The first time they heard the cries it was their second night in the new house, past two AM by the clock on the nightstand. Ken had woken up horny and woke Catherine by biting at her tit and fingering her pussy till she moaned and her eyes flickered open. At first she was unsure where she was; the bedroom was full of shadows, the gloom pierced only by shafts of moonlight from the balcony. The new house's style was very different from the sleek, modern look of their old apartment; even with the stacks of unpacked boxes from the move and the skeletal figure of Ken's exercise bike in one corner, the bedroom looked permanently fixed in some past era. For a moment Catherine had the strangest feeling that she had fallen out of time and woken in a Victorian novel. Then the surge of excitement her husband's fingers ignited in her brought her back to reality. She seized his head in her palms and pulled him close, kissing his mouth hungrily while his hands roamed over her body.

They hadn't fucked in ages. The last couple of months had been taken up with finalizing the purchase of the house and all the assorted garbage that went with it. Ken had been silent for much of that time, moodier than usual and often meaner. He hadn't touched her once. Even the kisses before leaving for work had ended. The whole point of this move to the country was to bring them together, to make more time for each other, but by the time they had closed on the place Catherine had begun despairing of the whole effort. Ken had changed since their marriage-her friends and her mother seemed to take a perverse pleasure in telling her this, and then falling silent, glaring meaningfully. You might have to leave him, their eyes said, radiating a strange satisfaction Catherine both resented and found oddly unnerving.

But this sudden bout of wake-up sex was different. A return to form, as the critics said of some novels. No question, Ken wanted her now, as he hadn't for more than a year. His hands grabbed at her small breasts, squeezing and fumbling for her nipples so he could twist them. His naked body rubbed at hers under the sheets. He was taller than her, but not by much, and now he was seemingly determined to merge with her on a cellular level. She could feel his cock pressed hard and flat against her thigh, and she pushed against it with her whole leg, devouring his mouth the whole time. Ken had never been much for kissing, not the way she was. But tonight he was either indulging her or had found a new interest in tongue-play. Then, suddenly, he took his face from his and climbed atop her, his hips already thrusting insistently.

Catherine wanted his cock badly, and she reached for it instinctively, curling her fingers around its hardness. She wanted it--but not just yet. She wanted more time with his body. She wanted to get close to him, remember his taste and smell and luxuriate in those senses. But Ken was already positioning his hips on hers, trying to find her pussy and thrust.

Sighing, Catherine relented. He wanted to fuck; that was alright, that was better than the sexual wasteland she had been forced to plod through these past months. She opened to him, her back arching as he slid inside her, her fingers finding the skin of his back and digging their small red nails in.

Such pleasure, the intensity of it crackled through Catherine's body like lightning, held her teasingly over an abyss she might fall into and plummet through forever.

Then came the scream.

Later Catherine would try to remember that moment, the exact moment when she heard it, the point that would come to represent a line of demarcation between her old life and what came after. All she could ever remember were the chills, the sudden unreasoning terror that gripped her, not unlike her earlier disorientation, but so many times more intense.

It was a raw, full-throated shriek, a sound that was not remotely human. It was a cry not of pain or even rage; it was rather a scream of frustrated longing, a scream of lusting. The sound came from outside, from the balcony windows, but once it began it echoed on and on, all around them until Catherine was almost ready to believe whatever made it was inside with them.

It had a very different effect on Ken than it did on her; he stiffened and drove into her, thrusting hugely, with an aggression that frightened her even as she strained to meet it. He hammered at her sex, his face hanging above her, shadowed, intense and raging. Catherine, her mouth working soundlessly, allowed herself to be filled, not only with her husband's flesh, but the weird, terrifying scream, which by now had begun again. It all hurt terribly, but it was so damned good, so much what she'd wanted, so much the opposite of the sensual vacuum she had been living in, that she couldn't resist it. She made no attempt to prolong the moment or hold off her climax; when it came she rode it like a wild horse. Her body spasmed, nerves blooming into a frightening, jagged pleasure.

Then it was over, and she lay back, wet and gasping. The screams had ended but part of her mind wouldn't accept their sudden absence.