Deathbed Ch. 2

I felt a dreadful pang of regret; if it hadn’t been essential that I leave, I knew I would have submitted to his lust. He had been the sort of man to treat me the way I wanted to be treated.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I couldn’t let you keep me here.” I put the gun back in my purse and went to the hall tree, picking up the car keys and considering my escape route. The people in the garage would have heard the shots--I had four bullets left, and there were the dogs--

Someone grabbed me from behind, one hand around my wrist and one around my waist. “Aaahhh!” I screamed. He tore the purse off my shoulder and flung it into a far corner. It was the rider, impossibly alive, his face working with demonic fury. Although his shirt had a huge bloom of blood on the front and his face was streaked red, I could see no wounds. Paralyzed with horror, I nearly fainted. His grip was the only reason I didn’t fall.

“I wasn’t gonna hurt you, Irene,” he said through gritted teeth. “But I think I changed my mind.” WHACK! His open palm connected with my jaw. “You thought you were gonna kill me, huh? Little *bitch!*”

“I--I SHOT you!” I screamed, my face stinging from the slap. He could have taken my head off if he had closed his fist. “You were--”

“Dead?” He grinned banefully into my face. “Sorry. You can’t kill me that way, because you can’t kill what’s already dead!” The whole surface of my skin prickled, every hair standing on end. “That’s who I am. The Dead Man. Fifty years dead!”

“Wh-what? Dead? You’re crazy!”

“It’s black sorcery, Irene. A mockery of life.” The rider’s hands tightened on my arms. “I feel desire and hunger and pain, but there’s no escape and no rest in this world or the next! Undead until I’m finally condemned!”

“Why?” I asked faintly. “Who…?”

“I challenged the Devil and forfeited my soul--I’m his creature until I meet the conditions of my contract, and I know what the Devil’s promises are worth! Fifty years I’ve existed in this torment! It’s my curse from Hell!”

“Oh…my…God…” I closed my eyes. What was happening to me? Unbelievable, impossible, but I had put two bullets through him and the effects had vanished in moments! I had to believe him; there was no other explanation. He was a demon! Undead and unkillable!

I was positive he was going to do away with me for shooting him, and a wave of heat went over me like a baptism of warm blood. He was going to kill me, and I welcomed my fate. If the accident that had seemed meant to end my life hadn’t done the job, death at the rider’s hands would be just as quick.

His fingers brushed my throat. I waited for them to close their grip around my windpipe, perhaps break my neck with one squeeze. With his hideous strength, I knew he could kill me as easily as a gesture. A minute ticked by, and still I waited while the rider did nothing but hold me, hand poised at my throat.

“Getting shot hurts like a sonofabitch!” he growled. “I swear, I can still feel it--I may be dead, but I got all my nerve endings! Makes me mad!”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered through my clenched teeth, my eyes still shut. “Just kill me!”

Part Nine

I felt him laugh softly, and his lips covered mine in a harsh kiss. “I got better things to do first!” He bent and threw an arm around my thighs, then stood and hoisted me against his chest.

Up the stairs he went, three at a time, kicking a bedroom door open. “You’re going to taste even sweeter now, you feisty little bitch! Get those clothes off!” He dumped me on a quilt-spread double bed and began to take off his shirt, exposing another large tattoo on his stomach.

“I…I…” I scrambled backwards on the bed. “No! Please don’t do this to me! I don’t want to--”

“Too late now.” Deadman threw the shirt on the floor. “You owe me--and you said yes anyway!” He jumped on the bed and grabbed me, dragging my body under his. He did mean to rape me, then--which I realized was exactly what I had wanted him to do all along. And then he would kill me…

“What?! No--please!” I tossed my head back and forth as Deadman tried to kiss me, my legs pinned under his heavy knees and my hands twined with his hands, my arms flung straight out to each side. His lips fastened on the sensitive spot behind my ear. “Don’t force me!” I begged, arousal flaring white-hot in my belly.

“I won’t have to if ya calm down, girl,” he said in my ear. I thrashed harder and he held me down more firmly. “Whoa there! I’m not going to hurt you!”

“What?”

“I said, I got better things to do! All I’m gonna do is make you mine. Sweet little red-head Irene, with her eyes to match.” His mouth came down on mine again for a long moment. “Kisses me one minute and puts a goddamn bullet through my head the next. My kind of woman!”

“You’re crazy!”

“You think yer too damn high-class for me?” Deadman grinned at me and settled between my legs. “I’m just some damn dirty biker who picked you up on the road?” He laughed in a way that frightened me even more. “You know I’m a lot more than that, Irene. Let’s see if you still think you’re too good for me after I’m in you.”

He inserted a hand between us and began to unzip my jeans. “I’m interested to know, so you’ll have to tell me. How high-class are you gonna feel when yer flat on your back gettin’ fucked? It’s an equalizer in more ways than one. A little short of the ultimate equalizer, but it’ll do.” With a heave, he pulled my jeans down and past my hips.

“No!”

He dragged my jeans all the way off and tickled my pantied crotch with his fingertips. “I can smell you. You’re wet for me, ain’t ya?” Deadman sat up and pulled my legs around his waist. One of his thumbs inserted under the elastic of my underwear and moved through the hair and down. “Yeah, all slick and soft…mmm.” He worked the thumb up and down in my vulva, stroking my clit. “Feels damn good.”

“Ohh…oh…” I moaned, shaking with the sensations. “N-no…”

“Pretty lady.” With the other hand he smoothed the skin of my hips and thighs. “Can’t really tell you’ve had a kid--you’re not stretched much. Just a few marks…I bet you’re tight around a man’s cock, huh?” He roughly sank a finger into me and rapidly worked it in and out, keeping the thumb on my clit.

I began to moan more loudly, my hips shuddering in little circles as the excruciating pleasure shot up and down my legs and into my chest. Deadman pulled the crotch of my panties aside, hissing on an intake of breath when he exposed my vulva, and kept stroking me.

Pushing back from me and half lying down, he brought his face closer to my groin, nostrils flaring. He added another finger to the one already in my vagina and breathed on my clit from an inch away, then licked it and sucked it between his lips.

My moans reached a crescendo of sensuality while Deadman pressed his face between my thighs and engulfed my sex with his mouth. Fingers thrusting and stretching me, he teased my tender flesh with intense wet lips, pulling on my clit and working his head around and around.

Softer than his stubble, his beard and mustache brushed my inner thighs and my buttocks. His tongue darted back and forth, flickering; I felt something roaring inside me, centering in my thighs and groin, and I screamed.

“Ahhh…ahhh…OHHH!” I climaxed, my legs shaking.

Deadman reared up again, licking his lips. His eyes had gone fiery and hooded, his mouth open with panting breaths. “Damn, you are one hot lady. You need that cock now, baby!” He unbuckled his belt and kicked his jeans off. When he was naked, his erect penis rose up before my eyes, nearly reaching his navel; it looked bigger around than my wrist.

Sinuous with muscle and velveted with light hair, his whole body was pale with the exception of his sex, which was dusky purple nested in red-gold curls. I couldn’t close my eyes, couldn’t stop staring at him. Deadman noticed my gaze and looked amused. “I reckon you’ve seen a cock or two before, Irene. You’re no tremblin’ virgin!”

“No…” But my lover Tony’s penis was half the size of his, and nothing larger than Tony’s had ever gone into me. Only my daughter had come out, four years before, and my body had already forgotten her birth. Only her death remained with me. I kept looking at Deadman’s penis; I didn’t think it would hurt me in and of itself, but the mere thought of such an instrument in me made me shake.

Deadman opened my shirt and pushed my bra up to my collarbone to expose my breasts, pulled me around until my head rested on the pillows under the patchwork quilt that covered the bed, and began to work my panties off.

“No,” I repeated automatically, my will to struggle almost entirely gone. Even if I broke away from him I wouldn’t take two steps before he would have me pinned again. I reveled in the knowledge that he would forcibly take me in a few moments--there was nothing I could do.

“That’s right, there’s nothin’ you can do,” said Deadman, stripping off my panties, sniffing them voluptuously and dropping them on the bed. He smiled at my startlement. “I know what yer thinkin’, girl. It reads plain in those pretty eyes of yours.”

Arranging my legs, he lunged forward and lay on me, the firm head of his penis digging into my stomach. The weight of his huge body felt so erotic that I began to breathe hard again. “You don’t want to do anything about it anyhow. You want me to take you. Don’t ya?”

I shook my head, and kept shaking it as he raised his hips and used one hand to spread a little spit over the head of his penis before settling it at my entrance. When he closed his teeth and curled his lips in a sensual snarl, driving his cock into me with a few hard thrusts, I was still shaking my head in denial of the only thing I knew was true right now. I knew I was a liar.

“Uhhh!” Deadman let out a long grunt as he entered me, panting in my face with his teeth locked, his eyes closing for a moment. “Damn…good…” I felt my body let him in and ease around him, closing its soft grip on his cock. His size was too much for my small body, but too much was what I wanted. He sighed in pleasure, his long hair falling forward over his shoulders as he began to move.

Despite myself, I arched my whole body in a slow rolling bridge to feel him penetrate me to my deepest recesses, the thickness of his cock stretching my entrance until my clit throbbed. Deadman lowered his head to my breasts and licked them, teasing the nipples with the tip of his tongue and bathing my skin in cool moisture. His damp hair trailed after his mouth. Continuing the tongue bath up my neck and across my shoulders, he thrust and withdrew, thrust and withdrew.

Returning to my breasts, he covered them again with wide strokes of his tongue, seeming to savor the taste of my skin. I moaned, wondering at his gentleness. I had nearly forgotten why I had shot him and why I had to escape the house--his heavy body on mine and in me crowded out all other thoughts and sensations.

I began to give myself over to the pleasure that rippled out from my sex and my breasts, urged along by Deadman’s touch. I couldn’t pretend for one moment longer that I didn’t want it. He raised his head and slowed his strokes, barely moving. Forcing my eyes open, I watched him consciously restrain himself with some effort. He smiled, looking at my breasts.

“Whose blood is it, girl?”

“What?”

“You must have washed the blood away, but I can still taste it. All over you, Irene. It’s in the pores of your skin.” He licked the underside of my right breast. “You taste of someone’s blood. And you smell of it…” Opening his mouth wide, he engulfed the nipple and areola, tugging and sucking. His hips rotated and he thrust deep and held his cock inside me.

“You’re crazy!”

He lifted his head and looked me straight in the eyes. “I know blood when I taste it. I could smell it the moment you got close to me. I thought it was yours, but I know it’s not. Whose blood is it?” His cock grew even harder, taking me slowly, so big it reminded me of childbirth. Every thrust, every slow excavation of my aching depths left me limp and panting like the the aftermath to labor pains. Acid green, his gaze bored into my eyes; his upper lip curled to show his teeth. “Tell me whose blood is on your skin, Irene.”

I began to hyperventilate, my breasts and stomach heaving into his chest. I had a strange feeling that he already knew the answers to the questions he asked, but was testing me to see if I would tell the truth. “It’s…it’s…my husband’s. And my lover’s.”

Deadman nodded slowly, his body still possessing mine, and began to thrust faster.

I moaned with the extremity of the pleasure, rolling my head around on the quilt. “I shot them. This morning. They were going to kill me together. They didn’t know I had the gun, but my Papa taught me to shoot and gave me that revolver when I left home and I’ve kept it ever since. I emptied the revolver into both of them and I reloaded to make sure they were dead. There was blood everywhere. I had to take off all my clothes because of the blood.”

Deadman lowered his head and began to trail his tongue along the line of my jaw, sliding his cock in and out of my body with a deliberate, accelerating rhythm.

“It splashed on my face and throat and chest,” I said, “and it was on my thighs and my shoes. I stripped naked and I took two showers to wash it off. I had to burn everything I was wearing. It was all soaked in blood.”

“I can taste it,” he said, lapping the side of my neck. “You taste so good, baby...” He was fucking me hard now, pounding my body into the mattress with his hands imprisoning mine above my head, and I cried out. “Yeah, baby, scream for me!” Deadman growled into my throat. “I’m gonna take you ‘til you know who I am!”

“W-what?” I gasped.

“Who am I, Irene? Who’s fucking the life out of you?”

I felt an orgasm approaching and moaned incoherently. “D-Deadman…’Taker…”

“I’m the Dead Man, and you’re mine now. Aren’t you?”

“Ahh…ahh…ohh…OHHH!” I screamed, my hips slamming up and down as I came. “OHHH! Ohhh…” He rode me to the conclusion, his teeth set in a grim smile.

“You’re a woman of blood,” he said. “Shot three men today, and you meant to kill them all! Those two aren’t the only ones who’ve died at your hand, are they?”

“No…”

“Like I said…my kind of woman.” Deadman kissed me with such passion I moaned, and began to move inside me again. “You turn me on so damn much…” I felt his penis swell inside me, the beginnings of his orgasm pulsing at the base. “Been so long, Irene. I haven’t had a woman for so long, and I found you waitin’ for me by the road.”

His face began to twitch, his mouth snarling with lips drawn back from his teeth. Ferocious, baneful, the most compelling masculine face I had ever seen. Beautiful, as his green eyes closed and he thrust hard and fast into my accepting body. The violent roar of his climax reminded me of his savagery in battle.

When he collapsed full length on me, covering my entire body with his hot, sweaty limbs, I sank into the mattress beneath him and imagined that we would lie this way for eternity.

Always joined, always buried, alive in death. The heaviness of dead earth on both of us, but the heat of our lust melting us together in an eternal embrace. Fading into exhausted sleep, I barely felt him leave me, dreaming of his body crushing mine like the weight of mortal sin.