Unmasqued: An Erotic Novel of The Phantom of The Opera (21 page)

She could learn to accept that. Perhaps even to love him.

“Christine…” Raoul said her name like the whisper of a dying man, and she looked at him. Saw his blond hair and gray blue eyes, and the soulful, desperate look burning in them.

She reached for him, taking his face in her hands, holding it there between her palms. Firm, warm, textured with a day’s stubble…it was a beautiful face. One that had the power to evoke deep devotion. But it drew only affection from her.

She had learned much in her weeklong disappearance, and even more in the last weeks of mourning and contemplation.

Christine Daaé had grown up.

His lips gentled, slackening into a soft circle, and she bent to press her mouth to them. She felt his swift inward gasp of breath when they met, and she slipped her tongue out to lick over the top of them. Soft, pliant, willing, they were.…She kissed him more deeply, there, in her dressing room…the one that had not felt the presence of the Angel of Music for nearly a month.

The one that she somehow needed to fill with warmth and emotion, tension and desire again.

The room that she could barely stand to be in alone.

Raoul’s hands grasped her hips, pulled her up and against him. He was hard and ready, and she pressed her mound forward. Her body missed the pleasure it had become used to in Erik’s lair.

What would it be like to make love to a man who had nothing to hide? Who did not seek to control her?

Raoul’s hands were busy, pulling apart the buttons that lined her spine, and Christine let him. The change of air on her bare skin had her shrugging out of the bodice of her gown, eager to bare herself to him. To shed the clothing of her past and open herself to a man who loved her…a man, not a monster.

Tears burned her eyes, yet she tore the clothing from her body, helping him to see what he desired. To touch it. To own it.

Perhaps then she could be free of the ownership of another.

Perhaps he could help her forget.

Ah,
oui
, his hands were there…on her shoulders, her arms, her breasts…brushing gently over her nipples, bringing them to their peaks. His mouth…warm, gentle, featherlight, nuzzled over a shoulder, then down her skin to close reverently over her breast. He took care not to hurt her, to draw carefully from her the response he wanted. A gentle tug, tug, and then one long pull with hot, wet suction closing around it.

Her labia swelled, filled, closing together as they moistened and throbbed. Her pip awakened from its three-week slumber…twitched, grew.

Already, his cock lifted against her; he’d shucked his trousers as he fondled her breasts with his mouth. Raoul moved his fingers down through the wiry, curling hair of her quim, teasing it away from her skin and sending new rivulets of awareness swimming through her.

Christine moved her hands over Raoul’s chest, pulling his shirt
away, peeling it from the warm, smooth skin…so different from Erik’s hairy torso.

She would not think of him.

Raoul dipped his head back to her neck, and drew on her flesh with his mouth in a hard bite that made her cry out. He would leave a red mark, brand her with his ownership.

She was sprawled against the gold brocade chaise longue, her legs spread, her breasts bare and cool from the moisture left by his mouth. Christine turned her head, and she could see the mirror to her left.

The mirror.

No.

She closed her eyes and looked away from the memory, returned her attention to Raoul, whose hands skimmed along her thighs and held them open. The edge of the seat bit into her buttocks; she was half on, half off the chaise, propped by her bent legs, held in place by her feet.

She wrapped her right arm over the back and one side of the half sofa fringed in deep red, her body turning partially toward the mirror, her hair dark against the gold and cream of the sofa. She had a three-quarter view of Raoul’s bare ass, the long, lean lines of his pale golden body, his jutting cock, and the swath of smooth tawny hair. His muscled arms held her thighs as he knelt between them.

But Christine could not keep her attention from the mirror, the clean, cold silver that had held her, trapped her, once before. Her breasts, tipped up toward the ceiling, rose and fell as Raoul’s face moved between her legs. His nose rode through the dark bush of her hair, his prominent eyebrows dark blond slashes in his fair skin, melding with the thick hair that fell from his head.

She watched, watched herself, as she felt his tongue dive into the wet, warm depths of her quim. Her shoulders twitched, and
her breasts shuddered and moved as she drew in long, streaming breaths. She saw the gentle flush rising over her beautiful, round breasts, and realized then, distantly, why men loved such things. The nipples were tight, flaunting themselves as though needing to be kissed and sucked. Her left hand moved, and she watched her movements in the mirror, playing her forefinger over the hard, sensitive nipple of her right breast. Pleasure coursed from the tantalized nipple, spreading down to where Raoul tasted her, murmuring wordlessly into her quim.

The vibrations from his mouth jiggled and burned against her pip. It drew in, tighter; folded out, even tighter. It pitched and throbbed and burned, pleasure rising in her belly and suddenly peaking from her nipple to her sex.

Christine saw herself jolt against the cream-colored chaise. She shuddered, her shoulders slipping, her breasts bobbing, her nipples iron hard. The orgasm poured through her, curling her toes and releasing a great sigh from the back of her throat.

Erik. She wanted Erik.

She swallowed back the sob, the gasp of his name, before it gusted forth.

Raoul did not move. He held her in place, keeping her thighs apart, pulling away just far enough to look up at her.

Desire burned in his eyes; she could see the shiny, purple sway of his cock in the mirror…yet he bent his face back to her. He pointed his tongue and traced each fold of her lips, ran it down and around her anus, licking up the moisture that poured from her sex. He dabbed at her pip, where it contracted painfully, still recovering from her orgasm. He was relentless, pulling, sucking, tugging with his pointed tongue until she cried out in pain.

She tried to move away from the insistent plying of his mouth, but he held her firm. The harsh sensations from her overstimulated
sex built as she cried for him to stop, to end the torture…but his fingers closed tighter over her tender thighs.

“Raoul, please,” she begged. This was not pleasure; it was pain.…It hurt.…It built.…Her nib throbbed and suddenly…the pain burst into rough pleasure, and the orgasm sent her into uncontrollable tremors, seizurelike. She saw her face in the mirror, the twist of pain and pleasure from her open mouth, the flush over her face as her body quaked helplessly. The angry red tips of her breasts from her own fingers that had never left…

And Raoul moved before she could gather herself. He turned her over, quickly and roughly, but with tender hands…always a tender touch.

She knelt on the chaise, grasping the mahogany curve that joined the back and side of the half sofa, resting her breasts up against it, pressing her hard nipples into the cold, carved wood that edged the fabric. She watched in the mirror as the length of his body curved up behind her, his hands covering the roundness of her rear.

He massaged her cheeks and then slid his fingers again inside her wet, waiting quim, moving them in the same rhythm his cock strained to do.

The pressure built inside her; she was full, wet, the inside of her vagina moving back and forth with each stroke. She heard his wretched breathing behind her, gusting hot on her bare back. Her nipples jounced into the wood and fabric, more sensitive than ever before.

Her sex burned again, and she reached around to rub her two fingers over it, over her lips, and around to close her hand over his cock. She stroked him with wide, gentle fingers, building his pleasure as her juices drenched his hand.

Now as her breasts banged against the chaise, Raoul slammed his cock into her hand, as his fingers delved into her quim, harder, harder, faster, and deeper.

She was full, swelling—her lips, her ass, her tickler, her quim—and when he finally came, he cried out as though it were his last breath. He pulsed in her grip; she felt her own vibration as he tipped her into another orgasm.

She opened her eyes, looked into the mirror.

And saw Erik.

Erik stumbled away from the image beyond the mirror, tearing down the corridor. Away.

Pain seared through him. His gut burned, his chest twisted, and groans of devastation were stifled in the back of his throat.

Christine. His Christine.

By all that was holy, how would he survive this?

How would he eradicate the image from his mind?

Dimly, he heard her scream behind him, call his name, but he kept going through the corridors that widened, then narrowed, then opened into the vast underground chamber. The sound of water gently lapping mingled with his harsh, horrified breaths.

He stumbled, his eyes blinded, and his hands closed around something…hard, rough, damp. The stone of the wall. Dirt and delicate flakes of slate splintered under his fingernails as he grasped at it. He fell against the bricks, sagging, half-collapsed with grief and pain.

He could not bear it.

The roar of pain bellowed up inside him, filling his chest, his lungs, his throat…exploding from him and echoing in the brick chamber…the sound of a man dying. An animal in pain. A creature maimed beyond saving.

M
adame Giry’s costume for the Gala Masquerade Ball was no accident. She had carefully selected the tight, black bombazine bodice that showed a healthy expanse of bosom and fell into wide swaths of red and black from waist to floor. Under the swatches of skirt she wore black stockings held in place with red garters, and high-heeled black shoes. To obscure her face, she had chosen a bloodred mask decorated with four black feathers…which she had particular plans for, later in the evening.

To the average observer, she merely looked as though she’d chosen to wear a low-cut gown and a full skirt made of black and red pieces. However, if one looked closely, one would see that she held the handle of a long black whip in one hand, and an article that looked suspiciously like a shiny black cock in the other.

The two managers were walking down the wide sweep of stairs,
greeting the attendees of their long-overdue gala, when Maude slinked up behind them. Moncharmin had chosen to garb himself in a Roman toga, complete with sandals, gold bracelets, and a golden mask. Perhaps he fancied himself unrecognizable, but once Maude had held a cock in her hand, she would know its appended man anywhere, in any guise.

Firmin Richard’s costume was even less imaginative, a surprise after the creativity with which he’d described what he intended to do to Maude, down to each specific and erotic detail, after the ball. He’d chosen to dress as the English medieval king Richard the Lionheart.

Maude did not have the heart to tell him that
that
Richard preferred cock to quim.

She waited until Firmin had stopped to speak with an ancient, proper, and overly headdressed patron. Then she slipped up next to him and, half-turned away, bumped against his leg and shoved the phallus into the pocket of his medieval tunic so he could feel the size of it.

She snapped open her white fan (painted with little black figures from the
Kama Sutra
) and leaned just close enough to hiss at him behind it: “I’m going to shove this big black cock up your ass if you don’t do exactly what I tell you.”

Firmin jerked as if she’d pinched him, but he maintained his composure and responded to the elderly woman, who was gushing on about how beautifully La Tressa had sung two years earlier, and why did the new managers not give her leave to sing more often?

“Meet me in the white room in twenty minutes,” Maude told him with a liquid promise, and, removing the phallus from his pocket, slipped away…and around behind the two managers to Moncharmin.

Her little teddy bear had found a welcome audience in a middle-aged
couple dressed as Romeo and Juliet. Maude stifled a yawn at their choice, and managed to pretend to drop her whip in front of Moncharmin.

Gentleman that he was, he bent to retrieve it, and she followed. Their masked eyes met as they crouched to reach for the whip, and she said, “This is for you. Meet me in the white room in twenty minutes.”

Then she stood and hurried away. She could only imagine the fiery burst of red that must be flushing her poor teddy’s face.

Maude stifled a gleeful laugh. If he was red now, he’d be purple by the time she was done with him.

“But, Christine, why must we keep our engagement a secret?” Raoul asked, clasping her hands fervently. He wore a mask tonight, a fact that deeply disturbed Christine.

Another man in a mask. What secrets did Raoul hide from her?

“If Erik finds out…he will be furious,” she told him earnestly. “I just wish to give him time.…” She toyed with the engagement ring he’d given her, a large square sapphire surrounded by tiny yellow diamonds. Instead of placing it on her finger, where it would be sure to garner attention, she’d chosen to wear it on a chain around her neck, tucked into her bodice.

“Time? Time for what? For him to abduct you again? Christine, you still have not completely recovered from your experience with that monster. You are still pale as a wraith, and you move about as though in a trance. If I did not know better, I would think you were ill.”

She was ill. Ill with a broken heart. Ill with the thought of how
she’d betrayed Erik. Ill with the knowledge that he’d seen her…seen her with Raoul.

And ill with the truth that she was too much of a coward to find Erik and to be with him.

It was easier, much easier to agree to marry Raoul. To become the Vicomtesse of Chagny. To live a normal life with a man who loved her, and who had nothing to hide. And who did not wear a mask every day.

Only at masquerade balls.