Complicity

"Nervous as fuck — I was certain I wouldn't be able to get it up, I mean just certain, especially as I'm still feeling the effects from getting pissed yesterday — and then, well… aroused, I suppose, when… when I realised you were."

"Uh-huh. Not before."

"No!"

"No."

"I mean, I felt awful for long enough; I felt like a rapist."

"But you weren't." She slides her hand between the cheeks of my bum, then soaps my thighs and down my legs. "You were doing something I'd always fantasised about."

"Oh great, so that old fuck Jamieson was right and all women secretly want to be raped."

Yvo

"Hmm," I say, unconvinced.

"Men like Jamieson hate women, Cameron. Or maybe they just hate women who aren't totally in awe of men, women who aren't under their control." She runs her hands up my legs to my buttocks again, sliding her fingers between my cheeks, touching my anus and making me go up on the balls of my feet, then her hand runs back down my legs. "Maybe men like that should have it happen to them," she says. "Rape; assault. See how they like it."

"Yeah," I say, shivering suddenly despite the heat because we're getting into dodgy territory here. "All those wigs and garters and fu

I'm wondering whether I should say anything to her about the police, and about the retired Judge Jamieson being "assaulted', whatever that means. After my drunken afternoon with Al I don't feel the same need to offload as I did before, and I can't decide whether I ought to involve Yvo

She washes my feet. "Or maybe," she says, "the Greers and the Dworkins are right, and the Pickleses and the Jamiesons are right too, and all men are rapists, and all women want to be raped."

"Bullshit."

"Mm-hmm."

"But I still didn't like being made to feel like I was a rapist."

"Well, we won't do that again."

"And I still find the idea of you wanting me to do it… unsettling."

She's silent for a while, then says, "The other day" — she's soaping the front of my legs now, from behind — "when you had to sit through Eldorado in that really uncomfortable position; you enjoyed that, didn't you?"

She's smoothing her sappled hands up and down my thighs.

"Well… eventually," I concede.

"But if that had been somebody else doing that to you…" she says softly, so that I can hardly hear her over the quiet thunder of the shower. She's soaping my balls now, gently palping them, massaging them. … Somebody you didn't know — male or female — tying you up, leaving you helpless, somewhere where shouting couldn't help you, and there was a big sharp knife under the bed… how would you have felt then?"

She stands up and rubs her body up against me, stroking my still mostly limp cock. I gaze out through the steam and the rivulets of water ru

"Petrified," I admit. "I'd be scared stiff. Well, scared soft."

She's gently pulling on my prick. It doesn't really want to and I find it difficult to believe and I'm not sure I want to because I feel so fucking drained and sore, but the thing's actually responding, fattening and firming and rising in her kneading, soap-slick hands.

She puts her chin on my shoulder and a sharp fingernail against my jugular. "Turn round, bitch-boy," she hisses.

"Oh ha-bloody-ha."

Yvo

I feel too tired to sleep so I play some Despot when I get home but my heart's not in it and the Empire is still in a tattered-looking state after all the earlier disasters and I'm almost wondering if I should start again but that would mean going back to the fucking dawn of civilisation and the temptation in Despot is always to swap PoV, which people who don't know the game always think sounds sort of i

I give up after an hour of civilisational water-treading, hit Store and slope off to bed. I've smoked six fags without really meaning to.

I'm still heading for the hills. I get up bright and late. I phone Andy and confirm it's still all right to visit, then I ring Eddie and get the next three days off, tell the cops — they're based at Fettes, though the DI has gone back down to London, and no they're still not giving me back my new portable yet — and (after I've cleaned the car up a bit) head out of the city and across the grey bridge in a day of squally, buffeting rain that has the bridge's 40-limit signs on, high-sided vehicles ba

Then it's up the M90, skirting Perth and heading northwards on the A9 with its frustrating mix of dual and single carriageways and its dire-warning signs about unmarked police cars before the fun begins at Dalwhi