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night had already been too overwhelming.
If I threw myself at Anderson, it might be too much for me to
handle. I was still in shock, and what’s more, my body would never
be able to handle him. I could tell from Anderson’s authoritative,
expert touch that he liked to lead the way in bed. I had never been
with a dominant man before, I was always been the girl on top. But
now, I wanted nothing more than to submit to this amazing hero, to
give myself over to whatever he desired.
    Another night , I said to myself,
sliding the big sweatshirt over my head.
    I pulled on the boxers and sat back down on
the comforter. “I’m decent,” I said sarcastically. Anderson turned
to me and smiled. I could see the glint of lust in his dark eyes,
no matter how hard he was fighting it.
    “That’s a good look for you,” he said.
    I laughed too loudly, trying to get a grip on
my unwieldy fantasies. “You’re some kind of a saint,” I said to
him.
    “Not at all,” he said, pulling down a corner
of the comforter and helping me under, “I’m just a guy who knows
how to fight.”
    “Tell me about it,” I said again, crawling
under the blanket. “Come on, I need a bedtime story.”
    “This isn’t exactly a ‘happily ever after’
type of thing,” he said.
    “Please,” I begged, burrowing into the soft
bedding, “I can’t sleep yet.”
    “I guess I owe you some kind of explanation,”
he said, sitting beside me. “I don’t have a picture book or
anything, I hope you don’t mind.”
    “I think I’ll manage,” I said, “Now
spill.”
    He took a deep breath and looked down at his
hands. “I’ve been fighting my entire life,” he began, “Ever since I
was a kid. I was born here, in New York City. Well, in Brooklyn,
actually. It was me, my parents, and my little brother Toby. We
lived by the beach, Coney Island. Things were rougher back then.
The city was, I mean. These days New York is like a theme park, but
when I was growing up...it was a different story.
    Mom and Dad worked all the time, all the
neighborhood parents did. So after school, all of us kids were
pretty much free to roam. It was nice, having that freedom, but it
also meant that we had to learn to take care of ourselves. In our
neighborhood, it was fight or forfeit. And I don’t forfeit. We’d
never really do any damage to each other, it was just kid stuff.
But as I got older, the rest of the gang realized that I was better
at defending myself than most of the others. I got a little
reputation as the tough guy in the neighborhood. And I liked it. I
liked knowing that I could protect my little brother, myself,
without even breaking a sweat. There was a power in it.
    But I wasn’t powerful enough to protect us
from everything. When I was thirteen, my parents were in a terrible
car crash coming home from work. They were carpooling to save some
gas money and got t-boned. The other driver fled the scene. They
never found out who he was. Both of my parents died instantly.”
    “Anderson,” I said, reaching for his hand,
“I’m so sorry. You don’t have to go on, if you don’t want to.”
    “It’s OK,” he said, “It happened so long ago.
It’s getting hard to even remember what they were like. My mother
had a wonderful laugh, I know that. And she always smelled like
clean laundry. Whenever I walk by a laundromat in the city...I
remember her for a second. My dad was reserved, but I could tell
that he was proud of Toby and me. He didn’t like my fighting much,
though. That much was very clear. I sometimes wonder what he’d
think of me now. But that’s pointless. Toby and I didn’t have any
other family in the world, but one of my dad’s good friends agreed
to be our guardian. Robert Hunt, the finest man I know. He took us
in without question, and his lifestyle was not exactly amendable to
having two pre-teen boys hanging around. Robert was, and is, a very
wealthy man, very classy. His home was a like a museum and the
Playboy Mansion rolled into