Page 43 of Angel's Flight

Erik braced himself.He didn’t want to say it, but he couldn’t lie to her.Maybe confessing his sins would help.Maybe if she knew the depth of his shame, she would forgive him.

“I shouldn’t have acted so rashly,” Erik confessed, shoulders sagging under the weight of his guilt.“Hurting Bidaut.Going to Geneva at all.I went too far with Pauline.”

“It was part of the plan,” Christine consoled him, voice gentle as night.“We had to convince her, and I wanted to see her hurt.”

Erik dared to move to the bed, kneeling on the floor so he could look up into Christine’s pensive face.“It’s normal to want to hurt the people who hurt us.That betray us.”

“It’s normal, but it’s not good,” Christine countered.“You were right to trick Bidaut, to save us, but not to give in to that violence.”

“I’m sorry,” Erik repeated as if it would matter.A fresh pang of shame bloomed in his chest.He didn’t deserve the kindness in her eyes, and soon, she’d realize that.“I can never say it enough.”

“Erik,” Christine whispered, placing her hand against his bare cheek.“I forgive you.That is the promise I made to you because I love you.”

“I don’t deserve forgiveness,” Erik said before he could stop himself.“At least, I don’t feel like I deserve it tonight.”

“Would you rather I punish you?”Christine scoffed, but it made something strange prickle under Erik’s skin as he bowed his head.

“Sometimes, I think I would,” he confessed in the barest whisper, his mind drifting back to the last time they had made love and the way she had yanked his hair and clawed his skin.How the pain he deserved had become pleasure and peace.

“What are you talking about?”Christine asked, voice tense.

“Things feel better, sometimes, when you...”Erik began, unsure of how to articulate this.“When you’re in control.When you give me what I deserve.”

“What you think you deserve, you mean,” Christine finished for him, clearly aghast, sitting up in the bed and boxing him in between her legs as she took his hands.“I don’t want to hurt you.You’ve already been hurt enough in your life.”

“That’s...”Erik dared to look up at her, imagining his ruined face in the moonlight.Did he look contrite or horrific?Or both?“That’s what makes it better.To feel pain or to be bound by you.Somehow, it makes the past hurt less.It makes me feel safe to be controlled and—”

“Punished.”Christine finished for him, soft, but not disgusted.Her eyes were unreadable as she looked down on him from high above him.“You don’t...”

“Please,” Erik begged, dropping his head to kiss the hem of her chemise and then the cool skin of her calf.“Please, let me serve you.Give me my penance.Make me your dog and teach me to be gentle, after all I’ve done.”

“I don’t know how,” Christine breathed back as Erik laid his forehead upon her foot.He could feel her trembling.Or was it him?

“Command me.Please.”

He held his breath, eyes closed as his shame and need warred within him.He needed her to do this; dear God, he needed it or he would tear himself apart.

“Get up.Now.”Christine’s voice was entirely changed – husky, confident, and unquestionable.Erik scrambled to obey, standing before her in the watery blue moonlight.“Take off your trousers.”

Erik was quick to comply, once again, exposing his fully naked body to her eyes and the chilly air of the night.Christine looked at him with hooded, lustful eyes as he did.She drew off her chemise in turn, exposing the ivory contours of her body to his eyes.Round breasts and hips, soft belly, and the thatch of hair below it.Utter perfection before his eyes, in perfect contrast to his scarred, ruined flesh.He couldn’t help but reach for her.

Christine slapped away his hand.

“I didn’t command that,” she chided.Erik’s pulse quickened and his blood began to move in one specific direction.Christine smirked as she looked him over.“Does that make you hard?To be reprimanded like an errant boy?”

“It does.”

Christine’s eyes darkened further as she advanced on him until she was an inch away.She lightly tapped his cheek with her open palm.It wasn’t a slap.It was a test.Or a warning.“I didn’t say you could speak, either.”

Erik nearly groaned at the word, but he bit his lip and nodded in turn.He would obey.

Christine leaned towards him, her cheek against his, her breath jagged against his ear as she exhaled.“I will stop if you say to stop.”

Erik nodded again.He understood.

Christine nuzzled against his neck, dropping gentle kisses along his collarbone, lulling him into a haze.Before she bit.Her teeth sank into the meat of his shoulder, not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough to hurt.The pain was brief, but it hit Erik like the first swig of liquor, deliciously clouding his mind.

Again, soft kisses, and another bite on his bicep.Then along his chest, before she grabbed him and held him close as she sucked a brutal mark right above his heart.Erik was fully hard now, his cock pressed between them and leaking for her.It was hard to stay standing as she kept up the random patterns of pecks and then pain, but she was holding him, her elegant nails driving deep into his skin and that was bliss too.His hips moved of their own accord, seeking the relief of friction for the organ trapped between them.

---