O-oh, here she comes.
Watch out boy, she’ll chew you up!
O-oh, here she comes.
She’s a maaaan-eater!

With confidently clopping heels, she walked straight from the jukebox to my table and sat herself down in the chair opposite me. I didn’t know her, but I’d seen her sitting alone at the bar a few minutes earlier and thought she was attractive enough, in a ‘milfy’ sort of way. No – ‘cougar’ was definitely the better word for her; there was nothing motherly about her, and she had a hungry look in her eye. On any other night of my life, a cougar wouldn’t have been my type; I was still young enough myself to be of interest to younger women, and it hadn’t escaped my attention how the other people in the room – the locals – kept their eyes down to avoid meeting hers and left her an extra valence-worth of personal space. But something about her – maybe her confidence, or maybe the smell of kitchen spices that wafted from her in place of perfume – captivated me. She had auburn hair – that too-red bottled color – that feathered away from her face and fell in loose curls over her shoulders. Beneath her black coat she wore the same black minidress every woman seemed to have; hers dipped down low between her breasts to show ample cleavage, albeit freckled and beginning to dimple. She wore far too much makeup – especially around her black-rimmed eyes – for anyone who preferred the natural look. Usually that was me. Usually the wrinkles around her eyes and the thin skin on the back of hands would have stood out like bright red stop signs. But that night I thought I liked her look just as it was.

“I’m Marguerite.” Her accent was a bit choppy for this part of Britain. I had already begun to develop an ear for picking out the local accents, and hers wasn’t local. She held her hand out, and I took it. Her skin was as soft as a baby’s against mine.

“Tom.” I gave her hand a gentle squeeze, then took my own back.

“Is that short for Thomas?”

I nodded.

“I’m going to call you Thomas then. You don’t mind, do you? I like proper names.” She didn’t wait for my response; instead she leaned forward so her voice could sink beneath the volume of the song she’d put on the jukebox. “Look, Thomas, a woman my age learns that when she knows what she wants, she shouldn’t waste any time before going after it. I don’t mind a little chit-chat, so long as I know that it’s going to lead to something physical, and I mean tonight. So how about you and I skip ahead an hour or so and you kiss me. To test the chemistry, you see. If it doesn’t work for us, I’ll buy your drink and bugger off. But if it does, then we go back to chatting and flirting like two adults, except we already know where we’re going. Are you game?”

She cut me off just as I was opening my mouth. “No, I’m not a ‘professional’. Not that kind. I’m just a lonely woman with loose morals who sees a new face she fancies. It’s as simple as that.”

I could hardly argue with her, and she was already leaning across the table. What else could I do? I leaned forward, and I brought my lips to hers. It had been at least a year since I’d had a real kiss – not one of those perfunctory goodnight pecks – and it was electrifying. Her lips pressed back against mine, and I felt tingles run over my face and down my neck and into my chest. Her lips were soft and pliant, and when they separated her tongue darted out and mixed her saliva with mine. I could taste a little of her in my mouth. That was enough for me – I was ready to verify a successful chemical reaction; but her hand slipped behind my neck and her tongue flicked between her lips again, and I wasn’t going to be the one to break the kiss, even if I could feel half the room staring at us. I met her tongue with mine and brought my hand to her chin, and for at least three minutes we kissed like movie stars.

Finally she let me go and leaned back in her seat. “Very satisfactory, Thomas. Brilliant. So now you know what I’m about, and I know what you taste like, we can return to innocent flirting.” She winked as she said it, because beneath the table she had kicked off her heel and begun cinching up the cuff of my lucky corduroy pants with her toes. I spread my legs a radian or so to allow her better access.

“Perhaps I should buy you a drink? Or would you like dinner?” Behind her, I could see the inn manager waiting awkwardly for an opportunity to put a plate of sausages and potatoes in front of me.

“A drink would be lovely, thank you.” She raised her finger as the manager approached. He nodded wordlessly and when he returned to the bar he slid a wineglass off the rack. “I’ve already eaten, but don’t let that stop you. I wouldn’t deny a young man like you an appetite. So why don’t you tell me what brings you to this corner of the world while we wait?”

-

The whole story was far too personal to tell her, of course, which is why it came as such a surprise when the details began spilling out of my mouth. It was one thing to tell her that I quit my job – my excellent, wonderful job – because I was stupid and angry. I was especially stupid when I blew off my boss, who offered to leave the position open until I was ready to come back. It was quite another thing to explain to her why I was so angry, and why I had a right to be. I mean, it’s a Hollywood cliché for your fiancée to leave you standing at the altar, but what kind of bitch text messages you an hour after the rehearsal dinner? A point of fact: it only takes 17 characters to announce a treachery. The most shameful part of the night was that it wasn’t my best man, or my childhood friend, or even one of her bridesmaids from whose bed she messaged me. No, she left me for my bastard, drunken father. My fifty-eight-year-old father!

I don’t even remember what little question or look from her cracked my dam, but once I’d started I couldn’t hold the story back. I had to tell someone every last bit of it, someone who wasn’t already invested and didn’t already have an opinion. It was such a release – as physically tangible as emptying a full bladder – to just blurt out every feeling I really had, instead of the feelings I was supposed to have.

Marguerite had moved into the chair beside me, and after I had pushed away the half-eaten plate of food she took my hand and began massaging my digits and kissing my knuckles. “You poor, poor dear.” She leaned over to squeeze my shoulder, and in the process she set my hand in her lap, at the hem of her hiked-up skirt. “You’re so lucky to have met me, Thomas. You traveled halfway around the world to escape your memories, didn’t you, and you never realized that the only solution was to find someone to pamper you and show you some real interest.” She leaned in to kiss my cheek, and whispered into my ear: “Oh, you’re a lucky one – I’m going to absolutely spoil you.” Leaning back, she let her voice return to a normal level. “Where are you staying the night, dear?”

“Here.” I motioned toward the stairs. “At the Foxhound.”

“That was a trick question, Thomas, because you’re coming home with me. No offense to James, but I can offer a much warmer bed and better company than he possibly could. And I’m sure we can figure out some kind of arrangement for breakfast.” Her wink was anything but subtle.

“But I’ve already paid him for the room, and my bag’s upstairs.”

“Oh, don’t you worry about the details. He’ll put your things in my boot, and what you’ve paid for your room can go toward your meal tonight and my drinks.” Patting my thigh, she added a little louder, “Isn’t that right, James?”

From behind the bar, the inn manager nodded sullenly. “Sure enough, Maggie.”

Marguerite’s car was one of those tiny hatchbacks no one in America buys – the kind that makes a Focus look roomy – and it smelled of incense. She drove far too quickly along a winding, hilly road that cut a ditch through the countryside, with only one casual hand on top of the wheel. Her other hand alternated between a crystal ball shifter stick and my lap.

“So you told me what made you leave the Colonies, but not what brings you all the way over to this island, and to my little county in particular.”

“Your county, is it?”

“I like to think of it that way.”

“Castles, really. Roman remains, standing stones – that sort of thing. The sort of thing we don’t have in Arizona. I like to take pictures, and I used the money I got from pawning both of her rings to buy the camera I always wanted. And a few lenses I didn’t even know I wanted until I talked to the salesman. But your county in particular? Well, I guess the Foxhound Inn got a good review in Let’s Go, and it’s not a long bus ride to Ardesbury. The stone circle there is supposed to be nice, but this weekend – tomorrow – there’s going to be a witches’ faire, a real one, in the circle for the first time in, like, 800 years.”

“Twelve hundred.” She punctuated he interjection with grinding gears as she upshifted to crest a steep rise.

“What?”

“Twelve hundred and seventeen years, and that year’s faire barely counted, since it ended early with the slaughter of nine women.”

“Oh, that’s awful.”

She patted my thigh. “It’s what happened, but it’s the past now. You can’t dwell on the past and enjoy the present, now can you? That’s the lesson I get to teach you tonight. For example, did you know that you’re an even luckier man than we’d thought, dear? As it happens, I’m going to the stones tomorrow anyway, so rather than bundle off early and spend an hour yawning on a bus, you and I can have a lie-in and a leisurely breakfast and I’ll take you over with me. I’m something of a popular figure in the coven, so if you don’t disappoint me tonight – and I don’t expect that you will – I’ll put in a good word with my sisters tomorrow. If your cards come up right, you may have beds and breakfasts waiting wherever on the island you want to go.”

I glanced over at her. “You’re a witch?”

“Of course I am!” Her hand slid down between my thighs, and she broke her stare on the road ahead long enough to give me that licentious wink again.

-

I suppose I was lucky, I decided, because if she-who-will-not-be-named had waited another three days to tell me that she was cheating, I would have been trapped in a horrible marriage for a lifetime. Instead of having my heart broken all at once, it would have broken slowly, crumbling to chalky dust over the years. I told Marguerite about what life with her used to be like, before we were engaged. We used to have the best conversations – about things I liked and cared about – and I could make her laugh with just a glance. We used to have the best sex; except it wasn’t just the sex. There was foreplay. We’d kiss for an hour before we even took our clothes off. Yes, I was one of those peculiar men who preferred foreplay to anonymous sex, especially kissing and nibbling, or anything mouth-related.

“Does that sound too fetishy? She could make me hard just by sucking on my finger.”

“No, dear. It sounds healthy.”

She used to nibble my ears and lick my neck, and I loved it. And she loved it when I went down on her, which made me all the more eager to do it. She would come out of the shower on the mornings she worked early and wake me up by sitting on my chest, wearing nothing but the towel wrapped around her hair. In the last few months, though, all of that intimacy just withered away. There was no more laughing naked, no more playful tickling. The kisses were brief and grudging. When we actually had sex, it was always from behind, always doggy-style.

“I guess that way she didn’t have to see my face.”

Marguerite patted my cheek. “It’s a lovely face, dear.” She was half-turned in her seat with her right arm draped over the wheel.

“I’m sorry – I’m talking too much, aren’t I?” I was. I hadn’t even realized that we’d arrived and were now parked halfway around the loop in her gravel driveway.

“Shush now.” She gathered up my hands and pulled them to her lap. “Come over here.” I leaned forward and she drew me over the e-brake, across her breasts and against her lips. The way we kissed was as sexy and sticky as warm butter melting into honey; her lips puckered and plumped and sucked against mine, and mine pushed greedily back into hers until we both needed air. I settled into the soft part of her neck while she rolled the lobe of my ear between her teeth. “There is one thing, though,” she breathed between nips.

“What’s that?” I was dangerously close to leaving her with a hickey.

“Before I let you – a stranger, though an undeniably delicious stranger – into my home, I need to see your passport.” Her smile was a bit embarrassed when I pulled away. “Well, you could be a serial-killer, couldn’t you? Even a witch has to be safe.”

I was sitting on my passport, so we both got out of her car. The shadow of a high-peaked, wood-shingled roof loomed over us and blotted out much of the purpley evening sky. I couldn’t make out all of the details of the house, but it seemed very old, made of stacked local stone like the pasture walls that sectioned up the countryside. Bushy plants that smelled of an herb cabinet bristled out of planters and pots and garden plots. Vines crept up around thick-framed windows. But I wasn’t paying attention again; she had come around to my side of the car, so I fished my passport out of my pocket and handed it to her.

“Thomas Alden Moore.” She read my name carefully, enunciating each syllable, then glanced up at me.

“Yup. That picture makes me look like a terrorist, but I promise you I haven’t had a beard and hair like that since college.”

“Thomas Alden Moore? That’s your real name – your given, Christian name?”

The way she said my name again was peculiar, more like a suspicious bureaucrat than the woman whose bosom had pillowed me a minute earlier. I thought it best just to play it off. “All of my life!” My middle name was a little odd, after all.

“Thomas Alden Moore.”

“Yes. That’s right.”

And then something between us clicked – like pins dropping into place in a lock – and she was laughing and leading me into her house by the hand. All the awkwardness between us was gone, and I was laughing too, and I didn’t even know why. She sat me down on a couch in the middle of her house. There was only one large room, plus a workspace joined by an open doorway, so from the couch I could watch her bustle around the whole house. Behind me was a hearth fireplace, which she had roaring in less time than should have been possible. She turned down the covers on a four-poster bed, latched shut the doors of her wardrobe, and flicked the center knob on a large gas stove. With a pink-eared smile she pulled down a string of laundry that had been stretched across the windows to dry. There had been more lace and satin than practical cotton among the undergarments; I think she took those down last so I’d be sure to notice. The walls and corners and rafters of the house were crowded with clutter – the kind of clutter that takes a lifetime or two to accumulate: huge copper pots and cast-iron cauldrons, rows upon rows of glass spice bottles and crockery flasks, books on odd shelves and bookcases full of knickknacks and crystals, candles, animal skulls, photographs, porcelain dolls, astrological charts, woodcuts, a paint and easel set. What caught my eye, though, was the clichéd, black satin, wide-brimmed hat jutting out from the wall. The conical peak was so tall it couldn’t support its own weight and it seemed to have permanently creased near the top. Draped from a hanger beneath the hat hung a black dress with a serrated hem. “Is that-?”

Her smile was coy, cast at me over her shoulder. “That’s for Halloween. But, I bet you’d like it if I- Listen, you sit here with your eyes closed. Promise me you won’t open them no matter what you hear, and I’ll slip into something less comfortable. Drink this.” She pushed a cup of tea into my hands and slid her fingers over my eyelids to close them. The tea smelt of cloves and cinnamon and warmed my belly at the first sip.

It wasn’t until several minutes later when I heard the clattering of cooking pans in the kitchen that she called out, “Oh, I’m sorry, dear, you can open your eyes now.” I’m fairly certain her timing was intentional, though: the first thing I saw was her bending over the open oven door to slide a pan onto the center rack. Her round, pantyhose-confined ass didn’t just peek out from beneath the serrated hem of her Halloween dress, it leered at me. She closed the oven door with a clang, caught up her teapot with a hotpad, and sashayed back to the couch. The nylon clinging to her thighs swished with every step, and her high-heeled maryjanes clopped against the stone-paved floor. “Drink,” she urged as she refilled the mug in my hands. I’m certain she knew that when she bent over to pour, the v-cut of her dress spilled wide open in front of me. “Just a few minutes more and I’m all yours,” she called as she clopped back toward the stove.

As promised, a few minutes later she was back on the couch; or, more specifically, she was sitting cross-wise in my lap and feeding me oven-hot buttery cookies from a plate painted with purple pansies. And since she kept my mouth full – either with cookies or her spiced tea or her kisses – she was the one to chatter and tell me about herself.

Despite my best intentions, I found it difficult to listen attentively. She squirmed in my lap much more than was strictly necessary, despite her skirt riding up and my now-wrinkled corduroys providing the only real barrier between her ass and my increasingly engorged lap. (Her pantyhose and lacy briefs absolutely did not count.) The wide brim of her hat shadowed both of our faces, giving us a sense of secrecy and privacy that forced me to stare right into her dark-ringed eyes. Her eyes were a springy shade of yellow-green flecked with brown; they were as vibrant as a teenager’s, and I hardly even noticed the wrinkles around them now. Several inches lower, the leather corset she wore over the Halloween dress created a deep cleavage between her pale, quivering breasts; they were just too far into my periphery for me to glance down without making it obvious. The black satin opera gloves she wore were busy twirling my hair or roaming beneath my shirt when they weren’t shoving cookies in my mouth. Still, I did my best to pay attention.

She had grand-children, and no, that didn’t bother me, even if I’d never been with an older woman before … She’d been with plenty of men, but she preferred to think of herself more as a connoisseur tart than a wanton trollop … This house had been in her family’s name for more than a millennium … Her hobby and primary source of discretionary income was cosmetic chemistry.

“All that means,” she explained, “is that I mix my own makeup and sell a bit to my sisters and to the boutique shops nearby, too. It’s high quality cosmetics, of course, but I blend in a few herbs and botanicals – witchy things. Little mood enhancers to make the woman more confident or the boy across the table more gullible.”

I held up a finger to stop her so I could finish chewing the cookie in my mouth. “Did you use them on me?”

“I’ll give you your answer if you answer me this: Do you like the results?” She winked and changed the subject.

At last I told her that I was stuffed to the point of bursting and couldn’t possibly eat another bite, and she showed me the empty purple pansy plate. “It’s about bloody time, Thomas. I was just getting ready to go bake up another half-batch. At least I can be flattered that you like my special cooking.” She shimmied off my lap and pulled me up after her.

I found myself following without resistance; I was full and warm inside, and my muscles felt loose. Like she’d served me alcohol. “Wait… special cooking? What did you give me?”

Her grin was large and full of white teeth. She walked backwards, leading me by both hands toward her bed. “The tea had a muscle relaxant, but particularly targeted. You had about the same dosage as two of those Viagra pills, but much safer.” Her words swam through my head, and I found myself grinning back. “And the cookies— I didn’t expect you to eat so many, but you should find yourself quite open to persuasion. Which is good, since I thought I might tie you down to the bed and do all sorts of naughty things to you.”

“Oh.”

* * *

I won’t go into the particular details of what happened over the next hour – it wouldn’t be gentlemanly. Let it suffice to say that I didn’t sleep after I had my orgasm; I wasn’t allowed to sleep until she was thoroughly sated too. Until that night I hadn’t had the slightest idea of all that was involved in satisfying a real woman. Some little corner of my mind wondered if I hadn’t left her (my ex, she-who-will-not-be-named) silently dissatisfied all of the years we were together. It didn’t matter now. That was the past, and in the present I was Marguerite’s. That little corner decided to shut up and enjoy the present along with the rest of me. The fire in the hearth couldn’t outlast her passion, so the shadows were deep before she let slip her final, sweaty sigh. Before I was finally allowed to sleep, she untied me from the bed. For the third time.

I woke up to see Marguerite sitting cross-legged on the edge of bed. She had changed out of her Halloween dress and into an outfit no less dramatic. The wide-brimmed hat was gone, as were the gloves and the corset; in their place she wore a long black robe with a purple silk lining, clasped at her neck and again above her breasts by elaborate gold pins. Beneath her breasts the robe flared open, exposing her plump, pale body. Her red hair had been neatly pinned up behind her head and out of her face. Once she saw that I was awake, she held out three color swatches and a candle to light them with. “Thomas, dear. Which do you prefer? For lipstick on me?”

My head felt as muddled as before. “That’s an odd question for this time of night, Marguerite.”

“It isn’t. It’s the perfect time of night. The full moon is high. And since my lips are the last thing you’ll see, I thought you might appreciate a choice in their color. I think you’d prefer the crimson, myself.” She scooted from the bed and clopped back toward her workroom. Apparently, she still wore the maryjanes. Her robe billowed out behind her.

“What do you mean, the last thing I’ll see?” My question felt more like disconnected curiosity than concern.

I rolled over to my side and watched her grind away in a mortar. “How else are we witches supposed to maintain our youth eternally? Magic takes so much out of a girl. I’m not saying I wouldn’t prefer a ruddy toddler instead, but everyone is a helicopter parent these days and there are so few young runaways. You’re sufficiently young and innocent. Or at least, you’re as good as I’ll find before tomorrow.”

Suddenly I didn’t feel as pleased at being persuadable – she was being serious. I needed to be, too. I got of the bed, found my balance, found my shoes and my shirt (my lucky cords seemed to have run out of luck) and wobbled over toward the door. She turned to watch me from her workroom, but made no movement to stop me, which was just as well. I was having enough trouble holding my own head up to worry about defending myself. The door opened with a groan; I had to pull harder, like I was fighting a vacuum. Outside the night was heavy and dark. Even the full moon high above the treeline seemed muted, as if the man in the moon were looking elsewhere.

The doorway was impassible. I’m not sure how else to say it. It wasn’t as if I had run into a pane of glass, or lacked the strength to fight my way through it; leaving through that doorway was as much an impossibility as flying by holding my breath.

With an irritated sigh Marguerite finally left her workbench and came over to shut the door, and just as I’d had the clever idea of sliding along the wall as close as possible and edging out through the side of the doorway. “Before you have any more bright ideas and go opening all of my windows, I should tell you that there’s nothing special about that door. It’s you. You won’t be leaving this house, except by my say-so.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts.

Out of desperation, I grabbed the closest thing I could reach – an old broom – and swung it high to crack it over her head. It never came down. A flick of her fingers lifted the broomstick into the air, with me still attached and unable to let go. The broom drifted across the room, ferrying me back to the bed, where it laid me down as easily as a suit set out to dry, and dropped down to pin me across my chest.

She had already returned to her workbench. “That’s fair, Thomas – once – but don’t try anything like that again, or I shall think of you less fondly, and perhaps even become cross.”

I had no choice but to wait there, pinned to the bed, while she finished her preparations. The minutes stretched long before she finally returned to the bed with a small basket dangling from her fingers. A few mouthed words and twiddles of her fingers, and my wrists shot up above my head and clung to the brass bars of the headboard. Now that the broom was no longer needed to hold me in place, it rose from my chest, just high enough to allow her to hang her basket and flip out the little mirror she had inside it. She threw out the bottom of her robe, then threw a leg over me so she could straddle my chest and face her mirror. Her lacy panties were gone, still draped over the post at the foot of the bed I thought, and the pantyhose she’d pulled back into place did little to protect her modesty (or what was left of it). I didn’t have to be as close as I was to notice that they were still drenched with the odors of our sex.

“I remember you said you enjoyed this view.” She glanced down at me over the horizon of her bosom. “You may show your appreciation as you think is appropriate.” She shifted her hips another inch closer to my face before turning her eyes back up to her mirror. With an expert hand, she began to stroke crimson paint onto her lips.

I nearly nuzzled right into her mound before I realized that I was being persuadable again. I thought that I should do better than that, so I forced my head to settle back into the pillow. “What now, then? Is that some kind of poisoned lipstick you’re putting on, and once I’m dead you’ll boil me up in a big pot?”

“You do me no credit, Thomas.” She spoke between quick strokes against her lower lip, inside to out. “It’s nothing so crude as that – nothing so elementary. You must think I’m a novice.” She moved up to her top lip, which required more attention and slower strokes. “Beside, I don’t think there’s enough youth left in you for that. It would all boil off in the reduction. No. I’m going to need to eat you whole and alive to see the sort of results I need.”

The whole idea seemed a great joke, so I laughed loudly and heartily. My guffaws shook her, and she clucked her disapproval and kept her brush from her face until I’d stopped. “That’s impossible,” I said. “Is your kiss going to turn me into a toad then? Or perhaps a newt or a rat? Will it turn you into a snake?”

“A bit cleverer, but no. I have plenty of vermin in my garden already. This is something much better. This is something that will impress my sisters tomorrow. Did you know that some of them I haven’t seen since that whole shakedown with King Henry? The big Henry. This faire is something of a renaissance for us. And won’t they be surprised to see me in top form!”

Once her lips were thoroughly painted and coated with a second layer that made them glisten, she smacked them together, ran her tongue back and forth between them, and checked herself again in the mirror. The color had stayed. She put her brush and mirror back in the basket and dismissed her broom, then turned down to me with a gloating smile. “How’s that? Ravishing?”

I nodded a little. Well, she was, whether I was persuadable or not!

“Oh, Thomas. I do appreciate you being such a good sport about all this. I hate it when they cry.” She brushed away the hair that had stuck to my brow. “Do you have any last requests, dear? Maybe one more good shag?” Her fingers brushed down my face, over my nose, lips and chin, and pressed into the plump mound behind her pantyhose. “I was going to let you eat me out before I ate you up, but we’re running out of time now.”

“No, I don’t really think that I’m in the mood. The threat of imminent death is not conducive to an erection.” I felt that I sounded clever, even if my words came out more as mumbles than anything intelligible.

“Well, that is a shame! Because I think you might have really enjoyed this.”

She shimmied back so she could lay over me, so she could bring her deep-red mouth down to lick and kiss me. Not just my face, or my neck, or my earlobes, mind you, but my whole upper body; she gave me the tongue-bath I’d only ever imagined. She kicked off my shoes and peeled back the shirt I’d thrown on in haste, and I found that corner of my mind quite ready to just close my eyes and enjoy the experience. It was only after she’d lavished far too much attention on my nipples – nibbling and sucking on them until they smarted and I was about to protest – that she sat back on my hips and pulled my left wrist free from the headboard. With a little smirk, she sucked my index finger between her lips.

Her mouth felt strange to me. It was wet and it was warm, but it felt too large, as though my finger only just reached her teeth when she’d sucked it in to the last knuckle. And it tingled.

She used her tongue to corral in the next finger, then another and another, and suddenly it was my wrist that was surrounded by her crimson lips, though her mouth had barely opened. Without resistance my arm slipped further and further into her mouth until she had taken me up to my elbow, yet her lips still hadn’t stretched. It was as if my arm pinched off in her mouth, but there was no pain – only that same tingling and the sensation of my fingers skittering over taste buds the size of gravel. Her eyes twinkled with mischief as she let my arm slip back out through her lips; other than the saliva that dribbled from it, my forearm was unchanged. She wrapped her fingers around my arm and pushed me back in to the elbow, then let me slip out again; in and out, until I realized that she was fellating my arm. I’m embarrassed to admit that I had developed another erection.

That fact had not escaped her, either; she let my limp arm slide from her lips and slap against my belly as she tore a hole in the crotch of her pantyhose and guided my phallus into her. “There,” she sighed. “I thought that might work. I need every last bit of your seed, Thomas, if this is going to go smoothly.” Her hips began to rock back and forth. “And don’t go thinking of how you’ll deny me this last favor. You want it to go smoothly, too – trust me on that.” Despite my best intentions I eventually did orgasm; I think it had something to do with her tongue wriggling in my ear. She rewarded my ejaculation with a last, long kiss, and then she backed off of me to clean herself with the corner of her robe.

That quick smile as she rubbed the silk robe down the inside of her thighs was the last time she looked at me as a person. There’s a way you look at a person, or even an animal who can look back at you. There’s a shared sense of judgment, a respect for an independent intelligence experiencing reality. Then there’s a way you look at a ham or a tablecloth. Once she turned and settled at the foot of the bed, I was a ham. My face, my fingers, my belly were all objects – her objects, to do with as she pleased. For me there was more frustration than fear; I was still compelled by a desire to please her, but I couldn’t even get her to meet my gaze.

She started with my feet, pushing her head back and forth like a python swallowing a deer, wedging in first a few toes from my right foot, than a few from the left until she had them all. Once she’d taken me to the ankles, though, it was all quick work; her lips really weren’t stretched until they were around my hips. She was already swallowing my feet by that time – ignoring whatever gag reflex the uvula slicking against my shins might cause her – and after my knees tipped over the crest of her tongue the peristaltic action in her throat helped to pull me down. My thighs and buttocks followed through the trough of her tongue, and she finally released my other wrist from her headboard so she could sit upright, tip her head back, and let gravity work with her last few gulps.

She was wrong, by the way: the last thing I saw wasn’t the crimson of her lips; it was the pink of her tongue sloshing up over my face and a flash of white teeth before her mouth closed down on my arms.

* * *

Even shrunken, the young man felt like a gluttonous feast settling into Marguerite’s belly. The few moments that he thrashed – probably from the sting of her stomach acids seeping into his nose – made her wish she’d had the foresight to bring a Pepto-Bismol tab to her bedside. She lay back, folded her hands across her bulging belly, and let herself nap. He’d been an early breakfast, and she still had a few hours before she needed to get ready for the day.

She woke before the sun had fully risen. All of Thomas’ last thoughts and experiences were tumbling around in her mind, and she wanted to jot them down before the details began to blur and muddy her dreams. Her fingers idly stroked the curve of her stomach. She could already feel the wrinkles fading from around her lips and eyes. Oh, she would be plump and beautiful today, and her sisters would be so jealous!

And they were. She was the star of the faire – vibrant, vivacious, practically glowing with an excess of magic – and she was the center of attention for all but those few minutes she had to excuse herself to leave a very large and unladylike deposit in the port-a-loo. She was just lucky he had moved quickly – of course once he was out of her, beyond the effects of her lipstick, he would return to his normal size. And weight. His remains made so much noise plopping down into the tank that she didn’t try to hid her sigh of pleasure.

(Of course, later that evening she found herself forced to explain the noise to Celica of Enniston, who had been in the loo next over plus one and heard it all. And despite Maggie’s better instinct, the two of them had stolen the tank and Celica had recovered and cleaned enough of his undigested cells to make a homunculus of him. But that, and the trouble he got them into, is a story for quite another time.)