Steamy Screams: Anthology of Erotic Horror

The stink in the attic burned in Barry’s lungs. The air had grown almost too hot, too ripe, to breath. Perspiration cascaded down his face and legs. Despite two climaxes since tromping up the stairs, one pumped directly into his mouth, his cock hung hard and heavy, wanting more, and his balls loosened up, aching for further release.

The books. He wanted to gaze through them again and enjoy their wickedness. Instead, he tucked his protesting dick back under cover and piled the antique books into the trunk. Touching the leather bound grimoire with the mottled hide and the resin-soaked pages again nauseated and aroused him. By the time he lugged the steamer down the narrow staircase to the second floor landing, his cock had unintentionally rubbed itself to the verge of unloading a third time.

Barry silenced its complaining and finished the job in the shower, where he washed away the external grime coating his body.  Not long after he emerged, pondering the internal, the doorbell rang.

His name was Nickolas Kantemir. A dealer in rare books, he had answered Barry’s post on a blog about the collection in the steamer trunk. The lone sentence was both vague and promising.

I know what you’ve found.

Barefoot, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, Barry padded down the stairs and opened the front door. Twilight had fallen, welcomed in early by the rain.  Standing between the threshold and the dusk was a column of darkness in the shape of a man, its back turned toward him. The muggy breeze swept up, rich with the man’s clean scent, a mix of summer rain and pine trees. Barry sucked in a deep breath, exhilarated for reasons he couldn’t at first identify.

The man turned, and Barry’s next breath came with difficulty. A classically handsome face with sapphires for eyes, dark hair one length longer than that of most professional athletes, and a mouth too tempting to ignore materialized out of the shadows.

“Barrett Manning?” the man asked, his voice a musical baritone.

Barry choked down a painfully dry swallow and nodded.  He somehow found his voice and answered, “Yes. And you’re Nickolas?”

“Guilty,” the man smiled, flashing a length of perfect white teeth, and for one blinding instant, all Barry could think about was kissing that mouth, and being kissed in return. Kissed everywhere, shuddering as it grew intimate with his flesh. Earlobes and instep, throat and toes, nipples and asshole and even places far beneath skin and muscles, places normally inaccessible to another man’s mouth.

“I’m here concerning the Langston Collection.”

Barry realized he’d fallen under a spell. Blinking, he regained some of his composure. “The books, of course.” Then a wave of worry crashed over him. He sensed his cock had grown stiff—if it had ever softened following his shower, which he doubted—and that if he looked down, the tent in his jeans would be capped by an expanding wet spot, damning proof of his guilt. Worse, what if the vision standing outside on the top step noticed?

“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.”