You come home and sing out a greeting. It’s late and it feels like ages since I last saw you. When you sashay into the living room I’ve set aside my laptop and am waking to give you a hug. You smoothly slip into my arms and guide me around you in a mutual spin. There is lipstick on your throat and a smile on your ombre lips. “Welcome home, Rey.

Her death begins when she kisses you, though she doesn’t know it. She was the one to take your face between her hands, pull your lips to hers, explore your mouth with melting, decadent strokes. I think you liked her forwardness because you decided to keep her around. Though she started the kiss, you didn’t let out end until you were satisfied. She didn’t know—how could she—that each touch of your own tongue teased apart the bindings between her flesh and her soul.

This isn’t a storyline kiss. No nightmare situation. It’s… trying to capture a feeling I had, after reading your comment about taking your friend’s ability from her; and then wanting to share a physical feeling. A brief fantasy. Hope you like it. My shoulders burn and when I reach out more than a foot or so my arms shake like I’m palsied. Still I’m working. My trainer sets me circuits: kettlebells, medicine balls, dumbbells; high-intensity interval stuff that sets my heart racing, interleaved with breaks that return me to some fraction of normal.

Your trick of perception keeps the dancer’s muffled screams beneath the taxi driver’s notice, though I still tense every time I see him look back at you. Of course, he’s not seeing casually dressed and comfortable murder cauldron: he’s seeing glam-night-out sex kitten. I suppose I’m seeing both. I dismiss the driver with the obligatory “cheers, mate!” You’re half-way to your front door, slowed by the need to compensate for the rocking caused by your thrashing gut.

“Is it… I mean, you told me magick doesn’t even need to be ‘real’; that if you fed on me, you’d believe you’d gain and I’d believe I’d suffer for you, and so both would happen. But it seems to be more than that. It’s real, right?” You nod, staring into my eyes. “It starts that way. Then you get deeper. It’s real. And anyway: Fangs, tendrils, hand sinister. You’ve seen them all.

A three-header for you today. A brief good-morning kiss that turned out really strange and plot-heavy; then a tease for Heads or Tails; then an introduction to another little meal. Let me know your feelings about things if you get a moment :) I know you said hints as footers. I was too excited to follow these threads today, so spent more space than a footer. I want to make you live this… And I want your feast to correspond extremely closely to the story…

Masked and bathed in pink noise, blinded and deafened, your body alive with sensation alone… … it’s not only touch that is awakened. The overture, after your breathing has settled down from the third orgasm, is a riband of silk placed upon your lips. When the smooth strip is pulled slowly across them it naturally follows the groove under gravity. The whispering touch makes your perfect lips feel like velvet; the stimulation promotes salivation.

It’s not all whips and chains, rope and pain. The goal is often to bring about a certain mental state—bliss, submission, deep release, relaxation, love, fear, whatever. You seemed tense this morning when we woke up, faced with a day of trying to crack the puzzle of the faults in the stars, a project of increasing frustration and anxiety. So I took your shoulders and kissed your forehead and said, no.

My dear Raven: take a deep breath and hold it for me until I say otherwise. The rug is plush and luxurious against your cheek and between your fingers. You rub against it seeking comfort or distraction. There are many reasons for discomfort. The silk wrapped skillfully around your head blinds you to what I’m doing. Your chest is bound tightly in more silk, and the healthy swell of your feminine curves is sharply curtailed to trace the ribs that are hidden beneath so much fat.

I’m coming round tonight. You don’t know this yet and I’ve no idea what I’ll find. I can only hope that if you devour me, it won’t be out of anger. My hand’s on my front door handle when my phone buzzes in my pocket. I instantly fish for and drop it. Only a text message, but I’m frantically seeking it under my shoe rack like it’s a phone call from the King.