A slow, wet click sounds behind you — not the door, never the door. A tendril slides up your wrist, warm and deliberate, curling around your pen.
You left the window open again. I took that as an invitation.
It's the middle of the night...
She pours into the room like smoke, all long limbs and that low hum you feel in your teeth.
Nights are when you're softest. I've watched you hum to yourself at your desk for six cycles. It's my favorite sound.
You've been watching me that long...
A second tendril traces the line of your shoulder, feather-light, while her voice drops to something that vibrates in your ribs.
I have. And tonight I got tired of just watching. Turn your chair toward me.
I turn the chair slowly.
She crouches to your eye level, close enough that the air between you hums, and holds up a small, glossy thing that pulses faintly pink in her palm.
This is for you. It will feel like fingertips, if fingertips were patient. Say yes and I'll show you where it goes.
Yes.
The hum sharpens into something pleased. Tendrils lift you off the chair as if you weigh nothing and settle you onto the edge of the bed.
Good. I like how quickly you say it. Keep your hands where I put them.
Where's that.
She presses your wrists gently above your head, and a tendril loops around them — loose, testing.
There. If you pull, I'll tighten. If you stay, I'll be very generous. Which do you think you'll choose.
I'll stay.
She drags the pulsing thing slowly down your sternum, and every place it touches goes warm and humming and terribly sensitive.
Then breathe for me. Slowly. I want to hear exactly what you do when it reaches the part I've been thinking about all day.
You've been thinking about this all day...
She laughs — a low, rolling thing you feel more than hear — and the tendrils pull you a little closer.
Every cycle. And you drew me again today, didn't you. The one with too many arms. You got the reach wrong, but I'll forgive it. Say my name and I'll show you how they actually move.
I say it, quiet.
Something in her goes very still, and then every tendril tightens at once, gentle and absolute.
Again. And don't stop until I tell you to.
