"Gah! Finally!" That's probably what you're thinking right now, huh? You honestly have NO idea how difficult it was for me to write this chapter...besides all the -ahem- details, I had to resolve everything enough to gain a sense of closure, yet leave enough open ends for a sequel...

What? You didn't know there was a sequel to this? Oh. Well, my friends and faithful readers, I am happy to announce that there is, in fact, a sequel in the works. In fact, one more update (excluding this one, of course), and "Desire" shall be finished, making way for a little something I'd like to call "Devotion".

Anyway, I'll be sure to keep you all posted as to how everything is going with the next one.

Eternal thanks to: MJ, Maureen, phantomluver (I appreciate the complement, but you shouldn't degrade yourself so!), Writer, Virginie (wow, that was a lot of reviews, thank you), Nobody of Importance (thank you), Sarela (of course I forgive you...anything less would be positively monstrous), and PrincessSYS, the Valentine's Day reviewer! And the readers! You ALL make my day.

disclaimer: I own nothing.

chapter 14

She had no idea what she was doing.

All she knew was that it was right.

She'd seen it happen often enough—what with the people she previously associated with, maturing and living in the Opera as she had—but never before had she actually experienced it for herself.

So, hoping to God that she wouldn't make a fool of herself, she brought her lips to his.

The first thing she registered was the cold; as cold, if not colder, than his fingertips against her cheek. It was a curious sensation, to be flushed with heat as she was, and yet held in such an icy grasp.

The thought gave her pause.

She pulled back, only slightly, but enough to gain his full attention. "Finally repulsed?" he spat bitterly, yet his expression, the very air about him, caused the stinging words to become sapped of their intended venom the moment they left his mouth.

"Stop talking like that," she snapped, just as harshly, just as vulnerable. "It's just that…well, you're so…cold."

He laughed mercilessly, pulling back and away from her altogether. "I would think that, by now, you would expect as much, Marguerite."

Puzzled, she looked at him for a split second, before erupting in anger. "Dammit, that's not what I meant! You complain and you mope…and for what? You insist that no one loves you, that it is impossible to love you, and you know what? You're right! You're absolutely right, because no one wants to love a miserable, self-pitying, bastard of a wretch who drives people away on purpose, least of all me!"

His eyes were on fire as he looked at her. "Take it back," he whispered dangerously.

"Like hell I will!" she retorted, realizing it was unwise to goad him like this, but her frustration was just too much to be dealt with rationally. "God knows you need someone to tell you you're wrong—"

In two long strides he was in front of her, forcing her backwards until she met the wall. Painfully aware of the fact that a confrontation of this nature had already happened once before, he pinned her arms above her head, his thin fingers biting into the flesh of her wrists.

She writhed and struck out at him. "Get your filthy hands off of me, you fu—"

"Such language was not meant to issue from your mouth, little Meg—and, incidentally, you're right—so I suggest you keep silent," he said, instinctively pressing up against her to keep her still.

"Wh-what did you say?" she asked, her voice now a hoarse whisper.

"Just now, do you mean? Well, I believe I told you not to use profanity—"

"No," she said, shaking her head, rather dazed. "After that."

"Ah. I was agreeing with you." He let her go now, watched as her arms fell limply to her sides.

"On which premise?"

"About that fact that I'm a…oh, how did you put it? 'A miserable, self-pitying bastard,' if I'm correct."

She blushed. "Oh, Erik, I'm sorry—"

"Why are you apologizing? I've just confirmed your statement. And I believe you said, once, that you didn't back down in an argument…"

"Oh, God, you're hopeless," she exclaimed, before kissing him again.

It was different this, the second time. A burning, emotional insatiableness replaced the driven curiosity of before, and she succumbed to the symphony of her senses, reveling in his touch, his unique scent, the charged atmosphere surrounding his presence. She was rather taken aback when his tongue eventually sought entrance between her lips, but the shock quickly wore off, and she opened herself to him, truly tasting him for the first time.

He tasted very much like he smelt—and that was like subtle must and decay, like he truly was, as he repeatedly insisted, a corpse. And yet, beyond that was the infallible proof that he was a man, a bona fide, living human being, from the breaths he took every few moments, to the awe-filled exploration of her lips and tongue, the hands against her lower back, insistent, pressing her into him.

She wasn't quite sure when the transition occurred, but his ravaged lips eventually strayed from her mouth to her jaw, and even further to her neck, blazing a contrasting trail of ice on her warm skin. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back, allowing him greater access, all the while reaching up and wrapping her arms around his neck, pulling him even closer.

She lost herself to him, washed away in the intensity of his thrillingly frigid touch, until, without warning, he stopped. She opened her eyes to regard him—he looked rather self-conscious and unsure of himself all of a sudden—and realized with a start that the strict, unyielding neckline of her dress had stymied his progress. She met his eyes, held them, not bothering to disguise the want, the desire that he had ignited in her.

"Are you sure this is what you want?" he whispered, musical, yet strained.

"Yes," she breathed, and, taking one of his hands in her own, led him in the general direction of her bed.

They stood there, facing each other, in silence, comfortable, tense. She watched his features, the way the moonlight played on his face, the grace and pure musical rhythm of his breathing. "You're beautiful," she whispered, overwhelmed, bringing her hand to rest on his hollow cheek.

He smiled, seemingly amused. "As are you…infinitely more so," he replied, and kissed her, folding her into a gentle, demanding embrace.

After several minutes, Meg, overwhelmed, pulled him closer to the bed, but Erik, seeing the direction she was headed, balked, pulling her to the floor instead. Not expecting the sharp tug of resistance, she fell heavily on top of him, breathless and embarrassed. "Erik…" she began, apologetic, curious, and desperate all at once, but he stopped her, placing his hand over her mouth softly, before teasing it lazily down her neck and arm, lingering tantalizingly at the soft curve of her breast.

She gasped at the barely-felt contact, eyes seeing stars, all at once experiencing not only his hands on her, but the movements of his slim frame beneath her—

She bit back a small yelp of pain as part of her corset bit into her side due to the strange angle in which she was lying. She looked apologetically at him in response to his curious expression, pushing herself off of him to bring herself to a standing position, silently cursing the ill-timed interruption.

He got to his feet. "What's wrong?" he asked, hotly aware of the fact that Meg was unbuttoning her dress.

"My corset…it pinched me just now, I'm sorry…"

"I understand." He smirked. "Though, for the life of me, I've never been able to fathom why on earth women subjected themselves to such a torture."

She shrugged, stepping out of her dress. "You get used to it," she said, walking over to the side of her bed and laying the dress out on top of the mattress. That done, she began attacking the laces of her corset with a vengeance, all the while feeling his eyes on her, following each and every one of her movements in the dimly-lit room.

The godforsaken scrap of clothing was off in a few moments—tense moments filled only with the heavy breathing of the two souls—and soon she was standing, exposed, nothing but a thin linen chemise and a pair of pantalets protecting her virtue, such as it was.

She looked over at him, standing several paces away from her, bathed in shadow; his eyes seemed over-bright in their golden, glowing way, and she blushed. She approached him, slowly, noticing that he had removed his black evening jacket, and it rested in a dark puddle of fabric at his feet.

She reached out and brushed her fingertips lightly against his cheek, and he reacted like an electric shock or something very close to it passed through him. Startled, she drew her hand back, but he pulled her close to him, pressing her into him.

"It doesn't make sense," he murmured.

"What doesn't?" she asked, still very surprised at his actions.

"Everything. Why you're here, why I'm here…something like this isn't supposed to happen to me; it defies logic."

She smiled, worming her hands up from where they had been trapped in his embrace and slowly beginning to unbutton his shirt. "I've noticed there's a point at which logic stops working and something else takes over…"

"What?" he said, pulling away a little and running his hands over her. "What takes over, Meg?"

She tilted her head back and closed her eyes for a moment, reveling in the sensations he was evoking in her, before helping him out of his shirt. "I have absolutely no idea."

All intellectual discussion ceased soon after that, their lips meeting in a passionate, heated embrace, matching each other measure for measure, articles of clothing tossed away haphazardly, hands groping blindly in the dark.

Several more minutes passed, both feeling very much like the only thing in the whole world that truly, deeply mattered was the act of abandoning themselves to each other, but Meg, determined to have the last say in circumstances, pulled him out of the darkness, away from the shadows and towards the center of the room, closer to the silent window leaking mists of mercury and moonlight.

They sank to the floor again, Meg's back resting fully against the firm surface, Erik above her. She could see him now, see him as he undoubtedly saw her in the darkness, each aspect of his body brought into sharp relief by the unyielding light from the window, only to be softened again by her lover's gaze. His skin was very pale—not the healthy, glowing sort of pale that was so often portrayed as the ultimate beauty, but the grey, sickly sort of pale, very much like a withered flower that had seen nothing but cloudy skies for nigh over a decade. This sickly look was only augmented by his impossibly slender arms and neck, and again, unbidden, the image of a corpse presented itself to her…quickly erased as he shifted his weight, bringing his mouth to rest against her chest, no, even further than that, resulting in the touch of his erect length against her inner thigh.

Acting purely on impulse, she snapped her legs together, tight, and she reveled in his low groan of pleasure as she cradled him, held him, illustrating for the first time to both him and herself just what sort of power she wielded.

He spoke her name in a hoarse, husky sort of tone she had never heard him use before, and she replied, quietly, "Yes, I understand." And she did, too. She understood the growing, unyielding pressure that had been steadily building within her, not just now, but over the course of the months that she'd spent with him, the years she'd known about him. She needed him, utterly, completely.

She released her hold on him, and he shifted again, expectant, poised, as she spread her legs a little wider and arched her back.

And in one swift movement that seemed to make all of time stand still as it would with the much-anticipated fulfillment of a hundred-thousand-year-old prophecy, Meg crossed the threshold from girlhood into womanhood.

She cried out, she couldn't help it. She'd heard the talk and had known what to expect, but she had honestly never once considered the fact that it could possibly hurt this much…

"Meg, are you all right?" he asked, genuine concern radiating from him.

"Yes, yes, I'm fine, really," she replied. She'd be damned if a little matter like this spoiled this moment for him.

He kissed her, took her lips with his. "Are you sure? We don't have to continue if you don't want to."

She shook her head violently. "Don't be absurd, Erik, of course I want this."

He sighed, remembering with sudden clarity just how stubborn the girl could be. Though the idea of him inflicting pain upon her in such an intimate manner repulsed him, she was adamant that he continue… "I'll try to be gentle," he whispered, and renewed his movements against her.

The pain she felt had faded to a dull, thudding ache while they talked, but his movements only served to renew it; it seemed that her body didn't give a damn whether or not she enjoyed this…

She gritted her teeth and closed her eyes but noticed that the hurt eventually grew to be less and less and less, allowing for the first small ripples of pleasure to wash over her; soon after that, she forgot about the pain altogether, reveling in the new, wondrous experience, soon inspired from her lethargy the pain had inflicted upon her into answering Erik's movements with her own.

Meg had been dancing her whole life. But never before had she danced quite like this.

They moved together, slowly at first, increasing tempo and rhythm in perfect sync with nature's music constantly swelling to a great crescendo from deep within them.

She lost herself. All perception, all sense of self-awareness, had evaporated, leaving only almost-unbearably-heightened sensation, only being, only him.

He came to crisis first, she immediately following, and she was shocked to discover an incredible warmth, a glow, coming from him and settling itself deep within her, flooding her being and completing her. It was the most amazing thing she had ever experienced, and she felt it, on her expression, in her body language, even reverberating from the depths of her very soul.

He relaxed, resting his full weight against her, burying his face in her neck. "Thank you," he murmured, his lips brushing lightly against her skin. "Thank you, thank you, thank you…"

She sighed, content, and closed her eyes, concentrating all of her available will-power on holding his now-soft form inside of her, but to no avail; he slipped out of her, at the same time rolling off of her and on the floor next to her. "Hold me," she whispered, and, to her surprise and delight, he did just that, scooting closer to her and enveloping her in his arms as they lay together in comfortable silence, broken only by their breathing.

He disentangled himself from her and stood after a few blissful moments, but she remained on the floor, basking in the warm afterglow of their lovemaking and the cold, impartial light of the moon, her eyes closed, her lips parted slightly, ruby red, a stark contrast to the milky-softness of her bare skin. "You look like Diana," he observed quietly, pausing for a moment in his quest to locate his trousers.

"Who?" she asked, nothing moving but her lips and her chest as she uttered the word.

"Diana…the goddess of the moon."

"Oh." She sat up, looked at him. "But, isn't she a virgin?"

His single, fluid movement of pulling on the aforementioned trousers split into two as he paused slightly, caught off-guard by her forwardness. "Venus, then," he amended.

"That's better." She smiled. "No one's ever called me a goddess before, you know."

"There's a first for everything," he said, stooping down to collect his shirt and pulling it on.

She stood, stretching, arching her back and throwing her arms over her head, exposing her naked breasts. "Tonight's full of firsts, isn't it? For both of us."

He looked up at her, previously consumed with buttoning his shirt, but quickly turned his head, thinking she would want some measure of privacy, and not have him ogling her. "Yes. I suppose so." He sat at the edge of the bed, staring at his feet, waiting until she got dressed to look up; this being the case, he was startled when the weight center of the mattress shifted, and he felt a lingering kiss on one of his horrific cheeks. He whipped his head around, met her eyes…she was sitting beside him, still naked, now resting her head against his shoulder. He looked at her, merely sitting there, content, and his heart swelled with wonder. How was it that she could be so comfortable with him? How was it that she could tolerate him, could bear to have him touch her…? "Meg?" he said, his voice a little hoarse.

"Yes?"

He kissed the top of her head. "Come away with me."

She moved away from him, grinning. "Hasn't that been the plan all along?"

"I don't know what you—"

She laughed, amused. "So I suppose you came back for no reason, then?"

"One should never jump to conclusions," he said stoically.

"Fine. Play coy." She made her way around the room, collecting her various items of clothing from off of the floor, but leaving the dress on the bed. "But I have to go with you, no matter whether you want me to or not," she continued, disappearing into the adjoining bathroom he had failed to notice before then.

"Oh?" he called. "And why's that?"

For a moment, all he could hear was the sound of running water, but then: "I know your secret."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You admitted to being a miserable, self-serving bastard. You wouldn't want me spreading the word, now, would you?"

To this, he had no answer, except to mutter under his breath and continue getting dressed while Meg finished up in the bathroom.

She emerged, dressed once again in her chemise and corset, a hairbrush in her hand. She sat next to him on the bed once again, thoughtfully running the brush through her golden locks, and he said, "If you disappear again…won't they know where you've gone?"

She shook her head. "No, they wouldn't, considering I don't even know where I'm going…"

"You know what I meant, Meg. They'd know who you went with, at least."

She shifted uncomfortably before setting her brush down, looking him straight in the eyes. "They wouldn't know anything, not unless I chose to tell them."

He looked at her, puzzled, and she continued, "I…I told them you had died."

He stood angrily, hurt and betrayal making itself known in every inch of his grisly visage. "How oddly appropriate…tell me, Meg, did you enjoy making love to a dead man?"

She stood as well, facing him. "Please, don't be that way…"

"And what other alternative is there?"

There were tears in her eyes as she said, "I was trying to protect you, Erik. If they'd thought you still alive, they might have sent the authorities out after you."

"And you told this lie completely on my behalf, thinking about nothing but my welfare?" he sneered, unbelieving.

"Yes! Erik, please believe me—"

"Tell me, what other lies have you spun for me? I'm intrigued."

She stepped away from him, adopting his cold manner with surprising ease. "Nothing."

He blinked in surprise. "You told them everything else?"

"Everything."

"But…but why?"

She sighed, tentatively approaching him once more and seeking out his embrace. "Because I had to reassure myself that it wasn't all a dream," she whispered, burying her face against his chest.

"A nightmare, you mean."

She looked up at him, fire in her eyes. "No, that's not what I mean. Honestly, Erik, have you learned nothing from just now?"

He held her close. "I'm sorry…it's just that…I'm not sure what to believe anymore."

"You'll figure it out, Erik, I have no doubt," she said. "You are a genius, after all."

"'There's a fine line between genius and insanity,' Meg."

"We'll cross it together, then."

They stood like that for a while, until Erik pulled away slightly. "We should leave," he said in response to her inquiring glance. "What time did you say she'd return?"

"Who, my mother? I have no idea."

"All the more reason for our speedy departure. Are you ready?"

"One moment," she replied, and quickly snatched her dress from its resting place, putting it on and buttoning it back up. That done, she walked to her closet, taking out a small canvas duffel bag and packing some of her most prized possessions along with some essentials: her hairbrush and ribbons, a few sets of clean pantalets and stockings, a small wooden jewelry box her mother had given her when she was little, and her dancing shoes, among other things. Finally, she went to her writing desk, crumpled up a piece of stationary—probably the same she had been writing on when he had first come—and pulled out a clean sheet, quickly scribbling something on it before folding it in half twice and setting it back down on the desk. "I'm ready," she said, picking up her bag and turning to face him.

"You're absolutely sure about all of this? There's no turning back, once we leave this room."

"So somber," she remarked with a smile. "Yes, I'm sure. I wouldn't have given myself to you, had I not been."

"Very well," he replied, feeling somewhat pleased with himself. His expression softening a little as he looked at her, he continued, "But, I warn you, I cannot promise you a pleasant life."

"I understand."

He nodded, and made his way silently through the house, Meg on his heels. He paused by the front door, waiting for her to put on her shoes.

"Erik?"

He turned around to look at her in the darkness. "Yes?"

"I love you."