“Told you,” Aurora said, and kissed his nose.
Pickering’s Pile rented fuck-cubbies by the minute. They split five hours between them.
He fucked her inside and out. Outside, he was the consummate caring lover. He tongued her nipples, teeth carefully sheathed. He left trails of kisses from throat to vagina, gently explored every wet aperture, breath shaky with fevered restraint. Every move deliberate, every signal unmistakable: he would rather die than hurt this woman.
Inside, he was tearing her apart. No caresses in there; he slapped her so hard her fucking head just about came off. Inside she was screaming. Inside, he beat her until she didn’t have the strength to flinch when the whip came down.
She murmered and sighed sweetly throughout. She remarked on how he obviously worshipped women, on what a change this made from the usual rough-and-tumble, on how she didn’t know if she belonged on this pedestal. Desjardins patted himself on the back. He didn’t mention the tiny scars on her back, the telltale little lozenges of fresh pink skin that spoke of topical anabolics. Evidently Aurora had use for accellerated healing. Perhaps she had recently escaped from an abusive relationship. Perhaps he was her sanctuary.
Even better. He imagined some past partner, beating her.
“Oh, fuck it,” she said, four hours in. “Just hit me.”
He froze, terrified, betrayed by body language or telepathy or a lucky guess for all he knew. “What?”
“You’re so gentle,” Aurora told him. “Let’s get rough.”
“You don’t—” He had to stifle a surprized laugh. “I mean, what?”
“Don’t look so startled.” She come-hithered a smile. “Haven’t you ever smacked a woman before?”
Those were hints, he realised. She was complaining. And Achilles Desjardins, pattern-matcher extraordinaire, master of signal-from-noise, had missed it completely.
“I kind of minored in asphyx,” she suggested now. “And I don’t see that belt of yours getting any kind of work-out…”
It was everything he’d ever dreamed of, and hated himself for. It was his most shameful fantasy come to life. It was perfect. Oh, you glorious bitch. You are just asking for it, aren’t you? And I’m just the one to give it to you.
Except he wasn’t. Suddenly, Achilles Desjardins was as soft as a dollar.
“You serious?” he asked, hoping she wouldn’t notice, knowing she already had. “I mean—you want me to hurt you?”
“Achilles the hero.” She cocked her head mischieviously. “Don’t get out much, do you?”
“I do okay,” he said, defensive despite himself. “But—”
“It’s just a scene, kiddo. Nothing radical. I’m not asking you to kill me or anything.”
Too bad. But his own unspoken bravado didn’t fool him for an instant. Achilles Desjardins, closet sadist, was suddenly scared to death.
“You mean acting,” he said. “Silk cords, safe words, that kinda thing.”
She shook her head. “I mean,” she said patiently, “I want to bleed. I want to hurt. I want you to hurt me, lover.”
What’s wrong with me? he wondered. She’s just what I’ve always wanted. I can’t believe my luck.
And an instant later: If it is luck...
He was, after all, on the cusp of his life. Background checks were in progress. Risk assessments were underway. Just below the surface, the system was deciding whether Achilles Desjardins could be trusted to daily decide the fate of millions. Surely they already knew his secret—the mechanics had looked inside his head, they’d have noticed any missing or damaged wiring. Maybe this was a test, to see if he could control his impulses. Maybe Guilt Trip wasn’t quite the failsafe they’d told him it was, maybe enough wonky neurons screwed it up, maybe his baseline depravity was a potential loophole of some kind. Or maybe it was a lot simpler. Maybe they just couldn’t afford to risk investing too much PR in a hero who couldn’t control inclinations that some of the public might still find—unpleasant…
Aurora curled her lip and bared her neck. “Come on, kid. Do me.”
She was the glimmer in the eye of every partner he’d ever had, that hard little twinkle that always seemed to say Better be careful, you sick twisted piece of shit. One slip and you’re finished. She was six-year-old Penny, broken and bleeding and promising not to tell. She was his father, standing in a darkened hallway, staring through him with unreadable eyes that said I know something about you, son, and you’ll never know exactly what it is…
“Rory,” Desjardins said carefully, “have you ever talked to anyone about this?”
“All the time.” She was still smiling, but a sudden wariness tinged her voice.
“No, I mean someone—you know—”
“Professional.” The smile was gone. “Some piece of corpsy wetware that sucks down my account while telling me that I don’t know my own mind, it’s all just low self-esteem and my father raped me when I was preverbal.” She reached for her clothes. “No, Achilles, I haven’t. I’d rather spend my time with people who accept me for who I am than with misguided assholes who try to change me into what I’m not.” She pulled up her panties. “I guess you just don’t run into those types at official functions any more.”
He tried: “You don’t have to go.”
He tried: “It was just so unexpected, you know?”
He tried: “It’s just, you know, it seems to disrespectful—”
Aurora sighed. “Kiddo, if you really respected me you’d at least give me credit for knowing what I like.”
“But I like you,” he blundered, free-falling in smoke and flame. “How am I supposed to enjoy hurting you when—”
“Hey, you think I enjoyed everything I did to get you off?”
She left him in the cubby with a flaccid penis, fifty minutes left on the clock and the stunning, humiliating realization that he was forever trapped within his own disguise. I’ll never let it out, he realised. No matter how much I want to, no matter who asks me, no matter how safe it seems. I’ll never be sure there isn’t an open circuit somewhere. I’ll never be sure it isn’t a trap. I’m gonna be undercover for the rest of my life, I’m too fucking terrified to come out.
His Dad would have been proud. He was a good Catholic boy after all.
But Achilles Desjardins was nothing if not practised at the art of adaptation. By the time he emerged, chastened and alone, he was already beginning to rebuild his defenses. Maybe it was better this way. The biology was irrefutable, after alclass="underline" sex was violence, literally, right down to the neurons. The same synapses lit up whether you fucked or fought, the same drive to violate and subjugate. It didn’t matter how gentle you were on the outside, it didn’t matter how much you pretended: even the most consensual intercourse was nothing more than the rape of a victim who’d given up.
If I do all this and have not love, I am as sounding brass, he thought.
He knew it in the floor of his brain, he knew it in the depths of his id. Sadism was hardwired, and sex—sex was more than violent. It was disrespect. There was no need to inflict it on another human being, here in the middle of the twenty-first century. There was no right to. Especially not for monsters with broken switches. He had a home sensorium that could satify any lust he could imagine, serve up virtual victims at such high rez that even he might be fooled.