I don’t really know what’s come over me. I’ve never slapped anyone in my life. He pulls back, whips around, rummages in his trousers. Wallet. Money spills on the bed, Brazilian reals.

‘WTF?’ I shriek. ‘I want you to fuck me, not pay me!’

‘Condom,’ he gasps. ‘Emergencies. Forgive me, God, for my weakness.’

He turns his eyes towards heaven and says a few more words in Portuguese. Then Antonio and his condom are on top of me, he’s drilling me, I’m clenching and wrapping my legs around him, scoring his back with my nails. Melodie is dead and I’m fucking her gorgeous boyfriend and it’s so so so so so so good.

Antonio is saying quite a few things I can’t understand. I don’t know if they’re dirty, but he sounds inspired and works me over for quite a while in various positions before he finally comes and collapses on me. Then he rolls us over so I’m on top, still skewered by his giant, indefatigable prong.

Sorry, but there really isn’t a better word for it.

‘I like it when you tell me what to do,’ he gasps in my ear. ‘Can you feel how hard our friend still is? Two for the price of one condom, yes? Our friend can go again.’

And he does. For that I can almost forgive him for calling his penis ‘our friend’.

We could have been doing this all along, I realise, as we lie there after the second round. All that silken skin and sculpted muscle spread on the mattress beside me, his dark hair that smells of limes falling around my face, the musk of his scent making me primitive. I’m dizzy, can scarcely see. If only I had insisted on condoms back when we were together, instead of slinking off and poisoning myself with synthetic hormones. We could have—

‘You’re thinking too much,’ he says, touching my forehead. ‘No thinking. It spoils the delight.’

He goes down on me again. I don’t know what happens to the condom, but at the end of all that cunnilingus as my back arches and my pelvis rocks up off the bed, I’m aware of a sudden stab of pain and I hear myself yelling, ‘Ow, ow, help!’

‘Charlie, what’s wrong, I thought you were enjo—’

I’m choking with laughter. ‘My toes! Cramp!’

Trust me to have toe-curling sex and end up with swimmer’s cramp. Horrible, but how can I care? Ripples of the orgasm are still washing over me. Antonio smiles and massages my foot. Soon every muscle in my body feels like it’s made of bright liquid. I lie there smelling his skin and just breathing. So happy. His lips are by my ear again.

‘I’m going to miss you, Charlie. Maybe one day you can come to São Paulo.’

‘What do you mean, São Paulo?’