Thumper Ch. 01

Eventually abandoning his dreams of creative carnality, George turned Eros. He had obviously misread Abby's unspoken signals and hadn't thought to ask for clarification. George embarked on a campaign of romance. He would stoke the amorous fires in the hope of recapturing the sizzle of their earlier years. Roses sent to the workplace. Schmaltzy poems, in rhyming couplets no less, secreted into Abby's briefcase. Candlelit dinners during which George felt much like an actor, comparing his performance with those of his fellow male diners, trying unsuccessfully to imitate their panache and romantic verve but failing to elicit the desired secret smile and dewy, blissful gaze from his distracted mate.

While the more accomplished Lotharios could ignore the world, lost in their oases of love and inevitable consummation, George felt increasingly on stage, his weakness and inadequacy obvious to anyone who cared to look.

That Abby dutifully spread her legs after these excursions brought little solace.

Everything he did now smacked of desperation.

Then one day six months ago, Abby returned from work uncharacteristically early, interrupting George's work on a hopeless academic screed that few would read but would, he hoped, count towards his tenure aspirations.

"George, sit down."

"I am sitting."

Abby looked annoyed when she confirmed that he was indeed sitting. "We have to talk."

George's stomach fell. Talking was an activity that had fallen off of late, and its sudden resurrection filled him with foreboding.

"I've had an affair."

No warning. No hints. The little bomb now lay on the floor between them. Ticking.

"It's over now."

It? Wondered George numbly. Their marriage? The affair?

Tick.

"It didn't mean anything. It was a mistake."

Tick, tick.

"I want to work on this. With you. Our marriage. Whatever it takes. I don't know what happened to us, but we need help."

Tick.

No apology, George noted dully. No tearful request for his forgiveness.

"Will you work with me?"

Tick.

George's hand worked itself into a fist under his desk. She screws around and then she asks me for something, he thought. A little effort. Like it's my fault she's been fucking someone, as though I spread her legs for someone else like a puppet master.

Tick.

In a flash of anger, he imagined his fist making contact with the face that he loved. Of Abby falling. Of her shock. Of Abby's fear of what he might do.

No, he thought, I will not work with you. "Of course," he said instead, his anger gone.

Abby nodded and left George's study, closing the door softly behind her.

The explosion never came.

* * *

Damian entered the kitchen and abandoned stealth when he saw Britt at the stove. Damn, he'd hoped to rejoin her in bed.

Even dressed as she was -- a hoodie bearing the name of her alma mater and sweatpants -- she still looked breathtaking. Despite the baggy clothes, there was no mistaking the beguiling curves and intoxicating femininity of the woman.

"You went out last night, didn't you?" she asked without looking at him.

"Yes."

Britt turned and frowned but there was no mistaking the twinkle in her eye. "You look beat. Did you have a tough night at the orifice?"

"You tuckered me out last night. I was feeling peckish," he explained weakly. "And yes, it was a tough night."

"Tell me at least that she was ugly."

"Of course. Eighty if a day. Three hundred pounds. Legs the texture of cottage cheese. It was horrible."

"Liar."

Damian sighed. "You got me. She was pretty. Young slip of a thing. Blonde. Blue eyes. Fit with legs that went for miles and spectacular boobs."

"You can stop now."

"Did I mention her legs?"

Britt threatened him with an eggy spatula.

"Any other woman would throw you out on your ass."

"But you're not any other woman."

It was true. When he'd first met Britt, she'd been little more than a meal. But something was different about this woman; he'd felt it the instant he'd tasted her. While his projections awoke something in her, so too did her response awaken something long dormant in him.

Britt was born of a human mother but had been sired by an unknown incubus. Those early encounters had almost cost them their lives, but for the intervention and sacrifice of those now absent. Not a day went by when he didn't feel the weight of his indebtedness to them, a weight lifted only by the presence of Britt, a blessing that no demon deserved. Now this woman, this cambion, shared her life with him in a bond far more intense and intimate than any sanctified in a church.

"But she was nothing compared to you."

"Yeah, right."

"Seriously. You're my pumpkin."

"Oh God." Britt turned to the stove to hide her smile and folded the omelette.

"The wind beneath my wings."

"Go on."

Damian approached her from behind and wrapped his arms around her. "Apple of my eye." He nibbled her neck. "My true love." His hands rose beneath her sweatshirt to cup the fullness of her naked breasts. "Pookins."

Britt purred.

"And believe it or not, she thanked me."

"I should hope so. You know, you really know how to kill a mood."

"I'm serious. It's as though she recognized me for what I was and thanked me anyway. Usually I leave them gibbering in terror and crying for their mommies."

"Like a typical guy, in other words."

"A typical guy who wants you."

Britt slid the omelette onto a plate and smiled at him winningly. "You'll have to wait. I'm feeling peckish."

* * *

"Bravo! How heartwarming!"

The sudden noise of applause and the booming voice shocked them. Britt gave a little shriek and Damian growled and whirled to the direction of the voice.

A small, balding man with spectacles and a pot belly stood in the corner of the kitchen. By his dress he looked not unlike an accountant circa 1900, or how Britt imagined one to look. He wore a bowler hat and a natty three-piece suit, complete with a watch chain. He held a walking stick with what looked like an obsidian gargoyle head, which he stroked with his index finger. A curious odor filled the kitchen so that Britt glanced at the stove to make sure that she had turned it off.

"Nice place you've got here. So quaint. So domestic. It warms my heart, it really does, to see one of my favorite agents of discord enjoying such fucking blissful domestic harmony."

"Rosier." Damian's voice dripped loathing but with an undercurrent of unease.

"Ah. So you recognize me, Damian of Pannonia, though perhaps Damian of Green Acres is more fitting."

He laughed mirthlessly as he waddled to the center island, tapping his stick on the floor. "And you must be Britt. We've heard so much about you. I commend you, Damian, she's a rare beauty."

Damian glared at the little man but said nothing.

"Damian, I do wish happier circumstances brought me here, but unfortunately it is not so." The small man looked genuinely regretful. "Your trysts do entertain the boss, but you're making Asmodeus a little nervous. Not to mention the fact that I have my doubts that you fully appreciate our core values. It's almost like you're going through the motions. It's like you don't care. I remind you that it's not about feeding yourself. There's a baser purpose. We can't allow ourselves to become complacent; the competition never rests, you know. Every member of the team must give 110 percent. And there is, after all, no I in team."

"Get out of my house," Damian growled.

Britt glanced over and saw that Damian had reverted to demon form. Horns of the blackest night rose from head and his face itself had adopted a reddish hue.

Rosier continued as though Damian hadn't spoken, leering at Britt. "Omelettes. I love omelettes, but with a little hot sauce." He turned to Damian. "Even though incubi are a little anachronistic in this day and age -- I mean, who the fuck cares about a little adultery and fornication these days -- there are still certain expectations. Certain things in the job description. Ours is a thankless job..."

Rosier shimmered and assumed a demonic aspect as well. If Damian could be frightening in his demon form, Rosier was terrifying. Gone was the accountant guise, in its place rose a terrifying specter. Taller than Damian, his horns etched furrows in the plaster of the ceiling and his muscles spasmed grotesquely under red skin. His eyes blazed and his mouth twisted in a bitter sneer.

"...but we don't expect fucking thanks from those we visit, do we? Are you some kind of fucking amateur? A poncy gigolo with horns?"

The roar of his voice was deafening and the old house groaned. In the after-echoes of his voice, the accountant was back, but the voice remained, though softer. "See that you don't disappoint us anymore."

Then he was gone, but the odor that accompanied him remained like a stain in the atmosphere.

"Who's Rosier?" whispered Britt.

"Trouble."