Herbert Barton sat on the edge of the dirty bed, rubbing his thinning scalp. “It’s just not the same, I don’t think,” he said to himself.

“What’s different this time?” The young woman’s voice betrayed that she wasn’t invested in his answer. Her heavy, round hips jutted as she bent to touch up her lips in the vanity mirror.

He glanced up, surprised that there was someone else there. He shouldn’t have been: he’d been rolling around with her in increasingly unlikely positions for the past hour. Her dismay was to be expected, as his third visit to her hadn’t gone any better than the previous two. It was always more ideas, more requests, more challenges, but this beleaguered and unimaginative girl just couldn’t break through that impenetrable… that intangible…

Light glowed through her window, light from a full moon and from the part of the city that didn’t shut off its power late at night. Colored lights flashed on her ceiling; a pale blue square slipped off her pillow. Herbert slumped, stick-like legs jutting from striped boxers, sock garters wrapped around his slight calves, the shade of a paunch filling out his white sleeveless undershirt. For all the world he looked like a Norman Rockwell portrait, as out of place in this time as his fantasies were in this reality. The corners of his mouth tugged down as he formed his thoughts.

The prostitute climbed past him and piled up pillows to wedge herself into the corner. She must be frustrated with him, he realized: three visits of his bizarre requests, always resulting in disappointment with this miserable little man. His comment hadn’t been to her but she was there so he had to answer. “Maybe it’s not the shoes,” he started, but she cut him off.

“Look, mister, we’ve tried bare feet. We’ve tried black sheer stockings and wool leggings. We’ve tried tube socks and short tennis socks with those li’l fuckin’ pompons in the back.” She stared at him in the shadows, her face momentarily lit up with the crackling cigarette she pulled on. The way her eyes glowed was unpleasant.

His head hung on his neck as he looked over at her. “I know, yes, I know. Thank you so much for your patience… but what if—”

“We’ve tried lying down together,” she continued, louder. “I laid on top of you and bounced. I sat on your chest and bounced. I stood on your chest until I thought I was going to cave you in. I stood on you in the bed and on the floor. I’ve balanced on one goddamn foot, right on your face. I wrapped you up in a rug and stomped the shit out of you from head to toe for twenty minutes! Mister, we’ve tried everything.”

“Right, but what if this time—”

“And I’m not your first in this goddamn house, neither. You’ve gone through everyone like a box of tissues: thin girls, fat girls, tall girls, short girls, young and old women.” Her face flared in the ember of another drag. “Sometimes in twos, threes, and fours. I was the only chick in this place you hadn’t tried, because I started last month. And you know what?” She struggled to sit up on the badly abused mattress. “I’ve already got two other regulars, and they can’t get enough me. You know that? They actually like me, can’t get enough. You,” she said, jabbing her cigarette at him, “you’re the only one I got a problem with. You make me feel bad about myself, like I’m doing something wrong.”

His heart dropped into his stomach. When he tried to speak, she stretched one thick leg out and shoved his jaw aside with her platform boot. “I’m good at what I do, mister. I fucking love it, and those two guys are so excited to see me each time. Leave with big happy grins on their faces. But you”—she kicked his shoulder—“make me feel… incompetent. Like I’m a fucking newbie or something. I’ve tried really hard to do everything you asked, but after three weeks of this shit, I have no idea what it is you want.” Her cigarette crackled again. “And I’m starting to think you don’t either.”

Herbert tried to apologize, but the big girl only told him to pick up his clothes and get the hell out. He fumbled for his pants, fumbled to find the belt in the waist, started to pull them on but she stung him between the shoulder blades with her butt. He clutched at his clothes on the floor and scuttled out into the hallway to get dressed. A heavy-set woman in a kimono passed him, smirking, followed by one of his state representatives, trying to hide his face.

Downstairs, the Madame grinned with her whole face at him. “How was it this time, Mr. Barton? I trust we were able to make your dreams come true this time.” Ringlets of black acrylic hair hung over her shoulders in the red China doll dress.

He sat in front of her desk, lips pursed, and slid three folded $100 bills across her desk. “She’s very beautiful, it’s not her fault at all,” he said urgently.

The older woman chewed the corner of her mouth and regarded him. “Mr. Barton has very specific tastes. This is the stomping thing, yes?”

He winced as though someone had swung at him, then looked around the foyer. “It’s not just stomping, see,” he said, stammering. “It’s more like… I want more, but not just someone who’s tall or heavy-set or…” He gestured vaguely in warm air heavy with incense.

“Claudia had long feet,” the Madame mused, referring to an earlier visit.

“Oh yes, the longest I’ve ever seen. I don’t know where you found her. But it’s not just long feet, per se…” He squinted toward the ceiling. “It’s like being heavier, everywhere, all at once. Maybe that’s large feet, but also large hands, long legs… but heavier. Everywhere, everything, all at once.” He grimaced and massaged his temples. “I’m sorry. I’m very sorry to keep bothering you like this. I’m upsetting your girls, and there’s nothing wrong with them…”

The Madame simpered. “You have a kind heart, Mr. Barton. And you pay very well, we have no complaints.”

“Maybe that girl was right. Maybe I don’t know what I want. It doesn’t sound like it, does it? All this big and heavy and I-don’t-know-what. Maybe what I want doesn’t… even exist.” Herbert’s arms hung at his sides, and the spirit went out of his spine, accentuating the cheapness of his suit.

The Madame wrapped her hands around her elbows, long nails clacking like talons. “This thing you want… I am concerned, Mr. Barton. You have sampled each of my women here. You have taken your time and, by all reports, been very patient and clear in your instructions. Yet it seems as though your goal is fading into the distance.” She shook her head and pinched her wrinkled lips. “I feel much regret that we haven’t been able to satisfy one of our most loyal and generous clients.”

It was too much for Herbert to think he’d disappointed two women in the same night. “Oh, no, no! Really, you’ve been amazing, I promise. You’ve gone so far out of your way. Believe me, deeply, I know how you’ve done everything you can for me, and more.” His laughter, meant to placade, came out as a weak cough.

“This is true,” she said, gazing at him intently. “We have done everything we possibly could for you. Mr. Barton, but your requirements seem to go beyond our sphere of influence.” When he tried to speak, she cut the air with the side of her hand. “Now I think it is time for you to move on… I can see by your face you misunderstand. Pardon me while I find the words. I mean that it is time for someone else to… it’s time for you to try someone else. If I may make a recommendation?” With a flick, she produced a cream-colored rectangle between her knobby fingers. “The big guns, I believe is your expression.”

A wild hope rushed through Herbert like a gust of cool air in a hot, stifling room. He reached for the card, but the Madame jerked it away. “I must advise you, Mr. Barton, that this is a very serious commitment. I do not make this recommendation lightly.” She leaned toward him. “Once you accept this, if you accept it, you cannot back out of it. You must see it through to completion. Do you understand?”

The little man felt a twinge of a reflex to hold himself back. “What does that mean? Are they going to hunt me down or something?” His joke fell flat; the Madame stood like a statue behind her desk, holding the card beside her stern expression. “There is a tremendous cost to be paid,” she said slowly, “but if I have any guess as to what it is you seek, you will most likely find it here.”

“Oh, I’ll pay anything!” Herbert nearly laughed in her face, dizzy with relief and hope.

The woman only murmured a tremendous cost, but placed the card face-down upon the desk with a meaningful thud, slid it toward him with much drama. He placed his fingertips upon the card to take it, but her fingers remained fixed. He looked up at her, and her dark eyes glittered with an uncanny energy for a moment before she withdrew her hand. He tried to thank her, but conversation was over: she pointed her sharp chin at the door.

Slowly he rose from his seat, watching her. Her entire body seemed tuned out to his existence. “Well, that’s that, I guess,” he murmured, pocketing the card. He turned up his collar and went outside into the cold dead of night to look for a cab.

His head raced, as he rode along in the back seat. The gravity with which the Madame impressed him gave this little business card tremendous emotional cachet, bordering on the mystical. His hand drifted to his jacket’s breast pocket, pressing it against his pounding heart. He glanced at the driver’s rear-view mirror, but the portly man couldn’t be bothered with him, not at this time of night. Herbert paid for the ride, tipped well (without acknowledgment), and walked the last block up to his apartment. His hand remained clamped to his chest, protecting the little card from errant breezes; his head shot left and right, looking out for bad agents in every alley, desperate people who could sense that he was in possession of something impossibly valuable. The full moon, bright and unimpeded by clouds, shone around him like a spotlight, leaving him vulnerable to any unseen attacker. Blood pounded in his neck and down his arms: if he had to, Herbert felt he could deliver one good shot to let anyone know he was not one to be tangled with. Perhaps a punch to the neck, stun the trachea, block off their air for the crucial seconds it would take to flee to his apartment.

Before he knew it, however, he was inside his own space, behind the locked doors of the building and the deadbolt of his apartment. As safe as he could possibly be, given the environment; he closed the windows and latched them shut, the ones that would be latched. Only then did he dare to take the card out and examine it. Floorboards creaked beneath his feet, and the full moon beamed into his living room, glaring upon the carpet, his shoes, his slacks. He looked around the too-empty room and threw himself into a large chair, salvaged and reupholstered. He had money to throw at prostitutes all year long, in the pursuit of his particular fantasy, but a new chair for himself was just too much of a luxury, a waste, one more obstacle on the way to his dream.

The card was stiff and impressively thick between his fingertips. His slim cold fingers pulled it smoothly from the interior pocket, and its pristine blankness glowed up at him. He drew a long, shaky breath and sat there for another moment. Light late-night traffic purred in the distance, and the vintage apartment building was uncharacteristically quiet in the wee hours, leaving plenty of aural space for his pulse to pound in his ears.

Slowly, torn between wariness and intense hunger, Herbert turned the card over.

Herbert didn’t know this part of town existed. Of course, in a city as large as this one, there would be obscure or hidden neighborhoods, places where no one has any reason to go unless they live there. But how did you even find these places initially, in order to move in? Did you need an “in” with someone? Was it just luck, checking the right newspaper on the right day? Did someone hand you a mysterious card that compelled you to seek it out?

It looked beautifully European, to his untraveled mind, with oily iron streetlight poles and spiked garden fences and plants absolutely everywhere. Nature refused to yield to human development in this area, with Spanish moss drifting from tree limbs, explosions of ferns hanging from balconies, trimmed hedges where a property owner was able to wedge them in, and maples and oaks that looked large enough to have been planted around the time of Jesus. He had the impression that the city had gone up against this bloc of flora and lost enough times to make development economically unsustainable. This was exceptional, in a city that seemed to love razing and refacing itself every few years, like a criminal desperately covering his tracks.

There had to be real money involved here. That was the sense Herbert got, a symbiotic relationship between property values and a lush pocket of nature. Perhaps the streetlights really had been imported from Paris. The flush of admiration he initially felt for this scenery slowly gave way to envy and melancholy. He made enough money to throw at “women of the evening” catering to exotic and forbidden tastes, sure, but even if he cut that expenditure, he would never earn enough to live among the French colonial houses with lovingly restored balconies.

As he gawked, he saw a flash of white amid a wall of foliage. He picked out an elderly couple sitting on white wicker furniture, reading the paper and having a smoke. They smiled at him kindly; he waved back, then recalled the purpose for his visit and turned quickly, shuffling down the street. Behind him the old man chortled.

The house numbers were difficult to read. Each building had its own curly, stylized, frou-frou script, and it hid their numbers in a new location each time: painted on the front steps, mounted within a richly hued porch, artfully accenting an antique mailbox. Herbert frowned and studied his precious little card again, looked up at the house fronts. He sighed, then breathed deeper: the air seemed so much cleaner here, healthful and life-lending. He couldn’t believe he’d lived so long in this city and never, ever caught a hint of this little paradise.

It took him too long to realize that the card being one digit off from the two houses he studied meant that he was on the wrong side of the street. Blushing, he turned around, checked for traffic—cars were parked along the road but no one had driven by the entire time he’d been here—and jogged across the street to land in front of his destination.

The building was a little smaller, narrower than those around it, but no less elegant. He wondered how in the world they were able to plant and maintain a palm tree in the little postage stamp of a front yard: it rose with a massive, pale trunk before the creamy two-story house. The upper level of the building had just enough room for one large window and a glass door opening to a sheltered balcony, which rested on two carved pillars framing a snug, elegant porch. Even this, this afterthought of a construction, this little brother to all the glorious houses lining the street, this was far beyond his reach. He would have been happier to stand here and simmer with envy, than to return to his actual home.

His lip trembled. He stepped up to the front walk and, as if on its own, his hand reached out to rest upon the knob of a wrought-iron gate, to stroke a cast-iron mailbox. Everything here was so classically beautiful, so solid and heavy. He continued up the walk, treading carefully, conscious of his lower-quality shoes upon the property (even the poured concrete seemed nicer here). His slacks felt thin, the shoulders of his jacket hung unevenly, and an odd breeze gave him to wonder if he smelled. He looked around again, slower, doubtfully. What was he doing here? He had no right to stumble into this carefully curated living space. Was the Madame playing a joke on him… or was she setting him up for failure? He looked up at the house, this time questioning whether he’d ever walk out of it.

He started to turn, then froze. No, Herbert, he told himself, not again. You’ve doubted yourself so many times, talked yourself out of asking for raises at work, turned away that nice woman at the restaurant who, in reflection, you’re 60% to 80% sure may have been trying to invite you on a date… You’re holding yourself back again. You have no reason to suspect the Madame of acting in bad faith, and for all you know, your wildest dreams reside within this house. Even if it’s the smallest on the block.

So he wouldn’t catch a taxi out to an overpass and hurl himself into the river. He stood in one beam of sunshine that slipped through the abundant trees, breathed the sweet air, and trusted in the card he pinched in his little fist. It was his tastes, his very intense and peculiar appetite that pulled him from the brink now, and as he promised the Madame, he would commit himself to it wholly. And it could end badly, but—

He stopped himself right there, kicked that thought in the seat of its pants and turned around and headed toward the house again. His shabby wingtips knocked against the immaculately painted porch boards, and before he could stop himself, he rapped smartly upon the leaded glass window in the front door.

There was a pause, during which Herbert struggled to swallow his questions and doubt, and he was rewarded by the parting of lace curtains on the other side of the window. Through warbled glass an older man peered at him, nodded, and unlatched the heavy locking mechanism. Herbert stepped back and held up the card like a holy symbol; the gentleman simply stepped aside and gestured Herbert to enter. His heart pounded in his head as he slipped out of the sunlight and nutritive air, into a comfortably shadowed entryway, redolent of old candles and old books. The wood furnishings glowed with decades and decades of meticulous care; the Turkish rug was as stout and sturdy as it was aged. Everything around here had a determination to live and exist, and Herbert felt as though he didn’t measure up to it all.

The gentleman wore a nicely fitted black suit, not as showy as a tux but as flattering as one. His hair was slicked back and groomed flawlessly. “This way, sir,” he said in cultured, modulated tones; Herbert abruptly longed for this man to read him to sleep. Even these three words underscored the rich, fantastical world so close and yet unknown to Herbert’s existence. It was almost a violation for him to be here, a trespass. He and his moth-eaten, secondhand suit deserved to languish in that fleabag flat he rented.

But the Madame…

The gentleman said, “My name is” (Herbert, distracted, managed not to catch it and was too embarrassed to ask him to repeat it) “and I am the steward of this property. Please have a seat.” He indicated an elaborately carved, stuffed chair beside a truly enormous Ming vase. Of course it’s a Ming vase, thought Herbert, it couldn’t be anything else in a place like this. He struggled to find a comfortable position as the steward glided away and disappeared.

Waiting by oneself was one thing; waiting in a den of opulence and luxury while feeling like a cockroach was another experience entirely. At least he could command his behavior, he thought, pinching his knees shut and folding his hands upon them. He practiced straightening his spine, unsure in what position it was actually straight. He sat in a large alcove, opposite a bay window fringed in thriving plants, hazy and buzzing with sunlight. After some time he realized there was music playing somewhere. He’d assumed his mind was creating it to complement his surroundings. He tilted his head, turned slightly, held his breath: yes, there was an accordion, a violin, and gentle drumming, coming through dimly as though the neighbors were practicing. Closing his eyes, he visualized a group of libertines, bohemians, drinking colored syrups in tiny glasses, holding their cigarettes in odd positions, laughing and joking in a language he couldn’t understand.

“Mr. Barton?” The gentleman, translocating silently, rattled him from his reverie. “If you would follow me, please.”

Herbert leaped to his feet, then spun, startled, ready to catch the huge vase in case he’d bumped it. With a work of art that precious, one naturally assumes one has upset it or is about to. But it was fine, it stood solidly as ever, and slowly he permitted himself to relax. “Yes, of course,” he said absently.

The steward somehow implied the sense of smiling. “It’s a fake, Mr. Barton.”

“What is?”

“The vase. It’s a very good replica. The original had been jostled and shattered many years ago.”

Herbert’s body rattled with relieved laughter. “Ah, so the pressure’s off! I could just…” He leered and reached for the upper lip.

“The replica is still quite expensive.”

Herbert froze and stepped back from the vase, then flinched to see what he might be backing into. The gentleman only raised one eyebrow and strode out of the room, and Herbert tailed him closely.

They passed through a dark wooden door and picked their steps carefully down a carpeted spiral staircase. The stairwell was lined with velvet wallpaper and gold trimming. The light fixtures were flickering LED bulbs that closely replicated the sense of large candles in sconces. Occasionally there were small, gilt-framed paintings of elegant woman in classical outfits. The stairwell turned and turned, and Herbert desired to rest his hand on the steward’s shoulder, to remain upright. The scent of the upper level had disappeared, was replaced by chilly air and petrichor; there was no music, only their own heavy footsteps on the runner, stretching on and on and on.

Unable to bear the tension, Herbert spoke up. “Say, this is awfully deep for a basement, isn’t it?”

The steward did not look back at him. “We are not going to the cellar, Mr. Barton. It is our fortune that beneath our property lies a network of largely pristine caverns.”

“Caverns!” This was the last thing Herbert expected to hear. “But… I mean, I suppose if you were able to purchase the land, you would get the mineral rights, but caverns… Surely they spread much further than the borders of this house.”

“We own the block, sir, and a number of blocks around it.” The back of the gentleman’s head bobbed with each successive step. “In a literal and legally binding sense, this is our part of town.”

Herbert’s knees nearly gave out. This was more than old money, this was legacy… He felt as though he very slowly, and only too late, began to perceive what he was stumbling into. He had to think about something else. “How do you know my name, anyway?”

As though responding automatically, distractedly, the gentleman said, “Mademoiselle is expecting you,” and nothing more. Herbert had nothing to say to that and only followed him into the depths of the earth.

At length they reached the bottom of the stairwell, which was a small, violently carved room with an immense fire door. The steward gripped a large iron bar on the door, then paused to look back at Herbert. He examined him as though noticing him for the first time, his brow lightly wrinkling as he took in Herbert’s thinning hair, the careless flap of his jacket lapels, the old shoes peeking out from beneath the frayed hem of his slacks. Herbert could feel his scrutiny the way he would feel someone slowly running a hair dryer over his entire body.

Turning back, the steward sucked in his breath, tightened his grip, and squared his shoulders to the degree that Herbert thought he might shred his own clothing. He was about to offer some assistance when metal on metal began to squeal. The bar rotated, gained speed, and when it made one full circle the steward gripped a fixed, vertical bar in the door and slid the entire slab to the side, into the rock. Cool, damp air flooded over the pair of them, and tiny smudges of light glowed in the yawning darkness beyond.

“Mademoiselle! We arrive!”

After that protracted descent, Herbert’s eyes had adjusted to dim light; even so, it took him some time to acclimate to the large, dark cavern. Beyond the rigidly symmetrical working of the fire door jamb, the floor was a smooth, slightly uneven plane of rock. All around the room were small stalactites and mineral deposits bulging on the walls in places. The ceiling was too high and too dark to readily perceive, beyond the reach of the colored lamps that stood on thin brass stilts at intervals about the area. He heard the trickle of running water but couldn’t pick out its source. As he stepped into the room, shapes coalesced and defined themselves: stuffed Victorian chairs here, a bookcase and circular walnut end table there, and a broad, heavy Persian rug commanding most of the floor, larger than he’d ever seen before.

Come to that, upon this rug reclined a vast and mighty woman, as long as the rug and nearly filling the room. She was draped in yards and yards of satin, as elegant as finest brocade and voluminous as a surplus parachute. It only partially covered a woman who resembled Rodin’s masterwork, the result of a three-year sabbatical fueled by unlimited patronage and untrammeled arousal. Curves no mind could frame, milky hues and porcelain textures that defied perception and invited—demanded!—caressing, exploring, tasting. Beneath her dress, the titaness’s skin glowed in answer to all the colored lamps, casting a dim light of their own. Her long, long legs stretched on forever, potent muscle caked in delicate flesh, ineffably demure in their subtle pose. Subtle! What about this colossus could be subtle? She was gigantic, she was immense; she filled the room with her mass and commanded attention with her… her… je ne sais quoi, animal chemistry, the imperceptible and unmeasurable charm that gave people irresistible command over legions.

Her eyes glowed in the darkness, it seemed to Herbert, and when they slowly rolled toward him, his body shocked with the urge to scramble away and hide behind a loveseat. This figure spoke to his basal self as a large predator, overwhelming, against which he had no defense. To be in the same room with her, to stand this far away and witness her potence, that was more than enough. It was too much! Her chest swelled with her breath, and he believed he could feel the entire room drawing in toward her, and himself with it. He glanced at his feet, checking his unsteadiness against what his body was actually doing. And she looked at him, and he wanted to flee, and all this fought with the screaming, searing urge that she was everything he had ever dreamed of.

Herbert craved her; he feared her. He wanted to throw himself into her arms and sob unrestrainedly; he wanted to knock the steward on his ass and charge up the stairs, maybe burn the house, no, the whole neighborhood down. None of this made sense, none of it: not the fact of her dimensions, not the scope of his yearning, his starvation for her. How could he want something that existed beyond his comprehension? His legs were weak, alarm prickled in his armpits, and his chest frosted over in panic. What should he do? What was he supposed to do? She was looking right at him! What was he supposed to do?!

He wheeled to face the steward. That was a composed man, a man’s man, someone who stared bravely into every inky unknown and acted with conviction. He’d know what to do.

What he was doing was hauling the fire door closed again. Herbert only barely contained the temerity to remain standing: charging after this old traitor was well beyond his capability. He could not even croak out a cry as the heavy steel door fitted with incontrovertible solidity into place; distantly, heavy pistons and bolts rolled into position, placing punctuation after punctuation at the end of Herbert’s sentence.

“Good evening, Herbert.” Her voice resounded throughout the cavern, knocking him to his knees. She said his name Air-Bear, in a halting French accent. French; a French titaness, lounging on a priceless Persian rug in a louche cavern under the most expensive, private section of his city. He wanted to laugh at the extravagance of it, every aspect of it, until his throat bled from hilarity. Yet there he knelt, clutching his thinning hair, shamed in the light of his eternal goddess now manifest, only now remembering to breathe.

He tried to turn but collapsed upon the damp rock, gasping without a shred of elegance or composure. “Herbert? Can you hear me?” Oh God, oh God, his goddess was calling to him, she knew his name, how could she know his name except everyone in this opulent bloc seemed to know his name. What should he do? What should he do?

Slowly he pushed himself up to lean upon one hip; in ungainly fashion he twisted himself around to try to face the living goddess once more, but the simple physics of his body resisted him. The dim pang of impatience was his salvation, then, as he kicked his legs out straight, bent them to heave his body upright, and finally stood shakily before the immense creature of incalculable sensual depth.

“It is pleasant to meet you at last, Herbert,” the monstress said. For all her charms, Herbert’s basal self knew that she was an aberration of nature, most likely an apex predator, and that charming man’s man just sealed him up with this gorgeous, horrifying beast. “You are, erm, smaller than I anticipated, but you are much more silent as well.” She arched an eyebrow the size of his arm. “Is it that you have nothing to say to me?”

He wanted to laugh at her, brayingly, mockingly. What place did a wretched little mortal like himself have to utter anything in the presence of this awful divinity? Should she not smite him at the sounding of his first miserable syllable? Ah, but was he not already smitten…

In for a penny, he thought with characteristic understatement. “The pleasure is all mine, goddess,” he said, and his voice was even thinner and weaker as it bounced off the glossy mineral walls. Should he bow? He tried bowing, one foot crossed before the other; one arm folding his abdomen in half, the other flung away aping élan. And why not? If he was going to die here, now, with her, at her hands, then why not just fucking go balls out and play the game as well as he could.

Breath roared in her chest. The titaness closed her eyes slowly, opened them, like an affectionate cat does. Not a finger twitched unduly: in this realm, everything belonged to the giantess and nothing occurred without her approval. She had all the time in the world, and everything Herbert thought was his, was in fact… “You are a nice little gentleman, aren’t you.” Her voice was loud yet soft, resonant and musical without being overbearing. When she spoke, it was an orchestra that came at him from all sides. He could feel her voice tingling in his pubic hairs; promptly he chastened himself for such a filthy, demeaning thought, then realized his cock was aggressively hard. He folded his hands before his crotch and nodded. “Step forward, then,” she said, and there was not a fiber in his body that could resist this command.

He heard his pathetic shoes shuffling over the rocky floor, then muted as they crossed the hem of the ungodly expensive rug. He watched his unfaithful legs drag him from the place of modesty and respect to a brazen proximity without shame. The giantess lay placid, stretched without a consideration for how she must appear, arrayed like the foothills of a legendary mountain range. What should she care, when the only witness to her bearing was a wretch like him?

And what was up with that, his wretchedness, his pathetic quality? They came up again and again without apprehension in his thoughts, as neutral as the fact of his existence. Was he comfortable with these descriptors? Was he proud of them? That is to say, what mortal could not but feel wretched in contrast to this vast, voluptuous spread of femininity? And if he was wretched already, was he not therefore especially suited for this situation? Yes, any other man, any hale, tall, robust figure of quintessential masculinity would have so much farther to fall, confronted with this casual giantess of overt, abundant sexuality; Herbert was already most of the way down, so while the red-blooded American hero had shattered his bones in his descent, Herbert merely picked himself up, dusted himself off, and moved to the next scene. This was the gift of being naturally low; this was Herbert’s Christmas.

“I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to be here,” he said cautiously. It was sincere, but in no way was it the uncoordinated tumble his emotions wanted to make it. It was good enough, but he dared not follow it up with anything.

Which… seemed to disappoint the giantess. Could he do anything right? Her unperturbed expression glowed against his skin. Thick lips, heavy with raw sex, parted and formed shapes: “I wonder if you can tell me why you are here, petit Herbert.”

Again, he was seized with the urge to throw himself at her, weeping, and beg her to roll just enough to crush him beneath her sternum, crush him to a paste. End me, his entire body sang, finish me beneath any section of your blessed divinity. To shove my head up your asshole is more than I deserve, and there he cut off his rampant, unpolished thoughts from speaking another sound. “I got this card,” he started, “from the Madame.” There. Perfect. All the facts, not a shred of which made any sense out of context. He sounded like a particularly dim child. Nicely done, Mr. Barton.

“Is that so?” As she spoke, one massive thigh shifted ponderously upon another truly colossal thigh. Herbert quickly ran out of adjectives, staring at the large mass drift over the other large mass, between which he craved to be obliterated. “Who is this Madame, and why did she lead you to me?” She said ’oo instead of who, zees instead of this, and he wanted to crawl into her mouth and live until he died in the place that made such sounds.

He drew a breath, and his ribs ached with disuse. “I’m sorry, do you mind if I sit? I’m kind of overwhelmed.” Herbert was stunned at his glibness, his casual tone. And yet, rather than backhand him to an early and unsatisfying death, the titaness simply reached out and picked up a chair like he would pick up, say, a magical, life-changing, reality-altering business card. She placed it beside him and his automatic reflexes guided him into it, when his more candid reaction would have been to collapse to the floor and urinate with abandon.

“I think you know the Madame,” he said with astonishing frankness. “I have been frequenting her business—heh, her whorehouse—for half a year at least. I’ve spent quite a lot of money going through all of her staff, asking them for one thing after another, pursing something I didn’t really understand myself.” He smiled, despite his urge to vomit with intense tension. “Big women, tall women, women with exaggerated features who could sit on me, stand on me, crush me in various ways. I didn’t understand what it was I wanted, and every woman was a near miss.” He laughed, when his body wanted to wail and tear down the steel fire door with his flimsy nails. “So, after banging my head against this particular wall for months and months, I finally received this little card from the Madame, which led me here. And honestly, I had no concept, no notion of what I was getting into.” Again, he laughed, when he was ready to tear open his rib cage and surrender his ghost to the hereafter.

The giantess moved. How she moved, what part of her moved, was impossible to estimate. “That is a tidy little answer, for such a tidy little man,” she purred, like a Harley-Davidson purrs. “I commend you for not wasting my time.”

“Wasting..?” Something compelled him to lean forward slightly, arching his brows in concern.

“The other men”—zee uzzer men—“they gabble and they plead and they fall on the ground. They roll around, begging and demanding, like a…” The giantess’s eyes squinted, and for once they trained upon somewhere other than Herbert (he felt a weight lift; he felt an indescribable robbery). “Like a, you know, a puppy. The puppy likes to play, it bites you, and then it rolls to its back and shows you its, how you say, its tummy? And you rub its tummy, but no, it wants you to masturbate it.”

Herbert’s barking laughter surprised even himself. He knew exactly what she was expressing, the sickening cross-species warmth of the emerging red shaft against the side of his hand; the all-consuming longing for this gigantic mother of humanity to suck his cock and balls right out of his body. He found himself on both sides of this fence, abruptly, and he refused to say another word until he knew where to step.

“You are not like these men, Herbert.” Once again, her fearsome, luminous green eyes rolled to consume him. “You ask for the chair. I ask you a question, and you answer me without a wait. There is something about you, Herbert. Do you know this? You must. Vraiment,” she said, and her massy head dipped twice with profundity, “tu es un petit homme spécial. With you, I am looking forward to play.” One huge arm bent and reached back, threading thick fingers through thick hair, tossing her raven tresses behind the peak of her shoulder.

Herbert couldn’t breathe, and that was the level best he could manage.

The titanic woman closed her eyes and grimaced pleasurably, cheekbones puffing as her long, long legs trembled with a luxuriant stretch. Her dress, almost living as it slid over her outrageous curves with a sensuality that… frankly, Herbert could relate to. If he were a sheet of silk or satin, he would glide and caress that artful mound of thigh just like that. He would slip coyly, almost unconsciously, between the supple bulges of her inner thighs, passing with an errant kiss upon her… oh God, her… and the heaviness of her breasts, coated in that sheer fabric that didn’t even pretend to apprehend or contain her. It was simply there for contour, to gild the lily of her abundant bosom, lavish entirely on its own merit. Cheery, multicolored crescents gleamed where the lamps showed off the fabric wrapping her breasts, and sparkled where her nipp-pp-gosh all hemlock…

Herbert realized he was jamming his spine hard against the back of the chair. His calves, such as they were, bulged with tension and his feet raised to tippy-toes: it seemed as though his entire body were wound up and braced for impact at a tremendous velocity, when all he was doing was watching the titaness. She writhed and lolled as it pleased her, and he sat in the chair she provided like stocking a dollhouse, and his cock was on fire like he’d never experienced in his life. Watching her, watching this breast hoist, heave with great mass, then spill dreamily down her ribs, he wondered if he might not just ejaculate right there. Not touching himself, not rubbing against anything, simply studying the perambulation of her left breast.

He should have felt self-conscious. Herbert, ever the classical gentleman of bygone mores, knew it was rude to stare and it was highly insulting to gawk at a woman for any reason, in any situation. And yet this giantess was rolling around for no other reason, seemingly, than his pleasure, and his body responded with a high-pitched, keening wail of a desire he’d never known before. Parts of him were still terrified, of course: she was enormous, for one thing, and she shouldn’t exist for another. Part of him wanted to crawl back into a cave for security, and another part wanted to bray against the illogic of the universe. The rest of him, however, only wanted her and it was no more specific than that. Should her arm roll badly and crush him, fine. Were he to lie beneath a massive boob that smothered his face, delightful. And should he find himself between those titanic thighs, and should they clamp shut upon him, yes, all of this was blissful and invited and desired.

So. What was he doing, sitting in a chair and writhing with the unbearable tension of desiring a woman who was showing himself off for him? In three more seconds, he resolved, nails biting into masterfully carved armrests, he would pitch himself from the chair and dive into the immense, squirming mass over mega-woman, and fate would do whatever—

“I was not wrong about you,” the titaness purred. “You have self-control. You can restrain yourself, when so many other, weaker men would have thrown themselves at me.” She ceased her sybaritic contortions and propped herself up on one elbow again, regarding him with beguiling, sleepy eyes.

Herbert looked down, then, and bit his lip painfully. His instinct for bravado would have foiled him; it was his cowardice and insecurity that served him now, albeit not in the way she thought.

“Tell me, Herbert”—he could hardly contain how much he loved the way she said his name—“what is it that brings you to me?”

While he still had the tendency to overthink simple situations, blood and endorphins and hormones surged through the least passageways in his head and clouded his ostensible cleverness. Speaking directly was all he was capable of. “I got the directions from the Madame, on this little card…”

“Yes, this we know. Promenade past this for the moment. But why is it that you are here?”

Where was this going? Herbert strained against the id-driven demands of his body, hunting for words like children pluck raspberries from the brambles. “I tried all the Madame’s girls—”

“Women.”

“What?”

“Surely her workers are women. If you were fucking little girls, our conversation is over.” Her expression hadn’t changed, but with a turn of phrase it could be interpreted as indifferent or lethally serious. So much subtlety on a canvas so large…

“Women,” Herbert repeated. “I only slept with women, I’m only interested in women. Adult women. Legal age of consent.”

And without words, without a physical shift, the giantess’s expression appeared easy and relaxed. It just did.

“But none of them were… right. They were wonderful,” he hastened to amend. “They were all beautiful, wonderful women with so much to offer a progressive society, all… with…” What did she want! “With their own stories to tell, their own unique perspectives of the world, from what life had shown them…”

She displayed the slightest, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it roll of her eyes and upturned one palm in a fluid gesture, beckoning him to get the fuck on with it already. But lovelier.

“Well. They.” The hint of losing this immense woman’s favor filled him with a mounting terror. “They. They knew their jobs, and they were very friendly and encouraging, but they could not do what I asked. They tried! They tried very hard, and they did the best they could, no question. But there was just something always off, something slightly wrong… and this was probably my fault. One girl, the last one, Morgan, she said that I probably didn’t know what I wanted, and I think she nailed it on the head.” He laughed uneasily, reliving that awkward night in her bedroom. He associated the scuff of her boot against his jaw with feeling completely at sea with his own desires.

“Tell me about the women.” She slid one bare foot against her shin, up and down, very slowly. He stared at it, and he could hear it: the rub of flesh on flesh had nothing to compete with in the silent cavern. It was a slight hiss in either direction, something slightly rough rubbing against something smooth.

“The women?”

“What each of them did for you, you silly little ma-a-a-an.”

Something flashed inside Herbert’s mind: she was toying with him. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand the rules of polite society: she was intentionally messing with him! His gaze drifted, impossibly, away from the titaness and toward a gently burning sphere of light. How many other women were toying with him, when he felt moorless, groundless, when one thing didn’t necessarily follow another thing in sequence? The corners of his lips twitched, turning up, and he drew a long, long breath that filled his limbs with lightness.

The giantess was messing with him, but not to be mean. It was simply another order, another script. Independent of his lust, he wanted to kiss this big, beautiful woman solely out of gratitude in this moment.

Obviously he didn’t. “Morgan was a heavy girl, so she lied on top of me.” His brow knit. “Layed? Lied? She rolled on top of me and tried to crush me like that. Angelique had incredibly long feet, and she rubbed them over my chest and covered my face with them. Maria had a big, big, round ass, you wouldn’t believe it, and she’d sit on my chest and kinda to this”—lacking the words, he shimmied his shoulders in his seat—“crawl up my body until she covered my face, and then she just covered me. Totally. Darkness, no air, just absolutely covered in her huge butt. And she’d sit there for a long time, too, like, I had no say in the matter. I slapped her hip and kicked the bed, but she didn’t care. She just held me down with…”

He relived the lurid scenes in his mind’s eye as he spoke. He could see Angelique’s eerily long toes, spreading with disarming distance, probing and groping his face like fingers. He could see the twin spheres of Maria’s caramel bottom swelling over his collarbones, over his jaws, rolling up over his face until her asshole nestled onto his nose and her buttocks blotted out his eyes and the scruff of her shaved pussy abraded his lips, and there she perched until she was good and ready to move. And when Morgan rolled on top of him, it was thrilling to feel all of a woman’s naked body on top of him, knees fitting around knees, belly squishing against belly, the precious gift of boobs mashed against his chest, but also… the peace. She weighed heavily on him, and he had to force himself to suck down enough air to breathe properly, but… it was like he could feel the life-force in her muscle, all the energy in the red blood cells that nourished her fat and skin… or something. It wasn’t just a heavy weight upon him, there was something magical in the feminine life that pressed him into the mattress. It was… what was it like? It was like eating dessert with his whole body. It was like coming up with something clever to say that made the room laugh. It was like a kiss from the universe, healing all past wounds, elevating his cosmic status while calming his vibration down slower and slower until he could have slept underneath her. Not died, just slept really, really well.

Herbert sat there, drinking in the moment, how it was better than almost anything and how close it came to what his body craved, down to the marrow. Slowly he realized he was no longer looking at the titaness in her diaphanous gown, stretched like a hundred billion dollars of gold bullion on an ancient Persian rug. When he looked at her, he saw the way she was looking at him, and then he realized that he had not been thinking in his head. He had spoken every word, and who knows? Maybe more than that. There was no telling what he’d expressed in his momentary trance, but now he was at a loss for words as he tried to form an apology.

She stopped him with a glance. That’s all. As clearly as though she’d wrapped her fleshy fist around his chest, the titaness simply let her eyelids droop and flutter, and he was rapt to know her next words.

“May I apologize to you, Herbert?” For a larynx that capacious, her tone was surprisingly high and soft.

Herbert’s head wobbled helplessly upon his neck.

She gave her chin an insouciant lift. “When I told you that you were a special little man, that wasn’t what I meant in the moment. I meant you were okay, you had passed the first test. You would do. Tu sais ?”

Did he? He had no idea. He was too preoccupied with this soulful sensation of teetering on the edge of a cliff.

“But now, listening to you like this… mmm.” She closed her heavy eyelids, and one huge hand slid down to strain against the Herculean task of grasping one massive boob. “I could almost love you, but we have only just begun. This must not be over just yet. You have yet to enjoy everything you will pay for—and you will pay dearly—and I…” Her head, lolling on the hillside of her shoulders, now rose erect and trained steadily upon him. “I intend to enjoy you for a long time. Herbert?”

“Yes, my goddess,” he drawled, melting upon the priceless Victorian throne.

“Two things, Herbert.”

“Anything, my goddess.”

“One: You must always speak to me as you have done, with your open heart. Yes? No clever words, no turns of phrase. I want to know the pure Herbert and his feelings, just as you have done now. Do this and I am yours, you wretched, beautiful little man.”

“It is my greatest pleasure, my godd—”

“Two: Never, ever call me ‘goddess’ again, or I will snap your scrawny neck in the door, and not in the sexy way.” The ring of colored lights congealed in a hellish fire in her eyes. “I will rub my own shit into your eye sockets. Do you understand? Never. Never! I do not want to hear that filthy, stupid, lazy word from your mouth again! Ooh!”

As she lapsed into swearing in another language, Herbert drifted between heaven and hell.

It was the strangest sensation, Herbert thought, to be lounging in this princely chair while a fairly literal goddess sprawled across the floor in front of him.

“Get out of your chair,” she said abruptly, and just as abruptly he sprang from his seat and stood at the edge of the rug.

“Herbert,” she said, and his heart melted. “I know so much about you, is it not so?”

“Yes, you seem to, go—… your mightiness.”

She giggled, as delicately as any geyser. “”You mustn’t need to call me anything like this. I am not royalty, not by your human standards. Although perhaps I am, in the same way you have come to prize gold above all other metals.“

Questions began to emerge in the terrain of his brain-meats, but one held true: “Then what should I call you?”

The big, beautiful woman rolled to her back. Her dress performed the uncanny trick of sliding away from some areas and clinging to others, so that she was never more than tantalizingly exposed. It enticed Herbert, but slightly less than that, it drove him a little crazy to be cock-blocked by a dress. “What should you call me…” she said, rolling the idea around in her large mouth. “I have a name, of course, but I do not think you have yet earned the privilege of addressing me by this. I have given this away cheaply to men who did not deserve it, but…”

Silence filled the room. Herbert felt the silence descend and swell, pressing him back from the giantess. He struggled to not collapse into the chair again.

“I talk so much! Why do I talk so much?” Again she giggled, and again his mind struggled to reconcile such a gentle sound with such a massive, threatening body. “You do the talking now, Herbert. It is not my place to spill all my secrets and give everything away to such a newcomer. Isn’t that so? Yes, you must entertain me.” So saying, she crossed one immense leg over the other knee and let her foot loll in the empty space.

Herbert could only stare at it. Every square inch of this woman was a miracle. He couldn’t afford to miss out on any piece of her. Her sole was a little rough, but not dirty, and just then he realized that as large as this cavern was, it was probably not tall enough for her to stand without stooping. “How miserable that must be,” he said, beyond thinking.

“What is?”

He stepped back in alarm; his heel banged against the chair. “Sorry, nothing, I was just thinking aloud.”

“Then speak aloud and entertain me, little man.” Some of the mirth left her voice in this sentence.

“I was just… I’m sorry, you large, glorious woman, but I was studying your foot.”

“My little foot? My cute little footsie?” The playfulness returned. She waggled her foot at him, a foot that was longer and broader than his entire torso, and this she waved at him as easily as a handkerchief to a sailing ship. Any one of her toes, he could have taken up in both hands… “What is it you noticed about my darling little footsie?”

Eyes on the prize, he told himself. “It’s just that your foot isn’t as dirty as it should be, you know, from walking around like the rest of us people do. If I walked around this city without any shoes or socks, my soles would be almost blackened with dirt and tar and trash and God-knows-what. But yours are… almost pristine…” Her thick toes waggled at him, and she waved her foot around in a slow, wide circle. His arms lifted from his sides, entranced, reaching for the extremity, aching only to experience this wonder, the thick big toe that waved around at him, the darling spherical toe-tips that lined up behind it…

“And?” Her foot stilled in an upright position, baring her sole at him.

“And…” Herbert panicked. All conversational threads had fled his mind, replaced by the desire to somehow grind out an orgasm against the broad, flat plane of flesh she presented. “And, and, I mean…” He studied the ball of her foot, puffy and thick where all else was wrinkled and depressed, and light caught the glint of silica between the wales of the skin’s ridges. “If you’re walking around in here, your feet should be dirtier. Generally, I mean, but of course you have means of washing them. If you so choose, I mean, who does one such as you need to impress?” He laughed; she did not join him. “I was just wondering whether you’re able to stand up and stretch yourself out in here. Me, if it were me, that is, trapped in a room that was too small to let me stand up, why, I might go mad.” There, that was very well said. Herbert straightened out his lapels and—“Not that you’re mad! I’m not saying that at all! No, it’s just me, weak little old me, I might not handle as well as some people could. You, of course, you’re capable of anything, far beyond my meager, pedestrian imagining, surely.”

Then she laughed. Herbert watched the giantess’s head slowly cant back into the expensive rug, heard the rasp of corded layers of hair against the floor, watched her lips part and her throat work up and down a couple times before her bosom heaved to release a deafening peel of rich, sincere merriment. Her breasts punched against the living dress; her shoulders drove back into the carpet with each guffaw; the gentle pudge of her belly rocked and shimmied with her laughter, and once again Herbert wanted to throw himself at it, lose himself in it, become absorbed into her living tissue…

Wait, what?

“You are the little charmer, Herbert,” she said in an accent like opium. “You speak from the heart, unafraid, without apology or explanation. This! This is why I like you.” Her head rolled to the side to regard him; her face was plastered in amusement. “So many other stupid men try too hard to use words they don’t understand and construct clever phrases they half-remember from books. But you, I can tell.” One long arm lifted and one thick finger pointed through the humid air at his chest. “You just open up your stupid little mouth and let it all out, without filters or trying to impress me. As soon as you think it… no. No, that is wrong.” Her fair brow furrowed and she squinted at the ceiling of the cavern. “As soon as you feel it, you speak it. Yes, as soon as the notion forms in your warm little heart, out it comes! Out it comes to land in my ears and crawl the long way down to my own heart.” She grinned at him, all the way up to her eyes. “You were not a mistake, Herbert. Among all other men, you might earn everything you are paying for.”

The momentary rush of pride at this indefinite accomplishment nearly wiped the question from his mind: “What happened to the other men?”

Her face soured and turned away. “Oh, Herbert! How crass. Do you like it when your girlfriend speaks of all the men who came before you?”

He thought about that: he’d never really had a girlfriend, not for long, and any ten of them wouldn’t be as large as this woman. “Well, no, I suppose not.”

“Then please do not ask me to engage in this distasteful pastime. Especially when you have a limited number of requests you may make.”

“What?”

“Did you not hear me? Was someone else speaking over me?” The titaness swung her huge head around comically, scanning for the ostensible perpetrator.

“I just meant… a limited number of requests?” The implication of rules he did not know suddenly weighed upon his head and shoulders. Of course there would be rules! One doesn’t simply lock a scrawny little man in a room with a living goddess and there aren’t any rules!

She laughed again. The laughter was less playful, sharper than before. “It is very convenient that you are such a dumb little man. If you were too clever, this would be a lot of work for me. Thank you for sparing me that unnecessary labor and letting this simply be fun for both of us.”

“Both of us?”

“You are having more fun than you are aware of, my little puppet.” Her foot swayed enticingly once again. “You will see. Now: undress.”

The idea shook him badly. “What?”

The giantess released a long, heavy sigh. Herbert could feel the breezes of the room shift and adjust to the new current she presented. “Let no one suggest that you did not ask your woman enough questions on your first date.”

“What?”

“But let no one suggest they were good questions. Herbert,” she said, dropping her voice, “your queen commands this. Take off your clothes and present yourself to me.”

“All my clothes?”

“Sacre merde…” Her hands curled into fists, and her arms swung to pound into the expensive rug. “I will tell you how to do every little thing, like a dull little child, yes? Take off your jacket and your pants. Do it!” she barked, when he stood there dumbly. “Oh, la vache, yes, take off your shoes first, and your socks. Take off that ugly little shirt I cannot believe you wore to visit a goddess. And there, stop, that’s it. Stand there in your underwear, do you understand? Is this clear enough for you?”

And so he did: he stood in his plaid boxers and sleeveless undershirt, shivering in the dank, humid air of the cavern beneath the most expensive neighborhood he’d never heard of. Out of reflex, he took the time to fold his clothes and leave them in a neat pile to his right, then wondered if he’d wasted too much time in this and further attracted the ire of this titaness.

“Now, you walk around to my feet.”

Herbert only barely restrained himself from asking what she meant by that. Throwing fate to the wind, he walked around the perimeter of the Persian rug to where her feet planted upon the ground. Her knees peaked in semi-clad arches from her broad hips and the rest of giantess-country. It was likely, he sensed, that he could shrewdly peek up the split in her garment, right between her colossal thighs, to spy upon the epicenter of her femininity, but no sooner did the thought form in his skull than he rebuked himself. He stared furiously at the fringed edge of the rug, berating himself hotly in his mind, telling himself how privileged he was to focus upon the row of heavy toes lined up on either side of him.

These toes were a marvel unto themselves. He could have stepped on her big toe with his entire foot, with plenty of room left over. If he’d stepped between her big and second toes, she could have casually twisted her foot and shattered his ankle, even his shin, into a hundred splinters. He could have sat upon her foot like a long, low bench, easily. Even her heel, taken in total, was larger than the mass of his own head. As a matter of fact…

He could only watch as one hefty thigh drew back, one meaty calf rose before him, and her rough, dusty sole planted upon his chest. He staggered back, catching himself against the entirely incidental force of this woman’s mere darling footsie slamming into him. He wrapped his arms around her toes, as though to support himself with them or else cushion them from impact if he did collapse, but he found himself rebalancing upon his spindly legs and remaining upright. Appalled at his audacity, he released her foot and stood at attention before her… well, below her, perhaps.

He released her, but he discovered she hadn’t released him. Her thick big toe rested upon his left shoulder, and her other toes wrapped around his right shoulder, curling cutely, stroking him, caressing him. The short bones of her big and second toes fit neatly around his entire neck, holding him there as though he’d been constructed for it. His chin rested upon the webbing between her toes, and his nostrils filled with the salty, dry musk of what bacteria built up there. Certainly they were freed of the various fungi that could cultivate within women’s traditional shoes, lacking ventilation and building up moisture in the darkness; yet this gigantic woman lived entirely underground, in these mysterious caverns, and even if she couldn’t erect herself fully, there was no telling what it was she crawled through when she needed to stretch her limbs and examine her domain.

Herbert couldn’t see the giantess’s face anymore, nor the swelling foothills of her huge boobs. All he could see were two tremendously meaty thighs rubbing delicately against each other, partially clad in this mysterious living fabric, and one beefy calf that hung from the shin that pointed dead at his chest. This led to the tenderly turned foot, despite its massive size, that reached up to pinch his pencil-neck between two darling toesies, holding him as securely as any cold iron shackle yet hugging him like an excited lover. The ball of her foot wrinkled against his chest, pinching at his shirt.

Dazed, he raised one hand to stroke the huge bone that ran down the bridge of her foot to lead to her big toe. Her skin was… so smooth, so warm… with tender little hairs that bent, reluctantly, under his fingers. And just under that layer of tender skin, he could feel the stout bone whose responsibility it was to support the rest of this mighty architecture. It felt stern and serious, single-minded in its task, yet it was caked in the softest, smoothest, milkiest flesh…

He didn’t know what to do. Herbert had no idea what was expected of him at this juncture, where she clenched his neck with her toes and hid her nonverbal communication from his beady eyes. Yet he embraced her foot with one arm, and she did not tell him not to. He stood just off the sacred carpet, beside a foot that could have shattered him into pieces, caressing the farthest limb from this giantess in a cavern of dimly glowing lights. And, oh yes, he stood there in his underwear, that should not be forgotten in this laundry list of weirdness.

The titaness’s lilting voice drifted over her bodyscape. “What is it you want from me, Herbert?”