Previously...
We meet Damian and Abby, and incubus and his mate. Following a visitation, Damian's victim, a woman whose marriage has fallen apart, unexpectedly thanks him. Damian's master is none too pleased.
***
Damian sat in the darkened dormitory room in one of the tri-cities church colleges. On the bed, a girl of nineteen writhed, hair splayed on the pillow and across her face. He hadn't touched her this time, but his very presence caused her hands to scuttle like spiders to her groin. They hitched up her nightgown to her navel and then resumed their journey to the downy nest between her legs.
Her breathing quickened as her fingers worked.
"Come," whispered Damian after several minutes.
The girl's movements stilled and she swung her legs over the side of the bed. With tentative steps, she approached Damian.
"Help me," whispered the girl. Damian knew that she was not speaking to him. "Please. Save me."
She knelt before him and trembling fingers unfastened Damian's jeans and lowered the zipper.
Damian slipped the jeans from his hips and took the girl's hands. He pulled her towards him until she straddled him.
She lowered a hand to grasp him as her hips descended, her nightgown tenting around their privates like a shroud.
With a muffled cry she impaled herself on his length.
Damian could feel the blood trickling from her.
"I hope you're happy, Asmodeus," he whispered.
***
Silence lay like a heavy blanket over the darkened house. It was well into the witching hour -- the hour when regret, self-reproach and self-recrimination came out to play, when the memories of carefree youth and innocence clashed against the realities of middle age and guilt.
The woman sat in her darkened office, scrolling through photographs on her laptop. Her husband had long since gone to bed, eschewing the customary good-nights and sleep-wells. She couldn't blame him.
He probably thought she was going over her company's accounts, rather than reviewing the photographic evidence of their lives together. Just as well. She didn't particularly want him to know this maudlin side of her.
She'd arranged the photographs chronologically. She was nothing if not orderly.
There were several photographs of their time at the university, taken by fellow students whose post graduate successes had sent them far afield. She prowled their Facebook profiles and wondered what might have been had her own life's trajectory not been so predictable.
It wasn't as though Britt wasn't successful. She was by any standard. She had the accolades, the money, the car and house. The fact was that she married soon after graduation and settled in the same town where she'd studied. One thing had led to another without those unexpected detours that often provide the fondest of memories. The one ill-considered detour that she had permitted herself had been succumbing to her business partner.
They'd been working late, putting the finishing touches on a business proposal. It was the culmination of weeks of long hours, of huddling together at the computer, of take-out at their desks after the cleaning staff had left. They were on the cusp of their greatest success. Both felt it. The exhaustion left them giddy. A fleeting moment of contact had evolved into a touch, then an embrace, and finally a headlong rush into lust. Then blessed release.
Then embarrassment.
Finally shame and guilt.
And thus it was that one the eve of her greatest success, she had written her single greatest failure.
And that was why she now looked at photographs, as though these frozen moments of happier times might suggest where things had gone so off the rails.
Wedding pictures. Honeymoon pictures.
They'd been so young then, though the notion applied more emotionally than chronologically.
She scrolled. The photographs had long since been committed to memory.
She sensed his presence behind her. After several months, she'd almost convinced herself that she'd imagined that night in the living room, relegating the sensations to the nocturnal imaginings of a needy unconscious. Now she knew it was not so. The hairs on the back of her neck stood and she shivered.
She didn't turn around. Instead, she clicked the mouse button and advanced the picture.
Just when she thought that perhaps she had imagined the presence, she felt a pressure, light as the tread of a spider, on her shoulders. Her heart raced but something in her welcomed the touch, so reminiscent it was of that night in the office, so needed after the months of physical deprivation.
The sensation moved from her shoulders down her arms and back again, leaving trail of goose pimples in its wake.
She felt a stirring in her loins out of all proportion with the touch that had evoked it.
If the light pressure had been a hint, the weight now on her shoulders was a statement. Her breath hitched and she sat frozen but for a finger that clicked the mouse button.
The pressure -- it felt like hands, had to be hands -- slid from her shoulders to the slope of her breasts.
Click.
She peeked at the picture. The couple smiling in a bar, their white teeth blazing against tanned faces. Her hand rested delicately on his forearm. They'd gone at it like teenagers that night.
Click.
The hands moved over the curve of her breasts and pressed flat against them. Her nipples tingled under the pressure, and she could feel them hardening.
She noted with disgust that the hand over the mouse trembled.
Invisible fingers squeezed her nipples, sending a current to her core.
She couldn't let this happen. Her body had betrayed her once before. Not again.
With a quick movement, she swivelled the chair to face her attacker. Of course, she saw nothing, just like the last time. "What are you?" she demanded, unsettled by the tremor in her voice.
She felt hands on her thighs, spreading them apart. She resisted for a moment and then allowed her legs to part. She cursed herself for her weakness. She closed her eyes and tipped her head forward, hoping to conceal her face behind a curtain of hair.
* * *
Damian sat in his car for several long minutes upon his return to the farmhouse he shared with Britt. The house had sheltered him and Kat for many years before Britt had entered his life. Now Kat was gone, recovering in Europe among members of an ancient demonic branch. For the first time, these four walls and roof provided more than shelter. They were home.
He struck the steering wheel and whispered a curse as the scene replayed itself in his mind.
Damian had absented himself from his polite suburban victim through the rest of the winter months. He had to admit that he'd been disquieted by her thanks and by Rosier's visit. In answer to the latter, he sought sustenance among the many young and impressionable university students who populated the tri-cities area. Young, sweet, and hormonally compromised, university students never failed to give Damian a satisfying meal. Occasionally, he would claim a girl from one of the church colleges, if only to keep Rosier at bay.
Britt had been justifiably distressed by Rosier's visit, recognizing in that moment how fragile their lives together were. He'd answered her questions with a calm that belied his own apprehension. Yes, Rosier was a demon, and yes, Asmodeus was his boss, prince of hell and demon of lust. And no, it wasn't a good thing to have come to their attention.
So Damian had redoubled his efforts to be an agent of discord, sowing the seeds of lust among those whose purity and goodness would be the most tainted by it. He hated himself for it, but Rosier had not returned. After a while, the lives of Britt and Damian reverted to a semblance of normalcy.
Several months after Rosier's visit, Damian returned to the wealthy suburb. The woman had been in the back of his mind since then like an unanswered challenge. He decided that he'd gone too easy on her.
He approached the house and noted that the little had changed in the woman's response to his projections. There was still a need, a barely concealed hunger, overlaid with frustration.
He observed her from the door of her home office. The light of the screen played on the attractive geometry of her face. Her intelligent blue eyes betrayed tiredness and the firm set of her full lips indicated something else entirely -- anger tempered by grief.
Wakefulness presented some problems to the incubus, but potentially greater rewards. The approach had to be careful. Some incubi, Damian knew, went in with guns blazing, whether their victim was asleep or awake. Damian preferred subtleness, insinuating himself by deliberate degrees into the consciousness of his victim. It was the difference between bludgeoning a hapless fish and setting a hook. He preferred the latter. Set the hook and play, letting out line and reeling it in. Granting the illusion of freedom before withdrawing it. The end result was the same, but it was an infinitely more rewarding game.
The waking mind behaved differently. It was more difficult to pass off sensations as dreams, for example. Then again, the waking mind produced a more potent fear. It was a different flavor of helplessness.
Damian entered the office and positioned himself behind her. He watched over her shoulder as the woman's life passed before his eyes. Wedding photographs featuring the woman and her new husband, both beaming. The couple in the Caribbean -- their honeymoon perhaps?
A photograph of the couple at the beach at sunset, leaning against a palm tree, embracing. Damian wondered about the photographer. Did he feel like a voyeur while the couple shared this simple intimacy? The couple certainly seemed oblivious to the photographer's presence.
He placed his hands lightly on her shoulders. Surprisingly, she didn't flinch, raise a hand to touch the spot, or turn around. He marvelled at her self-possession. Her index finger remained poised for a moment over the mouse button and then clicked.
His fingers traced the contours of her body and her flesh responded to his touch. Her breathing quickened and her heart rate increased. He could sense her fear and confusion, and it was good.
When she finally turned to confront him, Damian was almost taken by surprise. She'd allowed his hands free reign, seemingly content with the sensations that they generated. As quickly as arousal had bubbled to the surface, it disappeared.
"What are you?" the woman cried, abruptly turning to face him. Of course, she could see nothing, yet Damian was unnerved by the way she found his eyes.
For several moments he stood before her. The photograph of the smiling couple appeared over her shoulder. More so because of the photograph than anything else, Damian felt like an intruder.
