"You can't seduce the Orc. The Orc does not care that you have a comeliness score of eighteen. The Orc only sees that you are a High Elf. From an Orcish standpoint, you're rather ugly."

   "Ugly?"

   "You're short, thin, pale, and have weird purple eyes. You can't be very sturdy, because you have no muscles to speak of, and your bones are as thin as a bird's. What self-respecting Orc would find that attractive?"

   "I have big tits!"

   "Which means most Elves would probably find you unattractive as well," Magister mutters, sotto voce. Fortunately, the High Elf mage in question is too distracted by his frantic rule-searching to notice.

   I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised that the new guy would want to play a character of the opposite gender from his own solely as an excuse to get his character laid and would want the character to be a stereotypical porn star, only with purple eyes, pointy ears, and enough magical ability to take down a balrog when she is not coupling with other characters in the adventure. So far, "Perditiel" has seduced nearly every non-player capable of consent, regardless of race or sex, or killed them, regardless of whether the NPC was even an adversary. At least the other player characters have so far been deemed off-limits. Small mercies.

   "Why do you want to seduce an Orc?" I sigh. "You're an Elf. Your race doesn't like Orcs any more than Orcs like yours."

   "I need to interrogate her. Where there's one Orc, there's a war party."

   This is one of the few things Lydia's cousin has said all afternoon that even makes a modicum of sense, although seduction is not the usual method an Elf would probably choose to pry out an Orc's secrets. Unfortunately, in this case, the Orc in question is not part of a war party; she's the rogue employer who is about to hire a band of adventurers to break into a powerful wizard's house and steal a valuable enchanted artifact. We already exhausted what was going to be a two-weekend dungeon crawl in a home-brewed campaign, courtesy of Lydia's cousin finding a loophole in the game rules that allowed him to charge up a jeweled golden falcon the party found in a treasure hoard, turn it into the equivalent of a heat-seeking nuclear missile, and slay the red dragon that was guarding the dungeon. Now I'm on my second adventure. I'm not sure I want to know how the cousin will make himself temporarily as powerful as a demigod and kill the rival wizard. It probably won't involve something as boring as cooperation with other players, though.

   I sigh again. "Fine, Perditiel. Have it your way. Make a charisma check."

   He rolls.

   "Terrific. It's a success. You seduce the Orc. You don't expect me to describe what happens in detail, do you?"

   "I want to know all the Orc's secrets. Where is she from? Who is she working for? What does she want? Where are the other Orcs?"

   This may be the only opportunity I get to get the game back to its plot, so I quickly launch into debriefing my characters on their mission.

   And then I realize that it's time for a summit meeting. Things have gone far enough.

   We confer in front of the refrigerator. Ostensibly, Lydia and I are in the kitchen for more soda and chips to take back to the living room, but of course, that's only an excuse to be here. Our real reason is a little more serious.

   No, this isn't awkward. Not at all. It doesn't matter one iota to either of us that at one point about a year ago, we were in a passionate clinch a couple of feet from where we're now standing. We're not even thinking about that. And if we are thinking about it, we're not going to discuss it.

   "How do I put this?" I try to think of a way to bring up the immediate problem with the gaming dynamics tactfully, but there isn't one. "Your cousin's gaming style leaves a bit to be desired. He's making it hard for me to run campaigns for everybody else."

   "If he was any more of a munchkin, he'd be handing out lollipops on behalf of the guild," Lydia says flatly. "Sorry. I had no idea he'd be this much of a problem. He flies back home tonight, so this is the last time we'll have to deal with him in the game."

   "Mind if I kill him off early and remove him from play?"

   "You sound like you already have a plan."

   I smile nastily. "You could say that."

   "The wizard's garden is bathed in spring sunshine. You hear bees buzzing as they go about their work, and birds singing, and the gurgle of a nearby stream as it flows along on its way to the ornamental pond that you can see at the end of the garden. All around you are roses and irises, and lavender at the start of its bloom. In front of you, sitting in the middle of the neatly manicured lawn, on a small hill, is a gazebo."

   "How big is it?" the cousin asks suspiciously.

   "It's – gazebo sized. I don't know. Fifteen feet around, ten or fifteen feet high, maybe?"

   "Built like a brick house. It must be an ogre of some kind."

   Astonishing. The cousin has never heard of gazebos, let alone the gazebo joke? Good grief, the gazebo joke is several years old. Doesn't everybody read Dragon magazine? Is he setting me up? I had originally been preparing some killer clematis and ranunculus. This is too easy. I do some quick mental calculations.

   "No, it's not an ogre. It's a gazebo."

   "It's toast. I'm going to roast it with fireballs!"

   Not a set-up? Surely this opportunity has a set-up attached to it. Then again, to have a set-up attached, Munchkin would need to know my plans.

   Well, if anything would "kill" a wooden gazebo, it would be fireballs. "Okay. Roll against intelligence, with a difficulty of two." He'd better not get a critical success.

   He rolls.

   I chortle maniacally.

   Silence falls.

   "You rolled a one? Oh, dear. You couldn't have picked a worse moment. The gazebo, which had been slumbering on the grassy knoll, wakes up to the sound of your botched incantations and finds your off-key voice offensive. Roll for initiative."

   I decided two minutes and thirty seconds ago that a gazebo, if awakened, should be as powerful as a greater deity. No matter how high Lydia's cousin rolls, he won't be able to beat the gazebo's power.

   Within minutes, the garden is back to normal, and the gazebo is quiet and sleepy; although a perceptive visitor will see some pieces of a dead munchkin buried in a compost heap under a pile of splinters. Gazebos eliminate waste rapidly; their healthy, quick digestion process helps in the efficient production of mulch. This is one reason gazebos are sought out as garden caretakers.

   The adventurers move on toward the wizard's house, minus one party member. They have no mage of their own now, but should they have the bad luck to alert the wizard to their presence (which they probably will, given how his house is booby-trapped – setting off alarms will be inevitable even without the added problem of a noisy and bizarre gardening accident) they do have other options. Wizards might be subtle and quick to anger, but they are also vulnerable to being stabbed in the back by well-wielded knives. I'm sure the assassin in the adventuring party will realize this should it become necessary.

   Graduation day arrived; of course, I was invited, and of course, I attended. Lydia now has a bachelor's degree in philosophy. She also has a bachelor's degree in accounting, courtesy of her double major, so of course she actually has a job waiting for her.

   Taking the job entails moving to Portland. She had interned there in late November through December and lived with her father for the duration of the internship. Internships are a solid way to land a job offer, especially when the internship in question is obtained through family connections. It was a smart decision on her part. So was taking her father's suggestion to declare a second major.

   "You will stay in touch, won't you?" I ask. "Send me email." Since her father gave her a brand new computer as a graduation present, she gave me her old one. I am now the proud owner of a used computer setup. Magister and I have something on which to use the floppy disk we got in the mail from AOL a few weeks ago. And no, I'm not just hoping to create my own AOL account so that I can hear from Lydia after she moves. Although that factors in.

   "Of course, I will."

   I don't want to get my hopes up. I strongly suspect she won't.

   It's probably for the best.

   It doesn't hurt. No, really, it doesn't. It never does, provided, of course, you have no heart to be broken in the first place.

   I have a culinary experiment going on. It's called "poule au pot for the completely lazy cook." Authentic poule au pot recipes all rely on an awful lot of frying and fussing. The ingredients have to be fried in butter or olive oil – yes, that includes a whole chicken, also a side of ham, since European bacon is closer to what we Americans think of as ham than it is to what we call bacon – before being simmered on a stove in a large casserole dish or roasting pan, just long enough to cook all the way through but not so long that the meat falls off the bone and the contents become soup, then transferred in the roasting pan to the oven so that the cooked meat cooks even longer, which means frequent basting to ensure the meat doesn't dry out and become tough. Then all the ingredients have to be removed and set aside while the broth is reduced into gravy. The result is delicious, but very time-consuming and labor-intensive; also, it practically orders arteries to harden ("Toughen up! We know you can take more butter! Wimps!") and I think the ingredients would taste almost as good if they were simply boiled into a stew. The only way to prove my hypothesis correct, of course, is to test it, so I have a frying chicken and a small ham boiling in a stockpot with some wine and herbes de Provence added to the water. In a couple more hours I'll add the carrots, leeks, celery, mushrooms, and potatoes. All the vegetable ingredients will be tied into pretty little bundles or sectioned off in cheesecloth bags, just like in the original recipe, so the presentation shouldn't suffer too much. The dish will be ready in time for supper.

   Another, even lazier version of poule au pot, also one I invented, involves simmering everything in a crock pot in a base of homemade gravy. I'll try that on a day when we both have to work and so won't be home until after nine.

   Shortcuts are not cheats. They're creative variations.

   They let me do things like dance with Magister while I'm cooking dinner.

   This afternoon, I presented him with a mix tape I'd made earlier in the day. I used to make mix tapes a lot when I was a teenager, but that was when I had a stereo of my own and a library of records, cassettes, and compact discs. I left those behind in one of my moves. However, public libraries have extensive music collections of their own, and Magister has his small stereo in the living room, and blank cassette tapes aren't very expensive, so I decided to make him a present. The music is mostly classical. There are a couple of New Age pieces on it, though, and some pop songs – one a Bryan Ferry song that reminded me of him, a couple of Moody Blues pieces, and a few others, most of them from the early to mid-seventies. They seemed to fit.

   Magister found the latter selections amusing.

   "You do realize these were hits when I was young, don't you? Was that deliberate on your part?" He smiled at me when he said that. "Trying to make me feel old?"

   "Bah. You're not old." I hadn't thought of that while I picked the songs. For the most part, I don't usually think about his age. I'm aware that there are two decades, an entire generation, between us, of course, and I can't say that I see him as a peer, exactly, but neither do I think of him as an "older man," let alone as old. He's just himself. "I thought they suited us."

   And so, we're dancing, like twin planets in search of a sun, slowly orbiting the chest that sits more or less in the center of the living room. Then the Jefferson Starship song that I put on the tape starts playing, and I catch my breath.

   "They're singing about Thelema, aren't they?" I ask. "Or at least about sex magick."

   "Entirely possible."

   I stop our rotation to sway in place with him. I'm listening to the lyrics, and for some reason, I have a hard time moving my feet or otherwise dancing when I'm concentrating hard on the music or the lyrics to which I dance. This is probably why I don't dance often. "They are. The song isn't just a metaphor. The singers are ascending through love and sex. It's about Thelemic sex magick. It's got to be. Oh, my Erastes. This needs to be our song."

   "Hmm. It does seem to suit us, doesn't it? All right. We'll have a song." He smiles. "I suppose if we're going to do something traditional and sentimental like having an official song for our relationship, we might as well use one that references Aleister Crowley. However obliquely."

   We sway together, memorizing each other's faces with our lips and fingers as we do so.

   "I think it's time for a dip," he says. "It wouldn't be a romantic slow dance without a dip, now, would it?" Seconds later, I'm leaning back, giggling, with my head suspended above the floor. When he pulls me back up, our mouths meet briefly. And then I feel his teeth on my neck, biting slowly but firmly; my knees give in as the sweet, inexorable spasm grips me between my legs. I tremble in place, braced only by his arms, tossed by orgasmic pleasure; a tree in wind.

   Within a few short moments, we're both on the floor, seeking each other, and finding.

   "I love being able to cry with you if I cry," I say, as I get the buttons of his shirt open, and he works at the zipper on my pants. "Did you know I never used to cry much, until you somehow got me to do it? I don't even know if it was the pain. I've been hurt before, after all – it goes along with being bullied in school. It wasn't the same. Somehow you find ways to get under my skin. But if I'm going to cry, I want to do it in your arms. It feels good when you hold me. Your holding me when I cry feels good even when you were the one who made me cry. It makes the crying itself feel good. Isn't that weird?"

   I feel him smile against me as he buries his face in my shoulder, planting sharp little kisses along my neck and chest. Little kisses, little bites that make me gasp. "It's supposed to feel good, eromene," he murmurs. "Otherwise, there wouldn't be much point."

   His silvering hair is soft and fragrant when I kiss the crown of his head. When I concentrate, I can feel a slight glow, and I bask in warmth.

   Our naked bodies embrace each other, melting into each other, trying to forget that they are two instead of one. He pushes my legs apart and drives himself into me deeply, making me cry out. It hurts; it feels good. I want more.

   The lyrics break through the heat of my passion again for a few moments, because one word that I'm sure I used to be very familiar with is now unfamiliar to me, and I find that distracting and can't let it rest. "My love?"

   "Yes, eromene?" Of course, he isn't stopping; he doesn't have my distraction-by-nitpicking problem. His focus, as always, is unbreakable. The way he's doing what he's doing almost makes me forget what I wanted to ask him.

   "What does it mean when... when the lead singer is... singing 'Allez?' I... I haven't studied French since... I was... in lower school. Oh. Oh, my. That... I like that..."

   "Good angle? You like that, do you? I'll have to do more of it. Like this?" He smiles down at me. I have no idea how he can keep talking so calmly while he is pushing into me like that. He isn't even breaking his rhythm.

   Meanwhile, I'm groaning hoarsely, bucking my hips, desperately impaling myself on him.

   He pins me down with one hard rocking of his pelvis and resettling of his weight, making me cry out from a bizarre combination of frustration and pleasure. I can't move anymore, although I try anyway. "Ask me nicely, now. Your voice sounds so sweet when you beg."

   "Please. Don't stop. Please, more, my love, please, I'll do anything for you..."

   "Yes. You will." He leans down to cover my mouth with his as he thrusts, taking my jaw in one hand and holding me in place. His kiss enters me, insinuating, stealing my breath away. I gasp in sudden weakness and dizziness. "And I will always love and cherish you for it, among many other things about you. I think later tonight we'll see what else you'll do for me if I ask. Oh. Loosely translated, it means 'let's go,' or 'come with me.' Allez, beloved," he murmurs in my ear, as he grabs my calves and pushes my thighs higher to drive himself into me even more deeply. "Allez... Allez..."

   With every thrust, he wrings a sharper cry from me.

   When we are both spent, I find myself gazing at his naked body, how it glows in the square of golden afternoon sunlight that we are lying in. If I wanted to look away, I couldn't, but I don't want to. The glow is warm, as warm as inner light. My own body lies next to his, and my arm, next to his arm, is white stone, reflecting sun. We are alabaster statues in a temple, illuminated by warmth.

   I whisper, "I love you more than words can say."

   "That's what making love is for." He covers my mouth with his. He strokes my forehead; his fingers feel like velvet against my skin. We have more to tell each other, so much more, that will not fit into words. Some of it needs to be told now, sharply and sweetly, but of course, there is still so much more to making love after that. A lifetime of telling would not be enough to tell it all.

   Oh, my Erastes.

   We're snuggled on the couch going through Magister's latest haul of independently published newsletters and small-press BDSM periodicals. The air conditioner is going full blast, and the couch is right in front of it; on a miserably hot day like today, this is the only way to stay comfortable. I'm getting a crash course in scene etiquette and traditions. From what I've seen so far, I don't think I want to get involved, but Magister thought it would be a good idea for me to at least be familiar with my own subculture, which seems sensible enough. There are, at any rate, worse ways to spend a muggy August morning.

   There is apparently a bandanna for every kink that exists – at least, for every common and relatable kink. Somehow, I don't see too many people advertising a fondness for inflatable doll worship, or for sex with luggage, or for necrophilia.

   Wearing a scarf or some other prominent accessory on the left side indicates a preference for doing, while wearing the same article on the right side of the body indicates a desire to have the same action done to you. There doesn't appear to be much mixing and matching. The convention also doesn't seem to be strictly limited to gay bars anymore, although that's where it originated. Now I know why he tied the black silk scarf onto my right wrist when he gave it to me. Black is for edge play, pain, and extremes in general. Extreme. That would be us.

   "I must admit, I find some of these paraphilias baffling, but de gustibus non est disputandem. I wonder what a tie-dyed scarf would indicate?" I ask him.

   "An LSD fetish?"

   I elbow him in the ribs and go back to reading.

   And grimace.

   "Good grief, this is sexist," I complain. "Where are the women who play the top? Are we really that rare?"

   "Hardly. Professionally, for instance, the vast majority of female sex workers who cater to kink are dominatrixes – which makes sense, if you think about it. It takes a lot of trust simply to submit to someone you know. Submitting to a client whom you've never even met before getting sent out by an escort agency? That takes a rare and special kind of nerve. And unfortunately, sexual assault is a very real hazard of sex work, and women who do sex work are disproportionately at risk. Add to that the general perception that people who play the bottom do so because they want to be abused, and – well. Professional submissives of both sexes receive very high client fees as a result, about twice as much as dominatrixes do, because dominatrixes are so much more common. In the scene, meanwhile? It depends on where you live and what group you belong to. Most of the groups I know of in the Midwest do indeed cater to male dominants and female submissives, when the couples are of both sexes. I'm not sure why. It might be because we live in a conservative part of the country, and there's some unresolved tension regarding gender roles. Move west to California and you'll find it more common for groups to be predominantly comprised of dominant women and submissive men, if they aren't single-sex pairings. Dominant men like me are as scarce as hen's teeth in San Francisco, at least, those of us who also happen to be heterosexual."

   I make a sour face. "That's lopsided, too."

   "You might like one group I heard of that is based out of Los Angeles. It was founded by a married couple that happens to lead a Wiccan coven. They're also, independently of their spiritual roles, both BDSM switches. Dominance and submission, sadism and masochism – the full axis. Between Beltane and Samhain, the half of the pagan year ruled by the Goddess, the wife is the High Priestess of their coven and has dominance over her husband. Between Samhain and Beltane, the half of the year that is associated with the Horned God, Consort of the Goddess, her husband is dominant and is the High Priest of the coven. Mind you, I don't think there's any deliberate overlap between their domestic lifestyle, and what they do in the coven – oh, yes, they're lifestylers, too, their roles aren't limited to play that goes on in the bedroom, they actually live as Mistress and slave or Master and slave in the rest of their domestic life as well, depending on what time of year it is; it just worked out that whichever of them is currently dominant also happens to take the active leadership role in religious ritual, probably because the polarity affects their energy. The BDSM group that they are the public face for, meanwhile, has a higher-than-usual incidence of switches, and among the less switchable members of the group, the number of male dominants and female dominants is roughly equal."

   "That does sound nice," I say. Nice is an understatement. It's the sort of arrangement I would probably find ideal for my own life if only I could swing it, if I ever felt a need for something resembling a social life. "Why can't all groups be like that?"

  "I don't know."

   "Why are the switches brushed off in so many other instances? Most of what I read assumes that a person must be one thing or another: dominant or submissive, sadistic or masochistic, no playing both sides of the fence or you're not serious or you don't know who you are. It's like being bi, only worse, to everybody else – I've told you how lesbians won't accept that I like men, and straight people don't like that I want women, right? What am I, chopped liver?"

  "You, dear one, are not chopped liver." He turns my head around so that he can reach my lips with his and gives me a kiss that starts out warm and eventually sears me down to my toes. "Alas, I have no easy answer for you as to why so much of the subculture does not like to acknowledge its switch hitters. It does seem rather odd, especially given that arrangements like ours, where one partner plays the submissive to a more experienced dominant to learn the art, are fairly common, although the majority of those relationships do not also involve a magickal apprenticeship such as the one we have. I think perhaps many people are uncomfortable with grey areas. Ambiguity can be challenging."

   I still don't think I would find a home in the scene. I find it surprising that he was so active in it when he was younger, but then, he doesn't have the advantage of extreme flexibility that I have – his switchability seems to be limited at best. Learning by being done to wasn't an option for him. He doesn't talk about his experiences much, but I'm getting the impression that while he might have had a fair share of women in his bed years ago (it was, after all, the 1970s when he came of age) he played the role of voyeuristic wallflower more often than not if the setting was a public one. Every time I try to imagine him getting involved in a public scene in a nightclub or at a play party, my mind trips up on the image. He's so intensely private.

   "So 'zines like this are how other pervects communicate with each other and try to meet up, if there are no actual social groups or support groups in a given city?" I ask. "It's like looking at the bastard child of an amateur press literary magazine and a mail-order bride catalog, with Hustler acting as the drunken fairy godfather at the naming ceremony."

   "Pretty much," he agrees. "If you live in a major metropolis, where the BDSM scenes are large and active and extremely diverse, there's little need to communicate via pen pal lists and periodicals. If you live in a small town, or even a mid-sized city like ours in a conservative part of the country, finding folk of like mind, if that is important to you, gets rather more difficult. It's a common enough kink, in its milder expressions anyway, so finding a romantic partner to handcuff to the bed or give you the occasional spanking probably won't pose too many problems, but if you want to socialize with birds of your feather, or find someone to play with who is more hardcore, it gets problematic."

   "Hence the various ways to use the mail to meet other people."

   "Yes."

   I glance down. "Well, the personals speak for themselves. I could see how someone who lived out in East Oshkosh would want to advertise availability in a magazine, because spontaneously meeting someone compatible in East Oshkosh would be rather unlikely. Though not impossible. I seem to recall bumping into someone randomly in a bookstore." I smile. "I could also see where going through one of these magazines would be like consulting a cookbook for food preparation ideas – the bondage illustrations in particular. I can just imagine someone pinning one of the pictures up to use as a pattern while trussing their partner up with rope. So that's useful. I really like this one picture, by the way, the one where the woman has her girlfriend tied up to a tree – it's very artistically done. Also very romantic. You can see by the way they're looking at each other that they love each other very much. The photographer must have had fun doing that particular shoot. You know, I bet my first ex-girlfriend would have wanted to see this."

   "Down, girl," he says, with a grin. "I don't want drool on my periodicals."

   "Then distract me or move the periodicals out of my way. And you're drooling, too. You've been poking me in the back for some time, now."

   He proceeds to go about distracting me. As it transpires, I am easily distracted.

   Mud squishes under our shoes as we walk along the path that overlooks the river gorge. It's not exactly a narrow path, but wet fallen leaves and slippery rocks make careless walking treacherous, and there is a steep slide downhill that, at best, would end in a close encounter with jabbing underbrush, at worst, in an involuntary bath in rapids that have been swollen with autumn rain; so we're taking this section of trail at a slow and careful pace. The earlier part of the trail was gently sloped, even paved in parts, and led to a rather nice overlook from where we could see the waterfall, or, if we preferred to walk just a little farther, a wide cave mouth; it's a popular part of the park to visit, though, even on wet, chilly days in late fall, so we're pushing on. I'm glad this is a day we both have off, because it means we can take our time. There are rocks and trees in this park that have graffiti carved into them from the nineteenth and even the eighteenth centuries, left by wandering trappers, soldiers, and settlers; looking for their carved signatures and initials is half the fun of walking this trail.

   After a particularly rugged section that has me wishing for a walking stick, he looks around, sees something on his right, and veers off onto what I would be tempted to call a goat track, except I'm pretty sure, given the crushed beer can that I can see in the scrub brush, it was made by teenagers, not goats.

   He looks over his shoulder and beckons. "This way," he says, and I do my best to tiptoe in mud and wet leaves without stumbling. He's more sure-footed than I am; he has to stop every few minutes to wait for me to catch up to him.

   Eventually, we are perched side by side on a large, moss-covered log, overlooking a gully that leads down to the river.

   It's a long way down.

   "Excellent. We have a good view of the river, and we're just exposed enough to the mist that we'll stay in touch with the dampness. A little further on is a cave passage that would also have worked well for my purposes, but it's on the path, and while it's unlikely anybody will be coming this way, given the weather, I didn't want to risk a chance of being interrupted. This is better. I thought we'd work on channeling the elements. Sit facing me, please."

   I rotate gingerly until I am straddling the log. It seems a stable enough position. More or less. He's in the same position himself, and he seems comfortable enough.

   "You'll probably find this particular lesson rather enjoyable," he says, and smiles. "It involves a lot of kissing."

   He's right. I like the sound of it already.

   "Attend. I am sure you have noticed, by now, that quite aside from any questions of technique or style, there is a qualitative difference between certain of my kisses. It's because I sometimes channel different types of elemental energy for different desired effects. When working with Air, for instance, I've generally done so to take a very small amount of yours away from you. I do that to intensify certain physical reactions you have while we're making love, also because I happen to greatly enjoy it when you start swooning in my arms. You look cute when you do that. I'm not going to demonstrate it right now, because we're perched on a log over a steeply inclining slope and a ravine. Earth, on the other hand? Earth is another matter. This is Earth when channeled through a kiss."

   He takes my face between his palms and leans in toward me and covers my lips with his. Instantly I feel a hungry, desperate stirring of desire that starts between my legs and works its way up me, caressing my flesh, murmuring to me of things to come. At the same time, I feel blissfully secure; the leather-clad hands that hold my face still are my rock, my anchor, my home.

   "There," he says, as he slowly pulls away from me. "We are both grounded. I've just pulled the element of Earth through you, using you as a channel, and into myself. Some of that Earth energy actually came directly from you, from your body, although most of it came from the soil and trees and rocks around us. Did you feel how it flowed?"

   I reflect on his words, but ultimately, I have to shake my head. No, I was too busy noticing how wonderful it felt to be kissed.

   He can be very distracting that way.

   He smiles. "Well. We'll just have to try again. This time, pay attention to the energy, not just to what the energy does to you. I know you are capable of this. There have been times when I had you on the receiving end of my riding crop, and I could swear a part of your consciousness was sitting on the side, taking notes. This situation is no different. I am going to kiss you and use you to channel Earth again. Attend."

   Our lips connect once more, and by some Herculean effort, I manage to hold a bit of myself apart so that I can trace the energy flow. This time I feel it. He's pulling it up from the ground, through the soles of my dangling feet, and blending it with my ch'i. Once more, I feel the bliss of absolute security in his hands.

   "Better," he says at last. "I think you got it that time; and that is good, because now I want you to show me that you can do the same thing. Practice on me. I think we'll be going back to this element often, in the days to come – since your personal energy is predominantly Fire, you have a bit of a hard time with patience, which can be a dangerous flaw when you are the one in control. You need to be the anchor of stability when you are dominant. Earthing your own desire is a skill you need to have, and you need to be able to do it easily. Channel Earth through me now, please." He smiles again. "Take all the time you need. It's Earth, after all. Earth does not need to be rushed."

   Well.

   When I lean into him, concentrating on his energy, I notice mostly his warmth, and a tightly reined passion that I desperately want to release, but that's Fire. I'm looking for Earth. I focus instead on his body, on the delicate bones of his face, the salt and pepper of his hair; the log underneath us asserts itself, so I weave in my awareness of the wood and the moss and imagine us growing roots that sink deep into the soil. There is a sweetness about him, a sweetness I want to taste, and I open him gently; our tongues dart around each other as I take him in.

   I pull back.

   "A reasonably good first attempt. We'll be working more with Earth over the next few weeks. An important thing to keep in mind, by the way: you cannot create something from nothing. You cannot bring out and work with what is not there. So, in a sense, you can rest assured that although you are dealing with the emotions and needs of another person when you kiss in this manner, you won't be forcing yourself on your partner. If what you seek is not there, you simply won't get a response. You'll wear yourself out for nothing.

   "The flip side of that, however, is that most people do have strong emotions, many of which are repressed for whatever reason, and the reason is often a good one. Toying with emotions can be quite dangerous, and you can expect it to backfire on you eventually if you make a habit of it. It's unethical to play with the emotions of other people for your amusement. Be careful who you use as a living channel, and don't do it without a good reason.

   "Now. Let me demonstrate Fire. You're very familiar with this energy, of course, as with others, especially given that Fire is your natural element, but not under these circumstances, and it's important to have Fire under conscious control. Unrestrained Fire can scorch. The first step toward controlling any element is knowing it."

   He seizes my chin with his hand and pulls me toward him, crushing my body against him with his other arm. The chill of November vanishes. His kiss ignites me; I have become Fire. I want to have him here, on this log, now. Now. All I have to do is throw on a little more tinder. I want to feel his skin under my hands, his body writhing beneath mine, and I feed him my desire, tearing at the buttons of his coat with my free arm. It's too warm for coats, anyway. There, under his shirt, there is a place that likes being teased. It's mine now. His mouth, too, is mine. I will drink in this passion that he keeps buried deep inside. I know how to reach it, and I want it, all of it.

   He gasps. Oh, sweet and delicious, that gasp. I pull him closer and nudge myself onto his lap so that our pelvises touch, my legs straddling his. Only a little more.

   Come to me, lightning.

   His face between my hands. His body writhing, arching. He moans into me. Oh, how sweet is the taste of that moan.

   This time I am the one to break contact.

   He chuckles under his breath when his head collapses onto my shoulder. "I think it's safe to say that since you were able to not only detect my working from the very start, but also completely take it over, with fine control, you already thoroughly understand how to use the element of Fire. I asked for that one, didn't I?" He coughs and clears his throat. "I'm going to have to catch my breath before we go on. I'm a bit drained."

   I smirk.

   We sit in place, leaning into each other, heads on each other's shoulders, listening to each other breathe, holding each other. A wet breeze begins to stir. Eventually, I notice that it's getting cold and drizzly, and I press closer for warmth, feeling the strong, steady current of his being pulse against me.

   It's amazing the things you learn to notice when your voice is stilled.

   "There. Now that I can focus again, I think it's time to channel Water through you. This should be interesting – not that I haven't done it before, but this will be the first time you're aware of it as such. Believe it or not, you're very easy to use as a Water channel, because, quite independently of compass corners, Water is your polar opposite. Water opposes Fire; Earth opposes Air. Anyone who has strong tendencies toward one element will have a buried side, corresponding to what Jung called the Shadow, in which their opposite element predominates. You burn with a white-hot Fire, but you have hidden Watery depths. They are profound and dark, to match your brightly burning flames. Any power that great is very easily manipulated by someone who knows how to do it." He smiles, and his smile is like velvet and midnight. "I happen to very much like stirring your waters and plumbing your depths. You probably knew that."

   I think I noticed that some time ago, yes.

   He reaches out for me with one hand, stroking the bottom of my jaw with a gloved finger. I shudder. Already I can feel it, and he hasn't even taken possession of my mouth yet. "Come here," he murmurs. "Come to me, now."

   I swallow past the lump in my throat and lean forward into the kiss. I couldn't resist if I tried.

   Our lips meet.

   Drowning. Melting. Disintegrating, disintegrating. I'm dissolving into him. All I feel is my desire, which will kill me with ecstasy; and him, overwhelming, hard as granite on the outside, sharp as steel, and yet warm and soft and comforting beneath the surface, a blanket, a hearth fire. In this is everything I ever wanted or needed, and it caresses me softly, holding me in warmth and sweetness. My body is reduced to atoms, spinning dizzily, falling apart. From a far distance, I can tell that I'm trembling as I collapse against him, and then even that awareness is gone on a flood of drunken bliss. His lips are all over my face, tenderly kissing my cheeks, my eyelids, my hair. Every kiss leaves blossoms in its wake.

   "Mine?" he whispers, caressing me softly on one cheek.

   I nod speechlessly. Yours, yours, all yours, forever yours.

   His lips meet mine again. I moan into him, nearly in tears from happiness. When his hand plays at the back of my neck, tracing a faint circle before seizing me gently and holding me in place near the place my birthday necklace usually sits when I wear it, a faint cry escapes me. He kisses me there, too.

   I feel his lips against my ear. "Mine," he whispers, and I press closer to him.

   His.

   "Come for me."

   My body convulses, and a hoarse cry starts to escape me before he covers my mouth with his hand. Muffled, my cries go on, until at last he releases me and pulls his face away from mine, and I sag, exhausted.

    I feel a chuckle begin to rumble in his chest. "There. I think we're even now."

   "We are not even," I mutter, before I remember that I'm not supposed to be talking. "Not even close."

   He smiles as he puts his finger against my lips. "I've had practice. Speaking of which, did you follow any of that closely enough to try working it yourself?"

   I shake my head. No. How could I possibly trace an energy path, when I was busy being drunk?

   "Ah. Well, then. We'll just have to keep trying this until you can trace the energy and follow it when I work with it."

   I had a feeling he'd say that.

   Eventually, I manage to keep a part of myself withheld enough to observe and take note of the flowing current. My knees are jelly, as is the rest of me, both physically and emotionally, but that's all right, it's a good jelly state. Very, very good jelly. I'll just sit here and be jelly for a while, shall I?

   Except I can't, because we're doing work. Rats.

   "Water is a very useful element to channel through another person. It's not just a way to arouse emotions and encourage surrender; Water is also a healing element. There are far worse ways to encourage healing than through a touch, or a gentle kiss. It's also good for dreams and visions; a well-directed kiss can be transforming. Come to think of it, a touch or a kiss of Fire can heal and transform, too, but Fire is not a gentle element to work with, as I have emphasized from the beginning of your education – Fire is purifying, and its purification sears. Indeed, the root of purify is pur, the Greek word for Fire. Water can be dangerous in its seductive power, but it's a much gentler way to encourage healing and transformation than Fire is, provided it does not drown your subject. Now. Try it on me."

   I blink at him.

   "Beloved one, it is important that you practice this skill and master it before you try using it on another person – especially with the Water element, which can be elusive and tricky. That is why we are here today, by the river rapids: to use its proximity to help you focus and boost your power. I do not think you will hurt me. Aren't you just a little curious about what you might bring out in me? I am." He leans his forehead against mine. The sudden sensation of being touched by his presence is impossibly intimate. "It's all right," he whispers. "I trust you to not shatter me if you hold me."

   I take his face between my hands, drawing on the misty air, the river that surges below us. He starts to tremble. "Se philo," he whispers, and closes his eyes.

   Then our lips meet.

  Deep within, a warm, flowing current pulses. It wants to swell. I am profoundly thirsty, and oh, I'm hungry. Swell the current. Raise the river, bring down the rain, overflow. Overflow your life into my mouth, and my dear love, let me in, let me in. I have never needed anybody so, and here, you need me too, I can taste it in your kiss, in every wave I drink in, I am here, let us float together. I will hold your head above the water. Let us swim in love, rushed along the currents at flood. We will swim in eternal bliss.

   You are so vulnerably beautiful, naked in this torrent.

   When I break the contact and release his face, I see a drop of blood pooling on his lower lip.

   His eyes are astonished when he opens them. "My God," he whispers. "My God. I didn't know that it was like that for you."

   We melt off the log and somehow manage to navigate the hillside paths without stumbling or slipping. The wider part of the trail is a welcome sight, however, and it is with relief that I set my feet upon it. I don't feel tired – quite the opposite, in fact, which is odd – but my joints feel like river water, and my limbs all seem to want to tremble.

   When we get back into the car, I find myself reaching for him again. There is something about the warmth that I sense under his coat that lures me. Soon we are unbuttoning each other, seeking each other out with our hands.

   Did I ever love, or hunger, before him?

   Yes, but not like this.

   Our groping hands brush up against each other by accident, and I clasp his in mine, pressing it to my breast. Our eyes meet. He smiles.

   "Let lips do what hands do; they pray. Grant thou, lest faith turn to despair."

   Two can play at this. It's a famous passage, after all. "Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake."

   "Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take. Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged."

   A flood of bliss. Waters flow back and forth between us, drenching us with desire.

   "Then have my lips the sin that they have took," I gasp at last.

   "Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again."

   We float together on this boundless sea of our own making, caressed by waves, dissolved by tides.

On the way home, he stops the car outside the post office that is on the way. He looks down significantly at the stamped, addressed envelope that rests between us in the well between our seats.

   Sighing, I pick up my college application and run out the door with it, to drop it in the mailbox for the next collection.

   The rain begins to fall in earnest. By the time I make it back to the car, I am soaked and freezing.

   Once home, with the door shut behind us, he steers me to the bedroom and starts undressing me. Or maybe I started undressing him first. I can't be sure. I do know I desperately want to get our wet clothes out of the way, and he seems to be of the same mind. Our coats and gloves fall to the floor, soon followed by other articles until we are naked, and all our clothing kicked into the corner.

   A gust of wind blows rain and sleet against the window.

   "God, you're warm," I murmur into his lips when our faces collide. "Feels good. More."

   He is smiling as we sink onto the futon to tangle our limbs and bodies together. "Cold?" he asks. "I would have thought you'd have warmed yourself up by now. You've never had problems generating heat."

   "I want yours." I run my hand through his hair. His hair is one of the most magnificent things about him. The parts that are still sable really are black, while the increasingly large number of silver strands are a true silver, not grey or white, and it's glorious to feel under my hand: thick and very rich, the sort of hair I could bury my hand in indefinitely. There have been nights when I fell asleep stroking his hair, while he dozed against my shoulder.

   "Hmm. I'll consider it. You seem quite warm already."

   "I do?"

  "Eromene, you are an inferno. I don't think you are in any danger of contracting a chill. On the other hand, making sure you stay warm does have a certain appeal, although it might not be a very comfortable sort of warmth for you. I'll have to give this more thought. Right now, though, we still have work to do. This is a much more appropriate place to practice channeling Air through a kiss. We're lying on a futon. It's a safer place to be if one of us passes out than on top of a log over a high ravine."

   I look at him wide-eyed. "Is that likely?"

   "I won't rule it out. You're a novice, and Air is another element that can be very tricky to work with, so until you get more accomplished at what you are doing, results can be somewhat unpredictable. We are dealing with the original stuff of life. Psyche, translated, means not just soul, but also life and breath. The bride of Eros is sometimes depicted as being a butterfly, or as having butterfly wings, further emphasizing that Psyche is the embodiment of life and spirit and showing her link to Air. Meanwhile, further to the north, Odin is seen as the Father of All because he took the clay being crafted by Loki and breathed life and soul into it. In the beginning is Air... The first few times I started experimenting with it, I wound up giving both myself and my partner a nasty fright. I hadn't known my own strength. In the end, everything turned out all right and nobody was hurt, but – well. She took a long time to regain her consciousness, although her breath came back almost immediately after I stopped kissing her. It certainly felt like a long while until she came back, though it was probably only a few very frightening minutes. At any rate, there is a slim chance you might take enough breath away from me when kissing me, or impede my airflow somehow, that I'll start to lose consciousness. I doubt I'd accidentally do the same to you, but on purpose is another matter – come to think of it, putting you on the receiving end of a large working of Air might be a good way to help you get the feel of the element. Something more subtle would be too hard to notice at first. And I do need to replenish all the energy you inadvertently took from me when we were perched on that log. At least, I presume it was inadvertent on your part."

   Gulp.

   "You shouldn't be nervous. I think I mentioned having done this to you quite often, just not to any dramatic degree. You've always seemed to enjoy it." He smiles. "Immensely."

   Oh. I see. He's been using the Waiting for Godot method of foreplay.

   "Do you trust me?"

   I nod. Of course.

   "Then I am going to kiss you. This time, I will not hold back." He reaches out for my cheeks and holds me as he covers me with his mouth and body, rolling onto me almost like a heavy bank of clouds.

   At first, I don't notice anything unusual. It's a kiss. I bask in the warmth of his lips, the gentle feel of his hands caressing me, fingers stroking lightly along my torso, around my breasts, up and down, circling over and over, pinching and kneading the nerves and meridians he knows so well, playing my strings until I start to sigh and moan. More – so much more, my skin is alive under his fingers, singing, higher and higher, spiraling up until the orgasm seizes me between my legs and up and up my spine and I am screaming into his mouth. Screaming. Gasping. Gasping... Then I notice it. My breath is leaving me faster than I can replace it. He's eating my air. My life. But I can't stop coming or crying out, any more than I can stop him from sucking the wind out of me.

   If I am going to die tonight, I will die of pleasure.

   There are worse ways to die.

   Eventually, my screams become moans, then mewing noises, and then I feel my limbs shaking uncontrollably. Dizzy. I think I'm going to be sick. Still coming, despite it all. That can't be humanly possible.

   Blackness.

   "Five minutes. I suppose it could have been worse."

   The alarm clock winks at us from its place on top of a pile of books on the floor.

   "Glurg," I mutter articulately into his arm.

   He wraps himself around me more tightly; I sigh happily. "Did you manage to trace the path of the wind that I was raising and drawing out of you? I would prefer to not do that again tonight. The five minutes I just spent were a little too long for my liking."

No, I nod.

   "I think we'll save further intensive work with this element for another time. You seem too tired to focus."

   I nod again.

   He lets go of me briefly to get up off the futon and walk a couple of steps to the window. "It's a bit close in here. That can't be helping," he says, lifting the window sash. Icy, wet wind begins to blow into the room.

   It actually feels good.

   He crouches down to sit on the floor, his naked back propped against the bookcase that takes up space on that wall, and beckons me to him with his arm. Somehow, I manage to drag myself off the futon to cuddle up against him. I suspect he was testing me to see if I needed to be carried.

   The late afternoon sky darkens to dusk as we gaze at the cemetery through the open window. Rain and sleet continue to fall, and every now and then the wind will swell, blowing damply against our faces. One gust lingers, cold and sharp and wet, but somehow managing to feel like a caress, despite its biting cold; it's as if the wind loves me. It tickles under my chin in an eddy before slowly quieting.

   "Air is your element, isn't it?"

   "Yes."

   We rest together in companionable silence, gazing out at the bare, wind-swept trees, the sleet driven against the windowpane.

   "Can kisses of Air do anything besides take breath away?" I eventually ask.

   "Of course. You can breathe life into someone else if that person is receptive." He cups my face. "Very useful, for instance, when someone's energy is too low to allow play to continue, but both of you want to keep going anyway."

   The warmth of his kiss makes me sigh with delight.