A/N:
This chapter definitely holds to the PG-13 rating for sensuality. Please keep this in mind.
In advance, please, no flames for the cliffhanger unless it is constructive criticism. It is important to the plot.
And, I will try to have the next chapter up as soon as possible.
Enjoy, and please, please review.
-
Chapter 26: To Say Her Name
There was one unspoken rule that every prostitute knew without ever having to be told. From the moment that a young lady walked through the doors of a brothel, she understood that one rule, without ever having to be told. It was that obvious.
Never fall in love.
Giselle had followed that rule religiously. From the beginning, she had taught herself to detach her conscious mind from the task at hand, focusing on anything but what was happening at that moment.
In the dank, dirty room of the brothel, it was easy.
In the opulent surroundings of the de Chagny mansion, making love almost nightly to a man who touched her with infinite care and gentleness, who seemed to almost worship her, it was more difficult.
It was only the knowledge of who he really saw when she stood before him that kept Giselle from falling utterly into the web that he had spun.
There were times when she lost her own grasp on reality, when she could almost believe that she was this Christine that Raoul had hired her to become. After all, Giselle had been a name and nothing more for well nigh on two years. She had nothing left of herself. Why should she not be this Christine, fully?
But when the real Christine returned to Raoul, Giselle knew that her time of comfortable surreality would be ended.
She would have to become Giselle again.
This alone kept her from sharing the Viscomte's madness.
It did not keep her from falling in love with him.
-
Christine had never before realized how much she had missed the simple pleasures of life.
Things like sitting at the dinner table with someone you loved, enjoying a meal by candlelight and talking of things utterly inconsequential.
Or standing in the fire-lit great room and singing a quiet melody as your husband played the piano.
Her husband.
It seemed almost unreal, like a blissfully wonderful dream.
And she knew that all dreams ended.
-
Giselle sat by the fire, robed in a silk dressing gown, a book lying idly in her hands. Her long brunette curls were held back from her face, but most of their satiny wealth tumbled loosely down her back.
She did not need to look up to know who it was that entered her room. His appetite for her was near insatiable, like a starving man who was presented suddenly with a sumptuous feast.
She did not complain. Each day that he was content to see her, each night that she pleased him was one more day that she would not sleep away, one more night that she would not sell to dirty, unpleasant men.
She sold both her days and her nights now, but to sell them to one man was better than to sell them to a hundred.
He stood behind her now, and she kept her eyes fixed on her book. He touched her neck gently, and she leaned her head back automatically, but did not allow herself to receive his touch. She bent willingly to his demands, but she felt nothing. That was what she had always done. It was habit.
But tonight, as he ran his fingers through her thick hair and along her scalp, loosening the few pins and allowing them to drop carelessly to the thick carpet below, she wondered what it would be like if she dropped her guard for one night.
What would she feel in his arms?
She stood then, and moved towards him, swaying seductively, a goddess of allure in the dim, fire-lit room. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders and framed her face, and the fire shot sparks of gold in her dark eyes.
Raoul breathed in unsteadily.
Giselle knew that he saw Christine. Beautiful Christine, touched only by him, his prima donna, the leading lady of his life and his bed.
She looked into his eyes, and she saw the man that she loved. Loved, she knew, to what would be her greater grief, in the end. Perhaps, she thought to herself, she had loved him from the moment he had purchased her, however temporarily, from Madame Lavage's hell.
If, for one night, she dropped all pretenses and all facades, if for one night she looked into his eyes instead of tracing the patterns on the ceiling, if, for one night she did not deaden her mind and her body to his every caress, what would she feel?
If she gave herself, Giselle, to him, would he know the difference?
She determined to find out.
-
Christine lay beside Erik that night, her hair tousled and mussed, her limbs tired. He had fallen asleep, and the sound of his steady breathing beside her relaxed her mind as well as her body.
Two weeks had passed since their marriage. Erik had spent his days at the Opera Populaire, overseeing the reconstruction of both the exterior and interior damage. Christine had remained at home, fixing up the little house and yard to her heart's delight.
At night, he helped her feeble attempts to make a dinner for them, letting her feel as though she were, in fact, in charge, while he made additives based on what he had learned from books and such over the years.
Afterwards, he would play the piano for her, sometimes with her accompaniment, other times without.
And when the hours stopped drifting together and the music stopped, he carried her upstairs and the hours flowed into each other once again.
-
Giselle's breath caught in her throat as Raoul's fingers trailed down her neck. So this is what it feels like, she thought to herself. Gooseflesh raised on her skin as he replaced his fingers with his lips, his hands moving to her waist and hips.
The sash of the dressing gown came loose and the silken fabric fell away from her body. His hands met bare flesh, and Giselle's breath became ragged.
It was a matter of moments only before they fell together onto the velvet covers of the luxurious bed.
-
Erik rolled over, his eyes a touch mirthful. "So, Christine, darling, you cannot sleep?"
Christine smiled. "A touch of insomnia is all."
"Perhaps you simply are not tired enough." He touched her lips playfully.
Christine tried to hide the catch in her breath.
"Not tired enough at all." He removed his finger from her lips and pressed his own mouth onto hers. "Do you think you can sleep now, Christine?"
"I think, Erik, that sleep is the furthest thing from my mind."
-
Could it be, Giselle wondered, in this moment, when the fires of passion burned higher and hotter than the flames in the grate just beyond, that Raoul might see her, Giselle, instead of Christine?
There was only one way to find out.
Her hand came up to touch his face, and when his eyes met hers, she breathed out, hardly able to speak, "Say my name, Raoul."
He hesitated a moment.
Her voice was low and husky, breathless. "Say my name."
God please, if ever you have been merciful to me, if ever you have desired my happiness or a moment of respite from the misery of deceit that has plagued me for so long…please…just this once…let him see me. Let him see me.
Her fingers entwined in his hair.
"Christine!"
-
Erik touched her face gently as he kissed her again. "Christine…" he whispered against her lips.
For a sudden, startling moment, Christine thought that the voice that had said her name was Raoul's. Her shock was so great that one word spilled unthinkingly from her lips.
"Raoul?"