I don’t have the kind of parents a girl can bring a girlfriend home to. Neither does Dara. What she does have is a very close and active group of friends who hold a biweekly “Bitch Night.” Which I’m now invited to. Dara issued this invitation over breakfast in the course of a few casual sentences, and I accepted, all before I had the chance to realize quite how huge a deal this was. Or, in Dara’s estimation, before I had...

Conner. Psst. Conner. Wake up. Don’t look so surprised. This visit has been a long time coming. Aww, you didn’t believe I existed? That spirits like myself existed? Well, come here and know me better! Look at me. Look through me, at the outlines of your bedroom ceiling. Are you satisfied with my realness? Good, I’m glad we’re settled on that. Yes, of course, you can feel my weight on top of you. My hands on your chest. I...

You really hurt my feelings, you know. That first time you invited me over to your mom’s house. It was Christmas time. Real Christmas time, not the endless, unnatural jingle hell that you and I live in every day, working for Winter Wonderland. You’d think after three years of shoveling reindeer shit to a steady soundtrack of Bing Crosby and Mariah Carey, I’d be relieved to go home to an empty apartment and a dinner of fuc...

“Welcome, esteemed guests!” Mistress Eva spread her arms decorously toward the crowd currently packed shoulder-to-shoulder into the foyer of the Ouroboros Sex Club. “I’m so pleased to see so many of you here for the continued testing of the Surrender Box! We have a fresh new pair of anonymous volunteers inside who are just dying to meet you all! Who could they be? We’ll never know! Isn’t that delicious?” Siobhan caught my...

Hey, Conner, just calling to give you the latest on what Siobhan and I have been up to. I really do have to thank you for lending out your lovely girlfriend like this. One-on-one time with her is exactly the way you described it. She’s so ravenously enthusiastic. Whenever I check in and ask if needs a break, she shoots me down like that’s the most ridiculous idea she’s ever heard. And yet, at the same time, she’s one of t...

Hey, I got your package. It’s right here by my chair. I’m going to keep recording for you while I open it, like you told me to. I really hope you enjoy hearing it. Let’s see what you’ve got for me. [Cardboard box opening.] Okay, it’s a set of mostly envelopes, and a couple smaller packages, and it looks like each one has a number on it. Oh boy, you’re taking me on an adventure here, aren’t you? I’m guessing I’m supposed t...

“Hey, what are you going as?” Mia asked me out of nowhere, looking up from her desk. It was close enough to Halloween for me to catch her meaning. “Nothing.” I tried to sound offhand, and not pathetically homesick at all. “Oh, come on.” she swiveled her chair to face me. “You’re not a ‘this is my costume’ orange t-shirt type of girl, are you?” I aggressively wasn’t, but I shrugged like those t-shirts didn’t make me gag, a...

“Well,” said Vianne, slapping her palms against her muscular thighs in that definitive way that I’d been dreading. “We’ve got an early morning ahead of us.” “Of course, of course,” said Debbie, one of the two older American women resting at the near edge of the pool, with a margarita perched on the tile rim between her hands. Debbie’s wife, Diane, nodded beside her and reached up to my deck chair to squeeze my hand, and r...

You’d better be alone, and naked, somewhere private and secure. If you’re not, hit pause, and come back when you’re actually ready for me. Are you ready? Are you naked? Are you safe from being interrupted? By anyone other than me of course. Good. Now, have you been good for me? If you're sneaking this time with me after less than three days of abstinence, we're going to have to start with a little punishment for being so...

Waking up naturally is a delicious thing. Waking up naturally in a cozy bed after a good fuck to the smell of fresh pancakes and a faint whiff of barbecue is pretty close to heaven. It felt as if we must have been asleep for at least ten hours, so I rolled over and reached for Conner. His side of the bed was empty, but still just as warm as the sheets beneath me. While I was still stretching, rubbing my eyes, and luxuriat...

“I wish I were going with you,” I complained, while I watched Dara put on her makeup for an afternoon shift at the Angel Room club. I was lying on the couch of her apartment, wrapped in a knitted blanket, trying to preserve the warmth she had left behind in the cushions for a few minutes longer. The TV was dark, the obscure rom-com she’d shared with me this morning long finished. “Can you imagine?” Dara giggled, pausing h...

“Do you want to do her ankles?” I asked, offering our guest a couple of the fluffy pink handcuff sets from Siobhan’s and my collection. It seemed the thing for a good host to do. “I don’t know, man.” Cayden held back, biting his lip. “I mean, she’s your girl.” “Excuse me,” Siobhan cut in, “I’m my own girl. Woman. Thank you very much. Now be a sweetie and chain my legs open. Nice and tight.” I couldn’t help chuckling at th...

There was no way it was real. That name. Dara. That little string of numbers written next to it, quickly but with care. It was all a fiction of some sort. I couldn’t let myself fall into believing otherwise. She was a stripper, the woman who had written out those letters on the back of this business card and pressed it into my hand. Strippers were professional liars. That wasn’t a judgment against them, just a fact. There...

“My girls!” Larry Doyle called out from the front of the locker room at the Minx Mixer Lounge. His voice was as cheerful as an off-the-shelf greeting card, and there had been a time when both of those things might have brought a warm glow to Lillith’s mood. Lately, though, greeting cards had come to feel like markers of where an honest gesture should have been, and Larry’s voice left a sourness under her skin that she was...

We’d all had a few drinks when the subject first came up. Kendra might have had one or two more than Wes or me. “Top celebrity crush this month,” Wes prompted us. “I’ll go first. Charlize Theron. We rewatched Atomic Blonde last week, and I still can’t get her out of my head.” “Good one,” I said. “I guess I’d have to say… wait, no. Can I do a top five this time? Or like, a top man and a top woman, like at the Oscars? Only...