Bedbugs (23 page)

After the span of several pounding heartbeats, after his eyesight had adjusted to the narrow beam of light, he dared at last to bring his eye back to the slitted opening of the door. A single candle burned on the bedstand, washing the room with a dull orange glow. At first, all the boy saw was the corner of the large bed that his cousins had shared during their stay at the castle since they were little girls. He placed his fingertips against the rough wooden door and pushed it ever so lightly, opening it just enough so he was able to see a bit farther into the room.

The sight made his heart stop cold, like a dead thing in the center of his chest. His male member throbbed even more painfully, raising its head like a proud warrior and thrusting against the restraints of his nightgown. One hand shifted down to his crotch and tightly grasped the bulge.

Two of the cousins—Philipa and Ester—were lying on the bed outside of the sheets. Both of them were stark naked. The third cousin, Mara, was naked except for a sash of white cloth that was wrapped around her waist and draped down to mid-thigh. The three girls had their arms and legs wrapped around each other in a most curious position, and all of them were moving in slow, undulating rhythms like a single beast with three heads and six arms and six legs, all intertwined. Their soft, white skin glowed like snow on a mountaintop at dawn as hands and mouths kneaded and kissed and caressed thighs, breasts, shoulders, and necks. Soft bursts of laughter rang out like the silver-clean babble of a fast-running brook.

Heated blood rushed to the boy’s head, nearly making him swoon. Once again, his hand reached up underneath his nightgown. He grasped himself firmly and began to rub up and down, keeping time with the twisting undulations of the young girls. The boy had a vague sense that this was a new and interesting game his cousins were playing, and he knew instinctually that it was a game he could play, too. He had seen the animals in the barn mating. For now, though, he felt safer hiding in the darkness and just watching.

With a high trill of laughter, Philipa tugged at the white cloth wrapped around Mara’s waist.

“Come on, darling,” she said in a playful, teasing voice. “Don’t be so shy. You must let your sisters see
your
jewel, too.”

In an instant, Ester also grabbed at the white cloth and tugged at it, all the while laughing. “Yes . . . please, Mara,” she said with a trilling lilt to her voice. “Please let us play with your toy, too.”

“No! Not tonight!” Mara cried out, twisting away from her sisters’ embraces and sitting up in bed. Her facial expression looked shocked, but her voice had an excited edge to it as well, and the boy sensed that she didn’t mean at all what she was saying. He watched in rapt fascination as the white cloth was pulled away and, with a gentle push, Philipa forced Mara back onto the bed. All three of them were laughing now as each of the two girls took Mara by the ankles and spread her legs open wide.

The boy felt equally and violently repulsed and intrigued by what he saw. A wide swatch of fresh blood smeared the inside of Mara’s thighs, glistening a dark, oily red inside the thin wisps of hair between Mara’s legs. He watched in amazement, unable even to take a breath as Philipa and Ester both leaned forward and began to kiss and lick the blood from the insides of their sister’s alabaster thighs. He was motionless except for his hand, which continued to pump vigorously up and down beneath his nightgown. When his groin flooded with a hot, tingling rush, he was suddenly fearful that if he continued to rub himself in this manner, something horrible might happen. Perhaps blood, like the blood flowing from Mara’s private parts, would spurt from his male member.

But he couldn’t stop himself, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the entwined bodies of the girls and the scarlet smears of fresh blood that shimmered against Mara’s pearly skin.

How alluring!

How exquisite!

How exciting!

Suddenly the boy’s awareness was swept away by a dizzying rush as something hot, wet, and sticky shot out from inside his cupped hand. The feeling was so intense he almost fainted. Moaning softly, he leaned forward to catch his balance and inadvertently banged his head against the partially opened door. He was reeling with such an intense, almost giddy sensation of release and surprise that he experienced only a vague sense of alarm when he heard all three of his cousins squeal in surprise. He distantly sensed that they had all turned and were staring at him, lurking in the doorway, but he couldn’t tear his horrified gaze away from the streaks of blood that smeared Philipa’s and Ester’s mouths and chins.

“Well now, sisters,” Philipa said in a low, throaty growl. She lapped the blood on her lips with a quick flick of her tongue. “We seem to have ourselves a little audience tonight.”

“Yes, a little mouse has crawled out of the walls to watch us play,” said Ester laughingly.

The boy could hardly stand up, much less move. He looked numbly down at his hand, which was still reaching up underneath his nightgown. The white cloth was saturated with a thick, clammy fluid, which, he saw to his relief, at least was not blood.

He looked back at his cousins and watched in silent, motionless horror as Philipa, stark naked, rose from the bed. She raised her arms, extending them toward him as she moved quickly to the door and pulled it all the way open so fast that the boy staggered into the room.

Startled, he blinked his eyes like a mole that had been caught in the midday sun. His brain seemed to have shut off as he allowed Philipa to grasp him by the hand and lead him over to the bed. His legs moved stiffly, like stilts. He cried out softly when she pushed him roughly forward, but the sound was lost beneath another chorus of laughter from the girls as he flopped face-first onto the bed, landing between Ester and Mara. In the next instant, Philipa rolled him onto his back and leaped on top of him and he was suddenly lost in a maelstrom of white softness—of sheets and pillows and skin—as hands tugged at his nightgown, pinched his cheeks, and clawed at his neck, chest, and stomach . . . and lower.

Within seconds, his nightgown was ripped to tatters, and his slim, slightly muscled body was exposed to the probing touches of their cool fingertips and hot tongues.

“I say he has to pay,” one of the cousins said teasingly. “He has to pay a penalty for spying on us.”

“Yes, oh, yes!” said another voice excitedly.

“Oh, indeed he does,” said a third, more commanding voice. “He must pay a very
severe
penalty!”

The boy was lost in such confusion that he could no longer distinguish the girls’ voices. They all blended into a chorus of shrill, birdlike laughter, and their words were almost lost beneath the roaring sound that filled his ears like a thundering cataract.

“But what price shall we demand?” asked one.

“Oh, that’s easy,” said another voice. “Just like when we were young, and he insisted that we play his foolish little boy’s games, perhaps now we should force him to play our game.”

“Yes, yes! Cousin Vlad has to play our game, too!”

“No! I don’t like that idea,” one of them said in a sharp, commanding voice.

Through the swirl of confusion, the boy thought he recognized Mara’s voice.

“I—I’m still embarrassed that he saw me like . . . like this, suffering as I am under the ‘woman’s curse.’”

“Oh, my dear Mara, it’s no curse.”

“No, not at all! Why, it’s a
blessing
!”

“And if he’s so interested in watching us play, perhaps, just like when we were children, he still wants to play with us.”

“Yes, perhaps we should invite him to share in your ‘blessing,’ Mara dearest, and let him drink from your darling little fountain, too.”

The boy was lost in a dizzying spiral of confusion as hands and knees prodded at him, turning him over and over in the soft twining of whispering bed sheets. The moist cushions of lips and breasts pressed and rubbed against his face, his stomach, his back, his groin. As flexing fingers grabbed his male member, he felt it begin to stiffen again, pulsating with a strange, urgent heat. Then someone took him by the back of the head and pushed his face down against the soft, yielding flesh of Mara’s belly. His nose was squashed flat, making it difficult for him to breathe as the other two girls forced his head down . . . down. Not quite against his will, the boy found himself kissing a wet line along the pale skin of Mara’s leg until he was lapping at the sweet saltiness in the hinge of her thighs. A damp, musky aroma tinged with the coppery sting of fresh blood filled his mouth and nostrils, making his head spin.

His male member was now as stiff as a tree branch as he pressed his face into the downy cleft between Mara’s legs. He cried out a muffled protest when one of the cousins grabbed his maleness and, puffing on it hard, cried out, “Oh, but, sisters, he’s not made the way we are. Perhaps this will get in the way of all of our fun!”

“Yes, what shall we do about it?”

“
I
know what to do,” Mara cried out, her voice warbling with barely restrained passion.

She suddenly shifted around, pushing the boy’s head violently away from her bloody crotch. Then she rolled him over onto his back and straddled him. She moved her face forward as if she were about to kiss him, but her soft lips only brushed lightly over his blood-smeared mouth before pressing against his thin neck. Her lingering kiss burned the skin below his left ear as the heated moistness of her tongue lapped the artery that throbbed heavily in his neck. The boy was swept up in such a terrifying euphoria of seduction that he thrashed his head from side to side, completely abandoned to the sensations of fiery pleasure. Then Mara’s lips began to track down, her heated tongue flicking across his chest and stomach until, at last, her mouth came to rest on his throbbing member. Moaning softly, she licked him several times, then opened her mouth wide to engulf him and started sucking on him.

At first she sucked gently, the way a newborn calf will suckle, but then she took his shaft deep into her throat. Her teeth began to nibble on him, hard enough to be hurtful, but even that pain was exquisite, unlike anything he had ever experienced before.

The boy was nearly delirious with ecstasy, tossing his head back and forth and moaning deep in his throat. But Mara’s gentle ministrations were interrupted by a cold, sharp sting, like the delicate cut of a razor-edged dagger as her teeth sliced into the base of his member. He was too lost in the mind-numbing swirl of pleasure to care or worry about what she might be doing to him.

“No, Mara! Don’t!” one of the girls suddenly shouted.

The boy detected the fine edge of panic in her voice, and he sensed a flurry of activity as the violent sucking and nibbling abruptly broke off. As he struggled to sit up in bed, his vision slowly cleared. He let out a high-pitched squeal of fright when he saw Mara crouching on the edge of the bed, glaring at him like a cornered, feral animal. Her eyes were wide and wild, glistening with raging bloodlust. Her lips were peeled back, exposing two sharp, curved canine teeth that stuck out like a wolf’s fangs. A bright trickle of blood—his blood—ran from her lower lip, which was trembling with eager anticipation.

Mara stuck out the tip of her tongue and circled her lips, smearing the blood. Nearly numb with terror, the boy reached down to his crotch and felt the slick flow of blood on his skin.

“Please, Mara! You can’t do that!” Ester yelled.

“It’s not time yet!” shrieked Philipa. “He’s not ready to become
completely
ours!”

“No, not yet!”

The bite on the boy’s groin throbbed painfully with burning surges as a hot trickle of blood ran down between his legs and soaked into the sheets. He was nearly blinded by the whirlwind raging inside his head as he felt hands reach out and roughly push and pull him from the softness of his cousins’ bed. He teetered on the edge of the mattress for an instant, and then fell. He twisted around, trying to break his fall before landing, but he hit hard and lay there stunned for a moment, facedown on the cold, stone floor. Then, as he scrambled to his feet, a bundle of shredded clothing shot from out of nowhere and hit him like a solidly placed punch in the back of the head. He heard a deep sobbing sound and was surprised to realize that it was coming from him.

“Go!”

“Get out of here!”

“Leave us!”

“Leave us
now
!”

Shivering and naked, and stinging with embarrassment and pain, the boy covered his wounded crotch with the remnants of his torn nightshirt and started backing away from the bed. He felt blindly behind himself with one hand until he came to the door. Then, whimpering softly, he turned and ran out into the corridor, swinging one hand wildly at the enfolding darkness, as if he could somehow tear it aside.

Miraculously, he found his way back to his own bedroom door and, sobbing wildly, burst into the room.

Trembling and weak with humiliation and exhaustion, he fumbled to light the candle on his night stand. The sudden glow of yellow light hurt his eyes, but he leaned forward and stared in stark horror at his face, reflected in the polished metal mirror above his dresser.

He was horrified by what he saw, yet also strangely thrilled at the sight of the clotted blood that smeared his chin and lips. The stain looked like a fiery, dark beard. Tears streamed from his eyes, blurring his vision as he leaned over the washbasin and splashed cold water onto his face. All the while, his thin shoulders shook with unrepressed sobs.