He could easily have been the man Chris had warned Gabriel about—the dirty older man offering his sweet and toxic candy. He was not hiding in the dark shadows, but sitting right out in the open, in the park across the street from Gabriel’s apartment building.

Gabriel barely stepped out onto the pavement, crossed the street in the crisp autumn air, leaves crackling under his feet, and passed through the wrought iron gates of the park when he spotted the man on a nearby swing, just watching clusters of young and old in various Halloween costumes, giggling and chatting as they hurried on their way to trick or treat or to parties. Freshly discarded Snickers and M&M wrappers joined the rustle of blowing leaves.

Gabriel was planning to cut through the park to get to the Halloween celebration at Luna, the club a few blocks away. He’d refused to let the phobia Chris had injected into him about the supposed stalker take over his existence. After all, the man Chris had described—pretty much the type of man sitting on that swing—was very much Gabriel’s type, If he hadn’t met Chris, he could easily have given that man the love he had probably desired from Chris, which Chris had blown into some sort of mythological tall tale. Gabriel had always felt sympathy for the man Chris described, believing he just didn’t want to be alone. As Gabriel didn’t want to be alone now. But sympathy for that unseen stranger changed after the tragedy. Changed to dread and terror.

Gabriel pulled his hands into the long sleeves of his thick knit sweater to keep them warm. He could hear the squeal of the chain near the hook from which the swing was suspended. The laughter of the clusters of people died off, carrying on the cold wind as dusk enveloped the park in eerie orange light.

The man was simply a man. The masculinity was so natural, with no pretentiousness. His head was close shaved, the top center already bald. Stubble wrapped around the sides and back, connecting above the ears to the day’s growth of whiskers that crawled down his neck and over his Adam’s apple, and more than halfway up his cheeks. He had a thick shock of dark eyebrows above his deep-set eyes, penetrating, yet soft and gentle. The ends of his full lips rose in a soft snarl as Gabriel strolled over to him. He didn’t move, just smirked. His burly arms, swelling in a tight hooded sweatshirt, were locked in place around the chains of the swing, his hands plunged into the pockets at the belly of his sweatshirt.

Gabriel couldn’t help but notice how tautly the man’s jeans were stretched across his crotch. With his short, clearly muscular legs spread so far apart, he was practically advertising it. Gabriel forced himself to look away, and up at the man’s mystery eyes. He smiled nervously.

“Hey. Where you headed?” the man asked in a deep baritone voice.

“Over to the party at Luna,” Gabriel said as he took a seat in a swing next to the man.

“Great place to find fresh meat,” the man pointed out.

“You know it? I was hoping to find someone like you there tonight,” Gabriel turned a bit red at his brazen flirting.

“I sniffed you out before you could,” the man responded, that full-lipped smirk so inviting, yet so dangerous. “So, what’s your name?”

“Gabriel.”

“Jack,” the man identified himself. “A bit cold out here, don’t you think?”

“Wanna head over to the club?” Gabriel suggested, suddenly wishing they were in a crowd together. He was afraid of what might happen if he stayed alone with this man for too long—and afraid that maybe everything Chris had told him, as preposterous as it was, had been true.

“Actually, I would love to be alone with you,” Jack practically read the thoughts he was trying to ignore.

“I don’t think so,” Gabriel shook his head.

“Oh come on. You said you were looking for a guy like me anyway. Why not go for it? I’m fairly gentle with the pretty boys.” Jack’s legs side-stepped across the ground under the swing until his chain met Gabriel’s. Gabriel had to remove his fingers so they wouldn’t get caught. Jack grabbed Gabriel’s chain in the same palm that held his own swing’s chain, their faces only a foot apart. “Take a walk on the wild side.”

Jack’s free hand moved behind Gabriel’s head and pulled him in so his thick lips could press against Gabriel’s thinner lips. Gabriel felt every whisker pierce the skin around his mouth. And he felt an erection begin in his corduroys. It was like all the blood was draining from his body to fill his sex. Temptation overtook him.

“I can’t…” he gasped when he escaped Jack’s lip-lock, feeling the chilled, almost-November air stab his lungs.

Jack still had a hold of his head, fingers carefully entwined in the thick black mane at the back of his skull. The hand moved down, massaging his neck. The hairs there stood up at attention as shivers crept all over his body.

“Come on.” Jack stood. He was barely 5’6”. He reached for Gabriel’s hand. As if in a trance, Gabriel allowed Jack to lead him out of the park and to his front door. Across the sky, orange was being swiftly consumed by blackness. Gabriel looked up and pulled back for a moment.

Jack placed a hand over the bulge in his corduroys. “It’s going to be all right. I promise.”

“Are you…him…?” Gabriel’s voice quivered.

Jack raised the corner of one luscious lip, taunting with just one dimple. “Him who? I can be whoever you want me to be tonight. It’s Halloween.”

Is he the one, and just fucking with me? Gabriel wondered as he unlocked the front door. He opted for the elevator, since his legs were becoming too weak to carry him up the four flights of stairs.

In the confines of the elevator car, he used proper elevator etiquette and stood facing front. Jack, on the other hand, stood sideways staring right at him, firm belly pressed into his side. He took one of Gabriel’s hands and placed it on his crotch. Gabriel detected a modest, heated bulge. Not exactly the heft expected of a man with so much confidence.

Jack’s other hand was again behind Gabriel. His fingernails scratched over the seat of the corduroys, an arousing tickle. Gabriel looked down at Jack. Thick hair sprouted out from the collar of the sweatshirt where it zippered up to Jack’s neck. In the man’s whiskers and chest fur, there were bright white wisps mingling with the dark. Two swollen nipples pushed against the material of the sweatshirt on two very large, round pecs.

“You smell delicious,” Jack said, without even inhaling deeply. “What is that?”

“Uhm…it’s an oatmeal honey soap,” Gabriel responded awkwardly. “It’s all natural.”

Jack smiled at his nervousness. “You smell good enough to eat.”

Gabriel nearly bolted from the elevator as the doors parted on his floor…

…yet he still allowed Jack to follow him to his studio apartment.

He barely had the door deadbolted and chained from the inside when Jack’s powerful arms engulfed him from behind—and hands were jammed down the front of his corduroys.

“Not that scared now, are we?” Jack stood on his toes in order to whisper over Gabriel’s shoulder and into his ear canal.

“If you’re him, I swear to you, I didn’t know about you when I met Chris,” Gabriel explained without prompting, his breath bouncing off the door into which he was speaking. His body was trembling in terror, yet he had spat out a stream of precum that Jack was now using to lubricate the head of his penis underneath his briefs.

Jack turned Gabriel around forcefully, slammed his back up against the door, and pounded his palms on either side of Gabriel’s body. Gabriel’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. The shorter man looked up at him with that smirk: half comforting, half threatening.

Please let him say ‘who the hell is Chris?’ Gabriel prayed, his eyes focusing on the dark shadow above Jack’s lips.

Jack was frozen, eyes turned up under his brows so he could look right into Gabriel’s eyes. The silence built more anticipation than any drum roll ever could.

“Chris?” Jack looked almost quizzical.

Gabriel’s tensed sphincter relaxed way down in his pelvic area.

“Chris is no longer with us. He’s out of our lives, out of our minds, out of our hearts.”

Jack grabbed the base of Gabriel’s thick knit sweater and the T-shirt under it, and pushed them up and over Gabriel’s head, nesting them at the base of his neck so that his sleeves were still intact. Gabriel’s arms were frozen at his sides, his hands plastered against the door, the tension making the deep ridges of his muscular torso and chest stand out Multi-tasking, Jack crouched down, reaching one hand over to spin a nearby dimmer switch on the wall until the room was nearly black. Starting at the groomed pubic hair that rose above the waistband of Gabriel’s briefs, the tip of Jack’s pudgy tongue followed a carefully sculpted hairline up Gabriel’s lower abs, moistening the thin treasure trail as he went.

Gabriel’s stomach contracted, his anus pulsed, and his dick throbbed at the licking. He placed his hands atop the nearly bald head at his stomach, feeling the rough stubble on his palms and fingers. He couldn’t decide if he should push the man away or pull him deeper in. But the sensation of Jack’s tongue fucking his bellybutton found him doing the latter.

“Please,” Gabriel gasped, nearly choking tears now. “I don’t wanna die.”

Jack said nothing to quell his fears. He rolled the sweater and T-shirt off Gabriel’s shoulders and down his arms, letting them drop to the floor. He reached one short, beefy arm in between Gabriel’s legs, creating a seat with the crotch of his arm joints and placing his hand on the center of Gabriel’s ass. His other arm wrapped around Gabriel’s body. His fingers grabbed the back of Gabriel’s neck, hitting a nerve that stiffened Gabriel’s posture. He was lifted off the floor, carried across the room, and body slammed onto the mattress of his bed.

His saw stars—literally—as he lay, dazed and spread eagle, on his bed. The view afforded was of a skylight in the angled ceiling directly over his bed. Perfectly framed in the window was the rich yellow moon. The full moon.

“Oh God, no!” Gabriel cried, but his efforts to rise up and get away were stopped by the burly body of Jack. Knees landed on either of his hands, crushing them into the mattress with amazing force. Calves pinned his thighs in a way that would keep his legs from flailing.

“You’re an animal!” Gabriel spat into the face that hovered only inches above his.

“Woof,” Jack huffed gutturally, his powerful eyes laughing at Gabriel. That sarcastic animal sound was so sexy Gabriel felt his nipples turn rock hard.

Jack’s mouth was once again on Gabriel’s, sucking, eating, salivating, practically suffocating him. It was like a drug. Gabriel began to feel dizzy as Jack created a vacuum on his lips, drawing the air from his lungs. Needles and pins seemed to shoot through and numb his entire body—no, not his entire body. All but his most erogenous zones. His scrotum, his cock, his asshole were alive with heat, is if all the blood had been forced out of every other part of his body and into them. And into his nipples.

The sensitivity was explosive when Jack sunk his teeth into Gabriel’s right nipple. A gasping gag was all Gabriel could utter as he felt the hot spittle lapping up his areola, then the teeth nibbling at the raised nub.

Please, don’t let him break the skin, Gabriel prayed to the moon. Teeth yanked on the nub, stretching it upward. He let out a high-pitched squeal. His cock pulsated, poking into Jack’s jean-clad perineum. Animalistic grunts emanated from Jack’s throat as he feasted on his prey. After stretching Gabriel’s right nipple to its limits with his teeth, he released it. It snapped back in place, wet, battered and bruised.

A sob escaped from Gabriel’s lips as moisture cooled on his scorched nipple. It was followed by a cry of shock. Two sharp points punctured the skin right above his left nipple as Jack savagely suckled and teethed on it.

Completely paralyzed now, Gabriel just lie there, tears streaming down his face as venom was pumped into his system. His vision grew fuzzy. A cold sweat sprouted from every pore on his body. Jack’s heightened senses detected the scent, and he released the left nipple.

The strongest source of the sweat—Gabriel’s armpit. Jack’s snout nuzzled into the crevasse of Gabriel’s left arm. The only sound in the room was a raucous, dog-like sniffing as Jack buried his face into the pit hair. It was utterly repulsive and incredibly erotic all at once. Gabriel’s nervous system began to spasm when Jack proceeded to slurp the perspiration out of the tendrils of hairs. He had just introduced Gabriel to an erogenous zone he didn’t even know he had. The stimulation was overwhelming. Gabriel panted in ecstasy.

Is this what he did to Chris before he tore him to pieces? Gabriel wondered. Unable to resist or protest, he lay there as his corduroys and briefs were yanked off, exposing his painfully hard penis and testicles. He was ashamed at being in such a state when death was eminent. But it wasn’t the masochistic reality that had him so obscenely aroused, it was the complete helplessness against such a beast of a man acting towards his body out of pure animal instinct. Jack was a cat, tossing Gabriel the mouse around for his own enjoyment. He was being ravaged alive, and it was undeniably euphoric.

In his diluted sights, the moon began to split into two, and then bleed back together, never focusing totally.

His groin cringed as Jack’s nose jabbed at his testicles with little regard for his comfort. The sweat was licked from his scrotum. The nose sniffed further down anxiously, poking his perineum, then trying to dig beneath to his anus. His ankles were squeezed, his stiff legs brought up and over his torso. He heard a few vertebrae pop as his chin met his chest. With split vision creating two moons between his thighs, he was like a deer caught in headlights. He was sure he was going blind.

The entire valley of his exposed ass was slathered in drool as a tongue painted it. He felt every inch of Jack’s tongue, which had not been that long or rough when it was in his bellybutton. Something had changed.

A puddle filled his asshole, and flowed over, saliva running through the gorges on either side of his testicles. Drops splattered on his face. It smelled like dog breath. All he could see over the out-of-focus mound of his testicles was what appeared to be Jack’s head feasting on his asshole. In the dark twilight of the room, and in Gabriel’s visually impaired state, it looked like Jack had grown a head of hair in just a matter of minutes.

Until now, the concept of being deep tongue-fucked up the ass was a ridiculous overstatement. No matter how often it had been described in jerk-off magazine stories, in Gabriel’s experience, both giving and receiving, you really couldn’t fuck someone’s asshole with your tongue. It just wasn’t firm enough or long enough to make much headway within the tight confines of a man’s entrance. But now, he truly felt his rectum being invaded by a tongue. Dog dribble rolled down the shaft of his cock, mixing at the very tip with his own stream off glistening precum. The combination of liquids stretched slowly toward his face, coming to land on the small flavor savor under his lip.

Gabriel was ready to call it quits and give into the final moments of ecstasy. But as his eyelids were about to close, he saw a dark shadow hover above him, blocking out the moon (or moons, in from his viewpoint). Jack looked bigger somehow, and his hunky little form seemed to be expanding. In his hallucinatory state, Gabriel could swear the sweatshirt and jeans were tearing down the center. In fact, he could hear the ripping of each fiber in each thread. In only moments, Jack was naked above him, appearing to have a much hairier body than the tufts above his collar had hinted at in the elevator.

Jack’s paws gripped the back of Gabriel’s thighs, sharp nails digging into his flesh to hold him firmly in place…as if his pretzeled body could go anywhere. His toes were already touching the pillow behind his head, so his own body weight was insuring that he stayed propped up.

Gabriel knew what was coming next. The hazy form above him was squatting down on its haunches, its crotch targeting his crotch. The entry went smoothly. Jack was not particularly endowed, in fact, on the shorter end of average. It was a nice fit, easily accommodated. And the puddle of saliva was more than adequate lubrication. But there was no barrier between their bodies. Gabriel was sure to be infected if the hardcore love bite above the left nipple hadn’t done the job.

He struggled to regain focus as the beefy body above hunkered down over him, riding him, tickling him inside. He thought he could make out some features on Jack’s face as it peered down at him. Jack’s stance and movement were almost mechanical, as if the sole purpose was to satiate his cock’s hunger. Gabriel tried to make out any expression. He thought the smoky, deep-set eyes were gazing at him almost lovingly, although that was probably just wishful thinking—the idea that there was some sort of emotion attached to his final fuck. The shadows were so dark across Jack’s face, almost as if his facial hair had filled in even more. His smirk may have been in place, but Gabriel’s imagination had it stretching into a smile, exposing large white teeth. The smile almost seemed to be metamorphosing, the mouth and nose stretching forward as the eyes sunk deeper into the skull, the skin blackening with fur.

Chris was right, terror struck Gabriel’s heart. It hadn’t been the E that one night he spent with Jack…that one night that made Jack believe they were meant to be together, made Jack pursue Chris persistently until Gabriel came into the picture…then, still watching from a safe distance, waiting for the right moment to strike, leaving Chris’s mutilated body in a gulley, to be discovered by a jogger early one morning. A case that had yet to be solved.

Gabriel fought to regain control of his motor skills. The beast above him was growing inside him. With each downward plunge into his rectum, it was as if a variety of dildos, in growing increments, were being swapped in. His prostate took particular note, and his cock felt about ready to explode from the overabundance of blood rushing to it. His sphincter struggled to stretch around the intrusion, now the size of a banana, now the size of a cucumber.

The filthy smell of wet fur penetrated Gabriel’s nostrils as the beast’s pelvis went into overdrive. It was as if his colon was being ripped apart by a small fire extinguisher. A whip-like tail beat furiously against the small of Gabriel’s back with each thrust.

Crashing down on Gabriel with the velocity of a jackhammer, the beast raised its head into the air, its long snout and its pointed ears outlined by the full moon above.

The bloodcurdling howl shook the beast from head to toe. It lost its rhythm, and due to the dance of the springy mattress, its balance. It flipped off the side of the bed…and out of Gabriel, whose bent body flopped onto its side. The muscles of his anus and rectum struggled to contract back to their original size. But he didn’t have time think about that.

His body was his own again. Blood shot through his veins, recirculating at last. He rose onto his hands and knees, and stiffly lunged for the nightstand where the gun was stashed. The gun put there by Chris for just this very occasion, loaded with a single bullet made of the bands of silver his deceased parents had exchanged while still in high school years before.

Gabriel’s hand found the knob to the drawer in a painful rapping of knuckles that knocked a framed photo of he and Chris off the nightstand and to the floor. He yanked on the knob to open the drawer. The movement was too much for the still-weak arm supporting him, which gave out under the pressure of his upper body. His face crashed into his pillow, his ass pointing up to the sky.

He’d missed his golden—or in this case, silver--opportunity. The mattress sunk behind him as the beast pounced onto it and into his raised ass in practically one leaping bound. The beast’s growth spurt was beyond belief. Gabriel’s tract was practically split in two as the massive member punctured him doggy style. His prostate had no choice but to force a load of cum from his balls.

The orgasm was beyond comprehension as his sphincter gave up on trying to clench around its intruder. The force of the climax almost seemed like it would require medical attention for his strained genitals.

But his disgust at the source of his sexual relief was the least of his problems. The sticky slime of the jowls clutched the nape of his neck at the same time the monster cock expanded inside him. Despite what it had been through, his internal system felt every drop of animal excitement that rushed in as the beast climaxed spastically.

At last, his mind’s defense mechanism took over. The world went from dim to totally black.

* * *

He was alive to open his eyes. He was also in one piece—aside from the fact that he felt like he’d been mauled by a pack of bloodhounds. Sunlight glared down from above, and he had to squint to shut some of it out. He rolled stiffly to the edge of the bed and tried to sit. His ass protested miserably, and he shot up into a wobbly standing position. He walked shakily over to a full-length mirror on his closet door. He turned around, afraid of what he was about to see. He bent over and pulled his ass cheeks apart carefully. The usually fresh pink perianal area, adorned by just a slight circle of dark hair, was now nearly blood red. His anus was inflamed, and had not yet sealed completely back to its normal size. He thought he was going to be sick.

He hurried for his bathroom. He pushed the door inward—and found his night visitor hadn’t left.

The bearish body was lying on its side on a plush throw rug in the middle of the tiled floor. Gabriel took in the furry, meaty butt and the wide, and equally hairy, back. He was mortified to feel a slight stirring in his crotch.

His heart was pumping so hard it throbbed in his ears. He circled the body, taking in the fuzzy graying chest, perky pink nipples, a full, slightly rounded belly covered in hair, a dark patch of pubic hairs hiding a limp penis and a large set of testicles. Hands, pressed together as if in prayer, were clutching the gun. Gabriel peered out his bathroom door to the open drawer of the nightstand.

The barrel of the gun was pressed against the gorgeous, plump lips. The lips that had nearly eaten him alive last night. The facial hair had filled in even thicker today, a sexy salt ‘n pepper. The eyes were closed, and long thick lashes embraced them.

Emotion clogged Gabriel’s windpipe. He could see the chest and belly moving steadily. Jack was still alive. And so was he. Whatever it was, this curse, that had a hold of Jack, he’d somehow controlled it, spared Gabriel. The torment and anguish of being something he couldn’t control, a monster in the eyes of an unaccepting society, was written all over his face. How many times had the man contemplated the suicidal act he had nearly gone through with last night when the transformation had brought him back to his human form? Gabriel envisioned him, rolling off Gabriel as a monster once he’d finished planting the curse’s seed inside, reforming into the stunning man he was now as daylight broke through, finding the gun in the open drawer….

But he hadn’t gone through with it. Why? Fear of death? A desire to remain a monster? Or the knowledge of how cowardly it would be to leave another like him to live his life out alone in a world that despised this disease?

Gabriel dropped to his knees, took the gun from Jack’s grasp, and placed it out of reach on the sink above. He lay down beside Jack’s body on the plush throw rug, facing him directly. He put his hands where the gun had been.

Jack stirred, and opened his eyes slowly. His sleepy eyes took in the beautiful being staring back at him. As any lover waking to the sight of their partner the next morning, his initial reaction was to flash that sexy smirk that could melt the heart. But as reality set in, the corners of his mouth slowly lowered. His eyes swelled. And then tears burst forth, and he was whimpering like a hurt puppy. He clutched Gabriel’s hands desperately.

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry…” he sobbed, pressing his head against their conjoined hands.

“Shhhh,” Gabriel gulped down his own sobs. He placed a kiss on the shiny bald spot on the top of Jack’s head. “You’re not alone anymore.”