Given

(a writing prompt for Trifecta in honour of National Erotica Day)

“I’m worried,” Graeme said, sipping his coffee. She looked at him curiously, she’d never noticed his skin’s texture before, the smooth and rough of him, his scent. “That book you were given… you’re different.”

The first night she’d looked on that intricate symbol in the book and her dreams were vague and heated, and she’d awoken hungry for release, seeking it with her fingertips.

She’d been his friend for a year, a pure platonic friendship. Right now her body wanted him inside her.

The second night she’d drawn the symbol on her belly and dreamed of dark chambers and tall spires and a lover of inhuman beauty and appetites, waking shuddering to the cries of her own release.

“Is it some kind of cult thing? Maybe give it a break for a while. Let’s get away somewhere?” He touched her hand reassuringly. She shuddered in pleasure and he recoiled.

The third night her lover had walked her in his dream palace through an archway of pearl and she’d learned the touch of another woman, spending the next day in a fever for the coming night.

“Relax G, it’s… like meditation.”

Night four, rushing into sleep, into dream, her lover and another man this time, together, at once, and the next day each time her mind wandered she felt them again, felt it happening again.

“Okay,” Graeme sighed, “call me, okay?”
“Sure,” she lied imagining him naked and hard. She’d paid a tattoo artist to engrave the book’s intricate symbol on her and if the artist been embarrassed at the pleasure she’d shown as he inked her, he’d hidden it well.

Tonight would be the fifth night and the book promised… much. She barely noticed the waiter approach, then turned to him, opening her purse.

Her lover, of inhuman beauty and appetites, took her hand.  The cafe melted away like perspiration running across hot skin, revealing halls of marble and obsidian and the waiting, adoring, worshipers.

“The fifth night,” his voice burned, “and forever.”