"Our secret be benefit," the gypsy muttered. "Their unhappy lack of it."

From the balcony, in the shadows next to the velvet drapes stood a man, his skin as fine as dark chocolate. His face was drawn, the flesh gaunt over the bone. His cheekbones high, his lips lustrous and full, parting ever so slightly as to lick. His eyes took a sweep over the balcony, investigating the women's lace braziers, settling on the old gypsy woman.

"Awaken my trusting friend," the man and the women's lips moving as one. "My undisturbed reflection."

He parted from the drapes, his coat tails breaking free of the scarlet with a soft sweep of air. His footsteps like cotton on the marble floor, he descends from the balcony and into the ballroom. Like water he moves through the crowd until at the very center of the gypsy's chant.

"So fluid your beauty," a young maiden whispers into his ear.

Her pretty faces overdrawn with ruby red lipstick and blush. Her eyes hidden behind a mask of composed of a lion's face. The whisker's tickling his face on her descent.

"All gears and teeth…," he whispered down her blouse. Memorizing her curves for later use behind closed eyelids. Her yellow skirt brushed the floor in silent whispers, she moved her warm body next to his. He continued to watch as the gypsy woman turned over a tarot card with her clean hand, and the room gasped at The Devil card. She stamped it with her burnt one, and flung it high into the air, letting it flutter down as if turn wings.

"Come to life my second skin!" The old woman shrieked into the air. "To protect the madness locked within!"

The girl turned her face, buried it into his dusty coat at the sign of the Devil. Her hand found purchase in the lace of his inner shirt, and deep within she lay it on his chest. A sigh emits from the lion's maw when her delicate fingers twirl around a cold nipple. And tracing a fine dust of black hair, her hand trails idly toward deeper reaches.

"Yet, I know a place where we can touch in tongues," his voice like silk yet heavy and drawn.

She followed him in hand from the crowd and out one of many tall glass doors, into the courtyard and through the ancient grove of trees. Beneath the open face of the moon she vacillated between lust and reason, glancing back with lion's eyes at the light of the party, and the murmur within. And then at the strange black man, who lead her deeper into the massive courtyard with trees like marble pillars, reaching towards heaven, towards God.

She took his hand once more, stepping after into the darkness. Following feet that left not footprints in the earth. To a bench of granite they went, old vines twining up into crevices and over sharp breaks. He offered her a seat with one hand, nodding as she went and sat. Her skin turning shades of blue in the pale light, the edge of her dress covered in a light layer of mud.

"Though words did betray us, they buried our past," she told him. But he shook his head, an answer to a statement; No.

He leaned at her feet, one knee in the black earth. With his hands he took her breasts and kneaded them to serve his purpose, softening her flesh like clay. His tongue tasted like sand, a thick thing that invaded her dainty mouth, and probed, feeling along her teeth, the contour of her mouth. He lifted the dress in one fluid motion, and pressed up against her sex with palm burnt black. Licking over her breasts with tongue, making sticky wet trails that rolled down into her cleavage.

The warmth of the fire from the gypsy's hand melting into her body, the soft places between her legs massaged into feeling. She seeped, the wetness running through his fingers like water. Like a broken thing she leaked. Using his rough tongue he pushed up, inside of her he went. Pinching clit between lips like a water-clogged grape, and letting the sweet juices within run over and down his chin.

She moans, her voice cracking like the branches over head.

"Cry blasphemy!" His voice is sharp, and harsh to her ears. He pushes her down on the bench, and cradling her head with hand smothers her mouth with his own. The rock together, pressing up against the granite bench, moving like the trees do, and old branches above. Moving with the tides of air, the wind that stirs the dead leaves into flight.

Until their mouths are broken and torn, and chapped with spit. He breaks and smothers her body with his own until she whimpers in his arms. Until her body clamps up against his and her mask is thrown back over her head, and her head is thrown over the bench, and the bench to its side.

"Sad, passive release," she yelps.

"Come alive!" The gypsy's voice can be heard through the grove.

Bringing his down fury down on her, he grunts, biting lower lip with teeth. "Take my dears one." A simple sentence is said before the last drop of liquid is drained from both bodies, into each other or on earth.

The lay like two broken things, resting against each other until the sound of an owl brings to attention their fortune. She, her face still flushed and red from the sex brings the mask down over her eyes once more, never once glancing heavenward. And he, calm and composed, his pants circling his ankles kneels back onto the earth.

She hurries through the forest, letting the cool hair refresh her hot skin.

But he still kneels in the dirt, leaning heavily on the bench, he thinks. "The use of this spell, may serve all too well."

Before slowly gathering his belongings and slipping his sex back into his pants, he takes a handful of dirt, and pours a small portion of it into his pocket. The night comes alive with the sound of locusts and owls, the rustling of a bush, the swaying of the trees.

The ballroom is as left, the wicks burning in wrought-iron candelabras. The Gypsy's face composed and silent, breaking now and then with a shudder. The crowd pressed closer, though some still had left, bored with the game. He moved up the stairs, passing faces frozen in wonder. Half way to the top he heard a rustling, the sound of drapes and fabric moving as one. Two beings coupling within the red velvet, grasping at each others torn mouth.

He turned, quietly on the steps, away from the two lovers in heat, down the steps, and out the front door, into the chilled night air.