Johannes’s downcast gaze suddenly flicked up to meet my eyes. His shoulders heaving as he panted, his eyes showed disbelief at the situation before him, at his lover’s bold provocation.

I saw his smooth Adam’s apple bob once beneath his closed mouth. That reaction was thrillingly intense to me. After hesitating, he approached me. His trembling fingertips came closer, closer, searching for me.

I had tied several silk threads to the ring. The long braided white tail was left outside my clothes after being tightly knotted. So that anyone could pull it out anytime, if desired. Johannes’s fingers, now tracing my thigh, quickly caught hold of that thread I had secretly prepared, my heart pounding wildly at this first-ever act. At that moment, ah…

A long-held breath escaped briefly between Johannes’s lips. That sound, unable to fully conceal a deep tremor, seemed to me like the clear exclamation of an infatuated boy.

Johannes came and lay down on top of me, covering my upper body sprawled on the chair. Marking each space in the air, one by one. His visibly tense gaze wandered and curved long at a distance close enough to almost touch my face. With an expression of barely contained adoration for me spreading across his entire face, he gently bit my lip and whispered.

“Did you… do this yourself?”

His hand below pressed and rubbed my thigh. The shape of the thread could be clearly felt between our touching skin. I nodded my head vigorously like a child while repeatedly receiving his light kisses.

In one corner of my satisfyingly swollen chest. There was an unquenched thirst, and a frantic anticipation was fluttering noisily. I barely managed to stop the question about to burst forth by biting Johannes’s skin. How is it? Do you like it? Is it good…? Hm? Johannes.

Hurry and praise me.

“…Did it feel good?”

Johannes asked while rolling the knot. Yes. Yes…! I think I answered fervently while clinging to his lips. That. Even to my own ears, it was a voice melting from the top of my head down to the back of my throat. Somehow I felt embarrassed, but even that seemed like part of the ecstasy to me.

“What were you thinking, to do such a… naughty thing.”

Johannes’s breath was as rough and disorderly as mine as he asked pleasantly. His exhales, tinged with laughter, were all thin and trembling irregularly. The jaw I held in my hand was hot as if burned all over. Perhaps from tension. His damp skin was even a bit moist. And, thump thump. Thump thump. Thump thump….

I still cannot distinguish now. Whose pulse it was that was pounding strongly under my ring finger touching his nape. I suddenly felt something strange. At that moment I was startled from my core, and had to swallow back tears of surprise with a gasp.. As if a burning lump was buried beneath my breastbone.

“You…!”

My briefly choked breath then burst out like a startled moan.

“You, I… I imagined, you, treating me… roughly…! I imagined… Ah, if you discovered this then… what kind of expression, you would make towards me….” “……”

“I kept, picturing it…”

“……”

“Over and over… Ah, only you….”

I don’t know what I was thinking. Perhaps I was trying to reenact the ecstasy I had experienced alone in front of him. I lowered one trembling hand. I carefully grasped Johannes’s wrist as he caressed me. Finally, I gave him an imploring look. See, like this…. I, like this…. You know, just like now, while thinking of you….

I moved Johannes’s hand in the exact same way as I had done alone in the guest room. All the while, my mind was filled with a single impression. Blue eyes.

Intensely blue eyes gazing at me intently.

Eyes losing words, losing self, finally changing to the light of a pitiful beast at the unfamiliar form of his lover.

A subtle tremor soon ran up my spine. As the scene I had imagined alone rather constricted me. Ah. My throat was choked with longing. He’s looking at me. He’s watching me. What should I do, what can I do…? His gaze was an even greater stimulus to me than our deeply connected skin. Is the sight of me in your eyes right now perhaps like the Virgin in a religious painting flushed with divine fervor… You. It must be breathtakingly delicious right now. Isn’t it…?

I secretly raised my gaze amidst my breaths. My eyes were so wet with heat and tears that I could not see clearly ahead. I barely felt Johannes’s gaze fixed on my face within my blurry vision. He was strangely silent. Not even moving.

For a moment I got the impression that Johannes’s precariously hanging smile seemed to be gradually fading.. But I could soon notice that his breathing was getting faster by the second. Because the red flush that had risen hotly on his neck was spreading up to his forehead as if to drive away the bronze stains.

…Ah.

It was then that I felt a vibration inside my solar plexus. What he was doing to me in his cruel mind, unable to actually touch me while silently and firmly burning with desire. I felt then that I could see right through the scene in his head just by barely raising my eyes.

To me, it was no different from an aphrodisiac made of ground deer antlers. Ha, Giovinetta. Giovinetta. Giovinetta…. Johannes’s voice in his fantasy seemed to reach my ears like an auditory hallucination. No. It was so clear to these eardrums that it gave me goosebumps. His deep red moans. The sounds echoing in the room. Amidst the spreading scent of sticky blood, white.

The screams of my body in disarray like rags.

Johannes.

“Does it feel good…?”

“…Ah.”

As if my voice, unable to hold back any longer, was a signal.

Johannes threw his head back with a deep groan. It was as if black torrential rain was pouring over his face. The bronze color around his eyes instantly flowed down his entire face, streaming down to his neck. Thus, the glimpses of his skin visible through his collar were entirely the black color of a demon.

My blackness, shuddering alone, urgently buried its face as if plunging its head into water. It opened its mouth and swallowed me. It swallowed me frantically several times. Like a starving fiend trembling with thirst, while tightly wrapping around me completely. At times scratching the wet skin with fangs. I can’t let go. I want to live. You save me. Save me. As if begging and pleading to me like that….

I cried and laughed. Don’t say such nonsense about wanting to die, Johannes. I know you as you know me, Johannes….

“Just, a moment…”

Around the time when his breathing, about to collapse at any moment, rose up to the nape of my neck. I pushed away Johannes’s head while pressing my chest, which was trembling with wave-like sensations. The thread braided down flowed out between Johannes’s lips as he pressed his forehead against my hand. He was holding my ring in his mouth. I lowered my palm and pressed to cover his mouth.

“Don’t… spit it out.”

I commanded as if bursting into tears. Johannes, his entire chest heaving, barely raised a puzzled gaze to look at me. I slid down from the chair. I mounted Johannes’s waist and grasped both his wrists together at once. When I raised them above Johannes’s head, a bewildered look flashed across his eyes.

“Don’t move.”

I pushed on his chest. Johannes, with an uncomprehending face, obediently followed my touch and lay halfway down, putting his hands above his head.

“Don’t let go. Don’t ever let go…”

I remember repeating the command several times. Because an indescribable heat filled my entire body, hot tears welled up from deep in my throat, and I recall my voice was terribly thorny.

With his mouth covered in my hand, Johannes entrusted his entire body to me without being able to ask even one reason. The moment I lowered myself deeply onto his firm body, his brow collapsed dizzily. His moan, pooling long in his mouth that must have felt like a prison, sounded like some kind of wail.

“Short of breath?”

I asked while firmly pressing his lips, which were frantically heaving as if trying to connect more deeply with me. Johannes, who had restrained himself, gasped through his nose and contorted his eyes. Let me go. Let me go…. It was as if a dragon who had lost language was begging me for liberation. As if persistently fixing his teary gaze on me, asking for the freedom to spread its wings cruelly. And at the same time… As if asking to be more perfectly subdued.

As if the compressed peak was about to arrive.

Ah.

“Feel like you’re dying?”

I asked, putting more force into the hand covering his mouth. He nodded with a shattering light. I did not look at him begging. I did not listen. I only stroked his hair while comforting my lack using Johannes as a tool. Just as he had once whispered to me when I was trembling with fear and ecstasy. Today, I whispered for a long time as if soothing, as if coaxing my demon. While embracing an overwhelming heart. Sweetly. Sweetly.

Shh, shh….

Just a moment, endure….

Just a little while….

Haa, ah, that’s right, that’s right….

Good boy… Good boy….

It’ll be over soon….

Johannes….

Johannes.

That night. Johannes reached the peak before I did. Several times.

****

It was quiet.

In the guest room without windows, it’s difficult to distinguish day from night. Even when I stirred and got up with my disheveled naked body, and not even on the bed but on the floor, the surroundings were hazy with only the red and dim lamplight, so I really couldn’t gauge the time.

How long had I slept? I raised just my upper body and blinked my sleepy eyes, then casually looked down at my side. An arm that looked even darker in the red light was firmly bound around my waist.

Then I shifted my gaze lower. One bare foot carelessly placed under the thinly covered blanket felt heavy, as if tied by something hot and smooth like a snake. I didn’t need to lift the blanket to check. It was obvious. What was gripping the sole of my foot was my person’s….

“Tail…”

I muttered stupidly, looking down. I turned my head and quietly gazed at Johannes’s eyelids as he slept without even using a pillow. How deeply asleep he must be.

I gently stroked his forehead, which wouldn’t open his eyes no matter how many times I called, “Johannes, Johannes.” The sensation of his glossy black hair wrapping around my fingers felt quite nice. Even though we had spent a long night together, because these eyes and this skin were not yet fully familiar, I couldn’t help blushing as I looked at him, who still seemed like a complete stranger.

His face revealed under the red lighting looked so unfamiliar.

Long black eyelashes. Features that were still delicate as usual, but with bolder and kinder lines. If my Johannes was like a gloriously brilliant sun, he had the air of a hazy waning moon. Though so strange, my… beautiful lover who said he had been waiting to reunite since ancient times. That face.

The one lying beside me was Idris.