Page 54 of Angel's Kiss
“Erik,” Christine’s voice cut through the dark, and he looked up. He was still there, still home and safe with her.
“Rose was the one to let me out, after I broke and said I’d do whatever Steiner wanted. I wasn’t allowed out of the cellar though. I stayed there, wishing I could just die and be done with it. And then I heard it: a sound like something straight from heaven. It was slow and steady. Only violins, and another sound, melancholy and small but so beautiful. A clarinet. In a melody that rose above everything, like the voice of God once again coming from the dark. I had found myself below the concert hall next to our theater, and do you know who they were playing?”
Christine smiled through the tears on her face. “Mozart.”
“The Clarinet Concerto in A, the adagio. It was perfect. Like no music I had ever heard before. And I knew then I could live. And I had to stay so I could be close to these sounds and discover how to be part of them, to make them even. I learned later that I was in Mozart’s city. And so to learn and survive, I stayed there.”
“It made you a composer.”
“Vienna made me many things. I learned everything I could from anyone I could. Languages, music, magic, and ventriloquism from the Roma who would come in and out of the theater to fill in the show. I hated simply being exhibited for the patrons to scream at, so I became more. I’d do illusions and sing. Until they screamed at the end when they saw my face, I was just like the musicians next door.
“I’d sneak out to hear them and others all over the city once I was older. I’d be thrown in the torture chamber when I was caught, or beaten and whipped, but it didn’t stop me. By the time I was thirteen, I was stealing paper to write my own music. Mozart had composed operas and symphonies by that age, I was already behind. I left some with the conductor next door. He sent it back to Steiner. That was the final straw. Steiner decided he’d had enough of my defiance and since the usual ways weren’t working, he decided to try a new tactic: hurting someone I had come to care about.”
“He knew he couldn’t hurt Rose. She’d married a strongman Steiner had entrapped through a debt, Gregory his name was, and Steiner was afraid of him. So Steiner hurt Sebastian instead, over Constance’s objections. I told him to stop, we all did. But he wouldn’t. I can still hear his weeping, his begging without words. Then Constance attacked, with the knives he had bought her. After that it was a blur of screaming and fighting. Sebastian threw a lantern and a fire broke out. We all made it out alive. Except for the man who had held us captive.”
He could still feel the heat of it, and the rush of freedom he’d felt when he watched that place crumble.
“Is that where these came from?” Christine touched his left shoulder, where beneath his shirt the skin was mottled with burns.
Erik shook his head. “Those were...more recent.”
There was fresh concern in her face. Erik did not want to tell her she should feel fear instead. “But you were done. You could all leave.”
“We were free of Steiner, yes, but not free of what we were. There aren’t many normal jobs for people like us, so most everyone set off looking for another freak show that would pay better and abuse less. I didn’t though. I went looking for my friends among the Roma and begged them to take me with them. And amazingly, they did. I traveled with a caravan from Vienna to Prague and many places after that.”
“It feels useless to tell you that I’m sorry for all that’s happened to you,” Christine murmured. “But I am.”
“It means more than you can know that you even say it,” Erik replied. He looked up at the clock modeled on the one he had marveled at as a foolish teenager who thought he could find a place in the world. “It’s past ten o’clock and you have rehearsal early tomorrow. You should get some rest,” he said, forcing himself to rise, remaining as formal and gentlemanly as he could manage.
“Oh. Yes,” Christine said, standing as well and retreating towards her door, shy and slow. “Thank you for today. For telling me and trusting me.”
“It is I who should thank you, for what you have given me,” Erik replied and dared to look at her. There was unmistakable anticipation in her eyes. And perhaps, if he was going mad, desire. It drew him like a magnet, his feet taking him to her before he could stop. His hands moved of their own volition too, alighting on Christine’s waist as her breath hitched.
All day he had kept himself from this. All day he had tried not to remember kissing her, so as not to lose himself in the need to do it again. But it was impossible now not to want it, not to see her parted lips and remember their softness and heat. He wanted to claim that mouth and every bit of her that went with it.
“Erik,” she breathed. The sound of his name –hisname – spoken with such want behind it shattered the last of his resolve, and he kissed her at last.
It was better than before, and he wanted to catalogue and preserve each detail. He wanted to revel in how her hands snaked around his waist as she pulled him close; how her touch did not hurt or burn but made him feel like a missing part of him had found its way home. He wanted to transcribe the notes of her soft whimper as he pushed her against the wall and his palms swept up over her breasts. He wanted her forever and he wanted all of her.
She tilted her head back, allowing – nay,encouraging– him to kiss the delicate skin of her neck and taste her racing heartbeat.
“No king or emperor has ever received so fine a gift,” Erik murmured against Christine’s skin, drunk on her searing warmth.
She sighed again as his lips made their way down her neck and, almost unbidden, the song that had been in his mind and blood all day began to hum in his throat. It wastheirsong, the one that had seduced her so many times before, when he had been an angel. He was not an angel now, as she responded to the secret melody, her body arching into his. His mouth came to the edge of her dress, and he wanted to sing to her while he tore the fabric off. But he was not that mad. Not yet.
He had been too long separated from her lips, and he pressed closer to her as he kissed her again. She opened her mouth to his, and he dared to dart his tongue past her lips, deepening the kiss. But of all inconveniences, his mask caught awkwardly against her cheek and pressed against her face. How he hated the damn thing.
“You can take it off,” Christine whispered, drawing back and staring up at him through her lashes, her eyes dreamy and dark. “You should.”
“I...” It was she who kissed him now, her fingers twined in his hair. Her heat awakened a desperate need, the same need that had driven him from the bed this morning. Blood rushed to his groin and he felt himself begin to harden, the organ pressing against Christine’s body even as her fingers found the edge of his mask.
“No,” he cried, springing away and turning his back to her so she would not see his obviousdistress.
“What’s wrong?” Christine panted. He looked at her over his shoulder and winced at how utterly sinful she looked: hair tangled, cheeks and lips flushed. He had done that and been eager and ready to do so much more.
“You should get some rest,” he muttered, looking away and gritting his teeth as the hardness in his trousers begged to disagree.
“Erik...”
