Christine pulled the tail of rope from the slip knot, and pried at it with her slender fingers until the whole knot came unravelled. She knew it was only symbolic; if he wished to re-tie the lasso, it would take him less than a minute. But she didn't want to share the room with the thing in its deadly form, and it comforted her to disarm it.

While her fingers worked, the Phantom oozed back down to sit with her on their humble bed. His hand snaked around her middle to hold her. The covetous strength in his arm stirred the butterfly wings in her stomach back to life.

Tossing the rope aside, she assured him, "No one will come." She stroked the wiry arm that held her, trying to soothe him. "We aren't married, only engaged. My evenings are my own, my comings and goings are my own. I came in a cab, and made no promise to see him again tonight. ...He will miss me tomorrow." Her voice lowered to a whisper. "...But tonight, he will assume that I am sleepless with anticipation in my own rooms in the city."

He bent his head towards her, close enough to feel her hair brush against his face, and pulled in deep lungfuls of the smell of her. He didn't like the sorrow in her voice. He didn't like the shadow of his rival in the room, name spoken aloud or not. He didn't like that her attention was divided, only half with him and the rest of her somewhere across Paris. It made him want to act. His fingers itched to have the rope back. His arms longed for the sharp tug, the pull, the struggle. He wanted to attack first, before anyone dared try to take her from him. He would kill a hundred men to keep her, a thousand – all of Paris – to keep her warm and safe in his arms forever. He pulled her close against him and wound both arms tightly around her.

"My Christine," he hissed.

Her fingers on his arm trembled. She wondered if he even knew he had spoken aloud. With a swallow, she tried to gather the scraps of her courage together. She could not allow the Phantom, the madman in him, to hold sway. She needed to draw out the other tender creature she knew him to be.

"Your Christine," she assented. "And my... Who?" She rolled her head back against his chest to point her face towards his, still blind in the dark. "Who are you, my Angel?" She felt his own head tilt to look down at her.

"You answer yourself in your own question," he said. "I am your angel."

"Even angels have names," she chided him gently. "Michael, Gabriel, Uriel...?"

"Lucifer?"

Her caressing hand froze.

"Lucifer, the Morning Star, led the choirs of angels before he was cast down." he went on, voice soft and snide. "He was created to contain all the greatest instruments within himself, and was chief of music in heaven. The true Angel of Music. I thought you would have known that. Or didn't your father explain before he promised to send him to you?"

"...How appropriate," Christine sighed. "But that is not your name."

"Men like me don't have names."

Christine laid her head against his breast, her ear over his heart, while her hand resumed its caressing of his arm. "Every man has a name," she murmured.

She felt him looking down at her, seeming to consider a less flippant answer. The next sigh from her lips was one of happiness as she felt the jealous grip of his arms soften.

"Perhaps it is more truthful to say, that men like me have many names. I've collected quite a few of them over my life. But tonight, here, with you in my arms, none of them fit me. None of them name me. I am your Angel of Music, if I am anyone, because that is the name that brought you to me. That is the only name that I have ever loved for myself, because it came from your lips."

Christine closed her eyes in the dark, and pressed closer against him, feeling a wave of love and pity wash through her. She pulled in a deep breath with her face against his skin. The smell of him, beneath the light sweat of their recent endeavors, was warm, and clean. How could a man who had lived in an underground cistern, and then a graveyard, mange to be so fastidious, she wondered. She nuzzled her face against him, and he dipped his own to press it again into her curls.

"...But your true name," she said with gentle persistence. "The name you were given when you were born...?" She felt his warm breath in her hair, expelled in a silent laugh.

"The name given to me by a mother who found me too disgusting to look at? That name was never spoken with love, why should I keep it? I abandoned that name long ago."

She gave his arm a gentle squeeze, and wished for a moment that she might go back in time to those formative years and change them. "I might speak it with love, now."

"I would rather leave it behind."

Christine lifted her head. "Will you sign all your future letters A. M., then?" she asked with a teasing lilt to her voice.

"Would you take back my cherished appellation, Mademoiselle?"

"All things now considered, it does seem a little too grand for every day use."

"You didn't mind it before."

"I didn't know you were a mortal man, before," she said wryly, slipping her hand beneath the cloth of his open shirt to caress up his side. Cheeks burning, she said in a softer voice, "...I know it very well, now."

Her touch made him breathe deep with excitement, and she heard him swallow. But when he spoke, his voice held nothing but authority.

"...If you truly wish a man's name for me," he said, "then perhaps I have one for you."

Christine opened her eyes wide in the dark, feeling the hair on her arms prickle and the butterflies run riot. It was not the greedy Phantom, or even the tender lover who spoke. That voice, dark and silky and sure, was the one she knew best, the one she had waited for in the solitude of her dressing room, the voice of her otherworldly teacher.

"Tonight, for you, I will be Gualtier Maldè."

Christine sat up to face him in her surprise.

"I think you are right, and that you should have your singing lesson."

"N-now?" Christine spluttered, "Here?"

"It is long overdue."

"But..."

"Am I to assume," he said darkly, "that you have not been practicing in my absence?"

Christine quailed at the disapproval in his voice. "I have – I sing every day. But not... Not Gilda. I haven't sung Gilda since our last lesson..." How long ago that seemed, so far away it might as well have been a different world.

His tongue clucked with a disappointed tsk. "Verdi spurned, and my hard work neglected. Very well, then we must catch up. Scales. F major to begin."

Christine sat in shock a moment, feeling disoriented, and did not respond until prompted with a soft but severely spoken, "maintenant." Then, haltingly, she disentangled herself from his embrace. He rose to his knees and moved to situate himself behind her, a looming presence at her back that waited for her to position her body correctly. She sat up tall, lengthened her neck, and tried to relax her upper body. But nothing on her body wanted to relax. The light touch to her neck sent an excited thrill zipping through her, confirming that this would be a very different lesson than any he had given her through the mirror.

"Open," he demanded with a brush of his fingers on her throat.

A shuddery breath escaped her before she strove to comply. She yawned and stretched and pulled deep lungfuls of air through her nose and mouth to open the portals of her throat. When he deemed it sufficient, his voice hummed a perfect F to prompt her, and she began her scales. Up and down she went before he walked her down to D minor, and lower and lower still to find the limits of her range and challenge it. "My divine coloratura can be a mezzo if she wishes it," he purred in her ear, "if she strives every day." Then up again, up into the lofty heights to stretch her voice in the other direction. And with every note she accomplished, she amazed herself, because it was impossible to focus on the work. Every moment, she anticipated the next touch of his hands. His finger swiping a line up the back of her neck to remind her to hold her head high. Hands firm and demanding on her shoulders to tell her to loosen and drop them.

"Good," he said at last. "But I see what the focus of our lesson must be. In a chorus, it is easy to hide one's inattention. But when you are the leading lady, you must inhabit the role. There will be a thousand and one distractions to swarm around you, peck at you, pull at you. Critics. Admirers. The pinch of an ill-fitting costume. Emperors and Kings in the audience." His lips brushed her ear as leaned close. "Thoughts of what awaits you after the show... But it is your solemn duty to the music to ignore them all. You must be in the music. Feel it. So I charge you with this for our lesson. Whatever the distraction, chère fille, you must sing. Discipline your mind and body and sing, above all else."

Christine almost laughed. Almost. She wouldn't dare. But she could not even imagine success with all the distraction that was promised in his voice. Still, she felt that old longing boil up, that desperate longing to make him proud of her.

"I'll do my best for you," she promised, as she always had.

"Good," he said again, with more relish than she'd ever heard before. "So. Gualtier Maldè, the first man to come into your innocent world and stir up love in your heart. Precious name, Gualtier Maldè! Just the sound of it on your own lips brings you joy. Yes? You remember how it begins?"

"I remember," she said, feeling far too breathless to sing.

"Then try."

Christine closed her eyes. She willed herself to pretend she was alone. Alone, in room that was her refuge, and her prison, with the love of a father to sustain her, but it was not enough. And then, like a breath of sweet spring air through a winter-stagnant house... Gualtier Maldè. Gualtier Maldè.

"Gualtier Maldè..."

Behind her, the Phantom pulled in a breath at the gentle perfection of her voice. But for Gilda, it was only an echo of her heart's love-sick sigh. Very gently, he brushed his fingers along her arms, urging them up away from her body, encouraging her whole upper half to be tall and open. She raised them up in exaltation of the name.

"Nome di lui sì amato... ti scolpisci nel core innamorato!"

The softest "brava" in her ear, and then his voice skipping softly over the notes that the flutes would play, letting her imagine the guiding hand of the orchestra on Gilda's journey of discovering love. The playful notes danced in the air around them, and as they did, hands pulled whisper soft at the cloth of her chemise, pulling it up, up her body and over her head to leave her bare above the waist.

"Caro nome che il mio cor..."

"Breath," he reminded her softly, "use the breath.

"... festi primo palpitar – "

"Here, and here, and-" his hand pressed soft just between her shoulder blades to dictate her breath at the right moments, "here."

The note poured out of her, and she was rewarded with his murmur of approval.

" – le delizie dell'amor... "

That dream-like whisper of a touch became firmer. The hands that had been directing her breath spread warm over her rib cage, and pulled in burning trails along her sides. Then, as one line moved to the next, they reversed direction and poured up her body...

"... mi dêi sempre..."

– caressing her stomach, her ribs, under the mounds of her breasts –

"... ram–ah–mentar!"

"Attention," he scolded her when her voice hitched. He whisked his hands away to prod her back, correcting her posture. "Again, from mi dêi sempre."

She pulled in a shuddering breath – Gualtier Maldè, she thought desperately – and began again at his cue.

Christine managed the first simple stanza without another punishable offense, despite him resuming the exploration of his hands. They were so warm on her skin, so very difficult to ignore. But as she was coming up on the first difficult span of tripping notes, and his fingers were also approaching the sensitive points of her breasts, her voice began to tremble in a way that was not suited to the stage. Mercifully, his touch softened, his fingers went wide of their mark, and she managed the notes without faltering. But the next hurdle was in sight. A note to sustain, and she had no breath for it. It was spent on the anticipation of his touch. His touch, spiraling in once again, teasing towards the summit of her breast, just a moment away from –

A sharp pinch from his fingers made her gasp at just the right moment – "The breath," he reminded her – and she had enough for the note to carry as far as it needed to go. His hands smoothed down her torso with another whispered, "brava."

"Col pensier il mio desir..."

His fingers swept around the waist of her voluminous gown, and found the fastening for it.

"a te sempre volerà."

She felt it give, and his hands at her waist urged her up.

"E fin l'ultimo mio sospir..."

He shifted her carefully, guiding her weight from one knee to the other as he helped to extract her, until she was free of the gown at last and clothed only in the lightest of petticoats.

"Caro nome, tuo sarà."

There came the lull between the repeat. The Phantom paused with his hands resting lightly at her waist, offering a momentary reprieve. She felt the full weight of his attention. And she was determined not to disappoint. Her voice tripped lightly over the notes without words, relishing that first vocal flourish for what it was, a chance to show off. Each note hung in the air, glimmering, a glass-like thing of beauty, spun with the golden purity of her voice. It was the best she had ever done, despite not having practiced the aria for months.

"Bravissima," came his breathless whisper. Pride swelled warmly up within her, and carried her into the second half.

Up and down, her voice followed the imagined flutes, stringing the aria with the bel canto gems that Verdi had written for Gilda. He leaned close, pulling her gently so her back rested against his chest, feeling the power of her voice, holding it contained in the circle of his arms. "Sing," he urged her, and she did, pouring her voice out for him in a decadent cascade of notes that made his heart leap in his chest. It fed his soul so completely, it was almost enough to make him forget the hunger in his body. Almost.

Torment began anew as his hands possessed her in long pulling caresses. But worse was his mouth, pressing kiss after searing kiss against her arm, her shoulder, her neck. Worshiping her skin, feasting on her throat. The assault was too great, it was too much to endure. She bowed back against him, but he reminded her of her work with a rough correction of his hand and growl for, "attention." So she forced her trembling body to hold itself straight, and tall, and sang. Gualtier Maldè, she cried in her mind. Remember, you are Gilda, not Christine.

One hand slid down her thigh to clutch her petticoat, pulling it up in a long slow drag. The other found its mark at last, and palmed over one full breast with kneading pulls.

"Engage," he urged her at the threatening waver of her voice, "engage, and breathe, and sing, for me, you can do it..."

In some distant corner of her mind, where there was still some shred of clarity, Christine noted that his voice trembled as much as hers did. But that did little to help her maintain control. High note, think of the high note, think of the breath, and the notes, and the flower of your innocence, and Gualtier –

His hand plunged beneath her petticoat, driving a sound out of her that was nothing like the high note envisioned by Verdi. Her body spasmed and her own hands flew back to grasp any part of him she could reach. Astonishingly, she tried again, managing a few more quavering notes of music before his merciless hands provoked another animal sound of pleasure. She begged him for release. He conceded for them both.

He wrenched up at the back of her petticoat, and pulled her back hard against his lap. They ground together desperately, his hand between her legs fumbling until they aligned, and then with a rush they plunged together again. One arm held her tight against him as he took her, but the other remained thrust down between her legs. He couldn't bring himself to pull his hand away, too captivated by the feel of them coming together in that chaotic pounding of wetness and heat. She found herself pushing into the rub of his palm with shameless abandon, bucking back against him, chasing that explosive bloom of pleasure until it broke over her again in wave after pounding wave. The fluttering squeeze of her pleasure spurred him to move faster, clutch tighter, until he crested that wave just behind her, and they cried out their rapture together.

Slowly, their passion ebbed, and their minds gradually returned to them. When he finally tried to remove his hand from their joining, the touch provoked a flutter of aftershocks, and they laughed with breathless delight in each other. Carefully, the Phantom sat back on his heels, pulling Christine with him in his arms. He held her, his treasure, and couldn't think of any moment in his life when he had ever been so happy.

"I love you more than anything in the world," he murmured. "I love you more than music."

Her sweet laugh filled his ears.

"Hush! You'll make her jealous, and she'll rob me of my voice out of spite!" she said playfully.

"It's true," he said.

She cupped his ruined face in the darkness, hearing in his voice that he meant it. At least in that moment. She pressed a kiss against his forehead, and held his head tenderly agains her own.

"...And I love you, my Angel," she whispered. "...more, even, than music."

Author's note: The aria that Christine practices is "Caro Nome" ("beloved name"), the aria sung by Gilda in Act 1, scene 2 of Verdi's Rigoletto. The opera, and aria, are written in the Bel Canto style, which suits Christine's talents very well. Bel Canto is meant to show off the beauty and skill of the singers, and requires a great deal of discipline to sing well. I don't think Erik ever intended to let her sing the whole thing. ;)

Please listen to Nadine Sierra perform "Caro Nome" here: youtuDOTbe/T7M4_xZyZH8 (DOT = . )