The explosions are dull, distant, and yet they rattle deafeningly in my bones. One part of my brain knows they're harmless, they make people happy, only fairy lights in the sky - but the other part shrinks and jitters. So I, too, shrink and jitter-jitter-jitter ceaselessly. But then you come put the blindfold over my squeezed-shut eyes and press the headphones tightly over my ears. You simply cover me like a warm weighted...

One gloomy Wednesday, beautiful Lindsay met a man named Logan at a supermarket. Logan saw her standing in the bread aisle and knew that bodacious Lindsay was meant to be his. Beautiful, blonde, and bodacious Lindsay, with her huge, blue eyes, didn't know what hit her when Logan walked up to her, in carnal desire. "Greetings, gorgeous lady. It's such a delightful pleasure that I ran into you on this rainy day." Shaken by h...

Weeks go by in one long, endless torture session. My aching arousal waxes and wanes but is always there, accompanying me the same way my breath and my pulse do. I learn to embrace any pain because it occasionally distracts me from the ache. I learn that the ache comes mostly from inside, from an unreasonable expectation, and that just like the Vow says, I don’t have any real control over it. Only my teacher does, and he u...

Colton Broderick Keene is a man who wears a big silver watch – he’d probably call it a ‘time piece’. It is the first thing I notice when he meets us the first time, in the sitting room of the main house of his estate, coming toward us in a muted-colored suit that is tailored to hug his substantial body and emphasize the masculine muscles, angles, and bulges of him. Dylan told me on our way here that there was an ‘estate’....

If any of the partygoers look in our direction, they merely see a boyfriend and a girlfriend huddled together in a gloomy corner; she sitting sideways on his lap, he holding her safely, both of them relaxing. They might think we’re sharing a mellow moment of innocent intimacy. Maybe we’re having a conversation? They might think that I got chilly in my strappy little number after sweating on the dancefloor and then sitting...

This must be what female cats feel like when they’re in heat. I now understand the caterwauling, the rubbing up on things, the biting, the hissing, the need to wave one's throbbing parts in the air and beg someone to take care of them for you. A trip to the nearby climbing forest is part of the day-four-morning program, and I don’t know if I should hate or thank Missy-from-three-days-ago when she signed me up for this. Th...

Things never turn out the way you expect, or so the saying goes. The saying should be expanded. Sometimes, things turn out in ways you couldn’t possibly expect, and then become things that, prior to them turning out, you didn’t even know were the things you were supposed to be expecting… Does that make sense? When Y’Dryth and its vassal planets finally disappear in our proverbial rear-view mirror and we’re literally four...

All day, I simultaneously felt like a live wire and a car running on fumes. No fewer than three colleagues remarked (nicely) that I looked like I hadn’t gotten enough sleep and that I also should’ve forgone that fifth shot of espresso for breakfast that gave my eyes their quasi-manic hyper-awake gleam out of their bruised-looking sockets. I laughed it away with that trademark faux cheer – haha, y’know how it is, sleeping...

When Y’Dryth’s gravity finally lets go of us entirely and we’re slingshotted back into empty space, the last of the shaking abates. Neither Bane nor Rune answers my questions about our attackers/pursuers – no surprise there – but from the small line of blood seeping from Rune’s right ear, I’m guessing there was some heavy-duty Princess Leia-ing involved. For the first time since I’ve met him, Rune lies down next to me on...

I hurriedly stick the vibrator underneath my duvet to hide and muffle it, then slide the nightstand drawer shut again as though I’m hiding a crime scene. Paranoia forced me to check all around me if anyone noticed my antics – nobody there – and I finally pick up my phone again to stare at the instructions and the blinking cursor. Unknown Number starts typing as I watch. [Unknown: I know you’re eager and ready, Missy.] [Un...

“You vowed you’d take Kay home,” I repeat Rune's words, confirming with Kay via a glance at her, hoping that she’d react if this turned out to be inaccurate somehow - all just one big, hilarious misunderstanding. But she just looks at each of us in turn, warily, from her own half-crouched position. “Let me guess. This vow is super-important? Like, immensely? Quintessential Dryth-ness and honor and stuff?” Bane nods a curt...

The image and the message come through while I’m sitting cross-legged on my assigned bed (number twenty-four, middle row, third bed from the right) and scrolling rather mindlessly through my phone. The device buzzes abruptly in my hand. A holiday pic from my cousin? The number is unknown. Maybe Lisa got herself a new SIM card? She’s spending seven whole weeks in Chile, so that would make sense. Downloading the photo takes...

When I was sixteen years old, I had a crush on a classmate of mine. His name was Jimmy White and he looked like Andrew Keegan’s even dreamier brother, intelligent glasses and all. I may or may not have picked him partially because his last name was also a color, just like mine, it’s a sign, y’all! Plus, he sat next to the person who sat next to the person who sat in front of the person who sat next to me in Mr. Newcomb’s...

In a heated daze, she gets up from her seat. His hand falls away from her tummy and, just like when he let go of her hand before, her skin feels bereft. She feels bereft. Everything is clammy and cooled from perspiration and it makes her cringe. Poking out of the sea of airplane seats, she feels exposed even though there’s really nobody looking at her. Her knees are… all watery and wrong, but the floor is also heaving gen...

So. Drahta eat and drink basically the same things as Dryth. They also have zero table manners, but when they’re not starving, it’s possible to be in the same room with them while they’re eating... so long as you don’t make eye contact. That was a learning curve, believe you me. Also, they poop little cubes like a wombat. Guess how I found out about that. (Yes, we did have a talk about it and she now has a bedpan.) The ju...