Macho Sluts (46 page)

“Take me with you,” she whispered, and her bearer did not ask her where or when, just carried her away in a rush of black and silent wind. Oh, how she had missed being transported this way, effortlessly, in the grip of something far more powerful than herself, so powerful that is was pointless to worry about the destination or what would happen once they arrived there. The venom that had prevented her blood from clotting and closing the wound sang now in her veins, making her see colors behind her closed eyelids, making her warm inside and simultaneously relaxed and alert. No other drug could ever duplicate this ecstasy, this calm. She should know, she had had long enough to search for a substitute. Her thighs trembled, needing to be separated, and the arms around her tightened, hurt her and reassured her.

Her arms full, but under no strain, Kerry felt amazed, disgusted with herself, hopeful, but terribly afraid. She had a low tolerance for ambiguity. It slowed her down too much, made her angry. She had not succumbed to temptation, and that was a dangerous weakness. She had not kept her secret, which must mean she had been careless. If one woman could ferret it out, someone else could. Furthermore, she had not slain her discoverer. This was surely stupidity. The code had been violated beyond repair. It was time for another change, another sleep, another decade, another name.

But this blood—whose? Her name was … Iduna—Iduna's blood had been very good. She had never had it offered this way, seductively, with persistence and determination, or felt it being given up with joy. But should the pleasure of feeding be mutual? It made her uneasy, no matter how many times she had imagined it and craved it. Now, of course, she wanted it again, and how she resented that! Would there be more nourishment, more pleasure from this source? Or would the woman wake up sweating with the fear of death and the devil, sick of what she had done, and repudiate it and try to make her terror public? What did it mean, to be offered blood by a mortal who claimed to know what she was doing? Could anyone who was not like herself really know what it meant? Had any of her kind ever felt this way, asked themselves these questions? Perhaps it would be better to allow her own veins to be opened, briefly become prey, and turn this taking heifer in a hated peer. That image brought too much shame, hostility, and desire (yes, desire) to be tolerated for long. What had she done?

She wrapped Iduna's cloak more snugly about her to shut out the cold, transparent fingers of the wind, hugged her newly opened vessel to her breast, then took her deeper into darkness. The Eyrie was still far away. The slut moaned, twisted, exposed her throat. She wanted it again. It was going to be difficult to avoid draining her completely before dawn.
What had she done?

Safe, at home in the inhuman arms, Iduna dabbled her fingers in her still-oozing wound and thought, ‘After the long hunt, the desperate search, the years of doing without, being alone and bereft, with no wings to shelter me, no sharp teeth in any of the mouths that kissed me, I have you. You are no dream, no fantasy. Finally, my treasure, my pet, my lord, I will make you my beloved. Your strength, your magic, my death and your immortality—I have it all within my reach.'

This rare and beautiful creature did not know how happy she was going to make her, how much she would change her life. Iduna assumed she would never know how Kerry really felt about her, if only because she was so ignorant about her own emotions. The first one, the almost-forgotten one, so needy and yet powerful, had been that way, and Kerry seemed younger, less experienced than it. But Kerry would always need her because her blood was so sweet. Evolutionarily speaking, it was an adaptive trait. And she knew how to make it interesting to take. She had been well schooled.

How old are you, Iduna wondered, and how old am I? Will you ever bother to ask me the kind of questions I've been asking about your kind for these countless lonely, crazy years? Is my blood, precious as it is to me, enough to pay for the wonder and contentment I feel in your presence?

She twined one arm around her captor's neck and reached with the other hand for the leather seam that accentuated, pulled up, and divided Kerry's genitals. The curve was like a ripe peach pushed into her hand. It rubbed insistently against her palm. Kerry made the same noise she had made to warn the man in Purgatory to keep his distance, but Iduna only smiled. Abstinence is the mother of shameless lust.

“Sex doesn't seem to be out of the question after all, does it?” the vampire said.

The Spoiler

He slept in a pile of dirty socks and soiled jockstraps, souvenirs of the men he adored, sometimes acquired without their permission. In winter, for warmth, he pulled a leather hide over this nest and its virile odors. When he woke up, he ran three miles. His spartan breakfast was part of a careful diet supplemented with a bewildering rainbow of vitamins and minerals. Every other afternoon, he lifted weights. His body was well defined and hard, which pleased him, but not because he was narcissistic. It was the value others placed on his physique that gave him pleasure. The rest of each day, Monday through Friday, he worked diligently at his chosen profession. It brought him a comfortable income but placed no demands on his heart—or his evenings and weekends.

It was the rest of his time that was important, the time when he could prowl and sniff for the men who made him hungry, carefully laying the plans that would allow him to pounce and feast. That was when he became the spoiler.

When he went out, he always wore the same set of leathers. These carefully tailored black skins had cost him several times more than some men pay for an entire wardrobe of tanned cowhide. He wore a very tight, short-sleeved, black-leather shirt that laced up the front. This supple, buttery-soft garment clung to him, moved with him as if it were his by birth. He was fair-skinned, but very hirsute, so the black fur on his barrel chest sprang up around the laces, and the thick, curly hair on his biceps and forearms made it hard to tell where the sleeves ended and his bare arm began. He wore pants (not chaps) that fit snug across the ass, but were not tight enough in the crotch to mimic a hard-on if he was not really erect. His belt was a plain strap of leather, innocent of studs, well oiled and as flexible as a whore's tongue, with a massive silver (not chrome, not aluminum) buckle. No keys hung from his belt. He did not wear a cock ring or a wrist watch. He had no epaulets to hang a chain from since he did not own a leather jacket.

A cute clone in Adidas and a Daddy's Boy T-shirt who saw him leaving the bar one night asked, trying to pick him up, “Did you forget your jacket?” “No. I don't have a jacket.” Daddy's Boy thought, ‘Thank God, he doesn't take all this leather drag seriously, he's not going to get me home and do something ungodly,' and decided to cruise in earnest. “You should. You'd look hot in one.” The spoiler gave his admirer a puzzled frown. “But I don't own a motorcycle,” he explained.

Men in full leather are usually conspicuous. But the spoiler's appearance was so neat, his lines so clean, his bearing so modest that he often passed through crowds of the bourgeoisie without changing the topic of their conversation. In the self-consciously masculine bars and rotting piers he frequented, other men relied on flashy, cheap metal to signal their presence in the darkness, or a heavy tread that would make their keys and other accoutrements jangle. He, on the other hand, was rarely noticed unless he chose to be. Nearly every leatherman in the city had been elbow to elbow with him in some club or alley, but few recognized him on sight.

Of the elite handful who acknowledged him with a bare nod, the kind of minimal gesture that was harder to get from them than a knighthood, one man wore only cowboy fringes, conchos, and suede; one man wore no leather at all; and one was not a man. But each of these folks have legends of their own.

Only his boots glittered, and that was a mirror-bright shine, the kind that takes months of work to complete. Even a USMC drill instructor can't force someone to get that kind of sheen on a pair of boots. It takes constant caressing. Your brush has to touch the boots as often and as lightly as you touch someone who has just made you fall in love. He had never been in love, but his boots were perfect. He kept his pants tucked into them. They went up to the knee, glossy as a frozen lake at midnight.

The absence of right/left signals should also have made him conspicuous. Instead, he was often discounted as a tourist or an amateur. Only one youngster, drunk enough to think he was the most attractive boy in the bar and thus immune to snubs, ever had the nerve to accost him and demand, “What are you?”

The spoiler replied (perhaps amused because of what he was planning to turn himself into for the sake of his latest conquest), “A man.”

“No, I mean what are you into? Which role do you play?”

“I don't play,” he said. The look in his eye momentarily sobered the curious, intoxicated kid; made him want to ask another, better question. But those eyes were too deep, it was too far to fall—so he chose instead to get drunk enough to fall off his bar stool. Not that the spoiler noticed; taking out the trash was not his job.

Why did he take such care with his dress if he intended to travel incognito? If he did not want to be recognized, groped, and drooled over, why was he a regular in all the grimy Mafia firetraps that pandered to compulsive cocksuckers, gay bikers, fetishists, bondage freaks, masochists, expert handballers, and other sexually bent, homomasculine men the good Catholic mobsters saw only as a horde of spendthrift drunks and perverts? Every scene attracts a certain number of voyeurs, those too timid, alienated, or unattractive to participate. You might call him a voyeur since he spent most of his time looking and listening. But he was a watchdog, not a spectator. He paid attention to the scene. He knew the names and histories of most of the topmen who shared his specialized tastes. He could predict their behavior better than a seasoned bartender. And he selected some of them to be cut out of the herd.

His selection was made for him by a signal that socked directly through his eyes or ears or nose into his gut. His balls would roll as their pouch shrank, pumping blood into his dick so fast that it started leaking even before he got hard. Any number of things could trigger the signal. It could be the inborn authority in a tone of voice, a certain sure grip that revealed a talent for handling objects and men who wanted to be objects, an offhanded way of revealing esoteric abilities and interests. An expression of the mere need to control or dominate was not enough to throw this punch into his guts; too many people try to act like lifeguards because they are drowning themselves.

One night, the stars were in a favorable conjunction for completing a drama the spoiler had been hankering after for months. He found himself being agreeable to a young man who had never been in “this kind of place” before. He was sandy-blond, clean-shaven, with a trim body that looked fit because he was moderately active and under twenty-five. He said his name was Curt, and he had borrowed these chaps from his roommate; did they fit? As soon as the spoiler realized this good-looking kid was a complete novice, he realized he was the perfect lure, and began to turn him into his pawn. He also forgot his name.

The newcomer did not know why he was telling this plain, unsmiling leatherman about his bizarre, secret fantasies, asking him questions and accepting his suggestions. He did not know he was nervous and needed to be patted on the head and pointed in the right direction. It was easy to confess his lack of experience and his longstanding fascination with leather. Like most other raw recruits, he thought leather was synonymous with S/M, and S/M meant being whipped. He did not know how rare this ritual actually is. The grave stranger was knowledgeable and reassuring. He drew verbal thumbnail sketches of the half-dozen tops who were hunting in the bar that night, and told him which one he needed to meet—an older man, graying at the temples, with the build of a boxer and sad eyes. His name was Roger, and he had a protective instinct toward novices; it was almost a reflex for him to take a courteous one home.

Before he could say “whips and chains,” Curt was leaning his head on the master's chest and whispering, “Sir, may I buy you a beer, sir?” The gesture was too touching, the offer too well-bred to be rejected. When the boy returned with the cold, sweaty bottle, he was ordered to tell his story. It came out easily, since he had rehearsed it in the corner with the sympathetic stranger. He was not surprised when the big man put a hand around his throat and guided him down to the floor until he knelt with his cheek pressed against the warm denim that covered the master's cock. Curt wrapped his arms around the thighs encased in latigo, smelling of motor oil, and felt that he had come home. But he was surprised when the stranger (he had already forgotten exactly what he looked like) loomed near and inquired if he, “the boy,” had given offense to the master.

Roger scowled and said he had not known the boy was in anyone else's service. Before the pawn could deny this, the stranger said, “Sir, he is not in my service. But I pointed you out to him and suggested he introduce himself. I would hold myself responsible if you were not pleased.” Placated, the master relaxed, and the upshot of the matter was that all three of them left the bar together, to game in one of the city's better-equipped arenas.

This master's forte was whipping. In his black room, he had a large collection of English hunting crops, nautical cats, Scottish tawses, monks' flails, and Australian quirts on display under glass. The spoiler gave each one a separate scrutiny and made a quiet comment or two that showed his appreciation of their history and construction. These implements were not for use. But the walls of the master's inner sanctum were hung with enough modern copies to flog the entire mutinous crew of an aircraft carrier.

The room was clean, but somber. These walls could never forget what they had witnessed, and made the visitor feel an obligation to live up to their memories. Wooden beams ran the length of the ceiling, massive enough to support any load hauled into space by the greasy sets of block and tackle that hung here and there. A vertical beam equipped with large, iron rings stood alone in the center of the room. In one corner, there was a waist-high device that a man could be comfortably bent over and bound to by a strap buckled across his back. It looked like a huge, ancient butcher's block and was authentically stained. In another corner was a waist-high Barkley bench, the width of a human torso, minimally padded, with a hole in the center.