A/N: Thank you for the reviews. Love them! :) I know some of you want Erik & Christine to throw themselves at each other in passion now! lol But keep in mind the girl was brutally attacked and nearly raped several weeks ago, killing her cousin in the very instant before he could despoil her, and she had to run for her life, endure the terror of being kidnapped by a "madman", etc. I am slowly and realistically trying to get her to the point where she needs to be for what I want to happen. She has finally accepted her life with the Phantom, inexplicably drawn to him... patience, friends. Oh- and this chapter deserves the rating…
Chapter XLII
.
The Phantom stormed through the corridor, deadset on his course to exact truth and wreak vengeance.
Christine raced after him, uncertain how but determined to rectify what she had so terribly misunderstood.
What insanity had prompted her to berate him for lewd acts clearly not his own, even if on the outset she did think him to blame? What madness - to beard the wildcat in his den with her invective of misbegotten truths? Impulse had always been her snare, and now it could well exact the punishment of another.
She came abreast of the boy's room and darted a glance inside, grateful to see that Jacques slept with his back to the entrance. The Phantom's dark wrath could not wake him, and she prayed nothing else would either. She had never seen the terrible ruler of these caverns in such a frenzy. Even during those times when he caught her trying to escape he possessed a cold containment to his biting rage. This complete loss of control frightened her.
She approached Jolene's room just as the Phantom grabbed the girl's arm below the shoulder and hauled her out of bed, throwing her roughly to the ground. Jolene gave a terrified cry as she went down, catching her fall and scraping rock with her hands. In the strong torchlight coming from the entrance, every freckle on her skin stood out against her shift as she twisted her body around on hands and knees and stared up at her master in fearful confusion. Her dark auburn curls rippled around her to the ground. In her current position, her neckline gaped indecently, revealing lavish curves to his view. The loose shift hid nothing, but the Phantom seemed oblivious to her womanly traits and Jolene made no attempt to hide them.
He pointed at the girl. "What have you done?"
"I- I - don't know what - you mean!" Jolene could barely get a word out for her sketchy, frightened gasps.
"Don't lie to me, wench! You brought that prying boy from the hotel here, didn't you?"
Jolene sobbed and Christine stepped further into the room, clutching the rock behind her. She watched, feeling oddly distanced from the situation, as the Phantom reached down and grabbed the errant girl by both arms. Hauling her up off the stones, he brought her close and shook her hard.
"DAMN YOU- ANSWER ME! DIDN'T YOU?"
"No!" she cried. "Not Peter. A-a man. From the tavern."
"YOU BROUGHT ONE OF YOUR CUSTOMERS HERE?" Disbelief warred with rage on his features as he gave her another violent shake.
"No-not a customer - I don't do that since I came here! A friend. W-we had nowhere else to go! He-he doesn't live in Paris. I knew you'd b-be gone."
"HOW did you know? DID YOU WRITE THE NOTE?"
His accusation boomed off the walls and she shrunk back in terror.
"No, monsieur! I only delivered it. I swear it came from him!"
He inhaled a harsh breath through bared teeth. "Do you not realize what your folly has cost us? That your lust for flesh has put us all in danger?!"
"But it hasn't! I was careful - I made sure to blindfold him. He was drunk!"
"Fool little strumpet! You think he won't TALK?"
"He won't remember! I-I gave him one of your potions. He only saw the caves, no-nothing else- he doesn't know anyone lives in them! I was careful- " she cried again.
He gritted his teeth and spat his words in her face. "You were NEVER to bring anyone to these caverns, NEVER to speak of this place! You knew this, from the time I brought you down here!"
"I-I'm sorry, Maestro…" Her sobs came fierce. "I- wou-would never do anything to bring ha-harm - to- to any of us!"
He glared at her in disdain.
"You have defied me for the first and last time. By your actions you have broken the most vital command of living in my quarters - twice in one day." His words came more quietly but just as sharp and lethal. "Are you so dull of wit? Did you think I would not learn that you told the Vicomte's meddling cousin how to find these caves?"
Her eyes grew even wider in her stark face.
Christine's heart missed a beat.
"And now you have invited an interloper into my sanctuary. Damn you, you ungrateful wretch! You have brought your fate upon yourself."
Releasing one of her arms, he kept a tight grip on the other, forcing her to walk with him as they hurriedly exited the room. He grabbed a torch from the wall in passing but did not once glance at Christine, whose mind was rolling with what she heard.
Arabella had come in search of her? The Phantom had found her? Had she been his appointment? But why?
She filed the startling information away for later retrieval and hurried after them, at the moment more concerned for the fate of the wayward girl.
They had reached the interior lake room, with its window fronting her bath chamber. Jolene hurried to keep up as he dragged her mercilessly along beside him, his stride swift and determined.
"Where are you taking her?" Christine anxiously called after him, her words echoing off the rocks.
"To the streets where she belongs!"
Jolene suddenly turned to him, dropping on her knees and holding his leg tightly against her bosom while she wept against his trousers.
"Please, I beg of you, Maestro - don't send me away! Jacques cannot live on the streets. There are many who would harm him."
"I said nothing about Jacques." His words were cold and cruel. "His home is here, with me. But you are never to come back, and I will lay a trap to ensure it if you think to try."
She grabbed him more tightly. "Please - don't do this. Beat me instead! I will gladly take your punishment. I will do anything for you that you ask - anything, monsieur - but do not send me away from here and from my brother!"
"I have decided," he seethed, looking down at her. "Get up. Unless you wish for me to drag you across the rocks."
Ignoring her apprehension to confront him, Christine moved in his direction. "You can't boot the girl out in the middle of the night - and especially with her wearing nothing but her undergarments!"
She glanced down at the young maid, stunned to realize that the shift had slipped from Jolene's shoulders and no longer covered her breasts, which she held pressed to the Phantom's leg that she still clung to so tightly. Christine battled a sharp urge to grab Jolene away from him and cover the shameless girl.
"She cannot remain here," he hissed between clenched teeth. "She has not done as I have commanded. She knew the consequences of her actions!"
Christine again looked down, this time into Jolene's watery eyes. In them she read desperation and fear, and her heart marginally softened toward the girl.
She stepped around the beseeching maid to face the Phantom more fully. He scowled at her, as though discerning her intent.
"What will you tell Jacques when he asks about his sister?" she insisted.
"He will learn soon enough that all women are fickle. They leave. He will get over it."
His terse revelation made her wonder who had left him, but she pressed on, knowing it was too much to ask for absolute mercy from the formidable Ghost who haunted an opera and reigned over these gloomy tunnels of death.
"If you feel she must be punished, surely there must be somewhere you can put her while you decide what's to be done. If you throw her out onto the streets like this - and at this time of evening - you will be sending a lamb to wolves. To slaughter. Surely that isn't what you want? To destroy her?"
Jolene pulled her head softly away from the outside of his leg and to Christine's uneasy shock and bitter embarrassment, leaned her temple against his inner thigh, turning her face toward it, her nose nuzzling against his trousers.
Did the brazen girl suffer from such fearful distress to be thrown out into the cold night that it completely addled her mind? Did she even know what she was doing?
"Please, monsieur," she whispered, her voice husky from crying as she turned bright blue eyes upward, tilting her face to see him, her lips briefly brushing the bottom of his trouser fastenings with the action. "Bar me in a cell, give me no food, but do not send me away from you."
He looked down at her a long moment, his stance formidable, his golden eyes giving nothing away beyond the black mask.
"What entrance did you take him through?" When at last he spoke, his words came brusque.
"The same as I told the lady."
"Get up," he ordered, watching as she separated herself from his leg, "And for God's sake cover yourself!"
The young woman's limbs shook as she rose to her feet - only then pulling straps back over her shoulders, though this close, torchlight made linen transparent, doing little to hide curves and shadows. Christine grimaced with a second twinge of furious disgust.
"Come." He roughly grabbed Jolene's arm and headed with her in the opposite direction.
Suppressing irritation at the maid's lewd behavior, Christine followed. They entered his bedchamber, walked past that into the main chamber, where they exited to the corridor leading to her room, and went past even that. The Phantom swiftly led the way to a lit corridor Christine had never been down before though she had passed it during one of her futile escapes. It held a chamber at the far end with odd and sundry pieces of furniture and props filling the small space. In the corner stood a cot, its mattress bare. He released the breathless girl toward it with a shove while Christine watched from the entrance.
Instantly Jolene turned to face him.
"Merci, monsieur," she rasped, looking as if she might fall to her knees and kiss his hand.
He grimly regarded her. "You will stay here until I decide what's to be done with you," he ordered, lighting a torch on the wall. "Do not suppose that I have altered my original decision. Perhaps I have only delayed it."
"Will you send me back to my uncle then?" she asked barely above a whisper, her eyes downcast.
He inhaled as though struck and turned away.
"You should have thought of that before you so foolishly acted on impulse," he admonished darkly, then strode from the chamber, closing the door and barring it.
"She should have bedding," Christine said over the tense silence that followed. "She isn't dressed properly, and you wouldn't wish her to grow ill from the endless cold."
Shadows from the walls seemed to linger in his eyes. "You seem to think you know a great deal about what I would and would not wish for. When in truth, you know nothing about me."
The fluid intonation of his harsh words most certainly held deeper meaning, but she didn't attempt to solve his latest motive for irritation or let him deter her.
"Very well - then I would prefer it. I'm not skilled at nursing, which if the girl becomes unwell, it will fall upon me to do should you refuse to aid her."
He narrowed his eyes, his manner pensive, causing her exhalation to falter, but he only motioned with one careless wave of his hand down the corridor. "Go then, if it will ease your fear of sickbeds. I'll not prevent you."
She gave no response to his sardonic words, returning quickly to Jolene's chamber. A glance into the boy's room assured that he still slept and she thanked divine providence that they had not also needed to deal with Jacques appearing into the midst of all the drama. It was mostly for the boy that she'd spoken for Jolene, after recalling his sorrow of missing his sister. Winded once she arrived to her destination, she rested, looking around the room at the girl's pretty trifles, no doubt all gifts from the Phantom. Not for the first time, and with Jolene's recent exhibition to fuel rabid thought, Christine wondered exactly what kind of agreement bound their relationship. Just as grimly she told herself she didn't give two flying figs, lurched to her feet and snatched up what she'd come for, hastening back to the corridor.
He stood in the same spot, watching her approach. His brow lifted at the sight of the pillow.
"You would think this is a hotel instead of a punishment," he said, his manner grave but calm, his mercurial temperament having shifted orbits once again. "Will you also request of me that her every beck and call be granted for attempting to put our lives in peril with her treachery? Perhaps we should put a bell in there with her, so she may ring for service?"
"Will you please just open the door?" she gritted, panting for breath and ready to toss the pillow at his wryly tilted head.
He bowed in suave mockery and unbarred the door, pushing it open. Jolene stared at them from where she sat curled up at the head of the cot but said nothing as Christine set the bedding down.
"We will speak later," he warned the young woman.
She quietly nodded, her eyes huge.
Once outside the chamber, the Phantom barred the door, then grabbed Christine's arm above the elbow as if he did not trust her to follow. Knowing anything she said was useless, that he would not trust her, she gave no struggle.
"You said that Jolene attempted to put our lives in peril." She hurried her steps to match his long stride. "Does that mean there's no longer a risk of being found?" He glanced at her curiously, and she blurted, "for the boy's sake of course."
A partial truth. She feared that if they should be discovered, worse, if the French gendarmes should become involved, they would investigate and learn her identity and that Christine Daaé was a fugitive wanted for murder in England.
"I took care of the matter upon my return. No intruder will come through that entrance a third time."
She shivered with relief and studied him in apprehension. "Another trap?"
His smile was wicked, and she decided she would rather not know.
"What of Arabella de Chagny? I heard what you said earlier. She was your appointment?"
He neither denied nor admitted it.
"Where is she now?" Christine insisted.
"If she is wise, she has returned to her hotel suite, with no further plans of being an interloper."
"Then she is alright," Christine breathed in relief.
"I did not kill her if that's what you mean."
She refrained from a reply to his scathing retort. He acted angry that she would think it. Could he blame her when by his own admission he evaded public recognition for such crimes?
They arrived at the door of her room. He looked beyond, into her chamber, then into her eyes. A light within seemed to make the gold in his eyes glow.
"I will give you the choice. We will talk here or in my chambers."
"T-talk?" A wash of nervousness drowned her hard won composure. "Surely there's no more to talk about, and I'm rather weary…"
"Here it is then." He strode past her into the room.
"No! That's not what I meant -" She turned to face him. "Can it not wait?"
Beyond his tall stature, the massive veiled bed stood, a monstrous presence that suddenly seemed to stretch to all four corners of the enclosed room. With his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows and the black trousers well-fitting to form, the Phantom looked lean and seductive, bold and dangerous, the dark mask an accent to that. Not for the first time she noticed that his baggy shirt had come undone in his exertions, baring a portion of his chest, a dusting of dark hair sprinkled against the sheen of skin.
Not so long ago Christine had jabbed that solid chest with her finger, unafraid. Now she wished to find a crevasse in the rock to slip into and hide herself from his burning eyes.
She hurried past him and to her dressing table, taking the chair there. He pivoted to look at her, his feet planted a short distance apart, his stance indolent. Quickly she picked up her hairbrush, a weak shield, but worthy to fill her trembling hands.
"I am curious with regard to our conversation earlier and your actions that followed," he began, "when you believed that I was the man with Jolene."
"Can you blame me for my mistake?" she quickly took the offense, feeling the heat burn her cheeks and forehead. "You have alluded to as much." She swiped the brush through her hair, wincing when it pulled at her scalp. The fibers caught in a hank of tangled curls. "And she clearly adores you."
He laughed outright. "You are insane."
"It's clear to me." Christine glared at him. "Perhaps I see it because I'm a woman and can tell these things. Yet with the way she threw herself at you tonight, you must be blind not to have seen it as well."
"Jolene was frightened and desperately sought to have her needs met. She would have granted any favor to receive that..."
Disturbed by his blunt words and his callousness to air them when her eyes had not been able to miss their truth, she returned attention to untangling her hair from the fibers.
"When Jolene was not yet twelve, her mother died," he continued quietly. "Her uncle brought her to the hotel where he works as a concierge. While Jacques slept in a box nearby, her uncle took her into his bed."
Christine stopped picking at the bristles and looked up at him in shock.
"Within a week, he passed her around to clients. Within a month, she worked as a maid's apprentice, making beds in the day and visiting some of those same beds at night, while Jacques kept residence in a locked room or in the kitchens under the eyes of workers there. When she did not exact a favor requested in the manner expected, food and water were withheld from her and she was beaten or tied up and put in a dark room, the boy also threatened. When she granted a favor, she was rewarded with food, pretty ribbons and dresses. She soon learned that to eat well and wear nice things meant to smile prettily and please whatever perverse customer her uncle sent her to. She worked in that capacity for three years."
"How awful," Christine barely breathed, heartbroken for the girl's plight and beginning to understand her wanton behavior of earlier. "But - did she not learn differently in her time spent here with you?"
He narrowed his eyes. "What you really ask is did the monster seduce the maid?"
She did not respond to his quiet scorn, did not deny it, and his tone took on an acerbic bent.
"After I brought them to my caverns that first night, Jolene did approach my bed, eager to show her gratitude while fearful to lose her new sanctuary," he said darkly, wishing to forget all of what happened that entire evening though he feared much of it would forever be emblazoned in his memory. "She had the body of a woman but the mind and years of a child…"
With the expertise seen in females twice her age, he dryly added to himself.
Jolene had possessed a gold mine of knowledge involving corporeal pleasures to the few nuggets the Phantom could then claim. The girl was strong-minded when she wanted something and feared to lose it. He had not then known her full history - or her daily fear of going without sustenance that ordered her steps and led the pretty little tart to become the best and most sought after of her uncle's girls. Retaining an air of innocence rare for one in her occupation, while eager to please and proficient at her task.
For once, he had not been at fault, not at first. At the same time had he not been as wicked and perverse as the customers Jolene gave favors to - that it happened at all, no matter the excuse? A beast he was and always would be, fitting into the mold of the miscreants of Persia who desecrated young virgins at the palace. Though Jolene had been no innocent … and it had not helped that in his betrayed rage and pitiless sorrow he had earlier been drinking what many called the demon rum.
Feeling the betrayal of warmth flush his face and noting Christine's eyes sharpen on him, the Phantom turned on his heel and paced a short distance away to collect himself. The memory taunted, thankfully a mist of shadows though vivid flashes remained to accuse. He had evaded the darkest part of that bleak night for well over two damnable years! But with the events of the evening, his mind betrayed him and traveled to that godforsaken period of time, hours after the opera Tristan and Isolde had concluded…
At his first obscure knowledge of a soft, warm body nestled to his in the pitch darkness where he had collapsed, intoxicated and exhausted, he thought it a salacious dream. He had never lain with a woman nor brought one to his chambers, his last and first actual encounter with the flesh in an empty corridor almost a year before that. Indeed, he had thought it was Christine in his slumberous fantasy, his unconscious mind having mercifully escaped the painful truth of earlier. Gentle kisses, tentative then passionate, he had drowsily returned. Warm, languid strokes of her hand down his chest and beyond eventually roused his rum-soaked brain to the barely lucid boundary between slumber and wakefulness. The exchange of that hand for the wet touch of lips and tongue taking him fully inside had him grab her head of long thick curls and move in hungered rhythm in his hazy, sensual fog, finding coveted haven in her hot, eager mouth, soon leading to the explosive finish - after which time he began to realize what was truly happening, and the glaring memory of his two unexpected guests returned.
The avid little harlot finished her deed then moved to rest her slight body atop his own. Fully aware and sober by then, the Phantom had grabbed her sides, wrenching her away and cursing at her for daring to sneak into his bed while he slept, to treat him as one of her lewd customers - thundering for her to leave his chambers and never return. In terror, she scrambled from his bed and fled in tears.
His stark revelation at the hotel before finding the orphans nearly destroyed him, and Jolene's explicit seduction led him to seek reckless flight to the world above, to find the nearest bottle of alcoholic substance he could obtain since he had exhausted his supply. He found more than that. His search led him down another deserted corridor, where once again he crossed paths with a beautiful dancer in her early twenties. This one had been crying angry tears and nursing a full bottle of wine she then shared. Once they emptied the bottle and half of another, she lifted her skirts for him and shared her warm body.
Winnie had become his second wild indiscretion to happen in the forgotten corridors, his first time actually to take a woman - in part because of wishing desperately to scour from his mind what occurred with Jolene - but mostly because of his intense hurt and anger spurred by Christine.
Once he finished with Winnie, warning her never to tell a soul, the Phantom returned to his lair with the remainder of the bottle. The yowling of the cat that earlier followed him home from the hotel led him to find the foolish little strumpet hiding in the darkness by the lake, where she huddled shivering and naked, her lips and toes and fingers nearly blue from the cold. She had stammered out a feeble apology for failing to please him and begged him not to beat her. In silence, he gave her a drink from the bottle then picked her up and carried her to his bed, covering her with thick blankets. Her skin remained dangerously like ice, her shaking uncontrollable. Against all better judgment he finished the wine, extinguished every candle and disrobed, intending to bring warmth back by holding her close against his heated body for a time and rubbing her skin. It had worked … until the incessant memory of her unsolicited favor to him brought despicable urges that entered his inebriated mind, as eventually did her little mews from strokes of his hand that somehow lingered over lush curves and wandered to creamy areas forbidden.
Hard again, his aching need brushing soft flesh as she brashly wiggled her bottom closer, he had thrice-cursed himself and plunged, finding her as heated and wet as Winnie. Images in his drunken mind twisted and spun, prohibiting recollection of why he had ordered the girl away. In the darkness, with her long curls and slight form he soon confused her with Christine, much as Winnie also favored her.
That black night of wickedness became an indistinct ritual for carnal gratification that led into the blindness of a pitch dark morn. Once the damning effects of the alcohol at last wore off and the Phantom realized his ghastly mistake and the extent of his depravity, he pulled away from the fatigued girl in horror, escaping the twisted sheets of his bed.
He had become physically ill from his overindulgences, his stomach purging what contents remained. Afterward, still shaking, he fully dressed, donning even his cloak, and sat in the main room near a pallet where the deaf boy yet slumbered. Sickened by his actions, he called himself the worst kind of monster for having coitus with the girl, no matter that she was an accomplished prostitute. To try to atone for his transgression against her, he silently resolved to protect Jolene from other fiends like himself who would plunder her youth, those who lived above. To become her guardian and make her his ward.
The little maid had soon awakened and approached with a blithe smile, thankfully in the dress in which he'd found her. He sternly ordered that she was never to speak of what happened between them, to forget it entirely. Nor was she ever again to come to his bed or draw near to offer favors - telling her that if she tried, he would throw her out. But he vowed that if she obeyed him in all things, she would have a place of safety in his home and he would see to her material needs.
In these last two years she lived with him, serving him, he never touched Jolene again, never wanted to. Nor did he again drink to the point of utter inebriation.
Tonight had been the first time she defied his wishes and rebelled against his commands.
Realizing Christine waited for him to continue, he broke free from his mental recounting of that foul night and coldly turned to face her. She had been partly to blame for the extent of his actions, though of course she never knew it.
And she never would.
"Jolene soon realized I had no plan to throw her or the boy out and never again played for me the role she'd been taught. Tonight was her first performance since then."
He would not have been surprised had the foolish little maid tried to undo his trousers to perform fellatio on him in front of Christine, she had been strongly leaning in that direction. Jolene had no understanding of scruples - though he, too, was indecent. But he knew all of what he did was wicked leading to hellfire, after having been told daily for years by gypsies that he was the Devil's Child, later raised at The Heights to hear the sexton's incessant criticisms and the minister's fiery orations. Jolene had been taught that what was proper was to give pleasure at any given moment, in private, in public, no matter the place or the company, and at her uncle's depraved exclusive parties, she'd been passed around and freely sampled like a new vintage of sweet champagne. The Phantom, too, loathsome devil that he was, had repeatedly taken his fill of her that one black night. It was rare, but Christine was at last correct in her assumption of his dissolute past, with regard to his history with the girl. For that fiendish exploit alone he deserved her censure.
But this one offense among his multitude of sins was not why he stayed to speak with her. Indeed, they had drifted far off the twisted path of what he burned to know…
x
Christine watched the Phantom carefully, stunned by the dull flush of color on what she could see of his face beneath the mask. The atypical characteristic branded him guilty, not that she was surprised.
At the memory of Jolene's brazen exhibition, Christine's face also heated and she viciously broke her hair free of the brush. With knowledge of the girl's perverse history, she did not doubt that should the Phantom visit her cell, Jolene would offer him whatever he desired in her desperation to remain in his home. She was no girl to shun but a beautiful, well-endowed woman, skilled in how to give a man pleasure ... if he had ever shunned her. His vague, clipped answer with regard to if he succumbed to "favors" on the night Jolene came to his bed left her feeling sure that he had, and likely still did.
She might never know, and she had learned more tonight than she ever wished to know.
Perhaps it had been a mistake to speak up for Jolene. Someone so experienced could have surely found her way on the dark city streets.
Fiercely Christine sliced the brush through her hair a second time. Again it pulled and stuck, and she winced, tearing her hair free once more. She watched warily as the Phantom approached.
"What are you doing?" she asked, nerves taut and threatening to snap.
He grabbed the brush from her hand. "Preventing my new diva from going bald, with the need to wear a wig."
Christine scowled at him, assuming he would then walk away. She gasped as he moved to stand behind her and pulled the brush through her hair, where it again caught.
"You don't have to do that," she whispered, her heart quickening as he gently freed the tangles from the bristles. "I was managing well enough."
"I have a degree of experience in such tasks. Cease your dramatics, woman. And tell me instead: why is it that when you thought I was the man with Jolene in the 'disgusting performance' you bore witness to - you were ready to scratch my eyes out - and hers as well? But your tune remarkably changed when you learned the truth, and suddenly you were defending the wretched girl for her actions..."
Christine felt trapped by the silken caress of his tone and the breathtaking accompaniment of his gentle touch. He held a thick section of her hair as he spoke, working tangles out from the bottom with the brush, and effectively rendering her immobile, trapped in his hold. His large warm hands in her hair and the light sweep of his fingers made her scalp tingle, made it difficult to think.
Only once had someone other than Berta or herself brushed her wild locks, and that was when she was eleven. She had sprained her wrist that morning, falling from one of the rocks on the moors. Erik had caught her frustrated left-handed attempts at using the hairbrush as she sat in her nightdress and tried to ready herself for bed.
"You should learn to use both your hands, Christine, as I've been forced to do," he said as he entered her bedchamber and picked up the brush from the floor where it had fallen.
"What do you mean?" she asked as he moved behind her and began the arduous task of brushing out her long, thick curls with his right hand.
"That idiot tutor your father secured for us won't let me write with my left hand. He says it's a sign of the devil's possession. I should have told him how fitting that is, since I'm the Devil's Child."
She caught a glimpse of the reddened inside of his left hand and grabbed his wrist in dismay, noting the angry welts that covered his palm and long, slender fingers where he'd been viciously hit with a reed…
"Have you nothing to say?" The Phantom's words broke into the distressing memory, his right hand pressing the back of her scalp as his left glided the brush through the tresses he had loosed.
She blinked repeatedly, trying to capture scattered thoughts and separate the past from the present.
She must stop thinking of Erik when around this man. It made her weak. The years were dead and gone. Buried, where she must keep them. Deep in the vault of her heart.
"I - I don't know what you mean," she said, staring at her reflection. "I didn't defend her actions."
"Nor did you denounce them - suddenly seeming not to care what Jolene did or that she had done it outside your chamber. Though you were extremely offended with her behavior before that - when you thought she was with me."
Christine gave a nervous laugh. "You were angry enough for us both. Someone had to maintain reason. Clearly you read more into my words than I intended."
"Did I…?" He quit brushing her hair, setting the instrument on the table, and lowered his body so that his head was near her own. His golden eyes burned into her dark ones in the mirror. "I believe your exact words were to show you the common courtesy not to rut with my whores outside your bath chamber. Tell me how to misconstrue that."
She glared at him, her skin flushing with rosy color. "Is it so inconceivable that I would ask that you not parade your doxies and your liaisons with them in my sight?"
"I only wonder that you would care."
"I don't care!"
"No?" he asked, his tone decadent, rich and warm. "Then you would not be opposed should I decide to visit Jolene in her cell, perhaps to … accept her extended favors?"
"Is that to be her punishment then?" she bit out, despising him and fisting her hand in her lap so as not to swing around and scratch his face.
"Trust me, Madame. She would not consider it a punishment."
Bitter tears pricked the backs of her eyes. "I don't care what the bloody hell you do. Screw every dancer of the chorus in the vacant corridors above - or copulate with your little maid in her prison cell the entire night - I just don't want to hear about it!"
He narrowed his eyes at her distraught reflection.
"Which begs the question - why are you so upset if you have no interest in my illicit relations?"
His tone came very soft, the lure of his eyes hypnotic, and she felt the imprint of his touch on her shoulders more intensely, burning her through her wrapper and nightdress.
Incensed that he should torment her so cruelly, manipulating all thought and distorting emotion, causing her to feel what she shouldn't while trying to strip away her dignity by coaxing her to admit what she never would say- what certainly was not true- she stiffened her spine and regarded him with a calm unfamiliar to her.
"Take your vile hands off me, monsieur," she ordered with a grimace. "I cannot abide the thought of your wicked nightly trysts with your harlots only because your behavior is reprehensible and revolting. You expect fidelity in this pathetic excuse for a marriage and order me never even to speak to one of my dearest friends when you do finally release me - but you clearly have every intention of continuing with your beastly conduct, even speaking to me of bedding your whores and taunting me with the prospect. You disgust me!"
His jaw hardened to stone, his eyes flashing golden fire. Her pulse racing with her verbal attack, she swiftly looked away from his image to the dressing table. His fingers bit into her shoulders painful seconds before he released her with a flourish and straightened, taking a step back.
"Then all is as it should be." His tone remained level, deep and impassive. "You are correct in your assumptions, Madame - I am a beast. Repulsive, revolting. Do not presume that will change with a piece of paper that says we are joined. However, I will grant the favor of your request and concede to your wishes to keep the full extent of my 'wicked nightly trysts' from your knowledge." His last words came caustic and mocking before he walked toward the entrance then stopped, his back to her. "I expect you at morning practice. Jolene will not be there to wake you. Do not be late."
Without another word, the Phantom quit her chamber.
Christine stared after his tall, retreating form until the door swung shut. Only then did she relinquish her sham of bravado and fold like the stem of a broken rose, dropping her forehead to her arms crossed on the table … too emotionally exhausted by the night's events to weep, while her mind remained active with all she had learned and what yet remained concealed.
She wondered where he had gone, whether to his chambers or elsewhere, the persistent question haunting her once she slipped into bed. The distinct possibilities taking her to linger at the edge of troubled sleep.
She did not care…
She did not!
The dampness on her pillow and the unwanted return of provocative dreams with the dark rogue suggested otherwise.
xXx