Desires in the Dark Pt. 08

Yet again, Heather found herself walking up the stairs to Cam's loft while wondering what this night would bring. Her mood was much more positive this time, however. She wasn't worrying about whether she was turning into a monster: she knew about her monster side. She also wasn't worrying about whether their relationship could survive her being half bed-monster: she was feeling confident in their relationship after last night's intimacy and secret sharing. But she was, however, wondering just what Cam was up to.

That morning, as she'd been getting ready to head out the door to work, he'd asked her to come over after work again. Feeling both snuggly toward him and anticipatory of another night of being with her lover and getting to explore her new body with him, she'd said yes, of course. And then he'd said something about having an idea and taking a light day today, and she'd waved goodbye as she hurried off to catch her bus.

She hadn't thought to ask more at the time, and now she wondered. She'd also been noticing something else was changing in herself. As she was coming home and walking up these stairs, well, that was it: she felt like she was coming home, even though it was coming to Cam's place. They didn't live together, hadn't had that conversation, hadn't really made commitments despite being exclusive for well over a year. Was her monster half making a monster bond like her mother had described, or was it just the next step in a normal human relationship? How could she even know the difference? And would it matter? People had very different sorts of feelings about these things even when they weren't half bed-monster.

She didn't know and she felt that she needed to sort it out. Maybe see if she felt differently in dark and light. She didn't think she would, not when she was feeling like this at the end of a full day of work all soaked with light. And anyway, she needed to find out what Cam had been thinking about with his idea from the morning.

Unlocking the door to step inside the loft, Heather saw Cam was doing something at one of the windows of the loft. It looked like he was pressing a black stripe on the wall. And of course, since it was a late summer afternoon, he was shirtless and in shorts, sweat gleaming on his back and shoulders.

"Hey, babe!" he called out happily as he turned to her and waved her toward him, "Come check this out!"

Curiously, she walked his way, dropping her purse and kicking off her shoes. The heat of the loft beat on her workday clothes, but she ignored it for the moment. As she approached, she saw the black stripes were on every side of most of the windows now. Cam held the one that he was working with up to her, and she realized that it was an adhesive strip of magnet.

"What's this for?" Heather asked.

Cam pointed to some lumpy bundles of beige fabric on the floor next to him. "I got us blackout curtains. One of my buddies, he could swing me some heavy-duty canvas, and he and I cut it out to be the right sizes. Got the magnetic tape at a craft store, and then we can seal out the light any time of day or night we like."

He looked damned smug, and Heather thought that he was right to feel that way. "That's great!" she said, and pulled him down to her level to kiss him, feeling touched by what he'd done. His working sweat smelled quite deliciously masculine, and between the sweat, his shirtlessness, and his thoughtfulness, she could have thrown him down and fucked him there and then.

She didn't though, restrained herself, and asked how she could help. Together, they finished applying the magnets to the walls, then carefully aligned a matching set stuck on the canvas rectangles, adjusting and flattening until they had a cover sealing every window in the place.

"High five!" said Cam, and so they did.

And then Heather noticed a disappointing thing: a trickling feeling inside her as her period suddenly started up. She excused herself to the bathroom, frustration boiling up inside of her. Why hadn't she been keeping track of days? Well, she knew why. She never paid all that much attention anyway, just took the next birth control pill in the pack each day and opened a new pack when it ended. And she'd had better things to think about. But damn, she didn't want to menstruate today, she wanted to get fucked.

She frowned at herself in the mirror as she cleaned up. Some women might be intimate anyway while menstruating, but even just the thought made Heather queasy. She didn't like the blood and mess of things. Just pop a tampon up and make it go away for now. She did that, rinsed her panties, and was about to leave and get a new pair when an even more upsetting thought struck her. What would happen to her tampon if she turned into a monster? Would it stay in or would it fall out? Hell, what was monster menstruation like? Was that even something that her monster body did?

Heather decided that she needed to find out now, before she tried to go back to her evening with her lover. She took her clothes off, reached for the light switch, then hesitated. Nothing bad would happen, right? She flipped the switch and felt her monstrous transformation start. She leaned against the bathroom counter, rising and falling as her legs writhed into tentacles. Her mouth stretched out and filled with knives, her skin soaked up with slime, and something rumbled ominously deep inside her abdomen. She felt swollen and uncomfortable, and things were shifting around somewhere inside of her with a sickening queasy feeling. She had just time enough to reach the toilet before things burst.

Fifteen minutes later, she opened the bathroom door feeling drained and wobbly. Cam was looking worried for her, not surprising given the sounds he must have heard. She smiled weakly up at him and said, "Well, the good news is my period is over now."

He looked at her quizzically, not seeming to get it. Heather didn't really want to talk about it either, so she just said, "Let's just say things were a lot more rapid and dramatic than usual."

"You, uh, want to get a hamburger or something?" He gestured toward the door.

"Shit, Cam, I would kill for a steak right now."

And so they found themselves eating out instead of in, Heather building up her iron again with a heaping plate of barbeque. As she ate, her spinning head slowly came back to feeling level. Finally starting to feel better, she realized that Cam was saying something about air conditioners and she'd been nodding along.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," she said, "They're bad and you can never use one and that's why we don't live together."

He looked taken aback, which surprised her. Wasn't that always what he said? He was waving his hands in negation now and saying something else. She put another piece of brisket in her mouth, amazed at just how good it was, even with no sauce at all. She needed this. He asked her something else and when she nodded at him, he laughed at her.

That captured her attention and Heather asked, "What's funny? Why are you laughing at me?"

Cam grinned at her again and said, "I asked if you were out of it."

She blushed, feeling the bright pink rush on her pale cheeks. "Um, yeah, I guess I really was. I think I'm doing better though."

"I guess you really needed that."

She looked down at her nearly empty plate, realizing that she was only just now finally starting to feel like her head was really back together again. "I guess I did."

"So now, about the air conditioner?" His voice was confident and warm, not a self-righteous sort of tone, which Heather found confusing for this topic.

"I think I must have missed something. Why are we talking about an air conditioner?" Her fork and knife were set down now that she was satiated, and she was paying attention to her man again.

"I made sure to leave a space for it." Again with the confusing statements.

"I'm sorry, where?" She felt like she was sounding plaintive.

"In the blackout curtains for one of the windows, so if you do move in, we've got a place to fit your air conditioner." His voice was nothing but eager and hopeful now.

Heather was feeling flabbergasted. "But you were never... I mean, you didn't want? I thought this was important to you?" Then the more important part of his sentence finally penetrated. "Wait, are you asking me to move in to your place?"

"Well yeah," he grinned, "But I guess your meat was more compelling."

"You goof!" she cried, "Of course I want to. I just was, well, I guess that I was still recovering. I'm doing better now. So you want me to move in with you?"

He shrugged a bit. "More like I want to live with you, wherever. And I figure that it's better if it's just us, no roommates. But if I'm going to live with you, I know an air conditioner is important to you, so I made sure there's a space for it."

Now Heather was feeling really shocked. "But isn't that so important to you? I thought you'd never be willing to live with one?"

"Yeah, well." Cam was looking down a little now, his body folded inward like he was feeling upset at something. "It is. I don't want to contribute to the planet's problems. That's real important to me." He sighed. "But maybe I can be less of an ass about it."

She looked at him, just stunned.

He looked chagrined and slumped a little further. "Heather, I, well, I think I owe you some apologies. No, I know I do." He paused, looking uncomfortable. "All this has got me thinking recently, about my life, and what I'm doing with it. I like my job, I like my life, but I'm not going anywhere with it. I mean, you've got an actual career and make like three times as much as me. I like riding my bike all day, but I can't do that forever. If we have kids someday, I couldn't pull my share. And it's dangerous as well, I know. That's not cool either."

"Kids?" she asked, feeling all at sea with him.

"Well, yeah, I guess. I think I want to be a dad, oh, not now!" He waved his hands quickly in negation, "but, you know, I'd like to get there, when we're ready."

"Would you still want to do that, even now?" Her guts felt all churned up, as she felt hope and fear all mixing up together.

"I do," he said, reaching across the table for her hand. She gave it to him. "I know that you'd be a good mom, and I think that we do well together as a couple. I think we'd make good kids. Maybe with a few more tentacles than I would have expected, but, you know, whatever." He shrugged, self-deprecating in his apparent shyness to be confessing this.

"I don't know if I want kids," she said "I can't promise that I'll ever want them. I mean, I guess I always kind of assumed that I would have a couple of kids someday, but I don't know. I'm sure not ready now. And especially not with everything that's changed."

"Oh shit no, I'm not ready either. I just, I'd like to get there someday. Be ready. And I should do something more with my life anyway, even if I don't have kids. Like, dropping out of everything and being all so pure is easy when I let myself not matter and just go biking to get a little pay each day."

She was nodding, having understood his problem, and finally seeing how the air conditioner fit in. "So living without an air conditioner's too easy too?"

"Well, too easy a way to feel superior, you know. And not, you know, actually do all that much good besides making us both uncomfortable on days where it's too stinking hot."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa... are you actually admitting to feeling uncomfortable?" Heather felt viciously gleeful at this possible admission. And then she felt kind of like an asshole for feeling and saying that, but Cam was already cringing at her.

"I mean, I've kind of made my peace with it." He wasn't looking at her any more. "But it's not like I actually really enjoy it. I just, you know, I can take it, and..."

She quirked an eyebrow at his hesitation. So he went on, "I do like being tough enough to take the heat. You know, real manly shit." And then his head came up and he got a twinkle in his eye and a naughty grin as he said, "I also like that the heat encourages us to be more naked up there."

She nudged him in the shin with her foot and smirked right back, "You goof. I'll bet if we put in my air conditioner, we'll spend even more time naked up there, since I'll actually want to be in your apartment."

"It could be yours too." He was serious again.

Heather looked straight on at Cam and went serious herself as well. "I think that I would like that." He put out his hand to her and she grasped it, the two of them holding on tightly to one another.

Conversation drifted into the details of how they'd make it work. By the time they left the restaurant, they had a plan. Most of it would wait for later, but she wanted to retrieve her air conditioner tonight.

As they walked toward her apartment they were still holding hands, clearly neither wanting to let go. The night air was cooling and the rising moon peeked through in between the buildings as they went. As she looked over at her partner, words rose up in Heather with an unexpected certainty. "We're getting married, right?"

"I'd like that," Cam replied, "though I'm not in any hurry for it." His hand was warm and firm on hers.

She squeezed her hand right back. "Me too. And I'm not really wanting any fuss. City Hall is good enough for me."

"I can't imagine myself in a tuxedo. My parents will be disappointed and probably pissed, but they'll just have to deal. It's not their wedding, after all. We should throw a party though." His tone was jovial and light.

"Housewarming party. With lots of booze and edibles. Everything else, I feel, is just not other people's business." She was surprised at just how vehement she felt about her marriage being private. Heather wondered how much that had to do with how she had grown up, just her and her mother in their private little world. Maybe she was more of an introvert than she thought of herself being. She thought of how her favorite part of parties was listening to Cam and his friends talk bikes, and how important it was to her to get an edible in to chill herself right down. She certainly didn't want to be a center of attention in some bright white princess dress. But she did want to bind her life together with this man for sure. Monster, human, something in between, she didn't care where the feelings might be coming from, she just knew that she wanted this relationship to last.

When they got to her apartment, Heather went to talk with her roommates while Cam went to her room to start removing the air conditioner. They congratulated her and talked about subletting, and when she was done, she found that Cam had finished his task too, and was just setting the bulky, awkward object down on the floor. She looked at him, looked at the bed, and closed the door.

He clearly caught her thoughts, because he smiled at her and asked, "Lights on or off?"

"I want them off. Go close the shade. And I have something else in mind as well." He hurried to comply, but she did not yet douse the lights.

When he was done, she laid her hands on his shirt and started to help him take it off. Then came her pants, his nimble fingers pulling them down across her narrow hips. Next she did his, touching his erection through the cloth, feeling the little bit of sticky dampness where his pre-cum had started to soak through, then undoing the button and the zipper to reveal that his nice hard cock had snuck its way out of his boxers. He undid her top, revealing her utilitarian black bra, then made her gasp as he touched her aching rigid nipples, rotating them slowly around through her bra beneath his firmly pressing thumbs. She shed her shirt, noticing the smell of both of their arousals starting to permeate the room. She was wet and ready but she had other sorts of naughty plans. Still, as she dropped her panties, she rubbed her finger through her hairy soaking cunt, then brought it to his mouth to suck, offering a taste of her to him. His boxers had come off as well, and his hands were now around her waist. She gave his cock a gentle loving tug, and then she said, "I want you on the bed. And then I'm going under it."

"Your word is my command, oh monstrous one." His slow words were filled with lust and play. He brushed her sheets aside and lay on his back, cock hard and pointing upward for her with anticipation. She flipped the lights off and began her change, lowering her increasingly rubbery body to the floor, her legs becoming tentacles, her mouth becoming knives as she slid beneath the bed on a trail of welling slime.

Beneath a bed in darkness with her man above, everything felt right and fine and charged with tension like she'd never known before. Heather stretched her tentacles out almost instinctively, reaching up around the mattress in a dozen different directions, coming down on Cam from every angle simultaneously. She felt his anticipation reaching out to her, his arousal and his lust, the taste of love as well, and also fear, a deep primordial fear of darkness and the beasts that lurk within. She took him in her grasp and fondled him, his arms and legs, his face, his neck, his smooth and hairless chest, his balls, his cock, his belly and his thighs. Her stretching slimy tentacles were running all across his body, adhering and releasing, sliding, grasping, stroking, squeezing, as the deep dark scent of jungle flowers filled the room. One tentacle went inside his mouth, offering him a chance to suck, and he responded greedily, smacking and slurping on her tentacle as she used another one to pump his cock. She found that she was pumping out lubricated slime herself, globs of it dropping from her cunt with every pulsation it made in time with the movements of her limbs. She could feel him tensing, coming to a peak, and felt her own excitement building too. Her hands were on her breasts, adding another layer to the stimulation that she felt. The bed was squeaking over her, her man was thrusting and writhing under her constraining limbs, his lust was flowing into her, his arousal pushing hers, the taste of fear and all other emotions gone as he was overcome with lust, such tasty wholesome satisfying lust. She came as he did, his spattering of semen jetting up and smearing in between her writhing tentacles, her jaw clenched tight against the grumbling bellow that she wanted to let out but didn't dare to let her roommates hear.

She found she'd lifted off the floor, her cunt raised up and opened by the upward grasping of the tentacles that surrounded it. She didn't want to let go yet, tried to relax, was wracked by another wrenching shudder of orgasm. Her man was still in agony of pleasure, she could feel it soaking into her like warm delicious meaty soup. He moaned out loudly, her tentacle having left his mouth sometime during those orgasmic spasms. She wrapped a tentacle back across his mouth, not in it, just a shushing motion and his moaning quieted to desperate whining gasps and straining motions rubbing his body back and forth across the bed. Her hands still kneaded at her breasts, now less focused on the nipples and providing a more general firm indulgent moving pressure.

Heather felt more satisfied and satiated than she ever had before from sex. And Cam, as he came down, was clearly spent, refractory and sleepy with the afterglow of his intense orgasm. She let him go, came out from underneath the bed, then switched the night-light on and rose, wrapping her naked human self around her partner on her bed, feeling charged and awake and ready to take on the world, even as he was drifting gently in her arms. She brushed a gentle hand along his cheek, smiling down with tenderness and love.

He stirred and thickly said, "That was incredible. We've got to move this bed real soon."

She stroked him gently with her hands, replying, "Yes. But now, just sleep. We can finish moving my air conditioner in the morning."