Brazen

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen Jordan Castillo Price All rights reserved.

Copyright ©2009 Jordan Castillo Price

Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this or any copyrighted

work is illegal. File sharing is an International crime, prosecuted by the United States

Department of Justice and the United States Border Patrol, Division of Cyber Crimes,

in partnership with Interpol. Criminal copyright infringement, including

infringement without monetary gain, is punishable by seizure of computers, up to 5

years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 per reported instance.

ISBN: 978-1-59596-202-7

Formats Available:

HTML, Adobe PDF,

MobiPocket, Microsoft Reader

Publisher:

Changeling Press LLC

PO Box 1046

Martinsburg, WV 25402-1046

www.ChangelingPress.com

Editor: Margaret Riley

Cover Artist: Bryan Keller

Cover Art Design: Jordan Castillo Price

This e-book file contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language which some may find offensive and which is not appropriate for a young audience. Changeling Press E-Books are for sale to adults, only, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen Jordan Castillo Price It’s a sultry July night, and Wild Bill is content. It’s deliciously warm outside, the fireworks are about to start, there’s a whole pint of freshly-tapped blood on the menu, and his boyfriend hasn’t murdered anyone in months. Too bad Bill’s contentment isn’t shared by Michael, who’s tired of his own lack of experience. He hints that a new lover in their bed -- err, van -- might broaden his horizons. Their first encounter might have been a threesome, but it certainly hadn’t ended well for the third participant. Even now, Bill can’t seem to shake the memory of the hickory stake protruding from the chest of his old nemesis. Lust wars with guilt as Wild Bill tries to figure out how to bury his past, once and for all.

Chapter One A shrill scream cut through the air. Something burning. Then a sizzle, and a cascade of sparks. A rugrat no older than five with her hair in crooked blonde pigtails darted past the front of the van, waving a sparkler. It trailed a glowing zigzag pattern through the dark. The kid screeched again. Every dog within a two-mile radius pricked up its ears. It was a warm night. Gloriously, deliciously, flagrantly warm. I’d splayed myself out on the roof of the van, basking in the heat so contentedly, you’d think I’m a lizard on a sun-baked rock. Too bad I’m not -- life would be a hell of a lot easier. But no. I’m just your common, garden-variety vamp. In the height of summer, I’m out for the count nearly sixteen hours of the goddamn day, what with the hasty sunrise and the tardy sunset. But at least I’m warm. And so in July, in those few precious hours when I’m vertical, sometimes I can even forget about that nasty little condition of mine, and just enjoy the act of being. I sucked in a lungful of the night air. Freshly-cut grass. Sparklers. Funnel cake. Sunblock. Pabst Blue Ribbon. And about three thousand humans, give or take, each of them with a circulatory system coursing with a mouth-watering red cell cocktail. The thirst for blood gnawed at my guts. I had another drag of my cigarette instead. And even with the Marlboro smoke tickling my nose hairs and prickling my eyes, I knew it when Michael, my heart of hearts, entered my long-range sensors. Sure, I could smell him. But I could smell about four hundred other people nearby, too. Michael? I felt him. I was a giant tuning fork, and he was the note that had just bent up to meet my quivering harmonic.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

-6-

I watched him slice through the crowd. He’s tall, and his black-on-black contrasts with the bright colors and white whites that most other Missourians rotate out of their closets in these long, steamy dog-days. It takes brass balls to carry off a scarf at the cusp of July, especially paired with a worn-out Bauhaus T-shirt and a pair of jeans. But every time I tell myself to stop drinking from him where people can see, he looks at me with those big eyes of his and suddenly I’m nothing but a raging, mindless hard-on -- and I slice him open right on the neck, where my mouth happens to fall when I’m buried to the root in his sweet ass. Has it occurred to him, I wonder, to give me a good smack and tell me to bite him somewhere else? Probably not. He’s so used to spurting while I feed off him that a stray breeze hitting his throat is all it takes to give him a boner these days. He wouldn’t be seen in public without his silky black scarf any more than he’d leave the van without his jeans on. A hunger pang wrenched my stomach as Michael broke free from the pack and headed for the van. He stopped beside the driver’s side door and looked up at me. “Wild Bill,” he said -- as if there might be anyone else sitting on the roof he’d wish to address. “I found someone.” The pang intensified. “Do tell.” “She’s over there by the balloon-pop. But we have to be quick. She’s here with her friends, and they’ll come looking for her if we keep her much longer.” “Never let it be said that I’ve kept a lady waiting.” I swung my legs over the side and dropped down beside Michael, soundless, other than the clack of safety pins and buttons on my leather jacket -- which I can wear in ninety-degree-plus weather without breaking a sweat. And it’s easily ninety degrees in this baseball diamond that’s halfway between Columbia, Missouri, and the middle of nowhere. The girly-girl on the menu was a cute young gothy thing, of course. Because who else would give my eyeliner-beau the time of day? Let alone be cajoled by him into a one-night stand as a blood donor.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

-7-

As we approached, she picked Mikey out of the crowd first, and I scented her when her arousal spiked. I knew the feeling. His proximity did the same thing to me. Then she saw me, in step beside him. I’m guessing she thought we wanted to doubleteam her. And in a manner of speaking, we did -- though not quite in the way she’d imagined. We closed in on our Clairol-scented prey in a loose formation. I liked giving my food the option to cut and run. It usually didn’t. Girly-girl was no exception. “Rachel,” Mikey said, “this is Wild Bill.” “The vampire.” She sized me up, and her skinny, drawn-on eyebrows knit. “Vampires smoke?” “Why not?” I took a drag, blew smoke over her shoulder. “Lung cancer can’t take hold in me. The world is my oyster.” Michael caught her by the shoulder -- and oh yes, scent blossomed, creamy good girl-hots. He didn’t know. Or did he? Maybe on some level, he could smell it too, since my vamp-toxins coursed through him. Maybe that’s how he picked out the soup of the day with such uncanny accuracy. “Back behind these trees,” he said. Rachel hesitated, but I’m guessing only because it was expected of her, what with her lack of a Y-chromosome and all. The male meal tickets that Mikey scopes out for me always charge into the darkness full speed ahead. He slipped his arm around her, and she pressed into his side so they could push their way out of the crowd together. I got a few paces ahead of them, then spun around and walked backwards. Cute couple. Too bad I wouldn’t be able to talk my boy into a three-bee, where fun would be had by all. I patted down my jacket pockets. No condoms. Well, that clinched it. No threading the needle tonight, not with Rachel in the middle, anyway. The cluster of evergreens did more than just filter out the noise of the crowd -and it did that admirably. Its resinous haze cloaked the pervasive, insistent scent of humanity. This little nook held Mikey, some trampled grass dotted with dandelions, the stars overhead, the pale girl with big, dark eyes, and me.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

-8-

And I was starving. I pulled the phlebotomy gear from my jacket and disentangled the rubber tourniquet from the pricker. “I’ll do it,” I said. I’d seen Michael draw maybe three dozen times, and since the veins stood out like a glowing roadmap for me, I figured I could handle it. “No, I will.” Michael’s hand closed over mine. I let go of the needle.

“It’s dark,” I said.

“I can see.”

Could he? Rachel couldn’t. Poor thing was blinking, scanning the darkness,

trying so hard to get a fix on the two of us even though we were all at a standstill. I shrugged and handed Michael the tourniquet. “If you say so. She’s sweeter on you, anyway.” “Be careful,” Michael told Rachel as he wrapped her upper arm. Blood pooled in the lovely veins that covered the back of her hand and bisected her arm from the wrist to the inner elbow. “Most vampires will drink directly from your body, through a cut, or even a bite. And their saliva carries a pathogen.” “You’re serious,” she whispered.

“Everything I told you about vampires -- you think that was a joke?”

“She thought it was a come-on,” I said. “Give ’er a break. That’s what I woulda

thought.” Our grand experiment in vamp education wasn’t making as big a splash as I would’ve liked. We’d been warning people one on one that vamps are real, and that some of ’em -- the ignorant ones, the sloppy ones, the jaded ones -- will just as soon kill you as tip their hats to you. Or worse, contaminate you, drain you, and leave you to rise again looking for your own blood fix. Michael tied the tourniquet and I tore open the single-use alcohol wipe packet. It brought to mind the good old raincoat days, when I thought that wrapping it up would keep me from spreading too much love. Then I found out that vamp spit’ll taint someone too, if you drink from ’em often enough, or even suck face.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

-9-

Thus Mikey, and his new see-in-the-dark trick. He’s not really a vamp. But he could play one on TV. I swabbed the crook of Rachel’s elbow. Her eyes sought mine in the darkness. “You had a good look at me, and probably a few more eyefuls of Michael. Now chew on this -- what we’ve got in common is that we’re all vamp bait -- young, hot and tragic. I used to be young, anyway. Now I’m just well-preserved.” Michael took her arm from me and slipped into her vein so tenderly it was nearly a caress. So he really could see in the dark as well as I could. I pulled the tourniquet and tucked it into my jacket pocket. Blood flowed. Rachel’s knees gave as her precious ichor pulsed out of her, through the sterile tubing and into the convenient pint-sized pouch. I was at her back with my arms around her before she even swayed. I pressed a kiss into her freshly-dyed hair and whispered nonsense lover words against her scalp. “Nearly done,” Michael said, several minutes later. He squished the blood bag to work out the air pockets. We left Rachel beside the ring toss with a pink polka-dot bandage on her inner elbow and a stern warning to run in the opposite direction should a vampire ever approach her again. “Or at least stick to dry kisses and use a rubber,” I told her. The announcements were already underway when we swung by the van to grab our blanket. Thanks to the Lions Club, the Optimists, and the Jaycees. Keep your dogs leashed at all times, and remember, no alcohol outside the beer tent. And mark your calendar for the twelfth annual corn boil, weekend after Labor Day. “All the good spots are taken,” Michael said. We’d never even had a shot at a “good spot.” They’d all been scoped out and squatted on long before the big, scary ball of fire sank from the sky. I refrained from pointing that out. “Not all of ’em,” I said. “We got a prime view from our very own balcony.” I climbed up the side of the van via the conveniently placed door handle and sideview mirror, and gave Michael a hand up. Perspective shifted, and suddenly it

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 10 -

really was like we were in our own little world. Separate and untouchable. “Watch out for the bird shit,” I said. “I see it.” Of course he did. “The Star-Spangled Banner” played over the PA system. Farm boys took off their baseball caps, and the crowd stood with their hands over their hearts and got all blearyeyed, everyone but the stoners -- who were bleary-eyed too, but not with patriotism. The song ended. They all snuggled back down on their blankets and lawn chairs, drank their contraband outside-the-beer-tent beers, and stared up at the sky in anticipation. I released the clamp on the shunt at the top of the bag, which worked just like a straw in a juicebox. What’ll they think of next? I took a long pull and shivered with delight at the promise of quelling that fucking hunger for one more night. Before, when I got my blood directly from the source, I’d force myself to stop just as soon as I took the edge off the pangs. Didn’t want to leave a trail of drained corpses in my wake, after all. But my own personal phlebotomist assures me that a healthy adult can spare a pint, no problem. And as long as he’s doing the measuring, I don’t have to worry about getting carried away. Drinking my fill? It’s a pint of pure bliss. Michael shook out the blanket and then covered himself up with it. I was so busy filling my belly that it took me a second or two to realize that it was peculiar for him to get under the covers when the temperature outside was still hovering around ninety degrees. And then he tugged my fly down.

Chapter Two “You’ll miss the fireworks,” I said. Because what I really wanted to say was, “Fuck yeah, blow me while I glut myself and the sky explodes.” Some things you’re better off leaving unsaid. I tilted my hips up, and Michael dragged my jeans down around my thighs. He shoved my T-shirt up and kissed me just above the pubes. “You can watch them for both of us,” he said. Damn. He knew how to pluck my every heartstring. I exhaled carefully and eased back onto my elbows. He moved slow, like he had all the time in the world to press trails of lingering kisses into the bend of my thigh. The ends of his hair tickled where they dragged along my skin. I took a long, warm swallow, and felt everything surge down toward that heroin mouth of his, and I wondered if maybe I could trust that my luck had finally changed -- that I’d gone through purgatory and come out the other side, battered and bruised but maybe a little bit wiser -- and now I had me a little slice of heaven. He circled my cockhead with the tip of his tongue, and I buried one hand in his hair and hissed. Not a vampire hiss. Just a “yeah, baby” hiss. Once my dick was good and hard and he’d thoroughly baptized it with his spit, he went all the way down. Sweet mercy. I took another blood-swallow, dinner halfway gone now, but who cared? “Fucking hot mouth,” I told him. Because he liked to hear it. His head bobbed, and the whole blanket moved, up and down, as the first of the fireflowers bloomed vermilion in the night sky, then quickly withered and died. I took another long pull of the girly-girl’s blood and breathed deep. Brimstone. Anyone who cared to look over -- from the bleachers, maybe, or from the long, easy slope of the hill that led to the municipal center parking lot -- would get a prime

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 12 -

view of me getting my knob polished. But the masses’ eyes were glued to the skies, and Mikey and me, we were living in our own little vacuum of blood and sex and vampire love. Blood pumped through my veins and my pulse pounded in my aching dick. Blood filled my gut. Blood flowed through each and every living creature on the baseball diamond, and tiny airborne droplets whizzed by in the gullets of the satiated mosquitoes that sang by my ears. And blood flowed through the kohl-eyed Adonis between my legs. Unfortunately, even a healthy twenty-one-year-old’s bone marrow can only produce so much output, so even though Michael took his vitamins and ate plenty of red meat, I couldn’t drink more than the occasional chaser from him, not unless we wanted to add do-it-yourself transfusions to our medical repertoire. A bang sounded, loud and low, and a dozen crackling chrome yellow bursts sprouted off the central explosion. Something settled on my cheek -- rain? Didn’t smell like rain, or feel like it, either. Tiny specks tickled my brow bone and nostrils. Ash. The fireworks didn’t just look close, they were close. Pyros sure knew how to live on the edge, out here in the boonies. I balanced the blood bag on my chest, swallowed what was in my mouth, and reached under the blanket and stroked Michael’s hair. “You’re missing a pretty cool show,” I told him. He fingered my nuts and wound me up tighter. Blindingly white cascades of sparks opened up over our heads. The blanket rose and fell, rose and fell, until Michael coaxed another spume of white from the bottom of my balls. I let out a big groan when I shot, but the sound was lost in the screams and booms of the fireworks and the scattered oohs and ahhs of the skygazing crowd. Michael flipped the blanket back and crawled up the front of me. Flashes of light, white, pink and golden, illuminated the sheen of sweat that glistened over the curve of his forehead and cheekbone, and beaded on his upper lip. The reflections of fireworks exploded in his dilated pupils. I sucked hard and drained the last dregs of girl juice from the plastic bag.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 13 -

Michael shoved the bag aside and crushed his mouth to mine. The sweat, spunk and blood combination probably should’ve turned my stomach. I guess there’s no accounting for taste. He was after the blood. I knew it. He knew it. He’d refrained from actually tapping his own donors -- so far, anyway. But I could tell from the way he kissed that he was looking for more than just tongue action. A smoldering hunk of cardboard hit me in the shoulder and Michael jerked back. “What was that?” Chrysanthemums of light spread over the indigo sky, breathtaking in their closeness. “I’m willing to bet the pyrotechnicians might not be fully bonded and licensed. Either that, or they’re showing off for their girlfriends.” Our old blanket was in worse shape than it had been before the plein air hummer. A dozen new holes were scattered among the existing cigarette burns, and it was covered in a thin film of ash. I cupped Michael’s face with my hand and thumbed away a speck of cardboard that was perched on the tips of his long, black eyelashes. He didn’t even flinch. “Flip over,” I told him. “You don’t wanna miss the big climax.” He smirked, as if to say it had already happened -- in his mouth. His silences can be scathingly witty, I’ll give him that. He settled beside me, one knee slightly bent, with a shameless bulge straining at the front of his jeans. Roman candles pounded the night with a rhythmic series of booms, drawing our eyes downward, to the upper edge of the treetops, where more fireworks exploded. They were so low, so huge, that they covered the whole town in a giant umbrella of white-hot sparkles, and even my jaded heart beat just a little bit faster at the sight of it. I dropped a hand down between his legs and fondled his nuts while the dazzling lights enveloped us. I’d always thought fireworks were for adolescents and hicks, and I’d only brought us here to shut Michael up. But he’d proved me wrong. This was as bright as I’d ever seen the sky since I sprouted fangs and lost the stomach for Jack

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 14 -

Daniels. And I had to blink back a dab of moisture that had nothing to do with the traces of ash in my eyes. Even through the thunderous explosions above us, I could feel the thrum of Michael’s pulse. It was kinda like driving, by now. Gas, brake, windshield wiper, radio. All of it within reach while you’re having a conversation about LPs versus CDs and wondering when the next town’s coming up so you can stop for a fresh pack of Marlboro Reds. Human pulses and car engines are a lot alike. A little pressure in the right spot and you can practically hear them purr. “Suck it in,” I told him, ’cos he was wearing a pair of jeans that actually fit him. Total eye candy, but not much room for my wandering hands. Which was cool. I’m sure it felt all the nastier to have me cram my hand down the waistband and struggle to jerk him off. I delved deep, and Michael’s breath caught. God damn, he could undo me just by breathing. He was the world’s most sincere breather. I inched my grip up the length of his stiffie and circled the pad of my thumb in the slickery dewdrop at his slit. I stroked his cock and listened for that telltale flutter that told me I had it just right -- pressure, angle, everything. A hand job is a hand job is a hand job, but with the right amount of focus, I’d figured out how to make ’em pretty damn sweet. “My God, Bill.” Michael squinched his eyes shut and bared his teeth in a blissful grimace. “Watch the fireworks. You’ll come harder.” I didn’t know if that was a physiological fact, but it couldn’t hurt. Michael eased back, flat on the roof of the van, and covered his eyes with his hand so he could peer between his fingers up at the sky without getting an eyeful of ash. I undid his button fly and his hard-on jutted from the front of his jeans. His breathing was ragged. The skyflowers went red, white and blue while sparking gold rockets screamed up from the pitcher’s mound. Michael’s pulse hammered. The hand that wasn’t busy protecting his eyes settled on his chest, and he gave his nipple an absent stroke. Oh,

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 15 -

fuck. I felt all warm and tingly between the legs. I could go again. Just from the sight of him. Michael left off playing with his nipple and reached out to touch my face, instead. His fingertips found my cheek without him even having to look, and he stroked my lips with his thumb while I beat him off faster. “Please,” he whispered… if I could even call it that. Maybe it was just the shape of the word on his lips. Well, he’d sucked me off, hadn’t he? I’d be a pig if I didn’t return the favor. I turned my head and gave him a little nip on the base of the thumb, just enough to break the skin, and his breath hitched. His lush, coppery blood scent drowned out the sulfur stink of the fireworks. When I flicked my tongue over that nick, we both gasped. He pressed his hand over my mouth, and I sucked. I felt him start to peak and I slowed my strokes, drew it out, that long, delirious throb. His hips rose to meet my hand, and he sucked in a great breath, held it. And then he came, spurt after spurt, his body rigid with ecstasy. When he could move again, he grabbed me by the lapel and pulled me down for another kiss. Not much girlblood clinging to my fangs, not anymore, and not much of his either, so it was more about the kiss than the tasty red cells this time around. I wished I would’ve known that Mikey was waiting for me once I’d finished a lifetime of penance. At least then I would’ve had something to hope for, instead of just wallowing, day after day, in a pit of my own malaise. He smiled up at me as I thought that. Heart wrenching. Whistles and applause welled up all around us, a sea of sound, and I realized that I actually had synchronized Michael’s big O with the fireworks’ climax. “You missed it,” he said. “Don’t worry. You gave a killer show of your own.” He smeared the jizz off his T-shirt, then wiped his hand on the old blanket. “What did you tell Rachel, while I was drawing her blood?” I stared at his mouth as he spoke. Beautiful lips. “I dunno.” “You said something. It sounded kinda… hot. What I caught of it.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 16 -

I put some actual effort into remembering, but the words were long gone. “Hell, it coulda been anything. Whatever you say to girls to make ’em feel gushy. Why?” He slapped at his bare forearm, then scowled down at what was left of the bug he’d squashed. He gave it a curious sniff. “Intimate. For you. Don’t you think?” I watched him wipe the bug remnants onto his jeans. “I dunno. Why?” His eyes tracked sideways as he looked for words. His tongue darted out to wet his pretty mouth. I wondered if he’d considered licking his palm in that small pause between the smack and the wipe. I forced myself to pay attention. “I thought I might feel funny about it, if I ever saw you flirting with someone else,” he said. “Possessive, y’know? But I didn’t.” “Is that so?” I watched his eyes move some more, and his pulse picked up while he replayed the bloodletting on his mental VCR. “You’d be up for a threesome, right?” Hot damn, does the Pope shit in the woods? “I guess.” And then I knew I could totally go again. I sat up straight and sniffed the air. If Rachel hadn’t headed home yet, I’d be able to find her trail, offer an invitation she couldn’t refuse. A scorching multiple orgasm would be the least I could do to show my appreciation for that whole pint of delicious, nutritious blood she’d served up. “Cool. There was a wireless hotspot outside that antique shop on Main Street. We can swing by there and I’ll send a quick email before we find somewhere to camp out.” “You can send your emails anytime. I gotta snag Chickadee before she flies.” We both gave each other a wha? look, since it seemed like we’d suddenly embarked on two different conversations. I couldn’t imagine where I’d misheard him. He’d said “threesome” loud and clear. Clever Boy followed the thread back and found the snag before I did. “I don’t want to sleep with Rachel. I’m gay.” “I kinda dig her, though…” “I’m gay,” he repeated.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 17 -

Crap. When something seems too good to be true, it usually is. I sighed. “Fine. Then pick someone. But good luck finding a dude waving his rainbow flag in this hayseed crowd.” I spread my arms wide to indicate the teeming mass of Midwesterners trying to find their pickup trucks in the dark. Michael didn’t look at them. He was staring at me. “What?” I said. “It doesn’t make sense for me to pick out a… regular human. I mean, if we’re going around preaching to people that they need to be careful not to let vamps seduce them, and then we turn around and…” he shrugged. “Here’s what we’ll do. You still got some roofies left, don’tcha? We’ll show some farm boy a good time, stick a pill in him, and the next morning he’ll think it was all a kick-ass wet dream.” Michael stared at me. Apparently his acceptable use policy in regards to date rape drugs was limited to staking and beheading. “I got a sinking feeling about this,” I said. “I just figured we could sleep with another vamp. And we’d feel a lot less inhibited if we knew for a fact that he was a pacifist.” “And this is where the email comes in.” He’d kept in contact with a vampire research scientist -- a fangy Louis Pasteur contemporary, whose electronic memos kept popping up in Michael’s inbox. I doubted I could even get it up in front of his creepy UW pen pal. “I know I’ve got a rep for being omnivorous, but Doctor Smug ain’t my type.” “What? No.” He shook his head. “Not Jim.” And I know he didn’t call good ol’ Jim by his first name just to make my skin crawl, but it did anyway. “I was talking about Damien.” I completely and utterly sympathized with the humans whose blood pressures were skyrocketing as they scoured the lot for their interchangeable cars. ’Cos I, too, was well and truly lost. “Who?” “Damien. From Minnesota.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 18 -

Damien, as in six-six-pseudonym. Now I remembered him, all right. A pale young thing who dressed like Dracula and had the hots for my boyfriend. “He’s been stuffing your inbox, too?” “He’s pretty cool. I think you should give him another chance.” “Cool, huh? In what way? Specifically.” Michael laughed. Did he think I was kidding around? “You’re jealous. Never mind. It was a stupid idea.” “How is he cool?” “Like… a regular guy. He’s nice.” I doubted it. He was a vamp. “And you want to fuck him.” “You’re jeal-ous,” he sing-songed. “It’s fine. We don’t have to do it. It wasn’t important. We can stop talking about it now.” I caught the spent blood bag before it tipped over the side of the roof and hit someone in the baseball cap. Michael cradled his head in his meshed fingers and stared up at the stars. Smirking, ever so slightly. “You sure I can’t interest you in Rachel? I’ll stay in the middle. You won’t even have to touch her.” His smirk intensified, and he didn’t bother answering me. “So you’re done with this conversation. Is that it?” He rolled onto his side, and took a tone of tolerant exasperation. “What do you want me to say? I figured having a three-way would be no big deal for you. You’re the experienced one. You’ve done it before.” Probably a hundred times. I counted back. No. More like several hundred times. “And it surprised me that I thought you looked hot, talking into Rachel’s hair. That’s all. No big conspiracy to build myself a vamp harem or anything.” He rolled onto his stomach, peeled a scrap of charred cardboard off the van’s roof, and dropped it over the side. “Seriously, we can drop it. It’s only sex.” Only sex. It took a good two hours for the crowd to thin. I called down to a couple of farm boys who hadn’t quite managed to empty their cooler over the course of the evening,

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 19 -

and they tossed us up a couple of cans of Bud. Michael drank them while we peoplewatched from our perch, and said nary a word about the whole threesome plan. Michael was probably right about it being irresponsible to pick up a human to party with. I’d always figured I hadn’t created any vamp-addicts in the course of my wanderings, seeing as how I acted like an asshole so they wouldn’t actually like me or anything. But what if it didn’t matter how I treated them? What if it was enough that I had fangs? Turning humans into vamp-obsessed groupies was nearly as unpalatable as turning them into vamps. But the thought of snapping one off with another vamp was no better. They’re fast. They’re strong. They’ve got incredibly sharp eyeteeth. I lit a smoke and leaned my head on Michael’s shoulder. “Fucking faggots,” someone called from the thinning throng, and a rock pinged off the van’s hood. Mister Friendly was too far away for me to give him a mental adjustment, so I flipped him the bird instead. Only sex. In my mind, it kept coming back to that. How long did I think Mikey and me would be an item. A year? A decade? Forever? I would come off like a huge, hypocritical ass if I didn’t let him sow his wild oats. And we did know for a fact that Damien didn’t kill people. Or turn them into fledgling vamps. And it was only sex. And seeing as how I was illiterate in the art of email, unless I actually saw this Damien guy face to face, eye to eye, fang to fang, how else would I put him off Michael’s trail once and for all?

Chapter Three My guess was this. Although Mikey’d asked me to invite Damien into our dilapidated mobile boudoir, he never thought I’d actually go along with the idea. I based that opinion on the way his hands shook when he pulled the big, stained map out of the glove compartment, unfolded it, and picked out a town neither of us had ever heard of that sat halfway between Columbia and St. Paul. Once he’d launched the email to Damien and there was no turning back, we drove north a few hours so that we’d make the Unincorporated Township of Camden, Iowa, by midnight the following night. Michael turned the radio up loud. Classic rock. He must’ve been desperate to avoid saying anything that’d gum up the works. I halflistened as fat guys with hairline issues sang about drinking and driving, picking up chicks, and rocking, whatever that meant. I could find a late-night garage sometime, persuade a mechanic to put a tape deck in. A CD player, even. But it seemed more fitting for the soundtrack of our lives to be stilted, pathetic, and way beyond our control. Once we’d off-roaded it for a few teeth-rattling minutes and hid the van in a wall of overgrown bushes, Mikey stripped down to his skivvies, and the two of us rolled up in the crispy remains of our blanket. As I felt the creep of daylight hitting me like a bad hangover, I kissed Michael’s damp forehead and told him, “Everything’s gonna be okay.” I doubted either of us believed it. But it sounded good. The next night, we hit a fast food drive-through on our way to Route 65, and made Camden by 11:48. We would’ve been there sooner, only we’d driven right through it without noticing -- like when you run over a squirrel, and wonder what that fuzzy little thing is you see somersaulting away in the rearview.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 21 -

Our message had been to meet us at the tallest building in town. Cryptic? Sure. But we had to meet somewhere, and I’d blurted out the first thing that’d popped into my head. I’d figured there’d be a grain elevator on the edge of town, or maybe a water tower. Now I hung out the window and stared up at the spire that towered three stories over anything else in Camden. There was a big metal cross on top. Dandy. We parked at the far end of the deserted lot and walked up to the church without a word. Six-six-six. The Omen. I could practically feel the crucifix hurtling through the air and impaling me where I stood. And when I was busy looking up at the pointy brass projectile, the Antichrist chose that moment to reveal himself. He peeled free from the statuary like a marble come to life. Saint Sebastian, maybe, melancholy and effete -- a favorite subject of gay artisans throughout the centuries, probably because the arrows sticking out of him were so phallic, and he’d gotten himself martyred in his underpants. Damien, however, was fully dressed. He looked like he’d just stepped out of the Hot Topic storefront display. His black long-sleeved zip-up shirt fit him like a second skin, and there was zero breathing room in his red plaid bondage pants. He’d forgone the hair gunk tonight, and the tips of his black-dyed hair fell forward and tickled the corners of his mouth. He stopped walking maybe twenty paces away, then glanced up to see what I’d been gawking at. The cross. “Scared?” he asked. Great. A wiseass. An accurate wiseass. I lit a cigarette in lieu of answering. Damien looked at the cross again. “It’s just a shape. Right?” “No more than a flag’s a scrap of fabric.” I felt him staring at me. Michael, too. “Seriously? You’re afraid of crosses? How old are you?”

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 22 -

Old enough to feel like it’d wear me out to explain that I didn’t think a cross was gonna burn a smoking scar into my forehead, but that some of the things I’d done in my life still smoldered deep inside me. “A gentleman never asks.” “A gentleman doesn’t hiss at people, either.” “Still mad about that, huh? What do you want, an apology?” He scowled so intently I had to stop myself from laughing. “You spooked everyone. It wasn’t the same after that night. We had something good going on, and now it’s finished.” “All good things come to an end.” Seeing as how everything good that I touch turns to dust, my presence killing the conjugal vamp club to which Damien and I had once belonged? It came as no surprise to me. “I am sorry,” I admitted, “for whatever it’s worth. It was a pretty cool setup.” His shoulders sagged beneath skull-studded epaulets. He jammed his hands in his pockets and looked down at the ground. “Okay. Whatever.” He turned and started back the way he’d come. His pointy creepers made no sound on the summer-dry grass. Michael elbowed me, hard. I looked at him. He jerked his head in Damien’s direction. “What?” I mouthed. Michael rolled his eyes, then gestured like I was supposed to go after the Son of Satan. I looked at Damien as he retreated, visible in the shadow of the church only because of his plaid pants, and then back at Michael. “What did you tell him in your email, exactly?” I asked. And I wondered why I ever took anything Michael told me at face value. I might’ve shown up looking for a mouthful of fresh boy meat, but the only thing Damien had wanted to taste was my regret. Which, of course, made him infinitely more interesting than I’d thought he was only moments before. Michael pressed himself against my side, and put his pretty mouth to my earlobe. “I really, really want this. Do it… for me?”

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 23 -

His breath tickled my ear, which drew an answering tingle from my groin. How much of the exchange had Damien heard? We’d been quiet, and he’d been striding off in the other direction. And we hadn’t actually said a whole hell of a lot. A car door opened in the lot on the opposite side of the church. I moved fast. I wasn’t entirely sold on the idea of doing the naked tango with Damien, but I wasn’t willing to write it off yet, either. He’d opted for a red car, like I had -- but his was a sleek little ragtop in pristine condition. The only thing that marred its perfection was the sheen of bug-splatter across the grille that comes from driving solely at night. Damien had his key poised at the ignition. He looked at me. “What?” “You got somewhere to be?” I leaned against his car, ran my fingers along the top of the driver’s side door. Slick. I wondered what it would look like by daylight. “’Cos we could… hang out. Or something.” His hand dropped into his lap, clutching the keys. A glow-in-the-dark plastic skeleton dangled from the end of the key chain. “Why?” So, I’d have to work for it. Served me right. If I’d kept my posturing to myself, Damien might still be part of a big, happy, vampire gang-bang. I slouched a little, let my eyes go soft, and reached out with my awareness to take a measure of the resting rate of his pulse. “Why not?” I said. He looked at me without turning his head, only his eyes. I leaned in so that my mouth was closer to his ear. I doubted I could play him as expertly as Mikey played me, but I could try. “It’s barely midnight. How ’bout you take us for a spin in your cherry Mustang?” He pursed his lips as he considered. “It is a pretty sweet ride.” And the back seat was way too small for anyone with legs to fit in it. What gorgeous impracticality. “Maybe you should let me drive,” I said. “I think Michael wants to sit on your lap.” His head snapped around and he took a good look at me, then, while his pulse increased. His pupils dilated a smidgeon, too, though I couldn’t make out his eye color

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 24 -

in the dark. Something medium-toned, with a corona of another color, maybe ocher or gold, around the pupil. Nice eyes. “You haven’t eaten yet,” he said. So, while I took his pulse, he’d been busy sniffing me. “You need to hook up with someone?” “Not particularly.” The hunger was there, lurking below the surface, but I hadn’t even noticed ’til he mentioned it. “I topped myself off yesterday.” He looked out through the June-bug-speckled windshield and weighed his options. He held himself still, really still, but his heart was punching the clock at timeand-a-half. “And after the ride,” he said, “then what?” “You need me to spell it out?” He slid another look in my direction, and a small smile crept up on him. “I think if I lay a hand on Michael, I’ll end up with bloody stumps where my fingers used to be.” Maybe. Maybe not. I reached into the car, took said hand, and guided it up the inseam of my jeans. “How about you start with me, then?” Damien stared at his hand like it belonged to somebody else. “I don’t sleep with other vampires. I mean, I haven’t. Not since…” “Not since someone turned you.” I nudged his knuckles into my balls and rocked them against me to keep my interest from flagging at the mention of my least favorite subject. I was built so much bigger than him, my hand had his totally covered. He kept on staring at our hands like he couldn’t pull his eyes away. “I don’t think Katie meant to… I mean, I know it was an accident. She was newly turned. And hungry. If she didn’t turn me, I would’ve died.” His voice had dropped so low it was just a hint of sound. I felt the hair on my forearms prickle, but my jacket covered the goosebumps. I moved his hand up and over my shaft. He blinked, as if he’d suddenly woken up from some other reality, only to find his hand on my crotch. And then he started to feel around for himself, tracing the contour of my stiffening boner up, around the tip, and back down.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 25 -

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “If there’s a rulebook that says vamps ain’t allowed to knock boots with each other, I never got a copy.” He dragged his thumb up the underside of my cock, and stroked it just below the head. It was a small, precise motion that didn’t feel like much of anything at first, not through the denim, but then it sang along my nervous system once he’d done it a couple of times. And even though he practically had me begging for a little action, he kept his expression carefully neutral. He still had reservations, I could tell. I would too, if someone who’d hissed at me like a rabid tomcat suddenly tried to make nice. I tucked his hair behind his ear, and traced my finger down his pale cheek. He wasn’t wearing makeup. He didn’t need to. His skin was as smooth and fine as a girl’s. How old was he when he’d been made? How old was he now? He jerked his head toward the passenger seat. “Hop in. I’m driving.” Damien’s nerves stayed tripwire tight, but some twenty feet away, I heard the kathunk-thunk of Michael’s heart pounding in blissed-out relief. And from that distance, he’d heard every word we’d spoken. “C’mon, Mikey,” I said. “D-Boy’s gonna take us for a spin.”

Chapter Four Damien drove fast, one hand on the wheel and one on the stick, one foot on the gas and the other on the clutch, staring straight ahead with an expression so neutral it could’ve been lifted from one of the marbles in the churchyard. He drove with his headlights off, and the trees and fields streaked by like brushstrokes of indigo ink as we soared past. Michael and me didn’t both fit in the passenger seat, but that didn’t stop us from forcing ourselves in. I sat on top. I figured that if Damien’s need for speed ended up with us wrapped around a tree, I should be the first one flying through the windshield, since I’d already lived such a long, full life. Or at least a long one. The insect life felt a lot harder than I would’ve thought when it nailed me in the forehead at sixty plus. I snaked my arm across the top of Damien’s seat and leaned my head against the edge of his headrest. His hand on the shift knob pressed into my pelvis, but we were in fifth with no signs of slowing down. It felt like we were flying. Once the black-on-black scenery started blending together, I found myself looking more and more at our driver. Damien had a decent profile, and a stubborn set to his chin. His emotional barometer was more difficult to read than a human’s would’ve been. And I’m sure he was working hard to keep it that way. Michael had his far hand between my legs, and he gave my inner thigh a squeeze when Damien swerved one-handed around something small and furry that was lumbering across the road. I leaned in even closer to Damien, and despite the rush of air that thundered over our faces and eardrums and made our hair whip all around, I still caught his vampire scent, clean, like wet gravel. I inhaled through my nose and mouth to see if I could

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 27 -

separate it from the flavor of the wind. Vampire-scent was definitely there, gliding over my palate. Humans must react to that vampire scent. Or our vampire eyes. Or our vampire vibes in general. Whatever it is, it makes them dumb and giddy and incredibly pliable. But I’d never reacted to it myself. In my whole overlong life, I’d fucked only one vampire, Ambrose. And the first time we tussled, the night before I rose again as a bloodsucker, he hadn’t even had to use his vampy wiles on me. I’d been so hammered I would’ve gone home with anyone. Damien didn’t remind me of my maker. Good thing, ’cos if he did, I wouldn’t be able to indulge Mikey’s fantasy. The Mustang’s V8 gave a low, dangerous purr when Damien coasted back into town and eased into the church parking lot. His hand jostled my thigh as he downshifted. I didn’t make any effort to give it more room to move. He pulled the parking brake. I turned off the ignition, then dropped the glow-inthe-dark skeleton keyring into his lap. “Kiss him,” Michael whispered. Our heads were right there. All I’d need to do is lean in. But kissing -- on the mouth, anyway -- always struck me as too intimate to spread around to every Tom, Dick and Sherry. It was something I reserved for my beau. Damien sat rigidly, turning the keyring over and over in one small, nervous hand. His expression was still deliberately blank. Michael prodded me in the hip with his knuckles. “C’mon,” he begged. “Do it.” Damien wet his lower lip. He did have a pretty mouth. Michael prodded me again. Harder. Jostled me, actually. My left hip got up-close and personal with the shift knob and my face ended up so close to Damien’s that I could feel him breathing. His eyes widened. I felt his pulse fly, as if we were still doing sixty in the dark. And I realized what it was he’d been working so hard to conceal. Fear.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 28 -

I twisted so that I could run my fingers down his silky smooth cheek, and I pressed my forehead into his. “It’ll be fun,” I said. “You’ll see.” He swallowed. I tilted my head, lined my mouth up to his while he watched me, wide-eyed, frozen. His lips were soft against mine. I brushed that single kiss over them, and just as I’d thought, it did feel horribly intimate. It was a promise of a whole host of things I wasn’t sure were in me to give. And one kiss is never enough, is it? Michael’s hand crept up my inner thigh, and his fingertips grazed my nuts. His teasing encouraged me. He might’ve lied about the setup, but it seemed that getting his rocks off really was the only thing on his agenda tonight. Unlike the first threesome we’d shared. I planted a firmer kiss on Damien’s mouth. No tongue, but deliberate, and a little bit wet. “If we don’t get down to business soon, I’m gonna bust out of my jeans.” Damien shrank back into the headrest. “Here? No… not here.” “I generally avoid traipsing around naked where any old yahoo can get a load of me. It’s less complicated that way. Normally, I’d suggest we get a room, but the last motel I spotted was at least an hour south of here.” I cocked my head toward our van. The rear end stuck out from a tangle of mulberry. “We can squeeze in there. It ain’t pretty. But we’ll fit.” Michael already had the passenger door open and was in the process of extricating his long legs from mine while he tried to maneuver out from under me. Damien kept his eyes trained on me while he got out of the car. Michael rounded the rear bumper and plucked at Damien’s sleeve to try and herd him toward the van. Michael was easily a head taller, and he could’ve used a shave. Seeing the two of them side by side, I realized how rough Mikey and I had been living. I hopped out of the Mustang, swung around the hood and fell into place on Damien’s other side. I was a head taller than him, too. He took care to stand very straight as he walked, in the way a guy who’s trying to hide a beer gut might suck it in when a foxy chick crossed his path.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 29 -

I slung an arm around Damien’s shoulders. They felt narrow. And tense. I pulled him against me companionably. “You’re in for a treat. Me and Mikey don’t usually entertain.” Except for Ambrose. Who we then proceeded to kill. I didn’t say that, obviously. In fact, I tried my best not to even think it. But I’d never had much luck stopping the darkness that seeps out from the folds of my gray matter. Michael popped open the rear door, and then tried to wave away the stink that wafted out. “Smells like fireworks.” Explosives, rust, cigarette butts, damp newspaper, plastic laced with a hint of chocolate, socks, old sex, new sex. It smelled like lots of things. But our poor charred blanket, destined for the Dumpster just as soon as we got around to replacing it, was definitely the loudest note in the symphony of scents. And it totally camouflaged the ballistic smell of Michael’s gun. “Sorry,” I said. “We let our subscription to Better Homes & Gardens lapse.” I swung off my jacket and pitched it into the far corner of the van bed. It smacked the metal wall with a sound like a chain link fence toppling onto a pile of sheet metal. I reached across Damien and snagged Michael’s T-shirt, pulling him against Damien and me. Michael, I kissed hard, and with tongue. “You know I have a nokissing rule with strangers,” I said against his mouth. “And it didn’t kill you to break it. Besides, we’re not strangers. We all know each other.” His voice was husky, and his capillaries smelled engorged. Fabric rustled -Michael pulling Damien’s shirt out from his tight plaid bondage pants. My hard-on prodded the new guy in the low back. I took a quick glance over my shoulder to make sure all the residents of Camden were still snug in their beds. “It’ll be easier to strip ’im down out here. Coast is clear. No one here but us perverts.” Damien’s pulse started to pound, and I wondered what had compelled me, other than lack of elbow room, to suggest getting him naked outside. Was it my contrary

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 30 -

nature, to want to expose him in public after he’d specifically nixed the idea of bumping uglies in his spiffy red convertible? Michael unzipped Damien’s shirt. It fell open and revealed a stretch of pristine white chest. Damien’s heart thundered so loud I expected to see it split his sternum and burst right through. No, I didn’t think I was being contrary. Maybe I was able to read Damien, after all. And I was hooked on the idea of blowing his mind. I fit myself against his back. He wasn’t much taller than Rachel, and he probably weighed less. His hair smelled like expensive citrus shampoo. I stroked it with my jaw while Michael worked on the lacings that covered his fly. “Those are some complicated pants,” I said. “But I think we’re up for the challenge.” Damien gave a nervous laugh that was more of a small breath. I pressed a kiss into his hair. It smelled really, really good. Maybe certain fragrances mixed better with vampiric body chemistry than others. Because the mix of our blood cocktails had to be different from a human’s. Damien both looked and sounded nervous -- hell, maybe even terrified -- but he wasn’t giving off that telltale scared sourness like a human would. I slipped a hand around Damien’s middle. The skin on his stomach was as silky as his cheek. Vampire skin? No, I didn’t think so. My own stomach never felt like that. He must’ve been born with skin like that. He was warmer than I was; he’d eaten that night. I supposed that was reassuring. Michael knelt to work on some more buckles, the ones on his pointy-toed creepers. I slid my hand up higher, spread my fingers wide. They spanned most of his chest. He was smooth there, too. Maybe even shaved, I figured, until a few hairs tickled my palm. He’d been turned young, all right. I almost asked how young -- but I decided it would be a mood-killer, and kept the question to myself.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 31 -

I dragged a kiss through his hair, and my lips grazed the top of his ear. I stroked his body up and down. The stubborn buckles on his boots caused Michael to mutter under his breath. I let my hand dip south of the waistline -- absently, like the caress had just happened to drop low. Pubes skimmed the side of my hand. Well, at least he’d achieved adolescence before Mistress Katie made sure he stayed forever young. Michael moved on to the second set of boot buckles. “Almost done.” “That’s the problem with all those buckles and zippers and laces,” I said. “They look cool, but when it comes time to get down to business, they turn into a chastity belt.” Mikey’d unhitched the important part, though. Damien’s fly gaped open. His works were tucked to the right. I walked my fingertips lower, sidled them up alongside the root of his cock. He trembled. Michael stood and raked his sweat-damp hair back from his forehead. He ran his fingertips over the back of my hand, and added his own coy fondling to mine. He skirted the opposite side of Damien’s cock, not quite touching it either, just teasing. Damien breathed carefully. Michael planted a kiss on me, slow and lingering. He pulled back and licked the traces of it from his lips, then leaned in and laid one on Damien, too. Intimate, yeah. But not enough to trip my trigger -- the one that’d turn me into a red-eyed freak, anyway. The other one, the one that told me it was time for a little inout? That had snapped into the “on” position. It was fucking hot to see Michael in action. His seduction style is on the opposite end of the spectrum from mine. Whereas I tend to lead in with a few suggestive jokes, stand way too close, and get down to the fucking as soon as possible, Michael sits there looking heart-wrenchingly intense and waits for his prey to come to him. No small wonder we’d ended up together. Michael ran the backs of his fingers down Damien’s cheek. “You feel really good.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 32 -

I felt another shiver course through the kid, like he’d fold under all our scrutiny, and I took pity on him. “Let’s go inside,” I said. I pulled my hand out of Damien’s pants and turned him around so that he faced our rattletrap. “‘Step into my parlor, said the spider to the fly’.”

Chapter Five I had to nudge Damien to get him walking. The air mattress was buried in the typical mound of trash that was the leavings of our day-to-day life. He paused at the rear bumper, took in the chaos, and chose his footing carefully. He needed to move aside a box that’d held donuts maybe a week before, and powdered sugar dusted his thigh. Michael launched in after him and brushed a stack of newspapers and some empty Marlboro cartons out of the way. Maybe we could’ve straightened up, I realized, since it wasn’t as if we didn’t know we were gonna have company. But clearly I hadn’t been thinking that far ahead. Michael flicked the switch on the battery-powered camping lantern while I pulled one door shut, and bungee-corded the other partway open so that between the three of us, we didn’t breathe up all the air. Michael peeled off his T-shirt and wiped his face with it. “It’s so stuffy in here. I wish we had gotten a room.” My mouth watered. Because humans smell good to us vamps. More than good. They’re food, see? They smell incredible. Michael’s sweaty striptease hadn’t gone unnoticed by Damien, either. The new kid’s pupils had blown wide at the sight of Michael flexing his glistening pecs. I snapped my fingers next to Damien’s ear. “Hey. No blood. I might’ve caved in on my ‘no kissing’ rule, but I’m the only one who drinks from Michael. Got it?” Damien blinked as if his spirit was returning from an out-of-body experience. He focused on me, then gave me a supercilious toss of his black-dyed hair. “Duh.” Michael snorted. Fuckin’-A. It was a sad state of affairs when the most mature guy in the room was yours truly. I stripped down while Michael worked his jeans off, and Damien knelt

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 34 -

there in the middle of the air mattress -- still dressed, but unbuckled, unzipped, unlaced -- and watched us get naked. Mostly naked. Michael put a hand to the scarf that covered up my favorite drinking spot, and looked to me for direction. On or off? I shrugged -- it was his call. He left it on. I got behind Damien and eased his shirt down over his shoulders. He had a barbed wire armband inked on his left arm. I ran my lips down the smooth curve of his shoulder, then followed the contour of his tat with my tongue. Michael took up where I left off with Damien’s shirt, and eased his hands out of the sleeves. The spotless black shirt slid down between the front of my thighs and the backs of Damien’s, and settled on the ashy comforter to mingle with our filth. Michael’s head dipped, and he went for Damien’s nipples. Damien arched back against me. And I dug the feel of him, so small and wiry, taut and trembling. It’s one of the greater pleasures in life to hold someone down and diddle ’em until they thrash, but I’d never done it as a team. It was trippy to have a wingman in my bed. I kissed Damien tenderly on the back of the neck. He gasped and his heart went pit-a-pat. The tight plaid pants were no small feat to get rid of, but Mikey and me, we managed with minimal tearing. We guided Damien onto his back, and both eased onto our sides, facing each other over him. His chest rose and fell. The camping lantern cast a stark shadow along the curve of his ribcage, and inside the small divot of his navel. I stroked him, collarbone to hip, and Michael’s hand followed suit up and down the other side of his body. His uncut cock rested on his thigh, mostly hard, twitching whenever Michael lingered over his vulnerable nipple. The small flinches and gasps drew Michael’s attention, and his focus shifted to Damien’s nips. Michael moved from one to the other, stroking and sucking until they grew taut and pink, and they both glistened with his spit. I trailed feathery strokes down the inside of Damien’s thigh while I watched, mesmerized by the tiny points of

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 35 -

wetness. Michael’s head turned, as if he’d felt me staring at him, and he reached up and pulled me face to face with him over Damien’s chest. We kissed. I tasted Damien’s soap, just a trace, on Michael’s tongue. “This is so awesome,” he said against my mouth. How much credit could I take? I’d hardly invented the threesome, after all. But Michael and Damien were both wound up so tight that I couldn’t help but be swept along by the zeitgeist. I nudged Michael’s head so that both of us descended on Damien’s mouth at once. It was a sloppy kiss with plenty of tongue. Nothing fit together quite right, and it was all the hotter because of it. Damien tilted his head one way, then the other, trying to taste both our mouths at once. I felt him squirm between us, and I ran my hand down the length of him. His cock jutted straight up toward the roof, now. “You should suck him off,” Michael said. So serious. “I should, should I?” I smelled his capillaries engorge as he blushed. “I mean, when you get a BJ you can feel the fangs, and if he hasn’t been with a vamp since…” I cuffed him in the shoulder. “Calm down, I’m just playin’ with ya.” It wasn’t a bad game plan. I’ve always thought that getting your cock swallowed while another playmate was kissing you was one of the finer pleasures in life -- right up there with having a cigarette while someone blows you. Preferably after a few shots of Jack. So I was happy to take up my position and oblige. I’d been worried about the old green-eyed monster rearing its head at the sight of someone else kissing my guy, but I could see from my vantage point between our naked prey’s legs that there was nothing to worry about. Not because they weren’t into it -- because they were so into it that it would’ve taken a Roman candle to blow them apart -- but because that soft, vulnerable, young and fragile side of Michael? Gone. Like it’d never been there to begin with. This Michael was a dirty little fuckbeast -- and yeah, when I thought about it, that side of him had always been there. Plenty of times he’d give me the look of love --

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 36 -

and follow it up with some hot, slutty begging -- when getting horizontal had been the last thing on my mind. Seeing it turned on someone else, like a sunbeam through a magnifying glass, put Michael in a whole new league. He had stroked and squeezed Damien’s nipples beyond teasing, approaching the point of torture. They were red little peaks now that made the poor kid writhe ’til the mattress squeaked. I snuck a hand up and gave one a flick. His hard cock stabbed up into the air, but there was nothing there for it to fuck. Yet. Michael lavished a loud, wet kiss over Damien’s mouth, then moved on to his neck. Damien drank air the minute his mouth was free, and then he noticed me watching him, watching the two of them, and seemed to snap back from his throes of passion enough to say, “I’ve got condoms. In my shirt pocket. And a latex glove.” And a glove. Oh, the possibilities. “About that,” I said. What had Michael told him in their little email pow-wow? I nudged Michael in the ribs. He spooned up alongside Damien and gave each reddened nipple one more deliberate twist. Damien’s eyes squinched shut and his heels dug into the air mattress. A bead of fluid shone at his piss slit. “We can bareback,” Michael said, once it’d been quiet so long, except for the stiffly-controlled breathing, that I thought he might not answer at all. “I’ve been tested. I’ve got antibodies.” Damien jostled to get an elbow under himself and sat partway up. The air mattress was slightly less hindering than usual, with all of our weight on it. “No way.” “A vampire research scientist at UW confirmed it.” “Oh my God. I’ve heard of that guy. Hartman, or something.” “Harmon,” Michael supplied. “Hard-on,” I muttered. They probably both heard, but so what? I was accustomed to indulging my own propensity for insult, and old habits die hard. I was nothing if not old. I figured I’d win friends and influence people better at that particular

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 37 -

moment with a dick in my mouth, so I hunkered down between Damien’s legs and wrapped my fingers around the base of his cock, though it was standing up plenty well by itself. “Speaking of which, I don’t see too many hard-ons that aren’t circumcised. Not around here.” Here being the blanket term for the Heartland, everywhere besides New York and L.A. “Hippy grandparents,” Damien said, his voice slightly dampered by Michael’s hair. Michael had gone back to licking Damien’s chest as if he hadn’t just dropped a big old antibody bomb, and what I could see of Damien’s eyes through the tousled strands of Michael’s hair looked baffled. “So… what does that mean, that you have antibodies? You can’t catch vampirism?” He was hard enough that the flushed tip of his cock showed, looking particularly vulnerable since it was usually covered up. I tongued the foreskin as I eased it down, and enjoyed the shudder and gasp I got in return. Did I think I was actually distracting him from his question? No, not much. Just buying Michael time to figure out how he wanted to answer. “Can’t catch it,” he said, with his mouth poised against Damien’s stiff nipple. “Guaranteed.” Michael sucked hard, and the muscles in Damien’s stomach rolled. “Anything else?” Damien asked, all breathy. “’Cos I’ve heard things.” “Use a rubber anyway if it sets your mind at ease,” I told him. Then I gave him a lick across the crown that made his thighs quiver. He was tenacious, though. “I’ve heard of mortals catching just enough vampirism to change them, but not enough to make them a full vamp.” I slipped my mouth over him. His cock fit just right between my fangs. So long as my fellatio was straight and true, there was no risk of nicks and cuts. I was sure there was a bad joke about a vampire, a blowjob, and a sudden loud noise in there, but I’d be damned if I could find it. Not while I was trying to send Damien a telepathic message to drop the whole antibody talk.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 38 -

Michael had tried to interest him in more kissing, but Damien wasn’t done with our “never mind the safe sex” discussion. “You’re not just immune, are you? You’re infected. But not completely.” I slid him down deep and let his cock head bump my throat. His hips rose to greet my mouth. “You smell human. But you don’t move like a human.” I squeezed my hand under my chest, snaked it up between Damien’s legs, and hefted both his balls. They shifted around inside his scrotum as I toyed with them. “You’re a Renfield.” I sighed around the girth of his wet cock. “I mean… that’s just what they call it.” Keep going, I thought, dig yourself deeper. Good thing Michael wanted a threesome so bad, or he probably would’ve booted Damien’s ass out into the church parking lot by now. I pulled off and jacked him hard with my hand. “He’s immune,” I said. “Capiche?” He stroked Michael’s hair awkwardly. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I think it’s cool, y’know, if you can do all the stuff we do, without having to drink blood and sleep all day.” Cool. Uh-huh. I fished through a wad of ripe T-shirts mounded beside the air mattress and excavated the lube. “If you want him to shut up,” I told Michael, “you should put his mouth to better use.” I, myself, was a heartbeat away from plugging his other hole and spitting him between us, but at the last second I changed my mind, lubed him up, and threw my leg over him. I took him deep, fast, and treated him to a little wiggle as I got myself settled. Damien’s train of thought derailed. He stopped talking, and his eyes went wide as if to say, “Holy crap, you’re riding my dick.” Even Michael stopped pouting at the whole “Renfield” conversation so he could watch me impale myself.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 39 -

I braced the heels of my palms on Damien’s skinny hips and gave Michael the raised eyebrow. “Well? Go on. Straddle his head and fuck his mouth. It’s my turn for some of them kisses.” I squeezed tight with my thighs, and slid up and down Damien’s boner like a pro. Mikey climbed on, facing me, and jammed his cock in just like I told him. Of course, then I couldn’t see Damien’s eyes anymore, and had to judge how hard we were rocking his world by his heartbeat, his twitching stomach, and the few strangled sounds he made. Pretty hard, at the moment. Was the amount of force behind Michael’s thrusts really necessary, or was he pissed off? Because, cliché as it may sound, you really don’t want to make him angry. I shifted my focus from Damien’s heartbeat to Michael’s. It was fast. Which could’ve meant plenty of things. And by now we all smelled like sweaty July man-crotch, so trying to sift through the pheromones was no help. The look on Michael’s face? Intense. And loads of eyeliner. And like his elevated pulse, the look could’ve meant anything. I leaned in, and he met me halfway. His lips felt hot and swollen from kissing, the good-vamp Damien smell still clinging to them. I let go of Damien’s handy hipbones, took Michael’s face between my palms, and kissed him nice and gentle. His merciless pounding of Damien’s face seemed to ebb in response to my calm. At least the air mattress stopped bouncing so hard, and the choking sounds grew less pronounced. I licked the taste of the new guy from Michael’s lips, and followed with feathery kisses at the corner of his mouth, his scruffy jaw, his cheekbone. “You can be in the middle next,” I said into his hair. My face slid into and out of alignment with his ear as the front and back halves of the mattress rose and fell like a see-saw. “It’s wicked awesome, fucking, getting fucked, all full of dick and hands and mouths, everything at once.” And I could keep an eye on him, too. Make sure that sex was really the only thing on the agenda here. That a vamp actually had to kill people to show up on Michael’s shit list, and a verbal faux pas wouldn’t find Damien with his carotid

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 40 -

spurting just ’cos he was too carried away to see how the R-word rankled Mikey. Almost as much as the V-word sickened me. No, it was fine. I was sure it was fine. Because Damien didn’t kill people. As far as I knew. And Michael didn’t snuff vamps who weren’t killers. Again, as far as I knew. Damien’s delicate hands crept up Michael’s side, stroking him, encouraging him to creep closer to his brink. I spread my hands, and let my fingertips graze the scabs on Michael’s throat through his filmy black scarf. He shivered. “Might not wanna cream straight down his throat,” I said. “It’ll come back up, no matter how hard he tries to swallow.” Bloody, too, since Damien had eaten that night. But happily I didn’t need to go into grisly detail. Michael planted a final kiss on my lips, trailed it down over my chin, then eased his hard cock out of Damien’s mouth. That left Damien spread-eagle on the mattress. He looked flattened, rawmouthed and dazed. I treated him to an extra special gyration, and the movement seemed to jar him out of la-la land, and back into our van. “Whaddaya say, amigo? You up for changing the guard and letting Mikey scoot down here between us?” I clenched and picked up speed to treat him to a few more satisfying thrusts. Made sure he’d be good and hard and raring to go as soon as I pulled off. “You’d better turn in your best performance, though. ’Cos that’s my man’s ass you’ll be rootin’ around in. And I’m a tough act to follow.” Facial expressions ranged from “Is he serious?” (Damien) to “Bill, you’re so weird…” (Michael). But that was good. Very good. It meant no one was gonna turn big, green and violent from gamma rays and a fit of temper. I rolled off Damien and felt the distinctive crush of a half-full pack of smokes under my palm. Sonofabitch. I pitched the pack toward the head of the mattress in case one or two cigarettes had survived, and I tossed the lube underhand in a high arc. Michael’s long hair fanned out as he spun on his knees to grab it out of the air. His hand blurred. I caught Damien by the barbed wire armband and rolled him toward the opposite side of the mattress. Michael walked on his knees between us, working a

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 41 -

squirt of lube between his thumb and forefinger. His gaze was turned inward, and I wondered if he was still stuck on the word Renfield. What would it take to pull him out of his own head and show him a good time? A strand of hair was caught in his lashes, so I fingered it out of his eyes. “What’s the matter? You hoping for a different configuration of ‘tab A’ and ‘slot B’?” “It’s fine,” he said quickly. “Get down on your side. Let D-Boy curl up against your sweet ass.” Michael bent his upper knee, and reached down between his legs to grease his ass up. I was disoriented, watching from this side, hearing the small sounds of flesh rubbing as Damien worked his hips into place, prodded that tight, slick hole. Like maybe I was the one having an out-of-body experience. I lined myself up with the two of them, and put my mouth over Michael’s as Damien’s cock sank in. A half-breath, half-whimper flitted over my tongue. My stiffie prodded Michael in the stomach. “I can tell it’s not your cock inside me,” Michael whispered. His breath played over the moisture his kiss had left on my lips. I reached down and gave his stiff dick a few pumps, light and lazy, since it was sticky with half-dried spit. His eyelids did that fluttery thing they do, and his lips parted, and the squared edge of his white human teeth showed while he concentrated on Damien’s technique. “Feels good,” he sighed. Some minor groping yielded up the lube bottle. I drizzled some glide onto Michael’s hard-on and pulled my knee up. We would’ve fit together better if I let Michael spoon me the very same way. But turning my back on the two of them? Wasn’t gonna happen. Even through the “I’m getting fucked and loving it” face, Michael’s brow furrowed. “Aren’t you going to lie the same way we are, with your back to me?” “Nah. I’m limber. Besides. I want to kiss you while he works your ass.” We were all limber, but it was still a pick-up-sticks tangle of legs, and every time Michael tried to push into me, Damien slipped out of him.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 42 -

“Slow down,” I told him. “Take it easy.” I snuck my lower leg to the bottom of the leg pile. “Ease in, and let Damien come to you.” He grabbed me by the hips and I shimmied down a little lower to give him a clearer shot. He pushed in again. I watched his face for some sign of pleasure. He’d wanted this, right? He’d said so. And since when was it my job to separate out what he actually wanted from what he said he wanted? But as I thought that, the hitch between his eyebrows smoothed out, and another sigh escaped him, and the tension in his body changed, from frustration to eagerness. I slipped an arm around Michael and found Damien, ran my hand up his side. My palm skimmed along his ribcage. Damien’s careful fingers roamed among all our thighs. Michael flexed his back, and sank his cock into me deeper as Damien pushed in again, this time slow, steady. And then we were all three linked, Michael in the middle, fucking, being fucked, and all our arms and legs crossed and overlapped. It was a slow, precarious fuck. Excruciating. And somehow tender, because it was so careful and deliberate. I focused on Michael’s face while the three of us moved together, and got off more from watching him wind up, probably, than the act itself. A hand slipped between us in the concavity of my belly and found my cock. Damien’s hand. I knew, not because Michael still had a death-grip on my pelvis -- which he did -but because it felt different. I’d been with Michael so long that I knew what his hand felt like when he grabbed my junk. Craziness. Damien’s patented magic fingers stroking me under the piss slit made my whole world coalesce at the tip of my dick. And then Michael rocked into me, and I knew I was headed for that sweet, scary brink. Reluctantly, maybe, because it seemed like I was supposed to be the one to keep my head on straight, and to make sure no one got bitten, no one got stabbed. But, damn. It felt white hot, lava spurting, fire-in-my-belly amazing. I covered Michael’s mouth with mine. Tongues, wet, good. A thrust, a stroke, the sound of us all breathing and the gentle squeak of the air mattress. Blood.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 43 -

The groan it dragged from my throat might’ve sounded like sex, but it was actually the realization that I could panic while I was coming. Michael muffled the sound with his mouth, his sweet tongue, which he’d opened on a fang. He let go of my hip and extricated his hand, so he could take hold of my face instead, force me to drink from him. Because we were all stupid with sex, now, and that’s what always made him peak really hard. And then he arched back, tore his mouth from mine, and he sucked in a sharp breath. He came, all heat and wetness between my legs, and his whole body seized up and shook. It looked like he would’ve screamed, but it was beyond sound. And still, I smelled blood. I’d been the first to shoot, and I was the first to come back to myself in time to figure out that despite the fact that he’d kept his scarf on, Mikey was spurting in time to more than one vampire bite. I wedged my elbow underneath me, reached between the two of them, and knocked Damien back. His mouth was red with Michael’s blood, and Michael now had four oozing fang marks on the back of his shoulder to add to his collection. And a fat vein coursed a couple of inches to the side of the wound. Damien could’ve tapped that, but he hadn’t. Which is probably what stopped me from tearing off his head. Michael rolled onto his back and jacked Damien’s cock. Damien’s belly heaved, and he shot, over and over, a porn-worthy load if ever I saw one. He sprawled there as Michael jerked him off, looking stunned and glassy-eyed. And not particularly threatening. “I said no biting.” “I’m sorry.” Damien shuddered as Michael milked a bonus twitch out of him. “I didn’t do it on purpose.” “It’s okay,” Michael said, and his voice was dreamy and wrung out. “It’s not deep.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 44 -

“That ain’t the point.” Michael gathered up my hand and held it to his chest. I could feel his heartbeat slowing, deep and steady, as post-orgasmic lassitude set in. “It’s not his fault.” Opposite Michael, Damien cringed. He looked so spooked, I thought he might turn tail and drive off in his pony car before he got a chance to squeeze back into his skintight bondage pants. He might be a vamp, but he looked painfully young. I pulled my hand from Michael’s grasp and gave Damien a semi-playful cuff to the side of the head. “No. Biting.” “Right, got it. Got it. Sorry. My bad.” God damn. I needed a cigarette.

Chapter Six My half-crushed pack of Marlboros was lying on top of a tangle of red plaid. I tossed Damien’s pants at him. He didn’t bother to move out of the way and they nailed him in the face. “C’mon. Let’s get some air.” If Michael wondered what I wanted to say to Damien, the exhaustion of shooting his wad superceded that curiosity. He was out for the count when Damien crawled out the back of the van. I followed, barefoot, in my jeans and Michael’s Bauhaus T-shirt, the first clothes I’d pulled from the pile. We unfurled ourselves into the parking lot. The fresh black asphalt was just losing its day-warmth, with bright yellow parking lines divvying up the property so that the faithful could accurately corral their sensible sedans before they suffered through a homily. I counted the number of parking spots between me and the church and estimated the distance, and decided that the steeple was too far away to impale me with its cross if it chose that particular moment to fall. Probably. Damien fiddled with a buckle on his pants that wouldn’t lay flat. “Seriously, I didn’t mean to… I mean, I ate beforehand and everything, so I don’t know why…” “Shut up,” I said calmly. I found an unbroken cigarette, lit it, handed it to him. He took it and stared at it. I found another one, only slightly bent, and lit it for myself. “It was the heat of the moment,” I said. I took a deep drag, watched the vapor trail stretch against the indigo sky as I exhaled. “And still, you didn’t even hit a vein. I’m guessing Michael got a bigger charge out of the bite than you did.” Damien took a drag off the smoke, didn’t inhale, and blew it out. He scowled at the filter and somehow paled even further. “I don’t actually eat while I’m in bed with someone. I mean, I couldn’t. That’s how I…” His magic fingers moved to his throat.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 46 -

Maybe I saw some silvery traces of scarring there. Or maybe it was a trick of the moonlight. I sucked down my cigarette in a few good drags that singed the bottoms of my lungs, and watched the smoldering butt roll away after I dropped it and realized I wasn’t about to stamp it out without my boots on. Then I took the cigarette Damien wasn’t really smoking, and finished that, too. “It was just a taste,” he said. “That’s all. I got it in my head that he might taste different, you know, ’cos he’s a Renfield.” “It might do you good to purge that word from your vocabulary. It’s not exactly flattering.” “But that’s what everybody calls them.” And if everybody jumped off a bridge, would you jump, too? I took a moment to gather my thoughts, and decided not to channel my mother, God rest her soul. “Suit yourself,” I said. And I dug through the pack to see how many of the other cigarettes I could salvage. Damien shoved a cell phone under my nose while I was busy picking through the strands of tobacco. I wondered who on earth he wanted me to call -- and then I realized he was trying to show me the picture that lit up the little screen. I stuck a partially-intact cigarette between my lips, let it dangle, then took the phone from him and squinted down at it. A pair of pale young things mugged for the camera. Pretty, and androgynous enough that I did a few takes before I realized that there was one of each, male and female. “They’re twins,” Damien said. I handed the phone back and lit my cigarette stump. “Double the pleasure.” “It’d be really cool if I didn’t have to worry about turning them, you know? How’d you do it?” I picked a tobacco shred from my lower lip and flicked it toward the church. “Ancient Chinese secret,” I said. And then I realized he probably wouldn’t even know what that meant, but I let it lie.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 47 -

He scrolled through some more photos and showed them to me, and I stared up at the sky and tried to calculate how many hours were left to kill before sunrise. The three of us had tumbled quickly. Several hours left, at least. “Maybe we could do a trade,” he said. I held my face very, very still, and rolled my eyes down and to the side to look at him. Seemed he was serious. “You think so?” “Not for good. It’d be like, I dunno. An apprenticeship. You take Shawna and Kyle, and Michael can come live with me for a couple of months. Or… however long it takes to make them immune. That is how long it takes. Isn’t it?” “Kid, I like you. Don’t make me kick the white off your ass.” He snapped his phone closed and wedged it down into his front pocket. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Michael told me the two of you were going around all, like, ‘Have safe sex’ and ‘Keep away from vampires.’ So why won’t you tell me how to make a Renfield?” “How old are you?” “What do you care?” “Humor an old man.” “Tell me how to do it and I’ll show you my driver’s license.” He had a driver’s license? Shit, I’d dispensed with that rigmarole the night I was turned. And I hadn’t even known at that point that all I’d need to do was inform any cop who pulled me over that I was the safest driver they’d ever seen, and they’d just stopped me to tell me to have a great night and give me their Camels. “You don’t really have a driver’s license.” Damien crammed his hand into the other pocket, fished around as much as the tight pants would allow him to move, and eventually came up with the little plastic card between his index and middle finger. I snatched it away so fast even I didn’t see my hands move. Color me curious. He tried to grab it back, but I held it over his head and scanned it. There he was, with his hair dyed blue and gussied up in precise liberty spikes. Pale, but only human-pale, with

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 48 -

a sprinkling of zits along his cheekbones, and a lip piercing that must’ve been long gone. DiLorenzo, Damien. “Your parents seriously named you Damien?” “It was my great uncle’s name.” “Shit.” He hopped up and tried another grab, but I raised the license just out of reach. “You’re twenty.” “I’ll be twenty-one next month.” He did manage to grab it away from me, then, but only because a profound weariness had dragged my arm down. “So? You saw it. Now you gotta tell me.” Twenty fucking years old. I stared up at the moon, and imagined it wasn’t the moon at all, but the sun. That I’d managed to rouse myself at noontime, drag my sorry carcass outside, and stare into it until my eyeballs boiled in their sockets. I sighed deeply, removed the cigarette stub that had been stuck to my lower lip, and wondered if there was another pack of smokes floating around underneath all that crap in the van. And I figured I wouldn’t make things any worse by telling him. “It’s nearly impossible,” I said. “It was a fluke. Don’t drink from them, make sure no one else does, either, while you expose ’em to your spit, your spooge…” “How long?” I shook my head. Even that felt too heavy to hold up. “I dunno. Months.” “That’s too easy. There’s got to be something else. Something you’re not telling me.” “It’s simple, I’ll give you that, but it sure ain’t easy. One little slipup, that’s all it would take. The heat of the moment.” He wanted to argue with me. I could tell. He had that same mulish look about him that Michael got when I was so right it wasn’t funny. How could there be any doubt that I knew what I was talking about? My boyfriend’s blood was dried into the corners of his mouth, even though I’d specifically told him not to bite. One day, he’d get carried away, and boom… fledgling vampire. Just like him. He might’ve had enough control not to kill anyone -- because even though he was a grandiose little twerp, deep down inside, he thought that killing people was

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 49 -

wrong. But I doubted he had the restraint to fuck someone without biting. Not night after night after night. And once he broke the skin, who could say precisely how much blood loss it would take to trigger the vamping process? I felt bad for him. ’Cos he was the spitting image of me, twenty-five years ago. Except that he wasn’t consumed with a burning hatred for his maker. Katie. Of all the stupid names for a vampire… “What about that doctor guy? Maybe he’d help me Renfield the twins.” “And now it’s a verb?” Would Hard-On help him? If it served the prick’s purposes, maybe. “Good luck with that.” “I can’t believe you did it without even trying. You’re so lucky.” I wondered how Michael would end the conversation. Maybe by announcing he was finished talking and rolling over. Or by stabbing someone. Renfield, my ass. What I had on my hands was a Van Helsing. “Look, it’s getting late,” I said. “I don’t think you want to spend the night.” He cast a look in the van’s direction. “You got that right. Uh, no offense.” He patted down his pockets until he located the skeleton key ring stored behind one of a dozen zippers. “Have Michael send me the doc’s email address, okay?” I gave him a halfhearted salute. He turned and headed toward his car, brushing ash from one sleeve, then the other, as he walked. The cigarette stump yielded three good drags, and then the chemical tang of burnt filter washed over my tongue. I dropped the smoldering filter and wondered if there was any water to be had nearby, aside from the holy water in the church vestibule. The pebbly walkway was cool against the soles of my feet. The marble steps, too. I tried the door. It swung open. Who left doors unlocked anymore, even a church door? I knew we were out in the sticks, but still. It felt surreal. I checked the door to see if maybe an ancient lock had disintegrated under my vamp-strength. But no. The door had been left open. On purpose? It gave me a little faith in the world to think so.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 50 -

Low, after-hours lighting filled the vestibule with a mellow amber glow. I sniffed around to see if I could tell where the plumbing ran. The whole place smelled like lemon Pledge. Old wood, full of ornament, molding stacked on molding stacked on molding, turn-of-the-century construction. Real plaster, not drywall, arching up in curved swoops that could only have been handcrafted. I ran my fingers along the plaster coolness and picked a direction, kept walking until I found a door. The room beyond was full of pint-sized seats and photocopied pictures of Jesus colored in with crayon scrawls of varying degrees of accuracy. Sunday school. Talk about a blast from the past. This one had its own bathroom, too, with a fold-up changing table, a tiny little kid-sized toilet and a painted stepstool under the sink. I ran the faucet, and cupped some church water to my mouth to rinse away the taste of the burnt filter. By the time I wondered if it would scald out my vampire tongue, I’d already swallowed it. And my tongue was still there. One wall was all glass, looking out onto the nave, where prayer candles on either side of the altar flickered and danced. It had never occurred to me that they let prayer candles keep on burning until they’d consumed themselves. I let myself out of the Sunday school room, and crept into the nave for a closer look. The pews were freshly polished and smelled like furniture wax, too, but the tang of age had its claws in the nave much deeper than it had the vestibule. It was stuffy. And quiet. I glanced at a dark stained-glass window and waited for lightning to burst through it and strike me dead where I stood. That didn’t happen, either. The odor of burning wax was strong by the candles. At least the donation box was locked; I would’ve had to pinch myself to wakefulness if a stack of loose change had just been sitting there for the taking. I scrounged around for something to add, but the only thing in my pockets was a book of matches. I turned and headed back up the aisle, and then paused when I noticed the confessional. Another flood of memories tumbled through my skull. Act of Contrition. Ten Hail Marys. Five Our Fathers.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 51 -

I walked up to the old mahogany cabinet and peeked into the priest’s side. Who went to confession anymore? Little old ladies who think it’s a sin to miss mass on account of a bout of pneumonia? I sat on the priest’s chair -- none too comfy -- and opened the little sliding door that led to the penitent’s side. Ever so faintly, I caught a lingering whiff of human fear. Suddenly, it felt way wrong to be monkeying around in the priest’s side of the box. I needed to leave, but my fascination was too strong. If I scoped out the penitent’s side, I reasoned, I would have seen all there was to see, and I could be on my way. Switching sides didn’t quell the cascade of memories. Even worse, it seemed to make a few deeply-buried nuggets bob to the surface. Me as a snot-nosed squirt, wracked with guilt for discovering what my dick could do besides pissing in the Sunday school kiddie toilet. I couldn’t recall if I’d managed to tell the priest. And if I had, how many Our Fathers I’d been given to scrub away the sin. Just the guilt of having a body with needs, so palpable I thought I’d choke on it. The more things change, the more they stay the same. I knelt. There was a cheat sheet on the elbow rest, but the second my knees hit the kneeler, it all came back. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been… how many years since my last confession? Twenty-eight. At least. I turned the laminated card around in my hand. I’m not a big churchgoer or anything. Not a model citizen, either. But I like to think that when push comes to shove, I do the right thing. So what’s bothering me? Yeah, about that. See… I killed someone. No, it wasn’t self-defense. Not exactly. And no, I wasn’t in the service, or a cop in the line of duty, or anything like that. I stared hard at the card. The act of contrition. What did the word contrition mean, exactly? And how was it different from the burning gnaw of guilt?

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 52 -

The world wasn’t big enough for both of them. I probably could’ve split ’em up and hidden them from one another, stashed them each somewhere different while they were both zonked out on roofies. But they would’ve found each other again. No doubt. So if I hadn’t finished Ambrose, somewhere, somehow, he would’ve found Michael, and taken him out. Or vice versa. It wasn’t gonna end ’til one of ’em was dead. And there it was. I was like a surgeon sawing a pair of Siamese twins in half… and I had to choose which one got to keep the liver. I turned the card over and read: I firmly resolve with the help of Thy grace to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen. Yeah. Good luck with that. I propped the card back on the armrest and pushed the door open with my toes. The nave smelled like fireworks now. Michael sat on the floor facing the confessional with his back against the last pew, his legs stretched out in front of him and his hands folded in his lap. He looked up at me very solemnly. “You’re Catholic?” “Once upon a time.” He processed that for a lot longer than I would think he’d need to. “So you just went to confession?” “Not really. There’s supposed to be a priest on the other side of the box. Or a magician sticking swords through the walls. I forget which.” I gave him a hand up, and then I checked each of his pockets. Gum. Eyeliner. Wallet. I pulled out his wallet, cracked it open, and helped myself to the bills. I suppose I could’ve walked all the way across the church and slipped them into the donation box, and I could’ve done it vampy-quick if I’d wanted. But if the parish priest, whoever he was, could leave the doors unlocked, then I could slip him a few bucks without putting it under lock and key. I tossed the money into the priest’s side of the confessional and shut the door. And if the cleaning lady, the one with the penchant for furniture polish, got to it first? I wasn’t gonna worry about it.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 53 -

Too bad there hadn’t been a priest in the box. It was probably just a result of my own superstition, but I felt lighter than I had in ages. Maybe next time. I slipped my arm through Michael’s and steered him toward the doors. “I wasn’t really asleep when you and Damien went outside,” he said. “I’ll buy that. You never were the type to roll over and pass out. So, did you get an earful?” “Why would I… No, of course not.” Heaven forbid I should impugn his virtue by implying he was an eavesdropper. I kept my trap shut and waited to see what he was getting at. We headed for the van, which really was getting a little ripe, and I figured that we could make that motel down by Ames without too much trouble, clean ourselves up, and maybe shovel some clutter out of the back the next night. Grab a new blanket while we were there, too. “I don’t think I can have sex anymore without getting bitten,” Michael blurted out, fast, like maybe he was worried he wouldn’t follow through and spit the whole idea out if he didn’t speak quickly. I stopped thinking about our overdue spring cleaning and looked up at the night sky, as if there were any answers there. I wanted to tell him not to say shit like that. But I know better than to tackle him head on. “It’s not as if we ever gave it a shot.” “Maybe you haven’t. But I have. I tell myself that I should feel lucky to have what I do. That anything I want, all I have to do is name it, and you’re right there giving it to me. Sometimes before I even think of it.” He’d broken away from me, started pacing back and forth in front of the rear bumper. “And we’re there, and we’re doing it, and it’s awesome -- and, Bill, I swear it’s always awesome -- and then before I know it, before I can stop myself…” “If I woulda known it was an issue, I’d ride you so you couldn’t reach my mouth. We’ll add a few of those positions to our personal Kama Sutra, take ’em for a

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 54 -

spin, and you’ll see you’ve got nothing to worry about.” I swung the back doors open, sat down, and pulled him down beside me. The struts complained. “Problem solved.” Michael considered the knees of his jeans. They were gray with ash. “So… you kicked Damien out?” “Who am I, the hall monitor? He was too prissy to sleep in Big Red, that’s all.” “I’m glad. I mean, I like him and all, but after he bit me, the whole thing just got too… weird.” No need to mention that the weirdness started the moment our eyes first met. I could tell he was feeling sorry for himself as it was. I stroked his hair, and flicked away a small pebble that’d been lodged in my heel with the toe of the opposite foot. “I knew he was going to,” Michael said. “I could feel it.” Four fangs puncturing your epidermis are a little hard to miss. “I wanted him to. I think he could tell. I think he could feel how badly I wanted it, and he couldn’t stop himself.” Just because something’s probably true, it doesn’t mean it’s constructive to lay it all out there and wallow in it. “C’mon, baby. Come here.” I pulled his head against my shoulder and kissed his hair. “People cook up all sorts of fucked-up fetishes -- scat and clothespins and dressing up in hedgehog costumes. Don’t be so hard on yourself for getting hooked on something that actually feels good.” Speaking of which, I would’ve bitch-slapped my grandma for a shot of Jack at that very moment. But Michael put his arms around my waist and held me tight, and I suspected it wasn’t the best moment to make a mini-mart run. We rocked a little as we sat there, his breath hot and moist in the crook of my neck. I found a few tangles in his hair, worked my fingers through them, and he sighed and started rubbing me up and down the ribs. His tongue was a point of wetness on my collarbone. I imagined kissing his face, his lips, and his sweet, sweet blood filling my mouth -- or maybe he’d imagined it, and transmitted the visceral image to me. A shiver snaked down my spine.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 55 -

“Come lie down with me.” I pulled free and crawled into the van, then held a hand out to him. Michael might be stubborn, but he wasn’t stupid. If I showed him the hard evidence -- that of course he could get off without being vampire-bit -- then he’d stop dwelling on this notion that he was harboring some sick, incurable fetish. We stripped down with the doors open, added our clothes to the teetering piles, and the temperature had fallen enough that the breeze that snuck in and tickled our toes was actually cool. I endured the temperature, though, because it smelled like clean night air and dying lilacs, and it felt like the whole world was our bedroom, not just the stuffy confines of the van. We lay facing one another, with Michael’s head pillowed on my outstretched arm and his hair spread out in a glossy black halo. Our touches ranged farther than usual from all the same old pleasure points we tended to zero in on. It was as if there might be something new we could discover, now that someone else had cut a swath through territory that had been just mine, and just Michael’s, for so long. The curve of his shoulder was fascinating. I trailed my fingers down his body, and got lost in the stretch of his long, lean thigh. And he seemed just as enthralled with the smattering of hair on my chest and hills and valleys of my obliques. “I would rather have had you inside me than him,” he said, when finally his explorations were done and he was ready to move on to the main event. He stroked my cock and it perked up right away, swelling more with each caress until it pointed toward my belly. I started jacking him, too. He gets hard at the drop of a hat, young pup that he is, but his whole body got in on the act -- squirming, arching, yearning for my hand. And of course the feel of him reacting to every little thing I did to him charged me right up. I kissed him softly, only lips, and turned away toward his cheek, his jaw, the corner of his mouth, when he tried to slip me the tongue. I could stop myself from biting him, but I couldn’t stop him from impaling himself on me if he was bound and determined to do it. Not if I let him French me.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 56 -

He gave a disgruntled little huff at that, but I petted his cock real sweet and trailed kisses toward his ear, tongued that out, and he seemed satisfied. “Pick your poison,” I told him. “How ’bout you lay back and I do a little pole dance on you?” “No -- I want you inside me tonight,” he insisted. I always felt a little guilty when he asked for it. And a lot horny. “Come inside me.” He bent his knee up and caught my upper leg with his, pulled me toward him like he was showing me where to get the party started. “Turn over, then. Lemme do it from behind.”

“Like Damien did.”

“Since you claim you can tell the difference.” I was smiling when I said it, and

even though I had my face in his hair, I think he could tell. His body was less tense than it had been all night, loose-limbed and yielding. He let me roll him and fit myself against his back, chest to shoulder blades and thigh to thigh, with my hard-on cradled between his ass cheeks. The wound where Damien had chomped him was firmly clotted. I thought it might bug me, but it didn’t. Only the fact that Michael had made himself out to be some kind of sick freak over it wasn’t sitting well. I ran my hands up and down his body, and his hand clamped over the back of mine and came along for the ride. I stroked him all over while I rocked into him, humped myself against his ass crack. “You want to hear me beg?” he said softly.

“Maybe a little.”

“C’mon, Bill,” he laughed. “Fuck me. Okay?”

“Yeah?” I slipped my hand between us, lined my cock up to prod him in the

pucker. “You sure?” He arched his back and rubbed me with his ass. “Please? Pretty please?” “Well, since you asked so nice…” I took the lube he handed over his shoulder and greased myself up, then gave him a quick, wet fingering, too. He sighed and

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 57 -

shivered, and he was just as tight as always, just as hot as always. Still the same person I’d been tangling with all this time. I stopped torturing him and drove it on home, and it was tasty like that, back to front, the way we fit together like we were made for one another. “Pinch those nipples for me,” I said, breathy and rough, against his ear. “Get ’em good and hard. Make ’em sting.” He sucked in some air, wiggled against me as he did it for me. I found his hard cock and stroked it loosely. “That’s it. Hot, tight little ass of yours…” I tongued his ear some more, and he dropped his shoulder, twisted his torso around so that he could kiss my mouth. My lower arm was still under him, and I wrapped it around his whole head, just in case I had to pull him back. But it was hot like that, too. Fucking him, jacking him, holding his head down while I kissed him, owned him. It built quick for me, even though I’d spent myself a couple hours ago with Damien in my bed, and I set a good rhythm and cruised along that sweet spot of imminent release for a good, long while. Michael arched and huffed and grunted, and fucked his cock into the tunnel of my hand. And any minute now, I was sure, I’d hear soft, broken noise escape him, feel the telltale spasming of his hot ass that would tell me he was peaking… “Drink me.” Aw, fuck. I faltered and adjusted my angle. I had to be nailing him right in the prostate. Had to. Just like he liked it. How could he not be painting the wall of the van with his come? He shuddered and threw his head back, and gave his nipples a cruel twist. I took up the new angle and fucked him hard, fast. The van shuddered with my thrusts. “Please, Bill. Please. Drink me.” “Cut it out.” I fumbled some lube onto my jacking hand, gave him something good and slippery to fuck. And even that didn’t do it for him. He whimpered and he squirmed, and he begged.

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 58 -

“Bite me.”

“You don’t need it,” I told him. “It’s all in your head.”

“Everything’s getting raw, and it’s just… not…” He strained to capture my

mouth with his, slice his tongue on me, but I turned my head away. He made a frustrated sound and gave up on getting me to kiss him. He curled forward and the fit of our bodies changed again. There. A new angle. Maybe that was the magic rub that’d pull the genie out of the lamp. “How’s that feel? Huh?” When he started rummaging through the bedside crap, I figured he was after the lube again. I was delirious from fucking that hot tightness, me, the one who’d always been happy to take a rain check, because it was just too much work, and everything did go raw and chafed before I got to the good part anyway. Me. I wouldn’t be able to hold the elevator for him much longer. “C’mon, baby -- sweet, hot ass -- tight fuckin’ hole -- c’mon, come for me…”

It was dark, and I didn’t see it coming; I smelled it. Stainless steel. And old blood.

Michael had the butterfly knife out. It wasn’t mine anymore, it was his. I’d

picked up a sleek new switchblade in Joliet. That old thing hadn’t crossed my palm since I’d seen it do a headectomy. It was poised against the meat of his shoulder. “Do it,” he said, “or I will.” I froze. “Don’t do anything stupid. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“I don’t… care.”

Damn it all to hell. I grabbed the blade from him to put an end to his pathetic

begging, because I couldn’t stand to see him like that. And what was worse -- I couldn’t stand that it turned me on. Big time. To the point where the floodgates were already busting open. The blade was still sharp. A quick cut, and the scent of blood engulfed us. “Here.” I curled my slashed forearm over his mouth. “You’re so crazy about blood? Knock yourself out.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 59 -

He grabbed my arm with both hands. I thought he’d try to pull it off him, but he had no leverage, and I was stronger. He just held onto it, though, like he couldn’t believe what I’d just done. And maybe I couldn’t, either. And then he sucked. I’d been peaking anyway, and that just made it worse. Or… better. It was a wound, but somehow, it was more than that. It was a connection. A new hot spot to stroke. Nowhere near as powerful as being vamp-bit, because sad to say, I still remembered the second-last moment of my human life had been an explosive one. That groan that escaped me? I told myself it was just because I was coming. Michael slammed his ass into me hard while I shot, and I felt him tighten up all over, and then start bucking. Both of my hands were wrapped around his head when he spurted, and both of his were clawing at the piles of trash around the mattress. A hands-free peak, after all that sexy-hot begging. God damn it. My tsunami had receded to a few kiddie-pool waves, and Mikey was still sucking my arm. The telltale tingle died down when I clotted -- and I clot fast. He hadn’t gotten much from me, and I’d be healed by the next sundown. But he’d sucked out enough to prove that the spoogetastic bloodsucking could go both ways. Or maybe that he was a kinda-sorta vampire. One or the other. Hard to say, and I was too beat to dwell on it. I’d just busted my nut, and the emotional Tilt-A-Whirl had really kicked my ass from here to next Friday. “Did you know it would be like that?” Michael said. His voice was raspy. I wiped the lube that coated my palm onto the blanket, pulled my clotted arm out from under him, rolled over, and started digging for smokes. “Nope.” “My God.” He needed a minute to catch his breath, I guess, so I was spared the commentary long enough to locate a pack with three whole cancer sticks inside. It’d get me as far as the gas station. I sniffed out my Zippo by trailing the chemical sharpness of the butane, flicked it open and lit up. He rolled over, with some effort, and watched me smoke, while I stared out the back door. “Thank you.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 60 -

I sighed. “I’m banning ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ from the bedroom, got it? It’s not like we’re at a goddamn tea party.” “Sorry.” “That, too.” I ashed into my palm, flung it in the general direction of the door, and fell short by a couple of feet. “Did it feel good for you?” Michael didn’t seem particularly cowed. “Because it sort of felt like, I don’t know how to describe it. More than blood. There was this faint thread, maybe more like an electrical current, that I was tasting, or maybe feeling…” I flicked the butt through the door, assumed the position that passed for standing in that cramped, stinking space, and pulled on my jeans. “Let’s roll. I’m grabbing a nightcap before we turn in.” “Whiskey, or blood?” I pulled the back door shut and ducked through the black rubber flap that led to the cab. “I guess we’ll see when we get there.” I grabbed a shirt that was wadded up on the console and pulled it on. We’d been using it to wipe down the inside of the windshield when it got steamy, and now it had a grayish pattern of striations over the black that almost looked like tiger stripes. The gas and brake felt weird under my bare foot. I lit another cigarette, turned on the radio, and backed out of the bushes. Michael was fully dressed by the time he joined me up front. He sat with his knees up and boots pressed against the glove box, like usual. But instead of looking at where we were going, I could tell, from my peripheral vision, that he was looking at me. Blood and booze. How many miles -- Ten? Fifteen? That dive we passed, was it even open all night, or did they close at eleven? I didn’t need to turn and look back at Michael to know what he looked like. Pale. Haunted. A hot mouth to die for and luminous eyes ringed with black. Searching, reaching, yearning, a pit of insatiable need that nothing can ever fill, not really, not for long. “Wild Bill?”

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 61 -

“Hm?” “What if… when Scary Mary died… the vamps who bit her didn’t drain her on purpose? What if they just got carried away?” So. It was the death of the friend that had him going tonight. The inconsolable mourning -- that’s what had drawn me to him to begin with. Tasty as Jack to my vampire senses, and no hangover. “You got any way to find out who they were?” “Maybe if I asked around, now that we know a few other vamps… but it happened so long ago. No. I don’t think so.” I rounded a bend and caught the glow of neon beyond a stand of trees. I sped up, and the van shuddered. It might’ve been red, but it was no Mustang, that’s for sure. “So you’ll never know, not without finding out whodunnit, watching them in action to see if they’re pussycats or maneaters.” “She had bites on both sides of her neck, around her breasts, and on her inner thighs.” “And there’s a station. Look, it’s open. And they sell beer. If they don’t have hard liquor, I’ll bet they at least have those boozy lemonades.” “Even if I’ll never know for sure, the possibility that it was all an accident, that maybe they were all just getting off… I guess it changes everything.” I pulled into the lot and fishtailed on the gravel. The space we parked in had a nice, big trash can alongside it where I could unload a few cubic feet of flotsam before dawn. The spot also gave me a clear view of the nighttime clerk, a leathery guy close to my actual age, with a gray-streaked ponytail and a cigarette tucked behind his ear. He was the only human within ninety yards. “You got the works?” I asked. Michael popped the glove box and pulled out a fresh set of phlebotomy gear, and when I didn’t immediately open my door and tumble out of my seat, he looped the tubing around his hand, and waited, and watched me. “I don’t really hafta hoard the whole pint,” I said. “Maybe you’ve been craving the red stuff because your body needs it. Like food.”

Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 1: Brazen

- 62 -

He unlooped the tubing, then looped it again, staring hard at the man behind the counter while his hands fidgeted. Mental wheels were turning. “Maybe,” he said, eventually. “And maybe I let you tap him solo,” I said. I wasn’t sure if Mikey could vamp people’s heads or not, but if anything ever happened to me, if a crucifix ever fell from the sky and shish-kebabed me where I stood, I’d like to expire knowing that I at least showed him how to take care of himself. “I’m scared.”

“Of that guy?”

“Well, more like nervous.”

“Just be your persuasive self. I’ll smooth it over if he gets testy.”

Loop. Unloop. Reloop. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll do it.”

He rolled out of the van and headed for the door with purpose, like he was

worried he’d change his mind and he needed momentum to see the whole business through. I considered putting some shoes on, and decided I was too lazy to bother. I stepped out of the van barefoot, pausing to watch the gentle sway of Michael’s hips and the flutter of his hair as he strode with such purpose toward his prey. Damien was right. Michael didn’t move like a human.

Jordan Castillo Price Jordan Castillo Price grew up in the steel mill warrens of Buffalo, NY, spent some formative drinking years in Chicago, and migrated north to small-town rural Wisconsin once she realized she was going to kill the next person who bumped into her with a shopping cart. She did a six-year stint in art school and played bass in a punk band that crashed and burned just before their first CD was pressed. At least she got a cool boyfriend out of the deal, since she ran off with the drummer. Jordan has a weekly show on erotica writing tips and techniques at www.packingheat.net. She suspects some of her listeners aren’t much interested in writing, and just tune in to hear her say naughty words. Readers interested in freebies, snippets, and peeks into the writing process should check out JCP News, a monthly newsletter where Jordan posts links to free eBooks and serialized M/M stories. Visit www.jordancastilloprice.com to sign up.