by Hunter, Kiran; Gregory, Elin; La Roche, Tristram; Hartsock, Dianne; George, Reneé
“Yes.” Matthew smiled. “Good.” He leaned forward, his hands caressing Travis's chest. He bit his right nipple, tugging at the small bud with his teeth. “You know, I wasn't much more than a boy as well, the first time I saw you.” He took the other nipple into his mouth, sucking hard and tickling the tip with his tongue. “Your mother wouldn't let you come out to play.” He stared up at Travis as he licked the line between his nipples up to his Adam's apple and over his chin. He placed a kiss on Travis's lips. “I really wanted you to come out and play. I'm so glad you finally made it.”
Travis stared wide-eyed, willing his hard-on to go away, but the damn thing wanted this, wanted Matthew, even if his brain was screaming at him. His self-preservation mechanism was apparently broken. Matthew was probably just fucking with him. This was a haunted house after all. He was trying to scare him. It was working. “You're freaking me out.”
“You used to look out the window and watch the other kids all dressed in costumes going house to house for candy.” Matthew began to stroke him as he kissed down Travis's jawline. “Did you envy them?”
“Yes.” The word came out as a whisper.
Matthew moved to Travis's back. “Lean forward.”
“I can't.” Travis tugged on his restraints.
“Yes, you can,” Matthew said. He placed his palm on Travis's back and pressed him forward.
Travis blinked, then noticed the ground moved beneath him. It wriggled and bulged and had somehow come alive. The shackles holding his wrists released and two hands stretched up from the floor and took their place.
“This can't be fucking real.”
Matthew's soft, wet tongue licked his anus once, then darted in and out.
“It doesn't get much more real.” Matthew pushed Travis's ass cheeks further apart, his tongue rimming and stretching the tight circular muscle. Travis sighed with pleasure, his eyes rolling backward as Matthew's tongue slipped inside, filling him deep as it widened inside like a cock. It felt utterly fantastic, but he wanted the real thing: Matthew's cock thrusting inside him, his hips smashing against Travis's ass as Matthew claimed him.
Travis's balls pulled tight against his body and he moaned, low and quiet. The tip of his cock slid along the floor as Matthew continued to thrust into him. The floor beneath him began to move again. He canted his head so he could look down his chest. The floor formed a hole, then lips, then teeth, and tongue—but red, like everything else, like the hands holding his wrists. The newly formed mouth took his entire length to his balls, and he screamed. Pleasure rocked his entire body while Matthew continued to tongue-fuck him and this crazy illusion sucked him. “Oh, fuck. Fuck. I want you in me, Matthew. Please, please. I can't take much more.”
Matthew drew himself up and over Travis, his long graceful arms wrapping around Travis's waist. In one quick motion he plunged his cock inside him.
“Matthew,” Travis cried out as Matthew took his pleasure without mercy, his shaft sliding in and out, nearly too big for Travis's body to take. Big enough that he felt a small pain with every forward thrust, just the right amount of pain. He screamed again, his body on the brink of orgasm, being sucked and fucked, so hard, and everything so tight.
“Not yet.” Matthew shouted as if to make himself heard over the roar of rushing blood in Travis's ears. “Don't give your seed to the house.” He slapped a palm onto the floor of the room and the undulating faux-mouth let go of Travis. Matthew turned him over. The hands restraining Travis withdrew their hold.
Matthew slowed his pace, stroking his cock inside Travis. “You feel so good. I could stay like this forever. Me in you.”
“Matthew,” Travis said, breathing his name. “I want this… Want you. Want you so bad.”
Lying on top of Travis now, Matthew blinked, his expression hungry and passionate. “I want you to be mine, Travis Boyd.” He reached his arm around Travis and pulled him up. “I want to face you. I want to see your face when you come for me. I want you to see mine. To see how much I truly desire you.” He pulled out, gently.
Travis's body protested. He'd never felt so empty, so incomplete.
Matthew crawled around until he was in front of Travis. He sat down, his erection jutting, begging to be mounted. “Come here.” He gestured to his lap. “I want to see those beautiful eyes, and kiss those luscious lips as I fuck you.”
Travis vibrated with yearning desire and his ass demanded to be filled. He moved cat-like to Matthew, straddling him without a second thought. His stomach fluttered when the hard cock pressed against his crack. “I need you in me,” he whispered.
“I need to be in you.”
Staring into those magical green eyes, Travis readied himself and guided the tip of Matthew's cock back inside him. He shifted his weight and took the first inch into him. From that position, it felt like he was being stretched impossibly wide, but after a few seconds, the discomfort was replaced by pure pleasure as the sizable cock hit a pleasure nerve that sent pre-come oozing from the head of his cock. A ravenous gasp of delight choked from his throat, sounding wild and animalistic. “Oh, holy mother—” He settled down, taking Matthew's entire shaft into his channel. It wasn’t enough. He needed to feel every inch of it gliding inside him. He raised up slightly, then back down, carefully stroking the shaft with his ass.
Matthew smoothed Travis's hair away from his eyes. “How does it feel?” he asked breathlessly.
“It feels…” Travis exhaled sharply as Matthew shoved his hips upward, driving his cock deeper, “…like nothing will ever compare.”
He already knew nothing ever would.
A surge of triumph pulsed through Matthew as Travis surrendered to him. He leaned forward, taking Travis's mouth with his, plunging his tongue between his lovely, damp lips. He'd wanted to cry out when his cock had penetrated the first snug ring of Travis's anus, entering with a pop that could be felt, if not heard. He didn’t want to share him…ever. The incredible heat from his sleek canal enveloped Matthew’s cock and sent warmth through his entire body. Now, as he lunged upward, the channel squeezed and massaged him in a smooth dragging motion. He rocked his hips forward and back, driving his shaft in and out.
“Oh God,” Travis groaned against his lips.
God had nothing to do with it, Matthew wanted to say. He’d never felt so possessive of a conquest before. Then again, Travis wasn’t just any conquest. He was the ultimate prize.
“I can still taste you, Travis Boyd,” Matthew said fiercely. He bent forward and gently bit Travis's nipple, making him cry out. “I can feel you squeezing my shaft, pulling it deeper and tighter within you.”
“Fuck me.” Travis's mouth went slack with desire. “Fuck me hard and make me come again.”
Matthew shoved Travis backward, needing leverage to thrust.
Travis braced with his forearms as Matthew moved over the top of him, lifting a thigh to his shoulder. In the new position, Travis looked up at Matthew with dreamy half-closed lids. “Faster. Harder.”
Matthew obliged with a plunging assault. A sudden rush of blood gathered red-hot in his groin, and his balls tightened upward. The pressure on his engorged cock, ready to explode, nearly sent him over the edge. He fisted Travis's cock and stroked it in time with his thrusts, paying careful attention from the head to its base.
Travis sucked in a staccato breath and blew it out with a wail of euphoric rapture. His back bowed. Matthew rammed him deeper. Come spurted between them, as Travis shuddered and groaned with pleasure. Unable to hold back, Matthew pumped faster, coming hard inside Travis.
The spasms faded to a dull twitch, and his cock thrummed with a sweet ache. Matthew waited to withdraw until he softened slightly. Afterward, he laid Travis on the floor, carefully licking his cock and his stomach, cleaning him completely.
In that moment he knew he couldn’t keep Travis. It wouldn’t be right. Not for Travis. There’d been a reason he’d protected him from the house, and it was more than just his jealous need to keep the human for his ow
n.
Travis had been everything that Matthew had hoped for and even sweeter in his love than Matthew could imagine. He had wanted Travis to choose him over the world he lived in, and Travis had, but now, at the point of decision, of choice, he couldn't allow Travis to give everything away just for him.
Matthew gazed at him, mesmerized by the young man's innocence and beauty. He'd watched Travis grow, only a boy himself when he first saw him. Travis's mother had been smart—she’d put out wards of iron and steel each year, and maybe Matthew would have taken him to his world without a second thought had he been given the chance then. He'd been an impulsive imp. But over the last three years, with three conversations in a coffee shop, Matthew had come to know what it meant to love someone more than himself.
He tried to put all of that emotion into his words. “You are fantastic, Travis Boyd,” he said, suddenly nervous. “Better than I could have dreamed.”
Travis didn't know how to react. What could he say? He barely knew Matthew, yet there was something about him that made Travis go out on a night that he had never ventured out on for anyone. The attraction was physical, but more than just lust.
Something in Matthew's eyes frightened him. Matthew looked away quickly, as if something in Travis had seen farther into his soul than he had expected. The startling vulnerability quickened Travis's pulse. Matthew seemed so confident and put together. What could he possibly see in Travis?
“I'm ordinary,” Travis blurted.
“You're special,” Matthew replied, his voice almost shy. “You give me a reason, Travis Boyd.”
“Reason for what?”
Matthew turned his head sideways in a strange gesture. “To come back every year. To cross the divide.”
Travis's mouth tugged up at the corner. “The great divide, huh? Like somewhere between here and Texas?”
“Further, if you can believe it.”
“New York?” Travis didn't think Matthew sounded like he was from Texas or New York, but he wanted to know where Matthew lived.
“I come from a place that you couldn't imagine in your wildest dreams, Travis Boyd.” Flexing his hands, Matthew took a deep breath, and when he exhaled, the scent of spice filled the air again. “I can't do this. Not with you.” His green eyes darkened like a forest on the back edge of dawn, but brilliant bits of gold danced around like stars dropping from the sky. “I do want you, beautiful boy. I really do.”
The unnatural, yet beautiful dance transfixed Travis as he tried to make sense of the contradictory words. It was moments before he realized that he was no longer in the Red Room. Travis was dressed again and, for that matter, so was Matthew.
Samhain's Spiral
Matthew's wrapped his sinewy arms around Travis and pressed him into another kiss. His mouth melted against Travis's lips, joining them sweetly with a tenderness Travis had never found with anyone else.
“It's time to go, Travis Boyd. The haunted tour is over now.” He gestured to a line of people moving toward an opening in the wall. “It's just one step into the rest of your life.”
There was a finality in Matthew's voice that scared Travis more than anything that had happened in the haunted house. “I don't want to leave you. I'm not ready for this to end.”
“I'd love to keep you, but it wouldn't be fair. Where I go when the night is over, you could never come back from.”
“But we could be together?” It was a question.
“Yes.” Matthew smiled sadly. “Forever. Never to age. Never to know illness or hunger or want of fleshly delights, but you would also never see your family again, or your friends, or any of this place. You'd be giving up the world.” He spread his arms for emphasis.
“But I'd get you.”
“You already have me.” He ushered Travis to the exit. “Now go home, Travis.”
“You chose me.”
“Yes, I chose you for my own.”
“What if I choose you?”
As they moved closer the cutout, Travis could see the top of a slide. Screams came from the hole as each customer plunged down the thrilling spiral, which sounded like a long way to the bottom. He'd read on the website that the exit was a six-story spiral slide—a major adrenaline rush to finish off the haunted tour. He wasn't ready to be finished. He would never be finished with Matthew.
“Just go, Travis. Please.”
Travis couldn’t understand the pain in Matthew's eyes, his mouth pursed and ready for the argument. He shook his head. “Next year, then. Promise me you'll be back.”
A light of a smile touched Matthew's eyes. “You'll have moved on by then.”
“The hell I will.”
Matthew nodded and kissed him lightly. “Then next year.”
The walls of the spiraling slide rushed past Travis as he sped to the ground floor, his mind set on Matthew. Too sad to be afraid anymore. He would wait the year. He would do that for Matthew. Matthew had waited for him.
Out on the street, the homeless-looking man approached him. “They almost got you. Some folks never escape. I've watched them come and I've watched them go, but some…they never come out again. Keep protection boy, if you want to save your sweet ass.” He pulled out a pair of scissors and snipped at the air.
“What do you mean?”
“They are the faery folk, kid. They only come out on this night. It's the one night of the year that the spirits of the supernatural can cross over to our world. They take sacrifices with them every year. If you allow the other world to take from you, then you are doomed to it forever. I felt sure you'd be one of the many taken, the way that elf was trolling you on the street. You got lucky, son.”
“Lucky?” Travis hugged his torso and rubbed his shoulder to ward off the sudden chill. He'd wanted more than anything to stay with Matthew. The fact that he was something other than human gave him pause, but he knew without a doubt that he'd been loved tonight, and it wasn't just sex. Fear tightened in his throat, and it wasn't the kind of fear of a man who'd just escaped. It was the fear of man who might not ever be captured again.
He looked back at the haunted house as dawn broke on the horizon. The people had faded, the building emptied of noise and activity. He ran to the front door, now closed and bolted shut. He pounded his fist against the metal barrier, begging for Matthew to let him in. No answer came. The place was deserted.
Travis pulled his jacket tight around his waist and neck. He wouldn't forget Matthew, or forget his promise. “No,” he said gazing at the raggedy man down the street. “I didn't get lucky. Not this year. But next year…I'm counting on it.”
Costumes
Dianne Hartsock
“Oh my God, Paul! You gotta see this.”
Paul chuckled to himself and smiled fondly. He lowered his lashes, thinking of Bennie’s creativity in bed that morning. It took all his effort not to moan aloud as he recalled his lover’s lips on his body, sliding over his dick—
“Paul?”
Paul had trouble tearing his eyes away from the stained glass window in the door. Such a strange door, set in the middle of the west wall of the attic, leading nowhere as far as he could tell. He tried the handle again. Locked. But unless there was a balcony he hadn’t noticed from the outside, one would step through it right into empty space.
He glanced across the room, through the dust motes, and caught his breath in sudden alarm. Sunlight streamed through the old glass of the window and splashed color over Bennie’s face: yellow, green, blue, with a slash of blood red across his tender throat.
Paul drew a troubled breath. “What is it, hon?”
Bennie waved him over, and the movement centered the splash of red over his heart. “Come see what’s in this trunk! Our old Halloween costumes.”
Paul swallowed the lump in his throat. He was being silly. The reflected light didn’t mean anything. Just because Bennie’s aunt had died in the house… He didn’t believe in ghosts. No fucking way. Still, he hurried to Bennie’s side and slipped an arm around his waist.
<
br /> “Which ones?” he asked, looking down into the musty trunk.
“All of them, as far as I can tell.” Bennie started pulling out wigs and hats and scarves, a pirate shirt and a werewolf mask. “Remember this one?” he asked and giggled as he held up a pink tutu.
“Oh god, yes. I thought your father was going to have a seizure. What were we, ten?” Paul rubbed the frilly skirt between his fingers. He’d grown up in the house next to the Ramseys, and he and Bennie were as close as brothers. Closer, when at fourteen they discovered it was more fun to sleep in the same bed than separately.
Bennie flashed him a look, light blue eyes dancing with mischief. Paul’s heartbeat quickened. Bennie’s hair fell in reddish-blond ringlets around his pale face. A few freckles brushed his checks, and Paul bent his head and licked them. He’d teased Bennie as a child that he’d wash them away one day with his tongue. One night, in Paul’s room, Bennie had shown him where his other freckles were. Now he could never taste these without wanting the others.
Bennie quirked a brow. “Think it will still fit me?”
Paul’s hungry gaze traveled the slender body of his lover. “You’ve filled out some,” he murmured, purposefully lingering on the provocative bulge in Bennie’s snug jeans.
Pretty color tinged Bennie’s cheeks. “Let’s find out.” He pulled his T-shirt over his head, wiggled out of his pants, and tied the tutu around his hips.
Paul chuckled and tilted his head. “Your underwear’s showing.”
Bennie looked at the blue cotton peeking from under the edge of the pink fluff. “Easily fixed,” he said and slipped off the boxers. Paul sucked in a breath. Bennie had grown in the past nine years, and the tutu stopped shy of covering his balls.
“Fuck,” Paul whispered, his dick instantly hard. He reached to cup Bennie’s luscious sac, but his darling skipped out of reach, laughing over his shoulder as he fled across the room. He did several surprisingly good pirouettes along the way, and Paul growled and started after him at the flash of his delicious ass. Bennie struck a casual pose against an old dresser, but nibbled his lip, a sure sign he was just as aroused.