This is a fan fiction story based on characters from the Lonesome Dove television show, which belong to Rysher Entertainment and Hallmark. No infringement on copyrights is intended. All other characters and storylines belong to me.

Rated NC-17, coerced/consensual m/m, some bloodletting in the interests of a good time :)

Once again, let me remind you that this story does not belong to the Darkly Bound series, though it does draw on events that occur in DB. You might say it's a DB alternate universe fantasy, and it's one that has been growing and expanding with a life of its own. I even have scenes for a sequel already written, though at the rate I procrastinate, a sequel could be far in the future, if it ever materializes at all.

I wrote Part 2 without my previous co-author, so the narrative style might sound a little different, being mine alone. I hope it still satisfies your prurient expectations. I want to thank a fanfic writer friend, Darcy, for her inspiration on one section involving soap and water. Check out her very hot story, In the Bordello, about the characters played by Russell Crowe and Sharon Stone in "The Quick and the Dead" if you get curious. She has also written a wartime Clay Mosby story called Vengeance that is well worth a look, too.

One more caveat -- my vampire, Letourne, makes references to Christian imagery in irreverent and sometimes sarcastic terms. If the idea of vampire and Clay Mosby slash hasn't scared you off so far, please be aware that there are no archetypal cows considered too sacred here for erotic consumption.

The artwork included herein is by Tieranny, who would love to hear from you if you enjoy what you see.

And as always, comments are welcome. Please do not be afraid to write to me -- unlike Letourne, I don't bite!

Colleen J. MacLennan
cjmac444@earthlink.net
4/29/02

Clay stared blindly and breathed hard. A few stray objections groped for purchase in his mind, but the mouth on his thigh, the cheek rubbing against his hard cock and aching testicles, shoved those thoughts from a thinning ledge of rationality and commanded all his attention....

Letourne.

Oh God, oh God, that mouth on his thigh. The lips brushing lightly ... the tongue drawing warm, wet circles ... those odd fangs teasing and testing his skin, tickling awake an itch he couldn’t scratch....

Letourne....

Nothing but that one word, that one thought filled his consciousness. That and the itch.

The mouth pressed harder. The two sharp points pressed, but not hard enough. Clay groaned and rocked and pulled the head he cradled in to himself, his hands clutching long strands of blond hair in a weak grasp.

Letourne!

The word reverberated in his head, echoing as a desperate plea for relief.

A presence joined him there, reassuring, quieting, holding him steady. Clay balanced in that hopeful suspense, not daring to move, until at last the teeth bit down hard and quick. He grunted, then held his breath at the burst of fire as the points broke through the tender skin. As if to repel the invasion, his thigh muscles tensed rigid, but only for a moment. Blessed relief followed at once in a crescendo of arousal, and he relaxed and let it sweep him toward nirvana’s distant shore.

The mouth set an ever faster pace for his journey. It drew at the beating of his heart, sucking life’s essence from him in strong draughts. Clay moaned and rocked and his penis throbbed, all in time with each pull until the whole rhythm imitated the spasms of ejaculation. But these pulsations were unlike ordinary climax. They went on and on, prolonging the intensity even while true orgasm remained elusive.

Then all too quickly, the mouth stopped sucking and Clay panicked, bereft of the thing most imperative in his existence. He tried to keep the mouth in place, begging silently for more, for it to suck more from him. He wanted it to drain him to the last red drop. That single desire overwhelmed him with its urgency. He meant to lose himself in this being who had so inexplicably terrified him such a short time before and who now seemed his only reason for living. If he could not fulfill his need to be sacrificed in its name, he would have to die by his own hand, because death would be the sole act left for him to accomplish.

The presence quieted him once more, and as though to make amends, the mouth licked a path to his cock and began anew. The tongue wet it and stroked it, playing with the way it moved in response, exploring every silky inch of the heated, blood-engorged flesh. Clay moaned his impatience, and at last, the mouth trapped the tip and slid the length of it in almost to the hilt, as practiced as any Basin Street whore, with one distinct difference – the tantalizingly dangerous teeth that somehow never quite caught on the delicate skin, but made their presence known nevertheless.

A few more times in and out, and Clay closed his eyes. He let go of the blond head, let go of any control whatsoever, and eased backward to lie amongst the rumpled bedclothes. He wanted to come so badly, it hurt. Even more, however, he wanted for those teeth to hurt him so he could come. Surely, those teeth were the key, the source, the answer to all he desired. Surely, they could grant his every wish and whim, if only they would....

Vaguely, he became aware of hands on him now, too, helping him lift his hips, but it was the mouth that mattered as it continued to play its game of hide-and-seek with his cock. At last, one seductive point scraped a bit harder along the shaft’s underside where the blue veins ran just beneath the surface, and Clay’s hopes rose enough to make him groan loudly and writhe in frustration.

Bite! he thought, demanding, offering, begging.

A brief pause of the mouth’s movement stretched his endurance taut, but finally it obliged with a lightning fast nick of one vessel – so fast, there was no time for pain. Clay exhaled a long, deep sound of gratitude, and in a rush of excitement and heightened sensation, felt his blood flow out as if it were semen – violent spurts of hot fluid with the power to generate life inside another, phallic convulsions that drowned him in euphoria. He floated in that ocean, consumed with unbearable pleasure in the giving, knowing at the same instance what pleasure the taste of it gave the one who swallowed.

Further pressure welled at the base of his genitals, signaling imminent eruption of a more mundane kind. Clay tightened the muscles of his hips and tried to thrust upward, tried to force his sex deeper into the mouth that fellated it so skilfully. But a firm tug at his scrotum dissolved the urge and the mouth left him, once again denying him his human orgasm.

Clay wadded the sheets in his fists and growled hoarse frustration as he opened his eyes and squinted to see his tormentor.

Letourne.

He’d forgotten. How had he forgotten? Or had he ever really known? He let his head fall back against the pillows. Did demons have names? Clay frowned, suddenly disoriented, but the throbbing organ between his legs rooted him back to the moment at hand.

Whatever he wished to be called, Satan’s beguiling minion had made good on his promise. Clay did crave that "little death" now, almost as much as he craved....

His train of thought halted abruptly, then proceeded with trepidation at what lay ahead. That mouth.... A shock cut through him. The mouth ... those teeth.... Letourne was biting him and drinking his blood! How had he not realized that sooner? Four times already, and in the most intimate places!

Clay blinked and tried to see where he was, where this bed caged him and this demon held him captive. His eyes found the outline of a door – a way out of this earthly hell – and his thoughts reached yet again for some plan of escape. But Letourne put his mouth to Clay’s cock once more, licking the wound, nibbling and sucking the rigid organ ever so gently, and Clay weakened. The plan dissolved into mist before his grasping mind, and his effort to move away became an effort to move closer.

What did it matter if Letourne bit him and sucked his blood? The demon could have it all if he wanted, so long as Clay could have more of this inexhaustible pleasure.

Some part of him whispered from afar, reminded him he was not entirely conquered, and he should not go unsatisfied any longer. He’d been this devil’s faithful servant, and it was time the creature served him for a change.

A new plan presented itself in military style. When the enemy set a trap and you found yourself surrounded, the only way to win was to throw yourself against the opposition with all your resources and without concern for survival. So, the artful mouth that seduced him was Letourne, but Letourne was not only a mouth. In this form, he possessed one other orifice capable of sheathing the length of Clay’s penis. Clay didn’t care to think about how he knew that; it was sufficient that he knew, and knowledge was power, after all....

* * * * * * *

Letourne rose up and wiped the blood from his lips as he gazed down at his plaything with heavy-lidded eyes. He must have drunk too much. All these little sips must have added up to more than he’d thought, because the opium seemed to be affecting him. Either that or his dizziness indicated genuine passion. Could it be he’d started to take some actual interest in this man? That hardly seemed possible. Since his willing fall from grace, only one human had ever inspired him to real emotion, and he’d vowed after Etienne left him....

No. Clay was similar in many ways, but he was not Etienne. It must be the bloodlust, and the carnal heat of coupling with a human male again. It had been so long, the novelty of it was just overexciting him.

In danger of losing his bearings altogether, Letourne opened his eyes wider and worked to focus on his companion-of-the-moment. Clay met his gaze with an equally dreamy look and reached up to cup his cheek. Letourne smiled and leaned into the unexpected caress, pleased at how well-behaved Clay was, how receptive to their lovemaking now that he’d been subdued. Good thing, too, because Letourne had lost track of the path Clay’s mind had traveled.

Clay reached further and slid his hand into Letourne’s hair, smoothing it back, twining it between his fingers.

Letourne sighed and closed his eyes, and then yelped in shock as Clay jerked him by the hair down to the bed. The suddenness of it inhibited an immediate reaction, and Clay used the advantage to roll on top of him and pin him face down.

Irritation cleared Letourne’s head at once and he very nearly threw Clay to the floor again, but when he felt Clay’s fumbling efforts and divined his intent, he began to laugh instead.

"Oh, no, mon cher. Not like that," he said, twisting beneath Clay to lie on his back. "There is a better way. Let me help you."

Clay rose to his elbows, and even before Letourne entered his mind, he could see he’d disturbed Clay with his enthusiasm and sent him into confusion again. He slid his hands up Clay’s arms, and with an iron grip, prevented him from moving away any further. Clay might have thought to take charge, but he was still merely human. Even if the worst was true and Letourne was tipsy on a bit of laudanum-tainted blood, he retained more than enough strength to control any mortal.

"Did you think I would mind that?" he asked with a grin. "Au contraire, my beautiful. You have pleased me beyond my wildest hopes."

Clay’s brow furrowed as Letourne wriggled his legs free and spread them, causing their groins to come in fuller contact.

For a moment, Letourne revelled in the sensation, but the goal could not be attained in this manner, so regretfully, he gave Clay an encouraging push. "Lift up," he told him at the same time. "You must give me room for the right position."

Clay lifted himself on hands and knees to hover over Letourne more from the discordant feel of a naked male pressed to him intimately than from any sort of understanding or will to cooperate. Letourne, however, wasted no time seizing his own advantage. He bent his legs up, and with agile grace, pressed his knees to his chest to accommodate Clay’s angle of "attack."

"Now, mon cher. Take your revenge on me as you will. I won’t stop you," he murmured, sliding his arms around Clay’s shoulders.

Clay looked down at his dark, bloodied cock, hanging heavy with need between them, dancing to the tune of his heartbeat, and at Letourne’s own lust-hardened prick, so unearthly pale and still in comparison. Crimson droplets fell from his newest wound, forming a convenient lubrication at the port of intended entry. Letourne sensed his dismay turn to alarm then as Clay remembered how he knew what he’d been attempting, how he was "taught."

"No, no, darling boy, it is not the same," Letourne assured him, holding Clay in place again. He took Clay’s chin and tilted his head up, locking their eyes with a mesmerizing stare. "You are not like him. He was crude and beastly, hardly worth the place in Hell he has surely earned. But mon coeur, if you do not wish to take a place next to him in everlasting torment, you must serve me now, while you still live. Listen carefully, Clay. If you want redemption, you must give everything for it, every part of yourself. God will accept nothing less."

Gradually, talking softly all the while of sweet penance and salvation, Letourne drove the memories from Clay’s awareness until he’d calmed enough for little kisses and caresses to his arms and torso. Letourne’s would-be ravisher faltered above him, strength flagging. Still, however, Clay resisted the growing necessity to lower himself and rest his limbs.

Letourne sighed and lowered his own legs, resigned to provide more enticement.

Clay breathed heavily and watched him with a mixture of wariness and fascination as he stroked softly over Clay’s beard and lips, then trailed his fingers under the dark curls of hair and down the neck, all damp with sweat. For a few seconds, he took the measure of Clay’s pulse from the main artery near the throat, noting how it pounded at his fingertips as if demanding release. Soon enough – too soon – that time would come. Just now, Letourne traced further downward to the nipples, a hand for each, teasing the distended and especially sensitive flesh with feathery touches and then rolling the hardened buds between thumb and forefinger until Clay moaned low and closed his eyes and trembled restlessly. He was on the brink of capitulation, but still, he would not lay with Letourne.

"You defy gravity, mon cher," Letourne murmured in amused wonderment at Clay’s determination. "But you will not defy me."

He toyed with the hair on Clay’s chest and felt for the punctures on the left breast, caressing those, too, before moving on to the stomach. The muscles there flinched at his initial exploration, but seemed to settle comfortably against Letourne’s palms while Letourne admired the diaphragm’s work of filling and emptying Clay’s lungs above with heaving breath. Like a bellows stoking the fires of human spirit in his wonderfully mortal body.

Absently, Letourne remembered the pictures in the Bibles and churches of his youth depicting the Holy Ghost’s visitation to the apostles after Christ’s Resurrection. Little tongues of flame floated above those holy heads bowed in prayer, and the boy he had been laughed at the thought of them as human candles, until the old monk caught his irreverence....

Oh, what that monk would do now, if he could catch him at this impersonation! But the old fart was long dead and gone, and Letourne could commit better, more inventive mortal sins to wile away his eternal damnation than the good priest had ever crafted atonement for.

He slid his hands over Clay’s belly and felt it grumble – it was underfed of late. Laudanum was a jealous lover, curtailing the appetite for anything but itself. Then to the trail of hair thickening toward what must surely be every man’s most precious possessions, without which he could not abide to live. Letourne smiled at the thought of such human conceit and gently stroked Clay’s cock and testicles, hefting them slightly in his cupped hands for the pleasure of feeling their weight. They were swollen with blood and semen, the stuff of life, primed and more than ready to expend their contents for him. What a rare delight it was to own a man’s body so completely again, if just vicariously and for this night alone. And reassuring to know he could still bring forth this wellspring of essential fluids. He had not lost his powers of seduction despite their long disuse.

As if to confirm that assessment, Clay bent his head down to Letourne’s shoulder and opened his mouth on it in partial acquiescence. He ached for permission to let the shots loose from their cannon. That one thought consumed him now and its electricity reached out to Letourne in abandoned supplication.

Ah, but this was most exhilarating of all! To act the devilish god Clay must worship for the privilege of unconditional surrender and release – the irony in that deception was simply too delicious.

"Yes, I know how badly you want it, my sweet boy," Letourne said in a comforting tone. "Come down to me now and show me why I should grant it to you." He brought his hands up to stroke Clay’s hair and turn his face toward a kiss on the lips, and Clay didn’t fight anymore. He laid his weight fully on top of Letourne and pursued the kiss aggressively, putting his tongue in Letourne’s mouth to feel the fangs again.

Letourne enjoyed the insistence of Clay’s kiss and the soft caress of his beard as their mouths connected, but he pulled away nevertheless and laughed. "No, mon cher, not yet," he said in response to the inherent demand behind Clay’s flirtation. "You must give me everything first, Clay, every part of you. Every desire and every fear. If you do that, I will allow you your reward and you will be forgiven everything, even to this surrender that you also fear and desire."

With ease, Letourne reversed their positions and reached down between Clay’s legs. He found the wounds he’d made minutes earlier and pressed his fingers on them, making Clay sigh and moan and bend one knee up restlessly at the memory the touch recalled. Unable to resist then, Letourne slid down to put his mouth to the spots again. Little blood seeped from the holes anymore, but he sucked playfully for the simple enchantment of watching Clay’s face in the throes of magnified arousal.

It was odd, how this serendipitous liaison had reminded Letourne of better times. He never bothered with eroticism anymore, and he certainly never watched his victims’ faces while he fed, not like he had in the beginning, when the power was new and exciting. Perhaps he should change that, seek a spiritual renewal of sorts. Letourne almost laughed out loud. Was it possible for a vampire to be born again?

But Clay’s minimal strength was diminishing further. He would need an infusion of nourishment himself soon, and Letourne knew just the thing to do the trick. What was it the priests said while consecrating the Host at Mass? "Take, and eat all of this, for this is My Body...."

* * * * * * *

Abruptly, the demon stopped what he was doing and got up, leaving Clay sprawled across the bed. Clay stared at the ceiling and panted as if from a great exertion. Letourne’s absence should have been a mercy, but an undesirable sense of loss came over him. He should do something – cover himself, try to get away, move an arm or leg at the least. None of those options could overwhelm the simpler choice to stay and rest and leave his body vulnerable to further molestations.

God, oh, God, what was he doing? And why did he feel this way? For all the creature’s demonic nature, he was still shaped like a man. So how could Letourne seem so ... so....

There was no word for it, or at least none that Clay would assign to the sensation.

The ache in his groin intensified, however, at just the thought of the creature approaching him. And it wasn’t because of the sorcery Letourne had used to control him at first. If only that were the case. But no, Clay knew that sensation, that breathtaking euphoria unlike anything else, and he couldn’t blame his current arousal on such supernatural interference. Though speech remained impossible, he was in possession of his mental faculties now, and even the laudanum he’d drunk earlier had been rendered impotent. Meanwhile, the strength of his masculine urges had increased tenfold, with a reservoir of bodily humors dammed up and still building, ready to burst forth in a veritable flood.

Letourne came to stand at the side of the bed near to Clay’s head. Clay turned slightly to look at him through his peripheral vision. Any more direct than that seemed dangerous, as if it would tempt a fate worse than death without salvation. The demon was obviously proud of his adopted physique. Clay found himself simultaneously drawn to its sleek perfection and repelled by the maleness of it, which he could no longer deny.

"Still afraid, mon cheri coeur?" Letourne said, gazing down at him with an expression of such seductive evil that Clay turned his face away and closed his eyes. The creature only laughed lightly. "Ah, but the true question is, what do you fear? My intentions, or your own?"

A hand stroked his hair back and Clay breathed harder and waited, frowning into the black void behind his eyelids.

The hand withdrew. "Too passive," Letourne said with palpable annoyance. "Your strength fades. We must remedy that."

Sounds of activity ensued and the creature made a sound of his own like a little sigh. Clay’s fear jumped. In the barn, when Jensen was behind him, there were noises that deceived him of their plans....

"No, you will not remember that now," Letourne told him.

The hand touched his forehead again, as if to gauge a fever, and suddenly the images grew cloudy and meaningless, and Clay felt safe in the dark. He relaxed and his lips parted, and a finger entered his mouth and put something liquid on his tongue.

The flavor of it seized his attention at once as his tongue soaked it up and rolled it around his mouth. It tasted similar to honey, but concentrated and hot and fermented like a fine brandy. Whatever it was, it seemed alive and enervated, and it enlivened him with restless motion and an obsessive appetite for more. Not even morphine, with its powerful embrace, could infuse him with such immediate and absolute need.

He opened his eyes to look questioningly at Letourne and the resurgence of strength allowed him to rise on one elbow.

The creature grinned and gave out a malevolently delighted laugh. "You like that, do you?" he said. He took his own cock in his hand and languidly stroked upward on it until a drop of clear pinkish fluid appeared at the tip. "Would you like more, my darling boy?"

Clay stared in horror and shrank back. Jesus Christ, that’s what it was! And he had the taste in his mouth still!

The demon laughed again. "No, not Christ, exactly. More like the anti-Christ, if you insist on such grandiose terms."

Clay looked down and felt a wave of nausea. To his infinite alarm, however, it quickly washed away in favor of the compelling hunger there before it.

"Ah, but you know already how much more revitalizing I am to consume than that bland little Savior of yours, don’t you?" Letourne stepped closer, still holding his sex. "And didn’t He send me here to punish you on His behalf? ‘Do this in remembrance of me,’ He said. So, my sweet penitent, shall we renew your faith with Communion?"

Despite his disgust at the demon’s blasphemy, the loathsome hunger made Clay glance up at what he offered.

"It works the same as yours, mon cher," Letourne encouraged.

Clay rose to sit and drew back further, shaking his head. A deep, guttural sound rumbled in his chest, and a single word forced its way past the barricade to his voice, exploding into the room. "NO!" he said, though it was as much to himself as to the demon tempting him.

Letourne’s eyebrows lifted and a smile played on his lips. "Ah, but you are full of surprises, darling Clay," he said with a tilt of his head. "All right, because you have pleased me so, I will take pity on you for just this one thing."

Clay’s head filled with clouds again and his mind lost awareness of everything except for the ravenous craving that screamed from every cell in his body. All at once, the creature took hold of his legs and slid him to sit on the bed’s edge with no more effort than it might take to rearrange a rag doll. The sudden movement disoriented Clay even more and made him throw his arms back to keep from falling flat. While he struggled to find his equilibrium, Letourne pushed his knees apart to stand between them and combed his fingers through Clay’s hair upward from the nape of the neck until he held Clay’s head in both hands. The grip was gentle, but firm.

Clay worked to focus on what was within inches of his face – smooth, pale skin; the indentation of the navel; fine, gold hairs thickening as they flowed downward, pointing the way....

"Close your eyes now," the demon said in a softly persuasive voice, massaging Clay’s scalp at the same time. "Go into the dark ... your lovely, warm, comfortable dark...."

Clay fought to keep his eyes open, but the hands beneath his hair and the convincing voice that seemed to promise a reward made him shiver and relax and do what he was told. The hands pulled him to lay his cheek against the creature’s torso. It felt cool and inviting and he turned slightly to put his lips to the skin. His tongue came out and tasted it, seeking more of the invigorating sweetness. He couldn’t remember why, but he knew its origin was close.

A small hum from within the chest let him know he’d pleased the demon, which was an odd relief. He reached to steady himself with a hold on Letourne’s hips. His tongue continued to search, and a hand guided his head with light pressure from above until something brushed across his face. The object startled him – it seemed familiar and caused him to recoil instinctively. The hand guiding his head let him move away a little, but kept him from going far.

"There is nothing to be afraid of, mon cher. Open your mouth. It will be all right," Letourne coaxed.

Clay tried to resist, but the raging hunger demanded obedience to itself, if not to the demon’s reassuring words.

"That’s right. You are coming along very well, my beautiful boy," Letourne said. He slid his hand from the side of Clay’s head to cup his jaw and chin, and caressed Clay’s bottom lip with his thumb. "Now let me see your tongue and you can have more of what you want so badly."

Clay was given no choice from within or without. He pushed his tongue past his teeth to the edge of his lower lip. The creature’s thumb touched it first, and then something else, the object that had repulsed him moments earlier. It swiped by quickly, leaving a tiny amount of the hot sweetness for him to savor. He absorbed it into the membranes of his mouth as before, but the taste only inspired greater hunger, and he put his tongue out again and bent down to find the source.

Letourne hummed louder as Clay pulled the demon’s hips forward. He breathed in Letourne’s exotic scent, which emanated most powerfully here and was so like the taste he craved that every inhalation made him that much hungrier. And then he found it, or rather, it was held to his lips – a smooth, hard knob of flesh with an opening from which more of the liquid seeped. Vaguely, Clay knew he should not be doing this, knew there was something terribly, unspeakably wrong about it, but he couldn’t stop his mouth from closing over the rounded appendage and sucking at the orifice there to draw the substance out.

The demon sighed and moaned above him and caressed his hair, but that was of little concern to Clay now. His only thought was for the pursuit of more spicy sweet fluid, more than just a drop at a time. He dug his fingers into Letourne’s muscles and drew him even closer. His mouth filled with the hard, cool flesh, and his tongue probed and stroked while he sucked in strong pulls, made stronger by each additional droplet he earned for his efforts. He tried to move a hand to the place to aid in his cause, but the demon caught it and prevented him from touching the thing he suckled with anything except his mouth.

A flash of anger streaked through Clay at being denied his will, and he fought against the restraining grip on his wrist. He opened his eyes, and abruptly, a door in his mind opened as well, just as the liquid he’d sought began pumping into his mouth.

* * * * * * *

Letourne arched his hips forward and pressed Clay’s head into his groin. A powerful spasm of pleasure rippled through him with each ejaculation, made all the more intense for the years of celibacy preceding this tryst. He groaned and laughed simultaneously as his cum spilled into Clay’s mouth and down his throat, for Clay could not keep from swallowing and sucking still, despite his awakened, horrified, sickened male consciousness. Much as he wanted to vomit it up just now, he liked the taste too much, and was too hungry for its nourishment to spit it out or even gag.

And why not? It wasn’t the same as mortal semen. None of that viscous, pearlescent fertility remained in it anymore. It was sterile, clear and tinged with the blood from which it was distilled, not enough to initiate a vampiric transmutation, but plenty for a human in need of physical strength or healing. And Clay would gain both from his drink at this "fountain of youth," with the added benefit of a sublime taste unsurpassed by any medicine concocted through human means. So why should he complain?

But when the last drop had passed into Clay’s body and Clay had managed to tear his mouth away from the thing he so reviled, Letourne found himself flying across the room to land on the same carpet where he’d pierced Clay’s breast earlier.

"Bastard!" The word erupted from his victim in a vehement growl.

Letourne laughed again as he sat up, irrepressibly pleased to have set their game in motion this night. Clay was a marvelous toy worth hours of fun. "You grow stronger, mon cher," he observed. "You must have enjoyed your drink." He glanced at Clay’s cock, standing at attention and stiffer than ever. "And I see it has done your precious manhood no harm."

At that, Clay leapt at him like a panther. He knocked Letourne down again with a fist to his face and pinned him to the floor.

"Ow!" Letourne cried out, feeling true pain from the blow. "I should not have let you drink so much, it seems. My libation has made you the very picture of virility." He could not stop his laughter, though it fueled Clay’s quest for vengeance.

"Bastard!" Clay repeated, now that he’d mastered the art of that particular sound. He glowered with rage and raised his fist to land another punch.

Sobering, Letourne fended it off and grabbed hold of Clay’s wrists as easily as an adult might impede a child’s tantrum. "You think striking me will be sufficient, Clay? Don’t you want more satisfaction than that?" He looked down to where Clay straddled him.

Clay’s eyes did not follow the glance, but when Letourne looked up at him again, he saw the angry twitch of Clay’s upper lip that said he knew what was meant.

"Don’t you want to do to me what he did to you? Wouldn’t that be a fitting revenge? You tried before and failed," Letourne taunted him. "Can you do it now without failing as you’ve done at everything else?"

The twitch became a sneer, and Letourne pressed on.

"You must do it, Clay. It’s the only way to even the score with him and with me. Do it and I promise I’ll give him your message when I greet him at Hell’s gate. Do it the way he did it, so he’ll know his own evil."

Clay did look down now at his hard and straining cock, and Letourne had no difficulty reading his emotions and thoughts: enraged, feverishly aroused, aching from animal need and ready to believe anything that could justify his illicit self-indulgence. He was ripe for the harvest. Letourne let go of Clay’s wrists and granted him the freedom to choose his next move.

"There," he said, biting into his own wrist and reaching to pour the blood over Clay’s cock quickly, before the wound sealed up and disappeared. "With my blood to wet you for it. Isn’t that how he did it – with your blood to wet him?"

The violent sight animated Clay’s memories, and the demon’s blood animated his body with concentrated sexual rage. He made a noise like a panther’s roar and shoved Letourne over to lie face down. His fury made him tremble, but there was no fumbling this time. He put his penis to the opening and thrust without care for Letourne’s readiness, and Letourne gave him to think it was what he intended by offering the requisite struggle. In fact, the resistance made for another type of pleasure he’d forgotten, the heady excitement of succumbing to a lover’s rough desires, of being squeezed and yanked and penetrated with the savage force of driving lust. The only thing that compared was the killing bite on a victim who knew his fate and fought it to the last, but in those instances, Letourne was the hunter. What a rare game it was to be the prey!

Letourne surrendered for awhile to Clay’s brutality, enjoying each exquisitely pleasurable pain as Clay imitated his nemesis. The fingers digging into his flanks, the thick human cock hot with living blood, the stretching and dragging at his anus as Clay slammed forward and drew back repeatedly.... The feeling of expansion in that sphincter seemed almost a novelty, being so long since it had been used for any purpose, and Letourne groaned and writhed and thought he might come again from the heated friction alone.

Clay was near to coming, too, and he grabbed hold of Letourne’s long hair like the reins on a galloping horse and pulled as all his muscles contracted tighter.

With great reluctance, Letourne emerged from the fantasy of human intercourse and remembered he had to stop Clay soon. Living blood was one thing and he thrived on its gush. Living semen was something else entirely and could make him very sick for a time if it entered his vampire body in any appreciable amount.

Clay did not want to be dislodged just yet, however, and he wrapped Letourne’s hair in his fist to keep his seat on this mount as he might do in the mane of a bucking stallion. He thrust in deeper and leaned forward to put his open mouth to Letourne’s neck. It was a kiss with teeth, and Letourne was shocked to realize Clay imitated him now. That had not been in Clay’s mind. By the gods, this mortal was an intuitive one, and he'd be immortal before the night was done if Letourne wasn't careful.

He stopped playing and became deadly serious as he summoned all his strength to expel Clay from his body and throw him off.

"No!" he said when Clay came back at him and almost bit him again. He wrestled Clay to the floor, noticing he’d lost some of his own strength from the night’s revels. "No! That is not for you to do."

Clay stared into Letourne's eyes, a challenge for dominance, another clash of wills, except this time, Clay meant to claim the power Letourne possessed. Only one cure for that.

Letourne added more force to his hold and rapidly bent to Clay's left upper arm, punishing with a bite deep into the muscle, severe enough to cause crushing pain. Clay strangled a shriek and fought with all the strength he had gained to injure Letourne in kind, twisting his body and kicking fiercely, but once the burning had passed, a flood of arousal supplanted it proportionately. Clay’s growls turned to groans then, and little by little, he ceased his struggle.

Letourne filled his mouth with blood from the artery he’d punctured, and the glorious taste made him aware of how hungry he’d grown. He’d forgotten that, too – how much vitality it took from him to indulge in human-style orgasm. The benefit was more than worth the expenditure, however, because now Clay’s blood was cleaned of the opium, permitting him to swallow greedily to rejuvenate himself and subdue Clay at the same time. He siphoned over a pint, drinking until he sensed Clay’s aggression dissipate.

All the wounds he’d made on Clay’s body till now had been minor nips and were well on their way to healing completely from the "medicinal drink" he’d had. But these wounds were too deep to let close on their own – Clay could bleed to death before coagulation could stop up the holes. Letourne bit the tip of his own tongue and daubed them with his transmuted blood, watching afterward to be sure they knitted themselves shut.

Clay lay quietly through this procedure, and Letourne knew that, except for the fresh euphoria infecting him through the vampire blood, he was barely aware of it. His arm had gone numb and useless from lack of circulation. He’d had no sleep this night, his groin was still a throbbing center of now painful need, and he was exhausted in his body, mind and soul.

Letourne lifted up from the wounds and drew Clay into his arms to kiss him with a bloody mouth. Clay was fully conscious of their intercourse now, but he desired nothing more than to conform to expectations. He raised his right arm to slide his hand into Letourne’s hair while they kissed, and with a sigh of contentment, Letourne sent sweet thoughts to ease the needle stabs of renewed blood flow in the other.

The night was almost over and all was in place – time at last for the game’s denouement.

* * * * * * *

Even coated with blood, Letourne’s mouth tasted so good, Clay could not get enough of his kisses. Why had he ever wanted to fight this? How much better it was to abandon all hope of a certain outcome and embrace one’s destiny in whatever form it appeared. And now that he had done just that, a strange sense of peace had overtaken him. He felt somehow prepared to meet his fate, be it Heaven or Hell, and he wondered if Letourne would bite him again soon, and if it would be the bite that would dispatch him to the next world.

Letourne pulled his mouth away and caressed Clay’s beard. "Yes, mon cher. One more bite to send you to Heaven," he said near Clay’s ear. "But not yet. There is one thing left for us to do, one final test of your faith before you can have God’s forgiveness and be redeemed of all your sins."

Clay turned his face from the demon’s. His heart sank from the weight of his surety. It had to be. What else would make any sense?

Letourne stroked his hair. "Yes, you do know. It is the only punishment that can redeem your soul. But Clay," he said, turning Clay’s face back to meet his earnest gaze, "you must feel the pleasure in it this time."

Clay closed his eyes and breathed in and out slowly, feeling merely hopeless.

Letourne persisted. "Believe me, there is pleasure in it, if done well. I will make you feel the pleasure, I promise you. You have only to trust me and do as I tell you and there will be such ecstasy, you will ride it all the way to Heaven’s gate."

Clay wanted to laugh. This had to be God’s final joke at his expense, though one would think the Almighty could do better than craft such a poor play on words. Perhaps not, however. God had created him, or so the clerics insisted, and he’d turned out to be a poor joke, too.

"You think too little of yourself, mon cher." Letourne continued to stroke him gently. "You have done very well tonight through all the trials I put to you. You have succeeded marvelously, and now there is just this one left. You cannot fail, Clay. Let yourself know the pleasure in that which you fear the most and you will be saved for eternal, Heavenly pleasure in the presence of your God. How difficult can that be when I am here to help you?"

Clay looked into Letourne’s eyes, his question so obvious, there was no need of words to frame it.

"No, mon cher, I may not help you that way," Letourne said with regret in his voice. "You must have full knowledge of what you do, and you must do it willingly, or you will not be forgiven. God is very fond of His gift of free will."

Clay turned again to stare at nothing. He couldn’t do it. Not willingly. Not ever willingly. He would rather go to Hell.

Letourne bent to kiss him and let his hand stray to Clay’s cock. Clay sighed and rolled toward him and pressed Letourne’s hand to rub with more vigor, but the demon drew his hand away abruptly.

"You’re only to have that reward if you pass the final test. Think of it this way, Clay – it is a choice between one time tonight for an eternity in Heaven, or every day in Hell for the rest of time. Which is the lesser sentence?"

Clay rubbed a hand across his mouth and tried to clear the confusion settling in. He frowned and his fingers touched his lower lip suddenly as he realized it was no longer cut, and then his chest and arm, also healed.

"You see? God has given you a miraculous healing. There is a lesson in it – if you succeed at all His tests, you will be made whole again. Come, sit up now," Letourne said, assisting him before rising to stand himself. "I will bathe you while you decide your answer."

Clay watched Letourne with a slight frown. The demon poured water into the washbasin from a kettle off the stove and then gathered soap and towels. Was Letourne truly a creature from Hell? He had to be – he certainly wasn’t human in his strength or habits or even his appearance, though that was a fair enough facsimile. And the teeth ... they were a specialized tool of the demon’s trade. Inspired artists had painted images of Hell that included demons gnawing on sinners. Inspired writers like Dante had portrayed the same. Well, inspired meant filled with the breath of God, didn’t it?

Letourne set the basin and other things on the carpet to the right of him and knelt down behind. "Get up on your knees," the demon directed, assisting him once again.

When Clay had complied, Letourne smoothed his hair aside and kissed his neck and shoulder, scraping the fangs gently over his skin. Clay closed his eyes and cooperated with that as well, wondering how he could feel such arousal even now. Letourne looked like a man and that didn’t seem to matter anymore. The sinners in art and literature experienced horrible pains at their demonic tortures, yet here he was, with a demon that encouraged every possible pleasure and perversion of his flesh, calling it the path to salvation. There were no rules to this situation, or none that he’d learned to follow, at least. He had no choice but to trust Letourne’s guidance.

Unless Letourne was lying....

The demon kissed below his ear. "You can say no to it, Clay," he whispered, "if you wish to take that chance. But let me bathe you first. There is still time to decide."

Clay thought he should not be so malleable, so easily persuaded, but he was simply too tired and too in need of physical release to argue – yet, anyway. As Letourne said, there was still time to decide.

Letourne laid a thick towel on the floor around Clay’s spread knees and reached to the water, preparing the wash cloth without soap to start. He moved close to pull Clay against him while he brought the cloth to Clay’s face and neck and wiped the sweat and remains of blood from them in tender strokes. The other hand lifted a towel to dry his skin right after, careful to prevent a chill. Clay leaned back, letting their bodies touch once he’d felt that Letourne was not in an aroused state, or at least that his cock was soft. Letourne still smelled like the spices he’d tasted earlier ... my God, he’d swallowed that...! No, don’t think about it. It didn’t matter anyway. He would die before the sun rose and it didn’t amount to anything in the larger picture of his sins and transgressions.

Letourne added soap to the cloth and slid it under Clay’s arms, and Clay lifted them slightly to oblige. The demon bent to nibble on his shoulder while drying the same places. At the touch of the fangs, Clay exhaled deeply, feeling bizarrely content. Letourne washed down his arms next, and circling Clay in his own arms, he lingered at Clay’s hands, stroking the cloth over and around each finger and across the palms, repeating the caresses with the towel. Then the demon wet the cloth and squeezed it out and wiped it over Clay’s chest and abdomen, and once again, the towel followed in its wake. All was done with such sensual attention to detail, Clay felt as lulled and pampered as a king.

When his upper body had been bathed, Clay watched Letourne set the cloth over the basin’s edge. The creature dipped his cupped hand in the warm water and what he could capture, he poured over Clay’s pubic hair and aching genitals. The water ran down between Clay’s legs, tickling his scrotum and inner thighs before dripping onto the towel below. The sensation soothed the constant throb and made him shiver.

Letourne scooped the soap into the same hand to dunk it in the water. He brought it to Clay’s groin and rubbed it through the curled black hair until a lather formed. Then Letourne set the soap aside and Clay began to tense in mixed anticipation and dread. The time for a decision was approaching.

"Not yet, mon cher," Letourne murmured in his ear. "I will tell you when you must give me your answer. For now, you can think about this." He used his hand to spread the lather over and around Clay’s cock and testicles. In the process, he stroked and squeezed up and down on Clay’s cock with the aid of the slippery suds, and Clay’s breathing quickened and he drew himself up straighter.

As Clay arched his back, Letourne slid his hand down along the crease where groin met with thigh and then reached under the swollen shaft and weighted sack just barely to touch the place that triggered Clay’s panic.

At once, Clay tightened against the expected invasion and tried to break Letourne’s hold on him, a strangled protest rumbling in his chest. Damn it, he wanted his voice back! He wanted to tell the demon to go back to Hell and take all his promises with him because he’d be damned if he’d let himself be used like this twice. He’d be damned either way, so why not go fighting after all?

Letourne’s arms were immovable, and then there came the mouth on his neck again, melting his strength. Just bite! Just bite and let me die, he thought with utter despair.

"You have nothing to fear, mon cher," Letourne murmured, withdrawing his hand slightly from the point of contention. "It is a small touch, nothing more. A small touch to clean you...."

The hand slipped back between Clay’s legs as the demon whispered his soothing words, and the finger moved over the place again, circling the puckered edges more boldly. Clay tightened that muscle and every other muscle he owned with it, but when the demon went no further, his body began to study the fearful excitement with a keen focus.

The fingertip kept circling and then dipping toward the center, keeping contact no matter how much Clay fidgeted within Letourne’s embrace, no matter how much he tried to escape the stimulation. He’d never allowed this sort of touch in consensual circumstances, even when he was a whole man. It seemed an intrinsically dirty part of the body. But an abundance of nerve endings came alive under Letourne’s relentless caress in a way he’d never before experienced, and it redefined the meaning therein.

A sudden anxiety nauseated him, and a habitual disgust. If this continued to the intended conclusion–

"No, no, mon cher. There is nothing of filth about it," Letourne cooed, intercepting the objection. "You took care of that earlier, remember? And you will be washed and clean for all else in moments now. Just a little more to be done...."

And Clay drew a sharp breath as the finger pushed past the rim to enter him. Eyes wide open, he panted and squirmed on the fingertip probing and massaging, and wrestled with his body’s betrayal, for he could not deny the sensitivity of the area, and the incredible arousal incited by this penetration.

"It’s nothing, mon cher. It’s just a finger. It’s nothing," Letourne whispered into Clay’s ear, kissing gently, warmly, noiselessly, the lobe and behind, hidden by the curls of hair. "It feels good, doesn’t it? You want it inside you. Such a little thing to make you feel so good." He locked Clay in the steel grip of his arms as Clay tried to force the finger out.

His attempts were unsuccessful, and after only a short while, dizziness made him rest. In the quietude, surrender beckoned. Letourne was right. It did feel good – unfamiliar, embarrassing, but exhilarating in the manner that all forbidden pleasures were.

He attempted anew to extricate himself from Letourne’s encompassing grasp, but only half-heartedly now. Each movement, each effort to bear down, caused the finger to go deeper, to impale him on its pleasure, until he wasn’t sure if he meant to expel the digit or hold it in place.

"Yes, my sweet," Letourne said with a hum of approval. The palm of his hand cupped Clay’s testicles and his thumb stroked over them at the same time. "That’s right. That’s how you do it. Push down and you will open up for me. You see how easy it is...."

"No," Clay said with a shake of his head, though his tone failed to convince even himself. He felt as caught as a fish on a hook, but with no real desire to be free. The fact that he had spoken aloud went unnoticed in the midst of his dilemma.

"Yes," Letourne answered. "Tell me yes, Clay. You do want it. It is just a finger, nothing more. Nothing. Tell me yes. You want it to go in all the way. Tell me yes. Do you want me to bite you?"

Clay’s whole body quivered in response to the question. He turned his head to seek Letourne’s mouth.

Letourne kissed his lips quickly. "Tell me, Clay. Do you want me to bite you?"

"Yes," Clay whispered, his heart pounding louder than the volume of his unfettered voice.

* * * * * * *

Letourne rewarded him with a real kiss, letting him touch his tongue to the fangs. He knew Clay could spend an hour making oral love to those fangs alone. He drew his mouth away and said close to Clay’s lips, "You want my teeth in you, Clay?"

Clay reached with his tongue for them again.

Letourne moved his mouth just out of range, but his finger tenderly circled the moist, delicate tissues of Clay’s interior, pressing on the spot closest to the generative organs outside. "Tell me yes, mon cher. Tell me you want my teeth in you. Tell me you want me inside you. Say yes and you shall have your wish."

Clay moaned and frowned and finally nodded. "Yes," he breathed, eyes still closed as he leaned his head back on Letourne’s shoulder and put a hand up to Letourne’s head, drawing it toward his exposed neck.

Letourne let himself be guided, but kissed Clay’s throat with fangs sheathed. When he raised his head again, he removed his hand from Clay’s derriere and quickly set about rinsing and drying the area he’d soaped a minute earlier. No time to waste now.

* * * * * * *

Clay frowned even more at the sudden emptiness he felt as an abandonment. He blinked and swayed on his knees and thought he might pitch forward from the loss of his bearings and the chaos roiling in his mind. He could not want this. He could NOT want this! Could he? How could he, after everything he’d been through...?

He slipped a hand into Letourne’s hair and stroked it while the demon leaned over to finish Clay’s toilette. Letourne looked up and smiled and kissed the palm of Clay’s hand before nipping playfully at his wrist. Just the idea that the creature might draw blood sent blood rushing to Clay’s face and he flushed with excitement.

Letourne tossed the towels to the side, and quicker than Clay’s eye could see, he rose to fetch pillows from the bed and deposited them in front of Clay in a neat stack.

Clay looked at them and flashes of the hay bale pricked his memory.

Letourne knelt before the pillows and raised Clay’s head with a gentle hand. "They are soft, mon cher. The carpet is thick and cushioned. It will be all right to lie here. Come now," he coaxed, leading Clay forward by the wrists to bend and lie over the piled bedding. Clay resisted, fear mounting rapidly.

"The bed is too soft, Clay," Letourne explained further, as if Clay possessed a reasonable mind. "You would sink into it away from me."

Clay glanced around, avoiding the meaning in the demon’s words. "Where are we? What is this–" He stopped and pulled one wrist from Letourne’s grasp to touch fingers to his lips. "I can talk again."

"Yes, you may," Letourne said with a patient smile.

A noise caught Clay’s attention. "It’s raining out," he said, looking toward the windows.

"Yes, it is."

Letourne let go of the other wrist and reached to take hold of Clay’s face with both hands, turning it toward him once more. He closed the small distance between them and kissed Clay on the mouth, until in Clay’s obsession with those teeth, he forgot what had frightened him so.

He lost himself in that kiss as if it were the only reality he would ever again inhabit or require. The creature lowered his hands to grip Clay’s upper arms. His tongue thrust forcefully into Clay’s mouth, and though Clay would rather have toyed with the fangs, he sucked at it with almost as much enthusiasm. He put his hand out to cup Letourne’s cheek, which was as smooth as a girl’s and contrasted with the powerful, masculine style of the demon’s passion. Devil, incubus, male – whatever Letourne’s identity, Clay was past caring. He followed the kiss even as Letourne drew back, positioning him over the pillows, supported on his hands and knees.

Letourne unglued their mouths from each other and they became separate beings again. The pillows whispered at Clay’s abdomen, tantalizing him with their cool caress.

"Willingly, Clay," Letourne reminded him in a soothing tone as he moved to Clay’s side. He wrapped an arm loosely across Clay’s upper chest and shoulders, cradling his head as he brushed Clay’s hair aside. He bent down to kiss the nape of Clay’s neck. "I promise you, it will feel good. Like what I was doing before with my finger, only better. And then I will bite you and take your sins and let you have your body’s release and your soul’s redemption. And you can be pure in Heaven with God and the angels and all the saints, and you will be given only love and never any pain again."

Clay felt a tremor run through him at the demon’s mesmerizing voice, the promises offered, the breath in his hair and on his neck. He swallowed and Letourne directed his shoulders down with a light touch until he dropped to his elbows and his forehead nearly met the carpet. The red, gold and blue fleur-de-lis design loomed in his vision as through a magnifying glass. It skewed his already precarious equilibrium and he closed his eyes to recover his balance.

Letourne moved behind him, but kept a guiding hand on Clay’s neck to ensure he stayed in that position, his buttocks still raised higher by the mound of cushioning beneath his hips.

"Stay on your knees, mon cher. That will give you some control of it when the time arrives."

Clay breathed faster, his panic threatening to return. Now that he could speak at last, he found he had nothing he wished to say.

The demon stroked his back and kissed down his spine. "Have no fear, mon cher," he said when his mouth reached the cleft of Clay’s ass. "Have I lied to you yet?"

* * * * * * *

Clay verged on resistance again, so Letourne made all his motions languid and calm, though his own growing arousal and impulse toward aggression fought containment. A man – a warm-blooded human male – knelt willingly before him with the most beautiful, finely shaped ass he’d seen since ... well, since the mortal Etienne’s, if he were to be honest. Not a single blemish marred the smooth, gold-toned skin. He longed to part the two globes of muscle and plunge deep into the moist, hot, living canal of flesh poised at the ready. But Clay wasn’t truly ready yet, and any hint of violence would shred the delicate illusion Letourne had spun from the cobwebs of Clay’s hopes.

Instead, before Clay could protest, he slid his hands to either side of the divide, and while spreading Clay’s bottom apart to expose the orifice there, he scrolled his tongue along the centerline to meet with it. Clay squirmed and breathed in erratic gasps at the wet, wriggling intimacy, and Letourne knew he was unfamiliar with this sensation. Best to seize that advantage, for there was nothing quite so erotic as a new sexual thrill. He moved his tongue as he had his finger at the beginning, in lazy, teasing circles around the outer ring of muscle, probing at its tightness with a firm tip.

Clay moaned and dropped his head to rest on his forearms, tensing and drawing away every so often in reflex and shame, only to present himself again with obvious eagerness for more. Letourne flicked his tongue lightly over the opening to make Clay alternately contract and relax the sphincter, and unwittingly learn another use for these talents soon to be required. Clay smelled of soap blended with his body’s natural musk, the latter a delightfully male odor in Letourne’s estimation. And despite Clay’s lingering worry, he tasted only of the salty sweat that had accumulated since his makeshift bath. Letourne devoured him as much as possible without blood to drink, licking even down to the ruddy sack hanging taut below. Having thus bribed entrance past the external barrier, he pushed his tongue inside Clay, tickling the passage to the limits of his reach.

Clay moaned louder and more frequently. He flexed his hips, and rocked back and forth on Letourne’s tongue, setting up the motions of intercourse. This was a fortuitous bit of circumstance! Letourne gripped Clay’s buttocks tighter and immediately synchronized his thrusts to the rhythm, broadening his tongue’s width to cause more friction. Luckily, his tongue was as strong as the rest of him, and he’d been complimented on his skill with it, so he was well-equipped to go as long as Clay desired. Luckier still, his saliva could be absorbed through these mucous membranes, too, preparing Clay to crave ever more intense stimulation.

Now, to accustom his mortal lover to something a bit larger....

Letourne pulled back, and Clay relaxed momentarily against the pillows with a quivering sigh, his legs spread frog-like. Retaining his hold nevertheless, Letourne studied Clay’s anatomy with his heightened vampire eyesight. Clay owned a handsome little fundament, puckered as for a kiss, darker in color than the surrounding skin and fringed with traces of coarse hair like the scanty beard of a youth coming of age.

Clay twisted to push at Letourne’s hands in embarrassed self-consciousness now that he had a moment to think. "Stop it!" he said with a frown, as if he hadn’t just been more than delighted to push the same body part at Letourne’s tongue.

"Shh, mon cher. I know what you look like," Letourne said, refusing to be budged. "There are no secrets between us."

But of course, that was the problem. He knew all Clay’s darkest secrets, all the things Jensen had done and said in regard to Clay’s "sweet ass." Those memories swirled at the surface of Clay’s mind like a whirlpool, dragging everything into its centrifuge. Clay stared at him for a few seconds of conflicted desire before exhaling abruptly and turning away in surrender again.

That’s a good, submissive boy, Letourne told him in his mind, and the compliment elicited the same flush of arousal as it had earlier in their revels. Letourne chuckled triumphantly, and to add emphasis, he stroked with his thumb to make sure Clay knew what he was examining. The enforced exposure made Clay shiver and tense his buttocks slightly, but he didn’t try to pull away this time. He simply put his head down and buried his face in his arms, and Letourne knew he had begun to feel his nudity as erotic once more, after so many months trying to hide himself from view. As it should be, Letourne thought with satisfaction.

But Jensen had left his mark on Clay in physical ways as well, and not just in the whip lines on Clay’s back, which were crime enough. Two jagged scars on his bottom told of Jensen’s secret brutality. The guard had ripped Clay just for the fun of it. The very idea suddenly angered Letourne, and he bent to kiss the orifice and give it another lick for good measure, which elicited another sigh of pleasure from its owner, however grudging. Letourne smiled at that, unaccountably happy to show Clay the art of refined coupling to which his beauty and aristocracy entitled him.

On all fours himself, he crawled the few feet to a small table to retrieve a plate of croissants and butter. The generous hotel management had left it as a late night snack for two "weary travelers" – one rather inebriated, as Letourne had explained. He noticed that Clay watched with reluctant understanding as he tossed the bread to the tabletop and came back to set the plate with its ball of butter within reach.

"Did you wish to say something, mon cher?" he inquired. "You did so want that power returned to you." He smiled a little at Clay’s reticence when his mortal lover looked down in response. Letourne stroked Clay’s hair like he would pet a cat. "You are very beautiful, Clay, every part of you. Never feel ashamed. He was wrong. There is nothing of a woman about you."

There would be nothing torn this time either, he thought with some residual anger. The unexpected emotion came attached with a memory of his own – the dirty, calloused fingers of the old monk pinching and poking without mercy, while fetid breath suffocated him with dire pronouncements on his eternal soul. "Spawn of Satan," the bastard would call him. "The very incarnation of evil, to tempt good men to damnable vice!"

Letourne shook his head. Mon Dieu! How could he still remember that tripe after four hundred years? And how had this man become so significant that his pain could call up such ancient history?

He turned his attention back to Clay’s attractive derriere, caressing, nuzzling and nibbling with play bites until Clay moaned and writhed once more.

"You see, mon cher? There is no reason to fear. I will give you only pleasure. Raise up on your knees again now," Letourne said softly as he aided him. "I will use my fingers, and you can move as you did before, to accustom yourself to the feeling."

Clay hesitated, but then obeyed without an argument, and Letourne noted Clay’s trust had grown with his arousal. Pathetic, really, though terribly endearing. A pity he would have to die at the end of the game after all, but it would be foolish to leave him alive now. With his exquisite looks, education, breeding, and above all, emotional turbulence, he’d be too much a temptation, and nothing imperiled a vampire’s existence more than a human who inspired genuine interest.

* * * * * * *

From his peripheral view, Clay glimpsed Letourne dipping two long, manicured fingers into the butter, and his heart raced, leaving his mind to catch up. Butter was an improvement over blood, he thought from a distance. Unless it was the demon’s magical blood....

He flinched as Letourne’s hand spread wide the cleft of his backside, though as the fingers daubed him with the butter, he found himself anticipating the liberties they would surely take with him next. The demon gently worked the softened fat around his anus, oiling him thoroughly. Clay breathed in gasps, an echo of another molestation, but from waves of arousal this time even stronger than what he’d felt just minutes before.

The hand that held him open and so deliciously vulnerable let go of his buttocks and strayed around his hip to fondle his sex, and his arousal instantly doubled. Incredible as it was, he longed for Letourne to penetrate his body, to insert something and open him wider still, to enflame him with rough friction to match at both his cock and his ass.

Clay hoped the creature was reading his mind now, because he was loathe to ask for a desire so base. And it seemed Letourne had done just that, because he slid one finger, and then two, into Clay’s lower passage. He started slow, but as Clay groaned and squirmed, he went further, until Clay himself pushed back against the fingers to the last knuckles. He wanted more. He needed more!

Letourne laughed softly, and Clay knew the demon had read the demand, but it was to no avail now. In a perverse shift, Letourne merely held his fingers in place, not even moving them anymore, or his hand in front either, despite Clay’s frustrated noises and undulations.

"No, my darling, my sweet boy," the demon whispered. "Not so easy as that. You wanted your voice back, so now you must say it aloud. Tell me, Clay. What do you want? The time has come to give me your answer."

Clay gave Letourne a vehement shake of his head. Rather than speak, he grunted in anger, and with stubborn insistence, tried to push back against the unmoving, unmovable fingers, squeezing down with the tough ring of muscle that circled them.

Suddenly, Letourne removed both hands and used them instead to shove Clay to the carpeted floor as he laid fully over him, pinning Clay down, though with hips and ass still raised slightly higher and pressed between the pillows below and Letourne’s groin above. The demon’s sex, smooth as a polished marble column and just as hard, found room for itself along the crevice of Clay’s buttocks and nestled there as if to tease the opening that hungered for its stroke.

Clay breathed faster and tested the limits of his freedom, but Letourne’s strength was unbreakable.

"Tell me, Clay," the demon whispered by his ear. "Tell me what you want. Tell me out loud in words or I cannot give it to you. You must make the choice and ask for it or God will say I forced you. Free will, Clay. God must know you did it willingly."

"No!" Clay said, but it was more an agonized groan than a word. "I can’t. I can’t...."

Letourne put his open mouth to Clay’s neck and pretended to bite. Closing his eyes, Clay groaned louder and would have ejaculated from anticipation alone had it not been for the demon’s exasperating interference. He felt the teeth press harder, nearly puncturing the skin, while the tongue lapped at the area as if blood already flowed.

Clay felt faint from excitement. He panted and his heart pounded so loudly, he heard it in his ears. His neck itched for those teeth to bite and that mouth to suck until no blood remained for his bursting heart to pump. His cock and testicles throbbed with intensity beyond endurance and seemed so enlarged, he would be unable to lift their weight if by some unthinkable chance, Letourne freed him now. At his rear, the demon’s greased flesh rubbed an invitation to join with it, to open and let it enter, and Clay almost cried from the struggle to deny his desire for that union. There were only two real choices left to him. He had to come by any means available or die of this continued torture!

"Tell me, mon cher, and you will have your reward," Letourne offered. "You want me inside you. You want me to bite you. You want to spill your seed here and now on these pillows. Just tell me and I will give you everything."

Clay moaned and whimpered, and a single, barely audible word slipped from his mouth. "Yes," he murmured, desperately hoping vague permission would be enough.

It was not.

"You must speak the words, Clay." Letourne rubbed himself again on Clay’s backside. "You want me inside you. Tell me."

Clay’s last defense crumbled further. "I ... I want you...."

"What do you want from me?"

Clay groaned as an animal in pain. "Please...."

"Tell me," the demon ordered, but even that tone held infinite seduction in it. "You want me inside you. Tell me."

"Yes. Inside," Clay whispered. The wall fell to rubble and released his mindless lust. "I want you inside. Please, just do it! I can’t stand this anymore...."

"All right, mon cher." Letourne laughed and kissed him below his ear. "Even God must believe you now."

And in one graceful sweep of limbs, the demon rose up and lifted Clay by his hips off the floor. The movement was swift, but time seemed abruptly to slow thereafter and took on a languorous pace. Clay floated behind as if cushioned by myriad silk and down pillows. If he’d been placed on his knees again, he didn’t feel the effort of it. He had no control and no sense of what supported him except Letourne’s hands. Those, he felt distinctly as they gripped him with confidence, drawing him toward the act he had foolishly, helplessly begged for.

His legs spread to either side of the demon’s groin and the knob of flesh touched his rear, nuzzled between the cheeks and pushed against his fundament with steady pressure. Briefly, he felt something – someone – else, but as quick as the memory arrived, Letourne brushed it from his mind. Without thought for right or wrong then, Clay opened as the demon had taught him and the head of the rigid organ entered his body.

Clay gasped at the feeling of expansion, and though some part of him expected pain with it, there was instead only the odd, distressing sense that he must defecate. That faded soon, however, and once it did, he found himself wishing he could push back on this invader as he had with the creature’s fingers. The urge was craven and unnatural, and sheer lunacy in respect to his past, he knew, but restlessness made his skin itch for the violent intimacy of rough and abrading strokes, and for the intoxicating burn of the demon’s bite.

"Do it!" he pleaded with long groans of urgency.

"Shh, mon cher," Letourne said, breathing faster, too. "You wouldn’t like it that way. Relax now and trust me to know what you need...."

Clay closed his eyes and released another noisy sigh as the shaft pushed in farther, filling his attention as it filled the empty, expanding space in his body. This was unlike that other intrusion in every way. Waves of pleasure rippled outward from the sphincter each time he tightened and let go, tightened and let go more, allowing more of the demon’s sex to bury itself in him.

How could he want this? And yet he did want it. He needed it to feel complete, to feel ... forgiven.

Letourne held to him until he’d taken in as much as he could accommodate. Letourne decided when that was by his own method of divination. Clay only knew a satiating fullness that made him feel whole, and he had no desire to lose it anytime soon. The demon set him down then to feel the floor beneath his knees, freeing him to move at his own discretion. For a moment, Clay stayed still, afraid that if he twitched a muscle anywhere, it might bring on the pain after all.

Letourne stroked his back gently, and under him as well, running fingertips over nipples and ribs before settling his hands at Clay’s genitals. Clay trembled and his knees weakened, and the demon took his hips in a firm grasp again. "I told you, mon cher, I will give you only pleasure," he said as, very slowly, he pulled back and slid his cock out just a couple of inches, then pushed forward to fill Clay with it again. "There, you see? You are doing very well. Very pleasing ... in the eyes of ... God...."

The creature himself seemed out of breath and barely restrained, but he continued the careful thrusts, repeating several more rounds of them. The sensation grew familiar, until Clay knew to anticipate the little flood of heat released each time Letourne’s cock rubbed over a certain spot inside. That tiny foreshadowing of orgasm encouraged impatience and recklessness. With a deep inhalation, he threw himself back on the piercing sword, determined to impale himself to its hilt.

Letourne groaned now as Clay felt the demon’s pubic hair brush his buttocks. Letourne would not allow him to go farther, but suddenly scooped Clay into his arms and drew him upright. This action was not as careful or as gentle.

Both of them leaned back on their haunches, Clay still enclosing the demon’s sex inside his rectum. Letourne grabbed hold of Clay’s cock. "So, you wish to have control of it, do you?" he said, squeezing on the organ in his hand as he scraped his fangs along Clay’s shoulder.

Clay winced when the points scratched deep enough for blood to well in the grooves. Letourne licked at it the way Clay had seen great, maned lions lick slabs of raw meat at the zoo, with a broad, rough tongue. He breathed faster still and a hot tingling shot through his shoulder, extending down to his chest and nipples. That flush made him shiver and rotate his hips, which added even more to the whole effect as Letourne’s cock rubbed and pulsed against the sensitive place inside him.

"Do you feel me in you, mon cher?" the demon purred, wiggling his own hips and pumping on Clay’s cock more aggressively.

Stimulated from all possible directions, inside and out, frenetic energy seized Clay. He breathed in and lifted up, breathed out and lowered himself again, finding the angle that most aroused that hidden source of lust. Letourne kissed his neck hard and moaned, and the next time Clay lifted and lowered, the demon thrust upward to meet him, not hesitating now to fill Clay to the root.

The pace quickened and Clay grew increasingly forceful, even harsh as he fought to come. Sweat drenched his hair, trickled from his armpits, and sheened his skin from the exertion. Letourne matched him at every twist and turn, every grab and pinch and pull, and sweated, too, though it carried a different scent, the now familiar smell of spices and brandywine. Clay licked it from him wherever his mouth and tongue could reach – Letourne’s arm across his chest, the face burrowing into his neck – and the taste fired his desperation more.

He put an arm up and curved his hand behind Letourne’s head. Though the position was awkward, he crushed the demon’s mouth against his neck as hard as he could manage, feeling the artery there throb at the touch of the fangs on the surface. "Bite!" he ordered, loud and angry and starving to the point of madness for that final penetration, that final release of body and soul. His other hand covered Letourne’s on his penis and gripped with just as much violence.

Kaleidoscopic sensation inundated him.

For one moment, Clay’s entire consciousness went numb, unable to comprehend it. And then he knew it all simultaneously, as an animal might, without words or reason. Just feeling, touch, ecstasy. Heat, burning arousal, blood flowing, cum squirting, arcing onto the pillows without a care, strands of glistening pearls on silk, cum pouring sweet, hot life into him as thick, red life poured out into a ravening mouth. Electric, eternal, quintessential orgasm exploding him into a million blinding sparks of soul, a treasure of pearls and rubies enough to ransom Heaven.

Purity instead of sin, faith instead of fear, rapture instead of rape.

Clay collapsed in exhaustion, suddenly numb and sightless again. Demon Death laid him on soft bedding and kissed his mouth and whispered something in his ear, but he was too far away anymore to hear. The sound of laughter, silvery and light, familiar and loving, called to him from another place. No time to linger in Death’s embrace, comfortable as it was. He had to hurry to catch up or the laughter would be lost to him for another thousand years....

* * * * * * *

"Sir? Are you awake, sir?"

Clay roused slowly to the sound of knocking. Someone was at a door close by, looking for someone else. He turned on a side and pulled the covers over his head. He didn’t care. He needed to sleep....

"Mister Mosby?"

Why would someone be asking for his father here?

"Mister Mosby, it’s eleven o’clock. We brought your breakfast as the instructions said."

Clay jerked from slumber’s arms. Here. Where was "here"? What breakfast? What instructions?

With the drapes closed and his vision narrowed by panic, he could hardly see the room as he felt around for his derringer. He always kept it by the pillow at night, but it wasn’t there. Whose bed was this? Where had he slept?

"Mister Mosby, I’m sorry, but we have to go now. We’ll leave the trays by the door if you want them."

"Wait!" he called out to the unknown solicitor, willing to forsake caution in order to get some answers.

"Sir?"

Whispers, shuffling of feet, china tinking. Edible aromas wafted under the door, and Clay realized he was ferociously hungry. He glanced around and saw a little more. A brass bed, blue and white comforter, sumptuous but impersonal furnishings. A hotel room?

"Come in," he said, trying to sound calm. He sat up and dragged the comforter over his lap.

After some fumbling with the knob and more sounds of dinnerware gently colliding, the door opened. A young quadroon man about seventeen pushed through bearing a loaded silver tray, followed by a smaller boy with a commensurately smaller tray. They tried not to look at Clay as they deposited their burdens. The largest table in the room would only hold one of the trays, so in a rather officious tone, the older boy directed the other to put his, with its coffeepot, croissants and butter, by the bedside.

Clay stared at it, hardly noticing how nervous the boy was as he backed away to rejoin his counterpart. Croissants and butter.... He looked over to the breakfast table, but the only plates there were covered in silver domes, and the smells ... my God, he was hungry!

"The chef prepared everything exactly as you requested, sir, but if you wish anything else, you can ring the bell for service." The older boy indicated a pull cord dangling along the wall by the bed.

"Yes, all right," Clay said, too distracted by the food currently out of his reach to care about his confusion now. He waved them away and rummaged in the bread basket for a croissant. Swiping its corner through the butter, he stuffed his mouth with a bite.

The boys were at the door, the younger one scooting out ahead, when the older one turned to Clay again. "Oh, I’m sorry, sir. I almost forgot to give this to you." He drew an envelope from his pocket and walked back to the bed, handing it to Clay from a respectful distance, eyes averted as if Clay were naked.

Clay frowned as he took the envelope and glanced down at himself, wondering what was so immodest about his appearance. Surely these boys had served breakfast to shirtless men in bed before.

Thankfully, the boy left at last, and Clay threw the covers off to investigate the other dishes, the envelope already forgotten.

The plates were filled to the tops of their domed lids. The largest held meats of all kinds – steak running with red juice, smoked ham glazed with brown sugar, sausage and crisp bacon, fried chicken livers and half a baked squab with dressing. On another plate, eggs in a variety of forms – eggs benedict, an omelette souffle stuffed with oysters and shallots, eggs scrambled and a la creme. Smaller dishes held candied sweet potatoes with pecans, braised asparagus, fresh tomatoes in basil vinaigrette, sliced pineapple, strawberry crepes and whipped cream, rice pudding.

The sheer number of foods was impossible to catalog, no less eat, but Clay craved the bloody steak most of all. He crammed bites into his mouth as fast as he could chew and swallow, and of the rest, tasted everything at least once, washing it all down with café au lait from the pot by the bed.

Somewhere in the middle of this feast, his brain started to function again, posing uneasy questions. He looked around more carefully. His clothes were neatly folded on a chair, boots were polished and standing on the floor next to the door. Nothing seemed amiss. But how had he come to be here? Who brought him? He couldn’t remember checking in or leaving any sort of instructions with the management, and he certainly wouldn’t have requested all this food.

The letter.

He waited till he’d finished eating before going to fetch it, growing palpably more anxious with each step. When he reached it, he sat on the bed and stared at it for a minute in his hands without opening it. Absently, he rubbed his neck, and felt an immediate arousal at the sensation that made him drop his hand away fast.

The last thing he remembered, he was standing on the docks, looking down at the river. He wanted to hurl himself into its filth. He felt he belonged there, floating out to sea with the rest of the sewage.

He had no appetite then, but he was eating this morning like there really was no tomorrow. He’d been taking laudanum for days. He should be insensate, but he could think with clarity at the moment – clarity about everything except what happened the night before.

Clay tore the envelope’s flap with trepidation. The paper he withdrew was stationery of the St. Louis Hotel. So that was one mystery solved. He went on to read the first paragraph. It was written in a formal hand, European by its flourishes.

"Your bill has been paid in full, mon cher," it began. "All debt is forgiven ‘on Earth as it is in Heaven.’ I covered the damages from your ‘illness’ last night. The hotel concierge could afford to be sympathetic. He’s a greedy bastard, however. Don’t let him press you for a gratuity."

The image of a face with an odd smile flashed in his head. "Mon cher." He could hear those words said to him over and over in a solicitous tone, attached to other words muffled by a rising noise in his ears. Clay breathed faster and turned the paper down to stop his eyes from reading more.

There was no salutation. It wasn’t necessarily written to him. Perhaps the boy delivered it to the wrong room. Perhaps it was meant for some other recipient, someone who’d been ill and in need of a friend’s monetary assistance.

The only way to know would be to read the rest of the letter. Clay reluctantly turned it back over.

Oh, God. He did remember some of it now. A demon, an incubus with an appetite for blood had come to him in his dreams to re-enact his fall from grace. It was the same as all such nightmares–

No, that was a lie. Not the same at all. He couldn’t recall all the details, but everything was upside down in this nightmare; nothing was as it should have been. Pain was pleasure and the devil was God’s servant and punishment was heavenly. Nothing made sense. Still, the letter could be for someone else. Its meaning could be entirely innocent, merely regarding the poor fellow’s sickness. What happened to himself was just a dream, and spectral demons did not leave notes behind.

One paragraph left. Clay forced himself to finish it.

Clay wadded the paper and dropped it to the floor. He put his hands over his face, scrunching his eyes closed. Christ. He could hear that voice saying those words. It all matched. The style of speech, the endearments....

The demon’s name had begun with an L. Letourne – that was it. A demon incarnate.

No, there must have been a mistake. The note, even the breakfast, must have been meant for someone else and the staff got it mixed up somehow. The letter could have been written by anyone to a relative or friend, expressing concern and consideration for the sick man’s recuperation and well-being. It was simply a coincidence that it aligned with his own hellish dreams.

Yes, that had to be the explanation. To think anything else was insanity.

Clay took a deep breath and got up to wash his face and hands in the basin, anxious to be dressed and out of the hotel as soon as possible. He pulled the drapes open to get more light and suddenly squinted at the pain in his eyes. Quickly, he drew the drapes closed once more before the stabbing could grow into a headache. When he could open his eyes again, he caught sight of himself in the shaving mirror on the washstand and stared in shock.

No wonder the kitchen boys had behaved so strangely around him. He looked strange. Not ill exactly, but not completely well either. His skin was ghostly pale. His eyes were clear and so intense, they made even himself uncomfortable in their gaze. The irises seemed enhanced, with the centers a deeper gold and the outer rings a darker brown. But the most shocking of all were the marks on his neck and left breast, and as he examined the rest of his body, he saw more telltale signs of them near his left armpit, inside his thigh, and on his sex. Each marking consisted of one or two round, red scars, and some were faded more than others. The ones on his neck, however, were the most striking because a purplish bruise surrounded them.

The demon in his dream had bitten him on the neck last, when both of them were ... what?

Clay steadied himself with both hands as he leaned against the marble-topped commode. Sensations flitted through his body, teasing his memories awake with feathery strokes. A particular throbbing between his legs was most familiar, except this was arousing where the other was excruciating.

Something had happened during the night, and if his dreams weren’t real, then something akin to them was.

Clay sank into a nearby chair as he backtracked again. He’d been at the docks, that much he was certain. Had he blacked out from the laudanum? It was a good possibility. He’d done it before, though he usually waited till he was at home to ingest enough for anesthesia. If he had fallen unconscious at the wharves or anywhere near them, rats or mosquitos might have caused the bite wounds, or he could have been attacked by thugs who beat and scratched him while searching his clothes for hidden money.

It could explain everything, even the hotel. Religious do-gooders combed that area of the city, bent on saving men’s souls by ministering to their drunk, sick and damaged bodies. Perhaps some wealthy man had found him and decided to rehabilitate him, put him back on the path he’d strayed from. His own clothes would have indicated his background and could have led such a savior to assume he’d be more comfortable at the St. Louis Hotel than in the dives by the river.

Once here, the dreams were his delirium twisting the kind stranger’s sermons into images of punishment tailored to his crimes. Of course. It all made perfect sense.

Isn’t that what the demon said? The Samaritan might have said those very words about Clay’s obvious moral impoverishment. Who knows what he might have raved on about in a fever? He had only a vague notion as it was about the nightmares. His mind clouded over when he tried to recall their particulars, as if the hand of a faith healer touched his forehead and erased the disturbing memories for his comfort.

The statement appeared in the void. Clay put a hand to his mouth and chewed on his index finger, frowning as he concentrated. Could that have happened in some way? Was the man who had cared for him a true healer?

One thing he did know, and it was another way in which these dreams had been different – this time, he was not a passive victim. He was free to make choices and act on them. This time, he fought back against the demonic torment, and successfully, too, it seemed, because he wasn’t plagued by the usual sense of defeat he always dragged with him from that etheric battlefield.

Whoever said it – demon or evangelist – it was true. Even if it was just a figment of his over-heated brain, God help him, it was true. When he thought of Mary and his parents and all the men under his command who died because of his failures, he didn’t feel the furnace blast of their condemnation anymore. When he thought of Jensen, he didn’t feel that cold fear. Not like he had in the prison camp, always thinking it could be done to him again, always terrified of that pain and humiliation. Always ashamed.

He retrieved the wadded note and smoothed it out to reread the first part.

Could that be true, too, then? It seemed absurd to think so. Delusional, even. But if he had to live a lie, as he’d been doing since that fateful day in the barn, this was certainly the preferable one. Why not believe it? What did he have left to lose that he hadn’t lost already?

A loud answer filled his mind. He snorted in disdain and looked upward with a sarcastic crook to his mouth. "Just ‘cause You have my attention now, don’t think I’m going to be an easy convert," he said, his anger at the Deity still as strong as ever. A single night of preaching, no matter how divinely-empowered, wasn’t going to change that. Nevertheless, he couldn’t deny the message.

Robert and Olivia.

His trusted friend – no, trusted brother – and his concerned and selfless cousin. He hadn’t lost them. Through all the nightmares, waking and asleep, his own and those he’d inflicted on others, he’d never lost Robert’s love nor Olivia’s devotion. Perhaps it was time he did something for them in return.

Clay breathed deeply for a minute, blessedly free of his habitual rumination and more at ease than he could remember being in years. Standing, he took the note to the table, lit a match to it and dropped it to burn inside one of the plate lids. He went back to the window then and peeked out. The light didn’t hurt his eyes as badly anymore. He opened the drapes halfway and set about to bathe, noticing the bruise at his neck had shrunk already. The marks and other effects would disappear by evening at this rate.

A miraculous healing. Yes, that was the only possible explanation.

Colleen J. MacLennan
cjmac444@earthlink.net
4/29/02