Author's Note: If you have not been reading my long humor-fic The Real Don Juan Triumphant this piece really won't make any sense at all, but feel free to read it anyway. Still, if you want it to make sense, I suggest you read that FIRST and then come here after you complete chapter 43... But then, no one ever listens to me!
Warnings: I still think it's humor more than it's hot and steamy, but there's a bit of both. Erik is a clumsy lug and Christine is just too saccharine to be real. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: If don't own POTO, but if I did, it would have been way more fun.
She did not faint as she had that first night, no. In two weeks time she had become as accustomed to me as to a favorite chair by the hearth. Except that she had not touched me prior. But now she fell into me with all the force one might in falling with exhaustion into a beloved chaise, and she embraced me. She embraced me full length, clinging to me with an urgency unexpected and unprepared for. My nerves were on fire. I tingled. I burned, but a smoldering fire, not a blaze; a smoldering fire that does far more damage than leaping flames.
I was all atremble as she led me—yes, she remembered the way well and by now I was a mass of quivering flesh and rattling bones, and I could do nothing but blindly follow her like a little child—to the house on the lake.
We went inside. Oh, how can I tell you? We went inside. I leaned upon my chair heavily for my legs were as willowy as reeds and my breath desperately lacking. The poor girl... she probably thought I was going to die. She helped me into the chair, made me tea, hovered about wringing her hands while I trembled and shook. And then...
How did it happen? It happened, and yet I cannot say how. I suppose it was when I reached for the teacup, my hand shaking so hard that the china clattered noisily and tea threatened to spill. No, no, it did spill. That is how it happened. Ah yes. How it comes back to me now. Am I boring you with the details? No? You are certain? Yes, so I spilled my tea like the dottering old man I might as well have been, all over the saucer and the table and my own hand. It scarcely felt warm, so aflame was I.
She tossed a nearby napkin onto the table to sop up the mess, but she didn't spend any time over it. She withdrew a little lace handkerchief. Ah, you remember the one, you have seen it before? She withdrew suddenly a little lace handkerchief. I cannot find the words within me to explain why the lace edges of that handkerchief caused my heart to pound harder still. I had no time to contemplate it, either, for in an instant she withdrew it and an instant later she took my hand in hers and gently wiped from my still-trembling fingers the remains of the tea I had spilled.
She was so gentle, Daroga, as though she believed I might break. And break I might have--did, indeed, but that came later. When the little laces edges of the handkerchief were stained with tea, she placed it aside and looked up at me without releasing my hand. She looked deep into my eyes—mind you, I am still Red Death at this point, had not even managed to take off the ridiculous hat—she looked deep into my eyes and caressed my hand.
"Poor Erik," she said again. "Poor Erik, why do you tremble so?"
And I did not lie when I told her it was her touch.
The poor innocent! She withdrew her hands and apologized.
But no, no, no, I told her. No, please, anything but that. And she looked very confused but placed her hand carefully upon mine once again, and without meaning to I sighed so heavily that she repeated the sound and squeezed my hand.
"Oh, Christine," I told her. I was feeling so passionate by this point that my words were a convoluted mess, but they were a romantic convoluted mess, a melodramatic conglomeration of lust and rapture that I said nonsense such as I—even I!—have never said to a woman before, but it moved her. Those ridiculous words moved her and when she lowered her lids and blinked, a tear like a pearl slide down her ivory cheek. What did I tell her, what did I moan to her in my unrestrained longing? "Oh, Christine," I said, "Do not take your hand from mine, for while it is true that it is your touch which makes me tremble, I can feel in the depths of my soul that it is also your touch will help me never to tremble again."
Two more tears fell then, without need of blinking her lovely lashes. She kept her eyes locked upon mine as her tears slid down, unbidden, unnoticed by her at first, until they reached her lips. She gave an embarrassed laugh then and brushed them away with her free hand. I tugged on her hand a little and then she came and knelt closer to me. She came nearer and brushed her fingertips across my face, and I shook still more. Can you imagine how tiring it is to shudder so hard? I was surely exhausted by this point, so fatigued that if I closed my eyes I might have fallen asleep there in that chair, suffering as I was. But I did not close my eyes just then. Even so, Christine must have sensed my weariness for she suggested that it was very late and perhaps I ought to be going to bed.
Then she became quite ashamed and quite upset, for she had momentarily forgotten the coffin, you see. She became hysterical with tears and in an effort to calm her I stood and lifted her and pressed her to myself in a tight embrace. Somehow, momentarily, I stood solidly and she drew back her head to look me in the eyes. Then she said, "It is peculiar, Erik, that you are correct, that my touch eases your trembling." She said it in a tone like awe.
I could not respond—every response was too forthright, too carnal for her unsullied ears, and so I said nothing but only stroked a lock of her hair with the tips of my fingers. "Oh, then touch me, touch me, touch me," I longed to say. "Touch me here, and here... and—" Oh, but I would not say such things to her! Not yet! Instead my left hand fingered her golden curls while my right was tight around her waist and then all my self-control was gone for a moment.
My hand, Daroga, my right hand, of its own volition slipped downward, no longer curled around her waist but slipping lower still to caress the curves of her hips through the shapeless garment, squeezing the fleshy portions of her posterior until she gasped. My left, meanwhile, no longer content to twirled her tresses, suddenly followed suit and found itself cupped about her bosom, also squeezing.
Such mundane preparatory tasks we do regularly, certainly, without truly enjoying them, without thinking even, at times. But oh! The glory in those things, which henceforth, I shall desperately avoid rushing through if at all possible. Have you focused, really paid attention, to the firmness of your lover's breasts and buttocks? Or to texture of her skin? The exact color of her lips? The scent of her perfume, the warmth of her breath, the--No, don't nod at me that way, no, no, you haven't. You think you have, but you have not. Such things one notices only in passing until one's senses have been heightened, as mine have been. You can't know, but I--I--I!
I must confess that my right hand did not linger long on the coarse black fabric covering her quivering thigh and buttocks, though. No, it found it's way around to the front, fingertips feeling, searching for the place between her legs. I heard her breathing quicken. I knew I was falling desperately out of character, that her Erik could not possibly be so bold, but my hands are my own, and my hands know exactly how to find that secret forbidden place....
Meanwhile that plain, shapeless black cloak of the domino had suddenly become the most seductive piece of clothing ever sewn by any Parisian tailor. I fell to my knees to find the hem and when I did immediately began to inch it upward, my fingers hesitating at the bone of her ankle for a long time while I pondered the perfect shape of her ankle and allowed my lips to graze it slightly. Then, suddenly emboldened, my fingers darted upward only to hesitate again at the knee, as though each joint reminded poor Erik to keep his place, but the space in between encouraged the poor soul. I tugged the garment upward, ever upward revealing shapely white legs. My hands strayed above her knees, but only halfway there, she gasped and I released her.
I knew that I had moved too confidently, that if I continued to do so I would be caught and revealed for what I truly am, and so I turned from her and put my face in my hands and I did not have to will the trembling to return of an instant.
She wrapped herself around me then, from the back of me, the front of her pressing all her body gloriously against the back of me, except that recall I am still Red Death and my robe is quite large and heavy and when one is ablaze with forbidden desire, perhaps one is a bit clumsy. She became somehow entangled in it, though she did not realize this at first.
Meanwhile, she pressed herself to me and apologized profusely and saying that she did not understand what I had done to her. But no! That is not how she meant to say it, for I had done nothing to her, and yet something had been done to her, because of me, but no, please forgive her, for she hadn't meant it to sound that way and what she meant was that she was wondering if perhaps I should send for a doctor because she was feeling strangely and had never felt quite this way before and when one had such feelings, oughtn't one send for a doctor?
Well, I, for one, knew exactly to what feeling she referred, Daroga, but of course, Erik is a man who has lived alone forever as far as Christine knows, and so should Erik know such things? And I told her that whatever it was had certainly happened to me as well and perhaps we both ought to lie down immediately. At that she blushed thoroughly for she seemed to suddenly understand, but in that instant as she attempted to take a step away from me, the heel of her shoe caught in Red Death's cloak and she plunged for the ground most directly.
A moment earlier she had been trying to step away from me in embarrassed mortification, but in the instant in which she felt herself falling she seized me with both hands. But she was falling rapidly, and I was none to steady on my own feet and I toppled gracelessly upon her so heavily that I am amazed that no bodily harm came to her.
So there I was upon her, my chest against her breast, her hips directly beneath mine and stimulating me unknowingly as she writhed. My intellect was lost and I was merely a body thrusting against another, entirely unaware of the layers of fabric that prevented any meaningful discourse from occurring. I opened my eyes for but an instant and hers were wide, terrified, and locked upon me. I realized my terrible mistake in judgment and leapt off her and to my feet so suddenly I was lightheaded, all my blood quite surely being contained below my waist rather than above where it belongs. I swooned and fell, narrowly missing an injury by falling against the chair instead of onto the floor. My mortification tempered my lust, though almost imperceptibly.
"Dear Erik," Christine said suddenly, and I startled. She had not called me dear before, so perhaps my mistake was not as great as I suspected! Her cheeks were heavily flushed and her breath had become a pant, though whether she merely feared for both our health or had almost enjoyed out short jaunt on the floor I cannot say for her words could have been taken in either sense: "Let us get you to bed at once."
Oh yes. Yes, please. Get Erik to bed. He thought you would never ask. But all at once I suppose she remembered the coffin again, for she looked from the music room door to the Louis-Philippe room door. Then suddenly she said with decision "You shall stay in the bedroom this night, Erik. You will feel far better for it in the morning."
I could scarcely moan my response. Oh, innocent Erik should have protested, yes, yes... but he was so exhausted! And amorous, of course. Can it not be expected that poor unhappy Erik would savor some small hope that pitying Christine just might offer some relief?
I was so overcome with the feeling I that felt certain those pitiable red trousers would simply burst apart, so I let her lead me—lead me! the words I choose! I hung upon her and she half-carried me to the room where I eased myself upon the bed. She swept the cavalier's hat from my head and smoothed my hair as she put me upon the pillow, and I held onto her, feigning—scarcely having to feign it, though, you know—a delirium. She remained a long time, staring at me and then she extinguished the lamp and made as though to leave. To leave! Oh, I could not bear to go without, not tonight, not after all I had endured! Had I been thinking clearly, I might have slipped out the back entrance as soon as she departed and returned to the party, which surely still raged as I did and where, undoubtedly I would have encountered any number of women as you and I did when we were together earlier. But I was not thinking clearly. I was not. I was Erik in that moment, and I was desperate. I did the only thing I could think to do. I cried out to her to relight the lamp, and when she did so, I told her I was afraid to be alone in the dark.
Shameless Begging: You didn't think I'd beg less over here because it's "mature" did you? That's the content of the piece, not the emotional age of the author. I'm as immature as ever, and I still can't LIVE without reviews!! ::dramatic flourish and sigh::