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gotten out of the relationship and returned to Scotland. But not lived. She ignored that little voice.
    “He blindfolded me, tied me face down to the bed and flogged me. It hurt like hell, and even when I screamed red, he ignored me. He kept saying he couldn’t hear me. I think I passed out, cos the next thing I can remember was shouting for someone to help me, and no one came.” As ever, imaginary spiders did their usual scratchy and crawly dance over her skin when she remembered how frightened she’d been. “I have no idea how long I was there for until I realized the knot round my wrist was slack. Seriously it was weird, because I only needed to sort of wriggle my hands and it came undone. Then I got rid of the blindfold, and realized I was all by myself. I got dressed and left the flat. And never saw him again. But my backside was cut to ribbons and I’ve still got the scars.”
    “Where was he?” David’s tone was icy, and even held in the warmth of his arms, it sent shivers of fear skittering along Jess’s spine.
    “Dead.”
    “Dead? Dead how?” David’s shocked words reverberated through her.
    “Well it might sound harsh, but poetic judgment maybe. Evidently he’d gotten another woman under his thumb, and he’d done the same thing to her a couple of days before. Blindfolded her, tied her up, flogged her and walked out of the room. Seems it was his thing, listening to someone pleading and worried while he hid and jerked off. Eventually he’d untied her, and she’d gone and told her brothers. They deemed justice was needed. It seems they’d called round, found him and taken him away. He was found by the river, well dead, but no one could ever pin anything on him, and whatever the Aussie equivalent of death by misadventure was recorded. Meanwhile someone, also unknown, made sure my hands were easy to release, waited until they heard me move around, left the flat and stayed close by until they saw me leave.” She swallowed. Jess hadn’t known how cathartic it would be to tell someone everything. That awful night, and how she’d felt, had never been mentioned to anyone.
    “Ah, love, no wonder you wanted to castrate Jeff.”
    “And you,” Jess felt compelled to point out.
    A quick look of disgust flashed across his face, and he grunted. “And me. How did you find all this out?”
    “Well, I was damned sure I wanted to come home straight away, but I had a fixed flight. While I was waiting to sort a new flight out, I carried on working in this little café near the beach. A couple of days after I’d gotten away, these two guys came in for coffee, and told me they knew what had happened, that he’d done it before and wouldn’t ever again. Pete was dead, and no one would connect me with him. That’s when it struck me that he’d never actually taken me anywhere we could be spotted. Like I said, talk about naïve and a first class idiot. And telling myself that he was a clever manipulative shit doesn’t help very much. Believe me I’ve tried. So I came home, went to uni, earned my degree, taught for a few years, got to be a lecturer and voila here we are. My life in a nutshell.” Jess let her breath out in a long whoosh.
    “Not quite.”
    The not quite conversational, more of a demand note in his voice alerted Jess to the fact that perhaps she wasn’t going to like what David said next.
    “When was the last time you had a man—or a woman?”
    She was right, she didn’t. Jess pulled back and this time he let her go. She paced across the room, and ignored the way the lace of her knickers seemed to have gotten wedged between her butt cheeks and chafed like crazy. The silk of his shirt was smooth and sensual on her skin, and she hitched it up as it once more began a descent off her shoulder. She was positive she should have done more buttons up, but there was no way she could do that now, not without acting like a total loser. David stared at her, his thumbs tucked into his pockets. The action