I hate it when people insist on giving me information on paper. I don’t mind giving it to people on paper, but it’s a lot more time consuming to skim through. Plus, you have to be a lot more careful with loose leaf so you don’t wind up getting it out of order or losing the one piece of paper you’re actually looking for. There’s no hitting control and f on a piece of paper.

As soon as reality implements a better search function I think everyone would be a lot happier.

Luckily the result of getting in over my head hasn’t become too common of information. At least it hasn’t yet. If there’s anything that’s nearly impossible to keep hidden, it’s information. That’s bad news to anyone with a secret, but good news to anyone who knows how to find and sell those secrets.

Sometimes I wonder why anyone would even try to keep a secret anymore, but then I always remember that everyone is sure they’re smarter than everyone else around them. If I wasn’t susceptible to that arrogance myself I wouldn’t still be feeling so stupid about my run in with The Domina Argenti.

Still, these papers do have useful information on them. None of it pertains to anything that’s happening anywhere near Midas, but that seems like the best way to take some safety precautions without just dropping my job all together. Maybe if things stay smooth I can work on a more local level again but I’m going to give that awhile.

If it gets spread around too much that I’ve been compromised there will no doubt be people who won’t desire my services. That means troubles with the rent. Trouble with the rent means the sad fate of my computers transmuting from gold to into led.

You don’t get ahead in the information age by waiting for your technology to become obsolete.

Even with over a terabyte of ram in my computer I’m still forced to read through these documents. The information was not easy to come by. It cost me far too many of my favors, but it did end up ingratiating me on a few new information sources.

I don’t know why anyone would be so concerned with a romance novelist. It could be the novelist herself just trying to see what dirt is out there on her, but it doesn’t make any sense to me why she would care. In my research I found that she hadn’t even published anything in a good five years. Her name is apparently still used to describe classy and vivid romance, but she hasn’t even attended a public appearance in six years.

There are some interesting things about Yana N. Ritter, but they don’t really come close to anything that could be used against her, or even to her benefit. An easy job is never something to be upset over, but it does make my talents feel a little underused.

She was born to a Caitlan R. Ritter, and apparently no one has any clue who the father was. If it was a rape, her mother doesn’t remember it happening. She wasn’t a virgin birth, just a mystery birth. Apparently this never bothered Yana in the least to keep secret, and instead she was rather prone to using it as a joke at her own expense if the opportunity presented itself.

Her books were well known for how obsessive a long time reader would become. Some even claimed that if you read a single book you had to read them all, as if it were some sort of compulsion, but not one that felt anything less than transcendent.

The only reviews of her works that seem negative seem to be from men, and the way they’re worded is so vague as to seem that they didn’t even read the actual stories just the book jackets, read someone’s cliff notes, and decided to tear it apart for some arbitrary reason. I never read anything of hers, but mostly because while it was always tender, and with very compelling plots, it tended to be . . . darker.

Even if in the end every time the world would return to normal, the knight and the princess, the princess and the other princess, the journalist and the reporter, they would end up happy, but the path to get there was always full of dark seduction, betrayal, and people being forced to become something they weren’t.

She pioneered dark mainstream lesbian romance. I’ve just never had the stomach to read a story like that. If I’m going to fall for someone, I don’t want to see them hurt.

Unless they end up admitting later that they’ve been wrapping my brain up with underwear and using my body like a sex toy to let out trammeled up stress and sexual frustration. Then they can go through all kinds of suffering, and you have every right not to return their calls or give a damn. You might be willing to at least leave them an angry message on their machine, but they had to go and take you out on a date and make you feel like you actually meant something to them.

Then they had to wind up with some woman who can turn herself into gold, and the only reason that they found her in the first place is because of the information you gave them in the first place. I’m pretty sure that I’m not alone in that sentiment.

Of course it doesn’t help that I know the only reason Lucia, Sarah – whoever the hell she really is – told me is because she thought they would find out while they were patching up my mind. She could say it was for whatever reason she wanted to, but I wouldn’t really believe her, not really. It’s sort of hard to believe someone who tells you something like that. It’s supposed to be easier to believe someone who admits they’re a liar, or at least she seemed to think so.

As far as I’m concerned, misinformation is not something to take lightly. You don’t just treat someone like you’re courting them one moment, use them in another moment, and then in less than a fortnight, start dating an entirely different girl.

If she actually expected me to forgive her transgressions that easily then I’m better off without her anyway. Sure, if she asked for information from me again, I would probably give it to her . . . but it would cost.

I need to keep that on one side, and just look through these papers. It’s just hard to focus on a job that seems so dull when something keeps coming up to bother me again and again. Yana is a fairly interesting woman, but she has no known enemies besides a few critics, and they have nothing to gain by actually maligning her outside of reviews. Most of them aren’t even taken very seriously.

She’s pretty tall at five foot eleven and three fourths inches. Her hair is black. Her eyes are a shade of blue so dark that some people have called her eyes black. Her skin tone is very fair, both by genetics and by solar avoidance. She has a tendency to take herself too seriously and often wears very regal looking stylized black clothing.

There is just nothing here of any interest! I’ll transcribe it all and be sure my client gets it, but it’s not going to be the most interesting half hour of my life. Okay, here’s something interesting. Apparently back when she used to tour she would sign her books using a fingernail, and it would turn out looking as if she’d spent an hour making her name look like the most regal calligraphy anyone had ever seen. Just a brief look at an enclosed photocopy definitely makes me agree that it’s regal, but also a bit much for just a book signing.

She never had any romantic relationships – at least not that anyone ever found out about. She wasn’t close to her family. Her mother died of a stroke while driving her car right into a building. If this client is just someone looking to do a piece on the elusive disappearing Yana Ritter that might be motive to ask for this information but it wouldn’t be worth the money spent.

Yana hated anyone trying to give her nicknames, or asking her what the initial “N.” stood for. Yana N. Ritter is not a pen name, but no middle name is on her birth certificate. Pictures of her from the start of her career at twenty five to when she disappeared at thirty five look nearly identical.

There are only a few pages left to scan for pertinent information and I still don’t feel like this was worth my time. Maybe she’s a suspect in some crime that happened right before she disappeared. If she is, no one told me.

Her last known address was in the south of France. Nothing has said that she spoke French, and she took Spanish in high school. In college she took Italian and Latin.

The last time anyone tried to hit her up for an interview to ask why she hadn’t finished her promised novel “Love and Lies” had found the French villa to be abandoned. She’d left no forwarding address and no contact phone number. Since her disappearance none of her credit cards showed any use and all of her money just vanished from her accounts. There was money there, but the only explanation the banks have is that it was stolen, or the records were tampered with.

Could someone simply want to find her to snatch up however much she wrote of “Love and Lies”? It would be worth a fortune if it were to be verified and the right people went up to auction. First editions of her first novel “Cross My Legs and Hope to Die” last at auction went for . . . way too much.

Something just doesn’t feel right about her disappearance. She might not have made any appearances or published any books, but she had made regular donations to several literature programs right up until the day her villa was found to be abandoned. It was as if at that moment she’d chosen to no longer exist except in her print and in the memories of those who knew and read her.

Wanting to pull that off isn’t all that amazing. Being able to pull that off is something entirely different. Thinking about it though, that could be what Jimmy Hoffa had in mind too.

In high school she published her first short stories under the pen name Yana N R. It really wasn’t so much a pen name as she just didn’t include her full last name. Of course, she was only a freshman, and she was published in a rather elegant Sapphic story compendium. When asked about this at readings she claimed that when her mother asked her how she got the money, she claimed to be writing creative pieces for the senior class.

When her mother looked into it, she was.

She was a prodigy, but just a writer. Nothing except for her writing or disappearance is especially breathtaking. Well, she is gorgeous, or at least was six years ago, but that doesn’t really count. If Jim Morrison never left a corpse though I’m sure I would have gotten a request to dig up the dirt on him by now.

Finally, I’m on to the last page. Hopefully this will be more exciting. Apparently about six months ago she was reportedly sighted riding a bus in Midas, riding with two other women. All of them were dressed in black. There’s another photocopy and it looks like it could be her. With the sunglasses and without her standing up to see just how tall she is, that woman in the picture could be anyone.

This doesn’t count as not having anything to do with Midas. None of it has anything to do with illegitimate goings on anyway. Even if it did, I didn’t know that when I took the job and nothing that’s come up could possibly endanger my life or my mind.

Even if it did, I’m in Midas City. There might not literally be a thousand heroes but there are enough. Psyche could fly in to my rescue, or maybe even Jade. Well, Jade has started to drop off of the radar since she got with her girlfriend Cindy, but that still leaves Psyche or the Blue Fox, or maybe even that magician who went up against that “Fractal” however long ago that was.

The worst that would happen would be another stint dressed up in only ribbon, or maybe some sweet lacy panties, transparent and form hugging, and a matching bra that wouldn’t be enough fabric to really hide anything . . .

Damn it! The worst part about what Sarah did to me was that now my favorite fetish makes me feel vulnerable. Not only could it be used against me like what she did, but what if someone else found out about it? What if that information was spread around the information circuit? It wouldn’t be as popular as Psyche’s nude photos, but it would make some people smirk in the wrong ways.

It would be a lot harder to be taken seriously. I don’t want to be the lingerie fetishist of the information world. Just because the thought of being dressed up like that, or being with a woman dressed up like that makes me feel warm and aroused in a tired, sleepy way, doesn’t mean I want it known . . .

I never would have even told Sarah if she hadn’t defenestrated my inhibitions with her damned hypnosis. It’s a private thing . . . and it’s not even all that dirty as far as fetishes go.

It’s not like thinking about or seeing things like that make me need to be ravished, it just makes me feel warm and tingly. It’s not that its sexual in itself, it’s just captivating and beautiful. Just a simple pair of white panties where you can see just enough of an outline is enough to feel that warm satisfaction of seeing something that feels so primal and is linked to a simpler part of my mind.

The fact that the thought of having panties used to actually melt me into a sweet, vulnerable stupor used to make me have the same feeling is now more depressing than it is mutedly arousing. She found one of my own secret desires and used it to make a leash.

My finger slides along the last line of text as I force myself to finish the last of the information. I only got my hands on it because of an associate, who himself only got it from an associate who preferred to remain nameless. All I now is that it better be accurate. It all seems to be. If anything isn’t it doesn’t seem to clash with any information I’d found out on my own.

Ick! The ink is still wet somehow! The page that had been resting on top of it wasn’t wet near where it would have bled through, but my finger is . . .

Huh, that’s strange. I could have sworn that some of the ink rubbed off onto my finger. There’s no smudge on the paper, and my finger doesn’t have any black mark on it. The feeling of dampness must have just been a psychosomatic reaction to the thought of dipping my finger into some ink. There’s obviously no ink there that could have been anything but dry. Maybe I’m just a little bit on edge because of where I let my mind wander? It would make sense.

Ugh, I need a nap. It’s only noon, but I’m self employed ad in the information business, if you can get enough money flowing your way from a smaller amount of assignments, you don’t need to work full time.

After I carefully restack the papers in their original order on my desk I moved into my room and flop face first onto my bed. Another convenient thing about being self employed in the information business is that after you’ve checked your mail you can lounge around in your pajamas without it being anyone’s concern but your own.

Nuzzling into my pillow I hope that I’ll be able to come up with some more useful information, or my client is going to be dissatisfied. There’s nothing I hate more than a dissatisfied customer. Well there is, but I don’t have any control over bad dreams besides taking caffeine pills . . .

”Come on Alyssa . . . I want to show you something . . . special.” She leads me into her room, and my heart won’t stop beating harder and harder inside of my chest. Just thinking about what I know she means by special is making me feel so dizzy. My eyes must look like colored glass.

The blush on my cheeks won’t go away, and I can’t stop looking at the floor. I’ve been in her bedroom, here in her house, a thousand times before. I know that. But . . . this is different . . . “Okay . . .”

“I can’t show you anything if you’re looking down at the floor silly head. Come on, look up . . . Look at me . . .” Oh but I already know what I’m going to see . . . It’s different every time, I know. We’ve done this before, I know . . . but every time is special and it still makes me just as twitterpated every time that we do this. It feels so dirty even if it’s so innocent and sweet.

Well, maybe it’s not entirely innocent, but it’s not what I know anyone else would be doing. No one else would be able to be satisfied with just this. No one else has been satisfied with just this, besides Her. She’s always understood what this was about.

It’s impossible not to look up, but it’s so hard at the same time. I’m so embarrassed. I don’t feel worthy of this and it twists my stomach in an almost pleasant way to realize that she believes I am anyway.

The first sight is of her toes, clad in white stockings with the occasional white rose. That impossibly smooth white follows up along the gentle curve just above her ankle, past her smooth knees, and ends mid thigh with a ring of interlinked roses. Her leg always looks so gentle in an almost vulnerable way in stockings.

“Look . . . more. Come on, Alyssa. This is just for you, and you don’t have to do anything more than you want to, and than you feel comfortable with . . . but I know that you want to see the rest. Please . . . for you, and for me? I love the way you look at me . . .” She shifts, and her leg parts, but I don’t look away.

I want to – not that I don’t want to see – but I’m nervous and seeing that sight is always so . . . sacred. It’s special. I don’t want to take it lightly, and even though I know I’ll enjoy it every time before I see it I just tighten up with worry.

Between her stockings and a little bit higher past her milky flesh is a pair of white cotton panties, with lace kissing the insides of her thighs and the lowest part of her waist. The fabric is sheer, but still has a faint flower pattern to match that on her stockings. I can see the shape of her lips, but not the specific details. My head is swimming, and I just want to nuzzle and lose myself with that sight, lose myself to that sight and never look back . . .

“Take a closer look . . .” Her finger enters my view, curling again and again to beckon me closer, and then to beckon my gaze higher. I can’t refuse her. I can never refuse her.

Her tummy is so smooth and looks so soft. I could run my hands over her skin for hours, but I’ll admit her bare skin doesn’t tempt me nearly as much as her clothed skin does. Her bra is just as sheer as her panties, and just as lacy. It holds her breasts up so firmly, letting them stretch the fabric in the most alluring way. The protrusions of her nipples just make the pattern darker and rise, but the exact details are lost. Its so pretty, and just looking, just seeing her like this, makes me feel so dizzy.

I can see the slightest bits of her black hair curling over the straps of her bra, but when I try to look up she interrupts my motion with her voice. “Shh . . . Don’t look higher . . . That’s not what this is about. This is about what’s lower. This is about what you’re craving, needing to see and be with. Come closer, Alyssa . . . Come onto the bed . . . and melt with me.”

“Ye . . . yesss . . .” My voice slurs, and it makes my cheeks burn even brighter. She reads me like a book. She always has, and I’ve always been just as powerless to her.

I crawl up onto the bed, and nuzzle my cheek along the fabric of her stocking. I normally wouldn’t do it, but I know it would disappoint her, and the feeling is so soft anyway. When I reach her thighs I can feel most of my mind stopping dead, and I just curl up between her legs as she slowly lifts up my head, and places it on the textured surface of her bra where the rise and fall of the pattern tightly holding her breasts feels like a lullaby slowly melting me away.

Her hand starts to slide through my hair, and I whimper softly in reply. It feels so good to be against her, to . . . what . . .?

My eyes drift down as she shifts, and I see a straight view to the crotch of her panties. They look so pretty but . . . something is wrong. The outline of her . . . her . . . sex . . . is becoming more defined, more clear, more . . . black.

The blackness is forming like wetness usually does but its more, it’s actually black . . . and it slowly melts all along the flowers, and then through the lace. In just a moment, her panties have turned from white to black . . . and when I follow along the curve of her leg with my eyes, her stockings are slowly taking in that same black color.

I still feel so dizzy. It feels so good, but I feel confused too. Why are they changing color? Are they magic underwear . . .? That could explain part of why I’m feeling so dizzy, but definitely not all of it. It feels so nice to just feel that inky blackness pulling me down like the white did.

The dark spot of the nipple on the other cup of her bra, the one my head isn’t melted on, slowly starts to turn black. Oh . . . It . . . I can feel the nipple against my own cheek getting harder, not getting wet but . . . the fabric is changing. It feels almost silky, and like its wet, but without any dampness. Slowly, all of the lace, the strap, and the cup of her bra, both cups of her bra, turn so sweetly black . . .

I can feel the black dripping inside of me, pulling its self inside of me . . . and expanding. It almost feels like a presence, like a person in side of me, but it’s something more . . . It’s almost like something is filling me up and cradling me, bringing me deeper into the daze of . . . into the daze of whatever is happening . . .

“Sleep, little Lyssa . . . Sleep and let me take care of everything, let me worry about everything . . . You don’t need to think . . . Or know . . . Anything. Let me do that, for now . . . Let me do that . . . Forever . . .” Her voice feels like more of this black silky feeling stretching through me, sliding into one ear and out the other, being pulled back and forth to make everything in between sparkle and shine so brightly that it makes it impossible to look at or think.

Something about it feels wrong . . . like . . . its only half what it should be . . . I try to push away from her, just gently, but she pulls me against her so much stronger. I feel so much younger and simpler, I can’t fight her, and I don’t really want to.

Tisking she gently pulls me off of her breast and I can feel something slowly dripping, sliding down from my ear. “Silly little Lyssa . . . You’re just my little girl now . . . And if you’re not going to let me fulfill your fantasy, fulfill your dream . . . then I’m going to have to make you . . . I’m sorry sweetheart, believe me when I say that I wanted this to be easier for you . . . . But you just couldn’t smile and accept it . . .”

I try to struggle more at that, even as I feel everything growing fuzzier and fainter, but my body feels limp and hers feels so tough and firm even if it is so soft and smooth. What’s she going to do to me . . .? Am I going to like it . . .? Am I even going to know what it is after she’s done with me . . .?

Carefully one of her hands pulls at the cup of her bra, and slowly she exposes her breast to me. It’s so pretty, such milky white skin, so creamy, but her nipple . . . it’s still pretty . . . but it’s black. It’s not black like the skin tone; it looks like . . . it looks like body paint was lovingly applied to it, toner, pure black paint. It almost even shines like toner, but it still looks like it’s just the natural flesh tone of her nipples . . . dark and . . . pretty . . .

“Time to suckle, pretty Lyssa . . . Time to suckle all those pretty little thoughts and worries away . . .” Slowly she lowers my face to her breast, but I’m still trying to squirm or pull away. Her legs are lightly twined with mine, and mine can barely even twitch. The most I can do is rest my hands against her, and she easily pushes them to my sides.

At least I can keep my lips sealed. That should buy me some time. That should help me be able to resist whatever it is that she wants to do to me, whatever foul plot she has just waiting to spring with the lightest suckle . . . Her nipple rubs against my lips, but I keep them sealed as carefully as I can. Not just sealed, but suckled in, so nothing can drip through, pour through, but I’m starting to lose the ability to keep them closed . . .

Her fingernail keeps tracing spirals on my cheek, and my lips keep twitching. The rooting reflex . . . It’s so hard to fight it. It’s so hard to want to fight it, but I know that I have to . . . I know that this is important . . .

“Give up Lyssa . . . You can’t fight it forever . . . You wouldn’t even want to fight it forever if you could . . . You’d just lose yourself to it sooner or later anyway . . . Wouldn’t you rather enjoy your decent into sweet lustful darkness? You can feel my ink inside of you already . . . coating you . . . changing you . . . Soon, you won’t even remember you’ve been changed . . .” I try to whine, but her voice is so firm that my body feels afraid to interrupt her.

“N-“ Oh I was so stupid, I was so . . . I opened my lips to say “no.” It felt like the right thing to do, to deny her what she wanted, but it just gave her what she wanted. Her nipple is filling my lips, and with that fingernail rubbing and rubbing I feel myself suckling without even thinking of the process.

It feels so good to suckle on that black nipple . . . I can feel the ink starting at first to just dribble . . . and then flow into my mouth like sweet smooth nectar . . . Its so soft, the texture is thicker than milk, but it feels as smooth and the way it coats me as it goes is undeniably erotic. It feels like stockings pulled over my mind, and pulled over the inside of my body . . . it feels like . . .

I can feel my own sex starting to drip, starting to soak . . . my own nipples twitching, hardening . . . I know I’m just dressed in simple panties, a simple bra . . . but I can feel them turning black, and the darker I can feel it, the less I feel myself, the more . . . the more I feel Her . . . inside of me . . .

“Now little girl . . . wake up . . .”

When I wake up I can feel something thick in my mouth, and it’s not saliva. It almost feels like it, but it’s thicker . . . and it tastes like . . . black . . .

Instinctively I spit some of it out, and when I stretch up on my hands to yawn and try to wake up my pillow has a small splatter of black. It looks like ink, it . . . the dream was real . . . and for a second I can feel all of my initial drive, all of my initial desire to rebel and fight, but I can feel inky arms inside of me holding me, squeezing me . . . and I collapse limply onto my bed.

My pajamas are black . . . my pillow is turning black as more and more of the ink melts its way out of my mouth . . . and it feels . . . so good. It feels like staring at her panties, white turning to black, white and black . . . a spiral over the dark outline of her sex . . . Pulling me in . . .

It was a dream . . . but it was real, too. Somehow . . . It must have been the ink on the research paper, it must have been . . . But why . . .?

“Don’t worry about the what’s, or the how’s, or the whys . . . Just worry, about how good you feel . . . about how good this feels . . . and how you’re going to do exactly what I want you to do . . . because you can’t even think of anything else . . .” I feel her wanting me to nod . . . and I can. If I wanted to try again, I couldn’t because she didn’t want me to. I . . . didn’t I want to nod . . .? But I don’t now . . .

“You won’t even realize anything was ever different . . . You won’t need to act any different . . . Until I need you to. Sometimes the best traps are things that seem innocent, until they turn from angel . . . to succubus . . .” I can feel her grinning inside of me . . . where is her voice coming from . . .?

I want to get up . . . I didn’t before. Slowly I sit up, and look over at my dresser. A pair of black panties with lace is sitting on the top. I could have sworn I was wearing pajama pants, but I’m just bare . . .

“As soon as you put those on . . . You’ll have my ink against you forever . . . You’ll have my ink inside of you forever . . . and you can melt into the dizzy bliss you love so much . . .” Tenderly I nod, I want that, she doesn’t need to tell me I want that . . . My legs shake as I bring myself to stand, and slowly make my way to the dresser.

One leg steps in, then the other, and I all but scream at the feeling of the slick cloth crotch against mine. It feels alive, squirming against me, wet against me, slick against me . . . and slowly my lips curve into a melted grin . . .

The voice was the panties . . . it had to be . . . I can feel something from inside of them reaching inside of me . . . through me . . . connecting to something else, merging with me and then . . . huh . . .?

With a sigh, I shrug and slowly move into my office to sit at my desk. I don’t need to wear any pants. It’s just me and my research and my favorite pair of panties ever. I love them so much . . . and somehow I have the feeling that they love me too. Mmm, now if only I could open my eyes more than half way, transcribing this report would probably be a lot easier . . .