Who doesn’t long for the touch of a stranger, the touch of someone who is too damn sexy to be real while at the same time, too damn terrifying to really let in? I’ve always had fantasies of that sexy someone whose name I never know, the ghost, the demon the preternatural being who’s both terrifying and totally compelling. I know my fantasies are common ones, possibly even archetypal. What woman doesn’t have a secret longing for that deliciously dangerous negative animus?
I think one of the reasons these fantasies are so powerful is that they stem in part from our childhood speculations of what it’ll be like the first time we have a real lover, the first time we really have sex. We fear it and yet we long for it. I remember back in my days of fantasising, back before I’d ever even been kissed, I was as terrified by what I’d heard happens between men and women as I was intrigued by it, as I was drawn to it. Therefore my lovers always lived in my imagination and, in my fantasies, there was only a certain point to which they could take me before I became too frightened and too uncertain to fantasize about what happened next. In other words my power as an innocent, as a child, was to keep my demon lovers at bay. As long as I was innocent, as long as I was afraid to truly let them in, they I couldn’t really be touched by them. They needed to be invited, just like the vampire in the traditional tales. They needed me to offer myself unconditionally to them. They could tempt me, but they couldn’t hurt me – not really.
It was only when I truly began to understand the way it is between men and women, it was only when I reached the point of overcoming my fears enough to take the fantasies to the next level that the demon lovers truly took shape on my head, that they began to whisper what deliciously nasty, unspeakable things they would do to me. Of course that came hand in hand with my first masturbation experiences, with my first discoveries of just how overpowering my body could be when I let it have free rein, when I was willing to let go of my inhibitions – at least a little bit.
There are still things I fear to do in the real world that I am happy to invite my demon lover in to do to me or even to allow me to do to him … or her. I can’t help but wonder if that demon lover, that fantasy lover who can take us places we would never go in reality, is the inspiration from which erotica writers write. My most powerful experiences have come with the discovery of what my body is capable of doing when I’m willing to let go. My darkest fantasies, the ones I would never share in the real world, even in my own erotica, are the fantasies dominated by my demon lover, the fantasies of the dark places that aren’t safe to tread. The demon as fantasy lover holds central place in paranormal erotica and paranormal romance. I think – whether that demon is a vampire or a werewolf, whether that demon is a billionaire or an incubus, his power is that the rules don’t apply to him.His power is that he can take us to the darkness at our center and bring us back safely … if he chooses to. And in that place where our fate is truly out of our hands, the erotic and the horrific are separated only by a breath of consent.
I must say, KD, that you do demons incredibly well!
The attraction of the demon, of the dark side, is something I also feel, though I don't think I've expressed in my fiction as skillfully as you. We are brought up to be "good" (whatever that means), to make sane and sensible choices and to take responsibility for them. The demon tempts us to throw all of that away, to slip over the edge into an existence where we have no control, where anything is possible, where extreme pleasure has no consequences.