Unmasqued

by Colette Gale

  The room was still dim; not dark, but dim. One gas lamp glowed on the wall next to her, casting just enough light that her form showed clear in the mirror. The rest of the chamber held only shadows and the faint aroma of rose.

  “Christine…you have pleased me to no end.”

  “Thank you, angel. You are my inspiration.”

  “If you sing like that this evening, you will inspire the entire Opera House to love you.”

  “I will, angel. Erik.” She had thought of him as her ange for so long that it was easy to forget his name.

  “Now…” His voice took on a gentle purr. “Now I wish to see you, Christine. All of you. So that when you stand onstage tonight, and I am sitting in Box Five, I will see you in a way that no one else can. And I will know that you sing for me.”

  A sharp shot of desire pierced her middle at his words. She felt the tingle, the curling pain of lust, low in her belly and then down between her legs. Just from his words. From the image he’d placed in her mind.

  “Now…take off your dressing gown, Christine.”

  Her fingers trembled as she unknotted the tie just below her breasts, and she allowed the ruffled, silky robe to slide from her shoulders and crumple to the floor. She stood in front of the mirror, and saw herself dressed in the loose, light chemise fitted to her curves by the corset over it. Her feet were not bare; thin silk stockings covered them and stretched up past her knees, under the hem of the chemise.

  “More, Christine.”

  She took the top edges of the corset over each breast and wrenched them toward each other, twisting to release the top hook. Her breasts rubbed against the fabric covering them, brushing her fumbling fingers, and they swelled, aching for something more.

  The hooks released, one by one, and she was able to breathe deeply, more freely. Christine dropped the corset, and it fell at her feet with a soft thud. She stood in her chemise, with its low, rounded neckline made of fabric thin enough to see her nipples thrusting through. Her hair had fallen half over one shoulder, and half down her back, so that she could see the ends of her curls just coming from around the back of her hip. Her cheeks were flushed, her pink lips parted and moist from a quick lick of her tongue.

  “Christine…” His voice coaxed, but there was an edge there…one that hovered just beyond her hearing, but was ready to lash out if she did not comply.

  She reached down, grasping the hem of her shift, and pulled it slowly up and over her head, and then she was free.

  Tall, slender, pale, with a dark thatch between her legs, two dusky spots at her breasts with curving shadows beneath them, and a swath of curling hair falling behind her shoulders to whirl around her hips.

  She could feel him breathing, felt herself breathing faster, more harshly. Yet she stood there, proud, bare, ready.

  Ready for him.

  “Step to the mirror.”

  Christine's heart pounded; she could see the mad pumping in her throat. Her eyes fixated on the sign of her racing pulse as she walked slowly toward the tall silver length of mirror. She stopped when she was close enough that her breath left hot circles of condensation on the glass.

  “Closer.”

  She did.

  Now her panting left larger circles. Her ten fingers, each pressing against the smooth, hard surface, squeaked softly as she positioned them. Her nipples just brushed the ice of the mirror, as cold as the Seine in January. The tips of her silk-clad toes touched the bottom of the heavy, ornate frame.

  Her nipples hardened further, and the contrast between the heat of the rest of her body and the chill at her breasts sent another trail of lust skittering through her. She shifted, rubbing the very tips of her nipples against the cold, making them harder, pointier. Aching.

  “Closer.” The command was nothing more than a breath.

  Christine moved, and now she pressed against the cold mirror as if she were lying on it, turning her head to one side. It was unbearably cold, stamping her warm skin against the silvery glass…but she did it, breathing hard and concentrating on the feeling of stark cold versus the heat of desire. Little bumps erupted over her body and she had to close her mouth to keep from crying out at the amazing cold. Incredible that such a smooth, clear surface could cause such discomfort, such shock.

  She rested her cheek flat, so close that her eyescould not focus on the image she made.

  Her breasts pushed against the chill, two icy circles seeping into her hard, aching nipples.

  Her hips thrust forward, the bone of her pubis trapping the mass of tight black curls between it and the silver glass.

  The tops of her thighs; then her knees, slightly bent so that she could press against the looking glass.

  The tender, sensitive inside skin of her arms, forming L shapes on either side of her head.

  “How does that feel, Christine?”

  She could not form the words, but she felt it. The hot core in her belly and the gathering moisture between her legs. The torture of her hard nipples against the glass, still so cold.

  “Now, straighten your arms; grab the edge of the frame.”

  She did, sliding her damp hands along the freezing glass, leaving a trail of moisture behind them while her breasts crushed against the silver. She could barely reach the edges of the frame, but at last her fingers closed over the bumps of a rose on the left, and something she could not identify on the right. She curled her fingers around the edges, and felt the muscles in her arms relax, felt the pleasure of stretching her limbs.

  And then, something closed around her right wrist, locking it into place from the back side of the mirror. She didn’t have a chance to react before the left one was confined. Caught, tied, trussed to the edge of the mirror frame.

  Her breath left her in a whoosh, a gasp, and she twisted her head against the glass, turning her face to the other side as if she thought she might get a glimpse…of something. Her cheek, her nose and mouth, her lashes…her other cheek, trapping a thick lock of hair. Pressing against the warm mirror.

  “How do you feel, Christine?”

  Her sex was throbbing; her nipples were in agony; her breath was coming so fast that she steamed a huge, moist circle on the mirror. She licked her lips, tried to swallow. All she could think of was how the smooth, cold glass felt against her skin.

  “Angel,” she breathed.

  “Erik. My name is Erik.”

  “Erik. Please, Erik…”

  Pressed against the glass, she could see nothing that was not directly in front of her face, only the wall—two, perhaps three feet away—a gas lamp, the corner of a small table.

  But she heard something, and then she began to breathe harder. Her breath came in short, sharp gasps, because she knew he was there. In the room with her. Somehow.

  She tried to pull away from the mirror, but her arms were extended so far that she could barely turn her face from side to side. When she struggled to raise her head, her sex pushed against the glass, the coarse hairs crushed beneath it. She could not pull far enough to see anything but the small distance to her right side…or to her left.

  Christine was not frightened. But she was…aware. So completely, painfully aware of every hair on her body, every muscle, every heartbeat, every breath…of the growing moisture and heat, her need…

  When he touched her, she jerked, slamming her hips into the mirror before she could stop herself. His hand—no, a finger…just one finger trailed, bumping, down her spine as the other hand lifted her hair away, baring her back, without touching her skin.

  A bare finger. Not a gloved one.

  Flesh to flesh. Warm, roughly padded, firm and sure, his finger moved down to the curve of her buttocks, slipped quickly into the top of the cleft…then disappeared.

  Two hands gathered the mass of her hair; she felt them pull it together, lift it, and twist it into a loose coil…Then something slid into it, a comb across her scalp holding her hair in place, and he removed his hands. Her nape and shoulders and back were bare.
r />   Christine closed her eyes, waiting, trying to slow her breath, to release the coil of lust that was so tight it was painful.

  Then she felt him at the back of her left leg, two hands deftly rolling the silk stocking down her thigh, over her knee, and to the floor. She lifted her foot without hesitation, and felt the rough wool of the carpet under it when the stocking was removed. He did the same with the other, and then she was completely naked. Totally bare. Hidden only by the mirror against her.

  “Erik…” she moaned. She didn’t know what else to do. He wasn’t touching her anymore; he wasn’t speaking. “Please…”

  She felt rather than saw his shadow as he stepped closer; his figure blocked the direct light from the gas lamp, so all she could see in the close mirror was the dark shape of a head and shoulders looming behind her.

  Then a hand pressed flat against the center of her back, just between her shoulder blades. Fingers curled gently around the nape of her neck and delicately held her there as another hand slid down along the right side of her body. His hand traced her ribs and over the swell of her hip, then cupped one side of her rear.

  Nothing but that, nothing but that bare touch, and she was trembling beneath it. Panting. The stinging between her legs grew, and she felt wetness surge as she throbbed and pushed against the mirror.

  “Spread your legs.”

  His fingers dipped low from behind, and slid into the lower vee between her legs, up, and into the pool of her moisture. His thumb fit in the valley between her buttocks, and his fingers began to circle around her inner lips, tracing the slick opening, rolling through the wetness, and spreading it over her plump labia.

  Through the roaring in her ears, she could hear his breathing rough behind her. She felt the way his talented hand, prisoning her neck so gently, trembled and flexed over her skin. But most of her attention was focused on the hard, throbbing nub of her pip as his fingers slipped around it, and next to it, and then, finally, cupped it from behind. Flicked it. Once, twice…she moaned, pushing back, away from the mirror, into his hand.

  “Christine…” His voice shook.

  Now he was close behind her; his forehead rested on the mirror next to hers so that she couldn’t turn to look at him. She felt the bare brush of his sleeve to the left of her shoulder, and down, near her knees, where his trousers touched the back of her leg. He moved again, and then she was trapped between his tall, powerful body and the cold, hard silk of glass.

  His arms traced hers, spread far from her body, his hands closing around her wrists; his legs pushed into the backs of hers. His hips, his cock, pressed into the small of her back, the buttons of his trouser fastenings stamping on her skin.

  His hands slid from her wrists along the length of her arms, down over the underside of her shoulders, and alongside her breasts. She arched back from the mirror as far as her taut arms would allow, and he laughed softly against her head, his breath hot at her temple.

  “Impatient, are you, Christine?” But he slipped his hands around the front of her, closing over her hard nipples, still cold from the mirror, and covered them with his warm palms. From behind, he pushed her hips into the mirror and massaged her breasts with long, flexible fingers. She moaned, and rolled her pubis into the glass, and he followed her rhythm, rolling and shifting with her. She was trembling and pulsing all over, her entire being focused on the need he aroused within her.

  Christine tried to turn her head, to put her face next to his, but he hissed and pulled his head away from the mirror before she could come face-to-face with him.

  “You are impatient, aren’t you?” There was that edge again, lacing his erotic voice, the edge that told her he was not pleased with her impatience. She tipped her head back to the mirror, pressing her cheek again to the moist spot she’d left, and closed her eyes.

  “Please, Erik,” she whispered.

  He pulled on her nipples, one after the other in a fast, tortuous rhythm that caused her breathing to grow rougher, more ragged. Spikes of desire shot down to her pip with each tweak. It felt as if it was growing, swelling, and could take no more before it would burst…

  Then he slid his hands down and captured her hips, one on each side, and held her firmly against the mirror. She could not move from the waist down, and barely from the waist up.

  He’d moved away and only his hands were touching her, planting her pubis and hip bones on the glass.

  Then she felt his mouth on her shoulder, hot and moist and scoring into her skin. He was not gentle, or featherlight…He nipped and teethed and licked, all the while holding her hips so that she could not wriggle, until she was shaking and shuddering with need.

  He sucked on her skin, trailed the delicate tip of his tongue all the way down her spine. She felt him kneeling behind her, braced herself as his tongue slid along the cleft of her buttocks, sending her squirming and shivering, half sobbing, and gasping to catch her breath.

  Oh, please…was all she could think. She could not even form the words. Her pip was throbbing so hard, it was painful; she could feel a trickle of wet as it trailed down the inside of her thigh. Then his tongue was there, licking it, following the trail back up to her hot, wet quim, and she thought she would scream.

  He pulled the sides of her bottom apart, leveraged her hips away from the glass so that she was half-leaning, half-hanging from her wrists; her face, shoulders, breasts, arms, shoved up against it. She felt him moving close behind her, and suddenly his tongue was just where she needed it.

  She gave a soft scream, jerking uncontrollably against the mirror as he flicked his tongue over the hard nub of her tickler, faster, faster, harder, side to side, until she let go and sagged into a mass of quivering, shaking, shuddering muscle and bone and wetness.

  Her mouth was open, planted against the glass, screaming silently into its silvery silk as she came, and came, and convulsed against it. Her body, damp and hot, slid helplessly against the mirror, leaving chaotic streaks over it.

  “Now,” said Erik into her ear, “you will remember this when you sing tonight, won’t you, Christine?” He sounded ragged, out of breath, strained. “I’ll be watching you from Box Five, and remember…you sing for me. And me alone. No one else can give you what I give you.”

  And then he was gone.

  And moments later, her wrists loosened from behind the mirror, and Christine collapsed in a heap on the floor, landing on the silk of her discarded robe and the taut boning of her corset.

  FIVE

  * * *

  Meanwhile, in a well-appointed flat not so far from the Opera House, Carlotta shrieked and tore the parchment paper that purported to be a note from the Opera Ghost into two long strips. “Impossible! Impossible! He cannot!”

  “But what is it, ma chère?” Guy looked up from his pose upon her pillow-laden bed.

  She cast a glance at his sleek, bulging muscles, arranged just the way she liked them, tan and perfect against the light bedding. He was propped on an elbow and his long, muscular legs were crossed at the ankle. His cock, at half-mast in its bush of tawny hair, enticed her, just as the classic beauty of his mouth did.

  But then she recalled the letter, signed O.G., but more likely to have been written by a friend of Miss Christine Daaé. “Imbecile!”she cried, her feigned French or Spanish accent (depending upon the day) dissolving into her gutter London voice. “The cur thinks to keep me from singing! He says if I sing tonight, a horrible catastrophe will occur.”

  “But who would not want La Carlotta to sing?” asked Guy, running a hand artfully through his thick golden hair and placing his luscious lips in a pout. “He is foolish. And not worth your time, chère. Come here…Let me distract you from this foolishness.”

  “The Opera Ghost! He does not want La Carlotta to sing. He wishes for his student Christine Daaé to take my place on the stage.” Carlotta’s chest felt tight. She should never have bowed out of the performance last evening. The papers had been filled with praise for the young bitch, whose freshness
had surprised and delighted them. “The exaltation of a voice and the rapture of a pure soul,” raved L'Opinion Nationale, which had only days earlier sung praises for Carlotta’s own clear, glass-shattering soprano.

  She was only thirty-five—much too young to be replaced by that snippet of a girl.

  “Opera Ghost?” Guy sounded confused…but that was not unusual. He had muscle and stamina abounding, but what he had between his legs seemed to seep every bit of sense from his brain. Not that Carlotta cared much about the brains of a young buck like Guy. She had money enough, and brains of her own, and found she needed little from Guy or his ilk but a strong, on-command performance. Which he was most inclined to give.

  “That bloody ghost!”

  “But there are no such things as ghosts, chère. And you do not take orders from anyone but the managers, do you not?”

  “No, that is true.” Perhaps she was becoming a bit too sensitive. Messieurs Richard and Moncharmin had said nothing to her about not singing. The vile note had to have been written by that little snip, or one of her supporters.

  “Please, ma chère, you will upset yourself. Why don’t you come over here and let me ease your worries?” He patted a pink satin pillow, jostling its tassel.

  Carlotta eyed him speculatively. He settled back flat on the mattress, placing his hands behind his head. The bulge of muscle filled the triangles his arms made, and his stone-hard pectorals gleamed smooth and tan in the sunlight streaming through the window. She smiled coyly, stepping toward the bed as she dropped the strips of parchment at her feet.

  How glad she was that she had graduated from the grasping hands of Monsieur Contriste, her first protector, to this stage in her career, where she need not sacrifice anything for money, and where she made her own choices—in bed and otherwise. She had Maude Giry and her own talent and hard work to thank for her current situation. She was not about to let a wisp of a girl—or an Opera Ghost—take it away from her.

  She had heard, for she had spies in the theater, that the Chagny brothers had dined with the bitch last evening. If Christine Daaé had such backing as from the comte and his brother, that would not bode well for Carlotta. But her spy said it was the younger one, the vicomte, who appeared most taken with her usurper.