Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers: Magical Tales of Love and Seduction

Wolfed Tanith Lee

UNDER THE GLITTERING CLIFFS of skyscrapers, in the tangled night wood of neon, concrete, glass, and steel that calls itself New York City, he strayed from the path, and went into a little bar.

He was twenty-six years old, six foot four in height, and he weighed around one hundred and seventy-two pounds. He had the kind of face sometimes seen on celluloid, but once, that very year he thought he might make it as an actor, the middle-aged woman in the casting office had said to him, “Oh, honey. You’re just too good-looking. That blond hair and those black eyes — be warned. You’ll have a bad time here.” She then suggested something else. And when he did that, she was very generous, both with her surprisingly pretty body, and with the wad of bills he found later in his car. It was this that started him on his present career, the one he should have been pursuing right now, since he was down to his last twenty. So maybe the bar was a fine idea … or not. Really, it was the girl. She was the reason he came in. And she was not the sort of girl to be of any use. Because she wouldn’t need him, not at all.

As he sat down on the chromium stool at her side, practiced, he took her in, through the low, cave-dim light. But practice had not prepared him. He liked women a lot. Their voices, their bodies — oh, yes, those — their clothes and how they wore them. Their cosmetics even, jewelry, lingerie — everything about them. And this one—

She had a burnished hood of claret-red hair, matched neatly by her velvet gown, which being tight, backless, and nearly frontless, gave him an exquisite view of several rich curves, and a faultless pearl-cream skin. Then, imagine a deer in the wood who is truly a wicked — but beautiful — witch in disguise. That was her face. She had no makeup but for the black kohl around her eyes and on her lashes, that looked real and a full inch long, and the ripe scarlet on her full, smooth lips. No jewelry, good or cheap, on her slim arms, at her long, delicious neck, or in the lobes of her alabaster ears. However, where her shorter-than-short skirt rode up, just above the black lace of her long-legged stocking-tops, he noted a garter with a golden rose. And five years of having to do with gold, though seldom in the way of ownership, suggested the golden rose, like her lashes, was quite real.

He did not speak, but he saw from his vision’s corner, that she had turned to frankly study him. Perhaps she liked the look of him. Most women did. Suddenly she laughed, a great laugh, appealing, not too loud, not ugly, and not irritatingly coy. Lashes, gold, laugh — all genuine?

He turned, too, and gazed at her full on.

Oh, yes.

Her teeth were white, and her eyes the shade of green found in Han jade. She smelled faintly, warmly, of some smoky flower, perhaps not of the earth. Was that the catch — she was an X-Files alien?

“Thank you for laughing at me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, I liked it.”

“Why?”

“It means I’ve amused you. And I didn’t even have to tell a joke.”

She smiled now, and raising her glass — of some green cocktail less convincing that her Han-green eyes — she said “I laughed because you’re so handsome.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Do you?”

“Well … maybe. Shall I do it at you?”

“If you want.”

The few other customers were far off along the room, but now a waiter was floating down the bar counter, and the girl signaled, and he floated right over.

He knew now she would buy him a big drink, and she did, and when it had been served on its little white paper coaster, she said to him, “Will you tell me your name?”

“Sure. It’s Wolfgang. But you’ll believe I prefer to be called Wolf.”

“So we don’t gang up on you,” she said.

“Yeah, that’s it. And I guess they call you Red,” he added, guessing that he doubted that.

“Rose,” she answered.

She leaned a fraction toward him, and the white fruits of her breasts moved gently in the red velvet, just enough that he understood she had on no brassiere, and probably no underclothes at all, apart from the stockings with the garter.

“Rose,” he repeated. He let her hear it, that he was aroused. From the warm fragrance of her, the darkening of her eyes, he was suddenly recklessly banking on the fact that she was, as well. You had to take a chance sometimes. But you had to be careful, too. There had been that girl in Queens who looked like five million dollars, and turned out to have a habit, and a worse habit — which was a knife.

“Are you hungry?” said Rose.

“I’m always hungry.” He paused. “Not always for food.”

“Me neither,” said Rose.

Wolf glanced at those other customers. No one was looking at Rose, or himself, they were all lost, as most persons were, in their own involving lives. Just as well, perhaps, for she had put her slim white hand now on his crotch. It was the mildest, almost, you could say, the most tactful caress. But he came up like a rock against her.

“You’re interested,” she said.

“My. You can tell.”

“I’m so glad. Because you’re perfect, Wolf.”

“That’s nice.”

“I hope so.”

“What,” he said, as she removed her cruel, tender little hand, “did you have in mind?”

“Well, you see, it’s not really for me.” She watched him, watched his face change down, cool an iota. “No, this isn’t some trick, Wolf. It’s just, you see, I promised to take my grandmother something.”

“Your grandmother.”

Rose laughed, differently now. This was exuberant, even coarse, and yet, she could get away with it entirely. Muscles rippled lightly under red velvet dress and white velvet skin. Despite all his years of experience, he wanted badly to pull her close, and open his mouth, let out his tongue against, her ear, her throat, to taste the heat of her under her succulent sheath, and men he would like—

“It sounds unattractive, I know. But it isn’t. She isn’t. Grandmothers aren’t always elderly any more. I’m nineteen, and my grandmother — Ryder, that’s her name — is just, well, in her early forties.”

“That doesn’t sound like it’s legal.”

Rose shrugged.

“Or quite truthful,” he amended, sternly.

Rose picked up a little ruby purse, and slid out of it a small photograph. She held this out. When Wolf took it from her, he saw it showed a most beautiful, lion-maned woman, in a skin-tight leotard. Not young, but nevertheless voluptuous, limber, strong, and highly enticing.

“This is Grandma?” he said.

“That is she. And honestly, Wolf, the picture hasn’t been retouched.”

“You’d swear that on your mother’s life?”

“Can’t. No mother, now. I’d swear it on mine.”

Wolf emptied his glass. The girl raised her hand and the waiter stirred. Wolf said, “Maybe not. I don’t want you to waste your money.”

“I haven’t. Look, we’ll take a cab over there. Go up, and see. I know, when you meet Ryder, you’ll want to go in … if you take what I mean.”

“And if not?”

“No hard feelings. Make some excuse to her — wrong floor, wrong apartment. If you come straight back down, well, I’d wait around a while, and let’s say two hundred dollars for your wasted time. How’s that?”

“You guessed. Aw shucks.”

Rose leaned forward again. For a blissful moment, as she adjusted one crimson pump, he caught, in the scoop of neckline, the peek-a-boo flicker of an icing-sugar-pink nipple. The colors didn’t clash at all. And then her soft lips were on his, and her narrow tongue darted in and out — and was gone.

“I did so want to give her something lovely for her birthday,” said Rose. “And you are, Wolf, lovely as lovely is.”

The elevator had gold inside, not solid this time, but not bad: gold-plated.

When he alighted, and rang the gold-plated bell, her intercom came on.

“Is that you, honey?”

Ryder’s voice was low and sweet — and dangerous.

Wolf said, “I guess not.”

“Oh,” said Granny’s intercom. “Then what?”

“Rose — sent me up.”

“Rose did? Do I know a Rose?”

“She says she’s your granddaughter.”

“Oh, that Rose. Okay.”

The jet-black shining door opened wide, and showed him an enormous reception area, with black and white marble underfoot and on the walls, golded mirrors, a skylight set with milky glass shot by red jewels that threw down rosy blood-drops all over everything. There were no other furnishings, and just two engraved glass doors, opening somewhere else, presently closed. You couldn’t see through the engraving, not properly. But inside it looked fairly impressive.

He had been let straight in and he hadn’t yet seen Granny, in case he had to back off nicely if he didn’t care for her. But then, anyway, the elevator was a private one and this was the penthouse suite, so it would be kind of unlikely he had taken the wrong route, or made any mistake at all.

Just then the glass doors were pushed decisively open.

And there stood — Granny.

“What a wonderful voice you have,” said Granny. “Trained, yes?”

“I was an actor.”

“Not anymore? No more acting?”

“Not on a stage.”

She grinned. She had perfect teem, the teeth the best sort of predator would have. Which was about right. She definitely did exude the aura of a lioness. Even a lion. Almost as tall as Wolf, in her high-heeled slippers, and with a mane of gleaming platinum-to-silver hair, she wore otherwise a completely transparent robe, tied tight to her tightly muscular waist by a thin rope of Carrier gold. She was muscular all over, the way a dancer is, and maybe she was a dancer. On the muscles had been smoothed a satin padding of flesh, and over that a lightly tanned skin like honey. Her breasts were heavy, but edible. The urge to weigh them in the hands was overwhelming. And she had done just what they did in books, gilded her nipples. Under her round and muscular belly, which gave a little ripple even as his eyes irresistibly went there, a sort of little wave to him, her bush was of the same metallic effect as her mane.

She gave a kind of kick with one long, long, long leg. That was like a horse. But no, she was simply kicking out of the way a champagne cork lying on the mosaic — it was a mosaic — floor.

“My birthday party,” she explained. “They drank and drank. They all brought me presents, so I couldn’t turn them out. Would you like to finish the Dom Perignon? A couple of bottles still half full, I think, and I don’t drink alcohol on weekdays. It would be a kindness.”

“I guess I can force myself.”

“Then come on in.”

She turned and moved away. Her bottom was a stimulating sight. Yes, a dancer must be it — perhaps with a giant snake, winding and coiling about her amber body, caressing, slipping, its incredible muscles matched by her own.

The room was about two blocks big, with carpets on the walls that might have come from ancient Persia, and a single statue in bronze, of a girl holding up a dish, and in the dish lavish fruit: oranges, peaches, grapes — the proper stuff of an epic lust scene.

Had Rose already called up? She must have told Granny that she would like this present. Or why else had Granny come to the door clad fit to wake the dead?

She was returning with a large, sparkling crystal goblet about a foot long, somewhat the way he was feeling in a particular part of himself right now, and full of bubbling silvery-golden something.

“Wolf — that’s right, is it?”

Rose had called.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“My name is Ryder. I don’t look a day over forty-three, and I’m not.”

She deserved an accolade, though she probably received them always. “You don’t look more than thirty-three to me.” She didn’t, or not by very much. And though she had expression lines by her mouth, which was large and marvelously shaped and had the faintest gilded glisten on it, and by her eyes, which were as dark as his own and also gilded — they were of the variety of line that made you want to deepen them through laughter, and through loud cries that had nothing to do with sorrow or dismay.

“The trouble is,” said Ryder, putting her hand lightly on his shoulder, huge eye to eye with him, her slight, clean breath just blowing over his lips, scented by silk, musk, and savannah, “I didn’t know about you when I took the two herbal tablets. They’re terrific. They make you sleep for six hours. It’s been a tiring day. I calculate I have about forty minutes before those pills work. Do you think we could find something to kill forty minutes?”

Interestingly, her personal bathroom was even bigger man the two-block sitting room. And in the midst of its Grecian glacier of tiles and friezes, its ten-and twenty-foot, emerald colored plants that thrived on heat and steam, lay a very special Jacuzzi of ink-black marble.

“I love to get wet,” said Ryder. Then she added, “Do you mind short hair?” And drew off the mane, just as she had discarded her transparent robe and golden tie. Her own hair was also silver, a thick short fur over her head leading into a serpentine coil along her neck. This way, she looked more cat-like, more chancy even than before.

She stepped down into the tub, and lay along a marble ledge just under the water. There were a pair of black marble nymphs here, too, naked and glowing. Ryder lifted her arms and wrapped her hands loosely around their hips.

“Come in.”

So far, the water moved only gently, and through the little liquid thrills, her breasts, lifted by her arms, golden nipples glinting, bobbed and trembled as the water came and went. The way the water ran, he noticed, the nipples were getting particular attention. That must feel good, and obviously the ledge had been arranged for exactly this position and this treatment.

He took off his clothes, and Ryder watched him through half-lidded eyes. He could see she was pleased with him, very pleased. She wriggled her legs as he descended into the pool, and a spray of delicate cool-warm drops hit the surface of his chest and thighs, sprinkling like diamonds his already enormous erection.

“You’re a little ahead of yourself there,” she said.

He laughed.

The water was at a clever temperature, warmed enough to be comfortable but cool enough to brace. He eased onto the ledge beside her, and bent to her mouth. They kissed, tongues entwining like the serpent dance he had visualized, while his left hand and the water played over and over her big cushiony breasts, and her hard little nipples eagerly nosed after his fingers, wanting to be tickled. She made a deep luxurious moaning sound, again and again into his mouth.

When he lifted his head, a soft flush was on her face, making her look younger than ever. She pulled him over and on top of her, his penis lying delightfully trapped between their bellies, quivering uncontrollably with its own life.

Ryder polished his back with her hands, and slid them into the groove between his buttocks. She, too, began to play, while the water lapped with its own caress, creating a melting fire that trickled ever more strongly through into his loins, and until she had drawn out of him in turn a murmur of tortured pleasure. But he was now so hard that pleasure was stealing close to pain. He eased himself away from her.

“Step back off the ledge, but stay close,” she whispered. “Kneel facing me, where the groove is. Trust me, you’ll like it there. The water does something — special. Custom built.” He did what she said, and as he knelt on the smooth marble between her legs, she glided them up onto his shoulders, and her hands clasped firmly on the black stone nymphs. The speed and direction of the water intensified at once. It became insistent, skillful. It was probing at him in exactly the most apt of places, bubbling around and around his balls, and stroking, fierce, rhythmic, at his stem, while at the hugely engorged tip of him there began a ceaseless, miraculous suction, like that of the most amazing and cunning and unavoidable mouth in the world.

He said, “… Ryder—”

“Oh, Mr. Wolf,” she gasped. Her calves slid on his back. “Will you eat me?”

As the wicked water deliriously stroked and taunted and urged him, he bent into the wet sweet core of her vulva to kiss her better and better. Her hair, here was coarse and aromatic as summer grass. Her clit was small but totally erect, standing up to him like a pearl on fire. He licked her, licked her, to the tempo of the inescapable ecstasy chasing up and down along his spine, mounting like architecture in his groin, and felt the long quivers of a glorious complementary agony vibrating through her legs as he clasped her jerking hips in both his hands.

She lay spread before him, and he glimpsed her as she writhed, panting, clinging, and squeezing at the nymphs as if she were drowning, so that the jets of water they controlled were increasing, going wild, roiling over the maddened gems of her nipples, and working upon his penis like five or six desperate tongues and one starving loving mouth. He could feel Ryder’s tension churning and swollen beneath his grasp, banked up against her clit as if behind a dam, galloping in her vagina, the whole golden pulsing hill of her pelvis.

Her eyes were fluttering. Her vulva was fluttering.

And he had only moments left to him.

She heard him groan aloud, and she breathlessly teased like a naughty little girl, “Oh, he’s starting to come — he can’t resist — he’s going to, he’s going to come—” but then her breathing and voice broke entirely in her first soaring scream.

A spasm as huge as the whole skyscraping tower that contained him shook Wolf to his roots. He roared, arching against her, smothered in her, even as the lights exploded, frantically, gaspingly, swirling and slapping with his tongue on and on upon that burning orgasmic pearl of hers, to hear her screaming, so the marble room rolled and boomed like a bell, and her golden heels beat against him like the drums of paradise.

To his amazement, when he was only fourteen, Wolf had learned that there was life after orgasm. Heaven knew how.

He had to admit he was sorry, however, that Ryder had had to go and sleep off her two herbal sleeping capsules. There were lots of things they could have done, after an interval. Instead she had left him the run of her apartment, all the rooms excluding her bedroom, dressing room, and the bathroom with the fascinating Jacuzzi.

So he wandered a while through her studio, which was indeed equipped for dancing and exercise, and also partly as the most economical, effective — she proved it — and female gym he had ever seen. He viewed the study, the swimming pool of chartreuse water in the conservatory, the music and book library with a piano and a music system that had spread gold-rimmed speakers all through the apartment, the computer room — small, yes, but astounding—guest rooms, eating rooms, roof garden, three more bathrooms out of Spartacus or Jupiter’s Darling, and so on. And … so forth.

The kitchen was the tiniest room. Even so, it had everything the health- or diet-conscious — or even the simply greedy and thirsty — could wish for.

Ryder was opulent, but trusting. Which was warming. Wolf had always had his own code and behaved well, which he had not always been credited with. A meeting of social graces.

He ate some smoked salmon and some creamy chicken, a poppy-seed bagel, and a salad of dark green cress, frilly lettuce, and yellow tomatoes. He finished the first of the three half-empty bottles of champagne.

It was back in the sitting room that he found her note. It was to him, and he didn’t know when she had written it. Possibly, even before he had arrived at the apartment.

Wolf, once we part, I’ll be out, dead, for six or seven hours. So I’ll see you tomorrow, if you care to stay over. (The guest rooms have everything.) Meanwhile, I think Rose may be coming back, around midnight. She’s been very sweet to me, and I’d like to be really sweet to her, too. I’m not actually her grandma. You may have guessed. That’s a little — how shall I say? — joke. Did you like Rose, too? I hope you did. I’m sure you did. You have, I think, excellent taste. Yum. So, let me tell you what Rose really likes. Get ready:

Wolf read on. He raised an eyebrow, recalled he was not on camera, raised both eyebrows.

He laughed again. “Oh, boy.”

Then he sat down to consider.

Twenty minutes later, at ten fifty-one precisely, he strolled into the second dressing room that led from the closed bedroom of his sleeping hostess.

It was like stuff he had seen backstage and in the caravans of the movie lot. Only a good deal more generous, and expensive to the point of being fabulous, the essence of fables.

At least two hundred gowns. At least a hundred and fifty wigs. All of them beautiful, the most realistic, the most exclusive. And in drawers, when he opened them, smiling and already aware of something else, all the pure Indian and Chinese silk, and handworked lace, all the patterned and mist-sheer stockings, garter belts, waspies, buttoned gloves, that any woman of that turn of mind could have conjured. All the makeup, too, every lip-paint, blusher, mascara, shadow, tint, texture, contour, highlight … A Garden of Eden for any girl who liked these things.

Or any man who liked them, too.

It had been a revelation, the first time. The rich girl in Idaho who, in her long white house, had dressed them up together, saying, when she had finished painting him, lacing him, putting on his costume, “Well, just look at you.” “I’m way too tall,” Wolf had commented, staring at himself, or rather at this new herself in the mirror. “Sugar, I just don’t think,” said the rich girl, “that anyone’d mind that. The hell of it is, you’re prettier than me.”

Not since then. Not quite. Though now and then … just flirting with a pair of panties, hose, softly silicone-padded bra.

He liked women. The look and feel of them. He liked making love to them. He liked what they wore, their perfumes, and the unguents they stroked on to their faces and over the curves of their breasts. And the stockings they drew up their legs, and the lisping of the silky stuff over their bodies. Once or twice, just … once or twice. He dreamed of it. She, and he, also a she.

Apparently, it was just this very thing that turned Rose on. A slim, handsome man, disguised — as a woman.

He was erect again. He was thinking of Rose now. Rose all freely moving and warm and white and spilling over in her red dress, and the stocking-tops, and the garter, and he, Wolf, perhaps in that one, there, the black number. Because it was a fact, the garments that fitted Ryder’s big firm body, would fit him just as neatly.

He’d need that bathroom with its razor for guests and its creams and glosses. He’d need some more champagne, too. And it was already eleven. He would have to hurry.

But then, the actor is expert at changing costume fast, and everything else that goes with it.

Rose let herself into Ryder’s apartment at a quarter past midnight. The lights were low, and the softest music was playing. As she opened the two glass doors into the vast sitting room, Rose called quietly, “Ryder? It’s me, are you around?”

“I’m afraid she’s dead,” said a low, light, husky voice from the couch.

“What?” said Rose.

“Sorry. I mean she’s dead to the world. Herbal sleeping tablets.”

“Yeah,” said Rose. “And who are you?”

The tall, beautiful woman on the couch re-crossed, with an electric rasp, her sheerly-stockinged legs, revealing, as she did so, the long black tongue of a garter belt, under the black satin hem of her dress. Her hair was a mane of foaming black curls, just lit with a streak or two of silver. She was big, but slender, her stomach flat, her breasts, under the high-necked gown with its collar of black sequins, rather small. Her face was truly something, smooth as bone china, with a crimson mouth and somber velvet eyes.

“Who am I? You can call me — Nana.”

“Oh, Nana.” Rose smiled. She leaned right down to adjust her pumps, and as she did so, she put her hand against her bosom, so that only the upper swell of her breasts was visible. She tossed her claret hair. “My,” said Rose, “what big eyes you’ve got, Nana.”

“Research shows,” said Nana, idly, standing up and bringing the champagne, “that the larger your eyes are, the better you can see.”

“Really?” Rose took the glass, and extracted a few sips. “And does research tell me why you’re wearing my grandmother’s French perfume?”

“It tells me she’s not your grandmother. Way too young.”

“True. It’s our joke, hers and mine. When we met, you see, she said, Now, Rose, stop that — I’m old enough to be your grandmother. Now you understand. So, tell me why the perfume?”

“Because she left it for me, in the guest bathroom. Along with the nail polish.”

Rose observed the nails of Nana. “ ‘Savage Sunset,’ ” deduced Rose. “Like the lips. Blood red. Mmm. Have you been biting and clawing? Have you been eating someone?”

“I admit, I like to eat women.”

“Poor, helpless, older women, all alone in their humble homes.”

“And little girls in short red dresses.”

“Oh, Nana, what big teeth you have.”

“Forget about the teeth. Look at the tongue.”

Rose lowered her eyes.

Nana, in her high black heels, now towered over her. Rose swayed toward Nana, pliant, almost confiding.

“Do you know, Nana, there’s this bulge — just there. Yes, just where I have my hand. Are you pleased to see me?”

“Extremely pleased.”

“Yes, you do seem pleased.”

Rose slipped her hands around Nana’s buttocks and massaged them and pulled them inward. She rubbed against the mysterious bulge in Nana’s satin groin, back and forth, back and forth.

Nana tilted back her head and closed her eyes.

Nana was feeling very near the edge again.

It had started as she shaved herself and creamed herself, and it got more and more as she dressed in the cool shivery silk and it slithered and shivered all over her, and kept on slithering and shivering and slithering, teasing at her, and then the warm, tactile silicone padding, of the brassiere rubbed on her nipples, her male nipples, which were the nipples of none other — what a shock! — than Wolf. And by the time the stockings were hooked to the garter belt, it was with enormous — enormous being the absolutely right word — difficulty that Wolf packed his rampant and colossally aroused penis into the satin and lace modesty pouch.

“If you keep on at that, Rose, I’m not going to be able to hold on to myself—”

Rose shook her head with surprise, and ran her arms all up him, all up Nana, and lifting herself up his body, by some magical acrobatic feat, somehow lifted up Nana’s skirt as she came, and wriggled down the pouch, so out popped the gigantic rearing waving almost howling snake, red-hot to bursting. And supporting herself on his shoulders, while Wolf-Nana held her up by his hands cupping the smooth round little curves of her bottom, Rose sank on to the snake, absorbed it deep within her divine recesses, and so began to dance.

“Oh, Nana — how big — how big—”

Wolf pushed hard against and into her. He must think of other things. Not silk, not being danced upon. Not her wonderful enfolding vagina, that had him now as if it would never let him out. And not—decidedly not — about the white breasts rising up now from the neck of the dress, blinking their two adorable shy pink eyes at him, going in again, creeping up again, appearing, vanishing, and creeping up—

Think about the wood.

Think about the city.

Think about the stars.

But the wood is all thick and twinkling with white, half-naked young women, their breasts playing hide-and-seek, their naked bottoms filling the hands, and their legs wrapped tight around the waist where the corset is, and the silk, and the brassiere above, tweaking him innocently so two ravenous little stars ignite there, and Rose is throwing back her head, her neck is arched, her breasts rise like two moons, first with a faint flush, and then with her nipples all bare and upright, and he is going to, again — going to—

Think of the moon.

The moon is a breast.

Think of — think — of — the subway—

A tunnel, lined with wet eager velvet—clinging, surging—the train is—coming—

Think—

“Oh, Wolf—faster—”

He is on the couch — did they fall? — and she is on top of him, and he is thrusting and thrusting her home upon him, with his hands on her bottom, and her dress is just a red rope around her middle, and her breasts tickle his lips, and he is nuzzling them, and now she is gasping, and now giving a little sound nearly like the start of the first word of a sentence — Oh, come, Rose, come, oh, come into the garden, Maud — oh, Rose, Rose, come before it’s too late—

And then she comes.

She makes a noise like laughter, and she shudders all over, again and again, and he sees her, shuddering, laughing in ecstasy, her breasts and her hair, and he rushes her body up and down the length of him, and tingles and rills and impossible yawns of unbelievable pleasure tumble up his spine and across his blood and through his penis, until he detonates, in what must be the fireworks display of the century, but, alas, all invisible inside her.

In the early morning light, punctual as a clock, after her six or seven hours, Ryder wakes up and joins Rose and Wolf-Nana, and they shower together and eat a small but healthy — and nourishing — breakfast, and go back to bed, which is Ryder’s bed, all lambent with her scent and the size of Central Park. And here the two women praise all Wolf-Nana’s virtues, which are many, and play games all over him, until in the end, in a knot of limbs and hair and laughs and shudders and spasms and shrieks, they are coming together, and coming apart, and coming and coming and coming.

And perhaps, being so well-suited as they are, at the top of that cliff in the city wood, they will live happily ever after.