Joanne yelped before he could blink his watering eyes, sputtering as he attempted to fling himself over the side of the bed to hide. The master's reaction was quite the opposite as a cackling Ciel held him fast, legs coiled about the shocked boy, pulling Joanne against him and caressing his back. Being trapped, he buried his face in the linens on Ciel's other side. What a terrible brat, to exacerbate this already awkward situation. My cheeks still simmered.

Responding to my initial question, Ciel smirked in that perfect, mischievous fashion and purred, "I suppose I can be." He knew I caught the hidden meaning of those words. "Unless you've come to join."

Oh, what an insufferable, impossible, and glorious little brat. He had turned the tables, placed me in this situation of unease, to even suggest that right in that moment I could kick off my shoes and have my sample of both. I closed my eyes but that only brought the prospect into sharper focus, a possibility of Joanne as eager as I to put this uppity little earl in his place by fucking him to a state of delirium. The fantasy must have shown on my face, for he chuckled, his expression as haughty and suggestive as the way he tugged at Joanne's backside and he cowered into the crook of Ciel's arm all the more.

Clearing my throat, I gathered some discernible trace of my butler propriety. "Young master, your fiancée is waiting for you in the parlour."

That bit of news wiped the smug grin off his face.

"What?!" He clambered out from under Joanne, nearly tossing him over the side of the bed in the process. "God damn it!"

Joanne whimpered, "Oh my God, oh my God..." as he crouched to the floor.

"Sebastian! Dress me! Quickly!"

"Understood."

I rushed to the cabinet, whipping out some wool ensemble and collared shirt. Ciel was just sprawling off the bed as I grabbed him and in a diabolic flurry he was properly attired, right down to socks gartered and shoes buckled.

"How in the...?" Joanne had no time to ask how such a feat could be managed as I pulled him off the floor to deliver the same treatment, for I had pressed and set out an outfit for him much earlier in the morning. His heart hammered, not necessarily for the situation regarding Elizabeth, but rather it was me. There was fear in those vermilion eyes, for he had never seen me move with such inhuman speed.

Clothed in a sienna jacket and his ascot tied, he trembled as I handed him a comb from my jacket. "I beg you forgive my intrusion, but I assume you understand the situation."

"You could have knocked, you bastard." Ciel checked himself in the mirror, still looking rather flustered, even if the eye patch was over his eye, his hair combed back and his tie even.

"Elizabeth will not tolerate waiting for you."

"Does she I know I'm here?" Joanne whispered hoarsely. I brought a wet cloth from the wash basin to wipe his face, and this did nothing to ease him.

"She knows someone is here with the master, but does not know it is you specifically." I opened the door. "Take a deep breath, both of you. Give her no reason to suspect." My master had a much easier time gathering his composure, but he looked not at all happy about it.

As I ushered them into the hall, I seized Joanne by the shoulder and he jumped. "I regret I have caused you such distress. Please forgive me. Do you need another minute to collect yourself?" Despite what I considered a gentle approach, he jerked away from my hold.

Having already travelled the length of the hallway, Ciel turned back in concern for Joanne's distress. He nudged me off the lad's shoulder to replace with a reassuring hand to the back of his neck. "I'm sorry, Joanne. Come now, everything's fine. I want Lizzie to know you're here." A friendly shake eased a bit of that worriment, and looking pleased with his ability to sooth the situation, Ciel leaned in to peck him on the cheek. "Smile lovely for me."

Joanne was even less immune to that charm than I was.

As we rounded the corner we saw Elizabeth at the bottom of the stair. "Oh there you are! Mr. Harcourt, is that you? What an unexpected surprise!"

"Lizzie, I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting," Young master skipped forward to meet her half way on the stair to embrace her. She so loved to meet him a step below so she could bury her face in his chest and feel him lay his lips on her forehead. With such a greeting he did not need to make an excuse for his delay. "Joanne is in town on holiday and I have needed the company. Lizzie, I hope you have been well."

"Ciel you seem in such high spirits! That is so wonderful, after the... well, it appears taking a holiday has been good for you! Your head looks all better, I can barely see a mark at all." As we descended the last few stairs, Elizabeth and her fiancé hand in hand, she turned to face Joanne. "Sebastian told me someone had been with Ciel for the week. Forgive me for not knowing it was you!"

He chuckled with a touch of nervousness. "It's quite all right. And please, my lady, call me Joanne. I prefer it."

The three sauntered into the parlour, Elizabeth beaming about how I had shown her the gramophone and wanted to know how it played music. The boys engaged her on the subject and this allowed me to head to the kitchen to prepare a small brunch. When I returned with crumpets and jam and a few refreshments the three were sitting around the coffee table with Elizabeth not appearing at all as her typical, bubbly self.

There had been such a sense of urgency to her need to be in the presence of her betrothed, for she seemed to be carrying such burdens that threatened to spill out at a moment's notice. Her hair seemed so lustrous from the light of the window, and she smelled as cloying as freesia and honeysuckle.

"Actually, Ciel, things have not been well for me, and I think I am at my wit's end." I handed her a cup of tea but she did not give me her usual acknowledgement. "But I wanted to be the first to tell you before you hear it from somewhere else, because goodness, you know how people talk. Joanne, I'm sorry to rush in here and start babbling my problems, but you are to attend the ball, yes?" He nodded. "Well, no use trying to keep this from you either."

I poured a cup for Joanne, who took it but did not seemed inclined to drink, knowing that it was I who had prepared it. When I offered to my master, he raised a hand to signal he preferred no refreshment, but I placed it before him all the same.

She took a sip of her tea, and added another sugar from the tray, but she still appeared rather displeased with her tea. I reasoned it was not any displeasure with my offering. The tea spoon clanked on the china saucer and her brow crinkled.

"It's Edward. Oh he's gone and... Ciel, it's such a scandal..." she managed to set her tea cup on the table with a clumsy clink before losing her composure.

In the face of this display, Ciel scooted closer to Elizabeth on the couch, taking her shaking hands into his. "Just tell me, Lizzie. There's no use in trying to be cordial. Joanne isn't going to think less of you for being upset, right?"

"No not at all!" He would have preferred to be a passive participant in the conversation anyway.

Elizabeth took a deep breath. "So... you remember Jacquelyn, from the dinner party last month, yes?" The boys nodded. She took a shaky breath, patting her face with gloved fingers. "Last week mother received a letter from Edward, saying they... eloped." On the final word she sputtered and with it she burst into heavy tears, composure cracked for there was no hope in restraining such a torrent that had been churning within her.

Joanne relinquished his tea to search for his handkerchief. "Oh gracious!"

"Lizzie, why would he...?"

"Because... sh-she's with... they're going to..." She could speak no further beyond incoherent wailing. Ciel reached for her face, lifting her gaze to his, and from her tear-streaked grief he understood there could be only one feasible motivation to Edward's actions, to compel him to such an extreme decision.

"She's with child." Elizabeth keened in response. "And it's his." Ciel lifted a hand to his forehead. "Bloody hell."

Joanne offered a handkerchief to Ciel so he could wipe the tears from his fiancée's cheeks.

"Lizzie..." He understood the depth of adoration Elizabeth felt for her brother, the one who encouraged her own sense of personal strength and honour. This would be the end of any successful future for him. For any talent or charm she possessed, Jacquelyn Gardner was a common woman, an actress in a second-rate theatre company. How Edward had met her was anyone's guess, but there was no doubt he had been taken with her in some way.

After a moment of drying her eyes and trying to catch her breath, she continued, her voice thick from sobbing. "Father has tried to correspond with him, to offer him a way out. He was willing to pay for the woman's silence but he would hear none of it. Ed says he loves her, and he's willing to commit to that life to be with her. They were arguing last weekend in the study, oh we all heard it, and mother tried to keep me away from it. Paula says he's a fool because he's in love, but he has his integrity. He's going to be a father, Ciel..." she started sniffling again, "and he was yelling, yelling that he could not live with himself if he begot a bastard child and abandoned his love.

"That was when father told him... t-to get out and... never come back..." she buried her face in the handkerchief. "And since then mother has taken down the painting of him in the drawing room, all his certificates, the cricket trophies and awards in the lounge. She cleared out his bedroom... like he's d-died or something... like he n-never existed..."

"I'm so sorry," Joanne whispered.

Ciel tugged at Elizabeth's shoulders to pull her shrinking form against his chest. "Will talking to them do any good?"

"No! They keep telling me I am their one ray of hope, that they're so proud of me, oh Ciel, what do they have to be proud of?" She bent over his lap with the handkerchief still pressed to her eyes. "Also, Father knows about the factory in LeHavre, Ciel. He knows it burned down, and he's not confident in your ability to manage. I know he's wrong, but I can't tell him that, I can't tell him what happened. The reports all say 'electrical fire' and he thinks it's because you couldn't oversee properly."

"Wait, Ciel, what is this about?" Joanne scooted forward in his chair. "You never mentioned any of this."

"Please, this is of no concern to you—"

"Was this the reason for that injury?"

"Joanne, please! The matter is settled." Ciel leaned into the couch. "And in the very least I can collect the property insurance."

I chimed, "The settlements are waiting for you in the study, my lord."

"Probably a paltry sum, won't cover my losses... honestly..."

Elizabeth sniffled. "He already knows that. He looked into the insurance claim and he knows you're in debt over this."

"Brilliant, I'm sure he must be proud."

"He wasn't happy about it in the slightest." Sarcasm seemed lost on her. "So with all this he's not speaking much these days. He spends time sparring, mother spends time with the horses in the stable. And then there's me.

"I have Paula to keep me company, but the estate is so quiet. I have spent the past week in front of the piano, just playing and playing, just to fill the house and my heart with something..." she remembered her tea again. She took a minute to settle with the heaviness of her situation, as though washing it down with tea made it easier to swallow.

Meanwhile, Ciel draped a lazy hand around his fiancée, his head propped on the back of the couch and staring at the ceiling. In contrast, Joanne sat on the edge of his chair, surveying the floor. Elizabeth appeared as though her focus flickered in and out, her mind grappling to resort itself.

After a moment of staring into the dark of the fireplace, she seemed collected enough to continue. "I have been so lonely, Ciel. I hate the state of things at home. I have felt so... out of place since we came back from France... how it shouldn't be home to me anymore." How she set her tea cup on the table this time was much more composed. There was some mysterious air about her that projected the surety of woman, and perhaps Ciel was seeing it for the first time.

Her voice was even, and a fresh sense of calm overtook her. "I know we are planning to wed in August. This was what you had discussed with my father. I can't wait that long." She clasped his hands in hers. "I want to be wed next month."

I sensed the flash of alarm, how tiny words possessed the force of a thunderclap overhead, and the hair stood up on the back of my master's neck. Joanne gasped, covering his mouth.

Ciel blinked for a moment, taking a minute to collect his thoughts. "Don't you think this is rather sudden?"

"Is it really? Why put it off?"

"Because there are plans to be made."

She shook her head. "I know I've always dreamt of a big wedding, the perfect wedding, but I don't need that. I just need..."

Something struck me as rather irregular about her urgency. This was not a matter of romance, of a love struck girl who believed it would be fun to play house. These were motivations of a woman hell-bent on self-preservation. I could smell it on her, freshness of spring in all its fecundity, currents quelled and soft dew on her cheeks that was not from tears. I thought to myself, "May he never discover the truth."

Even if panic quaked at the bottom of him, my young master eased it with a deep breath, willing his body to remain still, to not follow some impulse to dart from the room. He could not sense the whole of her reasons for such insistence in this decision, but he understood the dignified role he had to maintain at the cost of his own personal desire.

"I think it is time we start our life together, Ciel. It is right for the both of us."

I watched the flicker of sadness flare in his blue eye, and he blinked it away. He had always felt he was condemning himself to an impossible role, but perhaps he had hoped it would not be so soon, or that the fate of his life would have allowed him to avoid this altogether. "This is what you want?" She nodded, solemn and certain. "I suppose I won't be able to talk you out of it. Lizzie, you've always been stubborn, as if it does you any good, because even if you weren't I still couldn't say no to you."

She blinked as the words settled, and then embraced him about the shoulders, kissing his cheeks with tears of relief as he patted her back. His shoulders looked so heavy and he looked out the window at the heather.

"Do you really mean it?" Elizabeth was sobbing once more. "Ciel, we're going to be so happy..." she stopped short for she raised her head from hearing the sniffling behind her.

Joanne wrapped an arm around his middle, the other hand to his face. "I'm sorry, you two are just so lovely..." and he stood up. "Please excuse me."

Young master glanced at my direction then shifted his gaze to Joanne who was stomping out of the parlour and I took this as an order to follow. I bowed and complied to this silent order, hearing Elizabeth murmur as I shut the door, "Is he all right?"

"He's fine, he's just very sensitive."

Joanne was on the terrace, bent over the railing with a trembling cigarette to his lips, trying to suppress his crying with smoke. He glanced over his shoulder when he heard the door open. "Sebastian, I would prefer to be alone."

"My master disagrees." He leaned away as I stood next to him. "I can venture a few reasons why you may be upset."

"The cause of my distress may not be as obvious as what you presume." He refused to look at me, instead choosing to fiddle with the cigarette, flicking it far more than what was necessary.

"Would you care to enlighten me then, so I may not make an assumption?"

"I don't have a choice, do I? Ciel sent you after me, yes? For what purpose?"

"I think the young master can only handle one distressed person at a time. He has his hands full with Lady Elizabeth, but it's obvious he cares about you. Consider me your consoler for the time being." After all, it was an easy role to fulfil for him.

He offered me a roll of tobacco from his case, as was his habit. I took one with gratitude and he even lit it for me like a gentleman. Such an odd condition, I pondered, that this young thing could engage in public behaviours that bordered upon vulgar. I suppose it was his way, to ask me to drop my formality and to meet him on something of even terms, for it offered him necessary comfort for what I asked of him.

Joanne spoke with tender fondness. "Elizabeth is a very lovely young woman, and I suppose... I'm envious. In some stupid ways. I wish I could be that."

"You wish you were Elizabeth."

"Well, still me, just... pretty, in that manner. Betrothed... as she is. But—!" he pointed his cigarette at me before I could interject. "I think I feel sorry for her, more than anything."

Smoke threaded into my nose. "Go on."

"She only looks to be so lucky, but the truth is... she has no idea about... anything surrounding him. I feel privileged to know him as I do. But even then... I wish I..." He forced the smoke to his lips so he could gulp down a sob. "It's just so sad that their relationship is a lie. I know what Ciel looks like, and what he feels like, when he bears himself and to see him put on a front for Elizabeth..." His shuddering breath smelled of cinders. "I understands why Ciel does it, because he doesn't want to hurt Elizabeth. Because she could never know, how awful it all is..." And he was crying once more.

He was speaking less to their amorous friendship, less to the master's inability to extend such to his fiancée. He was referring to a far more sinister matter, and he was trying to skirt it. I was not going to let him get away without speaking on it.

From inside I heard the burble of notes from the piano in the ballroom, and the tuning of a violin. The couple must had decided on music practice, and it was more than a pragmatic decision I was sure, for Ciel must have thought it a relief to have a means to distract the young woman. Not only that, this distraction offered me additional time with the young lad. There were matters to discuss.

"Joanne," my voice resonated with infernal timbre. "What is this awfulness you refer to?" As he turned to look at me I extinguished the smouldering butt on the end of my tongue, the following words rolling off with the smoke. "Does it comprise of the secrets he hides from her, and the world? But you know of one, at least in part. He has shown you a great deal, has he not?"

He shook his head in feeble denial, and as I gripped him around the shoulders he attempted a furious struggle, encouraging me to hold tighter and push him against me. His terrified face was inches away, and he strained his neck to pull away from me, but I cupped his head in my hand. "Now now... just confess... You know this is what I am for you, the one to hear all that may plague you, and to accept you all the same. No need to be frightened."

He shuddered. "Oh I have every reason to be frightened."

I leaned in, my lips to his ear. "I see why you think that. You know of it, such a curtain he wears to mask the truth... all the pain, and anger and despair residing in those... eyes..."

He froze with thick terror as cloying as molasses. How tempting it was to sip of this timid creature, to entangle myself in his smoky fear. As I buried my nose in his hair, his fists pressed against my chest, he murmured, "He is irredeemable. Forsaken. And this is beyond me... beyond anything I would ever want to imagine, and I fear I may be involved in something that I have no business being a part of."

"Smart boy." His hair smelled of my master's bed linens.

It was a possibility that I may have been a little embittered by his knowledge to my master's secret, for it was mine. If Joanne had confronted the contract emblazoned in my master's eye without fear, he would prove to me that he could face me with the same.

"Please, Sebastian..." his weak attempts to push away encouraged me to coil about him tighter, pressing against his groin and he strangled a yelp. "P-please, let me go, I beg—"

"You beg me? I generally do not respond well to begging and pleading. But yours... mmm, such fearful entreaty makes you rather striking." An alluring, familiar musk of indomitableness contrasted with sweet supplication, issued from sweating palms and ashy breath. I uttered against tremulous lips. "Can I anticipate your worst fear? That I will destroy you? No, if I had intention to do so I could have done it already before you were aware of such a possibility. So dismiss it."

As he exhaled against puckered words I caught such ecstatic pungency, and I twitched against him. "But do you know what else I smell that is even harder to ignore? I can smell him, on you, everywhere he has touched you, and you him..." The thoughts of earlier flooded my mind, how he had suggested I join them, but I had to admit those thoughts had not truly left. Ciel must have known my hunger, and he wanted to play with me again, with Joanne as one of his chess pieces. I was steadfast in my decision to not engage, but Joanne stood before me perfumed by my delectable chess master. "Oh, sweet damnation..."

And with that I forced my lips on that pout that had been around my master's cock not half an hour prior.

That scent had my tongue searching and probing, reaching to the back of his jowls to lap at some remnant of Ciel, and sure enough he had made his mark. There resided familiar ferocity, unrelenting urgency, but there was some new ingredient to this blend, some invigoration of spirit that seasoned the whole of it. I moaned into Joanne's surrendered mouth, teeth clashing to lap deeper for I thirsted, ears ringing from the blood surge.

His tongue battled against mine to match a lower, harder assault of hips. Joanne ground against me, his hands no longer fists that pushed but rather pulled at my jacket. When my locked arms softened to squeeze his rear he sighed his approval.

I retracted my tongue to speak. "I thought you were afraid of me, Joanne."

He gritted his teeth, the struggle between terror and titillation. "Oh... I am... but perhaps you are too alluring. And that's frightening also." He was probably still roused from his session with Ciel which was interrupted in the worst possible way. Being of a similar state, and knowing that the couple was preoccupied with music practice, this seemed a perfect opportunity to satisfy my own curiosity. Ciel was changed in some way, and Joanne was responsible for it.

"Unlike your new bed mate... I prefer to practice a little more discretion." Taking his hand in mine, I yanked him back inside, rushing down the servant's hall off the main breeze way and down a flight of steps to my quarters. With Mey-Rin in town there was no one left to give thought to us.

In some ways I preferred this bedchamber to the one at the manor because it allowed for darkness at any hour. However, I brought the gas lamp to life and locked the door behind Joanne. Trousers were wrenched from him and he was tipped to the bed with a single order. "On your hands and knees."

He looked back in horror, recoiling from me standing over him. "You can't hurt me, no, please—"

"Hush." I knelt before his raised backside, and I could smell such heady, wanton bouquet. I traced over his quivering hips, down the back of his thighs and calves to further split them and expose himself.

He peeked between his legs. "W-what are you going to do?"

I delivered a kiss to one cheek, his white skin resembling gooseflesh. "I know he has fucked you numerous times. I have seen you. He takes you gently, even when he is eager." The other cheek received my lips as well. "You force him deeper and harder than what he would allow himself. He climaxes inside of you every time. And you have not washed since he was last here."

He wanted to close his legs but I held him steady. "No, I haven't..."

"Please allow me this indulgence."

I buried my face in the cleft of his ass, smelling such debasement. He gasped as he recognised that those were my lips grazing about that tight pucker.

"D-don't do that, hah... it's embarrassing." He shuddered, muscles tightening against such crude kisses.

"Would you agree that half the thrill comes from the shame?" I parted his rear to gain better access. My breath rippled over pale hair, every sensation I delivered causing him to twitch. When my tongue crept lower to his bollocks his inhibition seemed to melt. As I traced up that softening cleft he sighed into my bedspread.

"Sebastian, may I make a request?"

"You may."

"Would you take off your gloves? If you're going to..."

I chuckled. "Have you ever considered," I breathed against that hole, "that we don such vestments for a reason?"

"So... you have a secret to hide." I drummed my fingers over his rear in response. "I will keep my eyes closed, I promise. I just want to feel your hands."

"You are so genuine, Joanne." I picked off my gloves, setting them on the bed. Under my fingers I felt the flaxen hair of his legs, the velvet of his sack and how that hole contracted when I pressed against it. Reigning him on his hipbones, my thumbs massaged over the sides of his rump. "Is this what you wanted? The contact?" He nodded. "Now it is time for me to make a request. I promise it will not be very taxing on you."

"What is it?"

My voice rumbled. "Talk to me about him. When was he last inside you?"

"It was this morn— oh!" My tongue prodded against him, swirling about that furrow, rich and noisome.

"Keep speaking and I will continue."

"I... woke up to him rutting against me, so I let him bugger me awake... hah..." I licked, flattened against him, salving that aperture to relax and permit entrance. "Your mouth is so hot."

"What does he feel like inside of you?" I murmured to his backside.

"He fits inside perfectly..." I pushed against the barrier, moaning to trace along the ridge where my master's cock had been finding respite. "Once the head goes in, I just... swallow it all. When I squeeze him inside of me he whimpers... oh, Sebastian, that feels…"

Tongue jabbed and shoved, and there was the effluence, primeval desire for pleasure, almighty and absinthial. I hummed deep into him, tasting that same vivacity, a renaissance of my master's spirit. Was there a limit to how complex he would develop?

"When I'm under him, he'll kiss my legs, ah, he wants to rain those kisses on every part... I want him to kiss me where you are, Sebas— hah," Joanne rocked against my intrusion, my wet fondling that dribbled over his sack. I prodded him with an intrusive thumb, plunging my tongue deeper.

It could no longer be helped. With my free hand I unbuttoned my trousers, thick organ to spring free which I graced with hurried clamping and stroking. Pathetic and desperate though it was, I cared not at all, humming against the entrance as I pumped myself. "Please, continue," I whispered.

"Sometimes he wants it quick, but there are times when he will go slow, oh... hah... And he glides gently, and he looks entranced, his eyes flutter shut..." Joanne panted, reaching to his own erection. "And he'll keep it slow until he can't stand it any longer, then when he comes he kisses me, moaning all the while... uh, moan into me again..." and I did so.

I tasted such openness, an expansion of consciousness, uncanny self-acceptance of himself and his corruption, his pain, of all the malignant components that defined him because Joanne was kind enough to take Ciel for who he was. Ciel was well past his repression, and his essence sang for release. I imagined what it must have been like for this golden lad, lying on the young master's bed, staring up at my master undulating over him, rocking into him, and the light from the window silhouetting him. Would that eye gleam from his darkened face? What name would be suspended upon those lips? When he was reaching for Joanne, was he pining for me instead?

Sex was no longer about a struggle for him because he was immersed in a boy who beheld him as beautiful, not my definition of it, but a human definition. To Joanne, it was not his fallen nature that made him beautiful, but the retention of his humanity in spite of it. Ciel had the capacity to be as harsh and unforgiving as nature itself, but also tender and caring. He was thriving, wearing his despair with honour, but also moving forward, noble and unwavering, not burdened by the weight of it because he developed some new strength to endure it.

I rushed against the tightening, the shuddering spill, bellowing the frustrating orgasm. While the taste of Ciel had aroused me, it was my own naked hand that had finished me. I panted, and I saw a flushed Joanne peering between his legs, pumping himself.

After a deep sigh I patted him on the thigh. "Turn over. Sit on the edge here." He was eager to do so, and as soon as he was sat up with legs spread my mouth dipped to greet the wet head of his prick. I was sure Ciel's luscious little mouth had taken in this swollen rod, which was almost matched to mine in length and girth. Joanne curled about me, my arms about his thighs and his toes twitching on my back.

Let him see my black nails trace over his lap. Let him see that seal that matches the one in my master's eye because this pretence is through. I rose and spoke with husky desperation. "Does he speak of me? Tell me..."

My lips were silenced by jutting erection, and his hands laced themselves into my hair as he pushed. "He is heartbroken over you and too proud to say anything…" My lips were tight about him, tongue flicking the underside of him. "I told him, oh Sebas... tian... hah, I said... you still desire him."

I pulled up, nuzzled against his wet length. "Why would you tell him this?"

He looked into my eyes. "Because it's true." I broke that gaze by plunging upon him again. "And when I said it the way he made love to me… eager and intense, and passionate, and tender..." and I bobbed faster, "I imagined that was how he wanted you—oh!" I squeezed at the base of him as I sucked and he leaned back on his elbows. "Yes yes... he said you're so good at this... ugh..." and I stroked a rhythm to match my tongue, my lips, each beat pulling a shuddering yelp. His head fell to the bed, back arched up to urge me take in all of him, knees raised.

He released my head to clasp at the sinister hand pressed over his tummy, needing some grappling hook as I drove him to the edge. "He won't say it, he won't admit it, ah! But I see it in his eyes! He's hurt and angry ah! But he can't change... When he is with me… he bites his tongue so he won't…! Ah Sebastian, ah, ah! He hasn't stopped— oh!" I forced him to climax before he could finish his sentence because I had heard quite enough.

I tasted such brightness, a soul hurting but uncontaminated, lush with unfettered sweetness, and that was the only characteristic to discern, as fundamental an ingredient to his soul as vanilla to cake. Such a concentration was staggering, and to feel it run down the back of my throat was a foul sensation. When that essence settled within me, I felt not myself at all. A truth settled within the broken condition of myself, to reveal that all that I had been was vainglory.

And what was there to love about that? Ciel had said it best in the beginning; that he had fallen for someone as wretched and wonderful as me.

As Joanne sprawled in twitching contentment, legs hanging over the side of the bed, I turned away to rest the back of my head against the mattress. How could I continue to fight this?

After a moment he sat up to look at me. "Sebastian... are you all right?"

I turned my head in his direction, but kept my gaze downward. "Joanne, will you kindly leave me? I will return upstairs momentarily."

"I'm sorry, did I do something wrong?"

"Nothing of the sort. Please leave."

He put on his trousers in a hurry, not bothering to tuck his shirt, and did not look back at me before shutting the door behind him. I sat on the floor, fighting against creeping defeat.