Page 2 of Tantalized by the Cursed Statue

“So what are you supposed to be?” The vampire’s eyes flick over him.

Nathaniel likes her vibe, the high heels and the hair piled on top of her head. Maybe if he sends the right signals back, she’ll want to tie him down and suck him dry.

He doesn’t have much experience dating, especially as a submissive trying to find a dominant girlfriend. All he knows is that he’s always been attracted to those magnetically powerful women in the room.

Only lately, he’s been wondering if women aren’t all he’s attracted to…

He pushes that thought away. It’s bad enough that he’s six feet two inches tall and has these stupid submissive desires, like the need for someone to spoon him from behind, kiss him on the head, and keep him from being afraid of everything.

Why are his emotions so needy and weird?

And he’s getting really tired of his ridiculous cock that likes to get hard in the presence of someone powerful and commanding.

He doesn’t need to suddenly find out he likes cock on top of it all.

He’s not gay, just…a little kinky. Once he finds a girlfriend, those kinks can stay in the bedroom where they belong. Completely safe, completely private.

He tries to concentrate on acting normal. The lady vampire is waiting for an answer.

“Um, I’m supposed to be Houdini.” He holds up his chained wrists, feeling a little ridiculous.

“Interesting. So if you’re Houdini, why don’t you escape?”

“But that’s not really the point…” he trails off, cringing a little under the vampire’s expectant gaze. He gives some halfhearted pulls at the chains, but they stay locked around his wrists.

“You’re not much of an escape artist, are you?”

“You can chain me down,” says the cute fox girl who comes up beside her. “If you feel like it, you can even give me a spanking.”

“I’m not…that’s not really Houdini’s thing.”

“But you’re so tall and dominant,” she says, looking up at him.

He buries his face in his hands and groans.

* * *

Nathaniel leaves the party, tiptoeing out the back door. With a sigh, he throws the costume shackles into his backpack.

This isn’t working.

Yeah, the vibe of the party was low-level kinky, just like the flier had hinted at.

But he and his shitty costume just managed to confuse everyone.

He doesn’t really blame them for being confused; he wasn’t sending the right signals.

And it’s hard to figure out what signals he wants to send when he’s confused about them himself.

Maybe he’s too tall and masculine to fit anyone’s physical expectations for a sub? Or is he giving off desperate vibes? If he wants to submit, he’s got to seem a little bit vulnerable, right? But not desperate enough that it’s not sexy. How does anyone strike a balance?

He slings his backpack over his shoulder and starts the long, lonely walk home. If he can’t find a dominant girlfriend at a party like this, maybe he should just give up.

He knows he should ignore all these negative thoughts, but as he trudges under the glow of the streetlights, they nag at him.

He graduated five months ago, but no one has been hiring for his degree.

With no other prospects, he decided to stay in his college town.

This meant watching all his college friends leave over the summer, starting new lives in different cities.

And now that he’s out of school, he’s just spinning his wheels at a dead-end job, feeling a little out of place and wondering if he should move back in with his parents.

Oh well, at least he has his big creepy statue.

Always looking at him with his dead, soulless eyes. The statue wants him, that’s for sure. He wants Nathaniel’s body, his soul, his mind. If the statue had crashed the kinky party back there, he wouldn’t have let Nathaniel leave until he was good and bound with his collar around his neck.

Not many people are bigger than Nathaniel, but that statue makes him feel small in a way that makes his stomach clench and his skin feel sensitive.

The statue is of a fully-formed, fully developed man, much more rugged and solid than a 23-year-old boy just out of college.

He’s got layers of muscle. It’s honestly impressive how defined the sculptor made him look, like a swole mix of marble and creatine.

Even a straight guy like Nathaniel can’t ignore his powerful core, the tendons of his neck running up to his square jawline.

His forearms are thick, his shoulders wide and strong.

And the way he holds his corded hands out from his sides, fingers slightly spread, like he’s prepared to attack…

Or defend.

Great, now Nathaniel is both sad and turned on. His half-hard cock bounces inside his pants with every step.

Might as well freak himself out a little.

So he forces his feet to turn in the direction of the cemetery. It’s eleven o’clock at night, far too late to be walking through such a dark, spooky place. So it’s kinda perfect.

He’ll just have to get his cheap thrills from him . At least until he can find a real person to hold his leash.

* * *

As Nathaniel walks through the cemetery, his shoes squishing into the soft ground, he feels no fear at all.

He’s not scared of anything!

His stomach is definitely not churning with a sickly mix of anticipation and dread. His jaw is not clenched, and his skin is not covered in goosebumps.

Okay, all of those things are happening.

He’s fucking terrified. It’s completely dark; crumbling headstones glow in the faint light of his phone flashlight. Every step he takes brings him closer to it .

What the hell was he thinking, walking the overgrown path up the hill to the old mausoleum? The last time he’d done this, the statue had said his name .

Except that is crazy. The statue isn’t alive, and he can’t speak. He doesn’t know who Nathaniel is. His name was conjured from his own stupid, horny brain. That potent mix of fuck-or-flight endorphins must have made him hallucinate.

He is not going to hallucinate this time. He’s going to keep his shit together.

He isn’t going to look at the statue’s face. Definitely not.

But maybe it’s better to check?

He takes a peek up at the statue.

Oh fuck, the huge man is looking right at him. His fingers are extended, reaching out to grip him, and all Nathaniel knows is that he needs to get away. Get away as fast as humanly possible. His feet fling themselves forward, and his body follows a second later.

His sweaty fingers lose their grip on his phone, and suddenly everything goes dark.

This was a mistake, a big mistake.

He’s trying to run, but he can’t move. His backpack is caught on something. A tree branch? Or has the statue finally caught him? He cries out as his feet scrabble helplessly against the ground. Adrenaline kicks into his bloodstream, and his idiot cock spasms violently.

“Nathaniel.”

He lets out a wail. In his panic, he shrugs the backpack off. All he can think about is fleeing as fast as possible.

He trips on a headstone, eats dirt. Scrambles to his feet and almost makes it to the other side of the cemetery when a flashlight shines on his face.

He freezes like a deer in headlights.

“Nathaniel, is that you?”

A tall, twisted form emerges from the bushes. Squinting, Nathaniel tries to make out the figure behind the flashlight.

Oh, thank God.

“OMR.” Nathaniel lets out a shaky exhale. He’s never been so relieved to see another human being, even if it’s just Old Man Renalds, the creepy graveyard caretaker.

Everyone calls him OMR. He’s been around forever and lives on the edge of the cemetery grounds.

He’s the kind of guy who is always just a little too eager to show off the headstones of all the people in town who’d met weird, untimely ends: falling off a ladder in the town library, bitten to death by black widows, or encased in a vat of lard.

Though that last one, Nathaniel suspects OMR made up.

“Are you okay?” Old Man Renalds asks. “You look like you’ve just—”

“—seen a ghost.” Nathaniel lets out a shaky exhale, ashamed of himself. “G-guess I just spooked myself.”

“Was it the statue?”

Nathaniel frowns.

“He’s been more active lately.”

A chill runs up his spine. “What do you mean?”

“Haven’t you ever wondered about his story?” OMR comes closer, the beam of his flashlight still shining directly in Nathaniel’s face.

“His story?” Nathaniel clears his throat. “He’s just a c-creepy cemetery statue, like a headstone for the mausoleum or something.”

“Maybe.” Old Man Renalds lets out a dry laugh.

“But back when I was as young as you, the old timers used to swear that he was once a flesh-and-blood human. Of course, that was before he was tricked by his own beloved. He was frozen into stone by an awful curse, transforming him into a living monument to the dead.”

Nathaniel can’t help but shudder. He doesn’t like imagining being frozen immobile for decades, watching time pass by and all his friends grow old. “Why would his own lover…trick him?”

“Before he was turned to marble, your friend had a reputation for being an extremely attentive lover: intense, brooding, and handsome. The kind of dominant figure that draws the eyes of both women and men. He sold oddities, strange and wonderful objects the likes of which had never been seen. No one knew where he came from, only that he was looking to settle down here, start a life in this town. But before too long, he got himself entangled with one of the town beauties. He seduced the young man, courted him for an entire season.”

“Wait, him ?” Nathaniel blinks at him. “He courted a guy? You’re saying the statue is gay?”

OMR shrugs. “Believe what you want. This doesn’t have to be anything more to you than a ghost story.”

“Okay, sorry I interrupted. Keep going.”

“The townspeople didn’t trust him. And back then…

” OMR shrugs. “Well, anyway, it was late October, and the man was called out of town on some business. And while he was gone, the town came up with a plan. They built a stone structure on the top of the hill over there, and prepared the ground with a special binding spell. Then they sent word to him that his lover had died.”

“Oh shit,” Nathaniel whispers. “But I bet his lover hadn’t died. It was a lie.”

OMR nods. “When he heard the news of his death, he was devastated. He rushed back to see his lover’s body one last time before he was laid to rest in the mausoleum forever, and that’s when it happened.”

“What…what happened?”

“The spell. The trap. Frozen into stone, never to breathe another breath. Bound to guard an empty mausoleum for eternity.”

Nathaniel’s own breath freezes inside his chest. They stand there in silence, the trees rattling in the wind.

Then he lets out a nervous laugh, feeling a little ridiculous. He’d been listening so intently to OMR’s story, he’d forgotten about all his stuff, scattered all over the ground somewhere near the mausoleum.

His stomach plunges at the thought of going back there alone.

“Um, sorry to bother you.” Nathaniel swallows, feeling very silly. “I should probably go find my backpack, and I dropped my phone. Would you mind coming with your flashlight?”

“Sure.”

As he and OMR make their way up the tree-covered hill to the mausoleum, he has to admit that it’s a little less terrifying to have someone else with him. And he’s so, so grateful that OMR does not shine his flashlight at the statue. It’s a vague, shadowy presence that he doesn’t have to look at.

It’s not long before Nathaniel locates his backpack. And a few feet away, his phone lies face down in the grass. When he picks it up, the light is still on.

“Thanks for your help.” Nathaniel shoulders his backpack and gives the man a shaky smile as they begin walking back down the hill.

“I guess there’s one thing I don’t understand about your story, though.

Why did the town have to freeze him into living stone or whatever?

” Relief mixed with adrenaline makes Nathaniel extra-talkative.

“Why didn’t they just lock him in the mausoleum and pretend he was dead? ”

“He wasn’t human,” OMR answers, his face shadowed by the beam of the flashlight. “Even back then. His cursed objects were imbued with tantalizing sexual evil. We feared that he would escape, come after us. We had to fight magic with magic.”

“Okay,” Nathaniel says giddily, “but didn’t you tell me that he was a town legend when you were young? Now you’re talking about him like you were there.”

“Believe whatever you want.” OMR lets out a weary sigh. “I’m just an old man, and it’s long past my bedtime. Things were different back then. We were told he was an evil wandering spirit who uses his dark magic to turn the good young men of the town to the pleasures of other men.”

“But that’s bananas.” Nathaniel snorts, rolling his eyes at what old timers believe.

“You said the statue and his lover were hooking up for a whole season? I’ll bet his lover was gay to start with.

That idiot probably just claimed he was seduced by evil statue magic to save face in front of the town. ”

The man frowns at him, his craggy face growing even more crags. “I’m sure a boy like you would know nothing about that.”

What the hell?!

Nathaniel’s skin begins to burn. “Um, I gotta go.” He spins around and starts walking away quickly. “Thanks for your help with the flashlight.”

“Take care of yourself,” OMR calls after him. “Remember, it’s dangerous to travel through the cemetery at night.”

Nathaniel shivers, hurrying away even faster.