Just before sunset, I'd managed to outrun my worries when my phone rang. In my hands right then, the phone felt too small to handle well. It felt stupidly slick, deserving a rough response. I pressed it open fast. I spoke carelessly.

I'm never able to walk away, even when I want to run.

"This is Max."

I breathed expansively, pushing my bronze-blond hair off my sweating face. It was during my cool-down. I was still hot from my run, and maybe I thought that saying no would happen like a second wind. It would just happen for me. My second wind is my edge; I draw in that rejuvenating presence like nobody else I know. I win from that moment forward, stoned on adrenalin, receptive to crazy thoughts, thinking that I've been picked by a primitive god to win the match. I believe the world wants to rise through and between the other runners. It wants me first. Comes to meet me, and pulls me forward from the crowd. So the second wind opens my throat and the air comes in, and draws the pain suddenly from my strong calves and thighs. Then you see someone really run.

The man calling, however, didn't set a good pace. He just told me the exchange was on. I remember one sentence very well, when the man's condescension turned an assurance into a taunt.

"He likes you, and he'll give what you asked for, and take only what you're comfortable with."

I was going to ask how this could be happening so fast. His delivery was fast, too, giving me no opening.

"I won't be setting it up; he's coming to you."

I never gave the man anything but my name, I thought. So I could tell him no, I'd decided V was not my thing. I didn't need it. I would run without it—though I had to be the last good runner who relied on his own blood. I had hesitated because I had noticed something giving out in the other guys' eyes. They gave a shudder when someone murmured the letter, a little jump and shake— spine locking, eyes blinking. They turned away or looked down in fear, when they confessed that they had a source. Some of those guys stopped running. Pretty clear that they had dumbly offered something that hurt to give.

I felt lucky when this service assured me that I could set my limits. I had been weighing things in my mind, never satisfied with the balance. It really seemed that the scales should settle now. However, I started sliding into gut-sick fear the moment I left my "offer" with the service. Winning more, and getting into that one college where I'd live just how I wanted, was better done any other way but this way.

Funny thing. I was looking for my chance to say no. I never said yes or even thought about it. "Yes" was just my usual approach. I left it out there for anyone to pick up on. Beer, yes, grass, yes, blow jobs in the back room of the piercing studio with the too-skinny tattooed guy, yes, and if the condom, dang, slipped off, still yes, ah, yes—always too late for "no" with me. I had so little control.

"No," I ventured, "Look, I can't do it. You have to tell him no."

The man laughed. "He calls me, son. I don't call him. I pass on a name and an offer. Then I'm paid and quit. You tell him no. You tell him no."

He paused, enjoying the tension, his breath quickening before he chided, "Why so upset, fangbanger? You only do what's comfortable for you."

Then he hung up.

I paused alone in the dry park, hearing the shifting air in the grasses and trees. It was the hot air rising as the cold winds flocked down from the dark sky. The feel of a massive transformation in my world made me dizzy.

I tried to run. In ten minutes a vicious cramp cinched up the center of my left calf. It felt as though the thick, engorged muscle was bending the bone like a wooden bow. I yelped with fury and dropped, squatting first, and flipping onto my right hip to lay on the dirt trail.

"Fuck…" I whispered "Fuck me, I'm fucked." For five minutes I lay and cursed, trying to press the pain out with my hands, like squeezing blood from a stone. At last I adjusted to the vicious dysfunction of my leg. I crawled up on all fours and shifted the target of my swearing, telling my leg how it had disgusted and angered me, and how I expected it to behave.

"Does that work?" Taunted a quiet voice.

I shook back the curling hair that had covered my face and glared up toward the speaker. I saw a dark-haired boy my age, sitting on a wooden bench. He wore a gray t-shirt with a soft finish. The shirt fit him firmly, but his dark jacket prevented a full sense of his build. Still I could tell he was lean and strong. That showed in his legs, thighs, and hips, all displayed in his tailored slacks. Yet he wore no shoes, as if he had put his young adulthood aside to roam barefoot in the woods, playing an animal or a savage.

The bench was only about ten feet away, and my immediate ambition was to get on it. I also felt that he should move for me, because I needed the bench-- an athlete's need that a self-obsessed, trend-chasing boy like him couldn't understand. And in the next moment I remembered the shame that related to boys like him. It is my shame that I disrespect them because I like them, and want no-one to know.

Biting back a rude comment, I gave him a rebuking look. I was used to most boys deferring to my anger. True to form, the boy got up and came to help me. However, his face looked cool, not sorry. I threw my weight roughly on his shoulder, knowing he would buckle and fall under me. Then I would laugh and maybe dare to linger, pressed on him for a moment. When we pulled apart, he'd have that confused, disgusted look they usually had. I'd feel happy I'd punished him, but sad and angry that he didn't respond the way the men did in dreams. Smiling, moving their lips sensually for me. Gripping me, pulling me close, spreading legs and opening mouths.

Oddly, he did smile, and he didn't fall. He bore me up easily. He took my wrist and pulled my left arm onto his shoulders, bowing his neck. His right hand slid quickly over my back and seized my far hip. Pressing my body to his side, he revealed the hard muscle on his frame. And I felt confused and frightened when the boy smiled slyly up at me. His black eyes shone under dark eyelashes. I looked quickly away and nodded at the bench. He was patient in helping me there. I didn't hurry. I wanted both to separate and to stay close. I wanted to think alertly about my situation, while preferring to imagine a safe future. I could feel that security if I got to the bench.

When he settled me onto the straight-backed seat, I felt calm. My panic had passed and I saw how safe I was in a small park. Even in the dark of a wooded path, you could never be alone. Someone was present, someone could help. This was the modern world. It was a place where you would meet good people like this stranger. My leg was perfectly relaxed, and my body still hot and stimulated by the run. I felt well. I breathed softly and felt his right hand press on my chest to steady me. It was as if we had been running together. I touched his fingers and we held our hands wrapped together over my damp t-shirt. I looked at him and smiled, to show I was okay, and comfortable with him, comfortable for him. He was looking intently at me.

"Thanks," I told him, looking at his face, still and handsome, features symmetrical and noble. Then the skin and muscle moved vividly, showing too many emotions for me to catch them all. I know he mimicked a wide laugh, stared hungrily, fell sad, and finally smiled. But there were twitches of a hundred other things, and a flash of wet, sharp whiteness.

Then I understood he was the vampire and pushed him, only to find myself thrown forward into the dirt. He rolled me onto my back and suddenly, wolfishly licked my face. He sat over my crotch, pumping his hips just barely, and slowly, his firm ass nudging over my cock. His right hand stroked my chest. It was bare. My shirt was gone. I felt a raw scrape along my neck and under my arms where the fabric had burned me as he tore it.

I brought my arms up and shoved brutally at him. He fell away with a force and speed that couldn't be mine, pulling me with him. I swung at him and I may have felt his hand cup mine, pull it forward, and smash both our fists into his jaw. We shouted. His pained cry sounded sensual and yearning. I saw him smiling and a red mark on his face. "Yes!" He urged, "yes, make me feel you. I'll let you do what you want— if you can do it with that much determination."

I took the neck-band of his shirt in my hands, ripping, and not doubting my immense power as the cloth flashed apart and away.

"Mean it," he advised, urged, and warned me when I pulled at his slacks.

I did mean it: I felt hungry to uncover more of his pale muscles, to know if the black tattoos on his arms would be inked also on his thighs. I felt hungry to touch what would be both delicate and stone-hard, coal-hot and earthily damp, his tumescent cock. It slid into my right palm and up my long fingers, and when the heel of my hand rested on his softly haired balls, my fingertips brushed below his glans. Hot pre-cum trickled onto them. Grasping his prick, I pumped its soft skin so that it slid on the hard shaft, and my wet hand slid too, and his hips pumped slowly, his mouth opening and gasping.

We knelt, face near face, and our chests close. My heartbeat surfaced throughout my body. All my pulse-points throbbed like my cock. I took his hand to my stiff prick, pulling down my blue running shorts. I watched blissfully how he began stroking my long cock and broad glans. He echoed every twist, squeeze, and stroke I gave him. Then he began handling me with unmatchable skill.

With a quick lunge, he had repositioned himself by my side. I understood I should lean back, press forward my hips, and accept his mouth into my lap. He bowed deeply forward to take my cock. His lips wrapped onto me and I slid through his mouth into the clamping muscles of his throat. It felt like he could swallow forever. The devouring mouth should have horrified me. But I thrust, rolling my hips forward and my head back. His hands brushed over my tight abs and thighs as harshly as a feral animal's fur. He tested my intentions, rocking and prodding my body, deciding on mate or meal. I missed his threats, only sensing his god-like physicality. I saved my life by never pausing in my lust.

When cumming into him, my mind shut down. I existed below him as a witness to the body that I released into pleasure. Finally his hands, tracing me, and time passing, embodied me.

I saw the boy's handsome face pause coolly above mine. He bit his lip and spat violently onto my lips. Suddenly my body could contain me, all my pleasure, and a hundred times more lust and cum—and I would spend it on him if this killed me. His blood worked first with my tongue. I followed as my tongue thrust from my mouth to taste him. His skin harmonized his blood's flavor and its liveliness. Now I knew that he was more than I had noticed.

Do you ever think about the winds storming in the sky a thousand miles over us all? They rage even on the calmest days. Could you be always aware of them? That is one transcendent thing; he was the center of many. Throughout the air surrounding us, his undeath and embodiment sent vivid energies. Every glowing process of his existence was sensual and stimulating. I had to be involved.

But he tossed me away before my blunt teeth could rip him. I came back at him, and he threw me a second time. He made a half-smile.

"You'd take more than I'd give," he judged calmly, "so now I take what I will."