The New Neighbor

First Time

As Sodom and Gomorrah sniffed around the furniture, inspecting their new surroundings, Lorelle stepped back against the wall, put her hands on her hips and carefully scanned the living room. 'What do you think, Robby?'

'Yeah,' he said with a nod, 'I think it's fine.' They'd already moved the living room furniture around four times – not to mention arranging the dining room and bedroom furniture and assembling the large desk in the spare room after lugging it in from the garage – and Robby was tired. So was Lorelle, who was still pale and appeared weary.

Lorelle moved to his side and put an arm around his shoulder. 'So do I. Now I just need to put up some curtains and hang some plants and it'll be home.'

They'd been so busy the last ninety minutes that Robby had no time to feel self-conscious. Now he had to force himself not to squirm nervously under the gentle weight of her arm and the warm touch of her hand just below his right shoulder. A strand of her hair brushed his cheek and he caught a faint whiff of her dark, musky perfume.

'There's just one thing missing,' she said, nodding toward the big wooden crate in the middle of the floor and said, 'I'll be right back,' then hurried out of the room.

They had been working around it all evening and Lorelle had refused to tell Robby what was inside, insisting it was to be a surprise. The crate was six feet long and stood about five feet high and when he tried to slide it out of his way while moving the sofa earlier, he realized it was very heavy.

Robby flopped onto the sofa with a sigh and watched the flames blazing in the fireplace. The dogs curled up at his feet and he idly scratched Sodom's head, enjoying the aroma of steaks and garlic bread from the kitchen. A few minutes later, the dogs pricked up their ears, then stood as Lorelle returned with a hammer. Using the clawed end, she pried away one side of the crate and a gout of thickly-packed shredded newspaper and fine wood shavings whispered to the floor like guts, revealing a coal-black hand with tensely clawed fingers, so smooth that it reflected the glow of the fire.

The dogs wagged their tails enthusiastically as they watched Lorelle disassemble the rest of the crate.

'What is that?' Robby asked, standing.

'You'll see.' She pulled out more paper and Robby helped her remove and stack the sides of the crate.

His mouth fell open as he stared at the black onyx sculpture that grew out of the pile of shredded paper, feeling a little embarrassed at the tingle of excitement that passed through him. He walked halfway around the sculpture, then walked back and turned to Lorelle.

'Did you do this?' he asked. It came out, unintentionally, as a whisper.

Her mouth curled into a half-smile and she nodded. 'Do you like it?'

Robby looked at the sculpture again and nodded slowly. 'I… yeah, it's… well, it's… '

'It's the only thing I've ever done that I couldn't bear to sell.'

Sitting stiffly, as if at attention, the dogs watched the sculpture as if expecting it to do something. Gomorrah swept his tongue over his black lips.

Robby walked all the way around it this time. Shaking his head slightly, marveling at the sculpture's detail and trying not to blush. He failed, and was relieved when Lorelle clicked off the overhead light, leaving only the glow of the fire and the soft light coming in from the dining room.

'I think it looks better like this,' she said quietly. 'Don't you?'

He could only nod. In the shadows, Robby half expected the two onyx figures to move, to breathe. He looked from one to the other, staring at them silently for a long time.

'You can touch it if you want. Robby. That's what I made it for.' Her voice was soft as a feather.

But he didn't. Not yet. He just looked at it. Watched it.

It was a man and woman, both naked, lying atop a twelve-inch-tall rectangular base, and although they were not quite life-size, they appeared so real, so alive, that it did not matter.

The man had the kind of body for which any man – including Robby – would sell his soul. It carried not an ounce of fat, but was not built with pumped up muscles like a professional body builder's. It reminded Robby of an illustration of the ideal male musculature in his nutrition and health textbook because it was impeccably proportioned, as if the man had not been born as an infant but newly created as an adult, sculpted out of flesh and bone. The woman gave the exact same impression but she was more interesting.

Robby was accustomed to being attracted to slim women with large firm breasts that perked upward, small tight asses and slender legs that tapered down to narrow delicate ankles. Movies, television and magazines like the ones stacked in his closet had populated his fantasies with women who perfectly met those standards. The woman in Lorelle's sculpture did not, but it didn't matter. In fact, she was somehow more alluring than any of the beautiful naked women he’d seen on the internet.

Her breasts were heavy but nicely rounded; they did not sag but were pendulous and were so real that he would not have been surprised if they had shifted slightly. Her ass was thrust carelessly upward and was not tight and muscular; it seemed to be made of two smoothly rounded three-quarter moons separated by a shallow crevice that curved downward between her kneeling legs to a fleshy mound with a fine coating of hair. And she had wings.

The man lay on his back and his erect penis, long and fat and smooth, curved upward slightly. Muscular body tense with ecstasy, his left hand clutched the woman's shoulder while his right clawed at the air. His shoulder- length hair was pooled around his head and his face was twisted into a mask of agonized pleasure – eyes tightly shut, lips torn back over clenched teeth, cords of muscle pulled taut beneath the skin of his neck. The woman straddled his legs and leaned forward, hard nipples almost touching his thighs, her fist wrapped tightly around the base of his cock, left arm stretched taut, nails clawing his right nipple. The bat-like wings that sprang from her back just below her shoulders resembled an angel's, but instead of feathers, they were covered with scales, and each fold came to a needle-sharp point. They seemed about to spread open to prepare for flight. Her head was turned slightly to one side and delicate, perfectly curved strands of her hair – which reached all the way to her waist – fell down around her face. Her eyes were narrow and swept upward on the outsides, giving her face a reptilian look, and her open mouth was turned up gently at the corners, almost – but not quite – smiling as the tip of her ever-so- slightly curled tongue touched the bottom-side of the man's cock just beneath the bulbous head, which she pressed to her upper teeth as her eyes looked up at the man's tormented face.

'Go ahead,' Lorelle whispered, stroking one of the scaled wings with her fingertips, 'touch it.'

Robby lifted his hand slowly until it was less than an inch from the woman's flowing hair, then -

– a harsh buzzer sounded somewhere in the house and Robby's hand dropped as he spun around.

Lorelle touched his shoulder and said, 'It's just the timer. Dinner's ready.” She went to the kitchen.

Robby turned to follow her and see if he could help, but he couldn't take his eyes from the sculpture. It was quite clear what the man and woman were doing, but there seemed to be no joy in it. They seemed to be struggling rather than making love.

He glanced down at the dogs. They were no longer looking at the sculpture; they were watching him.

'You do like it, don't you?' Lorelle asked a few minutes later, carrying their dinner in on a short tray which she set on the floor before the fire. She'd changed from her jeans into a long black cotton skirt that whispered around her legs as she went to his side. 'You don't think it's… too much?'

'Too much?'

'You know, offensive? It's not exactly something most people would put in their living room, is it?'

'Well, I doubt you'd ever find one in our living room, but… no, I don't think it's offensive.'

“Is your family conservative? Religious, maybe?'

'Well, we go to a non-denominational church, but no, we're not what you'd call religious. In fact, neither is our church. It’s very liberal. So’s our pastor. A lot of love and forgiveness, very little fire and brimstone.”

'You're frowning.'

He realized he had been frowning as he stared at the sculpture and he tried to relax. 'Sorry.'

'Does it bother you?'

'No. No, I'm just wondering… why does she have wings?'

'Have you ever heard of Lilith?'

He shook his head.