An organ echoed throughout the manor. The tune quivered in the humid air, gasping in the heat and the wet; the keys almost rose to meet the fingers that pressed so masterfully across them in anticipation of the next movement, the next touch. Each note pressed against its bosom the passion that fell from the heart of the player, or rather, the gut. The purely primal preying sense of he who breathed out a purple breath, pant, more delicious than any righteous ambrosia. It came from his sensuously curled lips, through his exposed canine teeth, came from his soul, from the depths of hell. It sought to claim any being not strong enough to be his equal, sought to conquer and make moan. His red eyes opened with his smirk as the crescendo coursed through his corpse; the climax shut them again in a flash, and he felt as though death came close to his ear to whisper her thanks.

He was, after all, her Michael, that messenger of all work she strove to carry out. She claimed him, but was below him, and the piece began to descend into its final moments of murmuring. He bowed to her, though he could change her existence, her meaning, entirely, and shuddered at the thought of her vicinity. He tenderly stroked the last key, already reaching for his long, red coat, which he had discarded before the encounter with his arcane song, the depths of which only he could know, only he could see. But, nevertheless, death understood him more than almost any other could, and he felt at home within her embrace.

A smile came to those lips again, one of bloodthirsty competition. Suddenly, it was more than death in his company; he had two mistresses over which to brood.

"You're done playing for the night, Alucard," A slender hand upon his shoulder, affectionate yet forceful, strong, accompanying her mandate. His heightened senses could smell the cigar smoke and her intention.

"Yes, my master," He stood, and walked backward, as if pulled by a leash. He grinned all the wider.

***

The humid air, a rarity for London, stayed the same. Intensity, heat, magnified it, as she forced her lips upon those seemingly ever-twisted in a smirk. He did not kiss back, instructed not to move; he kneeled before her with his head raised high. With the fingers that tied his hands behind his strong back she grasped his hair and held his head, her long, blond locks tickling his less-than-dead face as she moved to assault his neck. It was then that he pulled off her glasses with his skilled teeth, ever so skilled in annihilation, in complete and utter decimation, biting the bridge between the lenses gently enough to go unnoticed.

Hellsing manor groaned for Alucard, creaked when he could not, because of his ordered silence. The walls rasped as his master, his life, his death, his Integra, made him lowly, finally able to even faintly taste defeat, subordination. They all but buckled when she took him by the shoulders and threw him onto her nearby bed, and moaned, heavy with time, when she unbound his hands.

"Now," She paused to kiss him forcefully on his pale lips, "you will be good, or you'll be tied right up again." She loomed over him, a specter which he had not encountered in all his days in the fiery flames of hell or on his countless days upon a dreary earth.

"Of course, my master," he replied, his words in themselves drone-like, but his tone husky, full of want, of the desire to drink from her. It was this need that made him almost shudder as she kissed lower, lower, until, at a frighteningly slow pace, stopped to rest her mouth, her nose, upon his abdomen.

If he could sweat, he would have done so in that moment. If he could emanate heat, that heat would have then molded with Integra Hellsing's, his driving force, his leader, master, and, in every part, his everything. In this one arena he would lose, constantly, he would admit his defeat, though easily he could overpower the woman who made him so utterly desperate and full of bloodlust with the way she swayed slightly over his stilled and silent form.

He would obey every order, every word spoken by the velvety voice smoothed over by smoke and drink and domination that could only be natural to her. As his thoughts drifted from the current situation to the strength and valor and spirit which Integra possessed, he shifted.

Lost control. Moved. Showed weakness. And most of all, he disobeyed.

Integra looked up. Her look was one of admonition, yet one of victory. She brought her face millimeters from his own, and breathed that same purple breath that seemed to be his trademark.

"I win yet again, Count," she referred to the game they both played so well, she the uncompromising and august tactician, he the tool of war that was so completely destructive, but so completely in her grasp.

"So, you do, Countess."