Thumper Ch. 06

Previously...

With their marriage on the rocks, Abby and George turn to a most unlikely source for help. Unbeknownst to George, Abby has agreed to let the incubus, Damian, and his mate, Britt, act as marriage counsellors.

Following a morning of bondage at the hands of Damian, Abby discovers a newfound sense of freedom.

***

Abby awoke some time later, disoriented and stiff. She took in the rough wood of the horse stall around her and the straw on the floor. After a moment of confusion, the episode with Damian came back to her -- of having been bound in the barn, wrists tied behind her back and raised uncomfortably while Damian had done his work.

How long had she been sleeping? She stood in the stall and groaned as she straightened her back. Judging by the slant of the light on the floor of the barn, perhaps no longer than an hour.

Her shoulders especially were stiff and sore. Her privates tingled. Her thoughts chased each other within her head. Thoughts of the humiliation of bondage followed by thoughts of the shameful yet blessed violence of her release. Her body had betrayed her yet again, responding in quivering pleasure to the very things from which her intellect recoiled.

She was completely nude and wondered what she should do. A quick scan of the stall and interior of the barn revealed that her clothing had been removed. She could wrap the blanket around herself and seek out George. Unfortunately, she'd have some explaining to do. Or she could remain in the barn and wait for what came next.

In the end, Abby decided on the latter. She wound the blanket around her and tucked in a corner at her breasts. She sat on the straw, leaned against the wall of the barn and resolved to wait.

A few minutes later, the barn door opened and Damian appeared, carrying a bottle of wine and two long-stemmed glasses. He entered the stall and sat on the dusty floor opposite Abby. Without speaking, he poured two glasses of wine and passed one to Abby.

The blanket slipped and pooled in her lap, exposing her breasts. She left it. A little late for modesty, she decided. Like a bizarre if inexact parody of the Manet painting, "Déjeuner sur l'herbe", Abby sat nude while watching the fully clothed Damian, seemingly oblivious of the incongruity of the scene.

"Thanks," she said after taking a sip.

Damian studied her intently until she was forced to look away, gazing at the wine she swirled in her glass.

"You're a remarkable woman. I'm impressed," said Damian.

Abby remained silent. Until recently, Abby's idols, her pantheon of remarkable women, were those who had achieved great commercial success, who had crashed through glass ceilings and institutional sexism by outmuscling and outthinking their male counterparts. They weren't women who allowed themselves to be trussed up, manhandled, and brought to gibbering orgasms. While these last few weeks and answering Damian's challenges were remarkable for her, she laboured under the seemingly irreconcilable contradiction between her ideals and this new, unfathomable reality. The trouble was, she genuinely enjoyed the challenges she'd faced over the last few weeks. While achieving success provided intellectual satisfaction, there was no denying the rewards of Damian's brand of stimulation.

Damian interrupted her thoughts. "You mentioned before that I was trying to break you -- as in a horse."

"And you said the analogy was wrong."

"Partially. A lot of people think that horse breaking is a process of robbing the horse of its spirit until it is completely compliant and malleable, leaching it of what makes it vital and majestic."

"It isn't?"

"No. In reality, horse breaking involves training the horse so that it and the rider can work as a unit without one hurting the other."

"But the horse is still subordinate."

"What good would it be to the rider if it weren't?"

Abby mulled it over for a while. "That's the rub, I guess. Who's the rider and who's the horse?"

"True. That's the rub. We're almost done for today. But first, I would like us to explore the nature of horses."

* * *

George still couldn't get over it. He could see the angry welts curling around the side of Britt's buttocks. He had struck a woman. In fact, he'd enjoyed doing so. What's more, she appeared to have enjoyed it as well.

It was a strange world in which he and Abby had landed.

Britt held up her manacled wrists. "Could you unlock me, please?"

George hurriedly complied and Britt rubbed where the unforgiving metal had chafed her.

"Well, George, now you've gone and done it." She crossed her legs and leaned back on the bench, perching herself on her arms. The rings on her nipples glinted in the sunlight that streamed through the skylights. If she was self-conscious about her nudity, she hid it well. "How do you feel?" asked Britt.

"I should be asking you that."

Britt cocked her head. "I'll be okay, but I'm curious about you."

"Guilty."

"Despite the fact that I gave you permission?"

George shrugged.

"You have nothing to feel guilty about. I wanted you to do it."

George wasn't convinced.

Britt smiled. "Did you abuse me? Some might say that you did. As far as I'm concerned, absolutely not, and only I can judge. Don't you think that it's the height of arrogance for anyone else to judge? What happens in the bedroom between consenting adults is no one else's business."

"But this isn't normal."

Britt laughed. "Why are you so worried about normal? If it's normal for you, it's normal. There's no one else in your bedroom evaluating your actions against standards. You know, not too long, sodomy was a criminal offense. Now, it's a part of the menu. Are you going to wait for lawyers to tell you it's okay?"

Britt took his hand and placed it on her breast. "With consent, anything is possible."

Her nipple grew hard beneath his palm.

Britt continued, "It's something that has to be negotiated by the couple. It doesn't work for everyone. It requires a special kind of man and an enormous level of trust. It works for me because I trust my partner implicitly. That and I find it enormously satisfying."

George let his hand drop. "But we're talking about Abby."

"I think you'd be surprised at what Abby is prepared to do."

* * *

Abby was surprised to see that the bottle of wine was just about done. Damian had kept her own glass filled, and she couldn't be sure whether Damian had drunk as much as she. She felt pleasantly mellow, content even.

"Are you up for it?" asked Damian.

"Honestly, I'm exhausted," said Abby.

"I won't be placing any unreasonable physical demands on you."

Abby closed her eyes and nodded.

Damian stood up and held out a hand. Abby took it, clutching the blanket at her breast. As he had earlier that morning, he asked her to strip. Stripping took little more than letting the blanket to fall to her feet. This time, Abby complied without hesitation, despite some misgivings that she might be subjected to the same treatment as before. Her immediate and unquestioning compliance didn't surprise her any more. She asked only whether he planned to stress her as he had. There was only so much her body could stand.

"No," said Damian. "We'll take it easy."

He approached her nude form. "You have quite the body."

Abby blushed and shuffled her feet in the straw. "Thank you."

He stepped behind her and placed his hands on either side of her neck and kneaded the muscles. A massage was the last thing she'd expected. She could feel the heat of him behind her as his fingers worked their magic. Between the wine and Damian's hands on her, she found herself relaxing.

"I don't think you realize how much power you possess, even if you subordinate yourself to a man," he said quietly, almost to himself.

Was Damian making a pass? Was he admitting to being aroused? And what was this about subordination?

His strong hands left her and he disappeared into a dark corner of the barn. She mulled over what he had just said – subordinating herself to a man. Before meeting Damian, the thought would have filled her with revulsion. Now less so, though the notion still made her uncomfortable.

Damian returned a moment later with a cardboard box.

"More farm implements?" asked Abby nervously.

Damian chuckled and reached into the box.

He removed what appeared to be a squat, black cylinder. Abby was curious in spite of herself. As he approached her, she recognized what it was. With a wink, he placed a tall, fur-lined leather collar around her neck and fastened a pair of buckles at the nape of her neck while she held her hair out of the way. The collar sat firmly on her shoulders and braced her chin, effectively keeping her head immobile and upright. A large ring dangled at the base of her throat.

He stood back and admired her. "Bend over," he commanded.

Abby furrowed her brow at Damian. "What are you going to do?"

"Bend over and you'll know. Trust me. This shouldn't be too unpleasant," he said.

Trust him. The words rolled around in her head. How could she even entertain the thought of trusting someone who'd done the things to her that Damian had? Yet Damian could have had much more than he'd taken. In fact, he could have had taken just about anything and she doubted she would have wanted to stop him. Yet she could have stopped him with a word, a word that had remained unspoken.

Abby complied. Excited foreboding warred with anticipation. The collar forced her to keep her back straight as she bent at the waist.

Damian nudged her gently and she spread her legs. She grasped her ankles and closed her eyes, exposing herself to whatever Damian had in mind.

Abby felt his hands on her naked ass. He rubbed her for several moments and she sighed. The rubbing stopped and at length an object pressing against her anus. The object was cold and slippery. She thought it might have been the ball of the hook from earlier in the day, but soon noted that the object was tapered. She would only make it worse by fighting it, so she took a deep breath and forced her muscles to relax. She could feel more and more of the slippery length entering her. The object widened, stretching her almost to the point of discomfort when it suddenly narrowed, her anus closing around its base, hugging the object firmly within her ass. It wasn't uncomfortable now that it was embedded within her, yet the sensation of a foreign object lodged within her rectum was definitely insistent.

Still holding her ankles, Abby opened her eyes and peeked between her legs and observed a cascade of what looked like hair dangling between her legs.

A tail?

Damian invited Abby to stand.

"Um, I appear to have a tail," she said as the hair of the tail tickled the backs of her calves.

"All this horse talk." He shrugged. "I'm sorry if it doesn't quite match your hair, but I did my best."

What could she say?

"I have something else for you, Abby."

"I can't wait," she said, but failed in the sarcasm. Her heart was racing, not in fear but in anticipation.

Damian presented her with a tangled mess of leather straps. "I know it doesn't look like much now..."

He busied himself around her breasts. Her skin tingled at every accidental touch of her nipples as he untangled straps, draping a pair over the top of her breasts and another beneath. He fastened the straps behind her and tightened them. Her breasts seemed caught in a wedge of leather, held by a central metal ring at her sternum. She could feel him at the sides of her breasts, sliding something forward to narrow the straps, squeezing her breasts between them.

"Beautiful," he said, admiring his handiwork. "Are you ready for a walk?"

"A walk? As in outside?"

"Outside is one of the best places for a walk. The fresh air, the woods..."

"I can't go outside like this," said Abby in growing panic.

"Why not? We're in the middle of nowhere."

"But what if someone sees me?"

"They'll be in for a treat, I guess. There's no one. I promise." He clipped a lead to the ring of her collar. "Let's go."

Abby allowed herself to be walked to the open doors of the barn when she balked. "I can't do this."

Damian, standing in the sunshine, holding the lead, frowned. "I can't believe that after all we've been through, this is where you draw the line."

Abby looked from Damian to the path leading into the woods some hundred yards from the barn. "Can you cover me with the blanket until we get to the woods?"

"No."

Abby scrutinized the drive leading to the farmhouse and the windows that overlooked the barnyard. She could see nothing. She took a deep breath and then tentatively stepped into the sunlight. Damian turned and walked toward the path, leading Abby. She followed, almost overtaking Damian in her haste to reach the cover of the forest.

Damian and Abby walked along a cart path. Soon the path dove into a forest. Now that she was hidden from prying eyes, Abby found walking in the woods in the nude strangely liberating. Her tail tickled the backs of her thighs in time with the graceful movement of her legs and sway of her hips. She tried to keep to the grassy strip in the middle of the path to spare her feet the worst of the gravel.

The birds chirped unseen in the trees and for the moment, Abby forgot the unnaturalness of her position and listened to what Damian was saying.

"...we have these magnificent bodies that are capable of giving and receiving inconceivable pleasure, coupled with limitless imagination that enables us to explore the boundaries of sensation. Yet most people willingly restrain themselves because of prudishness, fear, ego. And you think that what I did to you was bondage." Damian laughed. "People restrain themselves in more creative and permanent ways than I ever could."

They walked in silence for several minutes.

"So, how did you like the barn?" asked Damian.

"It was the most intense thing I've ever experienced," Abby admitted.

"And you did it yourself. I merely set the stage."

"Great as it was, what's the point of all this? In the context of healing my marriage, I mean."

"I'm surprised and disappointed that you have to ask. You're a smart woman. You figure it out."

Damian's rebuff hurt, particularly since they seemed to have developed a kind of rapport, though Abby knew instinctively it wasn't one of equals.

Okay, she was smart, particularly when it came to the binary logic -- on and off, yes and no. But of late, Abby operated in an expanse of grey, where lines that had been respected forever vanished and re-established themselves in the distance. Damian had mentioned prudishness, fear, and ego. Did these apply to her? She thought for a moment and had to admit that they did. How might things have been different had she embraced the timid innovations George had introduced? How might they have been different had she encouraged him?

She remembered the early years of their marriage. Curiously, she'd never felt diminished, even on her knees before her husband, pleasuring him with her mouth. The giving of herself had occurred naturally, without any notion of reciprocity. She had revelled in her ability to stimulate George, to cross the line of her own comfort and accomplish something new. His loving gratitude was reward enough, though more often than not he'd upped the ante in his own way. What had happened?

Abby suddenly stopped when she heard someone whistling just around the bend in front of them. "What's that?"

"Sounds like the theme from the Andy Griffith Show."

"That's not what I meant."

"My guess is that it's Rodney," said Damian, tugging on the lead to keep Abby walking. "He's the groundskeeper at the farm."

"We've got to hide."

Damian laughed. "Don't mind Rodney. He's harmless."

"But look at me. I'm practically naked! And done up like a pony!"

"Believe me, I've noticed."

"Please!" Abby begged.

Damian shrugged as the whistling grew louder. He led her onto a game trail that intersected the path they were on. Abby begged him to hurry.

While Damian leaned against a tree with his arms crossed and a smile playing on his lips, Abby crouched behind some undergrowth. Ferns and grasses tickled the exposed flesh of her butt. She felt like a little animal, hiding from a predator. A man rounded the corner, dressed in a suit and a bowler hat. He carried a walking stick that he swung before him, more of a prop than anything, for it never quite touched the ground. He neared, seemingly oblivious to the two who watched his progress from just off the path, until he reached the point just opposite them. He turned his head toward them, or rather, toward Damian. In the suddenly unnatural silence of the forest, the man pointed to his eyes and then to Damian. His malevolent smile made Abby shudder. With a nod, the man sauntered down the path and out of sight.

There was a menace about this man that contrasted with his almost comical costume.

Abby heard the hissing intake of breath behind her and she turned in time to see an unearthly shimmering around Damian, as though waves of heat disturbed the air around him. She'd almost forgotten what he was.

After a minute, the whistling dwindled to nothing, replaced by the tentative sounds of the forest.

"Who was that?" she asked. Abby was angry. She turned to him, ready to launch into a tirade regarding his promise, now broken, that they were alone, that her vulnerability would be shared by no one but him. But Damian's own face was a study of fury. Lines etched his countenance and his eyes blazed under a furrowed brow. Beneath his anger roiled another emotion. Fear. "Rosier," growled Damian.

It was Damian's fear that robbed her of her angry denunciation of him and his empty promises. "Who is?"

He cut her off with an impatient motion of his hand. They emerged once again onto the forest path. The light slanted at a sharp angle through the trees, casting long shadows across the path. He stood in the middle of the path, looking the way Rosier had gone. There was wariness about Damian now, a tenseness that caused the muscles in his jaw to twitch.

Finally he took a deep breath and by force of will, it seemed to Abby, relaxed somewhat. "Let's go," he said quietly.

Damian allowed the lead to dangle from the collar Abby wore and took her hand instead. The contact was comforting, and Abby wondered who was comforting whom.

They continued walking, dapples of light playing across Britt's skin.

"I guess it's working," ventured Abby, wanting to get Damian's mind off the unwanted apparition that had so disturbed him.

"What is?"

"Your attempts at lowering my resistance," said Abby.

"The evidence would appear to support your statement."

They continued in a strangely companionable silence. She'd already forgiven Damian for his broken promise; it was obvious that the man's presence had been as unexpected for him as it had been for her.

As the distance between them and the strange man grew, Abby immersed herself in the enjoyment of this simple walk. Abby had never been so attuned to her body. The collar forced her to stand erect when she would have preferred to curl in on herself to hide her nudity. She felt the sway of her breasts, the plug within her and the tail that brushed the backs of her legs with every step. She felt the breeze between her legs and the hand that held Damian's. And she felt the freedom.

* * *

George turned at the sound of Abby and Damian entering the old farmhouse. Damian paused in the doorway to the living room.

Abby entered behind Damian, as though wanting to hide behind him for as long as possible.

"Hi you two," said Britt brightly. "George and I were wondering what kept you."

"Just a short stroll," said Damian. "We ran into Rosier..."

Had either Abby or George been looking, they would have noticed the sudden pallor of Britt's face and the look of alarm that passed between her and Damian.