Pain Slut

by J. A. Rock

  I turned around and kissed him. Hard.

  He dropped my jacket and wrapped his arms around me, and we staggered through his kitchen, kissing furiously and moaning like we were already in midfuck. A pile of mail fell from his counter as he put a hand out to brace us. We turned, and my head banged against a cabinet. Turned again, and this time I had him pinned against the counter edge. I plunged my hand down the back of his pants and grabbed his ass. He made a sharp, frantic sound and rubbed his groin against mine.

  He picked me up and practically threw me onto the island. The wooden fruit bowl plummeted. A banana splatted on the tile, and plums rolled everywhere. He tugged my fly down. I managed to get two of his shirt buttons undone before I just started yanking on the shirt. It didn’t rip open quite as elegantly as I would have liked. He had to help me, and together we tore it off his body. His chest was pale and already slick with sweat. Light hair between his pecs; a tattoo of a bird on his right biceps. I kissed down his torso and then up again. Pulled his head down so I could reach his lips.

  He tugged my pants off while I tossed my cardigan aside. I sat there for a moment with my cock poking out of my boxers, staring at the lines of his chest, his almost delicate collarbones. I wanted to make him scream.

  I slid off the counter. We started kissing again. We hit the fridge, and magnets clattered to the floor. He reached for my cock, making this deep, satisfied noise, like he’d been waiting all night just to feel my dick. He jerked my boxers down to my thighs and turned me around, kneading and rubbing my bare ass as he bent me over the counter.

  Oh God. Yes. Please.

  I let my boxers fall and then stepped out of them. Spread my legs and let him touch anywhere he wanted.

  I heard him start to take his pants off, and I spun to help him. Once he was naked, I made him take a step back so I could look.

  God damn.

  He had the longest pale thighs, lean and muscular. His cock was long too, and rising steadily. His balls were large and pink, the right one hanging heavier than the left. There was a dusting of gold hair on his inner thighs and around the base of his shaft. His hips were narrow, but his ass was round and taut.

  “Fuck,” I whispered.

  “Good ‘fuck’?” He sounded shy.

  I stepped forward. Dug my fingers into his shoulders and kissed him, searching with my tongue for the points of his teeth. I grinned when I found them—pushed so hard against them they almost drew blood. He seemed surprised for a moment, and then he raked his nails down my back, and I let out a hiss of utter pleasure.

  “You like that?” he murmured against my lips.

  I nodded.

  His hand cracked hard across my ass, and I jolted onto my toes. His hair was coming loose from the ponytail, strands of it sticking to the sweat on both our faces. He pulled back, gasping and gulping. “Condoms . . . in the bathroom.”

  We tried to keep kissing as we headed toward the bathroom, but we tripped and ended up on the floor in a heap. After that it was a Crawl of Champions down the front hall, both of us on all fours, stopping occasionally to grab each other and kiss or scratch or bite. When we reached the bathroom, he grabbed the condoms from under the sink. “You or me?”

  “You.”

  He put the condom on.

  I slammed the toilet lid down and climbed on it, on my knees. Braced myself on the tank and pushed my hips back until my ass was spread. I felt filthy, in a way I hadn’t in years—maybe ever.

  “Go for it,” I whispered. “Hard as you can.”

  His breath was in my ear, his teeth skimming my jaw. “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.”

  “I mean it.”

  I heard the click of the lube bottle opening. I clutched the tank. Tried to spread myself wider.

  He smacked my hole, then stuck his slick fingers in. I moaned and rocked the toilet tank and tried not to clench as he finger-fucked me fast and hard.

  “Oh God,” I said between gasps. “Okay, okay. Oh God.”

  He withdrew his fingers and then tried to push his cock in. I closed my eyes, my breath catching as he made another unsuccessful attempt. He stopped trying to get it in and ran it up and down my crack a few times.

  What happened to ‘hard as you can’?

  “I’m too tall,” he whispered with a laugh. “Over the sink.”

  I laughed too and stood, stumbling over to the sink. He caught me and bent me over with one hand between my shoulders. The other hand guided his cock in. He stretched me, creating a hundred frissons of pain. I was so tight, and the edge of the counter dug into my stomach, a constant ache. He started to thrust, slowly at first, and then faster, so that I cried out with each stab of his cock.

  My knees bashed the doors of the cabinets under the sink, and the crack of his hand on my thigh was like a gunshot in the small room. Some of his thrusts lifted my feet off the floor, made me kick and grunt. I flattened my spine and pushed back against him, sticking my ass as far out as it would go. I let my socked feet slip farther and farther apart on the tile until I was spread so wide my thighs hurt. He had to bend his knees to stay inside me. He started his thrusts down in a half crouch and lifted me up with each one, impaling me on his dick.

  All the while his teeth were on my neck, teasing the damp skin there with gentle nips. He licked a bead of sweat that was rolling between my shoulder blades, and I trembled with pleasure.

  “Hurt me,” I whispered. “Please.”

  I almost never said that to vanillas—it tended to stress them out. But Drix immediately buried his nails in one shoulder and his teeth in the other, like he was trying to rip me apart. His cock hit some place so deep inside me that I nearly screamed, and he grabbed my chin and pulled my head back toward him so he could bite my jawbone. His teeth sank deeper and deeper until I cried out. He let me go and grabbed my wrists, forcing my arms out in front of me, until my hands touched the mirror. He was tall enough that he could lean over me, his chest against my back, keeping my wrists in that iron grip.

  Bang, bang, bang, bang . . .

  My knees hit the cabinets. My ass felt ready to split in two. He reached around and jacked my cock until I came in his hand.

  Then he kept fucking me.

  I didn’t know if he had amazing self-control or if he just wasn’t getting there. But no matter how many times I clenched around his cock, he stayed hard, and he continued thrusting. Until I was limp and every breath was an effort. I watched through the mirror as he slammed his hips against my ass, arched his neck, and shuddered. That alone almost got me hard again.

  He fell forward slowly, running his lips along my spine while I panted into the sink. He traced my hips with his thumbs and slowly pulled out. I heard the condom drop into the trash. He helped me up and tugged me against him. I glanced in the mirror. We stood there back to front, our chests heaving, his long, pale arms wrapped around me. My ass and knees still throbbed, and my wrists were bruised, but my mind was quiet.

  Slowly he rested his chin on the top of my head. He closed his eyes, a slight smile on his face.

  I felt like I’d slipped into the skin of a younger me. Like there was something I wanted out of sex that went beyond pain, beyond orgasm. And if I just stayed here, with this man, maybe I’d understand what it was.

  Later, we lay in his bedroom in the dark. He’d said I looked too tired to drive home, and as much as I preferred my bed to a stranger’s, I hadn’t protested.

  “I haven’t done it like that in a while,” I said softly. My head was on his shoulder, and I was having a hard time concentrating on anything beyond that point of contact.

  “That rough?” he asked.

  “Well . . . I often do it in ways that hurt.” I couldn’t believe I was telling him this.

  He glanced down at me. Stroked my cheek with one finger. “Yeah?”

  I looked up. “I’m pretty kinky.”

  In my experience, when dealing with a vanilla I was hoping to have sex with multiple times, it was best to get this co
nfession out of the way pretty early. Then reassure the guy that I could still have “normal sex,” but that if he wanted to try anything wild, I was amenable.

  He continued stroking my cheek, fingers moving lower until they brushed the sore spots his teeth had left along my jaw. I closed my eyes. Nothing but this moment and that touch.

  “Really?” he said at last.

  I opened my eyes. “I mean, like, a real masochist.” I waited for the horror, but it never came.

  “Interesting. So you’re into—into S&M?”

  “BDSM, yes. Or I guess I prefer the term ‘kink.’”

  He nodded. “Because . . .?”

  “Because it’s broader.” I paused, sitting up. “You’re not freaked out? You know I mean, like—whipping and knives and blood . . .”

  Stop there. Why would you say that? Why?

  He shook his head, smiling. “I guess, then, I should make a confession too.”

  What?

  I waited, irrationally hoping his confession was that he was a professional dominant who specialized in knife play. He opened his mouth, but he didn’t speak. His gaze flicked away.

  “It’s all right,” I urged him. “Unless you’ve killed somebody, it can’t be worse than my ‘I like knives in my sex.’”

  He nodded as though considering this. Then he took a deep breath. “I’m a vampire.”

  “What?” I assumed I had misheard.

  “I mean, not a real one, of course. They don’t exist. But I’m a part of the vampire subculture. So I’m a vampyre with a y.”

  He kept saying the word “vampire,” and it was troubling me. “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, ah . . .” He propped up on one elbow. The sheet fell away from his body, and my gaze traveled immediately to the tattoo of the bird. “There are people in the world who believe they share traits with vampires—the mythological creatures. We call ourselves vampyres. With a y,” he clarified again.

  This was not happening.

  Everything started falling into place. “The . . . the teeth?”

  “I got them filed last year.”

  Of course. He got them filed. As you do.

  When you’re batshit crazy.

  “And the tattoo?”

  “It’s the mark of my coven, the Dark Ravens.”

  I gaped for a moment. “As opposed to all those albino ravens?” I said it more sardonically than I’d intended.

  He laughed. “I know, right?”

  I’d just had sex with a vampire.

  Vampyre.

  No. Don’t indulge him.

  I needed to get out of here.

  “And it’s funny you should mention masochism,” he went on. “I’m not a—whatever the BDSM term for it is. A dominant. But I am known in the vampyre community for . . . Well, I like to see blood. And I like the ways people react to pain. Like causing the pain.”

  I froze. “You’re a sadist?”

  He smiled with one side of his mouth, revealing a pointed tooth. “You could say that.”

  Be still my beating, motherfucking heart. A sadist.

  For the most part, doms who identified as sadists weren’t true sadists. Just as most masochists weren’t true masochists. Because sadism and masochism were technically disorders. I had played once, years ago, with a man whose sadism had been incredibly real—and incredibly pervasive. Inflicting pain was what he thought about when he got up in the morning, while he brushed his teeth, while he stocked shelves at the One Stop Mart. Our affair had been exciting. Terrifying. Short-lived.

  Drix nudged my leg with his under the covers. “You look a little shocked.”

  “This is just . . . a surprise. So what do you do as a vampyre? Drink blood?”

  “I don’t need blood. I enjoy blood play, but I actually get my nourishment by feeding directly on a person’s prana, or life force.”

  “Oh.” I tried to nod.

  Sadist, sadist, sadist, went my brain.

  But also: Adult man pretending to be a vampire.

  “It sounds really parasitic, but it’s not. In return, I give them some of my own prana. And I only feed on beings with really powerful life forces.”

  It was useless to try to respond to that. I rubbed my temples. “Can we just take a step back for a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  “How did you get into all this?”

  “I suppose I always knew, to an extent. I’m a klavasi, though. I wasn’t awakened until after puberty.” He grinned, sinking back against the pillow. “I know it all sounds weird. I don’t tell many people, but I figure since you also live an alternative lifestyle, you’d understand.”

  No. I understood people using pain to help them get off. I did not understand grown men pretending to feed on people’s life forces.

  He ran a finger over my shoulder. In spite of myself, heat rushed to my groin, and I had to shift so he wouldn’t feel my cock rising again. I tried to banish an image of him piercing me with his teeth, drawing blood, making me cry out as I came . . .

  Nope. Nope, nope. Nope.

  End it now. Go home. There will be other sadists, and they will not be vampyres.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I should go,” I told him, getting up.

  “Hey. Miles?”

  “I’m sorry, I just . . . sleep better in my own bed.”

  He was sitting up now, but I didn’t look at him.

  I went downstairs to get my clothes. Dressed in his dark kitchen among the spilled plums and splattered banana.

  Then I left.

  A few years ago, my friends and I had been at the mall, in the bookstore. And on an impulse we’d each bought a copy of some About Me journal that asked dozens of extremely personal questions. We’d agreed to fill them out, and then I’d agreed to be the one who would keep them all—“I won’t read them; I promise”—for ten years, so that we could read them a decade later and see how we’d changed.

  We’d filled them out together one evening, sitting around Dave’s kitchen table, drinking beer and laughing at the questions.

  I’d gotten stuck on What’s your darkest secret?

  I’d thought about it for a while. Started to write: I don’t have dark secrets.

  Then I considered writing something about my masochism, like I don’t always know if my thing for pain is healthy.

  Finally I’d written about this awful game I’d played once with Malina when I was nine and she was almost four. She and I were walking to the park down the street. She had trouble keeping up. I walked faster and faster, until she asked me to slow down. Then I’d told her I was going to leave her there. That our parents didn’t want her anymore, and that I was going to leave her too.

  I’d wanted to make her cry, and when she did, I immediately went to her and comforted her. Told her that everyone loved her and that I was never going to leave her.

  I didn’t understand at the time what I’d been trying to do. But when I look back now, I think I just really wanted to comfort someone. But I needed them to need my comfort. I liked that exchange—bringing someone to the point where they thought the world was ending, and then telling them everything would be all right. Cruel, I know. And I’d felt guilty about it for years afterward, even though Malina said she didn’t remember it at all.

  I’d even talked to the guidance counselor about it in high school. Ms. Warren told me it was totally normal for siblings to do rotten things to each other. She said she’d once duct-taped her little sister to the side of the house. But I couldn’t stop feeling guilty. The older I got, the harder it hit me how especially unforgivable it was to tell an adopted kid her family didn’t want her. And even now, I worried that streak of cruelty was still in me, and that it would make me a bad parent, a bad friend, a bad person.

  So that was my dark secret. Worse than the TENS unit in the closet.

  I’d read the others’ answers. I had a terrible nosy streak, but I wasn’t like Dave, who was very open about his inability to keep other peopl
e’s secrets or to stop himself from snooping. People trusted me because I was the mature one, the one who seemed to have willpower. And I hated myself a little for not actually being that trustworthy.

  Kamen’s darkest secret had been that he’d once put a cucumber up his butt. David’s had read: I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. Ha-ha, Miles, I know you’re reading this. Okay, so maybe people didn’t actually trust me. Gould’s was that he’d once played the police sergeant in a Hebrew school production of The Pirates of Penzance. Did any of them even know what a dark secret was? I’d been hoping for secrets worse than mine. I’d been hoping each of them had hurt somebody, but that they’d all been forgiven and had moved on with their lives. And that would be permission for me to move on with mine.

  Hal’s About Me journal was the only one I never read. I’d gotten a call while I was reading them, and I’d shoved them all in my keepsake box. By the time I was done on the phone, I hadn’t wanted to keep reading. I’d felt too guilty about having snooped in the first place.

  On Hal’s birthday, I arrived on Dave and Gould’s doorstep half an hour after the festivities had started. I stood there with my chips and dip, surprisingly nervous. We’d had no few fights in our years together. But this one had really hurt my feelings.

  The door was unlocked, so I wandered in, and within seconds was accosted by a very cheerful, somewhat drunk Dave. “Miles! The man of the hour. Wait until you see what we got you!” I was immediately suspicious, since I was not the man of the hour. That honor belonged to a dead man.

  Dave led me through the living room and into the kitchen. There were already three bowls of chips and about six different dips on the table. Plus a giant bakery cake with a picture of . . .

  “Who’s on that cake?” I asked.

  “It’s you,” Dave replied.

  The man on the cake was approximately twenty years older than I was and at least forty pounds heavier. Plus he had a mustache.

  Kamen, who was dunking potato chips in sour cream, nodded. “Yeah. We got you a face cake.”

  I stared at both of them. “What’s going on? Who is that? Why do you have a cake with someone else’s picture on it for Hal’s birthday?”