Vanity was busily snapping pictures of Athena, her self-proclaimed-goddess friend when this hovering hunk stepped boldly into her path.

"Hey Babe, you should be in front of the camera!"  He said, his smile laden with pure charm.

Vanity gaped.  That was a universal truth.  She was born to be in front of the camera, not behind it, dammit!!

"Come with me." The hovering hunk said.  "My car is parked over there." He pointed at the only Ferrari in the parking lot. "I'll take a few shots of you on my hood."

Vanity blinked.    Oooh.  La. La.  The bliss of posing provocatively on the hood of a firebrand car!     She started to follow him and then remembered Miss Self-proclaimed was still standing in a freeze pose. Vanity was vain but  never inconsiderate.   

 "Wait." She called out to the hurrying hunk. "My friend!"

The hunk glanced over his shoulder, looking a little bit annoyed.   "Your friend looks like she will be quite happy to play in her own head for a little while."

Vanity almost giggled.  It was true. Miss Self-proclaimed loved getting lost inside her own head.  Oh well, Vanity sighed and followed the hunk.

She was in the middle of posing in various risqué forms, stiletto heels clicking all over the roof of the car, when out of the blue, a voice thundered at her. "What the hell is going on here?"

Vanity spun around in shock and stared at the most handsome man she had ever seen.  Actually, strike that, her frantic mind told her.  This wasn't a man...but a God and he was standing tall, powerful legs apart, hands resting on his hips.

"Nothing-I'm-was-just-" She stuttered.

"I suggest you and your paparazzi crew move as far away from my car as possible." He said with dead calm.

Vanity looked down for the hunk but he was no longer taking photographs.  He had hurriedly toss her camera on the ground and was fleeing the scene as if hell fury was upon him.

"Missy, did you hear a word I said?"  The Lord of the Universe asked with impatience.

"Huh?" Vanity gave him a blank look.

"I said get the hell off my car."

Vanity was taken aback. She was not used to this kind of treatment from the male species.  Normally she received admiration, respect and even awe but never brooding anger.

"I-I-" She paused to recollect her thoughts.  "I didn't know it was your car." She finished lamely.

"Oh, yeah?" He subjected her to a lengthy stare, the kind of gaze that told her she was the only specimen in the universe. His universe. "And whose car did you think it was?" One of his eyebrows lifted sky high in amusement. "God's?"

What an insufferable- "Look, I'm sorry...it was a mistake so you don't have to act like a bear bit off your head."  Vanity snapped.

She walked gingerly to the edge of the roof and slid over the windshield all the way down to the hood.

"What the hell are you doing?" The man roared.

Primitive bastard!!  "What do you think I'm doing?" Vanity scowled. Duh. She almost rolled her eyes. Men had no imagination.  She tucked a tuft of escaped tendrils behind one ear and jumped off the hood of the vehicle to land on the ground.

She regained her breath only to lose it immediately.

"Oh no, you don't."  The bastard moved swiftly and before Vanity knew it, he had her imprisoned against the car.

"Let me go, you rude, insufferable swine."  She struggled to free herself.

He tightened his hold on her.  "Not so fast." He rasped.

Vanity stared up at him.  Something had changed in his expression. Raw. Primitive.   

Fear forgotten, she felt swamped by another kind of emotion.  Even her body was reacting in a most outrageous manner.

"You're not going anywhere until you pay for the damages you deliberately made to my car."

"What? Are you out of your mind?" Vanity stared in dismay at the man. 

"Am I?" He grimaced.

Vanity followed his gaze and gasped.     Oh God. Oh God. Stiletto marks were all over the hood.    "I don't have any money." Her eyes flew to his in panic.

His lips twitched. "Who said anything about payment in money?" His face moved closer to hers and she felt his breath fan her  lips.

And Vanity lost her breath...completely....

So what happens next???

Well...sparks continue to fly of course...but the impending kiss never hit the fan...because that was the opportune time Miss Self- Proclaimed chose to come rushing unto the scene.

However, as Vanity will find out later, the rogue never intended to kiss her at all.  He merely wanted to humiliate her.  Some nerves!  However, it backfires sweetly of course...because no one messes with Vanity.

Miss Self-proclaimed surveyed the scene and found not only was Vanity's camera abandoned on the ground but there were spirals of stiletto heel scratches all over the Ferrari.  She assumed the worst.  "Vanity Mendoza!" She shrieked.  "How on earth did you managed to get yourself into another huge photo shoot problem??"

"Shh." Vanity hissed but the rogue had already grasped her name as well as her whole list of vanity sins.  Men of these sorts never let anything escaped them...

"Vanity." He test drives her name on his tongue. "Mmm." And then "Hmm....it figures."

While Vanity was scowling her head off, the Lord of the Universe shook hands with Miss Self-Proclaimed. "Hi. My name is Sinclair but please, call me Sin."  He smiled like a leopard that drank all the milk. "And yes, your friend is in huge trouble with me."

Miss Self-Proclaimed was all smiles...totally bowled over by the lethal charmer.  "Please to meet you, Sin.  I'm Tina...er...Athena."

Vanity felt like screaming.  She wished Tina could have seen the Lord of the Universe in his true colours earlier. 

However, all she could do was sigh dramatically.  It was about time she brought this whole nonsense to an end.  She faked a huge yawn.  "Goodness me, look at the time.  It was nice to meet you, Sin.  Some other time perhaps."

She grabbed the fawning Athena by an arm and was about to drag her along when Lord Sin intervened.

"Hang on!" He commanded.  "I need your contact information." He pulled out his blackberry from the pocket of his faded, overworn jeans.

Vanity found herself hypnotized by the muscles rippling beneath his tank top.   "I'm not in the habit of giving out my telephone number to total strangers." A flash of her eyes told him "So there."

"I happen to know your name." He stated in a matter of fact way.  "That and one click on the Internet is all I need to retrieve your entire history."  He smiled. "So what's it gonna be, Vanity?"

Vanity gulped and searched her mind frantically.  Other than My Space, no other site online had any information on her.  And besides, she had used a fake name there, anyway.  Ha!  So there, Lord Sin. So there.

She hid a smile and reeled out a totally fake telephone number to him.  "That's my cell number," she finished." 

And besides, if he found out her true cell number somehow, she could always not answer her phone.  It came with Call Display.  In fact, she would change her number as soon as she got home.  That should teach him to snoop-

There was a loud gasp from Athena.  "Oh Vanity, that's not your number!"

Bummer!  Friends were supposed to help you get away from the devil not push you into his path.

"I see you want it the hard way." Sin smiled. He pulled out a card and hands it to Vanity.  "Report to my office before the end of this week!   We shall work out an appropriate payment plan, hmm?"

"I don't have a budget for any extra payment." Vanity had no option but to be honest.  Her cursed vainness had caused a huge whole in her bank account-

"And that's my damn problem?" He asks. "Let me guess, you used up your budget on too many photo shoots?"

"Whatever." Vanity gritted.  What was his problem?  Rich men like him came with built-in repairmen of the R2D2 Starwars variety.   So why was he after her to pay for the repairs of a few hardly noticeable scratches....????

"See ya, Hot Potato."  He winked.  "A few weekends as my housekeeper should settle your debt in full."  He pulled opened the door of his Ferrari, slink his tall frame behind the wheel and roared out of the parking lot.

Vanity glanced at his card and gasped aloud.

"What? What? Tell me!" Athena begged.

"He's some kind of a Secret Service Agent."

"Huh?" Athena scoffed.  "So how come he's driving a Ferrari?"

"Elementary, my dear Watson.  He's probably working undercover."

"What do secret service agents really do?" Athena bit her lips anxiously.

"Duh!  It's a club where men wear high-end designer sunglasses so they could see right through your er jeans.  And oh...they carry umm er sig sauer guns as well."

"Oh God! Oh God!"  Athena gasped.  "Do you think he saw through my boots to my socks?  They both have holes in them."

Athena was acting as if her panties had holes.  "Tina!" Vanity rolled her eyes. "The man wasn't even wearing sunglasses."  And that was a blessing because Vanity definitely did not want him to detect heat in any of her...er...secret zones.  Who knows what infrared technology or whatever kind of technology that was built into his absent sunglasses could detect.

"Oh!" Athena relaxed.  "Duh!  Right."

Vanity tensed as a new thought hit her.  Oh God.  She had no choice but to go to Sin.  There was something on her record she definitely didn't want him to see.  Oh, she was innocent but she didn't want the past to be dredged up again.  And it had something to do with a sig sauer caliber pistol.

Little did our poor Vanity realized she was already under investigation.  By Lord Sin himself.  And he had known who she was when he found her sprawled all over his Ferrari.

......more to come on our naive Vanity and our Lordy Lord Sin?  Perhaps.  We shall see.... and may this one become a volume in no time....(but yikes, gotta do major editing before I quit my day job ;(

Whew!  Gotta add zee Disclaimer too:   Yada, yada,  the abovementioned characters are purely fictional and do not reflect any real persons bla bla dead or alive....