Let’s get this out of the way to start with: I am not foolish enough to believe I’m the first person ever to wonder what kinky sex is like in the Dark Materials universe. Specifically in Lyra’s world, one in which everyone has their own daemon – a creature with whom you share a connection, who accompanies you at all times, and essentially functions as an external manifestation of your soul. The second you create a world with such creatures, and moreover declare that it’s taboo to touch someone else’s, inevitably you’re going to prompt a generation of perverts to grow up wondering what it’d be like to have your lover’s snake-daemon wrapped around your throat while they rail you. I know I’m not the first to explore this horny avenue, and I certainly won’t be the last. But it’s fun to ponder the implications of a world in which a part of your soul manifests in the form of an animal which is both reflective of your personality yet physically distinct from your human body, and how that might lend itself to some outrageously hot fuckplay. Strap in, my friends, cos this is gonna get… how shall I put it? … bestial.
If you already know what daemons are and you want to skip the explanation, scroll to the next heading to jump straight into the filth.
Dark Materials: what is a daemon?
For those of you unfamiliar with His Dark Materials, it’s a trilogy of stories following the adventures of Will (a young boy from Oxford, in our universe) and Lyra (a girl from Oxford, in a different universe). I enjoyed these books immensely when I was young, and I’m really enjoying the latest adaptation of them by the BBC/HBO, while blocking out some of the dodgy shit the author Phillip Pullman has been up to lately.
There are many notable differences between our/Will’s universe and Lyra’s. Lyra’s world is more steampunk than ours (their technology developed differently), and there the church is called the ‘Magisterium’ while God is ‘the Authority’. But the most significant difference is that in Lyra’s universe everyone has a daemon – a part of you which takes the form of an animal. When you’re young, your daemon can change from one animal to the other: one minute a bird, flying above you to get a view over crowds, the next minute a cat curled up in your lap, perhaps occasionally a beetle to sneak through small gaps and report back to you on what they find… you get the idea. But when you reach adolescence, your daemon changes less frequently, eventually ‘settling’ into a permanent shape when you cross the magical invisible line into adulthood. The shape in which it settles usually tells people something about your personality. If you’re a meek, shy person, your daemon might be a cute little fieldmouse. If you’re proud and hungry for power, you might get a snow leopard like Lord Asriel‘s.
Got it? OK grand.
The most important things to know about daemons are that
a) they are essentially a part of you. You cannot have one without the other. A human can’t survive long without a daemon, and vice versa. Your daemon is deeply and powerfully personal, and although your daemon might sometimes disagree with you (functioning a bit like a conscience), it is essentially a part of your soul. It forms a vital component in the collection of things that makes up who you are.
b) touching someone else’s daemon is considered extremely taboo. If you get into a scrap with someone, your daemons might fight each other (so if you’re packing a wolf while someone else has a guinea pig, you’re probably gonna win that fight), but reaching out to stroke someone’s daemon when you don’t know them would be extremely inappropriate. Touching someone else’s daemon is therefore something that requires deep intimacy and consent.
Knowing all the above, here are a couple of ways I’d like to have kinky sex in the Dark Materials universe.
The original books were written as Young Adult Fiction, but everyone in the stories is over 18. I imagine them late 30s like me, but feel free to imagine them your age if you prefer. As long as you’re a grown-up.
Kinky sex in the Dark Materials universe: me as a submissive
Let’s set the sordid scene. I, a 38-year-old brunette with a penchant for pain and a daemon in the form of a large tabby cat, go out on a date with a ruggedly handsome dominant guy whose daemon takes the form of a small lizard – maybe a gecko. She runs up and down the legs of the pub table while he and I chat over a drink, occasionally running up his sleeve and scurrying to take a seat on his shoulder. Occasionally she even joins in with our conversation, eagerly interjecting extra colour into an anecdote he’s telling. I note that when he excuses himself to go to the bathroom she’s whispering hurriedly in his ear: I think that means this guy likes me. My cat-daemon is pretending to be aloof and indifferent (in some ways he’s the opposite of me: the chilled-out yin to my brash yang), but he takes advantage of our brief moment alone to confirm my suspicions: “Yeah, that guy’s into you.”
Excellent.
Later that evening, the guy kisses me at the tube station, although when I lean in to meet his lips, instead of launching straight in with tongue he pauses briefly. Grabs the hair on the back of my neck with fingers that are gentle enough to reassure me he means no harm, yet firm enough to let me know that he’ll harm me if that’s what I want. Only when I whimper does he finally give in and kiss me.
Back at his apartment (studio flat; Islington; total chaos. He’s sacrificed space for location and I can respect that) he lights a single lamp in the corner of the room so everything feels soft and dreamlike. My daemon and I exchange a look that says ‘oh hell yeah.’ There are plenty of lamps in his apartment, but by lighting just one this man knows what he’s doing: in this warm, gentle glow I can let go. I can feel beautiful. And when when I feel beautiful, I’ll do anything he wants.
He turns to me with eager eyes and a wicked smile and asks “do you want me to hurt you?”
Yes. Oh God yes I do. But my mouth is dry and all that comes out is a vague half-murmur and a nod: I’m too busy watching his hands as he slowly unbuckles his belt.
“Say it if you want it. Tell me what you want me to do.”
He’s paused the unbuckling, now he’s just staring me down. Him and his lizard-daemon: two pairs of eyes boring deep into my brain, forcing me to say it aloud. My cat-daemon is trying to remain haughty – he makes a play to wash his paws but I can tell he’s torn. We may be different on the surface but he is still me, after all. We’re an indivisible team, and we both want this. I look back at this beautiful almost-stranger and clear my throat.
“I want you to kiss me like you kissed me outside the tube. Make it slow and firm so I whimper.” He grins, takes a step forward and starts to softly kiss my neck. I note that his daemon is now scurrying up and down his back. Taking care not to touch her, I put my hands around his shoulders and pull him closer to me.
“Keep going…” he tells me between kisses.
“Then I want you to take off every item of clothing except my knickers – when you get to my knickers I want you to tear them. Bare hands, just rip them away.”
He puts both arms around my waist, palms flat on each cheek of my bum, and squeezes possessively. My daemon, having long since abandoned the pretence at being cool, is now winding eagerly around my ankles – rubbing himself on my shins and purring loudly.
I continue in this vein, telling my stranger what I want him to do: take the belt fully off and whip me with it while I bite down into the pillows on his messy double bed and moan ‘thank you’. Order me to turn around so I can take the full length of his twitching cock into my mouth while he continues to beat me. Put my hands against the wall, arch my back and present my cunt so he can slide inside.
All the while I’m telling him this, he’s kissing me. From just beneath my earlobes, all the way down my neck, and eventually to my clavicle, whereupon he starts to unbutton my shirt with delicate fingers.
“So you want me to fuck you?” he asks, a hint of playful sarcasm in his voice. By this point I’m panting. When he hooks gentle fingertips into the cup of my bra and pulls it down, I am desperate. By the time he has kissed a trail down to my left nipple, and paused – hovering with that rigid pink peak mere millimetres from his lips – I’m more than halfway to losing my actual mind.
My cat-daemon is too: he yowls. Then he winds once more around my legs before rolling onto the floor and exposing his belly. My stranger notices this – flicking his eyes quickly down to see the effect he’s having on me – on us. He grins. And he places one hand gently around my throat and pushes me down onto the bed. I sit up on my elbows but he tells me “No, stay,” before adding “the safeword is ‘red’, OK?”
“OK,” I say. He turns to my daemon, asks him too: “OK?”
He’s baffled to be included like this, but replies in the affirmative too. “OK.”
At that point, the stranger picks up his lizard-daemon. She scurries over his hand as he turns it this way and that – scampering from the palm to the back of it, over and over, like a hamster eagerly running on a wheel. I’m lying stock-still, mesmerised by her movements. Then the stranger does something no man has ever done: something so odd and taboo that it triggers a flush of intense shame and deep arousal in my chest. He reaches out, palm-upwards, and places his fingertips on my stomach, tipping his hand so his lizard-daemon – this tiny creature that is no more and no less than a fraction of this filthy stranger’s soul – skitters forward and lands on my stomach.
The sensation is like a shudder, but one that is both good and bad. It hurts and thrills in equal measure, resonating in a chamber that’s far beyond the physical. Somewhere deep within me, my ancestors shriek with horror. They clutch their pearls and writhe in agonised shock. I stare down at her – those tiny clawed feet resting on the bare flesh of my stomach, each toe pricking dishonour into my skin. It’s abhorrent and delicious, my cunt throbs for it. He’s still staring at me, eyebrows raised as if to say ‘OK?’ and I lock eyes with him, panting. Resorting to a simple whispered ‘yes’, because I’ve lost all the rest of my words.
I don’t move, because I can’t. With her there on top of me, so powerful is the resistance to touching her that I worry if I move so much as a muscle in my neck to nod my consent, bad things will happen.
I don’t know which bad things – I’ve never touched been touched by another person’s daemon like this. Sure, I’ve occasionally had men offer to let me touch theirs – usually boys, when we were younger. Offering up their snakes and rats and marmosets with eager, horny grins: they’re aware of this taboo and how it can sometimes be a shortcut to intimacy, as they also know deep down that it is no substitute for real connection. But what this stranger is doing feels different. This is a man who took with consent something I’d never even realised I wanted to give.
My own daemon, now a quivering wreck of delight and fear and curiosity, leaps onto the bed to watch. Crouched like he’s ready to pounce, he stares at the lizard as she stands guard on my belly, occasionally flicking his eyes up towards the man who put her there. The man whose belt is now undone, sliding out of the loops with that unmistakeable, cunt-fluttering sound – soft leather through denim. Imminent ruination. Complete and utter joy.
“You want me to hurt you?” the stranger asks again. I squeak out a ‘yes please’ and keep a close eye on his hands.
As he unbuttons my jeans and pulls them oh-so-slowly down my legs, exposing black knickers and pale thighs and a lifetime of insecurity, his lizard-daemon follows the path he opens up. Her feet tickle against my skin as she scampers down my legs then back up again, and alongside the surface sensation each tickle also prods at something dark – something illicit and dangerous that thuds in time to my heartbeat. A part of me I’ve never really looked at closely, because staring at it frightens me.
Once he’s got my jeans off, the stranger leans forward. Grabs my knickers in both hands as I requested, and looks me in the eye.
“You sure I can ruin these?”
“Oh yeah. Ruin these, ruin anything.”
Ruin me.
His daemon scampers back up my leg and settles again on my stomach – tiny though she is, her very presence is enough to pin me in place. My cat-daemon lets out a hiss, but I can tell he’s gone as well. There is no way he’ll move until I – until we – have been satisfied. His claws are out, gripping tightly to the bedcovers, and his face is bright and alert like he’s hunting.
I look deep into the strangers eyes and tell him “fucking do it.”
At which point he tears off my knickers. Rrrrrrip, one swift move. Even the sound of it makes my cunt gush and my thighs tremble. But I still cannot move – his daemon has me frozen in shock and delight. I’ve touched other people’s daemons before, but being rendered immobile by one – especially one so seemingly fragile – is an indignity I never dared to dream of. The ultimate humiliation.
Or so I thought.
As she crawls up my body, slithering from navel to neck before settling in the hollow of my throat, the stranger rolls on a condom. Slowly. Painfully slowly, savouring every millisecond during which he can prolong this ecstatic torture. Making a meal of this moment. Pinching the tip of the condom carefully, placing it onto the solid, taut head of his cock, then holding it firm with one hand while the other gently teases it all the way down the length of his shaft to the base. By the time he reaches the end, I swear I’m drooling. Or whimpering. Or perhaps I’m babbling ‘please fuck me, oh please god fuck me please fuck me.’ I don’t know any more – all I know in this world is that I cannot move, and his daemon’s body is there, warm and humiliating and delicious at my throat, and his dick is so fucking hard and so tempting that I want him to claim me. Make me his.
My own daemon lets out a weak mewl and rolls over onto his back, exposing his stomach as if daring the stranger to touch it. Abject, pathetic: like a fucking housecat. My stranger leans forward, now kneeling on the bed between my spread legs, alternating his gaze between the wretched form of my own daemon and the telltale glistening wetness of my eager cunt. With his left hand gripping the base of his cock, pressing the tip against me, right where it aches, he tells me:
“OK, it’s time to beg.”
I splutter and gasp for a second, instinctively wanting to move my hips instead – to fuck upwards to meet him, and get that sweet release of feeling his dick slide in. But I’m rendered immobile by his daemon, and insensible by his patience, so instead I do as I’m told: I fucking beg.
I whine and whimper for his cock. I tell him I need it so much I no longer know what ‘want’ even looks like. I say ‘please‘ more times than I ever have in my life. I tell him I’ll give him anything if he’ll just gimme one hard stroke. I tell him I’ll be his forever if he’ll only fuck me right now. I offer him my body, my life, my everything if he’ll only get inside me right now – let me clench myself around him and crush the solid flesh of his cock with my yearning cunt.
“Please give it to me,” I tell him, choking back the sob that I’m shocked to find is swelling in my chest. “Please fuck me now, I can’t wait any longer. You can do anything you want.”
“Anything?” he replies, cocking his head like a wolf.
“Anything.”
“Safeword is ‘red’, but… anything?”
“Yes. Please. Anything. Just fuck me.”
And at that, he reaches out with his other hand to where my cat-daemon is now crouched in a pre-pounce on the bed. He grabs my daemon by the scruff of the neck, and in doing so grips me by the soul, then lifts him clean into the air where he hangs, kitten-limp and purring, in this stranger’s clenched fist.
Then he looks at me, this stranger – at the awe and craven lust that’s stamped onto my face – before dropping my daemon onto the bedclothes and plunging hard inside me. Fucking into me right as the wave of shame crests in my heart, driving so much deeper into me than anyone’s gone before.
Sating my hunger in a place I never knew it could be sated: the depths of my wretched soul.
Brief pause at the end of this story to note that it was one of the most enjoyable things I have ever written. Initially I’d meant for this post to be a list of 10 or so scenarios. But that one ran on so long I limited myself to two scenarios in all. Next one I get to domme…
More kinky sex in the Dark Materials universe: me as a dominant
This guy likes it when I’m mean to him. He enjoys being teased and ruined – likes that sensation that is conjured partway through a hand job, when the lube’s running out and you’re not sure if this feels good good or bad good. The bit that sits neatly on the line before tipping over from pleasure and into pain.
He likes me to tease him. So when I let go of his dick, sit up, and tell him “not yet, you eager little fuck” and slap him sharply across the face, leaving a streak of lube and the faint red outline of my palm, his rat-daemon twitches in sympathy. My housecat lunges for her, pounces. Grips her in soft paws to show we’re still playing, but does not let her go.
My daemon is more powerful here, so as I tease my subby guy with lubed-up fingers and a slow, twisting rhythm on the head of his dick, my daemon teases his in return. Toying with her. Gripping her neck in his jaws till she squeaks and then letting go. Each not-quite-bite drawing corresponding whimpers from my human plaything, who feels it too.
“What do you want?” I ask him, increasing my pace.
“I want…” he pants “…to come.”
I stop again. Slap him again. Feign outrage at his presumption – his audacity.
“You want to what?” I ask again, this time squeezing his cock so hard he gasps and twitches.
“I want to come,” he tells me again, voice cracking like he’s scared to ask permission. He should be scared, if that’s how he asks: where’s the fucking respect?
Quick as a flash, before he has a chance to register what I’m about to do, I shoot one hand out and grab his rat-daemon in my fist. His eyes widen in shock, and his dick twitches harder. I keep pumping at it with my right hand – faster, and harder, squeezing as tightly as I can without losing pace – as his daemon twists and squeaks and half-heartedly scrabbles in my left.
“You want to come… what?”
He’s writhing too, now, and I know this feeling: this total abandon of morals and practicalities the second someone has your soul in their grasp. He’s forgotten how words work in the face of this – an indignity he never dared to dream of. The ultimate humiliation.
I beat at his cock harder, and hold his daemon in front of his face. She’s resigned now to what’s gonna happen, she can see the light of shame in his eyes and the flush of horny despair and delight that colours his neck and cheeks. He whimpers in the back of his throat to beg me one more time:
“I wanna come, let me come, let me…”
I squeeze his daemon tighter, and she squeaks and writhes again.
“What word am I waiting for, you insolent fuck?”
“PLEASE,” he fires back instantly, gushing relief from his mouth as I pump his cock harder, before gushing torrents of spunk over my beating fist.
“Pleeeeease,” he continues as the next shot paints his stomach.
“Unngh, yes,” as I let go his daemon, placing her gently down onto his chest where he reaches for her instinctively with trembling, desperate hands. Clutching at her, soothing himself, riding out those last waves of pleasure with the one creature who makes him feel safe.
Then one more time for good measure: quietly he whispers it, as his daemon nuzzles into his neck and the final shots of cum pump lazily from the head of his cock: “oh yes please.”
Absolutely not where this post can ever go but…
This final part of the blog post happens in our universe, where sadly no one has a daemon. London 2023: our world. My partner and I are sitting on the sofa watching the first episodes of the latest season of His Dark Materials, discussing some of our favourite bits from the books, and how they might translate on screen.
We both loved the books growing up, and have continued to love them into adulthood. Adulthood in which both of us have realised we’re definitely kinky as fuck. So we talk about daemons, and the touching taboo, and how we’d have sex in the Dark Materials universe. If you found the stories above a little too animal-focused, you definitely want to look away for this next part.
Because obviously – obviously – as a subby little fucker, as soon as we’ve wandered far enough down this conversational path that I reckon I can get away with it, I present him with the following scenario.
“So here’s the thing: let’s say I had a daemon that was big, and vaguely biologically compatible. Like Lord Asriel’s snow leopard, but mine. Behind closed doors, you’d stroke it – we know that. You’d touch my daemon and touch me and in doing so hold me in the palm of your hand, ready to do whatever you want. But would you also … maybe … if I asked you to do it … with consent from both me and my daemon … would you tie me to the bed and tease me till my cunt was fucking sore for you, then stare me directly in the eye as you pinned my leopard-daemon with your powerful arms, you and I eye to eye like you’re challenging me to a fight… your cock poised and ready to plunge in… would you…?”
Long pause.
“…fuck me right in the soul?”
5 Comments
Ha, love it! :D
Yes, I also loved the books as a kid, and have been watching the show too. I’d like to think Pullman would approve of this! You can’t be the first person to write this kind of story anyway.
(I don’t know much about the controversy with Pullman alluded to here; so all I’ll say is, nobody’s perfect, and many creators whose work I enjoy have said or done stuff I don’t approve of. It doesn’t necessarily diminish their work.)
Also: I’d always read the daemons as a pretty literal metaphor for genitals; which in hindsight renders the scene where Mrs Coulter grabs Lyra’s daemon *very* uncomfortable…
Eek I’ve never parsed them as genital metaphors before(!!) but yeah no wonder that really shocked you! I think I’ve always seen them a bit like a conscience/inner voice type thing, although the newer books (which imho miss the mark by fucking MILES) give way more detail on the daemon relationship in a way that has changed how I perceive it, I think. Not entirely sure if I want to read the final one in Dust because the whole thing feels so off compared to the first trilogy, but I will definitely read it anyway out of curiosity, then probably be annoyed with myself for doing so if it turns out not to be what I’m hoping for =)
In terms of Pullman yeah. Hmm. I get what you’re saying and why you want to say it, although I’m going to push back slightly because I did think quite long and hard before including that link. Broadly, yeah, nobody’s perfect. And I don’t think that my gentle aside about him doing dodgy shit should be read as me saying ‘I believe we should CANCEL this man FOREVER’ or what have you. He’s been a nob, but not so much of one that I can no longer enjoy his work. There are other people who have been so appalling that I find it genuinely impossible to enjoy their work (a certain Other Kids Book Author Who Is Now Queen Of The Transphobes, for instance, or singers who turned out to be rapists whose work now makes me shudder if it turns up in a Spotify shuffle). I do think there are types of behaviour that can diminish someone’s work – Kate Clanchy, for instance, would be one whose work I wouldn’t read knowing what I know now.
But when we have these discussions I think too often we focus on the person who has done the dodgy shit, and not those affected by it. From my perspective, I saw some women writers of colour offering up extremely valid and legitimate criticism of a book, and being shot down by a very powerful white male author comparing them to the Taliban and Isis. So… it just feels wrong to me to talk about his books without also acknowledging my discomfort about his behaviour. Your mileage may vary, as may other people’s, but for me I don’t want to uncritically applaud people who have a lot of power without also noting the times when they use that power in ways that are harmful. It’s less about Pullman than it is about less-powerful writers, and other marginalised people. Nobody’s perfect, for sure, but imperfections like this (especially when you’re the one in power) have consequences, and it feels uncomfortable to me (as someone who has power in my little sex-blog community) not to at least mention them.
OK, that was a more detailed reply than I expected! To be clear, I don’t think you were wrong to include that aside about Pullman, and since you did I thought I should comment on it, but I’m not informed enough about the incident to make more than a general comment. I try to stay out of Twitter controversies in general…
Having looked into it a bit more, it sounds like he made a half-decent point in a stupid and inflammatory way, and was rightly criticised for that, though he did withdraw his comment. But it seems like that one of those Twitter fights where lots of people on all sides said awful and abusive things, and he was far from the worst culprit; though it’s true that when someone with a high profile says something stupid, it makes a bigger impact.
Anyway, whatever; I’m not here to defend his honour or anything. But I can’t imagine how unpleasant it must be to be a professional writer and have to spend every day dealing with that toxic hellsite. (With the obligatory recognition that yes, there’s still lots of good things on Twitter too…)
Going to leave it there before this thread goes even more off topic!
Oh my aching cunt, His Dark Materials AND begging pleading desperate sex all at once….I’ve gone all weak at the knees!
Ahhh thank you!! ❤️so glad you liked it!