A/N: Loved the reviews- loved that you loved the reunion. This chapter deserves the rating …
Part IV - The Soul Takes Flight
Chapter LXV
.
Christine stirred, her first awareness being that her entire body was swathed in soft warm silk that bore his appealing masculine scent. Her second: the wild, passionate dream of her masked lover had been no dream at all.
She smiled to recognize where she was, having resided in this bed for a week without leaving it when she was ill, then opened her eyes ... to see the awful semi-nude statue draped with a black veil standing in its post nearby. There was something so chilling about those empty eyes. A she-devil in ebony and gold, an icon to his judgment of the entire female gender ...
Or only to her?
Frowning at the memory of his bitter revelation during their explosive reunion that spanned the cavern's corridors, Christine noticed strong light flicker behind and turned on the pillow to see.
That side of the bed curtain had also been pulled a third of the way back, a tall multi-branched candelabra near the head of the bed. And standing close to that stood her husband, the Phantom of the Opera. Her Angel, Maestro, Lover ...
Erik.
Not entirely sure which title fit him at the moment, she tried to gauge his mood, which could change with the next breath. His expression was, as it so often became, an inscrutable mask. Shuttered to conceal emotion, as his exchange of the dark silk mask he now wore covered a little over two thirds of his face. His only other article of clothing, a robe of embroidered ebony silk, cascaded loosely from his powerful shoulders and was belted at the waist. She noted the black pigment had disappeared from around his eyes, the skin faintly glimmering there with whatever oil he had used to remove the black.
If his visible features and the expression lines near his mouth bore no traces of discernible feeling, his eyes seemed to swim with it ... or burn. She inhaled a breath at the message in their brilliant gold, her blood warming to be consumed by his fire again.
"How-how long have I been asleep?" Christine cursed the stammer in her voice. She had no fear of him, but he could unbalance her with just a look and make her question everything. "Are we safe from discovery? Will the police be looking for you?"
Beyond the desire, a doubt she wished to interpret brimmed in his eyes. She had seen it ever since she declared her love. His hunger for her, he in no way hid, a pleasant change. But the secrets within his mind lay veiled and obscure. A distant curtain that often fell over his eyes all that hinted as to their existence.
"No one will find us. You slept for almost two quarters of an hour. Long enough for me to exchange masks."
She drew her brows together. "And that was really necessary?"
"Yes, Christine, it was necessary."
The Phantom regarded her warily where she lay like a beautiful nymph within the sea of his maroon silk sheets. She huffed a quiet breath, displeased with the last of his explanation, and he recalled her insatiable curiosity always to know more. Ever since they were children, he had shielded that wretched part of himself from her and for good cause. Other than her most recent unmasking, he could count on one hand the number of times she had seen his face since their childhood. Always by accident, always fleeting, never in adequate lighting to let its full curse take effect. And the last time he had made sure of that.
His face incited fear; he had no desire to make Christine run from him again ...
Or worse.
His breaths grew shallow while his eyes ravished her. She lay with her glorious riot of thick curls rippling out over his pillow, her body glistening and naked, the sheet clinging to every lush curve. She was the embodiment of the vision he had so often dreamed in the unfulfilled nights when he thought he would never have her as his to possess. Her hair tangled and messy from their lovemaking, her skin flushed with it. Her lids still heavy from slumber, with thick black lashes that brushed rosy cheeks and shielded midnight eyes glowing with love and desire. For him. A truth as yet unthinkable but no longer a myth buried in the chamber of his darkest imaginings.
He moved to snuff out the candles, but she reacted with equal swiftness and intent. Her hand clasped his forearm to stop him.
"No - don't."
The darkness. Of course. A childhood fear never relinquished, and who could blame her when he had preyed upon her strongest weakness in his cruel lust for revenge?
"The darkness will never again harm you," he said gently, speaking to her as he had to the child she'd once been who awakened him with her own nightmares. "I won't let it."
"I want to see you."
Her soft, firm words took hold and shook him. Instantly his muscles contracted, his eyes narrowing in wary suspicion that she might suddenly reach up and seize what shred of protection he had erected for her sake, but her eyes were not focused on his mask. They looked intently at his collarbone even as she modestly tucked the sheet beneath her arms. Her trembling hands moved to the lapels of his robe to softly part it further.
His hands caught her wrists holding them captive.
"It's only fair, Erik. I know you can see me whether we're in the darkness or the light, but I don't have that advantage ... please ... I – I need to see …"
The warmth of her palms were suddenly flush against his skin, her fingers spreading their touch in a slow arc that stilled his instinctive protest, and a barely discernible moan slipped from his throat instead.
God, he craved this, to feel her warm hands keen against his flesh, and he decided to allow her eyes only that which she truly asked, knowing why she did. He released his grip on her, dropping his arms to his sides, aware of what she would soon find on the pathway her fingers took, with the light of the seven candles to reveal.
Her heart and breaths quickened as Christine stared at the expanse of gleaming pale skin above his sternum, her fingers spanning its warmth and smoothing the sparse hair there, the motion taking his robe with it. Never had she seen her Phantom unclothed in strong lighting, never so close. Touching him, watching where her hands touched, intrigued and excited her feminine sensibilities, and she wondered if it was the same for him, when he touched her; if it stirred his excitement when his eyes followed the trails his hands and fingers made in darkness. Oh, if only she had the ability to see as well as he did, no matter the degree of light involved!
Always before, her overall sight of him naked had been from a distance in a moonlit lake, or hazy glimpses while joined together with him in passion, always in dim caverns or dark chambers with bed curtains blocking scant candlelight or torches flickering from adjacent rooms. Even at The Heights, in all their years together, she had only seen him once without a shirt, the weather darkening with storm clouds, and later in the kitchen with the hearth fire burning low.
Since they first came together in physical union, Christine had always been fully immersed in the moment and never really looked in detail at his magnificent body, a vision of alluring strength and barely contained power that never failed to rob her of speech or breath. Now she was eager to learn all of what previously escaped her knowledge ...
Her attention was drawn to his left side near his shoulder and a puckered circle of darker flesh the approximate size of a halfpenny. At an angle a few inches below, another could be seen. Without being told, she understood. Her fingertips brushed with tentative care against one remnant of the horror.
"I suppose I am fortunate that he was such a bad shot to miss all my vital organs," the Phantom said in an attempt at dark levity, the quaver in his voice extolling the true nature of his feelings. "Have you seen enough? Is your curiosity now satisfied?"
Intending to step away and extinguish the flames, he froze when she again moved.
The gentle press of her lips to the old wound made him hiss and clench his hands into fists at his sides. His eyes fell shut against the rise of moisture filling them.
"Christine …"
Undeterred by the husky warning in his voice, she moved her lips to the next bullet scar, the emotions she felt so far removed from the pity he shunned and detested. She knew guilt for the words that made him go and joy that he now stood before her and gratitude to the Almighty and the angels for sparing his life, his healed wounds a vivid testimony to his narrow escape with death. Her fingers clasped the broad slope of his shoulders inside the robe, and she felt the scars there and along his back, scars she knew extended to his waist, scars that Henri had put there and the gypsies unknown to her with hearts just as vile.
Pressed flesh to flesh, she had known other scars ...
Belonging to the Phantom with a dark and dangerous past unfamiliar to her, she had quietly accepted their existence.
In the knowledge that he was Erik, Christine was horrified by the realization.
Any return of girlish timidity died a swift death as she lost hold of the sheet tucked over her breasts, the silk sliding forgotten down her body while her hands fumbled with his sash, swiftly pulling it loose and parting the edges before his hands could stop her.
"Christine - wait!"
An intense rush of heat inflamed her face as her eyes were instantly drawn down to the thick maleness of him, his desire apparent and growing as she watched in rapt fascination. He clenched her below the shoulders tightly, painfully, then released his hold with an annoyed flourish. The action made her remember her purpose and she tore her eyes away from his lower anatomy to seek what she must know. She had no need to search. The answer was laid out before her, appallingly clear.
Along his sides, down his stomach, partially hidden within the light matting of his hair, everywhere she cast her eyes, she was grieved to see scattered there small irregular random patches of faint white and pale red along with lines of similar color; short, long, some raised, some shallow, some thinner and curved as if by a malicious twist. Burns. Blades. God knew what else. Another circular puckering of flesh beneath his ribs gave evidence to a third bullet of shots fired, and she bit back a sob, not daring to let it air. The canvas of his beautiful body told a story of incredible horror that only the most evil of men could have painted, a story she was certain was continued after he left The Heights. More scars covered his slim hips. A vicious dark slash raced from the outside of one leg to his inner thigh. Another dipped below his navel and down his stomach, disappearing into the black curls that crowned his manhood. Dear God, had the beasts tried to castrate him?
Her eyes wet with tears swiftly traveled up to the middle of his chest and a line of pink barely visible amid the fine hairs, no more than a faint mark compared to the rest of his horrible scars, but this one distressed her most. This one ripped furrows through her heart and threatened to choke her with hot scalding emotion ...
This one terrible mark that had severed his flesh and was made by her own devilish hand.
"Are you at last satisfied?" he whispered harshly, though she could feel the pain in his voice throb throughout his body. "Foolish child, you always did wish to tempt the Fates and unveil the monster. You wanted what was real. Well, now you have it! And what do you see, Christine, besides the ogre who is so desperate to take you and again make you his own? A soul to be pitied? A thing to be feared?!"
He hissed in a short, uneven breath through his teeth as her lips ghosted against the dagger's scar they had made together over his heart, at the same time her hands took gentle paths up his hips to his sides.
"Dear God, Christine ..."
Her touch burned him even as it soothed. Her mouth slowly roamed his body, searing with tender devotion every scar within reach, her hands smoothing over their puckered trails as if to heal them in the warmth of her compassion.
"I see," she whispered against his skin, with the same reverential response a pupil would give her esteemed master, "a man who would not surrender. A courage that flouts all cowardice and foolish ignorance ..."
This was not a show of debasing pity. Pity he could manage, undermine, reproach. This - this was something he felt powerless to know how to fight.
His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, longing to bury themselves in her silken tresses. But he felt too undeserving to touch this mortal goddess, too stunned by her affectionate response to do more than helplessly stare.
"No, Christine ..." His deep words came strangled as she continued raining the gentlest of kisses over his worthless flesh, "I am not a man to be praised or admired. What kept me alive in those dungeons of hell was sheer hatred - hatred of you!"
The sick admission tore from his black heart in a wretched whisper, and he experienced the whiplash of his sharp words as she lifted moist eyes of profound sorrow up to him.
"Where passion is extreme, there exists a razor-fine line between love and hatred," he explained in low, biting words. "I cursed you every day, with every torture they inflicted ..."
... while in the empty silence of the nights and in his darkest dreams, he pled for her undying love.
The tears slipped from her eyes, down her cheeks and over her jaw, burning tracks into his soul.
"Hate me, Christine. Hate me for all I've done to you," he begged. "Curse me! Call me a beast, a tyrant, a devil – for that is all I am. You were right to speak those things! I am nothing but wicked and ever will be. I don't deserve an angel's compassion or forgiveness ..."
She bowed her forehead to his chest, slowly shaking her head. "You are my Angel. You gave me back my music, my voice. My very soul. Without you in life, I lost the will to sing."
Her quiet admission jarred his senses, and his own tears slipped free. Dear God, he had been the reason that her heavenly song was silenced?
His chest grew tight from his ragged breathing. His hands moved of their own volition before he understood, and he clutched tight fistfuls of her ringlets, forcing her head back to look up at him.
"I abandoned you – I tricked and deceived you. I am not worthy of such regard! My God, Christine, I drugged you and took you from the light, forcing you to dwell in this tomb of darkness! I terrorized you and showed no mercy. I demanded your soul in marriage then slaughtered your innocence –!"
"NO! I came to you willingly and gave all that was mine. My soul was already yours to claim."
He fell hard to his knees on the ground before her, sobbing and clutching her fiercely to him. His cheek pressed to her lower belly, his breaths singeing her thigh. She gasped at the intimate contact and cradled his head to her skin, her fingertips tangling in the cord of his mask.
"I love you, Christine, God how I love you! Heaven help me, I never stopped ..."
His low, whispered confession felt tangible, trembling with fervency through every fiber of her spirit and echoing into the deepest chambers of her heart.
"Never stop now," she begged.
"Never ..."
He turned his head to press a soft kiss into her thatch of curls, making her gasp. His warm lips floated slowly over the soft curve of her lower belly, the round of her hip, the joining of her inner thigh, his tears of hope smearing across her skin to dry there and become a part of her. Overcome with such swift changes of high emotion, from shattering compassion to stark desire, she tightened her gentle grip in his hair and arched toward him in silent plea.
"Love me," she whispered.
"Always ..."
His lips sought her need, brushing her moist womanhood in soft kisses, his tongue tracing gentle designs along the length of her that made her burn hotter even as shivers tingled down her spine.
Bestowing a deliberate suckle to the tiny pink nub of her sweet flesh and bringing from within his songbird a splendid, melodic cry, one he swore never would be silenced again, the Phantom moved his attentions up her slender body, pressing passionate kisses to her satin skin. His mouth brushed the creamy underside of her breast as he slowly rose to his feet and shed his robe, bringing her back to lie with him on the bed.
Christine opened her legs, eager to receive him, to have him relieve with his presence the dull ache that throbbed inside, but to her frustration he delayed their joining.
"Patience, my beauty," he whispered, his voice a silken caress. "Savour the moment. There is so much I want to teach you, that I will teach you ..."
He brought his lips around the top of her breast, his tongue circling the crest with gentle pressure, urging it to a harder pebble, while she gasped and moaned, her nails scraping his scalp. His left hand slowly moved up her side to shape her other breast against his large palm, molding it to his passionate design, and he teased the nipple between his fingers as his mouth tenderly devoured her.
She cried out, barely able to breathe, much less to manage speech at this new onslaught of tender passion. Not wild, impatient, or desperate as when they had always come together before, but deliberate and sweet ... so achingly sweet that it produced a slow, steady fire that surely melted the very marrow of her bones ...
Yet before she lost all sense of time and place there was something more to be said, something more to be done, something she also needed so desperately ...
God help her, this would be the hardest thing yet.
x
Christine gulped in a shuddering breath as she lifted herself slightly on her arms, the stirring sight of her beloved giving her such incredible pleasure heightening her pleasure to an even greater degree.
There was much to be said for candlelight.
"E-Erik, I love you with, with all that I am …" Her words were acknowledged with a gentle nip and deep suckle, and she gasped. "You-you know that now, w-without doubt – yes…?"
He gave another slow suckle before letting her glistening nipple slide from his mouth as he tilted his head to look at her. In the pool of light cast by seven candles she could see everything. His eyes had lost most of their gold but burned just as brightly. His fingers stilled though he did not lift his hand from her other breast. Seeing him touch and kiss her flesh so possessively, so intimately made it even more difficult to breathe and recall exactly what she wanted to say.
"I believe I have been convinced of that knowledge." His husky tone gently rasped against her senses, his voice a strong vehicle of seduction in and of itself.
She clutched his arms to bring him upward and he crawled closer, immediately taking sweet possession of her mouth. She indulged for long moments in his potent kiss, the deep meeting of their tongues – before tearing her lips from his lest the delicious spell he wove with his dark passion completely consume her.
"I would never hurt you – you know that? Please say you know that."
"Christine … what are you trying to say?"
Her name so beautifully spoken from his lips stirred sensation further and she prayed his voice would remain so calm.
"I- I meant what I said about wishing to see you, Erik." She took in a deep breath. "To see all of you."
He tensed as her meaning grew apparent and she locked her legs around him, to keep him near, suddenly afraid he might try to move away. He was stronger, of course, but she had gained strength and would fight his escape if she must.
She could not explain this sudden desperate need to bare all of him. Despite the changes time had made she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was her Erik. And if anything that made the necessity more compelling.
"At the Heights I let you have your way about it, but I'm no longer asking as I asked for years," she breathlessly stated with firm conviction. "I don't even wish for this to reassure. Because if you don't know my heart by now, and that it's constant, I feel hopeless to convince you. My reasons are purely selfish. After all that has happened, I need to see you …"
And just like that, the curtain fell over his eyes, making her want to scream in frustration.
She would be damned before she would let him hide from her again!
The Phantom looked at her with solemn regard, though inside his emotions churned.
He was not surprised by her appeal. Hundreds of times in their youth she asked him to remove his mask. Sometimes his stout refusal led to an argument between them. Twice she had ripped it from his face. Once, when they first met and she could not have known. Once, since they met again, and she knew full well.
"And what of the curse, Christine?" He barely kept his voice controlled. "What of the curse that comes upon the unfortunate and the damned who see this face?"
Christine knew that her husband was an intelligent man, a true genius, but he'd been so deeply mired in dark superstitions as a child, evil slurs that brandished their own lasting marks on his soul. Humanity's reactions to him throughout his lifetime had done nothing to help disprove the ancient gypsy legend. But she had long stopped believing in foolish myths, and never took that one into consideration.
"I have seen your face," she countered gently.
"Not in full, not so that you would remember," he insisted. "And the drug I gave you that night erased any memory that might remain. I made sure of that!"
She cradled his cheeks in her hands, careful with her words. "Erik, you do not have the evil eye. You are not cursed. People who see you are not cursed."
"No?" He scoffed out a laugh. "Christine, a man died after having seen the horror of my twisted face. Yes, you heard correctly," he said when her eyes widened in shock. "They ripped my mask away when I was presented to the Shah. A man in the palace court clutched his heart in terror and died right before my eyes. It was then the Shah feared I was marked by one of their devil gods who had sent me and I was promoted from prisoner to guest. He gave me private rooms in his palace, fearing his god would also strike him down if I was not treated with respect."
Her heart breaking for him, Christine sought words to counter such a nightmare experience.
"Having not seen your face, I experienced the worst curse imaginable – a life without you. I almost died, Erik. I ran out into the storm, begging you to come back to me the night you left, and grew ill with a high fever – so ill, the minister delivered last rites."
His eyes widened in horror and she solemnly nodded.
"I dreamt of you coming to my bedside and ordering me to fight, to live. You brought me back."
His eyes grew wet, his expression altering into one of growing disbelief. "I had the same dream – of you. I was in a delirium, after I was shot. It was so vivid, so real ..."
"... I thought you were there," she finished his sentence with him, feeling the same awe come over her.
Dark eyes locked with golden ones in astonishment to know that even with their bodies lying distant and near death, their spirits at the threshold to surrendering life had found and reached out to one another.
Suddenly his eyes dimmed.
"I lost much blood," he went on. "Two shots fired from a distance, one close; that bullet went through me. I should not have lived, but I fought my way back, for you. Later, when I was again aware, I sent the man who tended me to seek you out, secretly, at The Heights, to tell you I was alive. Joseph told him you had moved to The Grange, that the Vicomte had come one morning and carried you away. I left for Persia that week."
She gave a laughing sob at how cruel the Fates could be. Mingled with her dismay of this delayed revelation was the relief that he had tried to contact her.
"It's not what you think. Oh God, Erik! I was ... undone. I thought you had died ..." She shook her head, unable to speak of that horrid year of her black madness, not now.
"Don't you see? This proves it," she insisted. "We are one being, split in half at the beginning of time, like the story you once read to me long ago, both of us having wandered the earth to find our mate. The missing half of our souls. It's been that way with us, from the night of the storm, when you first came to The Heights. We've always been drawn to one another, bound together. I pulled away your mask then and did not die. Nothing evil befell me – I knew great happiness in those years with you. And now you saved me from a living death, by finding me and bringing me back to you. I have never known such bliss, when I've been with you, after having seen your face. There is no curse attached."
Braced against the bed, lying against her, his arms trembled, and he clutched handfuls of the silk. Despite such dreadful and astounding disclosures – to know that she had actually almost died, as she screamed earlier in the passageway in angry words he had not then taken as literal, to know that she, too, had fought her way back – for him –
– even so, he wrestled with what she required of him this night.
He did not fear that she would be repulsed and draw away; she had proven herself stronger than that. His Christine was the most fearless woman he had known. Even as a child she possessed great courage. Nor would she scream. She never did so before, not because of his face – only when in a fury at him for his trickery. She might inadvertently gasp or wince at the horror of the sight; he fully expected that. He did the same when faced with his grotesque reflection, on the occasions he had no choice when applying and removing his half mask. What terrified him was that she was wrong and would die in his arms, her heart still weak from her recent illness, the manifestation of horror too considerable to bear. Even when she ripped his mask away weeks ago, the bedchamber had been much darker than it was now.
"I made you forget this face, the drug I used made you forget," he insisted hoarsely, his tears dripping downward to splash upon her skin. He desperately tried to make her relent but knew that determined look, knew that she was as stubborn as he. "A man died. Others have been terrified, their minds irreparably damaged. My face is a weapon I have used to paralyze my prey or make them flee!"
She expected his every attempt to dissuade her and winced at his anxious words of self loathing, but they only strengthened her resolve.
"I don't fear anything about you. Even when I thought you only the Phantom, I felt close and did not fear you. Not really. By all accounts I should have. Even that first night in these caverns, when I was terrified by the darkness and the unknown and days later when I wept for my past – I clung to you. You have made me feel more alive in these last four months than I have felt in four years! Nothing wicked will happen to me –"
"This too is a foul darkness inconceivable to bear."
"Your face is not a darkness. Nor is it a curse."
"How can you be so sure when history reveals otherwise?"
"I just am."
He grimaced at such simple, childish, foolish logic.
"It's not a pretty sight, Christine. And in such bold light as this, it cannot be so easily scoured from the memory."
"There are things much uglier in this life than your twisted face, Erik."
Her honest words tried to soothe while her fingertips stroked his damp jaw. Her legs pulled him closer against her, his shaft burning hard against her thigh. "I am tired of the fairytales and masquerades – they are all pretense and shallow. I told you, I want what is real, what is solid. I want to see the entirety of who you are, the man behind the mask. There is no monster here..."
Her eyes glowed with a sudden burst of determination, making his muscles tense as if to draw back.
"I told you, I am not seeking your permission. I only thought to warn you first, so as not to take you unaware." She gritted her teeth through her tears, pressing her hands to his cheeks. "My God, Erik! I have wept oceans for missing this face, for thinking I would never see it again, until the torrents of my tears bled the deepest of grooves into my heart."
Her voice trembled as did her fingers which crept up to touch the edges of black silk. Her demeanor strengthened at his solid resistance.
"You owe me this, Erik, after all the dark years spent apart that we could have had together. After those terrible first weeks of fear spent in these cavern dungeons as a victim to your cold indifference – after lying to me and deceiving me – this is what I require of you! This is what I need to make things right between us! – And if you won't remove it, I will - I swear it."
The quiet and emotional challenge was tossed out, deafening in the air between them.
"There is nothing I can say to rid you of this damnable curiosity?" he said bitterly, and she saw the terror leap into his eyes when he recognized his defeat.
"Nothing."
"Dear God, Christine – I cannot lose you! Not now!" He squeezed his eyes shut, another rush of helpless tears shaking him to the core, and pressed his mouth desperately to hers in terrified persuasion, silently begging her to surrender this dangerous folly.
"You will never lose me," she assured once he lifted his head, so they could again breathe. "In distance and in death, I have always been yours."
Before he could grab her seeking hand or break away from her hold so tight around him, he felt the mask lifted from his face and gulped in a rasping sob.
Christine let out a soft little cry of horror but did not let go.
x
With her eyes so full, at first she could not see well. She rapidly blinked away the tears, as her hands pressed to either side of his head.
Nothing could have prepared her for how awful his face truly was in the unforgiving light ... how horrible. The sheer brutality of it. The flawless left side of his face had not suffered a mark, and she had innocently believed she would witness the same on the right side ...
Her heart felt as if a blade had been thrust through and she struggled to breathe.
She had expected the wax-like folds of twisted flesh, the skin stretched almost transparent in places near his eye, exposing part of his upper cheekbone beneath a thin surface, his flesh ruddy and coarse in places, the blue veins and thinner red thread-like vessels throbbing on the ridge of his forehead and up into his scalp. She had known of the absence of any firm flesh for a true shape of a nose on this one side, it being a misshapen lump that melted into his mottled cheek and disappeared beneath his lower eyelid that slightly drooped, though he kept his eyes tightly shut ...
Her girlhood memory of so long ago had kept those facts hidden deeply, safe within her mind, though they had blurred in detail, losing hues and form. An image never fully remembered but never forgotten - and now could be colored in at last.
What she had not thought to see was the raised red scar left by a long thin burn angled across his distorted cheek ... three scattered scars from thin blades, like those on his body, puckering the scars he'd been born with ... the deep pits covering his flesh in places as if tiny sharp bits of metal or glass had been crushed into it. Scars on top of scars. The cruel handiwork of men.
"Those devils," she cried softly, no longer able to hold in her anguish. "My God! What did they do to your dear, sweet face?!"
Frozen by her words, the Phantom could draw no breath into his lungs. Dear..? Sweet! Had the curse of his affliction sent his Angel into the very mire of lunacy?
He had no time to consider the terrible prospect for in the next instant he felt the most foreign and overwhelming of sensations against sensitive skin that had been starved and deprived of human touch for a lifetime – the gentle pressure of warmth blessed his ravaged cheek where before there had been only pain. The softness of silken lips moved slowly along the scar left by a hot poker, leaving their own brand of torture, so sweet, tears not his own wetting his scars.
He took in a deep, ragged breath, his ability to think completely stolen from him.
"My love," she whispered, never ceasing to kiss each scar of his mangled face, as she had with his body. "My darling ... See me, Erik? I'm alive ... I'm here ... with you ..."
His bewildered mind tried to made sense of her coaxing words, even as he began to recognize her actions. Her lips brushed against the scars man had made, in the process touching his deformities but treating this cursed side of his face as if it matched the flawless side, as if its original grotesqueness truly did not matter or disgust her. She kissed the tears from both eyes he had yet to open, fearing if he did, this would all be but a dream and vanish, again leaving him in his bed, forlorn and alone and without all hope.
Please God, don't let this be a dream!
The fervent wish no more than soared through his mind when her hand smoothed along his shoulder blade and down his back, gently trailing over each whip mark, brushing to his hip then slipping between their bodies. Her fingertips tentatively brushed the length of his shaft, and shocked to feel another touch from her to a place she'd never before crossed, his eyes flew open at the same time a raw, hoarse moan of disbelief and anguish and desire tore deep from within his chest.
Erik's powerful reaction to her soft, innocent seduction made Christine shiver deeply and fed her fledgling confidence. She closed her hand around his thickness, all the while she kissed all of his face, running the tip of her tongue along his skin to catch his tears, as her own heedlessly fell. In her gentle hand he throbbed harder, and she wiggled her hips in appeal, burning head to toe for him as she guided him to her need.
The sight of his damaged face had done nothing to decrease her desire; instead these last minutes had caught her up in a whirlwind of love for him, so intense, she felt swept away by its storm and eager to resume passion now that they were at long last fully bared to one another.
"Make love to me, Erik," she begged, gasping as the broad tip of him made soft contact with her wet flesh. "I need to feel you inside me..."
A maelstrom of emotions impossible to contain or decipher coursed through the Phantom's soul. Her cry echoed his own deep hunger and still overcome, he acted on base instinct alone. In one slow and steady push he filled her. She clutched his trembling shoulders, crying out in passion as her head fell back to the pillow with a soft thud and slide of silk.
Sheathed tightly in her drenched heat, for the first time since she pulled away his mask the Phantom dared to look at Christine's face.
Her skin was flushed and dewy, a wet shine in her dark eyes – alive, so very alive – and not one bit of fear or revulsion to be seen. An adoring smile lifted her rosy lips as she looked into his eyes ... into his face. His face! His accursed, monstrous face! It was the epitome of his dreams, that she could look at him with such love, such pleasure and desire, without the shield of his mask. A dream ... once an unreachable fantasy, a dark fairytale of Gothic proportions – made genuine ...
... and within his very grasp.
With a low, strangled sob, he buried the tortured side of his face against the silkiness of her neck where it met the slope of her shoulder. Her soft warmth cosseted the whole of his highly sensitive skin at once, the silken brush of her curls incredible against his malformed scars. Never had he felt anything like this on the condemned part of his flesh; her lips, her skin, her hair ... Nothing, nothing could compare to the physical perfection that was Christine.
He rubbed against her neck and she shuddered all the way down to her spine. Fearing he had at last overstepped the bounds of her tolerance, he reluctantly began to pull his head away. Her hand came up to press against his flawless cheek, keeping the twisted side against her softness.
"No, don't move yet. Just another moment," Christine breathed. "Holding you like this, with no mask in the way, holding you so deeply inside me, it's all so perfect, Erik. All I ever wanted ... my God - you're alive, alive and truly with me ..." she whispered in awe, still grasping to fully acknowledge that astounding truth as her tears rolled to her temples.
Her fingers threaded through his hair, holding his scalp, and she shivered again to feel him pulse with life inside her, a vivid reminder of the passion again waiting to be unleashed. She arched against his hips unable to curb the desire.
Nonplussed, the Phantom began to move inside her, slow and sensual, the heated edge of passion for his bride soon burning away his tremendous shock at her beautiful defiance and bold lack of restraint. So grateful to the all-powerful deity that had seen fit to spare her life, he was willing to design and erect cathedrals in tribute. He kissed her warm neck and the beating pulse in the hollow of her throat, covering it in his tears then moved to brush her seeking lips with his in wondering adulation.
"Christine ..." He cupped one large hand against her side, moving it down to her hip, and wrapped his strong arm around the curve of her spine bringing her closer. "My Angel ..."
"Say it," she panted, a deeper rose flushing her face as she met his every fluid stroke. "My name, s-say my name like before."
"Christine ..."
She shivered at the silken tones he drew out as a musical caress and tightened her hold on him, bringing her palms to press hard against his back. "Say what you always used to call me."
At last he understood, and bending low to her ear, he whispered, "My Little Angel ..."
Her eyelids fluttered as she cried out and the world fell away ...
.
xXx
A/N: Ah, at last. :) And now everything is wonderful…
(muahahaha)
Some might think it foolish how Erik- the all-powerful Phantom afraid of no man – was so caught up in the fear of what would happen to Christine if she saw his face. But at this time period, the belief in superstitions was still very prevalent, made even more so for him with the dark background he suffered ... I purposely wrote this unmasking scene as a nod to their first encounter as children and also as a resolution to their last day in the stables at The Heights, almost as if in both their minds it picked up from there. So now more has been cleared up, with regard to his past, his motives, and the mystery of all that happened years ago…with more revelations yet to come. ;-) Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for the reviews!