"Wanna try being eaten?"

I never quite know what I’m getting myself into, when I go to meet someone new. Oh, there are all the usual safety tips—meet for the first time in a public place, let someone know where you’ll be and when you’ll be back, like that—but I only worry about them as it suits me. That’s why I came straight here.

“But isn’t that a little dangerous?” you asked me, not long after you’d welcomed me into your lovely little home.

“A little,” I admitted, looking up the length of you from where my head lay in your lap.

“Then why do it?”

I didn’t say anything. Just stretched myself out a little more along the sofa cushions, and arched my back a bit, and smiled, and so did you.

It is a little dangerous. Even with a safety call—just anything could happen.

And does!

But this—

I’d never known anything like it. Any other time, I’d have fought like hell—we all would have.

But not now. Not here with you, not after you’d taken such care with me. Stretched me out in the middle of your big bed, stroked my arms and belly and breasts and hips, while you explained what you had in mind for me.

By the time you were done, you had me not just willing, but writhing for it. But even then, you made me lie still, made me select a safeword I would soon be unable to speak aloud. Made me think it, three times, loudly, to make certain you’d recognize it if I thought it because I needed it.

Impatient as I wanted to be, I knew you needed me to be safe, before you started. A corner of my mind couldn’t help reminding me that just because you could hear my safeword didn’t mean you’d have to honor it. But…if we’re being honest, at a moment like that, even so frightening a thought just sends a tingle up my back. And did.

You asked if I was ready. I nodded that I was. And, just like that, I couldn’t move.

It didn’t feel like being bound, and I know that feeling very well. I wasn’t restrained and I knew I wasn’t. There were no cuffs, no ropes, to pull against. But I couldn’t have anyway, if there had been. And I wouldn’t have anyway, if I could.

And then—

We’ve shared this body for a long, long time, my love and I, and we’ve long since learned how we fit one another. So we’re nestled perfectly together, blurring comfortably into one another yet separate enough each to savor and share our own sort of pleasure, when you begin to come into us.

Like nothing we’ve ever imagined. Pressing us into one another, squeezing tight around us; opening us wide, each and both together, enveloped and enveloping, and not just that—

We’ve always felt the difference between inside and outside. Outside has borders, barriers, boundaries: of thought, of flesh, of distance and time. Inside, such things do not exist; we are of one another, we share our thoughts and our senses and ourselves, and could not close ourselves off from ourselves if we tried.

We never imagined it was possible for someone else to come inside.

But here you are. And you are of us. No borders, no barriers, no boundaries. If we wanted to, we could force you out, hold you away. But we don’t. We’ve never felt like this. Never been so completely taken as this. You’re in us, all through us, in a way we’ve only ever felt one another before.

And we feel wonderful.

And now we know why you made us unable to move. Your somatic imagination is much stronger than ours, but it still might not stand up to the reality of our body, if we were animating our real body right now. And, as your fingers find a place in us that our real body doesn’t even have—find, and tease, and caress, and at last begin to press inside—there is no way in the world we would be able to hold ourselves still.

But that’s okay. We can feel ourselves in the body you imagine for us, and you can feel our unreal body writhing against you and around you with sensations we’ve never known before. Sensations, we are coming to realize, we’ve never been able truly to imagine before. And as your fingers slide further into us, growing delightfully thick and impossibly long, we—

— no. Not fingers—

— of course you know. You’re in us now, you’re of us, and how could you fail to find that? And as your tentacles hold us now in earnest, as more coil around the limbs of our unreal body and stretch us tight spread-eagle, as more still find all the places where they can slither inside us, here and there—

—and there? oh yes, we can’t breathe when you do that but we don’t need to breathe and—

—ohh—did you make that just for us? Such a lovely shape it has, and so large, and—that swelling behind it, those bulges, are they eggs?

— yes, yes! Please! Please breed us—you’ve given us the perfect body for it and you know we’ve always wanted to and never dared hope we could and please and please and please—

“Wanna try being eaten?”

I’m not sure how long it’s been. I’m not sure if I’m awake or asleep, if I’m hearing you with my ears or in my thoughts. All I know is that we’ve worn ourselves out with one another, for a time, and that I’m in the arms of my love, and that we’re both in the arms of you, and I’m glowing. And so deliciously taut-bellied full—

“Don’t worry, you’d grow back. After a good night’s sleep at most—”

Sleep, that sounds like just the thing. We’re so tired, so delightedly exhausted, and…wait, eaten?

“—you’re too important to be gone for long. But you can let the others handle things for a little while. You deserve a break.”

Wait, you’re—you’re talking to me. Offering to—to eat me. For a little while at least.

That should sound terrifying, some part of myself murmurs. That should sound horrifying. I should say no.

Even that part of myself doesn’t sound as if she means what she’s saying.

She’s right, my love says to me. She’s exactly right.

But I can’t leave you alone—

Yes, you can, my love says to me. I was ready to wait forever for you. What’s a night? You want this. And I want it for you, too.

But what if she—

Then, my love says to me, we will come and find you.

Beyond the warmth and light and love we share, something hisses. Something growls. Something huge slithers wetly against the floor of our mind.

All of us, my love says to me. We’ll come find you and bring you home.

My love is right. I do want this. I need only ask. I can feel you waiting patiently for me to decide.

And so I decide.

And suddenly—there you are, there’s a part of you, a slick soft wet hot part of you, sliding against my skin, caressing me, pricking me with tiny sharp spines whose pain is barely felt before warm smoothness soothes it away. In an instant I’m tingling all through myself, and as your mind’s tongue wraps itself around me, I feel myself being—lifted—no, that’s not the word, I don’t know the word, I don’t care what word, all I can think is how wonderful it feels to be splayed, trapped, wrapped up in you, tiny needles pricking into me everywhere, warm wetness slippery all over me, and—

— and just like that I’m not in myself any more, and I’d feel tiny and afraid except that I’m far, far from alone, I can feel you all around me, your mind touching me everywhere at borders and barriers and boundaries that I can already feel beginning to dissolve; and at the same instant, I am alone, tiny and alone and surrounded by your vast unblinking regard, every part of me naked, every part of me all at once seen, inspected, examined, known—

— it’s wonderful—

— no longer merely pricking, but beginning to press into me, my surfaces tingling all over, prickling, softening with the most pleasurable sort of pain as those thousand tiny needles delve everywhere into my nakedness, stinging me all through—

— to think I imagined myself full of you before! with your tendrils stretching, invading, wending all through me, turning and writhing and following the curves and shapes of my thoughts, braiding themselves along and among the very sinews of my self—

— I can feel myself beginning to, to deliquesce, the shape of me going hazy at the edges, my borders no longer perceptible even to myself. Only that at the core of me, and as your tendrils tighten, squeezing me so delightfully, binding me, my shape now going—I am become fluid, liquid, defined by the shape of you who are my vessel, and beginning to soak into the surfaces of your tongue still wrapped so tight around me—

— I hope, oh I hope, that I’m delicious, that I taste as good to you as you feel so good to me, the warmth of you all around me and in me and through me, melting into me as I melt into you—

— oh, I’m going, I’m coming, I—

— I awaken slowly, safe in the warm perfect closeness of my love, as well rested as I’ve ever imagined feeling. Drowsily thinking: such wonderful dreams we’ve had!

My love smiles at me, and I don’t want to move, so he stretches our limbs—the limbs of our real body, where I am safely back home, just as you promised before. And I remember where we are: home, but not home; not our home, but yours, and snuggled up in the warmth of your blankets and the much more wonderful warmth of your soft fur, the rich scent of you strong in our nose, your strong arms around us, your paws moving gently along our back. And I remember: it wasn’t a dream at all.

I’m not sure if it’s a sigh or a gasp or a moan, the sound I make, remembering. Maybe it’s all three. Your smile tells me that you understand what I mean by it. Such a lovely smile you have. So many teeth, so sharp—

“How was it?”

As if you need to ask! As if I need to say. But still, I’d like to know:

“How was I?”