Jack Burton - Steamy Screams - Anthology of Erotic Horror

“May I come in?”

“Of course, dude. Forgive my rudeness. Please, come in.”

Something in the man’s face changed. He glided into the house, graceful yet masculine. His hypnotic male scent deepened, but as he passed out of the shadows and into the light, Barry noticed the man’s pallor, ashen-gray, pink around the edges. The illusion was there one moment, gone the next.

Nickolas Kantemir wore a spotless black button-down shirt under a leather jacket. One shirttail hung out of his jeans in that jaunty, modern style. Old hiking boots on big feet, faded blue jeans. The man was stunning in an understated way.

“Can I take your jacket?”

“You can take my cock, Barrett.”

Barry’s eyes snapped fully open. “What?”

Nickolas’ lips curled into a seductive smile. “I said you can take me to the collection.”

Barry had heard the man wrong; he’d only heard what he wanted to. Watching the man’s smile, he realized Nickolas’ lips never once moved as he spoke. Perhaps he’s trying to hypnotize me, Barry thought. Or seduce me… which Barry couldn’t have wanted more.

“So, about this Langston Collection,” Barry said.

“Ford Langston was a professor of antiquities from Midlothian University, in the town of Avonmoors, Massachusetts, and a notorious sexual deviant who secretly—and not so privately in some instances—sought to explore every act of sensuality and lust known to man. He was obsessed with experiencing sex on every plane, not only physically but the metaphysical as well. Soul sex. God’s sex. Every sacred and sinful kink and bent ever conceived. And in order to obtain that goal, he assembled a collection of the rarest books on the subject. Arcane, forbidden books which became known as the Langston Collection.”

Barry glanced around the simple New Englander, half of it in desperate need of updating. “If it is this Langston Collection, what was it doing in my attic?”

Nickolas half-smiled and, inwardly, Barry reacted fully. “Perhaps some of Ford Langston’s research took place here, in this very house. Do you know anything about the history of the place?”

Barry shrugged. “I’ve only owned it for a few weeks, but there are some strange smells up there, and I’ve found claw marks on some of the walls.”

“Maybe the previous owner or tenant was one of his many conquests.”

“You mean lovers?”

“Sure, that works.”

Silence fell between them, warm and awkward. The central air conditioning felt nonexistent, though Barry sensed it whispering over his arms.

“I thought the books might be valuable,” he rambled. “That I could sell them and use the money to fix up the place.”

“Valuable? Oh, yes, very. If they really are the Langston Collection, you’re sitting on a fortune.”

The heat in the room doubled. “Fucking-A.”

Nickolas placed a hand on Barry’s arm. The connection was powerful, icy and electric. Barry gasped, suddenly aware of his nipples as they stiffened into hard points beneath the thin cotton of his shirt.

“No; books A , fucking B… ”

There it was again, that teasing frankness. Dumbfounded, Barry said, “This way.”

But Nickolas was already a step ahead of him and navigating the staircase to the dark room at the top.

Barry caught the intensity in Nickolas’ sapphire eyes, which glinted preternaturally in the wan light cast by the spare bedroom’s lone lamp. The other man knelt between the open trunk and the mattress and box spring sitting on the scuffed hardwood floor in what Barry envisioned as becoming the guest room some day. He leaned forward, enough that Nickolas’ shirt pulled free of his jeans, exposing a patch of furry skin just above the crack of his ass. The dude had gone commando, and Barry’s cock pulsed.

“Are they—”

Nickolas withdrew the indigo book with the gold leaf spirals. “ The Callae Cardera , painstakingly recreated from scrolls found in canopic jars at the infamous Walled Lake in the shadows of Castle Hayne. Das Buch Des Dunkel Lebenz … roughly translated as ‘Book of Dark Passion.’ The Taos Testament … ”

The handsome man grunted something under his breath as he lifted an oblong book from the pile.

“ Zettle’s Diary . An exploration of unholy sexual rituals with those abominations known as the First Gender. The Insatiable One, Yiig Y’Reka… tentacled Toth Helote… Watan Ranssae, the Dark Lover and Romancer of Fallen Souls… these incantations were believed lost following the destruction of the Third Reich.”

“So, is this the Langston Collection?”

“Only if The Libidonomicon is here.”

Barry parroted, “ The Libidonomicon ?”

“‘The Book of Lusts.’ Think of it as something of a dark Karma Sutra . The original text was written in human blood, by the Mad Hungarian, Adolfo Ardeshin. Subsequent copies were even more meticulous in their creation, bound in the flesh of his unwilling victims.”

Nickolas froze, and Barry’s heart galloped.

“What is it?”

Nicholas drew the silk-wrapped volume from the trunk. His hands shook as he unwrapped. “Can it be?”

A buzzing undercurrent of electricity infused the air. Barry’s arms broke in gooseflesh. His cock pulsed.

“Of all these treasures,” Nickolas said, his voice taking on a haunting echo. “You are the most priceless.” Then he faced Barry directly, a glint in his eyes and a surly grin on his lips. “I can say with certainty that this is the Langston Collection.”

Nickolas clutched the pinkish, gray-skinned book against his chest and stroked it. Though Barry initially dismissed what happened next as a trick of the room’s poor light, he swore The Libidonomicon quivered. The book made an undulating motion, like a snake, as though the pages were pulsing from within. Pulsing, like Barry’s cock.

“So… you interested?” he asked.

Nickolas’ grin widened. “In the books? Very much so. But also in you.”

The wine in the air, which had steadily built in Barry’s ears since being touched, crackled out. And the book, The Libidonomicon , puffed and shrank against Nickolas’ chest, as though taking breaths.

It had only happened once, in the deep green woods behind his uncle’s house. Dave and Jamie were a couple of local guys, friends bored out of their skulls during an otherwise unremarkable summer. A couple of no-good punks, he’d been told, but that wasn’t true. In the woods, they’d been great , at least so much as Barry remembered. Though not to be repeated physically beyond the one time, that sweaty, dirty afternoon proved to be unforgettable, fodder for a decade’s worth of jerk-off fantasies.

Barry thought of them again as Nickolas maneuvered him onto the nearby mattress. The pill-covered quilt felt scratchy beneath his naked spine, like that old army blanket in the woods, which had likely been somebody’s picnic castoff. The scent of pine hit his nostrils strongly, more nostalgia than Nickolas, he imagined. Nickolas, so handsome, moved on top of him. But in the murky near-absence of light, it was Jamie he saw. Jamie was a brute of a young man, probably now married, divorced, and living with one female friend or another in a long succession of meaningless lays since that long ago afternoon. If he wasn’t in jail serving time, that was. Barry hoped Jamie thought about their day in the woods, too, when he jerked off or was buried balls-deep in a choice pussy or ass.

Barry blinked and the face now belonged to Dave. Dave was the handsomer of the two and the dirtier-minded of the boys his uncle had labeled no-good punks. He’d also been the one to incite the dance steps that ultimately led to their conga-fuck beneath the pine trees; often, Barry had thought about seeking Dave out on the internet. Dave, who was also probably married and still playing around with men, cuming and making them cum. Oh, to cum…