Thumper Ch. 01

Note to reader: This series is a sequel to the Incubus series (also available on Lit). Although two of the characters are carried forward to this series, it has less to do with incubi and deals more with relationships, submission, and exploration. If the non-human genre isn't your thing, rest assured that there's more to this incubus than horns and a tail. I hope that you enjoy it.

***

She received his text message an hour ago. His plane had just landed. "Surprise me" was all it said. Those two words encapsulated a world of possibility. She smiled.

She took a leisurely shower--it would take him more than two hours to clear customs, collect his luggage, and return home. She anointed herself with a hint of perfume in the cleft between her breasts and lit some candles on the bedside tables and antique dresser.

She knelt and removed the gear from an old steamer trunk that sat at the foot of the four-poster bed. The leather had grown soft and supple over the last year. Regular use and the occasional application of mink oil made the leather feel almost like a second skin.

She strapped on the black leather wrist and ankle cuffs. Around her narrow waist she wound another belt. Studs and rings glinted in the flickering candlelight. She saved the collar for last. Her breasts lifted as she fastened it around her neck and fed the tongue through the clasp.

She looked at herself in the mirror, almost disbelieving what she saw. Not so much that she wore nothing more leather straps and looked every inch a slave, but that she saw the unmistakable glow of confidence that had been absent a year ago. At that time, she would have averted her eyes from the sight in the mirror--that and questioned her sanity. Now she appraised herself with satisfaction, knowing she would soon be giving and receiving pleasure in equal measure.

She wrapped a Japanese robe around herself and cinched the belt. She padded barefoot to the living room, sipped some wine, and waited for her man.

***

Damian drove slowly down the street.

He had left Britt at home, cocooned under a thick duvet, which is where he longed to be. Alas, he hadn't fed for a while and the hunger pangs had made sleep impossible.

So here he was, driving down a snow-covered suburban street at three in the morning with only inflatable Christmas decorations and wire reindeers to note his passing. The snow swirled in the twin beams of his headlights.

At times like this, Damian wished that he wasn't an incubus. While the frat boys could only dream of his carnal resume, it could sometimes be a drag. Like now. He could be spooning with Britt under the duvet. But no. He was hungry and had to seek the sustenance that Britt could not provide.

He found himself in an affluent neighborhood. Monstrous homes lorded over expensive, snow-covered European sedans and SUVs in the driveways.

As he drove, he projected his thoughts into the dark houses. He listened for the tone that would indicate that special mixture of vulnerability and desire that would signal a soul able to provide him a meal. Night was the best time to hunt. As lids drooped over eyes and breathing deepened, the conscious static that disguised repressed desire lifted. Night was when the subconscious wandered. Sometimes it attracted the attention of a passing demon.

Damian drove past countless homes, disregarding those in which children slept. Of the remaining, he discounted those where the response to his projections indicated sexual disinterest -- the majority -- or sexual satisfaction -- the vast minority.

Typical suburbia. Keeping up with the Joneses left little energy for desire or its fulfillment.

He slowed down as he passed yet another large house. He could sense a man and a woman within, both frustrated, both yearning. The woman responded to his projection with hunger. He shook his head. Trouble in paradise. One man's loss is another man's gain.

He parked further down the block. He had his target.

Behind the tinted windows of his car, he shimmered and his form dissolved into the darkness. He was invisible, or nearly so. If anyone knew where to look, he would now appear as little more than a furtive shadow, a wisp that haunted the periphery of vision and then disappeared. He could have left home in this state, but he liked driving, even if it was through snow. Despite his amoral intentions, there was something inherently human about hopping into a car to reach a destination.

He left the car and approached the house. Such a large house for two people, he thought. Ridiculous.

From the street, he noted the flickering of a television playing on the drapes of the living room. He knew that the woman slept within. Why this woman wasn't tucked in bed with her partner Damian didn't know. That would have made it marginally safer for her and slightly more difficult for Damian. Difficult, but hardly impossible.

Damian drifted to the front door. The motion sensing lights ignored his approach.

He projected into the house once again to confirm his earlier impressions. No children and thankfully no dogs. Man's best friend could sometimes make an unholy row when they sensed him, nipping at his invisible heels and making enough of a racket to raise the dead. Nothing killed the mood more.

He insinuated himself into the darkened house and approached the living room.

A woman lay on a leather sofa, her face lit by the television. How could she sleep with the hyperactive pitchman yammering away about the latest cleaning products?

She looked to be in her early thirties. Though long blond hair covered part of her face, Damian could see that she was attractive, with high cheekbones, delicate nose and full lips. Her robe had opened slightly, revealing the curve of a shapely breast and a lean torso beneath a snug t-shirt. She wore panties that were obviously not meant for show and a toned leg emerged from the folds of the robe.

The woman's response to him was unusual. There was hunger, but there was also a barrier that sleep did nothing to diminish.

She fidgeted on the couch and rolled onto her back, draping one arm across her forehead and another over her midsection.

He stared at her and probed her mind more carefully. Beneath the cloak of sleep roiled an ocean of anger, confusion, and despair. Just beneath that disquiet resided a yearning that hadn't been satisfied for a long time.

Perfect. Damian was hungry too.

While he watched her, he decided on his approach. He preferred to start slowly. With some women, his touch alone was enough to evoke that heady mixture of fear and desire that sustained him. He wasn't one to go in with all guns blazing. Subtlety worked better and generally contributed to longer relationships. For those willing to sustain him -- or unwilling to resist -- a slow escalation reaped the most satisfying benefits.

Damian approached soundlessly and carefully moved aside her robe to expose the twin mounds of her breasts.

"Sleep," Damian whispered.

The woman's eyes moved quickly back and forth beneath her eyelids.

"Shh."

He knelt beside her and gently pressed his lips to hers, inviting a gentle lassitude that wouldn't interfere with her awareness of his actions. He needed her to be aware.

He was glad that he hadn't visited the students' residences. While students were easy and suitable for a quick meal, they didn't possess the complex emotions of those a little older. Students were quick to arousal and to fear. They were fast food to him. More mature women reached these emotions more slowly and the wine of their agitation and arousal was by far more subtle and satisfying.

This one, he felt, would satisfy him indeed.

He traced a line with his index finger from her throat through the cleft between her breast and then down her abdomen to her pubic mound. Her breath quickened and she stirred listlessly on the sofa. Damian kissed her again, deepening the torpor.

He decided that he wouldn't be greedy with this one. He would take his time, enjoy what she would offer.

With his index finger, he traced the contour of a nipple, seeing it harden immediately in response and gain definition against the fabric of her t-shirt. He placed the other hand fully on the breast closest to him, undulating his fingers against its firm but yielding mass. He felt its warmth beneath his fingers.

The woman's breath hitched in her throat and her eyes continued their frantic back and forth motion beneath her eyelids. Damian could sense that she was waking under his ministrations. He allowed it, knowing that her body wouldn't easily obey her commands.

Leaving her breasts, he slid his hands along the corrugation of her ribs and traced the contours of her shapely hips and thighs.

She whimpered. He could smell her arousal and sense her growing alarm. Good.

His fingers traced a path up her inner thighs, noting with satisfaction and some surprise that her legs, though partially paralyzed, nonetheless parted for him. Most women with the slightest strength in their limbs would snap their legs shut at this unearthly intrusion. Not this woman though. He had chosen well.

He placed his hand palm down upon her, noting the moist warmth that permeated the thin fabric of her panties.

A strangled noise emanated from her throat at this point. Damian saw that her eyes were open, frantically searching for the source of these sensations, then appearing puzzled at finding nothing.

Damian smiled. The arousal was certainly there, judging by the heat beneath his hand, and presently the fear insinuated itself into the mixture.

He slid his hand beneath the fabric and pressed his middle finger firmly against the yielding softness of her sex, applying pressure upon the clitoris and down to the base of her opening.

Damian observed the woman's face as he did so.

Her lips parted and a faint "Ohh" issued forth.

He drew his finger up through her moist cleft, anointing it with her juices. He teased the clitoris out of its folds and strummed it, alternately rubbing and pressing.

With his other hand, he nudged the fabric aside and slipped two fingers into her, exploring the walls of her vagina until they finally rested against her g-spot.

The woman spread her legs more as Damian's twin motions caused her breath to quicken. Her arousal outpaced her fear but Damian didn't mind. Though he was tempted to take her now he decided not to. Leaving her with pleasant if confused memories would make the next meal that much more satisfying.

The muscles of her cunt tightened around his fingers, the most intimate of embraces. He closed his eyes and continued tracing circles within her slick confines, matching the speed of the action to the increasing rate of her breathing.

"That's it," he whispered.

She tensed at the sound of his whisper, even as she came. Fear flared as her entire body shuddered its release. He sensed her mind frantically trying to interpret what was happening, whether this was dream or reality, blessing or haunting. She arched her back and bore down on his fingers with what little control she had over her body. Her abdominal muscles clenched in violent counterpoint to the contractions of her pussy.

Damian drank it in, this intoxicating mixture of arousal and fear and felt himself replenished as the woman writhed upon his hands.

Yes, he would visit again.

At length, the woman's breathing slowed though her eyes still searched.

Damian removed his hands from her and stood.

The woman's lips moved and Damian bent to hear what she whispered.

He didn't catch it at first. Then, unmistakably: "Thank you."

Damian was dumbfounded. Had he heard right?

"I don't know what you are," said the woman with more strength, "but thank you."

Either Damian was growing deaf or he was losing his touch. Or perhaps the woman was unhinged. There was a time when a visit by an incubus engendered curses and tears. He was obviously getting soft if his victims were thanking him.

Damian left the woman, shaking his head.

* * *

The Tiny Toon song woke Abby.

She groaned as much at the song as at the kink in her neck.

She had to stop sleeping on the sofa. Her self-imposed banishment from the marital bed had seemed like a good idea, a necessary symbol of atonement, but now she wasn't so sure. Perhaps it was better to endure George's long-suffering sighs and occasional outburst of recrimination than suffer on the rack like this.

She fumbled for the remote and turned off the television. Blessed silence descended on the house. The Tiny Toon song seemed wholly inappropriate this morning. Or any morning, come to think of it.

Into that silence flooded the recollection of the night before. Her dreams hadn't been so vivid since adolescence. She was losing it. For a woman who prided herself on her self-control, this uninvited nocturnal debauchery suggested that her mind had turned traitor. Either forced abstinence was taking its toll or...

Or what?

Must be the stress, she told herself.

She padded to the kitchen, noting her damp, cold panties with a grimace. She ground coffee and prepared the machine.

She could have sworn that she'd been awake though -- strangely paralyzed but awake nonetheless.

Okay, she reasoned with herself. She'd been awake. So then...

So then she must have been assaulted, suggested the credulous part of her, by an invisible man. Or entity.

The rational part of her rolled its eyes.

I'm going nuts, she told herself.

Today was the day she's admit defeat again. Strike three. After having exhausted three sets of marriage counsellors in a six month period, Abby had to admit that perhaps the war was lost. Time to send the opposing armies to their barracks, sign an armistice, and bury the dead. Perhaps there was nothing left but mourning.

They'd each been telling their version of the story for so long that each version had developed into a mythology of its own. Neither could tell anymore where truth left off and myth began. The victor wrote the history, but in this, both were losers.

Abby had strayed, with her business partner no less. She had expected George to be angry, to throw things, to threaten her, to hit her, but he merely slumped in his chair, resigned. She could have lived with anger and possibly even naked aggression, would have welcomed it in fact, but though his mute resignation was expected, it was nonetheless a terrible disappointment.

The coffee machine beeped its readiness. She sighed and reached into the cupboard for a mug. Her hand fell on one with a Dilbert cartoon, one of the first gifts George had given her when they'd both been students.

She thought of when she had first met George. At the time, she'd been a computer science undergrad and he was pursuing his Masters. He'd been lucky enough to win a position as a teaching assistant, though the tenured professors were all too happy to rid themselves of this particular introductory course.

In a campus half populated by the immature, the insensitive, and the self-centred, Abby found George to be a welcome change. She would study him while he paced before the class, obviously engrossed in a subject that was little more than an easy credit for the engineering and computer science students who gravitated to his course. He was handsome in a bookish way, of average height and build. Not a vain man, he sported an unruly mop of hair and would often appear in class with several days of stubble on his chin, particularly when he was making good headway on his thesis. On those days, sleep deprived and wired on caffeine, George would deliver his lecture with a frenzied energy, and the class would invariably be caught up in it.

As the term neared its end, Abby had to admit that she was smitten by this strange and endearing graduate student. He had yet to make a move on Abby, or to even indicate that he noticed her among the other female students. Abby knew that men found her attractive -- she'd rebuffed enough of them over the term -- so George's lack of interest spoke to her like a gauntlet thrown to the ground.

As the weeks wore on, she dressed increasingly provocatively and would try to gain his attention with some insightful comment during the lecture. Indeed, she'd been studying the reading list more fervently than before, even to the detriment of her core classes. She would often invent some pretence to be the last to leave his lecture, some point of interpretation. George would always answer politely and patiently, though she would often read bemusement on his face. No one stayed after class.

He's either daft of gay, she concluded.

It was Abby who finally had to make the first move. She felt pity for his particularly haggard appearance one morning and asked him out for coffee. He looked at her, seemingly for the first time, and stammered his thanks. His eyes widened, perhaps taking in a possibility that he hadn't thought existed. Abby thought it endearing.

And thus began a relationship that would span their school careers.

Having succeeded at everything, including her campaign to win George's affections so many years ago, the imminent failure of her marriage terrified her.

* * *

The noise of the coffee grinder pulled George roughly from his slumbers. He used to be able to sleep through just about anything. Not anymore. In fact, last night had been worse than most. He'd waited for Abby to slide into bed, cursing himself for waiting, yet knowing that on a winter's night, the warmth of even an unfaithful wife could be better than cold solitude.

As he showered, he again turned over a thought that had occurred to him during one of their endless counselling sessions. It wasn't so much a thought as a word that neatly summed up his entire relationship with Abby, perhaps even his entire life -- drifting.

After Abby had inexplicably picked him out from the thousands of willing partners on campus, they'd drifted together almost unconsciously, noting the way markers of their relationship with little surprise or ceremony. Their first dates led to overnight stays which led to clumsy and timid exploration and eventually to full consummation. With all the predictability of the position of letters in the alphabet, they moved from dating to cohabitation to engagement. The effortlessness of their union, with its remarkable absence of conflict, spoke of a seeming inevitability that neither thought to question. They interpreted it as a logical progression for two individuals imminently well-suited to one another and counted themselves immensely fortunate.

Eventually they drifted into marriage as though that too were a foregone conclusion. The first several years saw their union progressing along a predictable trajectory, free of the drama that afflicted so many other newlywed couples.

In later years, various breezes and occasional gusts caused them to drift apart. At first, the distance that grew between them was almost imperceptible. Had either of them taken note, they might have been inclined to maneuver themselves a little more closely together. But their unconscious belief was that the inexplicable forces that had brought them so effortlessly together would soon align them again.

Inevitably, the easy intimacy of their courtship and casual domesticity of their early marriage began laboring under the weight of familiarity and career.

Sensitive to Abby's waning interest and growing listlessness, but misdiagnosing the cause, a stream of boxes began appearing at their doorstep, the fruits of George's nocturnal internet ramblings. Lingerie and lubes, toys and miscellaneous aids were introduced to the boudoir on the wings of George's carnal hopes and fevered imaginings. All were eventually consigned to the bottoms of drawers or, in the case of unsuitable eveningwear, the local Goodwill.