NOVEL WEB Chapter 7
“Okay, so,” I said, as we sauntered along the small strip mall. Madeline had hooked her arm through mine and I was pretending not to feel butterflies at the fact that a beautiful woman had me, also a beautiful woman, on her arm. It was delightful, and, in keeping with Alderberg being a very nice town with nice people, almost nobody gave a second glance. The most overt looks we’d gotten was a fourteen year old boy who’d stared at us with his mouth open, and a goth girl in her early twenties who had fist pumped when we’d rounded the corner. All in all, I was feeling gay. But I still had questions. “Why,” I asked, “did you turn me into a succubus?”
She chewed on her lip for a moment as we entered the large clothing store. I’d never been in here much. A lot of my clothes came from free clothing exchanges, which I then wore until they literally fell in tatters off my body. Frugal, sure, but I also simply never saw the point in dressing up something I didn’t like looking at.
“Well,” she said, “I didn’t, wait, no,” she mumbled as she guided me through the store. “I’ve been thinking about it and, uh, I don’t think I can actually do that. I’m quite powerful,” she said, a little smugly, and I was trying not to find it attractive, “but not that powerful.” She paused for a moment in front of a row that had clothing consisting of terrifyingly little fabric, and then pulled me in.
“Then what happened?” I asked.
“I think,” she said, as she started to rifle through skirts so short they might as well be belts, “you might have been a succubus all along.” She handed me a plaid skirt so short it made me blush. It said “S L U T” on the back.
“Hold on,” I stammered, and she stopped mid-movement. She looked at the next skirt she held in her hand, then at me, and started to tentatively put it back. “No, not that,” I said. “Well, yes, that too. Hold on,” I put the skirt back. “First off, I don’t know if that skirt works for me,” I said. She looked me up and down and gave me a smirk that implied so much it made me blush. I cleared my throat. “Second, what do you mean, I was already a succubus?”
She smiled, reached over, and took both of my hands. “Succubi are supposed to go through a kind of… second puberty,” she said. “It’s triggered by an… elder concubus, who activates the transformation deliberately.” I gave her a look of confusion. “Succubi are part of a whole. You’ve got boy demons, girl demons, and some in between and some that are neither. The whole group are concubi.” She waved her hand as if trying to shake off a cobweb. “Anyway, it looks like that ‘awakening’ never happened to you, so when I tried to cause a different kind of transformation in you, it looks like, well…” She let the rest of that peter out.
“That’s why it hurt so much?” I asked. She stepped forward and instantly took me in a big hug. I couldn’t resist, it was so sudden. Not that I wanted to. But I wanted to pretend to resist. Oh well. I wrapped my arms around her too. Might as well.
“Yes. And I’m so sorry. You basically went through years of transformation in seconds. I don’t think anyone should have to go through something like that.” She softly kissed the top of my head. “You least of all.”
“I’m okay. I’m… grateful. I’m just trying to understand,” I said. “If I was already a succubus, then who…”
She pulled away a little, smiled softly and then pressed her lips softly to my forehead. “It sounds like it might have been your parents. You mentioned they haven’t been around since you were sixteen. They probably never got around to telling you.”
I sank in her arms again. I didn’t think about my parents very often. There hadn’t been anyone to really be angry with. It had been a rainy night, a manufacturing defect. Nobody had really been at fault. They’d been there. Then they weren’t. They hadn’t ‘abandoned’ me. Nobody had ‘taken them’ from me. I’d processed their loss years ago. Not that I was over it by any stretch of the imagination. But the years of breaking into heaving sobs at their memory were behind me. Still, the revelation that, had they stayed with me, I would’ve been spared a decade of discomfort in my own body was… certainly a pill to swallow.
“So what was the other thing?” she said softly, as her arms relaxed so I could step out of them. I looked at the tiny skirt again, the one that would have done as much to cover up my ass as a dry erase marker would have.
“I don’t know if this is my style, Madeline,” I said, picking it up. “It’s sexy, don’t get me wrong and, well,” I looked down at my newly discovered cleavage, and then at my glorious behind, “I’m definitely that.”
“But?” she asked, raising her eyebrows curiously.
“I’ve been a girl, a woman, for less than a day,” I said and hung it back. I walked on a little bit and picked out a leather jacket and a torn jeans combo, and an oversized white shirt with an angry kitten on it. “I don’t know what kind of woman I am. I have no idea.” I looked at her and smiled an apology. “I’m trying to figure that out. Growing up, I tried being a punk guy, a classy guy, an average guy, and, hey, it turned out, all of those weren’t for me! Who knew!”
I walked on a little and picked up a gorgeous summer dress, yellows and greens that looked like it had to smell of freshly cut grass and peach cobbler. “I never thought about the kind of woman I could be.” She walked alongside me. I distracted her by pointing at something and, while she looked that way, kissed her on the cheek. Madeline Lullaby, Succubus extraordinaire, blushed. Mischief managed.
“Hell,” I picked up a sweater dress that looked cozy and comfy, the kind I could imagine pulling up my knees in while having tea and a book, “I don’t even have a name yet.” She nodded, and took over some of the clothes so I could inspect things closer. “So I need to try things. I’ve heard of terms like lipstick femme and butch and so on,” I said. “For some reason lesbian culture always appealed to me. But I never imagined myself in any of those outfits. The thought was abhorrent.” My voice grew quieter as I remembered how it had felt, the thought of dressing up, of feeling like a gorilla in a tutu, like a warthog in a dress, all angles, thick body hair. It had been the most profane, the foulest thing I could’ve imagined at the time.
Madeline put the pile of clothes on a rack, took my face in her hands and kissed me. It was either that or she blew my brains out the back of my head. With how powerful her lips were, I couldn’t tell which. When she pulled away, I mewled softly, panting. “Wh-why…” I stammered. She had way too much power over me like this.
“You’re beautiful,” she said. “I’m sorry for trying to get you to try out something you weren’t comfortable with.” She paused and touched my arm softly. “I… was trying to walk you through my own journey, but our experiences don’t compare. Before I found, well, me, I found a lot of refuge in,” she paused. “Audacity.”
There was no reason to get all straight about things now. I grabbed her by the back of the neck and pulled her in for a kiss that, if it had happened to me, would have turned me into an incoherent puddle. It was passionate and powerful and I was immensely proud of it, for as long as my brain was still operational. It had already started diverting power from non-essential systems to focus ALL attention on her lips against mine. When I pulled away, she was almost crying, and I wondered if I’d done something wrong. Her lips were parted slightly, and her breathing was short and shallow. The blush was a lot stronger now.
“I forgive you,” I said, trying to sound playful, and grabbed the pile of clothes off the rack, making my way to the changing rooms before Madeline could come to and take revenge somehow. I heard her stammer softly behind me. Then she made her move. I’d expected her to run after me, because I’d forgotten the unique features of my new anatomy. I was frozen in my tracks when I was hit by a vision, vivid and powerful, of being pulled into a dressing room and pushed against a mirror, Madeline’s hands pushing up my shirt, her fingers grazing my soft skin, nails every so carefully drawing white-hot lines that made the sensitive flesh of my breasts feel like it was on fire. Her teeth on my neck were full of desire, and her body pushing against mine, my legs wrapped around her as her pelvis drove into mine expressed a need I wouldn’t even dare try to put into words.
And then it was gone again and I spun around to look at her. I was blushing as hard as she was, now, my face flush with surprise and desire, and she smiled sheepishly, trying to get her thoughts under control. She was almost shaking on her feet. I turned around and walked to the changing rooms with even more determination now. After a few steps, I turned around again to look at her. She was steadying herself against a nearby clothing rack, but I caught her eye easily. “Well?” I mouthed, and began to walk again. She swallowed and followed me. Sure, she was capable of turning me into a useless mess but, two could play that game. Clearly, I was going to be pretty good at this whole ‘being a lesbian’-thing. And I had no problem taking charge. Clearly.
I tried to pull the curtain aside, which was difficult with my arms full of clothes, but an arm reached past me and opened it for me. Directly across from me was a full length mirror. In it, I saw myself, a cute girl wearing frumpy clothing, arms full of cute clothes. Behind me was Madeline Lullaby, who was suddenly a whole foot and a half taller.
I made eye contact with her reflection and swallowed. Oops. And they were both tops. I felt her push me into the changing stall with her body. She was more muscular than I’d remembered, not just taller, and all I could do was step into the stall. The curtain closed behind us quickly and efficiently. I doubted anyone would have even seen us get in here together. I carefully leaned over to put the clothes on a small stool, deliberately pushing back against her, and, to my satisfaction, I heard Madeline groan. But when I turned around I realized that her fantasy from earlier might well have been a prophetic vision as she picked me up without saying a word and pushed her mouth on mine.
As often as I kissed her, I was never going to get used to how sweet she tasted. Her soft lips fit on mine just perfectly, and a jolt of electricity crackled across my face as her tongue carefully touched mine, the magic in her kiss searing a hole through my defenses. But then her hands started doing exactly what they’d done in her imagination, and my perception of individual experiences started to fade as I was swept away in a tidal wave of touch. I felt her hands on my breasts and the experience was entirely new and amazing and terrifying. She was exactly as soft and as gentle as she needed to be to keep me from squealing out against her lips.
I wrapped my legs around her to pull her in closer -- she clearly had no trouble carrying me -- and I panted when her hips pushed into mine. She kissed and nibbled her way down my neck and I kept trying to figure out a way to pay her back, to do to her what she was trying to do to me, but nothing came to mind. But something definitely came up, I realized, as her hips pushed into a mine. I felt a growing stiffness in the front of her jeans and my eyes shot open wide.
