The Darkly Stranger

Boom.

The top half of the rickety wooden stairs unfolded. I had to duck or they would have landed on me. Dust rained down. I sneezed and coughed.

There was also another reason I didn't go up there. It was hard to open the second half of the ladder and even harder, almost impossible, to put it back up.

But with some wrestling, swearing, and bargaining, I unfolded that old ladder and gingerly climbed up. The climb was higher than I remembered. I flicked the light switch at the top. No light. Fine, at least for the first few feet there would be some ambient light from the hall. I peeked my head up. No floors. Oh, right. The crawl space was evenly spaced wood beams with chewed up fluffy pink insulation in between. The attic was about four feet tall so I had to crawl.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

I started out slowly. It took effort, and like a kid in elementary school, for a second I was sticking my tongue up and out with the intense concentration. It was hard going, carefully placing each hand, knee, and curled-under toes on the beams.

I was about halfway to the water heater when I stopped, a vision of what I must look like springing to my mind. I was bent forward like a wary cat, just wearing my old, gray cotton robe. It was belted tightly at my waist but gaping open revealing a wide swath of my breasts with the key swinging in between them. The bottom edges of the robe had parted and were riding up, giving a clear glimpse all the way up to my thigh. My expression must have been tentative and unsure. I sure felt unsure. I was headed toward an even darker area.

If this were a movie the increasingly eerie music would be cresting to a crescendo in the background, and I'd be sitting at the edge of my seat, torn between biting my nails and wanting to throw popcorn at the movie screen.

Then I thought I saw something in the very corner of the attic. Two bright green slits! Yikes.

I turned around and ran, in a half crouch, as fast as I could, jumping from beam to beam. Then a few things happened, so quickly it was almost as if they were happening at once. First, I realized what I saw was part of the pattern in a Tiffany-like lamp I'd stashed long ago behind an old heater, reflecting off the key.

I turned around to look at it and my foot and robe caught. I fell through the empty hole where the fold-up stairs had been. Time slowed down in that 'oh shit' sort of way. My body plummeted down at a terrible neck and head first angle. I realized there was no way to twist around; I was heading for the concrete at literally break-neck speed, and there was nothing I could do.

It was the kind of fall that could kill me.

I closed my eyes and prepared for impact.

Thwhosh.

What?

I was about a foot off the ground, held securely in the creature's embrace.

I stared into bright yellow, red, and orange-striped eyes. The creature was crouched low, and I was cradled against its chest, wrapped safely in its arms. It had saved my life.

I put my hand on my heart to keep it from beating out of my chest.

I saw a dreamlike sparkling blue line connecting me to the creature. Its eyes dilated, and I heard a voice in my head that wasn't my own; it was strange and deep.

'I need more. There has got to be more.'

I opened my mouth to scream, and it quickly covered my mouth with one hand. My intake of breath was captured in its palm.

Before I could even make sense of the weird, snake-like texture, it stood me up, and turned me. The move was so fast, I spun, almost catching a whisper of fingers tracing the edge of cotton. There was a whoosh, and the ladder was folded up and closed. Another whoosh, and it was gone.

I'd never been so scared in all my life.

Or so turned on.

*

I relived that moment a million times over. In all my dreams nothing was a wild as that one moment of truth. It lasted about four seconds, but it was more exciting, more stimulating, and more mind-bogglingly hot than all the years of my life put together.

I never doubted what I saw. I doubted what I heard in my head. Where did it come from? The creature? If so, what did having the creature nearby mean?

I knew what I wanted it to mean.

There were no more nightmares—in the shower or otherwise. There also was no feeling of being watched.

I spent a lot of time pacing my hallway wondering where the thing had come from. Somehow everything I knew was in question. Was that really telepathy or...? I mean, maybe I imagined it. Could it talk? Did it have some other way to communicate? Was it dangerous? Was it hiding somewhere on my property?

When it would it return? The house was completely quiet. Weeks passed and many questions became one burning question. How could I get it to come back?

While the weird dreams stopped, my desires didn't. I formed a plan. It seemed the creature only came when the shower was running or when I was in danger of being hurt.

I bought a sexy, white satin robe. I went into the bathroom and turned the water on full blast. It took a second to gather my nerve. I fortified myself with a deep breath. I knocked over my bathroom shelves and everything on them with as loud a crash as I could manage. I lay down on the floor on my side and artfully arranged the slit in the bottom of the robe, showing a revealing section of leg. I pulled a few locks of hair over my face and waited. I worked as hard as I could to calm my rapid breathing, and I waited.

I heard the whoosh of movement. I felt a gentle touch on my foot. I struggled not to move as I felt a wonderful, very subtle energy pour through me. Goosebumps sprung up on my skin as the creature quickly palpitated every bone in my feet with that strange pebbly skin. It reminded me of when I pet an iguana and the iguana rubbed back against me with happiness.

The creature moved on to my ankles. It spent quite a bit of time on my ankles.

I wasn't sure what it was doing and then it occurred to me. It was checking for injuries.

Its hand slid up to my hip. Four fingers squeezed my hip in three places. It touched my forehead; its fingers were cool. It ghosted one hand over my breast to my heart and rested its palm there for a few moments.

It tucked one lock of hair behind my ear.

Then whoosh, it was gone.

Well hell. So much for that.

I propped myself up. I wasn't sure if it saw through my ruse or if it decided that I was healthy enough to take care of myself.

I sighed, got up, disrobed, and adjusted the water temperature and got in the shower. I told myself that the ploy had been dumb, a total failure. Maybe it thought I was clumsy or manipulative. Who knows? I picked up my favorite soap and lathered it in my hands vigorously, letting the smell of jasmine soothe me.

I washed my face, and when I opened my eyes, there was something standing outside the shower stall.

I opened the sliding glass. The steam rushed out and a million thoughts raced into my mind. When you picture a fortune teller saying 'A tall, dark stranger will enter your life' I don't think they mean this much stranger.

The water continued to pour down on me, splashing whatever the creature was that was staring at me a little bit too.

"Can you understand English?" I asked.

Very slight nod.

"Can you speak?"

Also slight nod.

"Are you a male?"

Large nod. One corner of his mouth turned up in a smirk. His tail came up in a big graceful motion from behind him until it was face height and waved as if saying 'hello, this should make that obvious'.

I said the next thing that came to my mind, "Would you like to come in?"

His eyes widened, and his pupils dilated to almost twice their size.

I extended one hand out to him, palm up. "Come on in, the water's fine."

He stepped in, and we stared at each other.

I still had the bar of soap in my right hand and I massaged it in my palm, lathering it up one-handedly.

I guess I expected we'd continue to stare at each other while I finished bathing but he grabbed me and turned me around, yanking me to him, my back to his front. He put his lips near my ear, and the first words he spoke shook me to my core.

"Where I come from, if a female asks a male into running water, then she is proposing a life union of marriage."

I sucked in a breath and stiffened. His grip around me tightened. His voice got deeper until it was almost sub-aural. "And if a male steps in with her that means he accepts."

Oh shit.

Very sharp teeth grazed up my ear, and I shivered in the warm water.

On the other hand, maybe that wouldn't be so bad.

Something slithered around my calf and shin. Oh my God, was that his tail?

The soap fell from my hand.

He said something, his voice low and grumbly. I couldn't understand it.

"If that's not what you meant, I won't hold you to the agreement," he said and there was a pause. He teeth scratched my neck. "This time."

His hand stroked my side and my core blossomed, warm and hot. He caressed up and down one side, from shoulder to hip, grazing more and more of my breast each time. My head lolled back against him.

I was having trouble breathing. I had to open my mouth and pant.

"I will immobilize you, paralyze you, enter you, join with you."

What? Huh?

The tail wrapped a few times around my thigh and slid up, firm and quick, locking me even further into place. He wrenched my head around, stared at me. I blinked, unnaturally aware of the water pounding around us, and my chest heaving up and down as I struggled with the opposing twins of rampant desire and cautious, halting logic.

He was so strange up close. Yet, somehow so familiar. I stared at those weird yellow, red, and orange-striped eyes, and I was so hungry for him but content to just stare. I wondered if that's what he meant by immobilize. Tranced out with desire.

He touched his lips to mine, and gently rubbed them side to side. It was not so much a kiss as a sensual brush of the lips.

I wanted so much more. I nodded.

Then he kissed me, stroking his tongue into my mouth, brutal and hot. I had a panicked thought, there was something different about his tongue. Was it... forked? Then I couldn't think at all because he was running that talented tongue around mine.

Then he was touching me, there, matching the in and out caresses of his tongue to down below. Holy shit, was he doing that with the tip of his TAIL?

No. No, definitely not. That was one of his fingers, gently caressing. Definitely. Absolutely. But the huge shot of adrenaline that spiked into my heart just wondering where his tail was and what it could do just upped my heady cocktail of lust into the stratosphere.

I'd never be able to write about this. How would I ever describe it? Warm and gooey and burning hot and cool and scary and safe and new and old and—

He broke off the kiss and I gasped for breath. I smacked my hand flat against the tile to brace myself. The water beat down on us, like a sudden spring shower downpour, echoing the triple time of my heart and magnifying the surreal sensations that had made the incredible leap from my dreams to actually happening.

I was just about to tell him he was an amazing kisser when he placed tiny, soft kisses down the side of my neck and any words I had dissolved into soft sighs and gasps of breath before they got voiced. He continued to work his way down and it was like he was imparting love with each light butterfly kiss gift. His tongue licked the tiniest of strokes, slowly further down, and then he sucked one of my nipples into his mouth and rolled the other. He pushed his tail into me... wait...the tail! Whoa! It somehow hit the perfect spot and then...holy hell...expanded outwards!

I trembled, right on the precipice. He withdrew. I was shaking, stunned with the barrage of emotions and physical sensations that were so intense and had come on so quickly. I had sensed him for months and been thinking of him for weeks, but now that he was here my heart was filling up and spilling over, as if warm nectar was pouring out of me and joining the water of the shower.

I wanted to hold back, protect myself against the fear of the unknown and the overwhelm of the sensations, and the barrage of pleasure, the absolute gluttony excess of it, but I was defenseless against the shakes that overtook me from the onslaught of pleasure.

He moved me so we were facing each other completely, lifted me up and, BAM, slammed me against the tile, pining me to wall with his hips, his erection huge between us. He pulled my legs up around his waist. He opened his mouth wide, wider than humanly possible, to reveal two sets of upper fangs, the outer set descending like knives and dripping.

Shit.

He tilted his head to the side and lunged that mouth at me. He bit down hard, his fangs piercing my flesh. I felt a quick, sharp burn for a split second where his teeth sank in, just barely breaking the surface.

My body stiffened. I couldn't move. Literally. The only thing I could move were my eyes.

Venom.

I'm going to immobilize you.

Prey.

The fangs felt like blades coming out. He looked at me and smiled. He opened that wide, wide jaw again. Was it double hinged? Then outer fangs had retracted and the inner fangs lengthened.

I could hear him think directly into my brain.

'The toxin is a tonic.' '

He bit the other side of my neck.

Nothing.

Then I flew apart. I came so hard I thought my entire body exploded. It was the biggest rush I ever experienced. My core gushed. He pushed into me in one hard thrust. It was a good thing I was paralyzed because my body wanted to buck against him hard. He pulled out and stroked back in and huge flowing rings of light, red, orange, yellow, blue, crashed into me one after another.

I came again.

And again.

Not a tonic. An aphrodisiac. Times a thousand.

And then some.

The paralyzing venom wore off and every cell tingled and danced. I tightened my legs around him and ground my hips into him with each stroke.

He put his forehead to mine. I could hear his thoughts. 'Yes. More. Mine.'

I felt him shoot up into me.

'Join with me, mate.'

Huh?

Then I felt his soul merge into mine, and mine into his. Flying together, dancing. Burning. A lush, hot, blaze. I was glad for the water. He increased his speed and the inferno inside me exploded to thermonuclear.

'Join. Start.'

What did he think we were doing now?

The colors turned into a tsunami. A barrage.

'Now!'

It was untamed. I was still needy, yet satisfied.

'Mine. Join. Create.'

What did he want?

I came again. And again. And again. Then the multiples rolled over me again and again, and I couldn't get them to stop. I contracted around him and opened my mouth in a silent scream. Blinding lights made me close my eyes.

I shook so hard, I wished I were paralyzed again.

Then I passed out.

*

Chapter 2

I woke as if from a decade of sleep. Like an apple, bobbing to the surface of water, suddenly breaking through one viscosity and into another. I was lying in my bed. I didn't remember going to bed. I blinked. I turned my head. My creature was on his side staring at me.

Oh yeah. Now I remember.

"You wake," he said.

"Mmn-hmn, I wake," I said.

He slowly reached one dark finger and caressed it down my sternum, and my body arched up to meet him. My eyes closed slightly, and I purred.

"So good," I murmured.

He smiled. I took his hand in mine and studied it. Three long fingers, all almost equal in length, one more finger, slightly on the side, basically a thumb. The fingers had wider pads at the end and webbing in between. Reminded me of a frog. I caressed the back of his hand and found the texture of his skin identical to my own. I frowned. Wasn't his skin pebbly before?

"You fell asleep in the middle of our joining. Is this normal for your kind?"

Fell asleep? Nuh-uh. Blacked out.

He looked at me waiting for an answer.

"Maybe, if the sex is really, really good," I said.

He smiled wide. No fangs that I could see. Hhm.

"I wanted to wait until you awoke before I left," he said and jumped off the bed in one smooth motion.

"What?" I reached after him. I was tangled in the sheets, but he stopped when he saw I was lurching almost off the bed trying to grab him. He came back to me and settled into my arms.

"I go to register our union and to petition your move to the other side," he said.

"What, huh, what?"

He had said his statement in the most logical voice. We both furrowed our brows at each other. His confusion seemed to stem from the fact I wasn't on the same page as he was. My confusion was that I was about a hundred steps behind him.

"Surely you don't want to stay here when you can live in my world? I can only survive here for hours at a time. You do not wish to live with me?"

I took a deep breath. What did I really have here after all? A Skype job to misfits who were mandated to classes they didn't want. A house that cost more in utilities than my mortgage payments.

"I wish to live with you," I said.

He got up to go again.

"Wait!"

He sat back down on the side of the bed.

"Don't go yet."

He brushed his lips against mine. I had a powerful flashback of our souls merging together.

I gestured to my own mouth and jaw, and then I pointed at the lower half of his face. He opened his mouth slightly, and I glimpsed both sets of fangs. What had seemed so alien in the shower didn't seem quite as strange now. Were smaller now? I leaned in to get a closer look and he moved so that he nuzzled his way down my jaw and I let my eyes flutter partially closed. 'Oh, what talented teeth you have. All the better to eat you out with, my dear.'

He scraped his teeth and fangs lightly up my neck, barely scratching, not breaking the skin, but creating a wonderful rasping sensation. He pulled away just a little bit to look at me.

I put my hand on his jaw and gestured for him to open. He did. The fangs completely retracted.

"Amazing," I said.

He shrugged.

"Do females have fangs?"

"One pair."

I wondered which ones.

"I don't even know your name," I said.

He made a facial expression that I interpreted to mean that names weren't as important to them as they were to us. He said a very long, low word that I assumed was his name. I shook my head. There was no way I'd ever be able to get that.

He said it again.

I frowned.

He said it again, much slower. His neck expanded a little when he said it. There was no way I'd ever be able to say it. Damn.

"Tah-ah-nan," he said.

He'd shortened it. Must be a nickname. I repeated it. He made a face like, close enough.

"T-aaaahn." I said. He smiled at that. Lover's pet name. I liked it; it had aaahh in the middle. Still it seemed a mouth full. "Tan," I said.

He smiled again. It was okay with him; he didn't care.

"Donna," I said while I put my hand on my chest.

"Donna," he repeated, taking my hand away and putting his lips there. Obviously he had no problem saying my name. Although it appeared he decided to give me a pet name of his own. "Da'a."

He stood up to go.

"Wait!"

"What?" Now he looked impatient. I had so many questions; I wasn't sure what to ask.

"When I first thought I saw you, you looked...wispy?"

He frowned. He didn't understand the word.

"Like smoke," I said.

He walked in front of my blue accent wall, and his skin color changed to blue.

"Whoa!" I said.

He smiled.

Then when he moved away his edges seemed to blur. The smoke effect. That was much more freaky.

"Nature's magic, protective," he said.

Tan kissed me on the cheek and then, whoosh, he was gone.

Amazing speed, another of nature's protective bonuses.

Then I thought of another question. When would he be back?

Everything with him seemed so right, I hadn't questioned it. I got up, got dressed, made myself scrambled eggs for breakfast. I wondered about the change in his skin texture. Did he do that to please me?