"Are you ready, young master?" His voice, the voice that so often entered my dreams. The voice I was to awaken to each morning. No longer.

I looked up at him steadily, making certain that I did not tremble before I nodded. I could not show fear in the face of pain, nor weakness in the face of adversity. This was the bargain I had made long ago, a contract forged through flesh and sealed with blood. And yet, I could not deny the part of me, however small and insignificant, that wanted him to take me. All of me. My soul might have been branded as his, but I could still claim my mind and body as my own. It was a trade I longed to make. Until this moment, every hair, every breath, every movement of this demon belonged to me. He was mine. My butler and my servant, my pawn. And now, I wanted to be his.

"Will it hurt?"

The smile I received was deceivingly warm.

Damn him.

"Yes, a little. I will try to be as gentle as possible-"

"Don't."

I did not want his pity. This was something I knew long before today.

"Make it hurt. As painful as you can. Engrave the pain of my life into my soul," I murmured, refusing to look away from him. As if I could even if I wanted to.

A flash of understanding flitted across his face as he kneeled and placed his right hand over his chest. "Yes, my lord."

He leaned forward and took my face between his slender hands like a velvet embrace. The crimson glow of his eyes never wavered from mine as he tilted my chin up.

The pain began as soon as his lips touched mine. The sensation burned like acid, like a venom had been injected through my veins. I wanted to scream, to writhe and thrash from the agony that surely would have killed me by now. The fire that ravaged my soul surely should have destroyed it, if I had simply been dying.

But this was what I desired. To breathe the poisonous breath of my demon , to offer my being up for his sake. I wanted all of him, and I wanted him to want all of me.

"Take me with you . . . " I whispered through the pain, across the chasms of hell that separated human from demon, and spirits from angels.

"Young master. Call my name."

I tried to, but the flames had begun to lick at my neck and tear apart my vocal chords, one by one, stripped away like meat off a bone.

"Call my name."

Choking, I retched and gasped, struggling to say the one word, the name.

"Call my name, Young master. You are mine."

"Sebastian!"

Finally, I ripped his name from my mouth again and again until the blood ran down my throat.

Sebastian.

He tore through me as a shadow, filling my lungs with despair, and heartless laughter. The beautiful nightmare had commenced, for I knew it was folly to ask love from the devil. But no sin or wickedness could erase my desire, and even as the blackness filled around me and the world began to fade, the only thing I could still say was one word.

"Sebastian."