She had never tried virtual sex. The solitary version had seemed a depressing idea. People said the partnered kind was the perfect zipless fuck. He sounded experienced; she was afraid he would be able to tell she was not. But it didn’t matter. The virtual-therapy group wasn’t like a dating agency. She would never meet him in the real, that was the whole idea. She didn’t have to think about that stranger’s body. She didn’t have to worry about the real “Lessingham” ’s opinion of her. She drew herself up in the firelight. It was right, she decided, that Sonja should be a virgin. When the moment came, her surrender would be the more absolute.
In their daytime he stayed in character. It was a tacit trade-off. She would acknowledge the other world at nightfall by the camp-fire, as long as he didn’t mention it the rest of the time. So they traveled on together, Lessingham and Red Sonja, the courtly scholar-knight and the taciturn warrior-maiden, through an exquisite Maytime: exchanging lingering glances, “accidental” touches… And still nothing happened. “Sonja” was aware that “Lessingham,” as much as herself, was holding back from the brink. She felt piqued at this. But they were both, she guessed, waiting for the fantasy they had generated to throw up the perfect moment of itself. It ought to. There was no other reason for its existence.
Turning a shoulder of the hillside, they found a sheltered hollow. Two rowan trees in flower grew above the river. In the shadow of their blossom tumbled a little waterfall, so beautiful it was a wonder to behold. The water fell clear from the upper edge of a slab of stone twice a man’s height, into a rocky basin. The water in the basin was clear and deep, a-churn with bubbles from the jet plunging from above. The riverbanks were lawns of velvet, over the rocks grew emerald mosses and tiny water flowers.
“I would live here,” said Lessingham softly, his hand dropping from his riding bird’s bridle. “I would build me a house in this fairy place, and rest my heart here forever.”
Sonja loosed the black stallion’s rein. The two beasts moved off, feeding each in its own way on the sweet grasses and springtime foliage.
“I would like to bathe in that pool,” said the warrior-maiden.
“Why not?” He smiled. “I will stand guard.”
She pulled off her leather harness and slowly unbound her hair. It fell in a trembling mass of copper and russet lights, a cloud of glory around the richness of her barely clothed body. Gravely she gazed at her own perfection, mirrored in the homage of his eyes. Lessingham’s breath was coming fast. She saw a pulse beat, in the strong beauty of his throat. The pure physical majesty of him caught her breath…
It was their moment. But it still needed something to break this strange spell of reluctance. “Lady—” he murmured—
Sonja gasped. “Back to back!” she cried. “Quickly, or it is too late!”
Six warriors surrounded them, covered from head to foot in red-and-black armor. They were human in the lower body, but the head of each appeared beaked and ranged, with monstrous faceted eyes, and each bore an extra pair of armored limbs between breastbone and belly. They fell on Sonja and Lessingham without pause or a challenge.
Sonja fought fiercely as always, her blade ringing against the monster armor. But something cogged her fabulous skill. Some power had drained the strength from her splendid limbs. She was disarmed. The clawed creatures held her, a monstrous head stooped over her, choking her with its fetid breath…
When she woke again she was bound against a great boulder, by thongs around her wrists and ankles, tied to hoops of iron driven into the rock. She was naked but for her linen shift, it was in tatters. Lessingham was standing, leaning on his sword. “I drove them off,” he said. “At last.” He dropped the sword, and took his dagger to cut her down.
She lay in his arms. “You are very beautiful,” he murmured. She thought he would kiss her. His mouth plunged instead to her breast, biting and sucking at the engorged nipple. She gasped in shock, a fierce pang leapt through her virgin flesh. What did they want with kisses? They were warriors. Sonja could not restrain a moan of pleasure. He had won her. How wonderful to be overwhelmed, to surrender to the raw lust of this godlike animal.
Lessingham set her on her feet.
“Tie me up.”
He was proffering a handful of blood-slicked leather thongs.
“What?”
“Tie me to the rock, mount me. It’s what I want.”
“The evil warriors tied you—?”
“And you come and rescue me.” He made an impatient gesture. “Whatever. Trust me. It’ll be good for you too.” He tugged at his bloodstained silk breeches, releasing a huge, iron-hard erection. “See, they tore my clothes. When you see that, you go crazy, you can’t resist… and I’m at your mercy. Tie me up!”
“Sonja” had heard that eighty percent of the submissive partners in sadomasochist sex are male. But it is still the man who dominates his “dominatrix”: who says tie me tighter, beat me harder, you can stop now… Hey, she thought. Why all the stage directions, suddenly? What happened to my zipless fuck? But what the hell. She wasn’t going to back out now, having come so far… There was a seamless shift, and Lessingham was bound to the rock. She straddled his cock. He groaned. “Don’t do this to me.” He thrust upward, into her, moaning. “You savage, you utter savage, uuunnnh…” Sonja grasped the man’s wrists and rode him without mercy. He was right, it was as good this way. His eyes were half-closed. In the glimmer of blue under his lashes, a spirit of mockery trembled… She heard a laugh, and found her hands were no longer gripping Lessingham’s wrists. He had broken free from her bonds, he was laughing at her in triumph. He was wrestling her to the ground.
“No!” she cried, genuinely outraged. But he was the stronger.
It was night when he was done with her. He rolled away and slept, as far as she could tell, instantly. Her chief thought was that virtual sex didn’t entirely connect. She remembered now, that was something else people told you, as well as the “zipless fuck.” It’s like coming in your sleep, they said. It doesn’t quite make it. Maybe there was nothing virtuality could do to orgasm, to match the heightened richness of the rest of the experience. She wondered if he, too, had felt cheated.
She lay beside her hero, wondering, where did I go wrong? Why did he have to treat me that way? Beside her, “Lessingham” cuddled a fragment of violet silk, torn from his own breeches. He whimpered in his sleep, nuzzling the soft fabric, “Mama…”
She told Dr. Hamilton that “Lessingham” had raped her.
“And wasn’t that what you wanted?”
She lay on the couch in the mirrored office. The doctor sat beside her with his smart notebook on his knee. The couch collected “Sonja’s” physical responses as if she was an astronaut umbilicaled to ground control; and Dr. Jim read the telltales popping up in his reassuring horn-rims. She remembered the sneaking furtive thing that she had glimpsed in “Lessingham’s” eyes, the moment before he took over their lust scene. How could she explain the difference? “He wasn’t playing. In the fantasy, anything’s allowed. But he wasn’t playing. He was outside it, laughing at me.”
“I warned you he would want to stay in control.”
“But there was no need! I wanted him to be in control. Why did he have to steal what I wanted to give him anyway?”
“You have to understand, “Sonja,” that to many men it’s women who seem powerful. You women feel dominated and try to achieve ‘equality.’ But the men don’t perceive the situation like that. They’re mortally afraid of you: and anything, just about anything they do to keep the upper hand, seems like justified self-defense.”