Our first real date in months - he took me to see The Addams Family, which just came out this weekend. I am enthralled. This is perfect, absolutely perfect.

We are snuggled up against each other, at least, as far as we are able to around the armrests. I wish they were the kind that could be lifted out of the way, but the seats, while well-cushioned, lack certain conveniences and comforts, movable armrests being one of them. We press as close together as we can, though.

A large tub of buttered popcorn sits between us. I've been gorging myself on it.

So, Gomez was a desperate, howling demon in the night when he was making love to Morticia, was he?

"I wonder if I could make you howl like a demon?" I murmur.

"I think I'll leave you wondering on that count," he replies.

I nestle in closer; he tries to wrap his arm around me, but it doesn't work very well around the seats, so we settle for bumping up against each other. I stroke his shoulder with my right hand, brushing my face against my wrist so that I can feel the black silk scarf he gave me caress my cheek. The favor of his love.

Next weekend is Thanksgiving. Four days of weekend, rather than two. Four whole days of food. Roast turkey. He's having me handle the turkey, although he's doing all the side dishes. He says roast fowl is a fairly easy dish to learn cooking technique from. I'm a little nervous about the possibility of botching the main course of our holiday dinner, but my mouth waters at the thought of eating turkey.

Gomez is fencing with Tully now. I've always wanted to learn how to fence.

Magister reaches into the bucket, fishes out a couple of pieces of popcorn, and holds them to my lips. I nibble the proffered popcorn and then suck the butter from his fingers. Slowly, I run the tip of my tongue along the tip of his index finger, then take the finger into my mouth and fellate it. I hear his breath quicken, and I smile.

We scream with laughter at Wednesday's expression as she electrocutes her brother, and at what she thought their little "game" ought to be called. The people sitting immediately next to us give us strange looks and seem to shrink away from us. That might be the wisest course of action, all things considered.

Now Gomez has Fester in a headlock and chokehold. Fester is pleading for mercy.

He apparently forgot the secret "password."

"Uh oh! Bad thing to forget!" I mutter. Password? Safeword is what Gomez and Fester are talking about here, and we both know it.

We snicker.

How can the people in the theater not get it? Are they blind?

They must be blind.

We clutch at each other, alternately howling with laughter and wiping tears of mirth from our faces. The jokes in this movie really only make sense if you're a complete pervert. Otherwise, they're just gratuitously weird.

The movie is about us.

When we exit the theatre, making our way to his car, a blast of cold air hits us. Earlier this week, the relatively pleasant mid-November weather gave way to a cold snap from the north. Weirdness and rapid change are typical weather for this part of the state. We're just close enough to the lake to experience a lake effect in all seasons that are not summer. There's even snow on the ground now, although I don't know how long it will last since we haven't had many hard frosts yet. I wrap my coat around myself more tightly in a vain effort to warm myself up.

The instant we're inside the car, he has his arms around me in a crushing embrace. His lips are hot against mine.

"Cara mia," he murmurs with a smile.

"Mon Sauvage."

Talking suddenly seems pointless.

Eventually, he surfaces for air and gets the ignition started, and the car is warm enough by the time we're on the way home that I can unbutton my coat.

Soon he has his right hand undoing the buttons of my blouse, reaching underneath to stroke my breasts until I'm panting and writhing and arching my back. I cry out from anticipation when he slides his hand under the waistband of my leggings. I don't want to wait. I can't wait. He works me gently with his fingers. I shudder and rock up against him, begging for more.

I don't have to see his smile to feel it. It permeates the interior of the car like the evidence of desire.

Lights flickering, the noise of rushing air. Other cars pass by us occasionally. No doubt anyone bothering to look in our general direction would get an eyeful.

At some point it becomes clear that he's taking the scenic route home; the drive to the movie theatre didn't take more than ten or fifteen minutes, and we've been driving for longer than that. Also, the road we used to take to the theatre was not wooded and twisty, the way the road we are on now is, and the lights and noises of passing cars stopped intruding on us a while ago. I wonder where we are. Then I stop wondering, or caring.

He pulls over onto the shoulder.

"You're close, aren't you?"

"Yes. Don't stop, please don't stop..."

"I don't intend to stop. Ride my fingers."

After several minutes of grinding against his hand, I come, let out a strangled scream, and collapse back onto my seat, gasping for breath.

He bends over, wraps his arm around me, and tries to pull me toward him, but the space between the bucket seats has other ideas, so we clamber into the back seat to nestle together, where we sit, curled into each other's arms, watching the windows fog, watching the fog frost over, reaching for each other's warmth.

"Se philo," he whispers, brushing the top of my head with his lips.

I start to doze off.

"Bother," he says, then. "I needed you on edge for our next lesson. I should have restrained myself when you begged for an orgasm. It's a good thing you don't have much of a refractory period."

He is as good as his word, as always; when he turns into our parking lot, I am more than ready for another round in bed - or on the living room couch, or on the entryway floor - but the lesson he wants to conduct does not make use of any of those places.

"The conditions are perfect right now for energy work," he says. "Not only do we have a nice large full moon to work with, but the weather right now is quite bracing."

I suppose bracing is one word for it. Also, I'm so horny that if he were to ask me to mount myself on a nearby bush and ride it, I might very well do just that. Damn him. He's too clever with his fingers by half.

He takes me by the hand and leads me to the denuded thicket of honeysuckle, mulberry bushes, and scrub trees that grow at the back of the parking lot. Through the bushes a way, and then we are in a little wood that sits on a vacant land plot. It's been for sale for as long as I've been visiting Magister's apartment, but nobody wants to buy it, probably because it's too far away from the main road where there are stores and restaurants and other businesses, plus it's across the street from a cemetery and for some reason nobody wants to build a house and live across the street from a cemetery. We could almost have our own private park, it's so secluded. Go too much farther, and there are railroad tracks and an electrical station. He'd better not be thinking of tying me to either of those places.

"Here, this is perfect," he says. "A very good spot. Strip. You may keep your shoes on to protect your feet."

I look incredulously at him. There is snow on the ground, and an icy wind is still blowing. He must have lost his mind.

"I shouldn't need to ask you a second time, ancilla," he remarks quietly, steel creeping into his voice.

I slowly begin to remove my clothes.

"Also, I remind you that you are under silence, as we are doing work and I am about to instruct you. There. Hold your arms out from your sides, please. I need to use them for a minute."

This will leave my ribcage exposed to the cold; also, for that matter, my arms. I comply, shivering as I do so.

He pulls some cords out from the pockets of his overcoat and takes off his gloves.

Nuts. He is absolutely nuts.

As he's tying me to the branches of honeysuckle bushes and young maple trees, he leans against me and says softly into my ear, "You will meditate on the element of Fire. Summon Fire." His lips and tongue are hot against my ear as he wraps his arms around my torso and pulls me forward, lifting me to grind my pelvis up against his. The rocking movements make the branches I'm now more or less hanging from sway back and forth. He kisses my mouth. He's so warm.

Some dark instinct takes hold of me; I use my breath to suck his, feeling his warmth and life start to fill me. The taste is exhilarating.

He breaks away, though, leaving me cold once more. "Interesting," he gasps, a peculiar look on his face. "Although it really shouldn't surprise me. Not exactly what I was looking for, but... interesting." He fishes around in another coat pocket and pulls out something that glitters and clinks. "Hold still, please. Shivering makes this more difficult. These aren't the Japanese clamps, so I need to screw them on to get them onto your nipples."

That chain is freezing cold. I hiss between my teeth and dance on tiptoe.

The wind gusts.

He circles around behind me; I hear him rustling in the undergrowth, and then the sound of snapping twigs and branches. Somehow, he manages to sidle up behind me. He wraps an arm around me, leans in, and murmurs, "Let's try this again. I did not ask you to suck my heat, my life, and my energy away from me. I asked you to meditate on the element of Fire, and to summon Fire. I will help to some degree, but the bulk of the effort must be yours." His hand, which is still bare, reaches down between my legs and finds wetness. I start to whimper but catch myself. I want to do more - moan, cry out, rock my hips to ride his fingers, plead - but of course, I can't. Into my ear, he says, "And when you show signs of having summoned sufficient Fire to warm yourself, I will take you."

He pulls away.

Then I find out what the noise of snapping branches was all about.

I grind my teeth. Meditate on Fire. Through this. Right.

On the other hand, at least he is managing to warm me up a little as he circles around me, slashing at my legs and back with the improvised switch.

I've done this before. Admittedly, I wasn't naked, tied to scrub brush in a snowy thicket, and getting thrashed at the time, but I've done it. This is just a little bit more advanced. I can do this.

I think of sun, and warm beaches, and hot muggy July afternoons. I think of bonfires and volcanoes. I think of Magister's kisses. I think of all these things entering my body, filling me with power and heat. I see myself in my mind's eye, a torch blazing in the night.

I don't even notice when the snow around us has melted, when he stops lashing at me with the stick, when the air becomes permeated with mist. I don't notice when he unzips his trousers; I only feel him when he crouches before me and drives himself up into me, and his hand is at my head, grabbing me tightly by the hair, and he's kissing me and I'm moaning into his mouth and then screaming as pleasure takes me, and him along with me. I can't hold it in. It's pouring out of me in crackling torrents. Branches rattle back and forth, pinned to my arms.

Eventually, we collapse against each other, spent.

As he starts to unwind the cords that held me by my aching arms to the brush, he remarks, "That is a five-foot radius of melted snow. Look. You did that. Not I. All I did was give you a little extra energy and encouragement. You, my ancilla, did that."

I look. The thicket is full of mud and dense fog and is entirely devoid of snow.

That was me?

That was me.

I didn't even know that what I just did was possible.