Some had wondered if after the war Tavish Uilleam Davenport MacCraig had become asexual. He would say he had, in a certain way. His calm, easy behavior churned to intense and controlling; his unsmiling face kept others away. He had tried to date, but failed miserably, and he had not even managed to form as much as a friend with benefits. Therefore, he usually abstained from sex or masturbated. But giving pleasure was one thing he couldn’t go without: it was one thing he rejoiced in, and he couldn’t well do it alone.

Tonight, he was there to give. Anything—from oral to anal, from missionary to kink—would do, minus violence. He’d experienced enough violence to last the rest of his life.

Sprawled on the buttery leather-covered sofa, Tavish sipped his whisky, observing women and men as they made passes at each other in the dimly lit bar or made small talk in comfortable corners, like the one he was in.

No one had approached him so far, but he knew it would only be a matter of time. He didn’t like to be chosen, however. He was the hunter, not the prey.

He had seen women—and men—looking at him and checking his membership profile on their iPads, reading a brief description of his body, imperfections and all, his assets and sexual preferences, and the other customers’ reviews of him.

He fixed his gaze on a brunette sitting on a stool by the bar. She would do.

She was in her late thirties, and her hair was cut short, with styled bangs falling over her forehead. She had sultry made-up eyes and a bright-red lipstick-painted mouth. Tall and more on the plump side, she wouldn’t feel breakable in his hands.

She caught him watching her and checked the iPad near her elbow, scanning for his profile.

He didn’t bother to do the same. He had already decided. He just waited for her consent.

She raised her head, with a smile on her lips.

His lips didn’t even curl up in response, yet his member got hard as a rock. He rose to his full height and walked toward her.

“Hi there.” Her smile widened when she took a closer look at his face. “You should change this photo. You’re gorgeous this close.”

They all were there with the same goal: sex. They had filled in the forms, passed the obligatory exams, knew the rules, and paid loads of cash in advance for the open bar, attentive service, and a comfortable suite upstairs.

“My room or yours?” he asked curtly.

Her smile faltered and died.

Jesus! She’s not a pro. “I’m sorry. Let’s start again.” He flexed his broad, tense shoulders and amended his question. “Would ye like a drink?”

She rose from the stool and stared up into his eyes; raising the stakes, she cupped his groin. “They don’t serve the one I’m thirsty for.”

He hissed through his teeth.

“I’m Eva.” She tightened her grip. “Your name?”

“Call me God.” He smiled ironically at her. “Because that is what you will be screaming all night.”

“God! Aren’t you arrog—” She stopped at his raised eyebrow and laughed.

For the first time since he arrived at the club, his lips curled up. “Shall we?”

* * *

Exhausted, Tavish dropped down on his bed. Eva, or whatever her name was, had proved to be a demanding tigress. When he left her, there was a satisfied smile on her lips.

Tavish never slept at the club, not even alone in his suite. The shouts from his nightmares would disturb the other members.

He closed his eyes, hoping for some peaceful hours of sleep, but after a mere two hours, his head was already tossing on the pillow, his legs kicking away the coverlet and sheets as he fought a nightmare to no avail. Unbidden, distorted images formed, dissonant sounds filled his head; too many sensations overwhelmed him.

His breathing changed.

* * *

The candle burned lower. The shadows on the walls of the cave grew larger and darker, engulfing the light on Johanna’s eyes and smile until he almost couldn’t see her. An eerie laugh resounded off the walls. When he looked up through strands of his long, filthy ink-black hair, he saw a black-hooded figure advancing.

On all fours, he struggled painfully to crawl in her direction. I’ll save her, even if it’s the last thing I do in my life. His eyes locked with hers. “I won’t let him hurt ye.”

His muscles strained with effort, his tendons rippling. His wrists and legs felt bound with iron shackles. One of his shoulders popped out from its socket. His breaths were squeezed out of his lungs as each inch he advanced tore and flayed his skin.

“Me, take me!” he shouted desperately, not knowing what to do anymore. He struggled against his holds, even though he knew it would be useless. Blood trickled down where the cuffs cut him. “Please, no’ her!”

A cadaverous face peered out from the darkness of the hood as a sickening, pleased voice said, “You had your chance.”

Nae. The retching feeling churning in his gut impeded him from saying the much-needed words. I’ll do whatever you want. I will.

With a swift movement from an incongruously heavy-muscled arm and skeletal hand, a shining silver scythe sang in the cave as it sliced through the air.

“NAE!”

The hooded figure vanished. She grimaced. The wan light of the candle was snuffed out. Soft, bright rays of the morning sun entered the cave, chasing away the darkness.

As though commanded, a spray of thick blood filled the cave as the woman’s head rolled from her neck. He plastered himself onto the rough wall, not wanting to be bathed in the blood—not wanting to be touched by what he had held many times in his hands so dearly. But his lover’s severed head sailed in a dark river, stopping between his fingers.

* * *

Tavish shot up in his bed, heaving and choking on his breath.

He put his head in his hands until his heart rate had calmed. Knowing he would not get any more sleep, he went to the bathroom.

The image that greeted him in the mirror was of the identical tall, handsome man of a few years ago, with a few minor cuts here and there and superficial wrinkles around the eyes. But he was not the same since he had been to war and had been a prisoner for six months in Afghanistan, and that angered him, making him want to destroy something. He squinted, looking at himself through his black lashes with enough contempt that he could easily hear the mirror creaking and ripping him open, like a crack in a castle made of glass.

Turning swiftly away from his reflection, he walked to his living room and grabbed a tall glass and a bottle of eighteen-year-old Laphroaig Islay whisky, despite knowing that the whole bottle—or even two or three—wouldn’t ease his mind or dim his pain. His dry laugh echoed between the walls as he served himself, and its sound irked him.

Terrible, gruesome images kept him awake for hours.

He couldn’t sleep in the total dark anymore and it was impossible to get inside a pool. The hours of waterboarding had destroyed any pleasure he could possibly feel under the water. He had turned to heavy workouts, jogging—then running—until his body and mind didn’t succumb to the depression swirling around him.

I could take the rest of the week off.

The Blue Dot, the art gallery he owned and oversaw, was running smoothly since it had opened years ago, and his brother and his partners could deal with whatever came up on the next days. What good would it do? Wherever I go, my nightmares follow.

He sat sipping his whisky, watching as the sun wedged its first light over the darkness.

* * *

Laetitia Galen was not her name.

In fact, before she became Laetitia, she hadn’t been anything but her, herself, and she.

For sixteen years, she had been a no one, a nothing, a shadow who hid in the dark as much as she could, having learned from her childhood that it was better that way. Until one night, almost eight years ago, when she decided she deserved to be someone.

Several meows filtered through her bedroom door. She stretched and jumped out of the bed. After cataloguing what she had to do for the day, she washed the remnants of sleep from her face, braided her hair, and changed into a turquoise maxi dress and flats.

Another loud meow made her rush, climbing down the stairs to find Cleopatra, her cat, waiting for her at the bottom.

“Good morning.” She dropped on her haunches and caressed the cat’s head. “I’ll fix your breakfast.”

They took a turn from the front hall into the living room, where Laetitia stopped to throw the curtains open. A gray morning saluted her through the French windows, the glass wet from the frizzy rain of the previous night. She stood there for a moment, soaking in the renewal of life with the first rays of sun gleaming on the dew, before moving to the kitchen.

As she put a slice of bread in the toaster and water on the stove, Cleopatra devoured the food on her plate and lapped fresh water.

Working as a housekeeper for the eleventh Baron Beardley, Laetitia inhabited a world not dissimilar from that portrayed in Downtown Abbey.

The baron had slaughtered his young wife many years ago when he discovered she was having an affair with their gardener. After serving his time in prison, he returned home, where his sister and her children had decided to gravitate to him, waiting for him to die to inherit his fortune.

Of a staff of twenty full-time employees who worked on the estate, she and three others worked in shifts, on weekends and bank holidays, so the baron always had servants.

Marcella Langley, Baron Beardley’s sister, didn’t make her wear a uniform but determined she could only dress in black, plain serviceable clothes and shoes. Laetitia hated black clothes. Yet, she never let herself think about them: having the job that required her to wear them meant she was safe.

No one told Laetitia that where she was going to live was on the other side of the property, in a lodge that once had been the stables and the stable-staff accommodations; nor did anyone mention that the adjoining building she used as her studio had been the carriage house, and that both were in a state of disrepair. Laetitia had to spend part of her salary to make them habitable. But she didn’t mind. With the help of the estate staff, in a few months, she had turned them into her home.

Their morning ritual completed, Cleopatra bumped her head on Laetitia’s leg.

“We are in a hurry today, aren’t we?” The cat purred. “Have a nice stroll.”

They exited by the lodge’s back door at the far end of the kitchen, which opened to the back garden, each one going her own way, Cleopatra to the park and Laetitia to her studio.

At the studio, resting on floor easels, were four big canvases, with stenciled planks fixed over them.

She had developed the idea for a new painting series after she discovered Baroness Beardley’s erotic diaries hidden in the gardener’s toolbox.

She’d labored on the drawings and masks for months, applying tubes and tubes of oil paint to the expanse of the canvases partially covered by the stenciled drawings.

Her small studio was the only place where, in the safety of solitude, she could open up to the well of creativity inside her mind and heart, letting life’s symbols of wilderness, banality, and darkness out, bending the dichotomy between a too-harsh physical reality and its imagery to her will. With colors and strokes of brushes, she reduced them to nothing more than matter on a canvas.

After a few hours, the careful slashes of the brush against the canvas—midnight-blue, grayish-blue, and finally a cold-teal-blue, blending or standing alone—made the image come together.

She stared at the painting, giving the sky a last stroke. It was supposed to be an erotic, expectant scene. It was not her first intention to give it an alarming perception.

Under a roiling thunderstorm, a naked, lascivious woman, camouflaged by trees, watched a muscular man, bared to the waist, trimming the branches with garden shears.

Yet, it was the menace of the active man and his implement that struck a chord, which threatened to resonate with the past inside her, but it took just a second for her to route her thoughts back into the present.

“Good job, Laetitia,” she praised herself.

She cleaned her painting utensils, put everything in order, and crossed back to the lodge to get ready for her day.

As soon as she had donned her black clothes, a pitched screech coming from the intercom speaker made her jump.

“Laetitia! Laeeeeetitia!”

Before another scream pierced the air, she replied, “Arriving in a sec!”

After she hitched up the hem of her skirts, then hurried in a fifteen-minute headlong dash, Laetitia had no idea that, in the months to come, the world would discover her.

And then judge her.