Gloves and Teeth in the Night

It was a good thing that Mr. Stevens wanted to lie on his back with eighteen-year-old pub lad, Mark, straddling and riding him in the little room above the Exeter, England, pub, the Black Fist. Stevens was of such heavy weight that he’d crush the young man from on top. Conscious of his weight and the rolls of fat regardless of the vegetable seller’s otherwise good musculature, Stevens liked to remain fully clothed other than the baring of his prodigious-sized cock, but he liked Mark to be naked as the man fondled and tested him with his hands and bounced him up and down on his cock.

Stevens was a regular in the New North Road pub near Exeter Cathedral that Mark’s uncle, Henry, who had given Mark a home and a job after the youth’s parents had died, owned and managed. And he was nearly as regular a customer of Mark’s upstairs from the pub room, where Mark did as bid by his uncle to earn his keep. Mark was a comely and small-for-his age young man, with a mop of blond hair, fetching blue eyes, and a smiling disposition. He had become a favorite of men with a certain fetish and was content with the lot life had dealt him. And it was a certain type of pairing that the Black Fist pub was known to cater to.

Mr. Stevens owned and operated the vegetable shop several doors away from the flower shop Mark’s aunt, Agatha, operated on West Street. Mark helped out in the shop by day. That was where he had attracted the attention and interest of the vegetable seller, who had listened to gossip about the young man and had tracked him down to the Black Fist pub.

Having complete his half hour riding Mr. Stevens and seeing the satisfied man off, cleaned up with the bowl of water and towel at the dresser in the small room, and dressed, Mark descended to the pub to fulfill his duties of cleaning up after the patrons and helping to deliver the ale.

When he set a tankard of ale down in front of a single patron, sitting by the fireplace at the table reserved for the gentry, which was known as the lord’s table, a black-leather-gloved hand, the material silky and the fingers elegantly long, gripped the young man’s wrist and held Mark there ever so briefly at the table before releasing the hand.

Surprised, Mark looked down into the eyes of the well-formed foxy-looking man in midlife. His attention focused on the man’s dark, flashing eyes for the first time. The man was handsome in a way, although the intensity of his look and a certain mix of sensuality and cruelty in his aspect made Mark shudder. The man was dark, his hair—and his eyes—jet black and, beyond the black-leather gloves, he was dressed all in black, the material expensive and silky looking, and a black cape flowed down from his shoulders. He quite clearly was a man of the dark and the night. He had snuffed out the candles on the walls near where he sat, which had put him into the shadows.

The man didn’t say anything before releasing Mark, but the young man trembled at the feeling of being stripped bare and possessed. As he moved about the room, cleaning tables and serving patrons, Mark couldn’t help feeling he was being possessed, and, indeed, whenever he took a glance at the lord’s table, the man in black’s eyes were locked on him, watching and assessing his every move. If the man in black could have been said to have been smiling, it wasn’t a friendly one—and it didn’t rise all of the way to his eyes.

Mark’s reaction was contradictory. He felt both attracted to and repelled by the attention. He thus was relieved when his uncle called him forth to go fetch something from the family cottage on West Street over near his aunt’s flower shop.

* * * *

Long elegant fingers in soft black-leather gloves, gliding over my body, stroking and fondling. Everywhere. I’m cold, so cold, lying on my back on rough marble. Naked. I know not how or why I am unclothed and lying under a man—other than that, at eighteen, I do lie with men when they wish it and have the money to pay for it. A man—or something manlike—hovering over me. Me naked, he covered in black, rich, silky black. The branches of trees in the night above the lustfully leering face. The face of a fox, of a man fox. Familiar, but I don’t know in what way—my head is in a swirl. Too much ale or something.

Long, elegant fingers in soft black-leather gloves, gliding over my naked body, stroking and fondling. Testing and squeezing. Most men covering me will do it and have done. This one is taking his time, his pleasure showing to be more than cock in hole, release, and leave.

“Yes, yes,” I murmur, my body betraying my desire, as I raise my pelvis to his centering fingers, stroking, pressing in, my rocking pelvis going with the rhythm of his penetration. He is just testing, teasing at this point, withdrawing the fingers and gliding them over the muscles and other crevices of my trembling body. He knows that I will yield to him, that he can have me. He knows I want him inside me.

How have I become naked in the woods—no, not the woods, a cemetery? Cold, but from the marble under my back, not from the wind through the trees in the cemetery. The man’s black cloak, billowing, moving rhythmically with the breeze and with the movement of his body on mine, covering us both, blocking out the stronger wind. Saint Bartholomew’s Cemetery. That’s where I am, where I was walking beside before . . . this.

Head in a muddle. So weak, so weak. I try to move my hands, but find they are bound at the wrist by leather, my arms over my head. He is kissing my lips and cheeks and throat, moving down to my chest, my belly, licking and nipping. This is far more attention to my body than the men I go with upstairs in the pub give. They have me for a half hour. It is as if this man will have me forever. Humming in low tones. A gloved hand between my thighs, gliding up.

Oh, fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. The gloved hands coaxing my thighs apart, bending my spread legs, placing my felt-booted feet flat on the marble. This is it. He is preparing me to be inside me. I yield to him in everything.

The soft-leather gloved hands squeezing and separating my mounds, coaxing me to push up with my feet and elevate my pelvis to his desire. Experienced in the positions of approach of men preparing to penetrate, I comply. I am not a virgin to penetration, at eighteen. There is nothing in that that is making this strange and exotic—fearfully and yet compelling. Men do fuck me. I do take their cocks inside me and ride them to a seeding.

Do it and get it over with. It’s cold and creepy out here.

Gloved fingers at my hole. Not his cock, not yet his cock. Soft leather gloved fingers in my hole. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Kissing and nipping back up my body. Foxy face pressed into my throat. I feel the sting of the bite, the low whooshing sensation of the suck, the slow onset of lethargy and lightheadedness. Writhing, but as if I were underwater, struggling ineffectually against the hand at my hole. Howling into night as the black-leather-gloved hand penetrates, violates, stretches, fills, possesses, flexes, starts to move inside me. His whole fist inside me, moving in and out, in and out. Slight pain at the throat where I am bitten and being sucked. Greater pain inside, below as I am fucked by the gloved hand.

Sinking into lethargic pleasure, fully possessed by the fist, I rock on the hand, fucking myself on the fist.

“Yes, yes, yes,” I murmur in betrayal of my want and desire.

The hand withdraws and he repositions his still-clothed body between my thighs. His cock is out, though, and he enters me, thick, long, throbbing. I spread my thighs wider and lift my pelvis to his deep penetration. He begins to pump, the kiss of his teeth not losing their sucking grip at my throat. A cadence is set in the sucking of the mouth and the thrusting of the cock, and I move in synchronization, going with the dance of the suck and fuck. I am moving, languidly with his use of my body. Floating. Floating away. Relaxing into the ether. Losing all care. As I relax, I flow into him. And, with jerks and sighs, he flows inside me—releasing again, and again . . . and again.

I black out and when I come back in—only partially, in a drunken stupor, I am now stretched on top of the marble tomb—and know it to be that now—on my belly, the monster saddled on my hips, still possessing me with his reengorging, filling and stretching cock, rising and falling on me, his black cape billowing about our bodies. My wrists are free, but dangling, uselessly in my stupor over the sides of the raised tomb. The leather that bound my wrists now is a many-stranded hand whip. The whip is rising and falling, short lashes on my back and buttocks as the monster fucks me. When he stops, it is to lick the blood off the lashed welts and to lean down into me and latch onto my throat with his sucking teeth again.

A sound and the glint of a lantern on the cemetery walkway, and I suddenly am alone, lying on my belly, naked, on the raised marble tomb. With a groan I roll off the tomb on the other side from where I see the lantern swinging and the watchman whistling.

Next I know, I am huddled, clutching my clothing at the base of the cemetery wall, on Exe Street. Panting, too weak to move for the moment. Throat sore, ass channel on fire. Head in a muddle. Weak, weak, weak.

Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. I feel so weak, and alone, and violated, and . . . elated and so much . . . inexplicably . . . alive and at one with nature and the universe.

I mourn the loss of the moving shaft inside me.

* * * *

“Where have you been? Where is the keg opener I sent you to the cottage to fetch? Couldn’t find it? I swear, Mark, that you couldn’t find your arse to wipe it if you had to. Speaking of which, Brother Adrian is waiting for you in the room. You’re late for that. Well, get you up the stairs now. The monk’s patronage is right steady. Don’t keep him waiting.”

Mark had entered the Black Fist pub, named for a figure locally called the Black Knight, who fought at the nearby Battle of Bovey Heath in 1646, in a haze, barely able to put one foot in front of the other. He was not yet much aware where he was and why he was gone, but if his uncle and guardian, Henry, was saying he was supposed to fetch another keg opener from the family cottage, he at least knew why he’d been out. At eighteen, Mark was the evening cleanup lad and the one do everything no one else wanted to do lad for the family pub on the New North Road in Exeter, England, just around the corner and a walk down Exe Street along the Bartholomew Cemetery wall and over on West Street, where the family cottage was and where his aunt, Agatha, owned a flower shop where the lad worked in the day.

The lad’s other duties at the Black Fist—and why he saw evening service here—dealt with “the room” that his uncle, Henry, was sending him up the stairs toward now without waiting to hear an explanation on where the lad had been at such length of time without returning with the keg opener he was sent for. There were store rooms and an office and even two guest rooms to let by the night on the second floor of the pub. But “the room” was a small one and it was Mark, a beautiful, almost effeminate, blond and blue-eyed eighteen-year-old lad, who was rented out in “the room” at “by the half-hour” rates.

When Mark got to the room, he found Brother Adrian, a Benedictine monk from the Buckfast Abbey to the southwest of Exeter, waiting for him. The abbey’s monks, famous for their beekeeping and honey, were more worldly than most, and Brother Adrian, with a fetish for older teenage lads, and for Mark, in particular, was more worldly than most of the abbey monks. The two had initially become acquainted at a fair in the town when Brother Adrian brought honey to the market. Mark had expressed interest in how the honey was produced and Brother Adrian had taken him aside and explained the whole process to Mark. Mark had become fascinated with beekeeping, and Brother Adrian had become fascinated with Mark, had tracked the lad down to the Black Fist, and had discovered what could be had from the lad for few coins for a half hour. Brother Adrien had come from a wealthy family and he had the necessary coins.

When Mark reached the room, the monk was sitting on a wooden chair by the three-quarters bed in the small room. He was perched, naked, on his carefully folded black habit, and keeping himself erect by slow stroking his shaft and thinking sensual thoughts of what he had thought he’d already be doing with Mark. The monk, a young hard worker in the abbey’s enterprises, and fair of face, was strong and well-developed of body. Given the men Mark lay under, Brother Adrian was a pleasure to serve.

He was so intent on keeping himself erect to make the most of the half hour that he didn’t initially notice how listless the lad appeared to be. There was a minimum of kissing and fondling as he stood and pulled the lad’s small, slender body into his, got the lad stripped down, and then turned over onto his belly on the bed. Brother Adrian quickly was immersed in folding his body over that of Mark’s, mounting him from above and behind, getting his cock sheathed, fully possessing and stretching the lad’s sweet channel, and taking the two of them to heaven on earth.

Pleased with the partnering, Mark melded his body to that of the monk and, digging his knees into the surface of the bed to provide leverage, he rocked on the monk’s buried shaft, moving in the rhythm of the fuck, albeit not as active or into the cadence tonight as well as he usually was with the monk.

Placing the palm of one hand on Mark’s belly to hold him close into the fuck and stroking him off with the other hand, Brother Adrian buried his face in the hollow of the young man’s throat and whispered words of endearment as he kissed Mark there, marking this fuck as more one of affection and tenderness than what Mark usually experienced in this room. Mark sighed for him, raising one arm and burying his finger in the thick, unruly hair at the back of the monk’s head and palming one of the monk’s undulating buttocks cheeks with the other. The fuck continued in a slow, steady rhythm.

It was only when he picked Mark up and moved over to the chair, sitting on his habit, putting the lad in his lap, facing him, and pulling Mark on and off his cock, as the lad lethargically helped a bit by placing his feet on the wall behind the chair and using the leverage of those to rock on the shaft, that Brother Adrian realized the lad wasn’t entirely “there.”

It was obvious then that, though willing—Mark was fond of Brother Adrian, one of the few young, fit men who availed themselves of the lad’s sexual services—Mark seemed to be near exhaustion and mentally just not there with the fuck in the usual ability he had to sustain a mood.

Brother Adrian stopped fucking and embraced the lad close. The welfare of the lad mattered more to the monk than the getting himself off did. “What ails you, Mark?” the monk murmured. “You are so distant and pale. Are you ill, lad?”

“I don’t know. It all seems a haze,” Mark said. “I have been somewhere and done something, but I can’t remember what it was. I do feel weak and like I am somewhere else. My ears are buzzing and I am sore—no, no, you are fine. I have no trouble taking you in me.”

That registered with the monk. The young man had recently been with a man who was thicker than Brother Adrian was—thick enough to tax a young male whore. The monk had a cock to be proud off, thus, the lad must have been covered by a monster, Adrian surmised.

“I must admit, I noticed,” Brother Adrian said. “I did not wish to pry or seem to make a claim that is not mine, but it does seem that you have been with an overbuilt man. Did you lie under another man before coming to me just now?”

“I . . . don’t know. I don’t remember,” Mark said. “I think so, yes.” And then he seemed to be so concerned about not being fully aware of what had happened to him earlier in the night that Brother Adrian did not press him further on the question. It was a fact, regardless of the feelings he had for Mark that included, but went beyond, sex, that Mark was pimped by his uncle and went with men as required of him. In this time and age, Brother Adrian did not judge or question the uncle’s right to use Mark in this way. Perhaps, though, the uncle had the answer to the riddle of what monstrous man Mark had been with.

Mark shuddered. “What is it, lad?” Brother Adrian asked. But, although there was a glimmer of images of a marble slab, a black-clad foxy man, black-leather gloves, a fist moving inside him, a hand whip, and testing sex, none of the images were coming together to be anything more for sure than high-heat dreams.

“It’s no matter. We will manage,” Brother Adrian said, and, pulling the lad off his cock and reaching down to frot their shafts together, Brother Adrian slow stroked them both to release. It was only then, when post-fuck he was gliding his hands over the beautiful little body as it reposed on his lap, that Brother Adrian’s hands found the red welts on the lad’s back.

“What is it? You have been misused. You have been whipped. Not hard, but enough to raise welts and some rivulets of blood. What has happened to you? Has your uncle been punishing you?”

Brother Adrian could not do anything openly if the uncle was misusing the young man to this extent, but there were subtle ways he could use to rein the man in.

“No, no. He never would. I have only now realized it and felt any pain . . . now that you have touched it. My uncle has never punished me so. I don’t think he would. He is gruff, but he isn’t violent. It was . . . I don’t know who it was. I can’t remember who it was—where I’ve been this evening—what I have been doing.”

Mark was reduced to sobs, and, sliding a hand into the habit underneath them, Brother Adrian came up with a small packet of salve. The Benedictine monks were healers and they never left the abbey without a small supply of folk medicines, which they made from herbs grown in their own gardens.

“Here, let me put some calming ointment on your back and then we will put you to bed here. You must rest. I am most concerned about your paleness and your not being able to remember what you have been doing. I have seen this in this area before, and it is very disturbing.”

Mark didn’t object, and after Brother Adrian put him to bed, he came down the stairs. He sought the innkeeper, Henry, out, not only to pay him for the time with the lad but also to tell him that Mark was ill and that, yes, he would be fine in the morning, but that Brother Adrian had given him a sleeping potion so he should not have any more men visit him that night. It wasn’t true about the sleeping potion, but Brother Adrian knew that Mark would be of little pleasurable use to another man on top of him and fucking him that night anyway—although he knew there were men who thought only of releasing their own seed and would fuck the unconscious to achieve that, if need be.

That isn’t all that he spoke to Henry about, though. “Your nephew was badly used before he was with me.” That had to be said primarily to protect Brother Adrian when and if Henry saw the welts, but, in any event, Brother Adrian was fond enough of the lad to pursue the matter. If the uncle chose to beat the nephew, that was no business of the monk’s.

“Badly used? What do you mean? He has been with no other man tonight but you.”

“He has been whipped. Lightly, but he is a tender lad. It has raised welts and let some blood. I have applied a soothing ointment. I can assure you it wasn’t me who did that.”

“I do believe you, but it twasn’t me neither,” Henry said, aware of where suspicion would lie if it wasn’t the monk—and surely it wouldn’t have been the monk. There was no evidence the monk had anything with him to whip the lad with, and Brother Adrien had always seemed to be a calm sort. “I sent him home to fetch me a keg opener. The one here broke. But he were gone a long time, and he came back without what I’d sent him to fetch.”

“Perhaps he was drugged and misused why he was gone then. He was acting with lethargy just now. Was there anyone eyeing him in the pub before he left?” Brother Adrian asked.

“There be several men who eye him—whenever he moves about the pub. Ones who use him and ones who wished they could. It’s good for business.” There was going to be no stopping of the uncle using Mark as bait to bring randy men with an appetite for young male whores into the pub, and both Henry and Brother Adrian knew there wouldn’t be.

“Anyone in this evening who wasn’t a regular?”

Henry thought. “Aye, I thought it a bit strange that the likes of him came into the likes of this pub. He were quiet and I sat him over at the lord’s table by the fire, seeing a how he is a lord, not that he does much lording around these parts.”

“Who?” Brother Adrian pressed.

“Florean LaCore, from Compton Hall. All dressed out in black and caped, very mysterious and foxy looking that one be. I saw him snuff out the candles on the wall there. He wanted to be in the dark. Dark be a good term to use for him, from what I saw. If there be a man of darkness that would be Lord Florean.”

“Florean LaCore,” Brother Adrian said, and shuddered. He’d heard stories about the LaCore family and how reclusive they were and how there always was and had been a Florean LaCore lurking around. Surely what he had heard rumored couldn’t be true, he reasoned. And yet . . .

“And this man in black—this man named LaCore,” Brother Adrian asked. “Did he remain on at the pub after your nephew was sent off on his errand?”

“No, I think not,” Henry said after a moment of contemplation. “I do not remember seeing the man here, by the fireplace, after Mark left. Of course he made it so dark and he was all in black. It would have been easy for him to be there yet not noticed. I believe that is how he wanted it to be.”

Brother Adrian gave another little shudder, and he clutched the cross on the chain around his neck tightly. “If he comes in here again and shows any interest in Mark, please send word to me immediately,” Brother Adrian said. He already had paid Henry for the use of his nephew, but the flash of another silver coin gave him some expectation that the old man would do as he asked.

* * * *

I went to the door of the flower shop to open it for Aunt Agatha, who was carrying an altar arrangement to Mint Methodist Church, a good fifteen-minute walk away, when I noticed a black, closed carriage sitting idle across West Street from the shop. It was somewhat disconcerting because everything about the carriage, horse, and coachman was so brooding of aspect in contrast to the bustle on the busy shop-lined street. The carriage was black, as was the horse. The coachman, tall, gaunt, morose in appearance, almost cadaverous, was all in black as well. He himself was a black man, which was a rare sight in this section of the city, and the expression on his face was blank.

No sooner had I withdrawn into the shop, where I now was alone, than the bell over the door sounded and a man dressed all in black, with cape and black-leather gloves, entered the shop. He was a foxy-looking man, although handsome, well formed, and elegantly attired. He was familiar to me, but I could not readily place where and when I had seen him before. His age was indeterminant, but I could not gauge him to be quickly approaching thirty-five. His smile was somewhat icy and his eyes pierced me, immediately putting me in a strange mood in which I felt a little frightened, but also somewhat excited and aroused while feeling my body slow down into a lethargy in movement and thought.

I continued to be possessed with the thought that the man seemed familiar to me. I fancied I’d seen him before and had sensations of being both repelled and drawn to him. I felt a sense of both danger and inevitable attraction.

He fixed me with his eyes and said, “I am Florean LaCore from Compton Hall. I will be putting on a ball in two weeks’ time and I wish to order an abundance of greenery and flowers to decorate the halls of my house for the occasion. I wish someone to come with me to look at the halls that need decorated and to start making a plan.”

“You just missed the proprietress,” I said. “Mrs. Agatha is delivering an arrangement to a church nearby. She will be back within the half hour, I’m sure, and will be able to attend to your needs. If you would wish to wait—”

“I have no time to dally in waiting on her and it is you I wish to come with me. Come, my carriage is just across the road.”

I have no idea why he had an appeal to and control over me, but I did not question the situation or his motives. Under the steely stare of his mesmerizing eyes, I merely took off the apron I was wearing and accompanied him from the shop and across the street to the waiting black carriage, with its black horse and morose black-skinned coachman dressed in black. Casting his eyes about to ascertain if anyone was observing us, the man placed a black-gloved hand on my buttocks to guide me across the street and hand me up into the shadowy interior of the carriage, and I neither objected to nor shied away from his touch.

When a man placed his hand on my buttocks, I took it as a sure sign that he intended to get his cock inside me. When this man did it, I felt a little thrill of both anxiety and anticipation. I was conditioned to go with a man easily. I knew I would go with this one more easily than with most. I turned my gaze to look into his eyes as he handed me into the carriage and saw the inevitability there of his ownership and control over me.

Once the carriage was leaving the city by the Honiton Road and headed east into the countryside, the man—Florean LaCore—whose visage almost disappeared into the darkness of the interior as he sat across from me in the carriage, murmured, “Such a lovely young lad. An angel. Come here. Come across and sit by me.” His black-leather gloved hands were moving in the little light that came in from the carriage window. They were beckoning me to come across and sit beside him—and more.

I did go across, feeling compelled and not knowing why I so docilely did as the man bid other than knowing I would yield to him in anything he demanded of me.

From the moment he had handed me into the carriage I had felt a tingling at my throat and a stirring in my loins—and a slight remembrance floating into my awareness—cold marble; elegant, long fingers encased in soft, black leather; a sense of stretch and filling and being fully possessed by another man in my gut. The sensations were both frightening and compelling. And the hazy remembrance of being so possessed flowed over me and I began to pant and moan deep in my throat as I moved across the shadowy space in the carriage and black-leather gloved hands reached out and drew me to the man’s side—and more.

There was no preliminary seduction. It was as if the man knew I would succumb to his carnal possession, need, and desire. As I was drawn into the seat beside him, he twisted toward me, moving me under him, and covering us both with his black, silky cape. His lips were on mine, and his gloved hands moved over my body, unbuttoning and pulling material away. And I yielded to his touch and disrobing, until, within a moment’s time, I lay naked and lightly panting under him with his clothed body, other than his quickly revealed prodigious erection—all in black—hovering over me and his black cloak covering us both in the shadowy interior of the moving carriage. He placed my hand on his throbbing shaft, instructing me to leave it there and to lightly stroke him, and I did as he demanded.

I did not struggle against him. It was as if he’d fully possessed and controlled me from some earlier coupling—and something in the back of my mind, memories swirling up only to recede again before I could fully grasp them, kept assuring me that I belonged to him to serve his passion. I was his to do as he liked with me. I did not fight him as him positioned my limbs, my legs spread and bent, my hand slowly stroking his engorging member, leaving me open and vulnerable to the gliding and fondling of his gloved hands as he touched and stroked my inner thighs, my cock, my balls, and my anal entrance, which opened to his desire.

“Quickly, quickly,” I murmured. “Put it in quickly. Possess me fully.” If he heard me, he did not react. He was moving on his own track. I was nothing to him but a morsel to enjoy as he would.

His lips left mine and moved down my cheeks, onto my throat, and I felt the prick of his teeth and experienced the sensation of a rhythmic flow from within me that brought the memory of an earlier sensation to my consciousness. I felt a sense of calm and well-being and relaxed into his embrace, moving my hand from his shaft and palming his shoulder blades to hold him to me as he fed, my fingers pressing and released into his silk-swathed shoulders in the cadence of his suck. I turned my head to the side, offering my throat fully to his need and desire.

“Yes, yes, yes,” I murmured, vaguely realizing we had been here before—that he owned me.

The pleasure of his attentions didn’t leave me when I felt his gloved fingers at my hole and I moaned as he entered me with his fingers, working up to his knuckles. We had been here before. I was both resigned and eager to be there again. He was going to move his gloved fist inside me. I groaned as he did so, but now it was with more pleasure, a greater sense of relaxation, a greater sense of opening to the needs of his gloved hand as he penetrated me with his fist. I spread my thighs wide and elevated my pelvis to his possession.

He, my master, fed on me at my throat and fucked me with the fist. I melded into his body, becoming one with him. I panted and groaned and rocked on the fist and focused on the flow of my life’s blood from me to him at my throat, feeling myself becoming increasingly lightheaded and floating into the swirling mists of the ether.

Extracting the fist, and without loosening his tooth-hold at my throat, he moved into position over me, taking my hand again to do the guiding of his cock to my entrance. I put him into position and jutted my hips forward, impaling myself on his thick, throbbing cock with pain-passion, grasping his buttocks and pulling him into me—grasping his shaft with the muscles of my channel walls as he slid deeper, undulating my passage muscles over the cock, making love to it, fully accepting him as my master and savior, as he set into the steady rhythm of the fuck and I settled into rocking with the cadence.

“Take me master. I am yours,” I murmured. He began to hum low in his throat as he fed and fucked, fucked and fed.

After plowing me at the core and feeding of me at the throat for what seemed to be a glorious eternity, he turned me on my belly, mounted and penetrated me from above and behind, dove deep, and fucked me. With a sucking sound, he withdrew from my throat and rose above me, still riding my tail, and the striking of the whip on my back and arms and buttocks began. As he rode me and lashed me, he leaned down to tongue up the rivulets of blood being raised on my back by the whip.

This was not a new sensation for me either. I had experienced this before, but now it was more arousing than before. I was more in tune with it now, murmuring—murmuring because my energy was leaving me and I was rising up into the clouds—“Yes, yes. Use me. Use me up fully. Take me to heaven. Let me melt into you.”

He was going to suck me dry, beat me to death, transfer my youth and vitality to himself, kill me in my existence on this earth. And I didn’t care. He was my master, to use me, at his will—to use me up for his need and his pleasure. I would die in glorious release.

But he paused in his taking, which ignited a spark of resistance in me still, and, surprising LaCore, I rolled out from underneath him, turned to the carriage door, and had it open and was nearly outside the carriage, when LaCore grabbed me, pulled me back into the darkness, put me under him again, mounted my ass, and resumed the fuck and lashing.

Apparently pleased by my weak, ineffectual attempt at resistance, Florean LaCore laughed as he fucked and whipped me, his laughter broken off, though, as he realized that the carriage had stopped, well short of its destination. The interior was flooded with light, causing LaCore to shrink from the sudden glare, as the carriage door was jerked open and strong, ungloved hands seized me from underneath the black-clad figure, pulling me into the light, and doing the only thing possible to make the vampire shrink into the depths of the carriage.

* * * *

Brother Adrian had arrived at the mouth of West Street and drawn up short when he’d seen a black, closed carriage disappearing down the street. He feared that it looked like one Florean LaCore owned. The monk had been stewing about how disoriented Mark had been the previous day and what little he could say about the possible encounter he had had with Florean LaCore, and he had come to the flower shop Mark’s aunt operated and where Mark worked during the day to ensure that the young man was safe and well. Adrian had heard rumors about the lord of the manor at Compton Hall, of his proclivities, which Brother Adrian couldn’t fault him on—to a point. But LaCore was said to be sadistic in his appetites. There also were the rumors of young men having gone missing over the centuries in this region. That was usually written off to the lads leaving for the greater opportunities of the larger cities, but what was notable was how few of these young men had ever returned or reestablished any sort of contact with their families in Devon.

He thought he could identify the carriage and its cadaverous coachman, dressed all in black, as belonging to Florean LaCore, so he drew up to the outdoor display of vegetables at a shop a few doors down from the florist shop to ponder what he should do. As he stood there, Mr. Stevens, the vegetable shop owner appeared and asked him why he looked concerned.

“I was coming to visit Mark, who works in the flower shop over there, and—”

“The lad is not there,” Stevens said. “I just saw him being coaxed into the black carriage in the distance.”

“Coaxed?” Brother Adrian asked.

“Aye,” Stevens said. “He went willing enough, but it seemed the gentleman guiding him was being more than a bit familiar with the lad, not that the young man is averse to such attention, as I well know. A very mysterious gentleman he were too. He kept looking around like he didn’t like being seen doing whatever he was doing. He was elegantly dressed, black gloves and all, but he was all in black. A bit sinister, if you ask me. But Mark is what he is, going with men willingly, so I was not alarmed.”

Stevens, in fact, had been disturbed and more than a bit jealous at what he’d seen of Mark being guided into the carriage. LaCore had a hand on the lad’s buttocks in guiding him, and Mark wasn’t resisting. Mark was also giving it to someone other than Stevens, so, if the man was going to be misusing the lad, that was of little concern to Stevens.

Brother Adrian could see that the carriage was headed east, most likely taking the Honiton Road. Thanking Mr. Stevens for the information, he mounted his horse and followed the carriage at a distance. It, indeed, took the Honiton Road east out of the city, and, after leaving that road, it headed south on almost-deserted lanes toward the remote Compton Hall.

In a wild patch of wood, almost in sight of Compton Hall off in the distance, Brother Adrian received the horrific confirmation he had hoped not to be the truth. One of the carriage doors opened, and Mark, naked, and appearing to be almost comatose, leaned out of the carriage as if trying to escape. Black-gloved hands reached out, grabbed him, pulled him back in the carriage, and snapped the carriage door shut.

Brother Adrian increased the speed of his horse and narrowed the distance to the carriage. He rode up to beside the black carriage horse and slowed the animal to a halt. Both the horse and the coachman seemed to be in a drugged suspension and just came to a halt and remained where they were, docile, without resistance or animation.

Slipping off his horse, Brother Adrian came around to the carriage door and pulled it open. As he was afraid, what he saw was the pale flesh of the lad, Mark, under an undulating black cape. The black-clad figure on top of the lad was leaning over Mark, riding the lad’s hips from behind and on top. One black-leather-gloved hand was clutching the lad’s neck, holding his head down on the carriage seat, and the other was welding a hand whip.

The demon—clearly Florean LaCore, his mouth dribbling blood; Mark’s blood—turned an angry eye to the carriage door. Seeing the monk, he lashed out in that direction with the whip, only to rear back in surprise and fear as Brother Adrian flung the door wider to let the light enter the carriage, and lifted the cross on the chain around his neck. This gave Brother Adrian the opportunity he needed to pull Mark out from underneath the vampire’s clutches; to retreat, carrying Mark, to his horse; and to pound off back in the direction of Exeter.

Stopping at a nearby village church where Brother Adrian knew a clothing closet was maintained for the poor, the monk outfitted a slowly recovering Mark with sufficient clothing to withstand a journey to the other side of Exeter.

“What now?” Mark asked, Brother Adrian having explained to him what and who Florean LaCore was and what the man wanted from Mark. “I can’t go back to my life at the pub and florist shop, can I? Won’t the man just come back for me again?”

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do about the likes of Florean LaCore. You, however, can disappear,” Brother Adrian said. “You have shown interest in beekeeping and that’s what we do at the Buckfast Abbey. You also, unless I am mistaken, are agreeable to be with me. You could come there with me, well away from the eyes and search of Florean LaCore, and be with me at the Buckfast Abbey.”

“Then that’s surely what I’ll do,” the miraculously saved pub lad responded, with a grateful smile. But then a serious look set on the young man’s face. “But what can we do about Lord Florean?”

“Probably nothing but stay out of his way,” Brother Adrian answered in regret. “His kind has always been with us, and it probably will remain so, his kind lurking around in the shadows, dominating and feeding through the ages where weakness permits them to do so.”