A/N: Thank you so much for taking me to 1000 reviews! :D You guys have made my night! I have written up a frenzy these past two weeks, doing little else (even shunning some needed housework), to give you the past two chapters and this long-awaited one with very little waiting time in between. It is doubtful I even need to extend the warning that this chapter deserves the rating- yes? ;-) Thank you – my valentine to all of you for your support & encouragement ...
And now … at last…
Chapter LXIV
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Once they fell through the trapdoors, the Phantom swiftly pulled a lever, locking them into place. He sheathed his sword and shed the awkward yards of his heavy cape that impeded rapid movement, then grabbed Christine's arm and hurriedly strode with her down a passage lit earlier with candles. He needed no such guiding light, but he did not wish Christine to falter or fall in the darkness and had left nothing to chance.
There was no true need for haste, since none could follow with ease. Even if his orders were ignored and the imbeciles managed to break through the trapdoors into this heretofore unknown chamber beneath ground, he and his captive would have long disappeared through the hidden entrance that led down to the tunnels. Rather it was a burst of adrenaline from his magnificent triumph that fueled his steps – and angry disgust to have seen his errant bride cling so tightly to the arm of the intrusive Vicomte.
How had he once presumed that he could so stoically disregard her return to that boy? All noble attempts at icy control and pathetic self sacrifice disintegrated into sparks of jealous rage upon seeing the fool's hand at the small of her back – touching what was his to claim, as if the fop had the right – and the Phantom was uncertain how he had borne the knowledge of her presence at the hotel all these weeks, even if she did sleep in the girl's room, as Madame informed him.
"Why did you do that?" Christine worked to catch her breath and be heard, putting the syllables that jarred through her mind to voice. "Was that fire? Did you just set the ballroom on fire?"
"This is not the time or place," he answered brusquely.
She wished to argue but could find no sense, her mind still awhirl as her dark Phantom pulled her swiftly through a concealed entrance that had appeared as one with the wall. Beyond that stood the top of a towering stairwell wreathed in shadows of obscurity, the blackness deeper and trapped inside once he shut the stone door to close out the scant firelight of the chamber they just left. Without a hesitant step he kept his hold strong above her wrist as they descended wide stairs, gray oblong patches that strangely gleamed, dimly set off from the surrounding black, and wound far below into underground caverns. At the bottom, they came to a maze of corridors, stopping only for him to reset a trap, then took the sole passageway lit with sporadic torches.
Christine's heart had lodged somewhere in the vicinity of her throat during the unnerving descent as she followed along blindly, but little by little her shock began to dissipate now that she could again see. Disgusted anger at his caustic behavior after weeks of grating silence wore thin on what little patience she could yet claim.
"Tell me now!" she insisted. "What did you do back there?"
"It was no more than a flamboyant parlor trick," he snapped, his timbre deep. "Why should you care? Most of them are strangers and those who are familiar treat you with contempt."
"Meg doesn't. Madame doesn't. And I would still care if you actually hurt anyone up there. Did you?" She stopped in her tracks and yanked back on his hold to prevent him from striding further ahead. "Did you?"
He spun on his heel and they faced one another down.
Concealed beneath the earth, Christine glared at her infuriating husband, determined to have everything out at last.
Safe from any pursuers, the Phantom was more than happy to give his curious bride exactly what she asked.
The unspoken demand for silence exploded between them, the fury of words bursting forth from a pyre of forced forgetfulness, both of them now resolute to be heard.
"You are worried about that irksome boy!" he accused, his eyes blazing gold.
"Of course I'm worried – I'm worried about anyone who gets in your way. I don't want anyone up there to die! People are not pawns on a chessboard to be manipulated at your whim or bugs to be squashed because they vex you."
"How gracious of you to wish to become savior to all those perfect mortals above, who live in their own perfect world," he sneered.
"Did you set the ballroom on fire?"
"None of those wretched fools was hurt!"
"The flames –"
"The flames were equivalent to illusion, appearing for brief seconds, with nothing that an errant spark could combust near its path. Now, if you would be so kind, cease to speak of those abhorrent cretins at the ball who regard masks as mere frivolities!"
Relieved to know the opera house remained intact, she quietly insisted, "Why do you hate them so much? Is it because of the mask that you must wear?"
He waved a dismissive hand. "That is only one fault of many."
Christine shook her head in weary confusion. "But – what terrible wrong have they done you?"
"You need to ask?" His laugh came chilling. "They ignore my orders with regard to my opera and steal any claim for its glory. They call me a monster, but they are like vultures pecking away at what flesh belongs to this corpse – and the wretched Vicomte is no better. He steals what is rightfully mine and is daily encouraged!"
Christine winced in unease. "I doubt he was informed. He's too honorable to have a part in taking someone else's work without giving due credit –"
"And STILL you defend him!" His eyes were twin flames that scorched to the very depths of her soul. "He stole you away from me - twice! Or perhaps your heart was freely given?" he sneered softly. "Did you again come to despise the monster and prefer the prince now that you know who and what I am?"
She glared at him. "You have no idea what you're talking about."
"No? You dance with that fop of a boy, flirt and laugh with him – allow him to escort you to the ball and who knows where and what else – all the while you cleverly hide my ring that shows to whom you truly belong." For the second time he shook the broken chain in her face with the wedding band she had worn around her neck. It clinked hard against the silver heart. "How typical of your fickle nature."
"You seriously didn't expect me to leave it on my finger?" she snapped incredulously and let out a matching laugh devoid of humor, tearing her wrist from his hold.
Circumstances being what they were, he knew it was impossible, but the absence of it on her finger had enraged him.
"And what would you have me say to Raoul – or anyone else who might inquire as to its presence?" she continued, her voice thick with sarcasm. "The ring? Why, yes, I'm married to your archenemy – the Phantom of the Opera – who tricked me into thinking he was my Angel of Music but was really my long-lost childhood companion and lover, long thought dead – who in his twisted desire for revenge abducted me and trapped me into marriage – and now has sent me away to the opera house to live?!"
"I never trapped you into marriage!" His eyes flared amid the circles of painted black. "I gave you a choice."
"Ha! Some choice! Live throughout an eternity of darkness below the earth with a masked fiend who terrorized me at every turn - or give my soul to this nameless dark entity in ceremonial vows for life!"
"I kept my word," he growled. "I took you back."
"Yes, but WHY DID YOU?"
"What?" he blinked, taken aback by her question and the ferocity of it.
"You heard me," she seethed, poking her finger in his chest. "Was it to punish me for those five weeks I stayed at The Grange, to show me what torture you went through, and make me suffer a torment far worse? Or was it due to the foolish spiel of lies I told Berta in confidence after you spurned me once we came down from The Summit?"
"I was keeping my vow to you, woman!" He again grabbed her wrist, pulling her with him.
"Like hell you were!"
Pierced with fragments of her past misery – misery he had caused – she narrowed her eyes at his broad back as her fury ever mounted. The fire she had feared above now raged unseen below, all exhaustion burning away in its blaze.
She twisted from his hold and he impatiently turned again to look at her.
"SIX WEEKS, Erik? With NO word to me during these last few horrid weeks, NO sign that you were still here? NOTHING? Except for dozens of sensations and feelings I decided must be in my mind since you never came near. How was THAT keeping your vow to me? And let's not forget hiding behind a wall to give me lessons – never once allowing me to see you – and then ignoring me after my debut, my only contact a vivid dream of you seducing me in my dressing chamber, when -"
She blinked with the reminder of the dream- its many differences to the others that had formed their own pattern- and realization came stark and heavy. Her eyes going wide, she wondered why she had never seen the truth before.
"- That was no dream, was it. Did you drug my wine that night too?"
"I had no need to drug you, my dear – you were in quite the drunken stupor, what with your little strip tease in the mirror." He winced at what he'd foolishly revealed.
Her face flushed with angry embarrassment as she stormed a few steps past him, struggling to remember what she could of that night, many moments still concealed in a haze.
"So then, it was no dream?"
"Why do you persist on asking questions to which you know the answers? Yes, I was there..." He grabbed her above the elbow, forcing her to walk with him through another secret passage that led into another torch-lit corridor. He had suffered the most, having been acutely aware of every intimacy shared, every embrace desired and then tearing himself away from her. "Would you have preferred me to leave you lying naked on the floor?"
She whirled to look at him. "You seduced me while I was intoxicated!"
"You forget, my dear – you would not let go," he scorned in reply.
She scowled at him, vividly remembering the hollow feel of waking up alone the next morning in her dressing room – and day after endless day since he'd left her after his nocturnal visit to the hotel. Their brief passion in the secret corridor beyond the mirror had only honed her dismal loneliness to a sharper edge.
"Why did you not come to me at any time these past two weeks, especially after the intimacy we shared?" She balled her hands at her sides. "Or was that just another part of your horrid game of manipulation and revenge?"
"You speak to me of manipulation?" his tone was darkly mocking. "Why did YOU change my opera?"
"You know bloody well why, damn you!" Another wave of incensed heat flushed her face. "How else was I finally to see you and make you understand?"
"I understood quite well when you told me to leave after I did come to the hotel to take you back with me!"
"No, Erik – DON'T YOU DARE pin this on me!" she seethed, "I told you I just needed time." She moved forward once more to jab her finger in his chest. "But you – you've made a habit of manipulating that – and everything and everyone in your path!" her words ended on an angry little sob. "You finally make me your wife – giving me the singular, most incredible experience of my entire lifetime – then toss me aside like day-old garbage. What of your MARRIAGE VOWS to me? What of your promise on the moors NEVER to let anything separate us?"
"YOU WOULD HAVE WISHED TO LIVE IN THESE DAMNABLE, DARK CELLARS, AWAY FROM THE FRESH AIR AND DAYLIGHT –?"
"—YES! – IF THAT MEANT BEING WITH YOU – I LOVE YOU!"
"—BUT I COULD NO LONGER ALLOW IT – OUT OF LOVE FOR YOU!"
Their fierce shouts of devotion came in unison, the echoes reverberating in a frenzy throughout the hollow caverns.
Both took a step back and stared speechless at one another for an eternity of stunned heartbeats. Elation flickered only briefly as regret soon fed sorrow and stirred the dying embers of their bitter resentment with the need to understand.
"Tell me again," she whispered, praying she had heard correctly. That she did not just imagine what she had hoped and dreamed.
But he was dealing with his own disbelief. "Is it true? After all I have done, all I have said …Christine," – His voice came hoarse – "how can you love a monster like me?"
She shook her head fitfully. "How can you even ask that? How can you even think it – that I would ever cease from loving you? Did all we shared in England mean nothing to you at all?" Her own voice was breaking. "It would have been far easier to cut out my heart – though you took that with you when you left The Heights too -"
"Christine …"
"My soul -"
"No, don't say it."
"My mind -"
"I cannot bear this."
"My LIFE!"
She gritted her teeth and in a blind rage rushed forward, hitting his chest hard with her open palms and knocking him back a step into the wall.
"How could you, Erik! How could you do that –to ME?! To US!"
Wildly she struck his chest with her fists, until he found and grabbed both her arms.
"YOU cannot bear it?" she viciously seethed up at him."I have lived in a wretched hell of my own making and yours for over four bloody years! Thinking you were dead, living in a sea of regret. I almost died – damn you! You knew I often spoke childishly in my anger! You knew it!" Tears streamed unchecked down her face. "You should have come back! You should have confronted me about what I said! You shouldn't have even been there eavesdropping in the shadows like some, some – THRICE DAMNED PHANTOM! All of this time we could have had together – all of it lost and gone. I HATE you for what you did to me – to us! I HATE you for riding away and not coming back when you SWORE you would never leave me – I HATE you for all of it because I LOVED YOU SO MUCH!"
The tears threatening to choke her, Christine turned from him and fled down the corridor.
With a strangled curse, the Phantom gave chase and grabbed his vexing little Angel in the stretch of shadows flanking the next pool of golden torchlight.
Breaking free, she swung her hand around to slap his face, but this time he was ready. He grabbed her wrist in one glove and pressed it and her against the opposite wall, holding her there with his body. His other hand reached for her free hand by her skirts, also holding that wrist against the stones until she was effectively trapped. She struggled, but he pressed in harder. The feel of her soft, trembling warmth, the sight and scent of her threatened to raze his restraint as desire burned heavy through his blood, and he grasped what shreds of control remained.
"How could I come back, Christine?" he grated softly, his voice sensuous to her ears as he leaned in close. "After being shot, with Henri ready to finish the deed? I thought you wanted nothing more to do with me. To love me was to declare yourself mad, is that not what you said? That I was an ogre? A beast. You say I took your heart with me – but you cut your teeth on my heart ever since you were a child, and when you learned to bat those soulful dark eyes, you chewed it up and spit it out."
"I told you I didn't mean to say any of those things," she cried. "I have always loved you and only you!"
His brow raised in dark mockery. "And with this undying love you profess to have for me was your proof of that to become engaged to the Vicomte -?"
Her eyes widened incredulously. "WHAT? I never was enga –"
"Though you valiantly swore you could only ever love and be with a man who was of like mind and captured your soul," he went on cutting off her feeble protests. "Did you even mourn my passing, Christine?" His question came curiously detached, a shield to the remembered pain of her duplicity.
Fresh tears rimmed her eyes. "How DARE you ask me such a thing!"
"And I suppose you didn't live at the de Chagny estate within a fortnight of my supposed demise or travel with that wretched boy all over the world, or end up in this very opera house a little over three damned years to this day – in Box Five – holding hands and later going to the hotel with the insufferable twit? The same hotel you've shared this whole damned month!"
Her mouth dropped open in shock at his heated revelation. "You were actually there that night? Three years ago? You SAW me and – you didn't come forward?!"
"You looked quite cozy, embracing in the hotel corridor then slipping into his room," he growled in livid mockery. "I didn't think it the right moment to interfere. And I saw a repeat performance through the window of your hotel suite weeks ago. You didn't look too eager to leave your precious Vicomte's arms then either. When only hours before, you had been in mine."
In truth, he had wanted to charge through the door, wring the damned boy's fool neck, throw Christine over his shoulder and escape – both times – and just prevented himself from murder on each of those occasions.
She had been the reason for both his wrath and his mercy. Had he killed the boy in cold blood, he knew by her previous words to him that he would never gain the chance to win her back, challenging his doubt that he ever could.
"You heartless bastard! How can you say those things to me? Raoul was consoling me – both times – he's always been nothing but kind. And I have never been unfaithful to you – not once! But YOU...! Oh, I cannot fathom it. You actually followed me from the opera house to the hotel – three bloody years ago – and remained hidden in shadows, away from me? So close, within reach – yet letting me think you were dead?! ALL THIS TIME? How could you do that to me when I needed you so much!"
Sobbing at this newest discovery of his endless treachery, she again wildly struggled, wanting nothing more than to be free of the unfeeling blackguard, to run as far and as fast as she could go, to find a dark corridor where she could hide and never have to see his horrible, beautiful masked face again. In her heightened emotion, even the serpents seemed a tame exchange for the awful pain that lanced her soul.
As though sensing her thoughts, he pressed himself more firmly to her, preventing all avenue of escape. Through the fitted breeches of his costume she could feel his arousal hard against her belly covered with the many tufted layers of her skirts. The memory of his naked flesh pressed against and into her yielding body made her heart beat even faster and she grew very still, her traitorous senses responding as they always did when near him.
"Many were the nights and days I wanted to come to you, Christine," he whispered bitterly, shifting his position so that his face was close to hers, his captivating eyes holding hers equally imprisoned. "Then and now. I loved you without measure and I despised you just as fiercely. You were my salvation and you were my destruction…"
She squeezed away tears to think of his hatred. His love he spoke of as belonging to the past; had his deep affection for her been destroyed? Keeping her eyelids tightly shut, she used them as a shield from his eyes, unable to bear the accusation shimmering in gold.
"Where were you?" she insisted in a whisper, her foolish heart needing to know the truth even if it spilled more blood into its chambers. "Where did you go?"
"I had to stay away or risk being caught – surely you must know this. With you being constantly attended, it was imperative I carve out the perfect time for my return."
"No." She shook her head and opened her eyes. "Four years ago. Where were you? They -they said you died..."
He grimaced with the memory. "Once I recovered enough to leave my bed, I traveled to Persia with a man I met, as I told you. The same who found me left for dead and cut the bullets from my body – but there I found only more devastation and death. I returned to England, only long enough to learn of your close association with the Vicomte, then came to France and made a home, here, beneath the opera house of my enemies, where I could watch and learn and plan. A year after my arrival, you appeared that night in my box, Box Five, with him. I watched you and plotted a strategy, then, to bring you to France permanently, to me. I wanted to make you suffer for what you'd done, to pay dearly. But once you arrived, you had changed. You were no longer the vain and selfish girl I'd left behind. You had become a shadow of yourself – until I brought you to my cellars. Then you were spitting fire and I finally saw glimpses of your true spirit..."
He shook his head as if that was not what he intended to say, but she had seen the crack in the armor of his harsh words and it thawed the chill in her soul.
"I repeatedly fed on the hatred I had for you, to make myself indifferent, even from the first when I heard you on your second night here as you so woefully sang in the theatre, missing that wretched boy. No matter my bitterness at your betrayal, I could not bear to see you brought down so low and in such despair. Then you grew ill to the point of death. I became weak where you were concerned, no longer able to execute my full plan of revenge, especially after I discovered you were a virgin and had never even been with the damned bloody Vicomte in the first place, as I had thought throughout these past four hellish years, as I was told! Especially after you discovered who and what I was - I couldn't bloody well condemn you to a life underground any longer. So I let you go."
He omitted the coarse talk he'd overheard in the tavern briefly visited on his first day back in England, that she was the Vicomte's whore, any engagement a farce, if indeed it ever led to marriage - a vain attempt to mend her sullied reputation. His spy he later hired had only confirmed such bitter tidings.
Christine's stunned mind tried to take in all he viciously spewed at her, but there was one admission she could not get past.
"You brought me here from England?"
Grimly he smiled. "Who do you think told Madame Giry to write the letter to the fool, dictating the precise words to use? I knew he was inexperienced to the theatre and would have no idea that managers don't write investors about finding members for the chorus. I assumed he would tell you of the letter but had no idea if you would rise to the bait. Yet had neither incident occurred, I would have found another method to ensure your arrival. Of course I didn't know then that you would refuse to sing."
"So you did all of this only out of spite and revenge?" she whispered, surprised that her tattered heart could still feel such pain.
"What better revenge than to keep you trapped in the darkness you shunned and feared, not unlike the gothic tales of your girlhood. To force you into a hopeless situation – to pledge to 'the Phantom' your soul in marriage and what I knew was most sacred to you? To exchange vows with a terrible stranger, this ogre, a beast and a devil, who though you didn't know it was also the man you swore you would have to be insane to love? To have that man wholly possess you –"
"But – you wouldn't touch me! Not at first. You wouldn't even kiss me after our wedding ceremony until Meg asked. I had to force your hand."
"You were my sole weakness, Christine, my constant temptation. The only manner in which I could stay firm in my vow of reprisal was to stay as far from you as the situation allowed. To convince you and myself that I wanted nothing physically to do with you." He laughed in bitter self mockery. "Even that failed in the end."
She shook her head in stunned confusion. "You gave me back my music –"
"Entirely selfish. I wanted to hear you sing. Wanted you to star in my operas." A half truth. He had also wanted to rekindle her hope, to see the sparkle relight her eyes and give her back the dream they once shared.
"And what of these past weeks of silence?" she whispered at his fervent admission. "Would you have come back for me if I had not changed your opera? Would I have ever even seen you again?"
"The moment I saw you through the window in the arms of that foolish boy – as Erik from The Heights or The Red Death or The Phantom of the Opera – it made no difference what mask I chose to wear," he growled, his eyes sparking fire and making her dizzy by the look he gave. "I vowed then to have you with me and planned this night of my return. Who do you think came up with the idea for the Bal Masque and told Giry to inform the managers? I loathe such balls where society delights in an escape of masks, when to me a mask is a daily prison – but I needed an event where I could appear among the masses and steal you away. The plan was in motion before you staged your foolish little change to my opera."
"So you engineered your appearance and my abduction as the terrifying Phantom to once again upset Raoul in your desire for revenge?" she whispered, silently begging him to disagree and say what she so desperately needed to hear.
With his hands still trapping her, he gave her arms a little shake. "To hell with the bloody Vicomte! I would have done so, Christine, because you are MINE! MY wife! MY heart and MY soul! You belong to me – and no other man shall have you!"
In the next breath, her dark Angel swooped low and crushed his mouth to hers, anger and passion ruling his kiss that set her blood to flame.
Christine whimpered in relief as a new fire raged, her hands moving against his tight hold in their desire to be freed.
He released the extreme pressure of their kiss, no longer painful, yet still deep and hungered as if he wished to fuse their body and souls in that moment. Desperate to relive their wild symphony in the night, she arched her body against his, aching to feel the strength of his desire.
So much yet posed a mystery – but one thing was clear: all she wanted, all she now needed was to feel her fearsome Phantom – her magnificent Erik – possess all of her body and share with her his passionate soul, again to make her complete. To burn away the terrible distance between them. The recent hopeless weeks and months. The long agonizing years. To escape all masquerades of the heart and mind and come together again as Erik and Christine from The Heights, forever and always bound to each another.
This, she needed as much as air to breathe…
He had re-entered her world by force and through disguise, and in less than the span of one week had once more become her sole existence. He was flawed and he was perfect, in body and character, and she accepted him for all of who and what he was since she was no better. He was her inscrutable Phantom, her dark Angel of Music, the desired husband of her soul and heart. Never would she live one more day or night without him –
Never would anyone make her!
He released her wrists, grabbing her around the waist. Elated to be freed, she flung her arms around his neck, clutching the back of his head, and kissed him with a fervency and fire so long contained.
God, she never wanted to contain it again!
His hands tore at the buttons along her back while she impatiently wrenched at the gold clasps of his tunic waistcoat running down the front. Their actions were frantic, their hunger for each other painful. Potent. Uncontrolled in its desperation. Giving no care to caution he ripped the frothy pink dress from her body, tiny buttons flying, delicate cloth ripping, at the same time she tore into the belt around his waist. The heavy sword fell with a clatter to the stones, and she immediately seized the waist of his breeches, pulling at the foreign fastenings in impatience.
All that mattered was to be one with him again, and she silently damned all material that prevented it, his own curses to have her free and be freed coming voluble.
With fevered kisses and long limbs entangling and discarding they soon tore away all impeding barriers of costume disguises, save for his mask that had no cord for her to grab, and she feared wounding him if he'd glued it to his face. Bared to one another, flesh to flesh, they held fast, while Erik pushed her back against the wall of rock, almost smooth in this area of the cavern, and dragged her leg up around him.
"Wait," he rasped when he realized.
"No. I will never wait again." Her eyes burned into him as she clutched him more tightly in emphasis. "My God, Erik – I have waited what seems lifetimes for you – for us - for this! I want you NOW!"
She braced her arms on his shoulders and he gave a low growl at her proclamation that mirrored his own mind, stunned by her fervency as she lifted herself on her toes, trying to climb him. With his hands cupping her bottom, he pulled her up to meet his need. Fiercely she wrapped her other leg around his hip while he drove deep into her drenched softness, fusing them as one.
Christine tilted her head back and gave a little gasping cry at the long desired sensation of his solid fullness inside, stretching and completing her, while he held her off the ground pressed between the wall and his hard body.
They clung to one another, without moving, as each remembered the knowledge of rapture now that they were again joined.
Erik groaned with the experience. God, she felt like a glorious fiery heaven in this cold dungeon of hell! But the demands of nature clamored for more, and in this matchless obsession alone, surrender was a most coveted privilege.
"Hold tight to me, my Angel," he whispered, walking around the bend of the corridor to her bedchamber nearby, the sole reason he'd told her to wait - he knew they were near, and he feared the cave wall would scrape her delicate flesh.
She could not seem to touch him enough. Her fingers clutched his scarred back and shoulders as she held to him, wrapped around him like warm velvet, kissing his neck and jaw, every area she could reach beneath the mask, even the mask itself, with fervent little kisses. He sank with her to the freshly made sheets and rolled with her so that she lay on her back. Her legs remained tight around his hips as he grabbed her wrists and swiftly pulled back to plunge even deeper. She gave a sharp cry, grasping at him, her heels pushing into his skin. Even in his passionate desperation to take her, he hesitated and pulled away almost to the tip, fearing he had hurt his beloved Angel.
"Christine…?"
"More," she rasped.
"Are you –"
"Oh God, Erik – MORE!"
With a feral growl, he slammed downward, giving her what she begged for. She moaned and tightly clung as he drove into her, the feel of his hard flesh pushing in so far threatening to make her come unraveled. Liquid fire roared through her veins, the ecstasy a blissful agony as his flesh pounded his need into hers past all thought of a mercy she had no desire to receive. Panting, she clung to him, urging him, their breathless cries of pleasure and want echoing like music throughout the chamber. Her head spun, the pressure in her loins extreme. His hand took possession of her breast as his mouth seared her throat…
Christine squeezed her eyes shut as the world faded into a brilliant explosion, pinpricks of light and shadow flashing behind her eyelids. Erik cried her name hoarsely, his own release coming with a force that seemed never to end.
In the aftermath of their turbulent reunion they held fast to one another, sweat-soaked bodies fiercely trembling, their breaths harsh and unsteady. Neither wished to let go of the exquisite minutes or of each other. A long moment passed before she spoke.
"After all this time," she whispered in soft incredulity, letting her legs slowly slide down his hips to his thighs while using her arms to keep him close. "we are finally together … without mirrors or walls or hedges, or your damnable distance to block us - "
In answer, he lifted himself on his arms, only to grasp her head and kiss her into silence.
She savoured the intrusion, his warm, wet kisses a worthy substitute to speech. Only when they both grew breathless again did he pull back to look at her. In the dim light of the chamber, the sight of his eyes burning like flames amid the black sockets of his mask of death might have struck fear into the heart of anyone else, but Christine could only smile at such a cherished sight as her beloved, so close that they were one. She lifted her palm to cup his cheek beneath the ridged plaster of the skull.
His own smile came shaky. "Perhaps I should be the one to pose concerns of disbelief."
He broke their deep connection, but before Christine could protest his absence, he rolled to his side and again brought her close. His fingertips gently traced the tiny beads of perspiration from her shoulder to her collarbone, making a necklace of shimmering moisture he drew down along the slope of her breast and to her navel, then up the other side.
Even with all they had shared, she could not help the embarrassed warmth that came over her already flushed body as his gaze leisurely moved over where his stirring touch lingered and his eyes took in their fill.
"So, Monsieur Phantom, do my 'womanly attributes' at last please you?" she half teased, using his former words against him.
He chuckled and briefly dipped his head to touch his lips to one pert nipple in a kiss. She gasped at the sweet sensation.
"Most assuredly," he whispered, slowly lifting his head, his eyes flicking up to meet hers. "You are the most beautiful and desirable woman I have ever known."
His soft, sincere words assuaged her stung pride of former months and in the knowledge of his rare praise, Christine felt almost giddy with delight that she truly did please him.
"And your plans for me - I hope they now entail keeping me here in these caverns with you always, or for however long you plan to make this our home."
"I can never let you go again, Christine. I did not know then that you no longer wished it, nor that I could never bear it..."
His soft confession warmed her soul, and she traced his lips with her fingertips.
Gently he stroked away the hair that clung to her damp face. His attention strayed from her tangle of long curls to the bed beside her, and a strange look entered his eyes.
"Erik…?" she asked with a twinge of worry. "What is it? What's wrong?"
In answer he picked up a black scrap of material from near her head and held it up for her to see. She immediately recognized his old mask from The Heights.
"You kept it…why?" His voice trembled as if fearful to know, though his eyes demanded an answer.
She smiled gently. "You really need to be told?"
"I would hear it from your lips."
In disbelief she heard and saw the trace of his incredible doubt and endeavored to put it firmly to rest.
"It was the last thing to touch you, the only part of you I had left," she whispered. "Keeping it with me, next to my heart and beneath my pillow almost made it feel as if you were with me – though it was a poor substitute to fill the void of your absence. If nothing I have said or done tonight can convince you of my love, then let this proof be my witness."
He stared at her, his eyes misting with her words, his expression altering into one of realization struggling with disbelief.
"I was sorely tempted to abandon my plan to take you from the ball tonight - something occurred." His jaw tightened at the memory. "Then I found this and later heard you sing. I saw what you did to my opera. And knew I must see you once more. I had to know. But feared to believe …."
He shook his head, his strangled words coming to a halt. She could not bear to see him suffer so and lightly touched his shadowed jaw.
"What I did to your opera – I know I was always meant to be Aminta, that you wrote her as me and you as Don Juan. I did not only change things to make you come forward, Erik. That was me singing to you, expressing what was in my heart. For you. Even that night after I first came here and you heard me when I was scrubbing the stage – that song was for you."
He flinched in shock and she softly nodded, tracing her fingertips lightly down his neck to his chest. The damp wiry curls there teased her skin, and she trembled with another wave of undisclosed longing. "I was singing to heaven to my Angel, who has always been my inspiration, wishing he was there with me. I have only ever sung for you. You are all I ever wanted - then, and now. When you died, I died. A Phantom found me, brought me to his tomb, and gave me life again."
Pressing her hand over his heart, she lifted her eyes to his. "There was never anyone else. There never could be. I fell in love with my Phantom captor and found you, the other half of my soul."
Christine noted his amazement, the struggle in his damp eyes, the desperate need to believe, and it distressed her that even now he wavered with indecision.
Suddenly he moved to sit up, bringing the coverlet over her body, then rose from the bed and immediately turned to lift her up into his strong arms.
She gasped in surprised confusion, linking her arm around his neck for balance while with her other hand she grabbed to her breasts the escaping coverlet that slid down with his motion. For the first time since they entered the chamber, she noticed the shambles it had become. Her mirrors and chair were smashed and the torchlight from outside her room picked up fragments of glass that sparkled on the table and the ground.
"Erik – what happened here?"
He gave an offhand glance to where she gazed before looking back into her eyes, finding more to interest him there.
"This room, with its trappings of pain and deceit, belongs to a former tale. It is time we write a new one together, and I take you to where you belong."
"No more fairytales," she insisted quietly. "I only want what is real. With you."
Eyes of shimmering gold held hers another breathtaking moment before he nodded softly.
"Then that is what you shall have, Christine. I wish to give you all that is within my power to give."
He walked naked with her out of the bedchamber and down the passageway in the direction of the main lake room … their costumes of a masquerade left unnecessary and forgotten in a distant corridor.
xXx
A/N: Gotta say, I thoroughly enjoyed writing that chapter ;-) ... we have now reached a major turning point into the next and last phase of story - with more secrets to be revealed and more twists and surprises…
Thanks again for the reviews!