The Red Collection (15 page)

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 goose-bumps. 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 post-sex 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.

And, for that alone, I know I must invite my fate.

I duel with The Detective’s tongue. I press my body against his hand. I part my thighs, press my cunt against the chair and rock and wriggle lewdly.

The Detective laughs joyfully into my mouth as he grips the back of my head with one hand and lets the other slide from my breast down to my belly. His mighty form seems to weigh down on me as he thrusts hard and ruthlessly with his tongue and slips two fingers down between my legs – and then in between my sex lips.

A cry bubbles up from my chest, but he suppresses with his mouth and his sheer force of will. Down at my core, he rubs ferociously, working my clit. My body jerks like a fish on a line, thrashing against his caress and his presence, making the flimsy metal chair clatter and shake. I can’t break free of
him
, but I can’t see why I’d want to. All my struggling and writhing is a pure reflex action, more incitement than any kind of escape attempt.

When I come, I feel as if I’m going to choke for a moment, but still he won’t free me. He subjects me to more and more tongue, and more and more fingering, without an instant of respite. My head starts to swim and I smell my sweat and my foxy juices – and his cologne, sublime and expensive.

‘Naughty, naughty,’ he whispers when he finally releases me. He takes out a large monogrammed handkerchief, wipes his fingers, then refolds the white square meticulously and pushes it back into his pocket. ‘You just failed your endurance test, and now you really need a lesson.’

Suddenly on his feet again, he drags me to mine, then kicks away the chair. I sway precariously, my head like cotton wool from all the onslaughts on my senses. He holds me by my shoulders, his grip firm and unyielding, and I almost imagine that my feet have left the floor.

‘Over you go,’ he instructs me, manipulating me in space as if I were a doll made of papier-mâché or some other super-light material.

Before I can protest, I’m face down across the grimy metal table, its hard edge pressing sharply against my crotch. The room’s chilly air wafts like a breeze across my labia.