บท 4: She's Blushing! How Lewd!

"So you are real." His voice echoed in my memory. He had not been afraid of me. No screaming, no fear. Just four simple words.

He'd sounded so happy!

His words haunted me. And yet it was several days before I had the courage to revisit him. But until I found that courage - or perhaps it was desperation that drove me? - I didn't harvest any other humans. It seemed... it seemed wrong somehow, as if I was betraying him.

Worried about betrayal? A demoness? Truly, I was ill.

I convinced myself that I needed to return to his room, to discovering the source of this malady consuming me. I went at night, terrified I might find him awake. I didn't want that smile flashed in my direction again. I knew... ah, I knew that my nerves would not take it.

It was late at night. The darkness was filled with other demonic spirits as I rose up through the earth. I lingered outside his room, placed my face through the wall until I could view the inside in shadowy relief.

A hump in his bed. So he was asleep.

Emboldened, I passed through the wall and padded into his room. Somehow, it seemed tidier than before. The wrappers that had littered the floor were gone and the empty cans of soda were stacked with something resembling neatness. His desk was wholly free of all that rubbish I'd seen before. Instead, it was covered with drawing paper.

It was where I'd seen those beautiful sketches of myself. I turned my face away and swept past. There was no need to look again on those frivolous scribbles! They were a foolish distraction from my duty. Of course a human would draw something he saw in a dream, especially such a strange and striking demoness as myself. His curiosity was only natural.

And yet, the exquisite tenderness of those lines! He'd made me look so beautiful.

"So you are real." The joy bubbling in those words!

I stopped. I knew that what I was doing was a symptom of my illness, and yet the compulsion would not let go of me. I drew my claws across the papers, separating them so I could see what he'd been drawing.

And there I saw myself again. But this time..."

Hyacinth fell silent. Her face had turned red.

"Please, Your Horror!" cried Voreus in alarm. "The defendant is blushing! Must we really put up with such lewdness in this courtroom?"

Skelemis nodded. He kept his eyes discretely trained on the space just above Hyacinth's head and said, "Miss Thermise, if you would be so kind as to keep your conduct within the realms of decency?"

"I'm afraid blushing seems to be a symptom of my illness and comes upon me involuntarily, Your Horror. I'll try to control it."

Murmuring from the jury. Abraxas rubbed his claws together under his cowl. No doubt this was playing very well into an insanity defence, thought Hyacinth.

She swallowed and continued. "And so, as I was saying, Your Horror, I saw that he'd drawn me again. But this time I was wearing clothes, human clothes which covered up almost all my skin."

A moan of horror undulated through the jury. Hyacinth stared down at the table and hid her deepening blush with her hands.

"We would ask that the defendant describe these 'clothes' more fully," said Voreus with barely-contained glee.

Hyacinth grimaced. Of course, prejudice the jury against her! Even though they were just imaginary pictures a deranged human had created of her. And yet...

"It was a dress," said Hyacinth at last. "A garment which covers the body from the upper chest, above the breasts, hanging from straps on the shoulders to fall just below the knees. I believe it was of the kind called a sun-dress."

"So your breasts and genitals and buttocks and thighs were completely covered," asked Voreus.

"In the picture, yes," Hyacinth said, turning to the jury. "Don't forget, this was all in a picture the human had drawn."

"And the pattern on this dress?"

"Flowers," said Hyacinth, dropping her gaze. "There was also a hat, a straw one for keeping off the sun."

The jury muttered.

"This was not the worst picture. I saw others. I was dressed in different sorts of human clothes, portrayed in different poses: laughing, picking flowers, sitting under a tree reading. And yet in all of them I retained my demonic characteristics. The human wasn't disturbed by them, and had skilfully executed every detail of my horns and tail and wings.

I knew he'd enjoyed making the pictures. There were so many of them!

I left them behind and crept up to him. Having not visited him for many days, his orgone flashed bright. I knew he must have forgone any sexual acts since I'd last been there. The thought of him keeping himself for me pleased me and warmth flushed through my chest. I almost forgave him for the lewdness of the pictures he'd drawn.

My hunger rising, I stripped the bedclothes away to find a delicious erection already waiting for me. Was he deep in some erotic dream? Had the mere scent of my body elicited such a swift and lusty response? The sight delights me and after a few eager mouthings of his member I climbed on top of him.

It had been a long time. The drought broke as I rolled my hips and bounced upon him, ecstasy pouring through me with each upward piercing of his erection into me. He continued to sleep, but murmured and sighed as I took my fill of delicious orgone from him.

I was nearing climax. The act of fornication had barely begun and I was already filled to overflowing. I felt his member grow harder still inside me and delirious with pleasure, my lower half melting into liquid, I came just as he started to spurt his semen inside me. I cried out in the throes of my passion, then, for the first time in my existence. A succubus is to remain as silent as possible during harvesting so that the human does not awake, but the intensity of the moment drove all my training from me.

Then I felt his hands grab my waist as he delivered a series of hard thrusts into me with his still spurting member.

I was shocked, of course... and yet I was so out of my mind with pleasure that I rationalised it. He'd just made an involuntary, instinctive movement: such things are known to happen.

And even if he was awake, I knew I couldn't stop. I needed his orgone, needed his member, needed him. A grotesque compulsion that shames me, now, to utter it.

He opened his eyes.

Again that smile!

This time I didn't flee right away. Drunk with orgone and still shivering with those last waves of delicious pleasure, I stared down at him, my eyes wide in horror. He raised his hand to my face.

My lips curled in a defensive scowl. Biting his hand would have been melodramatic, ridiculous. I shied away instead, but not before the tips of his fingers had scored across my cheek.

"I missed you," he said.

The horror contained in those words! I melted away, then, dissolving into shadow and flowing down through the floor.

But I returned to him the following night. Shame-faced and silent, I returned, and the night after that one, too.

I continued to harvest him every night. Sometimes he'd wake just before he came inside me. His eyes would flash open, those beautiful timid eyes, and he'd try and hold my gaze as we reached our peak of pleasure together. I always turned my face away. I didn't want him to see the flush that so readily came to it now. Also, I couldn't endure what I glimpsed in those eyes."

"And what did you see?" asked Voreus. She turned to the Judge. "Your Horror, the defendant is being evasive."

Skelemis directed his sternest gaze at Hyacinth. "Please tell us exactly what you saw in his eyes, Miss Thermise."

Hyacinth smiled. "Love, Your Horror."

Stunned silence in the courtroom, and then uproar. The jury erupted into howls of shock and indignation. Voreus's red face went deathly pale. Abraxas fell from his stool. Skelemis sat paralysed, but as the court further descended into chaos, he began to bang his gavel, over and over, until sparks of incandescence flew up to the high ceiling. Hyacinth watched the disorder, a thin smile on her face.

"Order! Order in this court!" The old demon's aura turned crimson with rage.