“Major, this is spooky.” The pressure of Klaus’ hand, between his shoulder blades, guided Dorian through the doorway. “You gave the poor butler three days off, and the servants won’t be back until late tomorrow. Why come all the way down here?”

“Because I want to. Because you’ll like it. Think of it this way,” said Klaus, “We won’t need to worry about sound-proofing.”

Dorian looked around the small stone room. One entrance, the iron-barred oak door Klaus had just closed. One possible other exit, if one counted the stone grate at the end of a shallow sluice on the floor. One queen-sized iron bed with a futon mattress and a serviceable white quilt. A water dispenser, with a full bottle and white paper cups beside it. The room was warmed slightly by an electric heater, and lit with a single phosphorescent bulb in a camping-lantern. A cardboard shoe-box sat by the bed. He’d seen better accommodations in third-world brothels, while meeting underworld contacts. Not that he’d ever availed himself of the merchandise, in such dismal places. But Klaus made the setting almost negligible. Then Dorian realized – everything down here was more or less disposable. Breakable. He grinned. It boded well for a night of rough passion.

“I do hope this was an Eberbach wine cellar.”

“No,” Klaus said cheerfully. “The furnishings are new, but I think it was a dungeon-cell. My cousins and I used to terrify each other with idiotic pranks, down here. Are you warm?”

“Yes,” Dorian whispered, leaning back into his lover’s embrace.

“Yes, you are,” a teasing murmur vibrated against the back of Dorian’s neck. The caressing hands let him go. “Now turn your back to me and strip. Don’t turn around until I tell you.”

“What, no handcuffs tonight? They’d fit the décor,” Dorian asked as he shimmied out of his expensive but restrained clothing. From the carefully worded invitation, he’d thought Klaus was taking him out to dinner. This could be even better – how many times could he make Klaus scream, down here?

“No.”

“Condoms and lube?”

“Of course.”

Dorian tried to guess, by the various rustling sounds, what Klaus was rummaging for in the cardboard box. Imagination kept tripping him headlong into wild fantasy.

At last, Klaus said “Turn around and let me look at you.”

“As if I’d stop you?” Dorian smiled, in turn, at his lover’s pale, perfect body and purple-skinned erection. Klaus’ hands were behind his back, and he looked over Dorian with an abstract consideration.

“How much do you trust me?” said the Major quietly.

Dorian kept his happy grin from showing, striving to match Klaus’ introspective mood. Oh, this boded well, indeed! “Whatever you want, I’ll do it, love.”

That sharp chin gestured toward the bed. “Hands and knees. Brace your forehead against the pillow.”

At least Klaus had warmed the lube. Dorian squirmed back against those strong fingers, gasping when they opened his sphincter a little too roughly. But it was what he wanted tonight, for some demented reason; sudden, unpredictable pain making the voluptuous pleasure even sweeter. He hadn’t indulged in this kind of play for years. This was only for a lover who was implicitly, utterly trusted–

One slick finger curled deep inside him, gliding over his prostate. Dorian moaned. A fingernail flicked across the sensitive nub, sharp as a chisel, concentrating the sensation. For an instant, Dorian couldn’t tell if he felt pleasure or pain. Then the endorphin rush took over. His passage clamped greedily around that tormenting finger.

“Good,” Klaus whispered, reading his body’s reactions. “Remember how it feels, when you don’t know. When it all blurs into one feeling. Do you think you can do that, to me?”

“Oh, God,” Dorian said, momentarily undone by the combination of imagination and sensation.

“Can you?” Klaus pressed, reaching around and clenching vise-like fingers around the base of Dorian’s penis.

The incipient orgasm faded, a little. “Yes. Now?”

“No. We are going to play a game, first.”

“What – what are the rules?” Dorian asked breathlessly, as those wicked fingers took him once more to the edge.

“I take my pleasure of you, as often and however I want, as long as I want. As long as I can. All you have to do is stay awake, and when I finally faint, you can take me. Any way you want.”

Dorian could not believe his ears. This was Klaus, his ice-veined Major, the man he’d had to chase for years before stealing a single real kiss? The man who was still touchingly conventional in his lovemaking? Dorian had never even entered him, and here the man was demanding a debauched contest of stamina.

“Well?” Klaus kissed him on the ear, nibbling a bit. “If you don’t want to do it, I’ll drive you back to your hotel – ”

“No! I want – oh, Klaus, I want this. I never knew you liked – ”

“Ssh. Don’t get excited yet. There’s more, Dorian.”

Without any warning, Klaus pulled out his two fingers and slammed himself deep into Dorian’s relaxed opening. The blond bucked and screamed into the pillow, trembling as Klaus slowed to a soft, shallow cadence. “Better?” the Major asked. One hand wandered from Dorian’s hips, to caress his jerking penis. “Yes, I can see it is. Do you think you can rear back, now, onto my lap?”

Dorian didn’t even try to swallow his groans and gasps during that exercise. Once snuggled against Klaus’ hard abdomen, he turned his head over his shoulder. Klaus met him with a slow, open-mouthed kiss.

The Earl pulled back far enough to look in the smiling green eyes. “Now what?”

The Major’s hands were still lifting and rocking Dorian’s hips, setting a lazy pace that frustrated Dorian more than it satisfied him. “Turn your head back around. I have another present for you.”

Dorian obeyed, feeling himself speed toward climax just on the merits of Klaus’ adorable, unexpected bravery. “What present?”

“A necklace for your pretty throat.” Paper rustled. Dorian arched his head up, the better for Klaus to settle the trinket around his neck –

And froze in place, as he felt the clinging friction of rubber against his Adam’s apple. A hard, narrow pressure that could only be wire underneath the latex. His thief’s experience told him what it was for. To bind. Constrict. The rubber, and Klaus’s gathered fist, held it unmoving.

“Don’t struggle,” Klaus said mildly, “You’ll only set it tighter.”

“I don’t like this. Stop.”

“You’ll love it, Dorian. I won’t let it hurt you for long. It’s just to remind you – you are mine. If you last, you can return the favor.”

Dorian expected the fear that flooded his nerves, but not the equally-powerful stab of anticipation. “Damn you, Major. What sick game is this, and where the hell did you learn it? What happens if I fall asleep before you do?”

“Questions, questions, my thief. To wit – this is our sick game. I picked it up from a very old diary I found in the Schloss library, last week. Can you guess who wrote it? And for the last question -- don’t fall asleep.”

Dorian fought for composure. Klaus had been researching his ancestor Tyrian, looking for clues as to the precise location of the shipwrecked El Alcon – and its treasures. What demented experiment of Tyrian’s was the Major reproducing?

Klaus loved him, Dorian knew that beyond doubt. Even if the Major could rarely be moved to show it, much less say it. This was a matter of trust. A man like the Major demanded absolute faith -- and rewarded it with shattering delight. Dorian swallowed, again feeling a bizarre dichotomy of terror and hunger. He had to trust Klaus, to take them both into pleasures even Dorian hadn’t dreamed of. But Dorian wanted some guarantees, as well –

“What’s the safeword, darling?” he rasped.

Klaus kissed and nibbled at a spot on Dorian’s neck, just above the wire, that sent fire drilling down his spine. In the last dizzying seconds before he was finally allowed to climax, Dorian heard the Major whisper lovingly: “There isn’t one.”

Finis