Erik

Our first kiss, in the shadows with Raoul's life hanging in the balance, had been about power. Our second, following immediately after, had been about passion. But this . . . this was something else entirely. Sweet and fiery, gentle and deep, whole and heartbreaking, this was a kiss of—

I dared not think it. Not even to myself.

My heart, how could I bear it? Each moment of that kiss was an exquisite and beautiful torture. And yet, I never wanted it to end, because I knew—with the deep and painful knowledge born of fear and doubt—that as soon as our kiss ended, she would walk away from me again. She had to; my touch was and ever would be poison to her. If she stayed, my black heart would stain her beyond repair . . .

I would not let that happen. Not even if it meant keeping her near. My arms, which had of their own will wrapped around her and pulled her crushingly close to me, returned to their rightful place at my side. For a moment I hesitated; had I held her too tightly? Was it possible to harm someone by holding them too fiercely? I could not forgive myself if I caused any damage to her lungs. She seemed to be unhurt, so slowly, regretting every motion, I broke our kiss and tried to lean away from her.

She did not move. In point of fact, she was cuddling up against me, as warm and content as a kitten. If I had not absolutely known better, I would have sworn I heard purring. Holding my arms away from me—and thus, away from her—I took a long step back and turned slightly to one side.

For someone as skilled at reading others' emotions as I am, looking at Christine often resembled looking straight into her mind; she was a good actress on stage, but she could no more hide her real thoughts offstage than she stop her heart from beating. I watched as her eyes slowly opened; she was confused to find me at arm's length from her. She stared at me for a moment, and then hurt understanding came into her eyes. Christine looked away, a bitter regret etched into her features. Regret I could understand; she had just kissed a monster. She was displaying other emotions, however, that I could not help but wonder if I was misreading. Why, for instance, should her eyes seem to be recalling an old and painful loss? I could see shame in the set of her shoulders, and there was something else . . . something familiar . . .

Something I had seen too often in mirrors. The feeling of being alone, unwanted . . . unloved. That was the glue holding everything else she felt together.

Why would she feel unloved? I was merely bringing about the inevitable. She had to know that . . . didn't she?

"I'm sorry," she softly interrupted my thoughts. "I shouldn't have—I thought, maybe, that you—but no. Forgive me, Master. It will not happen again."

Bloody girl was speaking to me as though she had simply come for a singing lesson from her Angel. Perhaps that is what she thought this was. Maybe that was all I had ever been to her. But, Christine, most teachers and students don't share kisses like the one we just shared; most do not whisper 'I love you' into the darkness.

Too much had passed between us unspoken; this, if nothing else, I would know. "You thought what, Christine?" I asked quietly, reaching out to turn her face toward me and meeting her eyes evenly.

She tried to pull away, but I—as gently as I could—prevented it. Closing her eyes as though she was admitting to something painful, Christine finally whispered, "It's like you said, Erik. I spent a year between your house and my dressing room and never once . . ." She swallowed hard and, opening her eyes, forced the rest out. "Never once did I even believe that you wanted to touch me. I should have known better—known that I would only ever be your student—but sometimes I believed that when you said you loved me, you meant as a woman, not as a dearly treasured child."

My shock burst out of me in one uncontrolled explosion of sound. "What!"

She gave me a pained, tolerant smile and pulled her chin out of my grasp; I was incapable of resisting. "I mean, really, Erik . . . how foolish is it for a woman of seventeen to be jealous of a cat?" Her chuckle was painful, forced. It was not the freely bubbling laughter I had once known.

That was the moment when I gazed past the blinders of my own self-loathing and saw her. She was not looking at me like I was a feared and hated thing; she was looking at me as though—well, as she had said; as though I was someone who was both deeply beloved and wholly unattainable. Like a student might gaze at a young and handsome teacher, save that I was neither young nor—hah!—handsome, and her love went far beyond a mere schoolgirl's crush . . .

I was unaware of moving, but I must have done so, for suddenly I was close to her again, my hands cupping her delicate face as I looked down at her. "Only as foolish," I whispered, "as a man holding a woman so dear, so infinitely precious and deeply loved, that he uses every bit of self-control he has not to touch her, because he fears that his touch will shatter her."

Her eyes—those beautiful, soulful eyes—widened as the meaning of my words thundered into her heart. Hope echoed in her slight smile as she answered simply, "I have not broken yet."

This time, when we kissed, my heart did not break.

When we parted, we were sitting on a couch. Raoul, who had been the couch's previous occupant and had been present through most of our little drama—come to think of it, I very clearly remembered hearing a choked-off laugh once or twice—must have done the decent thing and left sometime during that last kiss.

Christine traced the left side of my face with her hand; I wondered if she noticed that I was shaking. A life like mine does not beget much in the way of non-violent physical contact; my senses were rapidly overloading. I could not remember the last time I had been this close to someone without them trying to hurt me (the slap did not really count; my mother had laid a harsher hand against me before I was three, and with much less provocation).

Her fingers hesitated on the edge of the mask; she glanced down, biting her lip, then raised her gaze back to mine and quietly asked a question I had never thought to hear from her: "Erik? Will you . . . can I . . . please take off the mask?"

Unfortunately, I did not consider my reply very well, and my tone had far more acid in it than I had any right to use with her when I retorted, "Why bother to ask?" I winced as soon as the words left my mouth, but the damage had been done; she shrunk into herself and pulled away. I caught her hands as she began to stand and tugged her gently back down to the couch. "Christine, no. I'm sorry." I gave her a miserable look, then I raised her hands to the cool, hard shape of the mask. "My answer, as it should have been, is of course you may."

I closed my eyes as her fingers grasped the edge of my mask; time is a trickster, and I did not want to see whether a year of absence had made me more or less deformed in her memory.