Lights, Camera…Monsters

by Lila Dubois

“Are you sure?” Luke looked to the sliding glass doors, which allowed light to pour in. “It’s daylight, nothing will be hidden.”

  “I know.”

  Luke stared at her, his gaze moving over her face, judging her request. After a long inspection he nodded and said, “I’ll go change.”

  “No, just strip, I want to see all of you.”

  Luke rose to his feet and stripped, taking special care with the new clothes she’d bought him. When they were folded on the arm of the couch Luke turned to the wall, presenting her with a view of his delightfully muscled back and ass. The tattoo stood out in stark relief against the beautiful gold of his shoulder. As she watched, the ink sank into his skin, merging into bronze flesh that began to roll and bubble as he changed.

  The sound was the worst part, the crack of breaking bone and meaty rip of flesh as his human body was stretched and broken to allow the larger form to emerge. Jagged tears emerged in parallel lines along his back.

  Lena pressed her fingers against her lips to stifle the sounds of fear as his wings sprouted from his back. Bit by bit they unfurled in jerky fits and starts, finally spreading across the living room. Luke flexed them a few times, then folded them tightly to his body so he could turn. The floor vibrated slightly as he shifted his weight from foot to foot.

  You can do this. Focus on who’s inside.

  Hating herself for the pathetic pep talk, Lena pushed to her feet. Fear thrummed through her, a reaction she couldn’t seem to suppress. She stared at the carpet between her feet. Silence stretched between them, tense and awful.

  “Lena…”

  She nearly jumped out of her skin when his deep voice rumbled through the room, menacing as thunder.

  “I’ll change back,” Luke said, and beneath the alien growl of his voice she heard sadness.

  “No, wait,” Lena said. She wasn’t going to wimp out now. “I just need to go slow.”

  Eyes still on the carpet, Lena held out her trembling hand. Long, thick fingers, covered in maroon skin, and tipped in black claws, curled around her outstretched hand. Lena closed her eyes and concentrated on the feeling of his hand in hers. The skin was different than that of a human, thick, but not rough. The talons were hard, cold and triangular in shape.

  Curling her fingers in his palm, Lena kept her eyes closed and stepped closer to him. She kept going until she felt the heat of his chest through her clothes. His body overwhelmed her personal space, filling every inch of breathing room she had. Each inhalation brought with it the spice of his scent, but ten times as potent as it had been when he was in human form.

  Slipping her hand from his, Lena began to undress. Toeing off her kitten heels she slipped out of her jeans and shirt, leaving on her bra and panties. Her bravery stopped just short of going completely naked.

  He moved, she felt it in the change of heat around her body, heard it in the whisper of flesh against flesh. Lena reached out her hands, inching them through the unseen space that separated them, until her palms hit the warm skin of his chest. She traced her hands over his belly and ribs, stretching up to find his collarbones and shoulders. With her eyes closed he felt like any man she’d ever touched, if much larger.

  Though she trembled with continued trepidation, Lena stretched to her toes and ran her palms up his thick neck, leaning into his chest. Against her bra covered breasts and bare belly, his chest was hot. That difference in body temperature was an undeniable indication that he was not human.

  Doing her best to ignore the panicky feelings that were growing within her, Lena brushed her fingers over Luke’s face. Here was where the source of her fear lay. The black, slanted eyes and fangs scared her the most. She sought the familiar with her fingers, tracing his cheekbones, nose and mouth. She stroked his hair, which was thick and coarse, like a horse’s mane.

  When she’d steeled her confidence, Lena ran her index finger over his lips. Again and again she traced the contours, until she was comfortable with them. As if sensing this, Luke turned his head and pressed his lips into her palm.

  A kiss was a kiss in any language.

  Lena relaxed, dropping on her heels to rest her aching calves. With great care, she turned her head and rested her cheek on his chest, slipping her arms around him.

  “Open your eyes,” he whispered, and she could hear the words vibrating through the wall of his chest.

  Lena obeyed, blinking to accustom herself to the light before she lifted her head from his chest. She was surrounded by him.

  Luke’s arm’s loosely draped her waist while his wings curved around her in a curtain of black. She brushed her fingers along one wing, and watched as he shivered in reaction to her touch.

  Pushing fully away from his chest, Lena looked up, and up, into Luke’s face. The black eyes were as disquieting and alien as she remembered, but there was something in his face, perhaps the set of his brow or lips, that was achingly familiar. He seemed worried and a bit unsure, the same expressions he often wore as a human stamped upon this face.

  “There you are,” Lena whispered, stroking his cheek.

  “I’m the same inside.”

  “I know, in my heart I know. I’m just having problems getting my brain to cooperate and agree.”

  “It’s sensible for you to be afraid; thousands of years of evolution have taught you to fear my people.”

  “If you know this why were you so upset that I was scared?”

  The monster, her monster, blinked and looked away. His wings shifted as he changed his stance, redistributing his weight. Lena suppressed a yelp and froze, petrified until Luke stopped moving.

  “It was wrong of me to expect something different, but I… I could not help myself. I guess I thought that if you’d touched me, known me, as a man, which would change everything.”

  “I don’t know if it changed everything, but I do know that once I realized it was my Luke inside the monster, I was much less frightened. Remember, I thought the monster had eaten my lover.”

  That pulled a laugh from Luke. In his monster form the laugh was a delectable thing, low and rich, like boulders cracking.

  “You are beautiful,” Luke told her, rubbing his palm up and down her back. “And I am the luckiest monster on earth.”

  This time it was Lena’s turn to laugh at his pun on the common phrase. Still standing within the circle of his wings Lena struck a pose. One hand on her cocked hip, Lena raised a brow and said, “Damn right you are.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Food,” Luke said between cracks of the wooden spoon against Lena’s bare ass.

  “What?” she gasped, barely able to focus as delicious pleasure/pain zinged through her. Luke brought the wooden spoon down on her ass with a firm swat. The resulting crack nearly drowned out his response.

  “We need more food after this.”

  “Yes,” crack, “ouch,” yum, “good idea.”

  After a shower they’d curled up on the bed with diet TV dinners, the only quickly edible things Lena could find. Though he’d eaten his dinner and half of Lena’s, she’d known he was still hungry. She would have ordered them food right then if they hadn’t gotten distracted.

  Luke had accidentally knocked his fork to the floor when placing their empty trays on the nightstand. He’d leapt off the bed to retrieve it, and while fumbling around under her bed, had found one of her toy boxes.

  He pulled it up on the bed, and when Lena saw he’d found the box dedicated to her spanking fetish, she’d flushed with embarrassment. Luke had pulled the top off and carefully examined the contents, fending off Lena’s attempts to steal it away. He’d flipped through magazines and a few printed photos of red-bottomed girls, some wrapped by dark rope, some bound only by the presence of the men who spanked them.

  The heart-shaped paddle, tucked inside a tasteful velvet bag, was the last thing he pulled out.

  “You like this?” he’d asked, voice giving away nothing.

  “It’s just a fetish that interests me, nothing serious, I’ve o
nly tried it once and it wasn’t great.” Lena kept her voice studied and cool, trying to pretend she wasn’t desperately afraid that he would start treating her differently now that he’d seen one of her most hidden desires. The first guy she’d ever discussed it with had started treating her like an intellectually challenged doormat.

  “I did not know humans knew about combining pleasure and pain,” he’d said a minute before he grabbed her, pulled her across his lap, and gave her five hard swats. Lena’s body had creamed with painful alacrity.

  “Oh god, Luke, please don’t start this if you won’t follow through,” she’d begged from her position face down over his lap.

  In response he’d pulled her off the bed, swung her over his shoulder, and carried her out to the kitchen.

  Propping a photo of a naked girl bent over a bar stool, a disembodied hand holding a wooden spoon headed for her ass, against the counter, Luke had stripped off Lena’s robe and bent her forward over the counter.

  When she protested that the counter was cold he’d forced her to slowly lower her chest, until only her nipples brushed the tile, the soft peaks hard from the cold.

  That was how she come to be bent over the counter, so aroused that cream leaked from between her legs to coat the inside of her thighs, Luke standing behind her administering a firm spanking with a long-handled wooden spoon he’d plucked from a jar on the counter.

  “After we eat,” crack, “we are going to come back in here, I can see several other interesting things we could play with.”

  Lena whimpered in arousal, her hips lifting helplessly to meet the spoon, her sex pulsing with need.

  “Luke, please, I need you in me. Please fuck me, please.”

  “I think you need a few more,” crack, “don’t you?”

  “Yesss,” she hissed. He tapped her inner thigh, until she spread her legs wide enough to please him. Luke murmured in approval. Imagined him looking between her spread legs at her wet, needy sex, examining her sex and ass as he considered how many more spankings he would give her.

  Crack.

  She wanted, no, needed him. “Please, please fuck me now.

  “I will, but we forgot a condom. I’ll be right back,” crack crack, “don’t let this fall.” Luke pressed the handle of the glossy wooden spoon up into her, sinking the long, skinny shaft in deeper than any cock would go. Lena’s muscles spasmed around it, even that slender invasion enough to have her moaning in pleasure. Time stood still as she bent submissively over the counter, body aching with need, her breasts and sex swollen with arousal, ass aching dully.

  Then Luke was there, ripping the spoon out of her and sinking his cock in, hands on her hips as he fucked her from behind. She whimpered as his hips pressed against her beaten ass. He pushed his foot between her ankles and kicked her legs wide apart, one hand on her back, pushing her down so that her breasts were smashed against the cold granite.

  He fucked her like that, one hand on her hip, one on her back, holding her still as he pumped his cock in and out of her. Lena’s eyes squeezed shut, her body quaking as she came, the fire in her beaten ass feeding directly to her sex.

  Luke’s pumps became jackhammer thrusts, one hand digging into her reddened ass as he came, a terrifying, rippling growl echoing through the kitchen.

  They stayed that way for a moment, Luke bent forward to brace his hands on either side of her torso. They were both panting.

  “Food,” he whispered.

  “Food,” she agreed.

  Worried she was becoming a nymphomaniac and scared of breaking her vagina, Lena urged Luke out of the house for food. They headed for Luna Park on La Brea, managing to beat the mad Saturday dinner rush. They settled in with killer mojitos, plates of gourmet home-cooking and light conversation.

  Luke was back to his sweet, slightly unsure self, always watching and waiting before making a move. When the hostess led them to a table, he’d scooted around to hold out her chair, smiling when Lena gracefully sank into it with a politely murmured thank you. She hid a smile as he took a seat. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had held out a chair for her, but it was a stock move in romantic comedy movies.

  Well lubricated by a mojito, Lena couldn’t help but touch him, stroking his hand on the tabletop, tangling her legs with his, as she stared at him.

  Lena knew exactly what they must look like to outsiders, a couple in the first stages of love, stuck in that sickeningly sweet phase where they couldn’t bear not to touch one another, couldn’t stand to be away from their lover for more than an instant.

  She assured herself this wasn’t love, this was infatuation. How could she help but be fascinated by a man, a beast, who was such a study in contradictions. Shy and quiet, but ferocious in bed, dedicated to saving his people, yet calm and easy going. Luke was like the first breath of outdoor air after years of recycled oxygen.

  “So what other…fetishes, do you have,” he asked, dipping a slice of crisp green apple into the fondue.

  There was a pleasant din of conversation, enough to mask her reply, keeping it for his ears only, so she answered. “A few, I have, uh, other boxes under the bed.”

  Luke grinned, “Can I look through them?”

  Lena thought about the contents, imagined Luke, with his ridiculously chiseled body and fantastic stamina, becoming her partner in the racier pursuits, and replied, “Oh yeah.”

  He picked up her hand and toyed with her fingers, “I had no idea human women were so inventive, so depraved in bed.”

  “Are female monsters really creative lovers?” Lena asked, the words bitter in her mouth.

  “I don’t know, there are very few female monsters. They are born weaker than the males and many do not survive. I’ve never had sex with another monster.”

  “Then who are you sleeping with?”

  “Sleeping with? No one, you are the only being I’ve ever held while I slept.”

  Lena melted like a schoolgirl gifted with flowers. To think that she was the only woman who’d ever known what it was like to be held by those arms, protected by them in sleep…

  “I’ve had sex with the succubae.”

  Lena snapped out of her pink fuzzy daydream. “The what?”

  “Succubae? They’re female demons that feed on sex with human men, but when they want to just have sex for fun, instead of food, they come to us.”

  Lena let out a slow breath, setting down her undipped apple slice. “Demons exist? Succubae and incubi and everything?”

  “Of course.”

  Lena shivered a little as her perception of the world rocked on its moorings. “And Hell? Does it exist? That’s where the demons come from, isn’t it?”

  “Actually they have a home base in South America, but there is another place, not exactly on this earth, that spawned the human legends of Hell.” Luke, who’d been struggling with a trail of cheese, finally picked up on the tense vibe she was giving off and looked up. Something in her face must have warned him that his words had scared her. “Lena, are you okay?”

  “Yeah, well no, it’s just a lot to take in.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, don’t be, I’d rather know than not. I guess it’s better to know there is a Hell, as I’m probably going there.”

  “Why would you go to Hell? Not that humans can get there…”

  Huh? “I’m a bad person, so I’m going to Hell.”

  Luke blinked at her for a moment then said, “Ohhh, I forgot that human religion uses the empty threat of Hell to scare compliance from its followers.”

  There was a lot going on in that sentence, and Lena decided this was a conversation for another time. The obliging waiter set down a fresh mojito, and Lena sucked down the mint infused alcohol. Time to bring the conversation back to a more interesting topic—sex.

  “So these succubae, they’re into fetish and kink?”

  “I think they may have invented most of what you call fetish and kink.” Luke had finally mastered the fondue fork, and held a perf
ectly dipped chunk of bread out to her.

  Lena pulled the bread from his fork with her teeth and Luke swiped his thumb over her lower lip to catch the melted cheese. She chewed and swallowed before licking his finger.

  “So…are you going to tell me what kind of kink you like?” she asked, nipping his finger.

  “You want to know?”

  “Of course, if you’re going to know all of my secrets, I want to know some of yours.”

  “I will tell you, but you don’t have to do any of them,” he assured her in a rush. “I don’t want you to think badly of me for what I like.”

  His words so closely echoed her own feelings that Lena lifted their linked hands to her lips and kissed his fingers. Then, eyes on his, she nipped him.

  “I won’t think badly of you. Honestly, I’d love to have way more kinky sex than I do.”

  He looked her up and down, seeming to consider. Finally he smiled. “We’ll take turns, playing with each other’s kinks.”

  Lena crossed her legs under the table, her sex slippery and wet from just his words and the promise of decadent and—what had he said? Oh yes—depraved, games.

  They talked through her dinner salad and his stuffed pork chop, then on through dessert. When the waiter started to make distressed noises about how long they were lingering, Lena paid the tab. They strolled, hand in hand, down the street. They were on the cusp of the bustling Fairfax district, which was alive with life on a Saturday night. They strolled to the Museum of Contemporary Art and perused the window displays, and then back up towards the restaurant where she’d valeted the car.

  Lena caught other women looking at Luke, their glances covetous as they ran over him, assessing as they looked her over, wondering how it was she’d landed the beautiful, exotic Adonis.

  Mine. He’s all mine, and better than you can even imagine, so back off, bitches, before I yank out your extensions.

  Once they were back in the car Luke turned to her, looking sheepish.

  “Lena?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I want to stay with you, but…”

  “Oh my god, you’re married.”