A/N: Just to cover my ass, this story is labeled Mature for a reason; it is smutty, and it is DARK. I have warned you, and I have labeled it appropriately on the site and in the search filters. No whining in the comments about the story being "omg!mature" because, duh. You will probably laugh or squick out, if I got my characterization right-this is L!Erik getting some, for God's sake. By continuing reading, I'm assuming that you understand that this is a MATURE story containing DARK and SEXUAL themes. You dig? Awesome. So get to it already!
Advances
Music. All across the lake he could hear the music echoing from his house—a bad, stumbling rendition of Mozart's Requiem, played in a ghastly G major. Still, the sour notes cutting through the dank air beneath the opera house brought a smile to his face; his dear Christine was playing for him! She truly was a sweet child, making such an effort to please him. Oh, he would have to stop her, of course; it would not do at all to have a guest come down and hear such an ill-played tune issuing from his dwelling. He loved his Christine, but there was always his reputation to consider.
When he found her in the music room, he had to stop a moment in the doorway to gaze at the white, trembling shoulders squared so efficiently before the instrument, half obscured by blond curls and the gauzy robe he had left to keep the chill off of her precious skin. Her stance was novice at best, her playing horrible at least, and in his breast his heart was throbbing with affection so violently that it was a wonder his very bones did not shatter to make way for the mad thing. What would it take to sate this delirious rush of feeling she inspired? A miracle, he thought wryly, might suffice, but until he received one, he would have to try to find another way.
Erik gathered his courage and went to her, looming over her unaware form and wincing at a particularly bad note. No, no, that would not do at all; he adored his Christine with affection deeper than words could frame, but the noble instrument that had suffered through his rages, his sorrows, his ecstasy, and composed his Don Juan Triumphant deserved more respect. Unable to restrain himself, he climbed onto the bench behind his unwary guest, stretching his legs out on either side of her to reach the pedals of the great instrument, his long arms slipping just beneath hers around her middle a moment later. Startled, Christine stopped playing at once, and the opera ghost seized the opportunity to take her hands in his bony monstrosities and move them to the proper positions. "Play here," he ordered, his voice soft and melodic and his mask cold against her ear. He hoped she would not notice how he trembled at their proximity.
She began again immediately, and while the procession was still halting and clumsy, and his intended had to hunch closer to the sheet music—to see the notes, of course—leaving his chest cold and alone once again, he allowed himself a moment to close his eyes and listen to the melody. Her right hand alone was doing a decent job of playing, but the damned accompaniment was off again though he had only set her hands straight a moment before. And the poor girl shook with every sour note.
Erik slid nearer to her on the bench, covering her back with his chest and reaching around her again, this time greedily leaving his fingers on top of hers, leeching the warmth from her soft skin. He guided the left hand through the chords, pressing the keys her delicate fingers were too small to reach by themselves. "Sing for me, Christine; sing of the despair your God inflicts on the damned," he entreated, taking over the melody from her right hand as well as the harmony from her left. The girl hesitated. "Sing," he breathed, pressing the keys with more force. Christine bit her lip and remained silent, and instantly the lovesick tattoo of his heart turned to a near-primal rage.
"Why won't you sing for me?" he demanded, pounding his fingers on the keys of his precious instrument with sudden, wild abandon. "I am your teacher; you have called me your angel—have said that you sing for me alone! Why then do you deny me?" A cacophonous shriek sounded from the organ before he abandoned the keys to grip Christine's beautiful shoulders with his bony, wasted hands. "Christine," he sobbed, "why must you lie to me? How am I to trust you when you lie, lie, LIE?" He shook her fiercely, and she screamed.
"Erik, please!" she cried, her thin arms flailing desperately for a handhold but only managing to find the organ, which continued to belch hideous melodies beneath her panicked hands. "Erik, you are hurting me!"
"How I am to know you do not LIE?" he cried in return. "You merely do not wish me to touch you! You find me so repulsive! You despise me, and yet you lie to make me love you! God help us both, deceitful chit, I love you in spite of it!" She turned her terrified eyes to him entreatingly; they were filled with tears, her cheeks pale with fright, and her lips trembled so badly she could not speak in her own defense. Erik stilled in his tantrum, his breath rattling in his skeletal chest. "Do not look on me with those eyes," he hissed, his own sunken sockets beginning to fill. The girl—the brave, darling girl—did not so much as twitch in his grip.
"To sing the Requiem of judgment and terror for one such as you—what an idea! Erik, please, I could not bear to give you more sorrows. Look at me now—how else can I make you see sense? Do you see guile in my eyes?" she whimpered, trying to move his hands from her shoulders. He considered her for long moments; her eyes shone true—the pain in them was genuine. If he shifted his hands just so, he could see the beginnings of bruises blooming on her lovely skin just beneath his ghastly fingers, and his heart felt sick. Disgusted, he ripped his hands away, clutched at his few remaining locks of hair, and wailed so piteously that his own soul trembled at the echoes.
"My poor Christine, what has this monster done to you?" He bent forward, trying in vain to kiss the livid marks on her skin through his mask. "Do not sing for such a horrible creature, this damnable wretch of an Erik, who deserves not a note from your lovely throat! Oh, look at your pretty shoulders—Christine—my darling, my angel—how could this happen? How could I hurt you so?"
The girl turned as best she could in her seat, and Erik, mad and grieved though he was, was a greedy creature, and had not quite resigned himself to allowing her to leave his presence quite so soon. However, to his surprise, she did not try to stand. Rather, her trembling lips parted, and from beyond them drifted the first strains of a song he knew well. Suddenly she sat before him resplendent in red silks and Spanish gold in his hollow eyes; she was Carmen, and she would sing for him—with him. She had chosen a duet. She would sing with him. She was Carmen, yes, and he would be her Don José.
The opera ghost swallowed his tears and opened his mouth, raising his voice to mingle with the prima donna's. She sang "Je vais danser en votre honneur," her voice strong and passionate, and he wrapped his answering harmony around it and through it in a weave of sound as artful as a Persian rug. Soon enough, however, he found their duet restrictive—far too tame to suit the desperations of their passions. He split off into his own new melody, and his beloved was powerless but to follow him; higher, higher, her song writhed around his, sometimes gliding in his wake and other times shooting up to grasp at heaven as best it could from beneath the ground.
Of course, a heart so sweet and tender could only bear the music of heaven for so long. Her eyes filled with tears and closed, her body grew limp against his; soon there was nothing in her but the music, and the sound of his voice echoing through her ears just as hers split through him. There was a sudden, sensational pang in his stomach of an impulse twitching somewhere between mild masochism and pure thanatos, and the wretched creature could not resist the urges that followed.
Wrapping himself around her unresisting body, a spider to its silk-sheathed prey, Erik slid the mask up his horrific face and pressed his hole-of-a nose into her hair, inhaling the sweet, luscious scent of her perfume and spasming madly for a brief moment. Intoxicated and emboldened, his timid hands slipped around her shoulders and, trembling, drifted over her collarbone, fingers tiptoeing over the swell of her breasts—such softness he had never guessed existed in the bodies of humans!—until they met with the collar of her gown. The fabric was coarse, and it irritated his fingers so much so that he decided he had no choice but to go beneath it.
Christine gave a jolt in his arms and seemed about to come to herself for a moment, but a few angelic notes from his lips, delivered directly into the delicate shell of her ear, seemed to put her at ease, and she again hung, boneless, in his grip. The opera ghost swallowed hard amidst his mesmerizing strain; his fingers had managed to slip beneath the taut fabric of her bustier, but he wanted to see, not merely touch. Guilt should be no object—she was practically his already, was she not? What was the harm, really?
Taking care to straighten her posture before moving, Erik slipped from behind her as smoothly as an eel, his voice trilling scales effortlessly up and down, up and down, lighter than the steps of the opera's most agile ballerinas. He settled on his knees before her and caught her deftly again without the slightest twitch from her body, and once he was certain she was firmly in her seat, the opera ghost leveled his attention once more on the sequined bodice of her gown, which rose up and down as smoothly as his voice and just as hypnotically. He knew he should not; it was unthinkable and unforgivable—but, unfortunately, unavoidable now. If God himself had appeared and ordered him away from her, Erik should have seen fit to spit in his creator's heavenly face and have his sweetest angel all in the same breath.
Slowly, carefully, he moved his hands over her collar bone and released a sigh that made Christine's eyes leak a fresh set of tears. His fingers twitched anxiously a moment later, constricting her soft flesh—so impossibly soft! It gave beneath his hands as easily as the keys of his organ, but while he knew intimately the depths of pleasure the great instrument could bring, he was woefully unsure as to what merely another squeeze of her obliging flesh might do to him. His belly already felt as if it were trying to flee through his back.
It only took a moment to decide, however, that a squeeze alone would not do; he had to experience her with every sense he possessed. He steeled his nerves and peeled back the fabric covering her left breast, his throat tightening as every successive inch of milk-white flesh was revealed. At the first peek of her pink nipple he choked on his song and saliva; nothing had ever looked so delicious, so perfectly meant for his mouth than the trembling, little protrusion. Erik's own mother had never shared her nipple with him when he was a babe, nor offered her breast as a place to rest his hideous infant-head, and now his adult body ached to have that which it had been denied all those decades ago—which he could and would, now, selfishly take from his innocent Christine.
His song, little stronger than a string of sighs now, warbled tremulously over the tip of his outstretched tongue, twitching ever closer to her naked bosom until a spot of heat like the glowing tip of a cigarette met with the cool wetness of his adventurous muscle, sending a shock through his body. He twisted his tongue against the soft peak, pressing it back into her flesh before flicking the protruding bud with light strokes that set her entire breast to shifting in time with his actions. Christine, still hanging limply in his grip, let out a soft, quiet croon in harmony with his song that made his stomach churn and his lips compress around her hungrily, and he paused a moment later to consider the import of his new position. His angel did not stir further.
Eyes closed, breath held, and song stilled, Erik took a tentative suck at her skin, captive between his wasted lips; it was warm and soft in his mouth, fitted perfectly for his attentions, and his body repeated the action without his conscious bidding. He was scarcely aware of his hand, pinching and squeezing her other breast anxiously, for while she was no less-soft beneath his fingers than his lips, the feeling of her on his tongue, between his teeth, and against the roof of his mouth was so sublimely right that he could think of precious little else. The silence left after the final echo of his song became filled with the soft sound of suction—of his mouth, tongue, and teeth pulling at her tender flesh—and with the sweet sound of her enraptured coos. He had stripped her other breast before he realized it, his hands working of their own will, and he caught her other nipple between his lips and devoured it with gusto while his thumb returned to stroke its abandoned twin, slick with his saliva. As he rubbed his tongue against the hard, little nub in his mouth, Erik thought that he had never felt anything as profound or exquisite in his life as the moment he was sharing with his beloved right then.
But his ecstasy was short lived, dimming as he gradually became aware that the tone of her cries had changed from sweet to terrified. Alarmed, Erik pulled away, his mouth parting from her breast with an audible pop. He stared for a moment, entranced by the sight of her swollen nipples and the visible evidence that his lips and teeth really had been around them mere moments before, but the sudden sensation of a drop of hot liquid—her tears! His poor love's tears!—falling onto his forehead brought him back to himself immediately. "Christine! Christine, do not cry," he wailed, tearing off his cloak and wrapping it around her. "There, there, do not be ashamed—I see your blush behind those tears—it was all beastly Erik's fault; weak, contemptuous, wretched Erik!"
The girl did not speak to him; indeed, his words seemed to do more harm than good. She was sobbing quietly now, her head bent and her thin shoulders shaking beneath his heavy cape. He tried a few more times to comfort her, covering her little hands with kisses and assuring her of her continued pristine innocence, but her growing despair caught him up as well, and soon he was slumped on the floor before her, his eyes buried against her knees, weeping desperately into her gown while he skinned his own knuckles over and over against the rough stone of his floor. "You must forgive me, Christine," he entreated, shaking with the combined force of their sobs. Again, Christine made no response, and Erik, though still crying, felt a twitch of annoyance that did not wait long before escalating into anger.
"What? You refuse to reply? Damn you, child! Forgive me or condemn me as you will, but SAY SOMETHING!" He leapt to his feet, his ghastly face tear-stained and doubtless even more hideous than usual, and Christine only cried more, her mouth flapping uselessly, unable to form words in her panic. Erik stilled for a moment as another realization dawned on him and his anger turned again to remorse.
"Poor love!" He bent and put a hand to her face, completely ignoring her flinch. "Why, you're hysterical, Christine! Poor, poor child," he crooned and lifted her bodily into his arms. She did not even try to struggle as he carried her to her little apartment in the back of his house, kicked open the door, and laid her down on the bed. "There now, Christine, you must not cry anymore—not for my sake, no, for I do not deserve such a favor, but for the sake of your health! Don't you know it is as precious to me as anything?" He climbed onto the bed beside her and put his hands on her knees, rubbing them soothingly. She had ceased crying but was still sniffling quietly and shaking like a leaf, the corners of his cape clutched together over her chest by her little, trembling hands. "There, are you calm now, Christine?"
"Yes," she managed to breathe, her voice faint and her face very pale but for her eyes, which were red-rimmed from her tears. Erik waited for any answer to his plea for forgiveness earlier, but it seemed that the one word had sapped all of her strength and interest, and so she lay, staring up at the canopy without saying a word. The opera ghost heaved a trembling sigh and moved around to kneel at the end of the bed.
"You must rest now until supper and regain your strength; it is already so dreadfully damp here, isn't it, and I will not have you falling ill in my charge." He gently removed the shoe from her left foot and stroked her stocking-clad toes affectionately before shifting to face the right. "When we are married we will move out from this place, perhaps to a loft in the city where you will be in the sunshine and fresh air, and I shan't ever have to worry about your health again." He slipped off the right shoe and kissed first the top of her foot and then her slender ankle, bringing a short flare of heat from the nearly-banked coals burning in his belly. "And we will go for walks in the park, and I will take you out on Sundays, and we will sing together every day! Wouldn't you like that, Christine? Does that not sound like paradise?" He pressed another kiss to her little foot, and her leg twitched in his grip, sending her skirt halfway up her shin. The movement caught his attention, and when he raised his head, he felt his stomach drop as it had earlier.
Protruding teasingly from the hem of her gown, a scrap of frilled lace sat, beguilingly nestled against her thigh. He stared at it for a moment, silently daring it to retreat back into its nest of petticoats and leave him be, but the damnably-coy ruffle did not budge except for its gentle swaying in the wake of his breath. He dared a look up at Christine; she was lying quite still with her eyes staring just over the top of his head. She too must have seen the bit of cloth, and now she looked as near to him as her eyes could bear without the buffer of his mask, waiting to see what he would do, no doubt.
His mouth was suddenly very dry, but as he tried to force himself to rise, his lips already beginning to beg leave for a glass of wine, her skirts shifted again, and a few more frills of cloth, accented with tiny, colored ribbons, appeared in his view. He choked back his words and froze in place, staring raptly at the shadows inside her skirts, unable to make out what lay just beyond the reach of the light. Shaking now, he settled back down beside her feet and reached out to grasp the hem of her gown.
After all, he had never had any trouble finding even what the light could not.
"Erik," murmured Christine, her voice little more than a breath; the quiet plea tripped up his spine and down to his toes. He guiltily raised his eyes to her face and was immediately trapped by the intensity of her blue irises staring directly into his yellow ones. He swallowed hard and held her gaze, the hand holding her skirt trembling severely. Her own hands were shaking, clutched together behind his cape, but her eyes never wavered. "Erik," she sighed again, and he, unable to face her in the wake of what he knew he must do—must do or die, surely! For how could he deny himself when he was already there? So close—lowered his eyes for just a moment to the silky, colored ribbons that implored him to explore what lay beyond them. He might have been content to leave her if he had not seen those damned ribbons.
When he returned his gaze to her face again, she had turned away, her eyes half-closed and fixed on something across the room. Her hands drifted apart, freeing his cloak, which opened just enough to show a sliver of the soft, white skin of her breast. There was a great rush of heat, it seemed, starting in his toes and shooting up his body to his cheeks and back down again to the pit of his belly, where it settled and smoldered like so many hot coals, and Erik's arm—free and guiltless in the wake of her disinterest—steadied at once and began to lift her skirt again.
So much lace—he had never seen anything so marvelously feminine as the curve of her hips beneath the almost-ridiculous garment. As slowly and gently as he could manage, he bunched the skirt up at her waist and let his fingers trickle down to caress the folds of silk and ribbon, barely managing to resist burying his face against her and inhaling her perfume, the faint aroma of which was already driving him mad. He was so distracted by the feel and scent of her that he found the lacy ties at her hips nearly by accident, though when he pulled on the little strings and they came undone neatly in his hands, his attention was rapt once more. Once loosened, her pantalets slid down her smooth flesh with barely any coaxing, revealing first the colorful, tantalizing weave of her garter-belt, next the petite, playful straps that traveled down to hook her stockings, whose path his fingers were itching to trace, and then—
—He caught his breath. Could it be, truly? He had found her at last; a soft, warm mound, nestled between her trembling legs, hiding coyly beneath a tender patch of hair. A bold finger reached out to stroke the quivering rise before he could stop it, perhaps unable to deny the shy, little cleft disappearing between her clenched thighs. Erik had to fight to breathe for several moments afterward. Christine, aside from a small whimper, remained silent. When he had gathered himself and regained some measure of composure, he dared to reach out again and, this time, slip his finger into the slit that curved out of sight.
"Oh Christine," he gasped, sliding his finger back out and watching her flesh grip him as he went. "Christine, what is this beautiful thing you've kept hidden from your naïve, trusting Erik?" A delicate caress along the outside of the cleft brought another whimper to her lips. He tut-tutted stoically. "And what more are you hiding? What is down here?" he asked, twisting his finger again between the outer folds of flesh and stroking their soft interior. It was so soft and warm that he would have wept if his lungs could have allowed him the breath for it. He could barely whisper his next words. "I will see you now, Christine, but do not fret—you are still a good girl, the purest angel who ever floated down from heaven."
His hands must have felt like cold, iron vices around her thighs, but the dear girl did not so much as squeak as he raised her legs up and held them high in the air. When he looked away from her curled toes, down, down, down, what he saw before him made his blood thunder in his ears. "Oh Christine, such a lovely flower; no rose ever blushed as sweetly," he crooned in his sweetest voice, so softly that he could barely hear himself warbling beneath the pounding of his heart. One of his hands deserted its post on her erect legs and moved down to caress the pink ridge and its budding contents, sprouting shyly from their home like the foot of a mussel. He imposed his fingers between the petals, spreading them wide to his ravenous eyes; he had seen a woman before, of course, but not like this: not warm and alive and in front of him—lying so still and blushing so prettily for him—quivering in anticipation of his touch. He noticed her eyes, then, fluttering between the far wall and the atrocities being committed beyond the white wall of her thighs.
"Do not watch, Christine; be a good girl, and turn away."
He touched her everywhere, allowing his fingers free reign to roam her as they pleased. One skated around her entrance, another moved up higher to explore what lay in hiding in the sea of rosy pink his sallow digits swam in. His attention, however, was pulled back time and again to the tiny hole; what did it feel like inside, he wondered. He should not wonder such things, he knew; it was entirely inappropriate—though, really, was it worse than anything else he was doing at the moment? Christine was quiet, her breath coming easily and her gaze fixed serenely upon the far wall. Would it bother her so much if he took one more liberty and explored what was soon to be his by right?
He drew his hand away, allowing her flesh to close again like a rose at sunset, and ran his thumb again over the ridge that rose up until it was just above his target. An inch or two at most, that was all he would take. Just one little touch could not hurt; after all, he had touched her already, and she had not died.
But the pained squeak issuing forth from Christine's lips startled him so that he snatched his hand back quickly, withdrawing from inside of her as if he had been burned. It was too dry, he realized with a start; of course it would be uncomfortable! His Christine must not suffer discomfort, not at his hands; how could he forgive himself if he hurt her while she was being so kind to him?
Erik slid his bony finger into his mouth, desperate for some kind of salve to soothe his Christine and aid in his exploration, before returning the anxious digit to the little cavern once again. He penetrated it slowly this time, letting her squeeze every successive joint of his long, ghastly finger in turn, pulling him deeper and deeper into the warm crevasse. He gasped with her when he reached the first barrier—she in shock and perhaps a little pain, and he in frustration; this was not the way to deflower his bride, that was absolutely certain. But, oh, he was already so close—
"Erik," gasped Christine, "Erik, no, it hurts."
He withdrew immediately, his lips spilling apologies faster than a pump spilling water, and unthinkingly peppered her offended skin with kisses. "Shhhh, shhh, my darling," he soothed, pressing his mouth higher up, where he could just feel curly tendrils tickle what passed for his upper lip, "Erik's horrible hands will not touch you there again, he swears it." Christine's face was obscured from view by her elevated legs, which had begun to tremble against his forearm, but she made no reply or acknowledgement of his words; she merely lay still and quietly under the devout attentions of his horrific mouth. And as her suitor lifted his twisted mouth from her for the umpteenth time, he had an epiphany that stopped him cold.
"Christine," he murmured, his voice thick and his eyes itching. "You are so good to your Erik, so very good. Do you realize that not even his mother—his very own mother!—has given him what you have? I am so lucky, Christine, to have fallen in love with the most wonderful woman in the world." He paused and buried his face against her again, moving his lips over flesh so hot it nearly burned his own frigid skin. "My love, no other woman has ever let Erik kiss her as you have."
The angel sighed beneath a fresh wave of worship from his mouth, and with every successive kiss he landed on her blessed skin, his body shook more and more. Soon it was utterly impossible to tell which of the strange pair was trembling harder. But despite his quaking, Erik was anything but inactive; indeed, his ardor and his boldness grew together until he thought his rawboned frame might collapse under their combined might. He even dared to run his tongue—the only part on his entire wasted body that might not feel so frighteningly chill to living flesh—along the gentle crest from nadir to apex and back again.
On his third pass, she finally responded with the most lovely keen even God must have ever heard, and his body reacted by seizing so enthusiastically that he could not breathe for a moment. His elevated arm released her legs, and all three limbs fell back to the bed, her feet landing softly on either side of his head. He dropped his mouth down and groaned into her warm, now slightly sticky skin, words of love becoming lost against her body. More kisses followed the declarations, venturing over places previously closed to his wizened lips, and never before seen by the eyes of a man.
"Erik, Erik, no!" Christine was suddenly thrashing beneath him, twisting so violently that he bit his own lip as she dislodged him. The taste of blood in his mouth swiftly overpowered the flavor that had only just begun to dew on her skin and, combined with the cries ringing in his ears and pain in his lip, burned away every ecstatic feeling he had been enjoying mere seconds before, leaving a sudden, terrible ache in his chest
He wrapped his bony, talon-like fingers around her thighs and forced them back down onto the bed with so much force that she gasped in momentary pain. Instead of deflating his anger, however, it merely served to inflame it; after all, he would never have hurt her if she had not begun her little tantrum in the first place.
"My love," he said curtly, keeping the pressure steady on her shaking legs but loosening the grip of his hands, "you are being a very naughty Christine. Erik asks very little of you, only that you lie still and quiet. It will feel good, darling, if you let it. Don't you know that Erik would never do anything to hurt his darling Christine?" Her hands flew up to her face, and such was his anger that he was barely moved by the sight of her pale chest, exposed once again to his sunken eyes; it merely added to the insistent throbbing he felt somewhere between his own tensed thighs.
"It's wrong," she babbled, nearly sobbing. "I am a good girl—a good girl!"
Tears leaking out from beneath her hands finally loosened ire's fierce grip around his chest. "Oh Christine," he sighed in his most beautiful, comforting voice, bending his elbows and lowering himself onto his stomach again with some discomfort. "You are a good girl; it is Erik who cannot control his beastliness. And you are even more saintly for allowing him this blessing before our wedding." He resumed his previous activity with as much gentleness as possible, but her continued whimpering proved too distracting. "Christine, as your future husband, I must say I am displeased with your behavior. Calm yourself, darling, and let Erik make us both sing, hm?"
She uncovered her eyes until the barest hint of blue shone at him from between her twitching fingers. "Erik, please, I can't bear it," she whispered. Understanding hit him suddenly with more force than her earlier kick. He chuckled bitterly.
"Of course, of course, my sweet," he said kindly, bowing his head. "It is this ghastly visage supping on your lovely skin that distresses you so! Worry not, beloved; Erik will make it so you do not have to see."
"Erik—" she began, but he swiftly gathered a handful of her skirts and pulled them over his head before wrapping his lips around her most sensitive spot and sucking until her words were lost in a strangled gasp and she went limp beneath him.
Satisfied that he would face no more interruptions, Erik pressed on, intent on learning how to play her senses as artfully as he played any instrument. Quick, intense pressure here and she sighed; a delicate flutter of his tongue here and she gasped. He worked until he had created a veritable symphony of sounds using her voice alone, and still it was not enough. His own body was burning, dying for the release he could not—absolutely would not—give it, not until their wedding night when she was irrevocably his. Though he was sure her voice at the moment would be enough to sustain him until then; his hands had all they could do to keep her thighs pressed firmly to the bed while her voice climbed higher and higher under every motion of his lips. Moved by curiosity, he opened his mouth wide and slipped his tongue into the passage he had earlier denied his fingers.
"Erik!" Christine's voice lanced through him, burning hot and igniting every nerve in his body. The feeling in his stomach shot passed pain and turned into a sort of urgent numbness, and for a moment he feared he might choke on the sudden rush of heat that came off of her. He recovered his wits after a moment and moved his tongue inside of her, his ghastly teeth rubbing against her further up, while he fought to reign in his own trembling. It was not until her strained voice cried out his name a second time and her body thrust up toward his mouth that the build which had been twisting in his innards since he first saw her playing his organ finally crescendoed, and he let out a ragged gasp to mingle with Christine's wailing keen.
The alien sensation of heat against his stomach coupled with the same urgent warmth against his lips and chin, and he collapsed into a shuddering pile onto the girl, twisting her skirts between his twitching fingers. It was a few moments before he realized that the tremulous whimpers echoing in his ears were his own. He swallowed them down immediately and held his breath, listening for—yes, there was the very same sound fluttering past Christine's lips.
After several minutes, once he thought his limbs would support him, Erik heaved his cheek away from its warm bed and balanced on his hands until he was able to maneuver his legs beneath him. He struggled with her skirts for a few moments, tangled as he was in the layers of petticoats, and only caught the barest hint of cool air before he realized his mask was still gone. Clutching the fabrics to his crown, he twisted around, searching the rumpled sheets for any sign of his cover. Not only did he fail to spot it, but his movements also agitated Christine, who began to twist ever so slightly.
"Erik… Erik, what are you doing?" she asked, her voice small and unsure as a newborn kitten's. Erik paused in his throes, wondering what she must think of him.
"Christine, Erik's mask," he choked. Her knees clenched, catching his eye momentarily; he wished he might crawl back down and rest his cheek on the warm cushion of her skin, but that simply could not happen. His love needed rest, and who knows what other vile things he would be tempted to do if he did not leave her soon! The evidence of his recent transgression was all around him, none so damning as the stickiness coating his lips and chin—not to mention the shameful mess he had created—that was beginning to make his sensitive skin itch. But where was the blasted mask?
The bed shifted beneath him seconds before the skirts of her gown were torn away from his face. Christine's eyes caught and held him in place before he could flee, and he sat, limbs curled like a dead spider, under her scrutiny. Erik could not tell whether her eyes were as red as her cheeks or her cheeks were as white as her eyes.
"Christine," he choked, one hand moving jerkily to brush a golden curl from her naked shoulder. His mouth, so full of the taste of her moments before, was suddenly chalky and dry. "Christine, I wish I could tell you I am sorry."
She did not seem to heed his words. In fact, she was staring at his face with a sort of fixated scrutiny that made every last bit of him want to crawl as far away from her as possible. But he would not do it; she had paid more than enough for his dignity with her own. So he sat still as a stone even when she raised one of her little hands and touched her fingers to his lips, smearing them over the ravaged flesh. She drew them back a few scant inches and considered them stoically, rubbing her fingertips together and coating them in the sticky residue they had gathered from his mouth. Her eyebrows drew in together in troubled confusion while they both stared, silent, at her hand.
"I am a good girl," she whispered, her voice nearly inaudible. Her hand clenched into a fist and fell into her lap. Erik's eyes followed it and did not rise again to her face.
"You are," he agreed, finding his voice in the absence of her gaze and making it as sweet as he could. He would not risk looking at her again, not even to see if he had had any effect on her. Instead, he reached into his pocket, drew out his handkerchief, and held it out to her. When her hand did not take it, he simply dropped it in her lap and rose shakily to his feet.
"Go to sleep now, my dear," he crooned, turning until his back was to her, his shoulders hunched so that all she would see was the very top of his nearly-bald head as he stumbled out of her room.