The studio was cold. She kept it that way on purpose. Warmth made people soft, made them comfortable, made them forget that they were there to work. The photographer's name was Lucy, and she had been shooting intimate portraits for fifteen years. Bodies, mostly. Human bodies in all their vuln...
Read MoreShe found the chaise on her first day in the mansion.The house had been empty for forty years. A Victorian grand dame, abandoned by a family that had run out of heirs and a town that had run out of money. The restoration was her first major project as a junior historian, and she had been determin...
Read MoreHe had called it abuse.That was the word he had used, loudly, at a dinner party full of people who knew better. Abuse. Violence. A pathology dressed up in fancy language and expensive leather. He had never been to a dungeon. Had never seen a scene. Had never spoken to anyone who actually practice...
Read MoreThe gift had arrived when she was twenty three, newly licensed, desperately trying to prove herself. A patient had been describing a fantasy, something intricate and humiliating, and she had wanted so badly to understand. To really understand. Not just the words, but the feeling beneath them. The...
Read MoreShe was the fifth.That was what they called them. The subjects. The vessels. The women who had been selected to carry the first human alien hybrid into existence. Four had gone before her. Four had failed. Not failed, exactly. The pregnancies had not taken. The bodies had rejected. The creatures ...
Read MoreThe snow started at noon. By three, the roads were impassable. By six, the tiny inn at the crossroads had become an island, cut off from the world by drifts that had swallowed the cars, the trees, the very concept of leaving. The innkeeper, a woman with tired eyes and a practical manner, counted ...
Read MoreThe house had been empty for forty years.That was what the estate agent said, anyway. Empty. She preferred to think of it as waiting. Waiting for her, perhaps. Waiting for someone who needed its silence, its shadows, its strange and palpable stillness. After the divorce, after the years of noise ...
Read MoreThe flyer had been on her friend's refrigerator for months, tucked beneath a magnet shaped like a seashell. Jackie had glanced at it dozens of times without really seeing it. BDSM 101. A six week introductory workshop. All genders, all experience levels, all questions welcome.She had looked a...
Read MoreThe spreadsheet had 247 rows.Each row was a date. Each column was a category. Name, age, occupation, how they met. A column for pros, meticulously bullet pointed. A column for cons, sometimes longer than she wanted to admit. A column for dealbreakers, highlighted in red. And then the scoring syst...
Read MoreThe first thing she noticed about her was how small she was. Not small in the way of delicate things. Small in the way of things that have been carrying too much for too long.The pop star's name was Eden. Twenty four years old. Four Grammys. A net worth that made headlines. Twenty million fol...
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