THE TRUTH

By Margaret Price

After a particularly scathing rant peppered liberally with obscenities in several languages, the Major was both stunned and annoyed to see that the Earl was not suitably cowed. Normally, the fop would sit with a dejected look on his face whenever Klaus happily burst his ridiculously romanticized bubble.

Not so this time.

This time, the Major’s ranting only seemed to encourage the amorous look that came to Eroica’s too pretty face. He was sitting quietly, hand to chin and leaning on his elbow, looking up, his blue eyes sparkling. He was also seriously unnerving the Major.

“What the hell are you looking at?” Klaus demanded finally. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?”

“Mmm hmmm,” Dorian affirmed with a contented sigh. “I’ve just realized why I love you so much.”

A chill ran down the horrified Major’s spine, and he felt Goosebumps spring up all over his body. Shit, now what? If yelling produced this perverted reaction, he might have to actually resort to physical violence as his only recourse in rebuffing the Earl’s unwanted attention.

“What the fuck did I do this time?” Klaus snarled in an attempt to mask his obvious ill ease.

“Nothing you haven’t done a hundred times before,” came the breathy reply.

Klaus felt his revulsion quickly being overtaken, his anger rising again. “Then tell me. What is the big attraction, huh? I’m not interested in any of the impractical romantic bullshit you say is so important.”

“That’s true.” The amorous look only intensified.

Klaus’s anger immediately clicked up a notch and a low growl rose in his throat. “You are so full of shit! You’re saying this to annoy me, admit it.”

“Oh, Major,” Dorian said dreamily, “you just don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what? That you’ve finally lost your mind?”

“As you have so eloquently put it, I’m the biggest flaming queen you’ve ever met, right?”

“Ye~es.” Klaus’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “So?”

“So…I’m surprised you’re not surrounded by an adoring throng of men…”

The Major’s emotional pendulum started to swing back from outrage to horror. “What?”

Dorian smiled, tossing his blond curls over one shoulder, his eye raking seductively over the Major’s muscular frame. “Well, what gay man could possibly resist the biggest asshole on the face of the Earth?”

*_*