Incubus Dreams

30

Nathaniel called my name, but I couldn’t answer. I was afraid to answer. Afraid if I took even a moment to think that that other colder mind would take over again. Nathaniel dropped to his knees with his arms still around my waist. The sudden movement startled me, stopped the screams like a switch had been thrown. That other mind spilled into the silence. But it wasn’t cold anymore, it was frightened.

Leopards are solitary. There are only three reasons to meet another leopard in the wild. Fighting, fucking, or eating. He was either something that would hurt us, something that would fuck us, or something that would eat us. There were no other choices in the fear that roared through my brain. I thought I’d understood what the fight or flight response was, but I’d been wrong. This made anything I’d ever felt as a human being pale by comparison. The need to strike out, or run away, thrilled all the way down to the tips of my fingers and toes. It was a rush of adrenaline like I’d never known. My entire body was thick with it, stronger, faster, because I was about to fight to the death.

I fought that panic, fought not to struggle, not to fight Nathaniel. I could get away. I knew it, and that other mind knew it.

We could get away. We could be safe. But that small part that was still human knew that Nathaniel wouldn’t hurt us. We had to let him pin us, had to, because I knew I could escape. What I didn’t know was what would happen if I got away. What would happen if Nathaniel couldn’t pin me and hold me down until I could think like a person again? I didn’t want to find out, because it would be something bad, something I wouldn’t want to live with afterward.

I struggled to be still. To let Nathaniel take me down, to be limp in his arms as he pressed me to the floor. That other mind shrieked through me as my body touched the carpet. It shrieked that we would die, and it believed that. It had no friends here. I’d always thought that at least part of my beast was Richard’s wolf, but in that moment, I knew it wasn’t so. What fought me wasn’t anything that recognized the larger social order of the pack. There was only prey, rivals, mates, and young. No part of me saw Nathaniel as a child.

I let him pin me facedown on the carpet. My skirt was too short for being flat on the ground, and it began to ride up. His body molded to my back, his hands on my wrists. I fought that screaming voice in my head, to lay still, to let Nathaniel get as good a hold on me as he could. He had no training in how to pin someone. He did it the only way he knew how, by forcing my legs apart with his hips, so I couldn’t just go to my knees and lift him off. The skirt rode up my hips until it was bunched so high that there was nothing between him and me but the silk of my panties and his pants. It was a horribly vulnerable position. Even the part of me that was still me, didn’t like it.

Because once you’re pi

Nathaniel won’t hurt me. Nathaniel won’t hurt me. I kept repeating that over and over and over, as he settled his body tighter against mine. The part that was beast knew he could break our spines from this position. The part that was me felt like it was a prelim to rape. I knew that Nathaniel wouldn’t do that, and I also knew that truthfully if you’re intent on rape you want some clothes off before you get here. Because once you’ve pi

The last clear thought I had before panic set in was, I have to get up off the floor. I had to get up. I forgot everything I’d ever known about how to use my body, how to fight. Panic was all I felt, and panic does not plan. It reacts.

I went from that limp stillness that I had fought for, to bucking, writhing, throwing my body from side to side. I struggled with my whole body, with every muscle. I literally threw everything I had into simply trying to get up.

Nathaniel’s body rocked with me. He fought to keep my wrists pi

I threw my body to the left and lifted us both half off the ground. He shoved us back down, and I had a moment to feel the potential strength. So terribly strong as he forced us back to the floor. If he’d been willing to let go of one wrist, and used his other arm for something else, but he kept my wrists, and maybe I couldn’t get up, but he couldn’t control me either, not enough.

He was saying something, I don’t know how long he’d been repeating it, before I understood it. “Don’t make me hurt you, Anita, please, please, please!” He almost screamed the last word.

The panic in his voice told the leopard that we were wi

We ended sitting with his back propped against the desk. His legs encircled my waist. I scratched at them, and part of me didn’t understand why the cloth did not part in bloody strips. One arm went across my chest, and only later would I realize that he’d covered my gun butt with his hand. His other hand balled into my hair, jerking hard enough that it tore a scream from my throat. I had a moment to feel his breath like heat on the back of my neck. The leopard screamed that he would snap our neck, the other part of me was just confused.

Nathaniel bit me.

He sank his teeth into my skin, into my flesh. I felt his teeth slide inside me, and I stopped fighting. It was as if he’d hit a switch I didn’t know I had. At first I simply stopped fighting. My hands fell limp to my sides. My body relaxed, and what should have been pain, felt warm and comforting.

Nathaniel growled with his mouth still locked against my body, and it drew a moan from my throat. The growl turned to a purr, a deep vibrating sound, and because his mouth was locked over the top of my spine, that deep, pulsing rhythm played down my spine, as if my body were a tuning fork for his voice.

I cried out, but it wasn’t fear or triumph now.

He loosened his legs around my waist. I stayed limp and easy against his body. He uncurled his legs, slowly, body tense, as he waited for me to react, but I was past reacting. I was waiting, waiting for him to master me, it was the only word I had for it. It was the most wonderful feeling, so peaceful, so safe.

He kept his teeth around my neck, his hand in my hair, but the other hand, he took slowly away. I sank into him. My body sliding along the front of his, held in place only by teeth and hair. My skirt had bunched like a belt at my waist and rode higher behind from my body sliding against his. Nathaniel slid his arm around my waist, pulling the bunched skirt even higher, I think by accident. He drew us both to our knees with his arm around my waist. He moved his arm away from my waist, slowly. I stayed on my knees, swaying a little, because every muscle was loose and calm. I actually had to concentrate to stay kneeling and not simply fall to the ground, but his hand in my hair, and his mouth at my neck kept me upright, made me want to stay on my knees. But that little bit of effort on my part started to help me climb back into my own head, a little, not a lot, but a little more of me was here. Enough to both worry and enjoy his bite on my neck.

Worry, because what would happen when he let go, would I revert back to that cold mind? Enjoy, because part of me that wasn’t just cat liked that firm grip, that pull of teeth in flesh.

I knew I was feeling better, because faintly, I could hear what Nathaniel was feeling. Not a sound, but I had no word for sensing another person’s feelings. He was scared, excited, frustrated, confused, unsure, scared, unhappy, worried. I felt each emotion like a cobweb blown across my body in the dark. Nothing to see, and when you brush at it, it breaks apart and blows away, as if it wasn’t there at all. Animals didn’t have this many emotions all at once. Confused and scared, yes, but not the rest. The rest was still too much for my beast.

Nathaniel’s free hand fumbled at the waistband of my panties. My skirt was already pushed up around my waist on its own without any help from him. He pulled my panties down to my knees, but since he was working one-handed, they came down in fits and starts, and it was anything but smooth. He growled his frustration against my skin, and it caught my breath in my throat, made me go weak at the knees. He used my hair like a handle, making it clear that if I went down on the floor it would hurt. It helped me stay on my knees. Helped me concentrate, and that helped me slide a little more inside my own skull.

I wanted to say his name. It seemed like that would help. But I couldn’t think of his name. Couldn’t say it out loud. It was as ifname were an alien concept. Smell, his smell, that I knew. I tried to say it, and it took me three tries before I whispered, “vanilla.”

He’d wrestled my panties down almost to my knees. But at that one word, he stopped. He kept his hand on my hair, but he lifted his mouth from my neck, just enough so that his breath caressed like heat on the wound he’d made. “Anita, can you hear me? Are you in there?”

Was I in there? It seemed like too hard a question for me. Was I in there? I think I took too long to answer, because the next thing I felt was his belt smacking against my bare butt. His pants fluttered against me.

The beast ground my hips against him, but not to slow him down.

The thoughts weren’t this clear, but it amounted to: He’d bested us in a fight, he’d earned the right to mate. I knew now why the big cats fought before they mated. You had to prove you were strong enough.