Page 27 of Angel's Mask

“You will see, my dear, if you are good, the cure I can give you,” she began, once again dropping the formal technique he had so painstakingly taught her for something rougher, darker, and incredibly tempting. It was Zerlina’s aria fromDon Giovanni, consoling the wounded Masetto. It was teasing, flirtatious, and absolutely maddening. But in the soft, seductive notes there was more than temptation. There was permission.

His eyes never straying from her, Erik let his hand find his cock at last.

“It is natural, not filthy, and no apothecary can carry it,” she sang, and Erik bit his lips to hold back a moan at the pleasure that engulfed him as he listened and palmed himself through his clothes. It was obscene and felt so incredible, and he knew he was damned.

“There is a certain balm I carry within me, I can show it to you, if you desire,” Christine sang and through the fog of yearning, Erik saw her own hands moving, touching her exposed skin with delicate curiosity. “Do you want to know where I keep it?” Her hands slipped below the line of the water, out of Erik’s view and he dug his fingers so hard into the wall that he was sure it would leave marks, while the hand on his cock moved rough and fast and a patch of moisture soaked through his trousers at the sensitive tip.

“Feel the beat of my heart,” she sang, her head falling back as somewhere beneath the water, her hand moved. “Touch me here.”

Erik obeyed, finally loosing his member from the stifling confines of his trousers, and taking himself fully in hand. What was she thinking? What was she feeling? Was she imagining angelic hands upon her as touched herself?

“Feel the beat of my heart,touch me here...here...” The phrase repeated again and again. “Touch me here,” she sang, her voice reaching a peak as her back arched and Erik’s hand sped over his shaft. At the urging of her song, he came. It was a climax the likes of which he hadn’t experienced in forever, whiting out his vision, making the world sing and spin as he poured his seed against the rough wall. He could barely catch his breath as he came down, the image of his Christine once again filling his eyes.

Had she come? She was blushing, biting her lip, but her hands were visible again for a moment before she dunked herself entirely under the water, then rose back up, gasping. Would she even know if she had? She had to be a virgin. What fumbling first exploration had he just been witness to? What sort of corruption had he somehow inspired?

What more could he achieve?

The idea would have made him hard again, had he the capacity. He wanted her. Desperately. He had wanted her for a long while, and he could no longer deny it. There was no use for this lust because there was no way to ever, ever be with her. But he wanted her, nonetheless. More than that, he knew if given the chance he would take any opportunity to be closer to her and feel that ecstasy again. Like Giovanni, he was already damned. Why not do his worst?

“Oh come to the window, my beloved,” his own voice rose in Don Giovanni’s plaintive love song. “Come and dispel my sorrow, if not I will surely die.” He watched as she smiled, watched as her bare breasts rose and fell in the water, her eyes half shut in her own bliss. Her hands remained on the edge of the tub, even as her legs writhed in the water. Maybe she was afraid or having second thoughts...but that would change, the next time they allowed a moment like this. He was sure of it.

He had filled her world with angels, but he felt far more like the devil. A snake in the garden, regarding Eve in her nakedness and bent in his defiant heart on sharing the apple’s taste.

Sin

It was the betweentime. That’s what Christine had taken to calling it in her head. The twilight hours between when work or rehearsals stopped, and a performance began. At these times the Opera wasn’t empty, but it wasn’t bustling either. It made it hard for Christine to wander and explore, for there was always someone hiding around a corner, gossiping, resting, or eating. She wished they were all gone so she could be alone with her ghost and her thoughts...and yet she had also begun to dread such solitude.

Christine walked past the empty singers’ dressing rooms and her face heated. It had been three days and four nights since she’d borrowed Carlotta’s bath. Sometimes when she thought about how she haddisplayedherself she wanted to crawl out of her skin in shame and embarrassment, and other times she chastised her foolishness for not doingmore.

What had she been thinking? Heaven knows. But she had ignited something in herself that she had no idea how to control or tame. Or understand. Every night since then she’d been beset by vague dreams of his shadow solidifying into something solid and real that could touch her. In the dreams, her angel’s vague form would be the one to push apart her legs and caress her as she had barely dared to explore herself in that bath. She’d see his sad eyes and call out to him, Then she would wake, gasping, that treacherous, sinful place between her thighs throbbing. And her clumsy, curious hands could do nothing to relieve the ache.

There was no way to question it because they had not spoken of or acknowledged anything that had happened. Her lessons continued and her teacher remained strict and focused on the music – though he had added Gounod to their repertoire. What would they evensay? She had no words for what she had done anyway, but the question of what he made her feel twisted inside her constantly.

Therefore, her feet wandered like her restless thoughts. Julianne had mentioned looking for Jammes, and so Christine found herself crossing the stage to the dancer’s side, her footsteps echoing in the auditorium beneath the unlit chandelier. She still couldn’t believe that one day she’d sing on this stage. The thought sent a different kind of thrill through her than remembering his gaze upon her bare skin.

The wings were quiet as Christine left the stage, the kind of quiet that made it so easy to believe in ghosts. The curtains swayed, perhaps from Christine’s passing, or perhaps from some unseen spirit. High above in the flies, she could see movement, a stagehand maybe. Or something else. She paused, trying to feel if her own ghost was close but there was no familiar prickle on her skin. Alas.

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