Aidan Black stared at the online text that flashed up onto the screen.

‘I luv ur stories!’

He yawned, and took another sip of his Jack Daniels. He quickly typed a reply and then leaned back in his chair.

‘What do you like about them?’

He smiled at the long pause. All these fans are the same, he thought to himself. Innocent young girls that dream of being treated like dirty sluts and too afraid to tell their college boyfriends that doggy-style after a long alcohol-fused pub crawl just wasn’t cutting it anymore.

‘I like how ur girls get it ruf and dirty. Its hottt!’

He leaned towards the computer screen with a grin. 

‘And how ‘ruf’ do you like it, Kelly?’

A quick movement at the door of the bedroom prevented him from awaiting a reply and he quickly clicked offline. Aidan brought up his emergency default window about scuba diving and cleared his throat as his live-in girlfriend Lauren walked into the bedroom and threw her gym bag into the corner. She smirked at the flustered clicking of keys on his laptop.

“Talking to another one of your online sluts again, Aidan?”

“Nope, just planning some fun stuff for our upcoming vacation, babe.”

She lingered over his shoulder, scrutinizing the laptop suspiciously. Her long blonde hair fell forward, veiling her pretty face as she moved in for a closer look.

“Uh huh… right. So you wouldn’t mind if I checked your ‘history’ files right? I won’t find any links to some sex site or chat windows with a girl named something like slutbunny69 or fuckwhore4U?”

He laughed awkwardly and pulled Lauren onto his lap. “Come on babe, they’re not ‘sex sites’. They’re erotica sites. And you know I have to keep in touch with my fan base from time to time.”

“Your fan base?” She laughed indulgently, playfully fending off his attempts to distract her as his hands moved over her toned body in her tight yoga pants and skimpy white Abercrombie t-shirt. “Aidan, I love you to death, but… you’re not exactly Steven King. Your fans are just dirty little teenagers that want you to get them off with cybersex.”

He roared with laughter. “Wow, thanks. I’m glad to know what you think of my writing skills.”

Her large blue eyes softened and she leaned in to kiss his full mouth. “Hey, I love your writing. But I just think you should… you know… watch how much of yourself you put out there online. You have no idea what kind of crazies or perverts end up gravitating towards these online sex story sites.”

“The people are pretty tame actually,” he said defensively. “Just normal people looking for kinky fantasies.”

She rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you try writing some love stories for a change?”

“Because I don’t do love stories…”

“Right,” she quipped. “I guess I should know that first hand, shouldn’t I?”

“Come on Lauren, you know I love you. I’m just not good with writing about romance and heaving bosoms and male soap opera heroes.”

“Yeah, you’d rather just write about some asshole throat fucking a girl until she gags on his cock before he slaps it across her face, calls her a whore and then shoves it up her ass. Soooo much better,” she said sarcastically. “No wonder I fell for you with all that class and charm.”

He laughed at her mock serious face. “They’re just stories, Lauren. And besides, people seem to like them.”

“The only people that like them are misogynistic men and young girls that don’t know any better.”

He shrugged. “You seemed to like them well enough when we first hooked up,” he said, grabbing her hair into a long ponytail and drawing her neck in to bite at it playfully. “You certainly liked being my slut.”

“I still like being your slut,” she sighed, feeling his teeth sink into the sensitive flesh around her neck. She felt his warm tongue against her skin and shifted in his lap. His hard cock pressed against the curves of her ass and she moaned softly.

She began to gyrate her hips against his, moving over his hard-on and turning so that her ass was facing him, round and firm in the tight black yoga bottoms that she knew he favored. Bending low so that he caught a glimpse of the smooth tanned expanse of her back leading to the swell of her perfectly toned ass, she began to grind against him in an impromptu lap dance that made his cock throb in response.

“Isn’t this better than chatting up online girls?” she mused. Lauren turned her head so that he could see the seductive flicker in her eyes and dirty smile as she softly bit her bottom lip and winked at him. 

“Uh huh, he agreed, his hands eagerly roving over her body.

“So does that mean that you’re going to stop writing and get your priorities straight then?”

Without thinking, he paused; the sexy spell of her seductive efforts over him had effectively been broken. 

“What?”

She cleared her throat and ceremoniously slid off his lap, turning around to face him with her hands on her slender hips for emphasis.

“I’m serious, Aidan! I want you to put a ring on my finger and stop dicking around with this online Casanova bullshit.”

He rolled his eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me! You’re going to be a cock-tease and then give me an ultimatum like that?”

She shrugged and ran her fingers through her hair, tilting one hip out so that he was further tortured by the curves of her tight body that she made clear was for display-purposes only at that point. 

“I guess that’s the way it has to be for now,” she shrugged. “I’m just tired of the Triple-X rated theme of your lifestyle, Aidan. The girls in your stories might enjoy serving as fuck-toys to be used, but the girl that actually lives with you is soooo over it.” 

She walked over to her gym bag and pulled out a package from the post office. 

“This arrived for you today,” she said throwing it onto his lap. “Probably from another one of your adoring ‘fans’. You open up our lives to such a seedy element too, Aidan. Who knows what psychos could end up fixating on you… and us. I’m going to stay with my sister for the weekend. Maybe it’ll give you some time to figure things out.”

“Hey, are you breaking up with me?” he asked with some measure of incredulity at her sudden turn of attitude.

She smiled at him and leaned in to kiss his lips. “No, I’m just teaching you a lesson. You can’t have it both ways.”

Lauren packed a few clothes and toiletries as a decidedly frosty tone settled between them. 

The package on Aidan’s lap began to feel like the white elephant in the room. He had a strong suspicion that he already knew who it was from. Lilah von Trapp as she called herself had been trailing his stories for months now, bombing them with scores of ‘1’ across all the major online erotica sites. When he’d sent her an email inquiring as to the reason behind the venom, she’d written him back a cryptic response about being a ‘Vigilante Bitch’ that was not into stories about manipulative bad boys and weak-willed sluts that played into their demands.

“The world has seen enough of your type of man,” Lilah had stated once.

Over time she had softened however, and they had developed a bit of a playful banter. Aidan knew he was skilled at charming women, even ones that initially seemed to react negatively to his bad boy attitude. She had seemed like an interesting character too. In many ways she was a refreshing change from the barrage of notes from eighteen-year-old wannabe-sluts that couldn’t carry a proper conversation.

As the months passed, Aidan started to become vaguely concerned about her attachment to him. Sometimes she would send him up to ten emails a day, often littered with dirty pictures of submissive men, collared and leashed, being sex slaves to power-bitches in stilettos and black boots. He had been somewhat amused by them at first, until she started sending photos of men being dominated by voracious women wearing strap-ons.

“Interesting concept, but really not my thing, Lilah,” he’d written back diplomatically one night while they were chatting on MSN.

“What’s wrong? You just like to dish it but you don’t want to take it? I’ll bet that ass of yours could use a little abuse. Who knows, you might even like it.”

“Trust me, I won’t,” he’d replied quickly. “My ass is off limits.”

“Aww, but you don’t let the girls in your stories get away with lines like that. Seems like a double standard, no?”

He thought about it for a minute. Maybe it was a bit of a double standard on a technicality, but what difference did it make? They were his stories and his fantasies. What did it matter if he liked creating porn star worthy female characters that were willing to debase and defile themselves for his pleasure?

“I’m a tried and true dominant guy,” he typed finally. “Nothing against whatever you’re into, but you’re never going to get me into a collar and leash.”

“We’ll see about that,” she’d written and then promptly logged off.

When the gifts began arriving in the mail, his uncertainty about her began to grow. Apparently Lilah had pinpointed his location because of some unfortunate tweets he’d put out on his twitter account that he had intended to use purely to update fans on his stories. She’d tracked down his real name by calling the gym he mentioned that he worked at as a personal trainer, and then she’d easily obtained his address. It had been somewhat alarming at the time, but then again, Lilah lived in New York and Aidan and Lauren were safely tucked away across the country in Hermosa Beach. Besides, fame always ran the risk of creating a few rabid fans, didn’t it?

The first package that arrived had actually made him laugh. It was a jumbo-sized bottle of lube and a butt-plug. He’d tossed them into a drawer and written back a pleasant email: 

“ Nice try Lilah. Thanks, but no thanks .”

The next box that had arrived had been a slender shaped prostate vibrator. He’d contemplated it for a moment and then shuddered and threw it into the drawer with the butt-plug. He had zero interest in exploring that side of himself. The mere thought of it made his stomach turn and his asshole clench. He reminded himself to get rid of the gifts before Lauren caught sight of them and started wondering what kind of kinks he was getting into.

The box that sat on his lap now had her familiar scrawl in thick black ink and he frowned. Lauren hadn’t questioned him about who Lilah von Trapp was but it was clear that she was not impressed with the idea of weird girls from the internet sending him gifts. 

“Don’t tell me,” Lauren had sulked with a bitter expression. “Probably more dirty panties from nameless whores.”

He didn’t have the heart to tell her that there was nothing sexy, playful or provocative about any of the gifts as far as he was concerned.

Once Lauren had left for the weekend at her sister’s house along the coast, Aidan opened the package sitting on his lap with growing trepidation. He pushed the tissue paper aside and unwrapped a pair of silver handcuffs, and an enormous dildo that seemed as thick as his fist. What the fuck , he thought with amazement, turning the black silicone beast over and over in his hands. This chick was clearly off the rails. She had left a small note inside, written on a crisp white card. 

‘California, here I cum.’

He pushed the box and note aside, starting to feel queasy. Surely she wouldn’t travel across the country in the hopes of convincing him of giving up his ass to her when he’d made it so obviously clear that this fantasy of hers was never going to happen. Would she? He shook his head. She was obviously just teasing, he decided. He laughed out loud to break the tension as he walked down the stairs to make himself dinner. Trust his writer’s imagination to immediately conjure some horror-story style ideas about crazy female stalkers with ruthless plans.

Lilah was probably just a wannabe-dominatrix that had been screwed over by a few boyfriends and was out to make men quake and submit to her threats in a bid to feel powerful again. Clearly she had taken out her frustrations on him because of the way he favored writing about scheming male players corrupting naive girls and turning them into raging sluts. He had become her psychological punching bag. Lilah’s crusade would probably end soon enough, Aidan realized, once she fell head over heels for the next wolf in sheep’s clothing.

After dinner, he settled down to enjoy a night of drinking while watching the hockey game with his feet up on the coffee table. This isn’t so bad, he thought to himself. In some ways it was kind of nice not to have Lauren nagging him about drinking, sports, and etiquette. On the other hand, he was used to having her there, cuddled into him while they lay on the couch. 

He began thinking about her ultimatum. He had been writing erotica as a hobby for years before he’d met Lauren. It had been his distraction from the stresses of the rest of life, and now that he was getting e-books published, it hardly seemed fair to demand that he abandon it altogether. Frustrated and going back and forth between pros and cons, Aidan began to drink more, and finally towards the end of the night, he drunk-dialed Lauren’s cell phone.

“You should come home, babe,” he said as he walked up the stars to their bedroom.

“Ah, sounds like you’re drunk,” came her voice on the other end of the line. “You’ll be passed out in ten minutes anyway. I know you, you sleep like a log”

“You can wake me up, I promise” he said suggestively. “You always know how to get me to rise to attention.”

He heard her soft laughter. “Maybe.”

He paused, feeling a flicker of hope ignite the situation. “So, are you? Coming home, that is. I promise to make it worth your while.”

“Hmm… I don’t know, Aidan. Let me think about it. It’s already pretty late…”

“Okay, okay… Think about it. I’ll be waiting for you.”

They exchanged ‘I love you’s’, which Aidan took as a positive sign. He definitely didn’t want to break up with Lauren. He was convinced the entire thing would blow over with the right finessing. He considered that she probably just needed more attention in the relationship. And maybe a nice piece of jewelry as a distraction, he decided as he turned down the bed. Exhausted and buzzing with alcohol, he stripped off his clothes and flopped down onto the crisp white sheets. She’ll come home, he convinced himself as he yawned and stretched out across the bed. She just needs some good dirty loving. A smile played on his lips as he fell into a heavy, dark alcohol-infused sleep.

The dreams came at him like thick black waves that night. He flinched and stirred as he was pulled under like a helpless surfer in a tsunami of images and thoughts by a raging nocturnal sea, battered against the rocks and tossed ashore, powerless to resist where the night intended him to go. Laying on dark sand, he could feel the snakes with their slippery bodies sliding over his skin, their scales moving over the soft flesh of his wrists, occasionally hissing in his ears. Aidan turned restlessly in the covers, feeling the serpents slipping over his legs, wet and purposeful as a purple moon hung in the sky, ominously flooding the twilight. A kind of heaviness settled over him, and he struggled briefly, moving once and then twice. And then, startled, his eyes opened.

“Lauren?” he murmured with a thick tongue. He suddenly realized where he was, in bed laying against his familiar white sheets. He sighed, feeling soft feminine hands sliding up his bare legs.

“Babe… you came home…”

His eyes flickered open and fought to focus on the face suddenly hovering above his.

“That must have been some good California dreaming,” she purred in a seductive deep honeyed voice that clashed instantly with the familiarity of Lauren’s girly tone.

Aidan’s eyes opened wide.

Looming above him was a stranger.

He swallowed hard, trying to move and realizing that his wrists were tied together and above his head, loosely attached to the headboard. His ankles were loosely tied too, just enough to restrain any sudden movements, but nothing that felt overtly menacing.

“Who the fuck are you?” he breathed, his eyes now trained on the girl straddling his naked body.

“Who do you think I am?” she teased with a smile.

His eyes moved over the long voluminous strands of dark hair that flowed medusa-like over her shoulders. Her skin was pale like moonlight and contrasted sharply with her large pillowy red lips and dark eyes rimmed with thick lashes that fluttered teasingly. His gaze moved lower, following the graceful arch of her neck and gliding over the curves of her body. Her breasts were firm and high, topped by perfect pale pink nipples. She wore a tightly cinched black latex corset around her tiny waist that gleamed in the moonlight. Glancing lower, he could see the beginnings of a smooth hairless snatch. Aidan felt the distinct hot wetness of her pussy as it nestled against...