Page 96 of Angel's Flight

“And what did it get you?A life on the run?A madwoman after you for a fortune you won’t ever even use?”Pauline laughed.“Sounds like a bad deal.”

“Back to ours.”Erik backed a step away and Pauline followed, a glimmer in her eyes and a grin on her face.Christine hated it.

“I will contact everyone once the deed is done, and you’ll be free.As I said,” Pauline replied with a shrug.Erik looked unconvinced.Christine, for her part, was both furious and bewildered.

“Will you tell me now who employed you in the first place?”Erik was doing his best to sound bored and dispassionate, but Christine knew him.This was a trap.It had to be.

“When we’re done, I’ll tell you everything.”

“And what exactly will be required of me?”Erik asked grimly.

“Oh.You mean to ask if you can get away with a few quick thrusts and be done with me?”Pauline sniggered, and Christine’s jaw dropped.Surely she couldn’t mean...“No.I want you to well and properly fuck me.You have to make me come and you have to finish too.”

She did mean it.Christine didn’t care about the why or how of it, she was too angry and incensed in a way she had never been in her life.

“That may be difficult,” Erik drawled as if he were bored.

“Will it though?”Pauline whispered, approaching Erik again.This time, he didn’t step back.She slid a hand up his chest, making an absurd face she surely thought was alluring, and batting her lashes.“You can pretend I’m her.I want you to.I don’t want you to only fuck me.I want you to make love to me the way you do to her.To your angel.You can even call me Christine if you like.Just make me feel it.”

“How are you to replace her if she is the one I’m imagining?”Erik asked, voice dispassionate and spine straight.“How will I burn the world down with you if all I can think of is her?”

Pauline’s smile faltered and her hand froze.“I’ll be better than her.I know I’m better than a weak, delicate thing like her,” Pauline tried, and Erik gave a knowing laugh.“I’ll let you do things to me she’s never dreamed of.Never heard of.”

“You know, for all that you think you know about the woman I love, you’re quite mistaken about her,” Erik said calmly.“She’s more formidable and vicious than you could ever imagine.”

Christine didn’t want to think about what it made her feel to hear him say that.Was she proud or ashamed?Was she ready, right now, for them to both embrace the darkness they had left behind or was she the weak, sweet fool Pauline assumed her to be?

“But that doesn’t surprise me, Pauline,” Erik went on.“You’re not very smart.You think you are, but alas, you’re too in love with your masks.I’d know.I used to think I was powerful and unstoppable too.Until her.”

“What—” Pauline stammered, and Christine was sure she could feel the way Erik smiled.

“While our lives may not be all we want yet, you must understand, Christine is everything to me,” Erik nearly sang, and Pauline’s insipid, round face went pale.“I’d do anything for her, including delivering a gift to her to beat senseless if she sees fit.”

“No—”

Christine moved without thinking.She felt the handle of the pitcher from the wash basin in her hand before she even decided to grab it.She had it raised before Pauline turned to her in shock and horror.The woman made a noise of protest, raising her hands to defend herself, but she was too late because Christine’s rage was faster.

The pitcher shattered against Pauline’s skull and the woman crumpled to the floor, clutching her ear and weeping.

“You could never be her, Pauline,” Erik said with a smile as Christine let the handle of the pitcher drop to the ground.“You’re a weed.A bramble.My Christine is the forest itself, in all its beauty and power.”

“I was going to say you’re an idiot for thinking you could seduce my husband,” Christine spat, another flare of possessive jealousy sparking in her chest.“But he’s more poetic.”

“Fuck you, you stupid bitch,” Pauline sputtered.Was there blood in her mouth?Christine found herself hoping she’d lost a tooth.

“No.I’ll be fucking my husband,” Christine was shocked to hear herself say.“In ways you couldn’t imagine.”

Pauline rose, preparing to pounce on Christine, but looking nothing but pathetic with her gashed face and bloody grimace.“Now you’ll never—”

“Please shut her up, my love,” Christine ordered calmly and savored a moment of pure excitement as Erik gripped their nemesis by her throat.

Pauline struggled, of course, the way people often did when Erik began to cut off the air from their lungs.Christine had seen it enough times now that it wasn’t even horrifying.She found herself looking at the woman who had thought to supplant her with clinical interest, noting how her face grew red and her hands became rigid claws, trying to gain purchase on Erik’s sleeve.

“Shall we dispose of her?”Erik asked, and Christine didn’t know if that was a bluff or not.For a moment, she didn’t care.She wanted to destroy the thing that continued to rob her of her happiness, the person that had stalked and manipulated her, only to try to be her in the most insulting and inept way possible.How embarrassing for her.

“No.Send her to sleep,” Christine sighed.“Her pathetic life is punishment enough.For now.”

More impotent rage flared in Pauline’s eyes before they rolled back in her head and she went limp.This time, when she fell in a heap on the floor, she didn’t stir.

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