Fire Celtine, Tywyn, Tkstout and Penkitten get many thanks for their help with grammar and wording. My priceless betas! I also now have a webpage for anyone who wants to see. It's at Freewebs (dot) com with a backslash and then Gabrina. This won't let me put a link in the story.
Back to 1870 Paris.
Ch 7
"Your hour is almost over," The Goddess said as she walked across the small room to her modest vanity. "I suppose for the money you paid I will allow you another."
Erik had not yet composed himself enough to answer. Grief still moaned from his trembling lips muffled only by his hands over his face.
The Goddess left Erik to his misery and sat before her vanity. She turned the lamp up again and slid her shoes from her feet. Her fingers danced along small jewelry boxes and perfume bottles crowded on top of the glass surface. The Goddess sighed to herself as she waited for him to either sit up and demand that she sing or cry himself to sleep. He had been humiliated enough and had confessed to something he never wanted to tell a whore he had paid to sing for him. She would not ask him to return to the streets yet.
The Goddess took a silver hairbrush from amongst the clutter and ran the boar bristles through her long straight hair.
Yes and no, he had said. He loved Mademoiselle Daae and he did not.
The Goddess twisted around to see if Erik had moved yet. Her hand gripped the scrolled iron back of the chair and she frowned. She turned back to her vanity and rummaged through a box of small rags.
The velvet red throne she used had burn marks along the back. The Goddess assumed it had been salvaged from the old opera house and dragged to the small apartment. She hadn't been home at the time it arrived but there was no mistaking who had delivered the gift. A blood red rose lay atop the seat, thorns removed and velvet petals dusted in tiny snowflakes.
Despite the cold the rose had survived two weeks inside a cup of water. Not one petal had withered. Then one day she returned from market and every petal had fallen from the stem.
The chair had arrived the day after Erik had first approached her. Eyes downcast he had nervously walked into the darkened room, murmuring that he did not come in search of physical relief. Once Erik had discovered there was no place else to sit he had resorted to the bed.
Erik had looked somewhat childlike on the very edge of the bed with his hands clasped and head bowed. He had not looked at her once as she sang. He closed his eyes and merely listened, forcing himself to show no interest in her physically.
"Yes and no," the Goddess said under her breath. She wanted to know more. "You admit your love for Ms. Daae…but you deny it as well."
No reply came. She was beginning to think her phantom had cried himself to sleep on the floor. The sobbing had ended, the hiccups gone until nothing existed save utter, miserable silence.
"There are many women here," The Goddess said. She took a rouge-stained handkerchief and cleaned a spot in the glass to see her reflection. "Some younger, some older, some fairer…some who may offer more than I. A woman for each fantasy, even one for a chorus girl turned diva. Why, I wonder, would you come to me?"
The Goddess walked to the bed and lay on her stomach, bare feet dangling over one side of the bed and arms hanging over the other above his body.
"She was East Indian, wasn't she?" Her hand dipped down, fingers skimming along the sleeve of his overcoat. He shuddered at the sensation and exhaled sharply.
"What was it about her that you desired?"
"I didn't mean it," he said meekly. He glanced at her from over his shoulder, gaze fixed on her swollen lip. "I didn't try to hit you. Forgive me, Goddess."
The Goddess made no reply. She had only seen him a handful of times over the last few months but never in such disrepair.
"You are not taking care of yourself," she said quietly. "Your clothes, your hair…you haven't shaved in days. For the money you bring to my door you should dress like a prince."
Shamed, Erik closed his eyes and nodded. She watched him a while. For such a tall man, for such a broad-chested individual, he was reduced to nothing.
"How many years has it been?" The Goddess asked. He still did not reply. "How many years, Erik?" she asked firmly.
He hesitated, mouth opening and closing again. The Goddess moved her finger from behind his ear to his shoulder. "Fifteen," he answered. "Fifteen years."
"Fifteen years. Ah, then she did come before Christine Daae. Tell me everything about this woman," The Goddess purred. She stepped over him and knelt down at his side. His eyes opened briefly as she took his hand.
"Obey me," she whispered.
The Goddess moved his fingers a hairsbreadth from her cheek. "Tell me the color of her eyes. Tell me how her skin felt." She breathed on his hand and felt him pull away.
"I promised you," he whispered.
"No more promises. I never asked for your promises." The Goddess grazed the tips of his fingers along the silken edge of her bodice where the deep valleys of her breast rested. She moved his fingernails over her flesh. "Tell me how her heartbeat felt against your own." She turned his hand and touched his knuckles to the corset's boning contorting her frame, down the trail of embroidered satin along her midriff. "Tell me how she whispered your name in the heat of passion." His hand rested against her knees, fingers curled tightly into his palm.
"Was she forbidden?" The Goddess whispered.
"You don't know what you do," Erik said in return. He kept his voice low to mask the tremble of uncertainty, the sheer fear of being so near his desire.
"I know what I do. I am your Goddess, your Goddess Noir, the dream of night and decadence. Why do you deny yourself?"
He recoiled from her presence. "I must deny myself. There is no other way."
"Sit up," the Goddess demanded. "I'm tired of you lazing around my floor."
Without protest he sat upright. "I'll give a thousand francs if you let me stay here for the night. I'll stay right here on the floor. I won't move. I won't touch you. I swear it, Goddess, but please just let me stay. Just for another hour. Two at the most," he said frantically.
He reached out for her hand but stopped himself and turned away again. The pain he felt twisted the visible side of his face into something unrecognizable.
"Who hit you?" The Goddess asked once he turned. On the masked side of his face, just below his cheek, was a bruise along his neckline. Erik closed his eyes again and drew in a breath as she stroked the dark edge of the injury. The mark appeared black in the dim light. "You were hit by a fist. Is that what happened, a fist to your neck?"
He nodded, his lips trembling again.
"Who hit you?"
Erik's chin touched his chest and The Goddess knew she would receive no answer. Not yet.
"Look at me," The Goddess demanded. She touched the divot in his chin and drew his face to hers. Tears had formed again, clinging to his eyelashes. He took several deep breaths and forced his eyes to open, forced the cowardice away at last.
The Goddess had not noticed the dark circle beneath his left eye. She had not seen the red veins threaded through what should have been the whites or the glassy appearance of his sullen gaze. He was exhausted.
"Where have you been sleeping? The opera house?"
He shook his head.
"Where then?"
"Nowhere."
"For how long?"
"I don't know." He clamped his hand over his mouth to stifle the next unbidden sob. His body shuddered with such violent force that The Goddess thought he would be sick. Erik turned away and apologized to her between his struggles to breathe. "I don't want to do this," he whispered. "I only want to hear your voice."
The Goddess sat on the floor with her legs outstretched. Softly she began to hum a song she remembered from the end of her childhood. Erik's head lowered, shoulders dropping as she did what he had come for. Her mouth opened as the words came back to her and she sang, soft and clear. A lullaby. A gentle nudge of her hand pitched him to the side. Once he realized his head rested against her legs he attempted to move but she firmly pressed on his shoulder and he relented. Her hand remained between his shoulder and his neck where she could feel his body move with each breath. Slowly she sang to him, stroking his jaw.
Hush no more fear
Hush I am here
In night and in dreams
Nothing is what it seems
Hush close your eyes
Hush do not cry
In dreams I am here
In night no more fears
"I offer you something real," The Goddess cooed. Erik jolted awake again as the song ended. "No more fantasies, no more longing. Something made of flesh and blood and silk and satin. Do you want to feel my heartbeat? Do you want to have the world for your taking? Lay back. Let me take you across the seas, let me bring you to the Baltic Sea and my homeland."
Erik glanced into her dark eyes and shuddered. "I don't want to go back."
His eyes closed and he slept with his fist holding tight to her silk skirt. The Goddess laid her head back and closed her eyes. He whispered a name in sleep, a name he had not spoken in years.