Unmasqued: An Erotic Novel of The Phantom of The Opera (24 page)

Madame looked at Christine, waiting until she looked back. “Make no mistake.…Philippe is the one who killed Régine tonight, and he did it to make certain the public outcry toward the Opera Ghost is raised. Erik will not be safe for long. And neither are you.”

“T
hink of it as having your cake and eating it too. There is no need to wed the girl in order to have her as your own,” Philippe told his brother over a glass of claret the next evening. He still burned with hatred and fury for the mangled-faced bastard who’d interrupted his pleasure with Christine, but he was pleased that he had confirmed that Erik was indeed the Opera Ghost.

Now it was only a matter of time before he had his vengeance…and that sweet little quim. He sipped and smiled and hardened.

“A wife and a plaything,” Raoul was musing, as though the thought had never occurred to him before. Perhaps it hadn’t, the fool.

“Your marriage into the Le Rochet family will bring nothing but more power and money to our family, Raoul. And Celeste is most enamored with you.…Certainly, she is not as beautiful as
Miss Daaé, but she is rich and she will stay out of your way. You will be able to keep Miss Daaé in your bed, and Celeste in your parlor. In fact…” Philippe picked up the phallic-handled ivory whip he’d just acquired, and snapped it experimentally. “I think we could find quite comfortable accommodations for Miss Daaé here at Château de Chagny, don’t you think? The estate is certainly large enough.”

He cracked the whip again languidly, delighting in the clean, crisp sound it made. From his chair, he shifted so that he faced the spread-eagled, ass-side-up lovely little upstairs maid who was arranged over a chaise. Just as Christine Daaé had been last night. Or would have been, had Erik not interrupted them.

Anger tightened his mouth and he snapped the whip expertly, watching in delight as it scored a thin red mark down the maid’s buttock. She jerked, shrieked, and jerked again when he laid another line across her other buttock. Not enough to break the skin…no, he had more finesse than that.

“My dear friend…Rose? Is that your name?” The whip cracked, and she shuddered, sobbing that he could call her Rose if that was what he wished. “Rose and the others will make certain Christine is well cared for. And you could visit her whenever you wish.”

Raoul smiled, nodding slowly, as though he had just worked out the details in his mind. “Perhaps that could work. I could be her protector. She needs a protector, and if it is I, then no one else will dare to touch her. If Christine stayed here, Celeste would have no knowledge of her existence. I could visit when I wish. And I know that Rose and the rest of the staff are discreet.”

“Indeed.” Philippe nodded. He paid the staff very, very well in order to ensure their discretion…and their participation in
all
of the duties he required of them. Rose was a bit new to his private chambers, although she’d been at the château for well over a year,
and therefore was still being trained. But he was certain she too would soon fit in rather nicely. And if she didn’t…well…he had several options at his disposal.

And, for the moment, with her long, black curls and creamy white skin, she looked just as he’d imagined Christine would have looked…bare to him. Helpless. And, if he was not mistaken, more than a bit moist there between the legs.

He drained his claret and stood, the cock-handled whip in one hand, the other fingering the fringed edges of the braided end. His own cock filled his trousers and his breathing quickened.

“But I am not certain Christine would agree to come here, to Chagny House,” Raoul said woefully.

“Do you want that Opera Ghost—what does she call him, the Angel of Music?—to have her? For that is, indeed, what he has planned. He will abscond with her and keep her prisoner in his deep, dark lair.”

“
No, not again!
I could not bear it if he should have Christine. She belongs to
me.
” This fierce possessiveness was so unlike his brother, but quite welcome, in Philippe’s opinion. At last, Raoul had come to see his point of view.

Pleased, Philippe opened his trousers and his erection sprang free. “Never to worry, brother,” he told him, standing at the edge of the chaise. Still holding the whip, he shoved a small bolster pillow beneath Rose’s hips, pulling her tied arms and legs even tighter as her ass rose. Her plump red lips lifted and opened toward him, glistening in invitation. His cock twitched.

“Never to worry,” he repeated, coming around to her face, flushed and wet with tears. Another pillow then, under her chin, raising her face so that it rested on the edge of the chaise, facing Raoul. Damn, she did look like Christine…enough that another provoking image filled his mind.

Rose and Christine. Rose on Christine. Christine on Rose. Christine twins. That would be a pretty sight.

He plunged the white dildo whip handle into her mouth so far her eyes goggled and she gagged, coughing and choking behind it. Tears streamed from her eyes and she jerked and twitched as he trickled fingers down her spine, between the globes of her ass, and down into the slick wetness of her quim. He took it, smoothed it over and around her nether lips, delighting in her moans and cries behind the ivory cock.

“Christine will be more than pleased to accept your invitation, you shall see, Raoul,” Philippe said, settling himself behind the spread thighs. “I will tell you exactly how to ensure it.”

And he slid inside, already quite satisfied.

Erik was back in the damp, foggy corridor. It stretched on forever, and he ran, his feet pounding on the stone floor.

The sounds of pursuit came faster and harder, closer. His lungs burned, his legs ached, yet he ran, pushing himself. A little farther…a little farther…

His vision shifted, fogging from those horrors many years ago to a new scene. A room strewn with tapestries, bedding, pillows, ornate furnishings.

Christine. Sprawled on the bed…was it his bed? Her hair spilling over the sides of the narrow mattress, dark against the rich gold silk. Her breasts, round and full, their curve echoed in the swell of her hips, nipples jutting and moist. As though someone had been sucking on them.

He stood above her, at the end of the bed, looking down. Her legs wide, not like a whore’s, not crudely…but inviting, beckoning. His cock hardened, lengthened, throbbed.

Then Erik realized he couldn’t move. His arms were spread, his wrists bound to the top of the tall bedposts…his legs spread, ankles bound at the corners, his feet on the mattress. Suspended at the end of the bed, looking down at the feast below him…unable to sample it.

Then Christine was touching herself. She tugged at her nipples, plucking at them with her forefinger and thumb…pluck, flick, tease.…They tightened before his eyes and he pulled on his wrists, pulled, but there was no give.

She slipped a finger to her lips, over the plump red curve, inside, then out again, glistening. He watched as she moved it in circles over her nipple, around and around, jiggling and shaking her breast, her eyes burning into his.

Then, down between her legs, her hands moved. One opened her lips, holding them wide and red and wet, and the other slipped in and out, around, one, two, three fingers inside the deep, dark entrance. When she brought them out, they dripped, shone with her juices.

He struggled again, his cock straining as hard as his arms. She lifted her hips, inviting, lifted them, lowered, lifted, lowered, in a parody of the rhythm he needed.

Then it changed again.…Somehow he was in her place, on the bed. His arms tied, his legs in a vee. His cock straight and towering, twitching as he watched her above him. Her breasts lifted with her arms outstretched, at each bedpost, just as his had been. Her legs wide, as though they were straddling the mattress itself. A shiny trail lined the inside of her thigh.

Then, wide, dark fingers slid from behind, covering her breasts. Lifting them, thumbing over the stark-hard nipples. Squeezing.

Christine jolted, her hips moving, and Erik saw the shadow behind her. Her head tipped back, her long, white throat convulsing
as she cried her pleasure. He watched as those rough hands fondled her, covered her smooth white skin, sliding over her belly, her ribs, her hips…everywhere. One hand on a breast, pinching at the nipple, while the other slid to cover her mound.

Erik’s mouth dried when that thick finger slipped down into the fluff of hair, jimmying there between her lower lips. Christine’s hips moved frantically, tipping and twisting, trying to slip that finger in farther…but she was as helpless as Erik.

His cock was screaming; he probably was too, but nothing filled his ears except Christine’s cries of pleasure. “Please, please,” she moaned, “please…”

He could tell just when the man’s cock slipped inside her from behind. She lifted, rose, and her eyes fluttered. Her chin lifted even more, and the delicate bones at her throat became shadowed as the man’s head bent to her shoulder, covering her neck with his mouth as her head dipped to one side. Her long black hair fell like a curtain behind her outstretched arm, swaying as she undulated with pleasure.

The tendons in her arms tightened as she fought with her restraints, fought to gain the movement she desperately needed, the freedom to pump her hips, to push herself closer into his fingers. Her mouth opened into a dark, silent oval, her lips red and wet from biting them. Christine’s hips moved faster, Erik’s cock surged harder, he pulled futilely at the bonds holding him, and he watched those dark hands…those rough hands, holding her hips, pulling and pushing them until she screamed her orgasm, shaking and shuddering from her spread-eagled position.

And then suddenly, she was falling…falling from her mount. Her soft, wet body landed on him, her face just off his chest. Her hips at his knees. Her torso next to his needy cock.

He saw the man behind her.
Philippe de Chagny. Not Raoul. Philippe.

He advanced, his face a mask filled with mockery and pleasure. Christine’s arms lay limply across the bed, across Erik’s helpless body.

And then she was on her hands and knees, over him, just over Erik…but not…not where he wanted her.

One leg between his, her knees straddling his thigh. Her breasts hung in front of him…moved closer as she shifted forward, over him, still over him, now her belly high above his chest. Her nipples teased, her breasts bumping against each other, just over his face. He could see them, could almost reach up to taste those jutting, red nipples.

Her face rose behind him, above his head, so he could not see her expression…but when he looked down along the line between her breasts, to her curving belly and the black nest of hair at the end, he saw another set of thighs behind her. Thick, hairy thighs, and then the edges of thick, dark fingertips, grasping her waist. Just above him, just above Erik’s own belly.

Christine’s cry of pleasure pierced his ears as Chagny’s cock slid inside her. Erik could see his ballocks dangling behind her spread thighs. They moved above him, Chagny swift and sure, in and out, jostling Christine so that her hands, placed on the mattress above Erik’s head, brushed against his hair as she shifted to keep her balance.

He watched in horror and fury as that thick dark cock worked inside her, teasing him with what he could not have, and what Chagny took, and took.…A long, turgid column sliding into dark, wet lips…faint suction sounds, slipping, slick noises…in and out, long and short, her lower lips moving together, then apart, as he moved in and out. Those heavy hands moved, covering her ivory breasts, dark and rough, squeezing them, just above
Erik’s face. He struggled, kicking at his tight ankles, pulling at his wrists, his hips jostling the bed…but nothing put Chagny off his stride.

Christine’s body shone above him, moist with sweat and with her own juices, both sliding down her thighs to pool onto Erik’s own belly. He was wild, pulling, thrashing, fighting…and still, Chagny pumped away, moving those hips teasingly above him, those breasts nearly close enough to touch…and then the end, the shuddering, quaking, heaving…and the last, worst ignominy…when Christine’s knees collapsed and she and her lover fell atop him.

Trapping him.

His aching cock dripping and surging, his face wet.

His heart pounding.

Erik dragged his eyes open at last. Perhaps he could have crawled out of the dream earlier…but instead he had forced himself to endure. To feel the pain.

Christine had meant pain to him. Only pain.

He’d given her everything, and she had killed him.

His eyes, adjusting to the dim candlelight, saw the parchment curling next to him on the bed.

Maude had written, and he had yet to decide whether to respond.

Erik closed his eyes. His dreams were about to become his life.

C
hristine had not sung onstage since her abduction by Erik, but tonight she returned, singing the role of Scheherazade for the first—and last—time.

Her dark hair had been gathered at the crown of her head, wrapped with gold and purple, and then left to fall in thick corkscrew waves to her shoulder blades. One long curl hung from each side of her temples, wrapped with jewel-laden cords so that they sparkled amethyst and carnelian and topaz. Despite the harem setting, her costume was more French than Persian, with silky, flowing skirts of sheer material that slid sinuously about her legs and brushed her bare feet. The bodice of her gown was heart shaped, the vee cutting well below and between her breasts. The rounded tops of the corsetlike bodice curved down around her breasts, cupping them like the hands of a lover, leaving only a narrow strip of boning thrusting up to cover each of her nipples.