampening.

He closes my mouth, grinning at me, wicked intentions in his eyes. Not so nonchalant anymore, I see.

"Um, I-I...I don't..."

I stop talking, realising what a total idiot I sound like, while his grin broadens. In that second, I am grateful for my dark skin, as he can't see me blushing.

"Tongue-tied?"

My cheeks and vagina get hotter. "Shut the fuck up."

He actually laughs.

"Don't worry, honey," he says, his hot breath brushing against my face, shocking me. When did he get this close?

"One day," he whispers, now in my ear,"I will fuck you."

And with that, my panties soak right through.

I realise that my eyes are closed and I open them. He's gone. I stand there frozen, in total shock.

What the actual fuck just happened?

***

•Mature, 18+

Growing up in Jamaica, you hear all sorts of fantastical stories about beasts and creatures. Myths. The Rolling Calf, Ol' Higue, River Mumma, Anansi and his little friends. Well, what if I were to tell you that some of those creatures were real? That just below the surface of our world is a whole other universe waiting to brim over?* Please note, that although these things might be real, what I have written is fictional. Rolling Calves cannot, to the best of my knowledge, take human form. I have never heard of an obeah man or woman being immortal, and real obeah is much, much more complicated than what is written in this book.Some of the tags for this story, eg. werewolf/ loupgarou will appear later in this story. I used mermaid and siren as other names for river mumma. Witch is another name for obeah man/woman.

Sometimes, love seems to come at the most inconvenient times, just to screw everything up when we just begin to figure ourselves out, understand who we really are.

For Ezinma, a hedonistic twenty year old who has always embraced her sexuality in every sense of the word, love also comes along at a most inconvenient time.

When the line between the most extreme lust she's ever felt, and a love she's never experienced before begins to dissolve, fear of the unknown takes over.

Will she reject it? Or will she embrace it, just like her sexuality?

This is a book about Nya and Kwamé, characters in another one of my books called Myths, Truths, Roots. MTR is rated pg. 13, but this book is not. This book will have a plot, and is not simply about sex. However, THIS BOOK WILL CONTAIN EXPLICIT SEXUAL CONTENT. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.