His voice was steel, his voice was velvet. It wrapped around her and cushioned her fall from grace. She choked, one hand to her abdomen, the bones of her yellow corset digging into the soft flesh beneath her ribs. The audience melted in a sea of colour, unimportant, unalive. A painting, flat and winking on a wall.
"Past the point of no return," he paused, challenge in his eyes as he sang, a quirk on his lip which echoed a smirk. He didn't think she could do it. He didn't think she would. "No backward glances."
She did glance back, to see the musicians continuing as though nothing had happened. They looked somewhat startled at the impromptu song, but the conductor always enjoyed a challenge and they fit molded themselves to his song like velvet around a diamond. A hand ghosted along her jaw, bringing her face back around to face his, only to find him several paces away, commanding the stage in a way unparalleled.
Snapshots shot through her mind as fingertips fluttered away, warm, teasing. Them, together. Candles iridescently fickering with enough brightness to drown the sun, melting away into a nothingness which would be as dark as the shadow of the moon. A boat, a man. A hand on her waist, skin on skin. Curls of her own hair shadowing his chest as she moved above him.
His eyes brightened with knowing.
"Our games of make-believe are at an end."
She wanted to shake her head, demand he release her from whatever spell the ghost had over her. She wanted to slap herself, wring her hair, scream. She wanted—she wanted—
"Past all thoughts of if or when,"
The disdain lingered in her mind, a chorus fitting with her heartbeat, thrumming through her pulse, compelling her to watch him as he stalked closer like a cat. What did he want? What did she want? A voice screamed in her head to run, run before she was over her head, run before she did something she'd regret.
"No point resisting."
Could he hear her thoughts? He already knew the inside of her mind as well as an intimately walked hallway. He answered her every call, lit on every cause for lighting. The fire to her ice, before she even knew she was burning.
"Abandon thought and let your dreams decide."
"No." She sucked in a breath of air. The word was a whisper, too low for even herself to hear above the music, above him. It was a plea, a cry for help from her own indecision. Raol was watching. But his eyes flashed to hers, dark and burning from behind his black mask as hard as obsidian. She searched what she could see of his face desperately, clutching at anything, but his mouth was soft and forming notes rough with emotion and smooth has honey. He'd heard her, but he knew her. He stepped closer, winks of satisfaction and vulnerability alternating in his pupils.
"What raging fire shall flood the soul?"
His hands were on her. She nearly shuddered with want as his arms encircled her tight enough to cut off her breathing, one hand warm around the taught line of her throat. Her back was pressed against his chest, her scanty stage dress becoming inconsequential as the heat of his body leaked through to warm her. She found she couldn't care, her head thrown back against his shoulder, a bubble of uncertainty rapidly depleting. The voice squeaking no at the back of her mind was stifled as his hand heated from her throat to her jaw, to her cheeks, caressing her mouth as the other rose to ghost her shoulder. The audience breathed, a choked breath of the voyeur as they found themselves unable to tear their eyes away.
"What rich desire shall unlock its door? What sweet seduction lies before us?"
He drifted his hands away from her, snapping his body away and dipping his head to watched the curve of her waist to breasts and hip as she shivered before his gaze, dizzy with music and desire. His lips ran from her shoulder to hand, biting her knuckle softly, his eyes never leaving hers. She wanted to moan. But he would stop his song and it would be her turn. If she failed- she wouldn't be- she couldn't-
"Past the point of no return."
Gently, he tugged her forward by the hand, his other outspread towards the audience as smoothly as a man who sung before them every day. They watched him, eyes glazed with hunger, gripping hands and thighs and pearls. She stared out at them, knowing her expression matched theirs, fingers taut and breathing thrumming under collar bones.
"Please." She half sobbed, her lips barely moving. He snapped his face to her, calm but relentless, determinately moving on with his song to the conclusion she knew she would face readily, wantonly.
"The final threshold."
He whispered it and sang it in equal measure. The audience caught their breath in wonder at the raw need of his voice, while she turned her face in sudden, cold, stage fright. He was warning her.
"What warm unspoken secrets shall we learn beyond the point of no return?"
He wanted her decision.
A note of silence, pure as a bubble of water, filled with rainbows and fear hung suspended in the spellbound hall as the pair on stage stared at one another. He was still, not a muscle moving as he waited. She was breathing fast, hands fluttering, eyes feverishly roaming his yet her body turned towards someone in the stands.
Truth.
"You have brought me," She nearly wept with relief when her voice sprung from her as high and clear as usual, "to that moment when words run dry. To that moment where speech disappears into silence. Silence."
His eyes flashed with amusement.
Cheat he mouthed at her across the stage, a smirk of pride hovering on his lip. She straightened her bare shoulders at the look, a flash of heat giving her a surge of clarity and confidence as she stalked back towards him, enjoying the surprise in his gaze where before uncertainty had her crippled.
"In my mind I've already imagined our bodies entwining, defenseless and silent," It wasn't a whisper, it wasn't straightforward. It was a croon which caused him to breath in sharply, but disguised beneath layers of opera which concealed bare want from the audience. They shuffled.
"Now I am here with you, no second thoughts. I've decided." He raised an eyebrow. "Decided."
The world stopped.
"Past the point of no return"
She turned, slowly, away from the audience, towards the fire which burned desperately at the back of the stage. He turned with her, hypnotized by her eyes which flashed with sudden and unexpected confidence, the skin which glittered in hellfire and stage light.
"No going back now."
She wanted to be closer to him. He stepped towards her just as she did, him. Perfectly timed, a dance of want and need, a song of decision and hardened detachment from reality.
"Our passion-play has now at last begun. When will the blood begin to race? When will the flames at last consume us?"
He remained still, face still, eyes burning on her with a want so fierce it was a wonder she didn't melt. He was taut from head to toe, muscles tight so as to hold himself still. She watched him, delight in her own power leading to a recklessness she might have once regretted.
"Past all thoughts of right or wrong,"
Tease.
"One final question!"
He tensed.
"How long are we to wait before we're one?"
He stifled a groan, not wanting to shatter the perfection of the music. She stood, fearless in fire as a medieval princess, consumed by her own lust and straight as an arrow with an imperious turn to her head. He stood, black against the red, fists clenched, his soul burning.
"Past the point of no return,"
The shouted together, tightly laced not to clash, no need to even concentrate on the words they automatically threw away together, his presence full in her mind and she in his.
"The final threshold,"
No warning this time, no need for it. She matched him, a pillar of brilliance in space which fizzed like a firework.
"The bridge is being crossed so stand and watch it burn."
They gasped together, their breath short, their voices an effortless harmony in the red-hot hall. Their eyes met. He stalked forward as she did their hands grasping through bare air for the other, he clasping her hips and she his waist as they pressed closer in agony. He spun her, hands on her, running from throat to waist in a movement unbearably heated on her breasts. Their voices climaxed as they thrust apart, crackling in the comparative gloom of the brilliantly lit stage.
"We've passed the point of no return."
Silence.
They breathed hard.
They watched one another.
His eyes shifted from hard to soft in an instant as he saw the tight lust on her face break into something else. Her eyes darted to the box where he knew her lover sat, quick as thought. Violent hatred towards him roughened his voice into that of sadness as he watched her stand alone in the darkness, a shape, atoms of brilliance and perfection.
"Say you'll share with me one love,"
The audience shifted. She shifted. Lust and love were two very different topics, the change so sudden he could see the dizziness in her expression.
"One lifetime. Lead me, save me from my solitude."
His voice cracked for the first time in his life, hitching as he watched her, desperation feeding something warmer than lust. They were still close enough to touch. She leaned her head back as his pressed his kiss into the base of her throat, beneath the heavy fall of her hair.
"Say you want me with you here beside you."
Her beautiful face turned up to him like a flower, eyes glittering with tears. She knew a pledge when she heard one.
"Anywhere you go let me go too."
She watched him, terrified, hot, cold. This brilliant man, who sang with enough raw emotion for ten, who had the power to command, who held a room in pure hypnosis. A man himself terrified, alone, masked with confidence. A man who threw himself in supplication at her feet with a devotion that petrified her.
"Christine"
He used her name for the first time, and it broke something in her. He hurled her name like a spell into the room, into the heavens, where it lay suspended in stars and encircled by planets, pulsing. A talisman. A gift.
"That's all I ask of—"
He broke off as she reached forward.
His eyes darkened.
A second, maybe two.
Her lips captured his as she bent towards him like a bow, hands smoothing his throat as she offered him the first free kiss of his life. The stood, in the centre of the stage of the Paris opera, the girl and the phantom. She in yellow and red silk to show the whiteness of her skin and brightness of curls, he in black to hide in shadow. The merged into a flame, desperation and adoration warring into a heated excess of love which shattered the rooms silence. Whether screaming in horror or exultation neither cared.
"You." He whispered against her mouth, a broken whisper, a whisper of a fallen man. She tasted of honey.
"Always." She whispered back, her mouth brushing his as she fingered the edge of his mask.