“Guess you got me where you want me, huh?” Matt grins. How many months have I waited to see him like this? On his knees and helpless, both of us in love with his helplessness. “Now whatcha gonna do to me, big man?” He’s almost mocking, daring me to test his limits.
“Shut up, Matt,” I growl, dipping my cock in the jar of moonshine, then feeding fiery flesh to him till he’s choking again beneath my kilt. As soon as I pull out, between gasps for air he’s goading me again. “C’mon, Derek. Don’t you think I can take it? This is child’s play. If you can’t hurt me right, you’d better let me take charge. I’ll show you how it ought—”
“I told you to be quiet, Matt. If you don’t shut up, I’ll shut you up,” I snarl, rooting through the armoire’s toy drawer. I love it when they fight back, when they challenge me, when they ask for it, when their macho defiance conceals a deep need to be forced. Considering what a little hellion he was in the parking lot brawl, I figured he’d give me a tasty fight in bed.
“Oh, yeah?” he’s jeering, twisting around in his bonds. “Wait’ll I get out of these, I’ll give you a good hard . . .”
Between rebellious syllables I push the rubber bit between his teeth. I take my time securing it, letting him fight like an irritable horse. He’s growling and shaking his head, trying to force it out, but soon enough I have the straps tightly buckled behind his head.
I stand over him. Still on his knees, he looks up at me, blinking, mouth working around the gag. He shakes his head hard, like a rain-drenched dog, long hair tossing about his face, then manages a distorted “Goddammit” before dropping his eyes to the floor in momentary defeat.
“Go ahead, Matt. You’re a big strong guy. Maybe I didn’t manage the knots well enough. Struggle for a while, try to escape. If you can get loose, then you’re Top for the rest of the evening.”
What I want’s a muscle show, and Matt gives it to me. Against the restraining web of the ropes, his chest, shoulders and arms are flexing and bulging and straining every which way. Four-letter Anglo-Saxon words force themselves in a long litany—moist consonants bent at the edges—past the rubber bit. Sweat pours down his violently twisting sides and back, lacquered in the dying firelight.
I prop myself up on a pillow and stretch out on the bed, sipping moonshine, watching and smiling. Occasionally, Matt pauses to get his breath, and it’s then that our eyes lock—mine calm, his flashing with frustration, shame, and a sheepish rapture—before he’s off again, cussing and thrashing. I can hear his heart pumping savagely, the blood coursing through him. He’s wild to get loose and hoping like hell that he can’t.
He keeps up the bid to escape for a good fifteen minutes, with gasping breaks. By now drool is soaking his goatee. I’m guessing his knees are sore as hell and his wrists chafed raw. He gives a long sigh, half despair and half satisfaction, and settles his ass back on his calves. His big shoulders slump, his head bows. He knows he’s beaten. In the sudden silence, a silver drop of saliva gathers on his chin before slowly stringing to the floor.
I take no passion in crushing the weak. What delights me is conquering the strong.
The bedsprings creak as I rise. I fall to my knees beside him. I lift his chin, lap the gag-inspired drool from it, and gaze into his eyes. “That’s it? You’re done?” He nods, and I bend close, till our chins touch, our noses bump. Matt’s eyes are obsidian mirrors, and in them I see not only my own mastery but the exhausted peace his struggles and his futility have allowed.
Again I run my tongue over his spit-wet goatee, then take a good handful of his thick hair and slowly pull his head to one side. I can wait no longer.
This is the practical advantage of sadomasochistic sex, the way it sidesteps suspicion. When I sink in my teeth, what my lovers feel is only another in a series of ecstatic wounds. Just another jet bead in a rosary of rope-burns and bruises, to be counted and admired in the morning light, by those who survive. Bruises that say Remember my touch. Remember.
I lick his neck softly, spreading the anesthetic saliva, rake one fang-tip over his goose-pimpling skin, then bite down. He jumps with the shock, and I wrap my arms around his roped-tight torso. His blood is still racing from his exertion, and the rusty taste of it hits the back of my throat like a tiny red geyser.
Human metaphors? Yes, yes, easy enough. Squeezing purple juice from tiny wine grapes, shattering the wax cells of the honeycomb, crushing the ripeness of pomegranate seeds between your teeth.
I’m gulping him the way he nervously gulped Scotch that first evening in Fort Hill. He’s groaning, his drool is running down my tattooed shoulder. I reach down to grip his cock, and he thrusts into my palm. Once, twice. He’s tensing, just this side of release, so with a thumb I press his perineum, blocking the blood flow and easing him down. At the same time, I pull out. I want this lovemaking to last, just as I want his life to last.
I have only to imagine him dead—at my hands, at the hands of those alley Calibans—to achieve control over my hunger. This is a feast, an orchard, an arbor, I will husband and harvest with care, for as many decades as time and reciprocity will allow.
Matt’s clearly dizzy from the sudden blood loss when I jerk him to his feet, so I lift him into my arms. His head falls against my shoulder. “You all right?” He nods.
“That’s ‘Yes, sir.’ ” I am master of his movement, master of his speech.
“Yeth Thirr,” he slurs. Eyes closed, he gives his head a little shake, fighting back the faintness.
I carry him to the window and stand for a minute, feeling his breath against my skin, looking out at the night. No more fireflies. Lammas and its Corn Feast well over, the autumn equinox on its way. Any day now the black walnut trees will glow yellow and begin dropping leaves the way the prematurely balding lose hair.
Now I sit on the edge of the bed, holding him still in my arms. I brush my beard over Matt’s face, kiss his bruised cheek—rough with stubble, a cornfield in autumn—and his eyelids—soft as cornsilk. “You are my sacrifice, you are the Christ in the Corn,” I whisper. He nods, more from obedience than comprehension.
John Barleycorn. Body of the god made into bread, into beer. Body of the god devoured. How does the song go? I sing a few stanzas:They’ve hired men with the scythes so sharp
To cut him off at the knee,
They’ve rolled him and tied him by the way
Serving him most barbarously.
They’ve hired men with the sharpest hooks
Who’ve pricked him to the heart,
And the loader, he has served him worse than that,
For he’s bound him to the cart.
Onto the broad bed I gently lower Matt onto his side. My mouth is moist with his blood, and my body is raging for more. Just a soupçon. Bob will keep him in bed tomorrow, fry him up some iron-rich liver and onions, perhaps a mite of haggis. Enrich the earth, prepare the soil for another cautiously gleaned crop.
The fire’s coated with gray ash. I step over to stoke the last embers, then light votive candles around the room. I unbuckle my kilt and neatly drape it over the rocking chair. “Roll over onto your belly, Matt,” and he obeys. The hunger’s rising in me, black and blinding tide I fight back, as I prop his groin on a pillow, spread his legs, and rope his ankles to the bedposts.
If I weren’t so ravenous, I’d stand above him and study him for hours: the white ropes circling his wrists and arms, the soft hair pooling like midnight rain in the small of his back, the mossy cleft of his buttocks, the muscles of his calves as he tests the cords securing his feet. From the bedside table I take a candle, hold it above him and tip it. He winces and grunts as the hot wax stings his skin. Across his buttocks I trace a D.
Now I lie atop him, and the cooling wax seals my loins to his ass. He groans, chewing and slurping on rubber. I nuzzle his ear. “You want more, Matt? You want me inside you?” His head bobs with eager affirmation. He grinds his buttocks against my crotch.
“Please?” I coax, wiping more spit from his chin.
“Pleeth, thirr.” How I relish the garbled speech of a man whose mouth is forced full.
Breaking our waxen seal, I slide my lips down his spine. Between my sharp canines, I lightly nip his furry cheeks before pressing them apart with my palms and working the very tip of my tongue inside him.
Matt cries out as best he can, pushing his ass back against my beard. Within the knots, his hands are clenching and unclenching. I pull out and flick my tongue along wet arabesques of hair before working in again. He bucks back, opens himself a fraction more, and I bury my face deeper. I want to enter him just as deeply as this love for him has pierced me.
He’s sobbing something completely unintelligible by the time I desist, something with the tone of a plea. Straddling the small of his back, I bend over him and, muttering love words in Gaelic, I kiss the bunched muscles of his back. I stroke auburn hair from his sweaty brow, gently work the bit around in his mouth, then moisten the palm of my hand with the drool soaking his goatee. Now I slide off him, and, kneeling between his spread thighs, I sink my teeth into my own right wrist. Blood wells up and drips into my left palm, mixing with his spit to make a viscous fluid I then smooth into the crack of his ass. When I touch the center of his tightness, he starts to whimper and presses his face into the sheets.
“Slow and easy, I promise.” I bend down to taste that chrism of his saliva and my blood, then enter him with a finger. “Relax, Matt,” I whisper, kissing his buttocks and sliding in another slow finger, then another.
“Feel good?” He nods. “Ready?” He nods. I can smell both fear and exultation.
Moistening myself, I stretch out along the moist and fuzzy length of him, then begin to slide in. He grunts with pain, and I stop, keeping perfectly still for several minutes, feeling the taut ring of his heartbeat pulsing around me. Then he nods again, and I continue.
Sacred giving space, fern-edged grotto of the gods. Clench of storm-wet satin. Fistful of coal-heat, blossom of the blood-rose summer-eased open. Now I’m inside completely. In giving me his manhood, he’s only confirmed it.
I slip my arms around his chest, slide out and then in again. He’s growling now, grinding against me, ready to get it rough, so I begin to slam him hard, thrusts he meets in perfect time, with muffled shouts thrashing in my grasp, tossing his head from side to side.
His heartbeat’s seismic, shaking me to my bones. Suddenly I sink my fangs into the thick muscles of his right shoulder. It’s a small pang he doesn’t even notice in the midst of the brutal hammering he’s getting. Before I know it, we’re both on the edge, and as Matt grunts and humps the pillow and his ass clenches about my spasming cock, I drink mouthful after syrupy mouthful, one dark rivulet escaping to bedew my beard and drip over his back.
He shakes and gasps one more time, collapses on the bed, breathing hard, and then goes limp. Atop him, I withdraw my fangs and drowse in my own delight for a good minute before realizing that he’s a little too still.
“Matt?” I nip one ear. Nothing. I’ve gone too far. Aradia, he’s passed out.
Pulling out, I unbind his ankles, roll him over and check his vital signs. Breathing a little shallow, but heart still strong. Damn it, Derek. I unbuckle the gag, unknot his wrists and arms, then climb into bed beside him. Pulling the bear-claw quilt over us, I cup his cold body in the curve of my own.
I thought I had more control over my thirst. I thought he was safe from me.
By the time the birds begin, the votive candles have burnt out, and jocund day stands tiptoe, etc. That’s Bob’s frigging rooster now, emitting his deep-jungle cries. I slip out of bed, tuck Matt in warmly—his breathing is back to normal—and pull on my kilt. I’m almost out the door when I hear him croak, “Derek?”
He’s only half-conscious, and confused. “You had a little too much to drink, Matt, and I got a little too rough. Go back to sleep.”
“Where you goin’? Come back to bed. Ain’t it real early yet? Man, I feel wiped out. I don’t rightly recall . . .”
“It’s that popskull moonshine, Matt. Must have been a bad batch. Listen, I have to drive to D.C. today for business,” I lie. Centuries of deception have made me the smoothest liar I’ve ever known. “Bob’ll take care of you till I get back.”
“Derek, you were wonderful. I ain’t never been topped like that. C’mon over here and hug on me awhile.”
“I have to go. Tell Bob to get out some of his Cherokee salve for those rope burns.”
The first glimmer of dawn is seeping into the room, and the skin of my bare chest is stinging. Sleep, I command, before rushing downstairs, scrawling a note for Bob and dashing for the cellar door.
“Jesus, you’re a monster!” Matt’s standing over my coffin, staring at me in horror. “You tried to kill me!” Candlelight plays across his handsome face, twisted now with disgust.
I rise, shaking my head, and he backs away. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Matt! You’ve got to believe me.”
The rest of them are standing around the room. The Leviticus Locusts. That bloated preacher, who’s rubbing pomade into the lop-sided rain cloud of hair breaking over his brow.
“Here, Matthew, you must save your own soul,” intones Reverend Bates, patting his hair one last time before handing Matt a fat, sharp stake. The Locusts close in, seizing me, holding me down. Rats drop from their shirt sleeves and scuttle into my coffin.
“Lo, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death,” Bates is droning in a bored tone.
Matt steps forward, runs his fingers regretfully through the hair on my chest before taking the mallet from Bates and placing the tip of the stake on my left nipple.
Worse ways to die than at the hands of a gorgeous man. I should have told him I loved him, I muse with a sudden calm, as my death’s delivered, long overdue.
“Fucking Hammer film!” My language is getting as crass as Matt’s. “Where’s the cliché police?”
Just overhead, someone’s pacing in my study. Not a good sign. The sun, my senses tell me, has about five minutes before it slips entirely behind the hill, so I slip from the secret room, head through the cellar and up the stairs. Just inside the darkness, I wait.
Now. Safe. I pull open the door. Bob’s sitting at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. Hearing the door creak, he looks up. Panicked. “Matt . . .” he begins, then shakes his head.
“What the hell?!” I shout, suddenly sick with fear. “He was just a little weak when I left him this morning. You can’t mean that . . .”
“No, he’s in the study. But . . .”
I turn, flying down the hall. Matt’s pacing back and forth in front of my desk, in his jeans and a T-shirt he must have borrowed from Bob. He stops abruptly and swings around to face me. His fists are clenched.
“Matt, what’s wrong?”
He glares at me. “I hate a liar, Derek.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I got tired of stayin’ in bed, as woozy as I was most of the morning. I came down here to find a book to read till you got back from—where’d you say?—D.C.? Bob was out in the garden. Thought I’d check my e-mail. Thought you wouldn’t mind. Guess what I found?”
Goddamned computer. “What?” Derek, banish that quiver from your voice.
“Messages from Charleston friends, all worried about me. Hadn’t seen me since the corpses were discovered.”
“Corpses?” I’m trying to look confused, but the thought of losing him is paralyzing the normally facile muscles of my face.
“Yeah, the corpses. Rats ate most of ’em. In the parkin’ lot right outside the Tap Room. No one knows who they are—were—for sure, but folk think they’re some kids from Belle who didn’t come home th’other day. Members of Reverend Bates’s church. Yep, we know, don’t we, Derek? We know who they are.”
I stare at him. A blood-dew starts up on my palms. I drop my eyes.
“You’re a killer, Derek! Why’d you kill them?”
“I . . . They were trying t
o murder us, Matt! They would have staved our heads in without a second thought. I really care for you. I’d do anything to make you safe.”
“How’d you get the rats to eat them, Derek? I ain’t never heard of folk bein’ chewed up by rats. Not so thoroughly. Pretty damned convenient for you, I’d say.”
“Matt, please, I . . .”
“Oh, and, Derek? What was blood doin’ on the bedsheets this mornin’? My blood, I’m guessin’. I mean, I like it rough, and last night I got it rough, and I loved it, sure as shootin’. Shit, you’re the best goddamn lay I ever had, but”—now he’s pulling the T-shirt over his head and throwing it on the floor—“what the hell are these?!”
He’s pointing to—what else?—the scabby fang marks on his right shoulder and on the side of his neck.
“Now I sorta remember you bitin’ me in the midst of that good hot fuck, but these cain’t be your teeth marks. Hell, looks like a damn snakebite!”
He pauses, glaring at me, waiting for answers. I silently drop my eyes, suddenly ashamed of my own appetites.
“And another thang. You never went to D.C., man. I’ve been watchin’ the road up this mountain all damn day. That Jeep has been sittin’ in the driveway the whole time. Where the hell were you? Has anything you’ve ever said to me been the truth?
“You know what I think?” he says, his voice lower, almost confidential, as, eyes cautiously fixed on me, he retrieves his T-shirt. “I think you’re some kinda psycho. This ain’t no hangover I’m feelin’. I think last night, after I passed out, you pulled some kinda awl from under the bed and bled me like a pig. This mornin’, when I woke, when I thought about the way you made love to me last night, givin’ it to me just the way I’ve always dreamed of gettin’ it, I thought, ‘Jesus, I could love this guy. I could eat this guy up. I could chew on this guy’s dick forever.’ But now, Derek . . .”