Enjoy!

Nico

Five year old Erik sat at the kitchen table, switching a small charcoal pencil between his right and left hand, placing the delicate finishing touches on yet another architectural design he had created that would never become a reality.

From behind his small mask, he allowed his eyes to steal brief glances at his mother, who was busying herself over a pot of something that was steaming into her face, causing thick tendrils of her hair to fall into her eyes.

How pretty she is, Erik thought.

He was never a physical child. No matter who came through the small home he shared with his mother, he was never touched.

Not even by the woman who had given birth to him.

The previous night, Erik had watched from a small hiding spot beneath the stairs as his mother had entertained a male guest. The man was a young doctor who had been examining Erik for almost his entire life.

Erik hated him.

In front of his mother, the doctor was cordial and friendly…warm even…but behind the closed doors of his sterile examining room, he was harsh and ill-tempered, one time even striking Erik when the child refused to partake in a series of painful blood work that ultimately left his arms so severely bruised he could not lift a pencil for weeks.

Erik had watched from his tiny cocoon as the doctor had touched his mother softly as they sat beside one another on the couch. He watched with unblinking eyes as the doctor first brushed a lock of hair from her forehead, and then kissed the piece of skin he had revealed.

He watched as his mother placed her thin hand on the doctor's knee, the resulting crease in the knee of his perfectly pressed pants the telltale sign of her urgency.

As the doctor's mouth came crashing down on his mother's Erik had whimpered and run away.

Up until that point, he had been certain that his mother touched no one.

It turned out that she saved that treatment for her child, and her child alone.

But intelligent as he was, a five-year-old's affections were temperamental at best, and as Erik watched his mother slave over the boiling pot, he was overwhelmed with the need to embrace her, to bury his face in her skirts and inhale the scent of motherhood.

He ran to her, wrapping his thin arms around her legs before she had a chance to block him.

For a split second, Erik was mollified, his face spreading into a smile as his heart felt instantly soothed by human contact.

The comfort only lasted for that instant.

His mother suddenly shrieked, kicking at what might as well have been a dog begging at her feet.

And like a dog, Erik howled as his mother's heeled boot came crashing down against his ribcage.

"What were you thinking?" She screamed at him.

Blinking and disoriented, Erik's mouth quivered. "I was just hugging you, Mama," he stuttered. Then, feeling as if he needed more justification, added in a small voice, "I love you."

His mother placed a hand to her mouth, tears springing to her eyes.

"Do not love anyone, Erik," she whispered.

"Why not?" He had whimpered back.

"Because," his mother had said, her face suddenly stonily blank. "No one will ever love you back."

"I love you…I love you…"

Christine repeated the phrase over and over, something telling her that Erik would not believe it, no matter how many times she said it.

She repeated it as he led her to shore, and then back towards the silken room that contained Erik's impressive pewter swan bed.

She repeated it as she felt Erik gently turn her around, his fingers quickly undoing the back of her intricately laced ball gown.

She repeated it as she turned back to face him, blushing under the heat of his gaze as she stood before him in nothing but her thin undergarments, corset and stockings.

Erik stared at her for several moments longer than he knew was appropriate.

Yet she made no attempt to shield herself from him.

With a sigh of purely male frustration, Erik grasped a silk robe from the edge of his bed, draping it around her bare shoulders and then turning his back on her once more.

Christine's brows knitted together as she pulled the robe self-consciously around herself.

"Have you nothing to say to me?" She asked after several minutes of silence.

"What would you have me say," Erik asked, his voice so quiet she could barely hear him.

Christine scoffed. "Something…anything…I would take curses of hate over this insufferable silence!"

Erik turned, his hair askew, his shirt and pants wet from the lake.

He truly looked like something out of hell.

"What is it you need to hear, Christine?" He said lowly. "Must I regale you with stories of my tormented past…stories of a mother whose only gift to her son was a mask to cover the face that made her vomit?"

His voice had grown louder.

He began to walk towards Christine, who instinctively backed up.

"Shall I tell you of the days I spent in a traveling cage with nothing more than straw to sleep upon? Would you like to hear of how the bars of that cage were just big enough for the children to thrust a stick in my sides?"

He was yelling now.

"Erik," Christine said, her backside pressed up against the wall. "Please, stop…"

"Or perhaps you would like to hear of my days spent in this darkness," he continued, ignoring her pleas. "Where the punishment for this," he ripped off his mask, thrusting his face inches from her own, "is endless solitude?"

He slammed his hands on either side of her on the last syllable, causing her to yelp.

"Stop!" She cried. "Please, Erik! Stop this!"

Erik watched as the woman who had moments ago confessed her love for him began to sob, her eyes wide with fright.

And as his rage subsided, he realized she was trembling because of him.

Immediately, and perhaps a bit too roughly, he pulled her into his arms, his lips landing at crook of her neck where, out of the torrent of emotions flooding through him, he bit gently.

Christine gasped, the feeling of his teeth lightly nipping at her neck eliciting sensations through her body she had never experienced before.

"God help me," Erik rasped as Christine placed her arms around his neck, pressing her body to his unconsciously.

"God helps those who help themselves, Sir."

The male voice caused Christine to scream in fright.

Erik turned.

There, standing in water up to his knees was Raoul.

"Although," the Vicomte continued, "I see that you've already done just that."