A/N: My lovelies, it gets a little closer to some M-rated content in this chapter. Please let me know what you think! We're underway now. It may end up being a four chapter rather than a three! Thank you for the reviews! Remember, the more reviews the happier the author!
Christine let out a breath. Oh, he was obstinate. A simple list would never do. "When we first met, you told me that you were an angel. I know it wasn't true, but you were better than an angel. Erik, you believed in me when I had no one. You listened when I felt like my voice didn't matter. You were my solace in a strange city. My protector in the dark."
She moved to sit beside him, and she could feel his leg tense through her skirts. "My friend." The clip-clop of horse hooves and carriage wheels. He regarded her with a strange glint in his eyes, turning away so that the unmasked side of his face was hidden in the shadows. She hummed nervously, he had a way of making her feel simultaneously foolish and safe. She wanted always to be closer, but found herself trapped by her natural tendency to overthink her instincts.
They sat silently. Erik's slow breathing a comfort beside her. She wasn't through explaining, but took a moment to collect herself. To allow him to be accustomed to their new proximity. His long fingers rapped in staccato against his knees. He unraveled her. They knew each other so well. Thoughts and stories. Voices. Memories. Shared moments in his home and in the Opera House. With so much history between them, why was it so hard for her to confess that his absence from her was intolerable and full of anguish. Why should propriety stay her from clinging to him, from whispering away the secrets of her desire? Beginning at the beginning, then. That night.
"I don't know what came over me that night, Erik. There was just something about all the time we had spent together, and the music. It seemed to go right through me, to my very soul. I felt bare, almost undressed to your gaze." She stopped, the words that seemed to tumble from her were almost foreign in their candor. Too much honesty escaping her unbidden. She felt exposed now, as she remembered that twisting melody. Aching in its tenderness, indecent in its composition. It was like blood running through a bowl of water, desire painting her red. She shuddered, remembering the way his shoulders swayed as he played, the long span of his fingers coaxing the music from his piano. The thrashing of her legs beneath her sheets as she woke to its power, the haze in which she had approached him. The heat of the fire, the way his sleeves had been rolled up, his collar unbuttoned.
She had been at his home for two weeks, two weeks of getting to know him after her triumph. They read the reviews at breakfast, drank tea, and sang. Music, always music. His nuances and habits. The varying intensity of his gaze. Alone with Erik, she had ample time to consider the effect he had upon her. Had grown to realize that those years of wanting now had a face, and she longed to see it. Down in the dark, she had catalogued every innocent touch and brush of hands. She felt things that she was afraid of, and had no voice to speak them.
"I wanted to see you." He had turned away again, and timidly she reached to touch his shoulder. "Erik…, I wanted to see you. Your anger frightened me. It was as though I was shaken from a dream. Your music, oh Erik, your music." He must have heard the reverence in her voice, for he turned towards her and took her hand in his own. She squeezed tightly. "I wanted to see if it mattered what you looked like underneath." She whispered. "It didn't."
It hadn't. How could it? Why would it matter about that marred face, etched into her memory. Those malformed lips, the angry, twisted flesh of his cheek. The mottled sheen of his forehead. But those eyes, so sad and golden. When he had begun to yell, she had not heard him. She felt so very far away as she stared, sitting on her hands so she would not reach out to learn the texture of his flesh. His eyelashes were white, on the marred side, and she longed to feel them feather over her in butterfly kisses. That seam dividing ravaged and perfect, the duality of his face. She realized with a clarity that the fact that she had still thought him handsome after the unmasking was the reason she had been unable to face him in the morning. She'd been unable to discern her next move.
"Surely you know, Erik, you must know how much you mean to me." She stroked his unmasked cheek. "How much I missed you."
"Oh Christine," She felt his penitent lips against her palm, and trembled. A soft sound was pulled from her at the touch of his lips. Erik's eyes latched on her with a new predatory intent. Fascinated, as if to dare her, he kissed the inside of her wrist. She was suddenly aware of how very alone they were. Her knees trembled, and she felt the blood rush to her cheeks.
"Interesting," He was the maestro again. "What makes you tremble so?"
He knew, he must know. She couldn't continue in this vein, thinking of all the stories that the ballet rats had told her about the anonymous pleasures that were to be had in closed carriages circling the park at night. It made her think of the texture of his lips on hers. It made her think of the many ways one person could love another. She began to realize that she had missed too Erik's touch, before confined to soft corrections to posture and the grasp of hands. She began to realize the possibilities of intimacy. She cleared her throat. "I like your hands." It came out in a squeak.
Erik blinked, letting go of her hand to stare at his own. She mourned the contact.
"I like your eyes. They look like honey. I like how tall you are. I like the way you tell stories, and I like your voice. I like how you always protect me. I like your smile, when I get to see it. I like your thick, dark hair. I like you."
"Angel," Erik moaned, daring to stroke an errant curl that rested on her shoulder. "You are too good for me, for this world." They were so very close, the heat of their thighs, side by side. She found herself leaning into him, breath hitching. Chests nearly together as she leaned.
"Neither of us are angels, Erik. I was glad. That you were a man. It meant that I hadn't been…wanting something that I could never have. Something an angel couldn't give me" He was strangely silent, for Erik. Her maestro, the man who always had something to say. He moved towards her, so impossibly close that they shared breath. Those golden eyes bright and piercing. His beautiful hands cupping her face, and she found herself tilting her chin upwards, hoping that he would kiss her.
He merely stroked her cheekbones with the pads of his thumbs. Her lips parted and he groaned.
"Christine, you are playing with fire." He warned, fingers combing through her hair with growing confidence. The strangeness of this evening overtook him. He believed every word that she spoke, a far cry from his usual insecurities. She had sought him out, she had cried. His dear Christine, his sweet songbird. Muse and love. She must care for him. If he had known how she had missed him—
"Maybe I like fire." She countered, very surprised at the way her hands had curled into fistfuls of his lapels. Very surprised that the throb of her sprained wrist had been replaced with a stronger ache.
Erik murmured a phrase in a language she could not understand, sliding his gorgeous hands down her back. "I believe you mean that." He wondered, new realization dawning in his eyes. New tension seeping into the space between them.
"We've known each other too long to pretend." Christine's practical side was horrified at her behavior, but the vast majority of her heart, mind, and body overruled her propriety and she found herself sating her baser instincts by throwing her arms around Erik's neck, and burying her fingers in the hair at his nape. He was so much taller than she, and she found herself practically in his lap. Head tucked on his shoulder, breathing in the scent of him, feeling the jump of his pulse.
"Christine, you do not know what your presence does to me." A sudden jolt of the carriage threw them even closer. She wished her legs free of the confines of her many layers, as she half stood, half leaned against him. She had a sudden, insistent notion to straddle him as one does a horse. She could feel an unfamiliar hardness against her, and blushed.
"Erik, I would very much like to find out." Slowly, oh so slowly, she touched her perfect lips to his. The gentlest of kisses, innocent for the energy between them. Erik, to his extreme embarrassment found himself to be fully aroused, mildly tearful, and ecstatic in his happiness all at once. They grinned stupidly at each other for a moment then lunged together, kissing with an increasing passion. A soft coo left Christine, and Erik slipped his tongue between her lips, finding his nirvana.
A sharp knock startled them apart, Christine springing back to the bench opposite like a startled wildcat.
"It's late. I have a wife to get home to." Their cabbie hollered, "I've been officially off-duty for the past half an hour. You two have been at it long enough. Listen, I'll drop you anywhere you want but I can't keep driving in a circle regardless of your stamina. The horses are tired, I'm tired. I don't know and I don't care what you two are doing, but monsieur—wrap it up!"
Christine looked at Erik, his unmasked side and the tips of his ears were red as La Carlotta's garish lipstick. He stared at her, at the door, and then discreetly flicked his eyes downward. She followed his gaze, and briefly registered sizable bulge in his trousers before he crossed his legs with as much dignity as he could muster, and she looked politely away flushed and smiling.
"The Opera Populaire!" Erik growled, attempting to smooth his dark hair into a semblance of order. It was the most mussed she had ever seen him, and Christine shook with silent laughter at the thought of anyone seeing the impeccable Opera Ghost so tousled. The carriage lurched into action, and she slipped off the bench. Before she could make a sound, Erik caught her, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her onto his lap. She felt his chest reverberate as he said.
"Careful my dear, we wouldn't want you to fall."
He kissed her neck, and she suddenly she found that she had little cause for laughing anymore.
A/N: THEY KISSED! I want thoughts, reactions-tell me what you think!