Chapter 1: The Taste of a Dream
Thomas woke to wet heat and a flickering pink glow.
For one disorienting second, he thought he was still in the dream—the one where he was backstage, and she was smiling just for him. But the pressure was too real, too specific. A mouth, perfect and knowing, moved on him. His hips jerked off the mattress before his eyes even opened.
He looked down.
Lisa looked back.
Her eyes, dark and amused, held his over the ridge of his own stomach. Her hair, ink-black and impossibly shiny, spilled across his thighs. The neon fairy lights strung over his bedhead pulsed, catching the gold in her skin, the provocative curve of her smile. She was exactly as she existed on his laptop screen, in the posters taped to his ceiling, in the million downloaded pixels he’d obsessed over. Perfect.
But wrong.
His brain, fogged with sleep and the lingering static of a late-night data run, stuttered. The posters didn’t breathe. They didn’t press warm, real hands against his hips to hold him down. They didn’t have a forked pink tongue that darted out to trace a slow, deliberate line up his shaft.
He gasped. The sound was strangled.
“Shhh,” she whispered, her voice a melody he knew from a hundred interviews, but layered now with a huskiness that vibrated through his bones. “You’ll wake the neighbors.”
“You’re— I’m dreaming,” he managed, his voice rough. His body was screaming one thing, his mind another. He was hard, aching, every nerve ending focused on the sublime suction of her mouth. He could feel the scratch of the stale sheets under his back, smell the sour tang of yesterday’s energy drink on his nightstand mixed with something new, something sweet and ozone-sharp like a storm.
“You keep telling yourself that,” she murmured, pulling off him with a soft, obscene pop. She rested her chin on his stomach, her smile widening. It was Lisa’s smile, but the mischief in it was sharper, older. A predator’s playfulness. “It’s cute. Makes the flavor more complex. That little spike of denial… delicious.”
Thomas tried to sit up, but her hand on his chest was deceptively strong. She pushed him back easily, her nails—painted a glossy black—dipping into the soft flesh below his collarbone. Not enough to break the skin. Just enough to promise she could.
“Who are you?” he breathed.
“For you?” she said, leaning forward. Her hair tickled his skin. “I’m Lisa. I’m Lalisa. I’m whoever you’ve been begging for in the dark, Thomas.” She said his name like a secret, a tasted thing. “I’m the answer to every dirty, lonely thought you’ve ever had while staring at that screen.”
She lowered her head again, taking him back into that devastating heat. His back arched. A moan, torn from somewhere deep and shameful, clogged his throat. He was fully hard now, throbbing, the sweep of her tongue mapping a topography of pure, helpless sensation. He fumbled a hand into her hair. It felt like silk, like smoke. Real.
This wasn’t a dream. The evidence was coursing through his veins, tightening his balls, shortening his breath. This was impossible, a violation of physics and reason, and his body was celebrating like it had won the lottery.
He was a data analyst. He dealt in patterns, in predictable inputs and logical outputs. There was no column for this. No algorithm that processed wet dreams into living, breathing flesh.
She worked him with a practiced, relentless rhythm, pausing only to swirl her tongue around the head, to glance up and watch his face crumble. She was studying him. Consuming his reactions. Her own eyes were clear, calculating, even as she performed the most intimate act.
He was close. So close. The pressure built, a urgent, blinding wave. Panic licked at the edges of the pleasure. “Wait— stop, I’m gonna—” he choked out.
She didn’t stop. She hummed, and the vibration shot through him like a live wire. Her other hand traveled down, cupping him, squeezing gently. An expert, merciless encouragement.
He came. Hard. A strangled shout ripped from him as he spilled into her mouth, his vision whiting out at the edges. It was less a release than a seizure, a total systems overload. He shuddered, every muscle taut, then collapsed back into the sweat-damp pillows, utterly spent.
For a long moment, the only sound was his own ragged breathing and the low thrum of his computer’s cooling fan across the room. The pink lights flickered.
She crawled up his body, fluid as a cat. She settled her weight atop him, her knees pinning his hips. He could feel the heat of her through the thin, red silk of her dress—a dress he recognized from the “Money” video. Up close, her golden skin was flawless, poreless. She licked her lips, a slow, clean swipe.
“See?” she whispered. Her breath smelled of salt and burnt sugar. “No dream ever tasted like that.”
He was still inside her, soft now, slick and oversensitive. He was trapped. By her weight. By her gaze. By the horrifying, dawning understanding that he didn’t want her to move.
“What are you?” he asked again, his voice a weak thread.
“Think of me as a service provider,” she said, tracing a nail down his sternum. “A subscription you didn’t know you ordered. You fed the signal, baby. All that want. All that focused, lonely lust. You built a beacon right here in this sad little room.” She glanced around at the crumpled posters, the empty bottles, the glowing shrine of his laptop. “I’m just the hungry thing that followed it home.”
“A succubus.” The word felt absurd in his mouth, as if from a medieval textbook, not his Ikea-furnished apartment.
She grinned, showing perfect teeth. “Such an ugly word. I prefer… collector. I collect moments. Sustenance.” She leaned down, her lips brushing his ear. He froze. “And you, Thomas, have a deep, deep well. I’m going to drink from it. All day. All night. As long as you can give.”
Fear, cold and sharp, finally pierced the post-orgasmic haze. “You’ll kill me.”
She laughed, a sound like wind chimes and broken glass. “Don’t be dramatic. I’m not a monster.” She kissed his jaw, soft and chaste. A parody of affection. “I’m just what you wanted. I’ll take just enough. I’ll leave you breathing. Mostly.” She pressed her hips down, a slow, grinding motion, and he felt a new, dangerous spark in his groin. Already. It was impossible, but his body was responding, betraying him all over again. “The real question,” she purred, “is can you give me what I need without begging for more?”
She sat up, straddling him, and pulled the red silk dress over her head in one smooth motion. She was naked beneath. Perfect. Impossible. Every curve he’d fantasized about, rendered in living, breathing flesh.
His mouth went dry. His renewed erection pressed against her thigh.
She saw the surrender in his eyes before he did. Her smile turned triumphant, ancient. Wicked.
“There he is,” she cooed, reaching down to guide him back into her. She was so wet, so hot, so tight that he saw stars. It wasn’t just sex. It was sinking into a warm, willing addiction. She moved, setting a slow, inevitable rhythm, her head thrown back. The fairy lights haloed her.
He gripped her hips, his fingers pressing into that golden skin. He should push her off. Should scream. Should do anything but help her move, but meet her downward thrusts with his own.
But he was so tired of being lonely. Tired of the pixels and the fantasies that left him empty. Here was the fantasy, made flesh, taking him, wanting him.
She opened her eyes and looked down at him. Her pupils were vast, black pools that swallowed the light. “That’s it,” she whispered, riding him harder. “Just like that. Feed me, Thomas.”
And he did. He gave himself over to the rhythm, to the feel of her, to the devastating rightness of it. The data analyst in him was screaming about anomalies and fatal errors. The lonely man in him was finally, blissfully silent.
He was still feeding her when the first gray light of dawn began to bleach the darkness from the edges of his curtains.
He was still feeding her when the first gray light of dawn began to bleach the darkness from the edges of his curtains.
It was past noon when he opened his eyes again. The room was dim, the curtains still drawn. She was curled beside him, a warm weight against his chest, one perfect leg thrown over his. He felt hollowed out, lightheaded. As if something vital had been siphoned from his marrow. His mouth was parched.
She stirred, nuzzling his neck. “Sleep okay?” Her voice was morning-rough, intimately sleepy.
“What did you do to me?” His own voice was a croak.
“What you asked me to.” She propped herself up on an elbow, her hair creating a dark curtain around their faces. She looked… refreshed. Vibrant. Her skin practically hummed with a soft, inner light. “Don’t you feel better? All that tension. All that… pressure. Gone.”
He did feel strangely calm. The usual morning anxiety, the low-grade panic about work, about his silent phone, about the sheer mundane loneliness of the day ahead—it was muted. Drowned in a deep, physical exhaustion. But underneath the calm, a new terror was rooting. It was the terror of a prisoner who finds his cell comfortable.
“I have to go to work,” he said, the statement absurd.
“Do you?” She kissed his shoulder. Her lips were so soft. “Call in sick. You look terrible.”
A weak laugh escaped him. He did. He felt terrible. Wonderful and terrible. “They’ll know. They’ll check.”
“Let them.” She trailed a finger down his stomach, lower. He flinched, oversensitive, raw. “What’s more important?”
His phone buzzed on the nightstand. A work email. The screen lit up, and it was her again, his background photo from the concert in Bangkok. Two faces of the same fantasy, one digital, one breathing beside him. The cognitive dissonance made his head spin.
She saw him looking. She smiled, then slowly, deliberately, shifted her body on top of his. The slide of her skin was electric. His body, traitorous and exhausted, began to stir again.
“See?” she whispered, her lips a millimeter from his. “The software is responding to the new hardware. It’s a simple compatibility issue. You’re just… updating.”
“This isn’t real,” he breathed, but his hands were already moving to her hips.
“It’s the most real thing you’ve ever felt.” She sank onto him, taking him in with a slow, sighing roll of her hips that made his toes curl. The hollowness inside him flared, an aching void that demanded to be filled, even as she drained him further. It was a feedback loop of need. “The data doesn’t lie, Thomas. Feel this. This is your output.”
He was losing. The arguments in his mind—the logic, the fear—were just distant, static noise. The signal was here. The signal was the glide of her, the clench of her, the sweat-slick heat where their bodies met. The signal was her whispered filth in his ear, words Lisa from the posters would never say, words that unraveled him completely.
He didn’t call in sick. He forgot to. Time became a series of feverish interludes punctuated by periods of vague, dreamless sleep. He’d wake to her mouth, or her hands, or her riding him in the half-light, her form silhouetted against the glow of his own computer monitor. She’d feed him sips of warm energy drink, crumbs from a protein bar. It was enough.
At some point, night fell again. Or maybe it was still the same day. The perpetual dusk of his room was eternal.
She was perched on the edge of his desk, scrolling through his phone with a detached curiosity. He watched from the bed, cocooned in sour sheets. He felt weightless. Detached.
“Your boss is ‘concerned,’” she read aloud, her voice a pitch-perfect mimicry of bland corporate HR. “Three days with no contact is a ‘serious matter.’ Blah, blah.” She tossed the phone onto the bed. It landed next to his thigh. He didn’t reach for it.
“I’m fired,” he said. The words had no texture. It was just data.
“Probably.” She shrugged. A beautiful, elegant lift of her shoulders. “Does it matter? You hated it.”
“I needed it.”
“You need this.” She left the desk and crawled back over him, caging him with her arms. Her eyes were bottomless. “You need what I’m taking from you. It’s the only thing that’s ever made you feel full, even as I empty you out. Admit it.”
He looked up at her—at the face of his every lonely fantasy, now his warden, his addiction, his god. He saw the ancient hunger behind the familiar eyes. He felt the thrilling, terrifying power of her attention—all of it, every ounce, focused solely on him. On consuming him.
It was the most profound relationship he’d ever had.
All the fight, what little there had been, bled out of him in a long, surrendering exhale. The analyst in him finally, quietly, shut down. There was no more analysis. There was only the equation: her hunger, his willingness. The solution was simple. It was inevitable.
He reached up, his hand trembling only slightly, and brushed the hair from her face. He let his thumb trace the impossible curve of her cheekbone. A gesture of tenderness. Of ownership. Of sacrifice.
“Take it,” he whispered, his voice clear for the first time in days. “All of it. It’s yours.”
Her smile was different then. Not a smirk. Not a predator’s grin. It was a real smile, warm and wide and terrifying in its genuine delight. She leaned down and kissed him softly, a kiss that tasted of promise and of endings.
“Good boy,” she murmured against his mouth.
And he was.
He surrendered completely.
He surrendered completely.
For three days, he floated in a warm, soupy void. Time wasn’t linear; it was a loop of touch, taste, and exhausted sleep. The world beyond the bedroom door—the kitchen with its empty fridge, the silent buzzing phone, the unwatered plant slowly dying on the windowsill—ceased to exist. There was only the shrine, and the goddess who lived there, and the constant, gentle drain.
He was so tired. A deep, bone-marrow tiredness that should have been terrifying. Instead, it felt like peace. The static in his brain was gone. The anxiety that usually buzzed behind his eyes was silent. She had siphoned it all away, leaving him clean and hollow.
On the fourth morning—or was it evening?—she was different.
Usually, after she fed, she’d curl into him, a contented parasite, and doze. This time, she propped herself up, her dark eyes lucid and intent. She traced the line of his jaw, her nail a sharp point of sensation.
“You’re adapting,” she said, her voice not a whisper but a clear, conversational tone. It was jarring. “Your life force is… resilient. Thicker than I expected.”
Thomas mumbled something into the pillow. Even talking was an effort.
“No, no, look at me.” She pinched his chin, turning his head. The touch wasn’t cruel, but it was absolute. “This is good. It means we can move to the next phase. The maintenance dose wasn’t really satisfying either of us, was it?”
He blinked, slow. “Next phase?”
Her smile was all Lisa—the one from the variety show where she won the dance battle. Bright, charming, utterly deceptive. “Now you have surrendered,” she whispered, her lips brushing the shell of his ear. The change in her voice was instantaneous, a shift from conversation to a secret meant for his basest self. “I’m going to increase the pleasure every time you cum.”
A stupid, weak thrill shivered through him. He hated it. He craved it.
“And if you consent,” she continued, her tongue flicking against his earlobe, “by stating ‘Lisa owns my cock’ three times, then thrust up into my wet pussy… my pussy will cover your hard cock with a powerful aphrodisiac venom.” She pulled back just enough to watch his eyes glaze over. “It will make you perpetually extremely horny. A constant, beautiful ache. A need that only I can properly answer. It will make the feeding… deeper. So much better for both of us.”
The words hung in the stale air. They were absurd. Monstrous. A transactional curse from a pornographic nightmare.
He should say no. He should find some last shred of self-preservation and shove her off the bed.
Instead, he felt his body betray him with a sudden, sharp resurgence of interest. The mere description, the clinical filth of it, sparked a low fire in his gut. Perpetually horny. It sounded like hell. It sounded like the only heaven he’d ever deserved.
“Why?” he croaked.
“Because I’m bored,” she said simply, shrugging. The ancient, capricious creature peered out from behind the pop star’s face. “And because you want to. You just haven’t admitted it yet. This makes it official. Your voice. Your choice.” She trailed a hand down his chest, over his stomach. “Say no, and we continue as we are. You’ll live. Probably. For a while. Say yes…” Her hand closed around him, and he was already semi-hard, responding to her voice like a tuned instrument. “Say yes, and every nerve ending will sing for me, forever.”
Her grip tightened. Not enough to hurt. Enough to promise.
His mind was a blank screen. All the data was there—the danger, the madness, the certain degradation—but he couldn’t process it. The only operating system left was the one she had installed: pursuit of pleasure, absence of pain, the oblivion of her attention.
He looked at her. Really looked. At the perfect arch of her eyebrow, the slight pout of her lips, the familiar beauty that had been the wallpaper of his loneliness. This was it. The final fantasy. Interactive. All-consuming.
His mouth was dry as dust. He licked his lips.
“Lisa,” he whispered.
Her eyes gleamed. “Say it.”
“Lisa owns my cock.” The words were ash in his mouth. And electricity in his veins.
“Again.”
“Lisa owns my cock.” It was easier the second time. It felt true.
She leaned forward, her breath hot on his face. “One more time. Make me believe it.”
He took a shuddering breath. The last gulp of air before the plunge. He didn’t think. He just let the words, the surrender, the stupid, gorgeous truth of it, tumble out.
“Lisa owns my cock.”
For a fraction of a second, her perfect composure broke. Her pupils dilated, swallowing the brown, and in their depths he saw not lust, but pure, rapturous hunger. A starving thing looking at a feast.
“Then take it,” she breathed, sliding her body over his, positioning herself.
He moved. With a groan that was part agony, part deliverance, he thrust up into her.
The change was immediate.
It wasn’t just heat. It was a thousand burning wires lit up inside him. A sensation like molten gold being injected directly into his nervous system. She clenched around him, and a wave of intense, prickling heat radiated from where they were joined, flooding his groin, his stomach, shooting up his spine.
He cried out—a raw, animal sound.
The feeling wasn’t just pleasure. It was a rewriting. A permanent adjustment. The tiredness evaporated, burned away by a sudden, frantic alertness. Every single cell in his body felt awake, sensitive, yearning. The air on his skin was almost painful. The smell of her was overpowering. The sight of her above him, smiling with dark triumph, was the most desperately needed thing he had ever seen.
The aphrodisiac venom, she called it. It felt like being dipped in gasoline and handed a match.
The perpetual ache began before he even finished. A deep, implacable throbbing that centered in his cock but echoed in his fingertips, in the back of his teeth. It was a need that dwarfed any horniness he’d ever known. It was a biological imperative.
She rode him slowly, savouring the change in him. Watching his eyes widen with the shock of the new, relentless hunger.
“There,” she whispered, leaning down to kiss him. Her lips were sweet poison. “Now we can really begin. You’ll never not want me again. You’ll dream of this when you sleep. You’ll feel this empty, angry need with every heartbeat. And I’ll be the only thing that fills it.”
She was right. Even as he came, a convulsive, mind-blanking eruption that the increased pleasure made almost unbearably intense, the relief was fleeting. A single drop of water on a desert tongue. The ache returned within seconds, stronger, more insistent.
He was gasping, trembling, already hard again inside her.
She laughed, a sound of pure delight, and rolled her hips. “See? No more boring breaks. No more recovery time. Just… need. And me.”
Thomas clung to her, his fingers digging into the flawless gold of her shoulders. The hollow man was gone. In his place was a vessel of pure, screaming want. The data was gone. The logic was gone. There was only the equation she had written.
Need. And her.
He was hers. Not just in surrender, but in his very chemistry. The curse was complete.