We’re warm and cosy at the moment, though, in spite of the crashing thunder, the pouring rain and temperatures outside that feel more like midwinter than 23 June. Our big old bed is like the warren of some animal tonight, a sweaty sexy burrow of tangled sheets and a moth-eaten duvet, all garnished with a liberal smattering of crumbs and crisp bits from our usual television snacking.
Normally, at midnight, I’d be fast asleep, snuggled up against my honey, breathing in his familiar raunchy man-smell and probably smiling in my slumbers.
But tonight isn’t a normal night. It’s the Midsummer’s Eve twelve-hour marathon of my all-time favourite cop show, and my boyfriend Sam and I have decided to watch the whole thing here in bed.
Well, I’m watching.
Sam’s not the rabid fan of the show that I am, but he’s an easy-going soul – bless his heart – so he indulges me in my televisual obsession. He’s been passing most of his time catching up on his newspaper reading, and poring over back issues of his beloved car magazines while I worship at the shrine of The Detective.
Oh, The Detective! He’s a bit like the chocolate biscuits I’ve been scoffing far too many of – irresistibly delicious, but detrimental in unrestrained excess. I ought to feel guilty but I couldn’t give a monkey’s!
It’s terrible of me really.
Here I lie, ogling my god while my real sweet long-suffering bloke lies ignored beside me, making his own amusement. Not many other men would stand for such offhand treatment so amiably, so, in a spirit of fairness, and because I’m very turned on, I start feeling Sam up during the adverts. There’s a less than brilliant episode on just now, so I decide that I can spare some of my attention in order to rub my pelvis provocatively against the man who’s actually in my bed. He deserves a treat for putting up with my foibles, and pretty soon he takes notice. I’ve surreptitiously slipped off my panties and kicked them away down amongst the mangled covers. And when The Detective makes his big entrance, scoping out the scene of the crime, I notice that Sam starts touching me and naughtily flicking my clit. I’ve got a sneaking feeling this is something of a sly competitive tactic on his part, to see if he can completely wrest my attention from the screen, but who cares what it is when it feels so wicked and so good. Pretty soon, I’m wriggling and pulling at him, Detective or no Detective, and Sam complies obligingly by climbing on top, slotting himself into me and starting to pump.
Mmm … that feels so good … so familiar, yet also new … because I’m still following the course of the investigation … oh, bad me!
From time to time, I grapple with my concentration, and attempt to focus on Sam, who I think the world of, and who is undeniably very cute and lovable. But, as my cunt ripples, he drifts inevitably from my consciousness. All of a sudden it’s The Mighty Detective between my legs, shagging me senseless.
My Detective, oh my Detective, how can I describe thee? You’re so tall and broad and handsome, with your angelic face, your naughty mouth and your bitter-chocolate eyes full of mischief and wisdom. It might actually be Sam putting his back into it between my legs, but it’s your passionate lips that I’m kissing and your huge delicious dick that’s surging inside me. And your name I moan deliriously as I come.
Oh my God, what a selfish bitch I am! The instant I’ve stopped fluttering and glowing and I’m back in my body again, a great weight of lip-gnawing guilt descends upon me. It’s one thing to have a crush on a television character and fantasise about him during sex – but it’s well out of order to let your partner know you’re actually doing it at the time!
How could I do that? Isn’t it bad enough that I’m subjecting Sam to twelve hours of the big guy on the television?
But my Sam is a saint and, now that’s he’s huffed and puffed and shot his load, he’s feeling more than mellow. He just chuckles and gives me a sloppy affectionate kiss.
‘I knew you were pretending I was him,’ he growls, mock fierce, and beneath the covers he slaps me playfully on the thigh ‘But don’t worry, it was me you were fucking, and not Sherlock, so I’m still the winner.’ Rolling over, he squeezes my bottom, and gives that a little play tap too. Well, slightly more than a tap … It’s a second slap that stings in a mild but interesting way. ‘And you can always make it up to me by giving me a nice blow job when the next lot of news comes on!’
‘Um … OK.’ I feel strangely shaken by those slaps, especially because all of a sudden they make me want to fuck again. We’ve never actually played spanking games but it’s something I’ve always thought of suggesting.
A few pretty half-baked scenarios flit through my mind during the next adverts, but, after a few minutes of car insurance, teeth whiteners and Andie MacDowell’s hair, it’s time to commune with my glorious hero again. There’s one of my very favourite episodes coming up next but a part of me still can’t help thinking about those slaps. Sam was only fooling about, but to me they suddenly seem quite deadly serious. God knows, I deserve to be punished after my faux pas over The Great Detective’s name!
As the channel ident flashes, I steal a split-second glance at Sam, but he’s fast asleep already, mouth open, mad black curly hair sticking up at all angles and a tea stain down the front of his muscle vest. What a contrast to the sartorial GQ treat that lies ahead of me.
The story preamble begins. Some nasty perp up to no good as usual, but I’m not yet paying full attention due to The Detective not appearing until after the credits. Then the credits begin … thunder rolls … and the room goes black!
‘Fucking, fuckety fuck!’ I shout, regardless of Sam’s slumbers, and, like an idiot, I start stabbing buttons on the remote still in my hand. As if that’ll restore the electricity.
And yet, against the odds, it does do something. Thunder cracks again and the lights flicker faintly but only for a second. They go out again, but, astonishingly, the television springs back to life. The screen looks slightly blue tinted, but not too badly. It’s still perfectly watchable.
And the credits of my beloved cop show are still rolling.
At least it seems to be my cop show. My heart leaps again with bubbling excitement. It must be a special episode or something – maybe recorded just for this marathon – because the sequence of images isn’t one I’ve ever seen before. The frames are sharp, ultra clear, almost 3D, and, as they fade from one to the other, each one of the hairs on the back of my neck seem to prickle and rise individually. And, even though it’s the same familiar music, and the same graphic styling, there’s only the one character featured in the montage.
It’s just The Detective with no sign whatsoever of the rest of the team.
And at the end, he seems to walk towards the camera, my guy, tall and intent, dressed in an immaculate thousand-dollar suit of bluish grey. His long stride eats up the ground and, as he approaches, he just keeps on coming … and coming … and coming …
‘Vicky Sheridan?’ he enquires imperiously when he reaches me, flipping out his handcuffs from the clip at his belt.
But, before I can answer, he grabs me by the shoulder, hauls me from the bed and snaps the cuffs on me while I’m still wondering what’s happening and trying to catch my breath.
What?
‘You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.’ He grips my shoulder again, and propels me forwards, parroting out the Miranda as if I’m the lowest of low-life scuzz-buckets he’s just apprehended. ‘You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you at government expense. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?’
By now, he’s manhandling me through a familiar door into a familiar room, and I’m so gob-smacked I don’t have a breath of resistance in me.
It’s the interrogation room. We’re in a familiar chilly grey box with the mirror and the metal table and chairs that I’ve seen in scores
of episodes. And it’s just as soulless and intimidating in real life as it is on the television.
Real life? What the hell am I talking about ‘real life’ for? My heart’s bouncing around as if it’s on a bungee and my skin is a pointillist fresco of painful goosebumps. This isn’t real. How can I be here? This place is just a film set really.
It’s all got to be a dream but, despite that, I can touch and I can feel.
Especially The Detective.
He still has me by the arm and his fingers are like points of fire against my bare arm while I just stand like a lemon in the middle of this cold claustrophobic room, letting him loom over me like a dark imposing nemesis. All these months – years even – of adoring him, and now I’m too afraid to even lift my eyes and look up into his face. I just stare in awe at the shiny polished toes of his great size-thirteen shoes.
I shiver violently, but it’s not just from the refrigerator cold in this oh-so-impossible room.
‘Please, take a seat, Vicky,’ he says, sort of all polite business and sharp sardonic mockery at the same time. With feigned courtesy he pulls out a chair and pushes me into it.
Is he playing bad cop? Or good cop? Or a bit of both?
As The Detective releases my arm, I shuffle into place. The floor is some sort of shiny institutional vinyl stuff, and my bare feet adhere to it, but far worse is the cold unforgiving metal of the chair itself. I’m reminded with a shock and a gasp that I dispensed with my knickers to fuck Sam. My postsex stickiness almost audibly squelches against the slick surface of the seat as I inch towards the edge, trying to accommodate my still-cuffed hands behind me.
Despite the burning urge to look, I simply can’t bring myself to lift my face, but I hear The Detective pull up a chair of his own and settle his large magnificent body into it.
‘So, Vicky, do you know why I’ve brought you here?’
Oh that voice! It’s like the vocal equivalent of velvet, so seductive, so smooth and so challenging. It’s the same voice from the show, but somehow it’s never sounded quite like this before. Never so intimate, never so sexy, despite my crush on him.
My eyes are still glued to anything but him, and my attention flits from the stark smudged surface of the functional table to the leather binder stuffed with documents that he has open before him. As I watch, he picks up a pen in his left hand and makes a small notation on a yellow legal pad. I’ve no idea what he’s just written, but I sense it’s not a plaudit for my good behaviour. All I can do is ogle those fingers, imagining, imagining …
‘Nothing to say, Vicky?’
I’m just about to shake my head, when a huge mitt of a hand shoots out across the table and lifts my chin, forcing me to look at him.
Oh, God! Oh, God! Am I drowning? I feel as if I’m spiralling down a time tunnel, yet, at the same time, I catalogue each detail of the heartbreak-handsome face before me.
He’s smiling. It’s a warm wide white smile, but it’s tricky. His broad but subtle face is full of secret teasing. We’re playing games, I realise, and that makes me relax. My belly warms as his pink tongue suddenly peeks out and sweeps his sexy lower lip.
‘Well, no … I don’t really know what to say … I don’t know why I’m here and I’ve no idea how I got here either.’
The Detective cocks his head on one side and regards me archly. I notice that, in the blue-toned room, his deep-brown eyes look redder than usual and, as I wait for him to say something, they light from within and seem to dance with ruddy sparks.
‘We don’t bring people here without a reason, Vicky,’ he purrs, his fingertip still lifting up my chin. It’s just a minuscule contact but it’s as solid and secure as the handcuffs. ‘This is an interrogation room, so that makes you a suspect. Are you seriously expecting me to believe that you’re totally innocent of any misdemeanour?’
Guilt floods me. Heat floods me. Arousal floods me. Literally. My bare sex oozes anew against the cold cheap chair.
I’ve perpetrated a heinous crime. One that’s deeply shameful and reprehensible. At least it feels like it. I thought about this man, and imagined him in me, while fucking my Sam. That’s just got to be on some statute book somewhere, hasn’t it?
The Detective nods, and his hand slides lightly up and down the side of my face, before stilling again. He cradles my jaw, holding it delicately with just the tips of his very large fingers. ‘That’s better,’ he observes, his thick lashes drifting down. They give him a hooded look that’s deceptively sleepy eyed and sultry. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere … Now we can negotiate a just retribution.’
It’s like being hypnotised. In fact, it’s possible that I am being hypnotised. Those beautiful eyes are like two hot coals and I can’t avoid them.
‘I … um … er … shouldn’t you be sending for the DA or something?’ I stammer, grasping for shreds of the reality of the show I love so much. I don’t know what’s happening here, but the show is where it started.
The Detective laughs, and it echoes around the grey box we’re in like strange deep music. He moves in closer, rising out of his seat and leaning right over the table to get in my face, and it’s as if I’m paralysed yet at the same time also in motion. Violent motion on the deepest level, as every cell in my body furiously vibrates with wild desire.
I’m making a pool of lubrication on the metal of my chair, and my nipples are like stones of lust beneath the thin cotton T-shirt.
‘Oh, I don’t think there’s any need to involve the District Attorney’s Department at this stage, is there?’ He does the head-tilt thing again, ever so slightly, his eyes still locked on me, swivelling in their sockets as his face moves. ‘Better to cut a deal between the two of us for now, don’t you think?’
‘B– but surely it’s not legal or regulation or whatever … And where’s your partner? And the captain? You can’t just – just –’
‘Just what?’ he demands, releasing me, before spinning away like a dancer. He ends up leaning with his back to the great big mirror that covers almost half of the opposite wall. I know from the show that this is a two-way, allowing observation from another room beyond.
But who’s watching us? And, if it’s the captain or the DA, why hasn’t anyone rushed into the room to put a stop to this completely non-regulation interview? I peer at the mirror. I suppose The Detective, with his preternatural powers, could tell me who’s behind it, even if he didn’t already know. But, to me, the mirror is impenetrable, reflecting only his magnificent back, his dark crisply cut hair and me, trembling behind the table in my T-shirt.
And then he does something. Something that seems to confirm that this is indeed a dream.
Still staring at me, he makes a strange elegant magician’s pass with his fingers against the glass … and then it ripples and becomes partially transparent like a sheet of water.
The scene that it reveals makes me gasp.
Lit by the flickering illumination of what must be our own television, I’m staring into a familiar room. It’s my own bedroom. The one I share with Sam. And there he is too, my tolerant easy-going boyfriend. He’s propped up against the pillows, staring avidly back towards the screen. The light is poor, but I can see the flush high on his cheeks and the hot hunger in his hugely dilated eyes. Not only that, he’s kicked back the mountain of covers and exposed the fact that he’s touching himself, stroking his penis where it protrudes like a fat red bar beneath the hem of his grungy vest.
He licks his lips as if he’s keen to see more of what he’s watching.
‘So, shall we continue?’ The Detective pushes himself away from the mirror and returns to the table.
Prowling round to my side, he sits on the table, just next to me, unashamedly staring down the loose neckline of my T-shirt. With his left hand, he reaches casually to one side and touches a fingertip to my nipple – and I leap two inches into the air as if he’s goosed it with an electrode. He laughs softly and shakes his great head, then takes a hold of the little bump of stiffened flesh.
‘You’re quite something, Vicky, aren’t you? A real piece of work …’ He tightens his grip and twists a little, making me gulp and moan and groan like a total slut. ‘Mostly when people come into this room, they’re nervous and afraid and on edge.’
He tweaks again, and my hips start moving of their own accord, rubbing my slithery sex against the chair. I find myself trying to spread my legs, and sit down harder to open myself. The Detective notes this immediately, and his moist pink tongue sweeps across his upper lip as if he relishes my helplessness.
‘But you, Vicky, you’re just horny, aren’t you?’ He grins, his teeth glinting and predatory. ‘You’re in the biggest trouble, but all you want – all you really want – is to get laid.’
Ah ha, Mr Clever Detective! You’ve slipped up … you’ve got it wrong … I don’t want to get laid, as such, I realise in a sudden blinding flash. I want something else, sort of similar, but different.
His sparkling demonic eyes widen as if he’s read my thoughts. Maybe he has. This is a dream, isn’t it? Anything can happen … and he’s me, isn’t he, really? He’s from my mind …
‘So that’s the way it is.’ He pulls at my nipple. Quite hard. I wrench against the cuffs as sensation streaks from my breast to my pussy, but I can’t for the life of me tell whether it’s really pain or just a twisted form of pleasure. ‘I knew I was right about you.’
Inclining sideways, he surprises me with a kiss. He presses his firm lips against mine, and then tickles them with his tongue as if asking for entrance. As I open my mouth, my glance flicks to the glass again, but the surface seems to swim, and I can’t see any image but the incriminating one of us.
Is Sam still watching? Was he ever watching? To my shame, sucking on The Detective’s warm mobile peppermint-scented tongue, I can’t seem to care or worry about Sam’s feelings for the moment.
Love on the Dark Side Page 21