“Heaven Sent”
by Jordan Castillo Price

The Midwest is full of huge gaps where things once thrived, until the Interstate landed…somewhere else. Wild Bill and I found this house between cornfields in the middle of Iowa. “Watch out for busted needles, Mikey,” Bill had warned me. “This was a squatter’s paradise. Once.”

Only one bedroom had miraculously survived the warp and rot that took the rest of the house. It was before dusk when I woke there, squeezed in a little kid’s bed. I pried myself out from between Bill and the wall and scratched my stubble. I needed a shave, which wasn’t gonna happen. No electricity, no water. I fingered sleep and old eyeliner from the corner of my eye, pulled a strand of hair out of my mouth, and blinked. Cowboy sheets. What more could we want?

Wild Bill was still fast asleep. He tells me that what you see in the movies, about vampires being dead while the sun is high, is all a load of crap. He says he’s just a very deep sleeper.

I pressed my ear to his chest and listened to the slow, deep thrum of his heart. No, not dead. Just sleeping for all he was worth.

When I shifted back and pressed my lips to his stomach, his skin was cool. He needed to feed, but not from me. One man’s marrow couldn’t keep up with the demand, so he’d drink from a stranger, and then follow it up with a chaser from me. This solution wasn’t ideal, but it was the best we could come up with.

I stroked Bill’s stomach with my cheek. My breath warmed his skin for a moment. Something shifted under my shoulder. Wild Bill might sleep deeply, but part of him was waking up early.

I settled my hand over his cock carefully; sure that it would startle him out of sleep. I think a human man would have given me some kind of reaction, not that I’ve been with many, and not that I’ve actually spent the night with any of those few to test their reflexes.

Bill’s face stayed exactly the same. Still. Pale. Cheekbones to die for, and a luscious mouth. And young. He looks so young when he’s asleep, maybe even my age, since when he’s sleeping his face isn’t twisted up in its perpetual smirk.

I stroked him through his jeans. The girth of his cock began pressing against the threadbare denim, its shape more defined with each pass of my hand. I undid his fly and brushed a kiss just above his pubes. He didn’t move, and his slow breathing didn’t change.

Having Wild Bill’s eyes on me is a rush, don’t get me wrong. But it felt good to enjoy him without the worry, too. He always seems to think he’ll contaminate me with his “vampire seed,” always watching to see where I lick. I can tell when he’s ready to come—we’ve done this so many times I’ve lost count now. But he’s not himself unless he’s feeling apprehensive about something.

A quick tug and his jeans were down around his thighs. He inhaled more deeply. Dusk was close.

I settled myself on Bill’s legs and lay my face beside his cock. I pressed it to my mouth and ran my tongue up the shaft. He was warmer there than on his stomach. Maybe I’d gotten his blood pumping.

I tongued the sensitive spot where his cockhead met his shaft. He’d freak if I took him in my mouth, all the way, with no condom. He would. It wasn’t worth getting lectured because I’d snuck a little taste.

But I wanted to.

Instead I inched lower and cupped his balls in my hand. They seemed so vulnerable. When I traced the shape of his left nut, his scrotum wrinkled up.

Bill sucked air.

I looked. His eyelids fluttered. Almost awake. But not quite.

By now I was hard, too. I adjusted myself inside my jeans, settled back on Wild Bill’s thighs with my legs hanging off the bottom of the little kid’s bed and its cowboy sheets, and I tongued his balls, every bulge and fold.

Wild Bill made an indeterminate noise. Soft. Bemused, maybe. I looked up. His face was still. I’d inched so far down I was more off the bed now than on it. I stood up and pulled off my jeans, then fished a condom out of the back pocket. It felt cool and lube-slick as I rolled it on him. I swung a leg over Bill, reached behind me, and lined him up.

My cock jutted toward the ceiling as I eased myself down. It was tight, but that pressure, that burn—that sensation was addictive, and I’d grown to crave the feel of his cock, thick and hard, fucking my ass ’til I shot.

Slow, easy, inch by inch…finally, he was inside me. I held onto him by one hip and planted my other hand on the cowboy sheets. And still, Wild Bill’s face was placid and smooth.

I considered letting him dream on, making a game of it to see if I could come before he opened his eyes. But no. I might be riding his cock, but what I wanted was him. Present. Awake.

His battered leather jacket leaned against the bed. I snagged it and pulled a safety pin from the lapel. How long had that pin lived there? Possibly as long as I’d walked this earth. But so what? My tetanus shot was up to date.

I jabbed my forefinger. The safety pin was duller than I might have liked, but I didn’t flinch. The time for flinching was long past.

I dropped the pin on the floor and milked out a dark bead of blood, then stroked it over Wild Bill’s lips, just along the seam where they met. His eyes shot open. The room was nearly dark, but I knew those eyes. Blue. Like the summer sky. He licked his lips, and then gave a sigh that coursed through his whole body. And even though he hardly moved, suddenly he was so there, so present, that it was as if his spirit had entered him—all at once, in a great, heaving rush.

“So, I died and went to heaven,” he said. “Who’da thunk it?

I glanced up at the kitschy striped wallpaper hanging from the plaster in curls, roped with spider webs. “You call this heaven?”

“Must be. My very own guardian angel anoints me with blood while I sleep.”

I offered Bill the pinprick. He grabbed my wrist in his iron grip and sucked my fingertip into his mouth. His abs rolled as he pressed his cock in deeper, and I felt the connection, even through that one tiny hole where he drank from me. My cock throbbed with every suck, and my arousal spun high, fast and heady.

Bill sucked my finger so hard it stung, and a thread of heat zinged up my arm, down my spine, straight to my groin. My balls drew up, and I took a deep breath, focused on riding him, coaxing an orgasm from him so he could come inside me while I shot over his belly and chest.

One drop of blood shouldn’t have been enough. And yet, it was. In the way a single star can light the sky. Or a virus can wipe out a population. The tiny bead of blood—and whatever Bill managed to suck out with it—was enough.

I watched him until I could no longer bear to look. The feeling was too intense, and all I could do was clutch up against it. And still it washed over me. And I came.

My gasps were loud in the hollow, ruined room. Wild Bill yanked me forward while my body spasmed, pulled my mouth against his, and sighed a vampire sigh as he gave over to the pleasure, too.

My semen was sticky between us. His chest rose and fell—with me draped over it, stupefied and useless like I always get when Wild Bill drinks me and pounds into me until I come and come and come.

A movement in my peripheral vision dragged me from my post-orgasmic high, and I spotted a hairy three-inch millipede wriggling its way out of a seam in the wallpaper. Right where I’d been sleeping. Sick.

I jabbed my thumbnail into it and felt its body crack. The front half fell away, dropping down the small gap between the bed and the wall. The back half remained, stuck to the wall, legs twitching.

Bill spoke into my hair. “Aptly named, Archangel Michael.”

I wiped my thumb on the cowboy sheets. “Right. I’m an angel.”

“Ever been to church? He’s the one with the massive sword, held high over his head.” His voice dropped, but I heard him anyway, forming the words in my hair. “The one just waiting for someone to sin.”

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