“We’d better get going,” Siobhan slipped her phone back into her chosen purse for the day, a dainty yet faintly ominous pouch of black leather. I was pretty sure I knew how this evening was going to go, but I could think of at least a dozen powerful surprises small enough to fit in the tiny gaps between her phone, wallet, and lipstick. “The appointment’s at six-thirty,” I said, checking own phone and fumbling to get it ba...

Conner’s fingers twisted excitedly through mine as Linda, our head of HR, went over the instructions one last time. I pulled his hand behind my back so that she wouldn’t see the fervor of his anticipation. “Remember,” said Linda, “we’re here to celebrate LFM Solutions as a whole, and most especially our team members’ accomplishments. This should be a chance for everyone to feel genuinely appreciated and proud of their wor...

Prologue There had not been a lindworm sighting in the realm of Frosfiant for over three hundred years. King Thragor had dismissed the first reports of a great serpent, one that stretched and swelled the ground it passed over, as the imaginings of common folk with too little to gossip about. After his own best scouts had verified the nature of the tracks, however, he had promptly set a bounty for the beast’s live capture...

After the experience we’d had last year, there was no way Siobhan and I weren’t going to buy tickets for the next Comicorgy as soon as they were available. I was even more nervous this time around, however, as we presented our tickets at the gate. We were wearing the same revealing scarlet spandex costumes as before — Terrance and Tiffany Tempest — and I was pleased to have gathered a few knowing smiles and approving nods...

“Bree! Come on in, have a seat. Can I get you anything? Coffee?” “Please,” I answered Chris and nodded to his secretary, Jan. I felt a quiet rush of pride at the fact that she no longer needed to ask how I liked it. I had a standing coffee order in the office of Chris Fucking Jameson. How many people could say that? “A couple of things have come up that we need to go over,” he said, turning to tap away the lockscreen on h...

Brooke needed to fucking unplug. There was no one to talk to — complain to, more like — about the relentless noise of grinding gears in her head. After all, everything was going better for her than anyone could possibly ask for. She was the first woman to qualify for the Grand Prix in over 30 years — longer than she had even been alive. And she was going to be the first one to win. That was according to her, of course… bu...

“Hey, have you seen a Sarah Conner come through here?” I asked the cute little goblin woman minding the entrance of the Ms. Monster Maze. “Why, are you here to kill her?” the goblin answered playfully. I glanced down at the black leather jacket and t-shirt of my Terminator costume and put on my best Arnold voice. “Oh, no, we are fighting fate together now, haven’t you heard?” I hefted my orange-tipped shotgun over my shou...

It was nearly two in the morning, and we finally had the jacuzzi all to ourselves. I leaned against the warm massage jet at my back and stretched my arms out along the cool tiles of the rim, behind the shoulders of Siobhan and Abby on either side of me. They were each in their second swimsuit of the day, one-pieces this time, while their bikinis dried in Abby’s room. Siobhan was still in her favorite shade of red, while A...

The breeze coming off the nearby ocean was the perfect temperature. Siobhan rolled onto her side on the pool lounger beside mine. Her breasts pressed together, and she propped her head up on one hand and smiled. I took a glance behind me. The resort’s pool area was usually crowded, but it was early afternoon, and most of the guests were still at lunch. We were hardly alone, but no one was looking. I reached out, brushed a...

“Hi! Come on in.” The customer’s name was Mika, according to the work form. She turned out to be a woman about my age, with bouncy bobbed hair and a bubbly smile. She was dressed in a baggy t-shirt with an obscure cartoon character on it that had been my favorite as a kid. It was long enough that I wasn’t sure until she turned to lead me inside that she was wearing shorts underneath. I trained my eyes upward, to the back...

Siobhan and I had talked for years about checking out Comicorgy, but this was the first time everything had lined up for us to go. We’d settled on going as Terrance and Tiffany Tempest, a superhero couple of radiation-empowered scientists we’d always had a soft spot for. We’d really gone all out on the perfect costumes — skintight scarlet body suits with white accents and subtle raised lines, to suggest the presence of fu...

It had been two weeks since Rachel and I had hooked up, and my streak of missing appropriate windows to talk about stuff had firmly resumed. Rachel had practically asked me what I wanted, and I hid behind my dice. I’d been in the zone all night, so in tune with her, pushing and pulling just hard enough to keep her fully, ecstatically in the moment. But I still couldn’t tell her that I wanted to be more than a friend, and...

The weekend was almost over, and the last few sips of beer and wine swirled around the bottoms of our glasses as we fidgeted with them, none of us quite willing to finish. Siobhan and I were hosting three of her former roommates, all of whom, according to her passing comments, had “cleaned up nicely” since she had known them in college. I had no points of comparison to judge this for myself, but I could certainly agree th...

I want to say I had a feeling this would happen. I did have that feeling, but not in some kind of useful, psychic way. It felt just like any other intrusive thought. I told myself it was normal. Jitters. Like everyone must have on their wedding day. I breathed my way through hair and makeup and final fit check, and tried to smile and laugh along with my bridesmaids at the right intervals, as they tended to the details on...

It’s a relief to know that my chastity belt can recognize what’s going on, if belatedly, and I’m not in danger of literally crushing myself. Still, any idle fantasies I might have harbored about whispering, “The sky is red, water is dry” to myself in my room, just to see what it feels like to be comically well-endowed, evaporate within hours of bearing the curse. The smallest of fibs add up shockingly quickly. After just...