Unmasqued

by Colette Gale

  And the most volatile of orgasms.

  Thwack!

  Philippe cracked the whip, snapping it in the air just behind Delia’s ear, and watched in abject pleasure as she jerked and trembled, pulling at the manacles that held her wrists above her head.

  She was already sobbing, and he hadn’t even touched her yet.

  “Now, my dear countess,” he said in his low, rolling voice as his trousers tightened over his swelling cock, “I want you to show me how much you love the taste of my leather. It had better be loud…and it had better be real.”

  Delia, his wife and quite honestly the best he’d ever fucked, which was the only reason he’d deigned to make her his countess, panted and gasped her intention to comply.

  Her pale ass rounded plumply over the smooth wooden pole that she half straddled, half hung from. The pole was built for such a purpose, set at a forty-five-degree angle from floor to ceiling. She had clambered up as far as she could go, holding on with her hands and wrapping her legs around it, all the while attempting to dodge the flick of his whip whilst retaining her balance.

  When she had climbed as high as she could, Philippe had reached up to stretch her hands along the length of the pole, manacling her to chains that hung from the ceiling. Then he’d pulled her higher. Next, he strapped her knees together beneath the pole, and her ankles above it, leaving her precariously balanced with her ass and juicy pink quim lifted and wide open to his view.

  And what a lovely view it was.

  Crack!

  He flicked the leather thong in the air behind her, and she startled, whimpering. The red lips of her pussy trembled and shivered as she tried to maintain her balance.

  She dared not fall, for she knew the penalty if she did.

  Crack! Thwack!

  This time, the nubbin end of the whip snapped at her buttocks and Delia jerked and cried out.

  But not loud enough. Not nearly loud enough.

  Philippe stepped closer and sent the leather raining down on her, once, twice, thrice…laying pink welts over her buttocks, and one over the backs of her legs. He knew exactly how to wield the leather tail without drawing blood. Pain, yes, of course…but no permanent marks. Nothing that would make her unable to perform her duties.

  Her sobs were muffled as she tried to contain them. “Did you like that, my dear Delia?” His cock pounded in its confines; he slipped his hand down and loosened his trousers.

  “Yes…yes.” Her words came out in little sobbing gasps.

  His cock free, Philippe slid the length of the leather braid between his fingers, all the way to the narrowest part, and toyed with the little knotted nub at the end. Looking over at the sleek black rack on the wall, he considered exchanging this whip for one with six little nibs at the end…but decided not to. There was something ironically lovely about flaying a woman with a pip-ended whip.

  “I can’t hear you, my dear,” he growled, twitching the whip and sending the barest brush of it over her ass.

  “Please, Philippe, please…” she cried louder.

  When he reached forward to touch her with his finger, she started and tensed. He slid his middle finger down from her tight little anus to the full, hot lips of her labia, massaging in deft circular motions through her juices, then brought them back up and around her puckered rear opening. Then back down to the little throbbing pip, where he fingered it just as he had the end of his whip.

  Delia squirmed and sighed, her breathing speeding and little beads of moisture forming over her upper lip and sheening on her back. “Please, please, please, please…” she whispered over and over, lifting her hips as high as her trembling thighs would allow, giving him better access.

  Then, without warning, he removed his hand and flicked the whip in one smooth motion, replacing pleasure with pain, and he heard the soft, wet thwack of the leather meet her drenched lips.

  She arched up, raising her head in a vain bid to pull her arms free, as her hips pushed down to the pole as if to protect her pussy, and cried out louder than ever.

  “Very good, Delia, very good,” Philippe told her, stepping back to get a good, wide sweep. “Now, let's hear it some more.”

  And he raised his arm and let the whip fly.

  It branded her back, and he sent it cracking through the air and smacking against her skin, more and more, until she was thrashing on the pole. Her hips rose and fell with each blow; her arms jerked and shook, trembling and stretched above her head. Her face, turned toward him, was tear-streaked and wide-eyed. Blond hair fell in one long swath over her neck and one shoulder, shimmering like a curtain with her every movement.

  He dropped the whip and seized her hips, straddling the pole behind her, and slammed his engorged cock into her juicy, swollen sex. Delia gasped and shuddered, her flesh trembling beneath his hands.

  Bending forward, he reached down around and covered her two dangling breasts, one with each hand, lifting, lowering, squeezing and pinching. Her hips began to move under him, and the pleasure built painfully in his cock. Twisting her hard nipples, he plucked at them as he rammed her full, in and out, thrust after thrust.

  She groaned and cried and twitched in agitation beneath him; he could feel her rising to the peak and just before she tipped over, he pulled out, jerking his hot spew all over her ass, and the gentle curves above it. He spewed and shuddered, his eyes rolling back in his head for a moment as he savored the release.

  Delia whimpered, continuing to move in a vain attempt to bring herself to orgasm, and Philippe climbed off her rocking body.

  He picked up the whip and brought it down over her left buttock, the puddle of come splattering under its force and flying through the air. She shrieked and bucked harder.

  “You…did…not…please…me.” He marked each syllable with the flay of the whip, and Delia struggled under the slicing leather. And when he saw that she was trying to grind her throbbing nubbin onto the pole in search of some relief, he laughed and changed the angle of the whip.

  One smack across her labia and she was lifting those juicy hips again, and left off trying to cheat herself into orgasm.

  Three more thwacks and he let the whip fall to his side so he could observe. And enjoy the moment.

  Delia lay panting on the pole, her bum pink and red with welts, juice from her pussy smeared all over her swollen lips, and his spew shining over her skin.

  “See?” he said, turning away from his wife and toward the peephole in the wall. He opened the hidden latch and drew the door open. “I have often spoken of the pleasures of marriage…and now you have seen for yourself what mastery you might obtain.”

  Raoul stepped into the room, his attention focused quite appropriately on the sweating, straining, submissive Delia. “Yes, I see.”

  “Do not be so hesitant, brother,” Philippe snapped. “She is eager for you. Help yourself.”

  Raoul walked toward his brother’s wife, unfastening the buttons of his trousers as he went. Philippe watched as the healthy young cock, thicker and longer than his own, was released.

  It was not the size but how it was wielded, Philippe knew. Thus, he did not feel the slightest bit of envy when Raoul slipped it slowly inside that lovely sex. He watched his brother's buttocks tighten and flex as he stroked and thrust, slick with the sounds of her juices, as his rhythm became faster and more urgent.

  At last, when he gave a harsh, guttural sigh with one last thrust, Raoul slumped forward over Delia's beautiful hips as she shuddered and came beneath him, crying out in relief.

  Philippe, his own cock throbbing again, yanked his brother away and took his place, filling his wife with his member and reminding her who was master. He pinched her nipples, reached around, and tweaked her pip, and rammed into her a mere three times before ejaculating.

  When he pulled away, breathing calmly and rebuttoning his trousers, he turned to look at Raoul. “When you have the Daaé wench, she will make a nice addition to our escapades, will she not?”

  Raoul was fastidi
ously wiping the wetness from his still-hard cock. He looked up at Philippe, shock blossoming over his face. “I—I do not want Christine to be like this.”

  Philippe laughed in delight at his brother’s ingenuousness. “Of course you do. Your cock was hard as a pike when you saw the way Delia was whipped. Can you not imagine the two of them together: one dark, one light? It would be most enjoyable—for all of us.”

  Most enjoyable indeed.

  ~*~

  Months ago, when Erik had first called to her, Christine thought that the disembodied voice was her father’s, for whose else would it be? He’d promised to send her the Angel of Music, and since he was in heaven, it had to be him.

  When she heard her name that first day, kneeling in the small chapel tucked in the corner of the Opera House, at first she didn’t know how to respond. Christine…

  At last she answered. “Who is it?” Her voice quavered, but she wasn’t frightened, not really. It was just…strange.

  "It is your angel…”

  “My angel? Papa?”

  “Your Angel of Music…did your papa not promise he would send him?”

  Her heart beat faster and she felt a rush of joy. Her father had not forgotten her! She had waited for years, but he had finally answered her prayers. “Papa!” she said. “I have missed you so.”

  There was a long silence, so long that she feared she’d frightened him away. Christine felt as though the air crackled with her nervousness…Could she have driven him off? At last, after being alone for so long, was her chance at comfort gone so quickly?

  Then, finally, when she felt as though she’d held her breath for hours, the voice spoke again. “I am not your father, Christine. But I am the Ange de Musique. And I wish to help you feel again.”

  “To feel again.” She repeated the words dumbly, considering what they meant.

  “You miss your music, do you not? You feel lonely, different from the other girls, yes?”

  She nodded, and then realized he might not be able to see her. "Yes, angel, I have found little joy in my music since Papa died. Do you…speak to him?”

  “I do not speak to him, Christine, but I know that he misses you as much as you miss him.” The voice was so smooth and calm, lulling, and yet titillating. Elegant. Beautiful. Sensual. It made the hair on the back of her neck and arms lift, and something in the middle of her stomach tingle. “I would like to be your tutor. Would you like that? Would you like to feel your music again?”

  “You would help me?”

  And so it had begun.

  The Angel of Music would come to her at least once a day, at a time when she was alone, and he would sing to her, and with her, and play for her. Christine looked forward to those times, and because she was never certain where or when he would come to her, she was often in a state of expectancy and happiness.

  In time, her lessons about music would become more than just lessons. Yes, he had high expectations and he drove her toward perfection, but as the weeks went on, the disembodied voice seemed to relax. He allowed himself to speak of things other than notes and breathing and timing.

  Christine found herself becoming more comfortable with her mysterious tutor, and the strange way in which he taught her as well. Perhaps it was because she couldn’t see him that she felt better able to talk of things deep inside her, of her opinions and dreams. It was almost like praying, or like daydreaming, this speaking into a room where there was no one’s face to frown at her, no stiffening of a body to disapprove.

  One day Christine remembered in particular. She had had a horrible day—it started when her very last pair of wearable stockings got a huge ladder along the outside of one leg; it was so wide and long that it could not be hidden, nor twisted around to the back of her leg, for then the two ladders on the other side would show.

  Because of that, she was late for dance practice, and had to endure what the ballet girls called Madame Giry's “hairy eyeball” glare along with her silent treatment as Christine attempted to catch up on what she’d missed.

  After that, in an effort to return to the dormitories to beg or borrow another pair of stockings, Christine had hurried along the backstage hall and came face to face with La Carlotta. The diva was wearing a monstrously tall hat, a nest of birds and butterflies and flowers, and the panniers of her impossibly wide gown that put her in the fashion of Marie Antoinette blocked the narrow passageway so that no one could walk by.

  Christine curtsied and tried to brace herself against the rough wooden wall to allow the other woman to move past, but Carlotta was not to be hurried. In fact, she moseyed along, chatting with a wide-eyed composer, until she came just to where Christine stood…and she stopped.

  Turning her back to Christine, Carlotta cooed and flirted and practiced a few soprano trills at the top of her powerful lungs, whilst Christine remained pinned between the wire-shaped gown and the wall. There was no way for her to get past without brushing roughly against Carlotta's gown, and she did not dare attempt that.

  At last, Carlotta seemed to notice her. She turned, the pannier of her skirt bumping into Christine, and focused an angry look on her. Despite the fact that she was not a bit taller than the younger girl, the combination of her outraged expression and her towering hat made her seem gigantic.

  “What you are doing, listening to my private conversations, little rat?”

  “I was—I was merely trying to pass by,” Christine stammered, trying once again to slink past the obnoxious wire-framed skirt.

  Carlotta thrust her face into Christine's, her rouge- and powder-scented face, and rose-scented breath, overwhelming her. “Get out of my sight, you little rat! And you mind your own business!” The diva's Spanish-flavored r sounds rolled and spit in Christine’s face. “You do not have any business with me!”

  Christine fled. As she pushed her way down the hall, she heard the continued outrage from La Carlotta as she waxed angrily to the composer, and anyone who would listen, about “little rats who do not know their place” and other annoyances, at the top of her very capable lungs.

  As she scuttled down the passageway, trying to hold back tears, Christine heard giggles and whispered comments and some outright laughter. Instead of going back to her dormitory room, she turned blindly down the corridor that led to the small grotto used as a chapel. The place she prayed for her father’s soul, and the place where her ange had first spoken to her.

  There, the tears of frustration and humiliation came, soaking the sleeve of her ratty practice costume, and dripping down onto the flimsy, floppy skirt in her lap.

  She had not been there long when she heard his welcome voice. “Christine…”

  “Angel,” she replied tearfully. Wiping her face and swallowing her tears, she looked up and round in the small cavelike chapel, lit only by seven candles in small alcoves in the wall.

  “Do not trouble yourself with her, Christine,” he told her. “She is an undeserving woman, and she will get her own recompense.”

  “I did nothing wrong,” Christine replied, sniffling. “She is a horrid cat.”

  He chuckled, the tones of his laugh vibrant and warm. She felt better already. “A cat? You are not fond of felines, then, to put them in the same category as La Carlotta.”

  “No, I do not like cats. They are sly and arrogant and barely deign to acknowledge one’s existence. And when they do, it is as if they are showing you great favor.”

  She could still hear the humor in his voice when he replied, “Did you have a cat when you were younger, then, Christine? One that did not allow you to pet her?”

  “How did you know that?” Her tears had dried.

  “It was merely a guess…For you to have such strong feelings about such an innocuous beast, I suspected as much. For what happens in our youth most often molds our maturity.” A trace of sadness hung in his voice now.

  “Yes, when I was eight, Papa and I lived in Prague for nearly a year. The mistress of our boardinghouse had a cat and she would not ever come t
o sit in my lap. I chased her and crawled under the furniture after her, dragging her out. She would scratch me when I held her. Then when I cried, she would run away again. She had such dark, soft fur. I wanted to hold her so badly.”

  “Poor Christine,” the angel replied. “You needed to have something to hold, to comfort you.”

  “Yes…I was very lonely.”

  There was a silence, a hesitant pause before he spoke again. “And now…you are lonely still?”

  “Not so much,” she replied honestly. “I have…you.”

  “Is that why you came here when you were upset?”

  “I hoped you would come to me here, ange, for this is the place you have come to me most often. And you make me feel…less lonely.”

  “I am glad, Christine. I am glad.”

  That day seemed to have been a turning point in their relationship. After that, her angel would remark about something that Carlotta, or one of the other dancers, had done that day, and they would laugh or talk about it. He even teased her about her dislike of cats, beasts that he admitted to finding quite intriguing.

  He still remained a disembodied voice, and he still made her practice hard, and did not accept excuses. His presence always sent little snaking shivers down her neck and spine, and his voice still raged or soothed…but she felt as though he’d begun to reveal more of himself to her. He seemed to know everything about her; she was grateful for any drop of knowledge revealed about him.

  Christine realized now, as she lazed in the massive bed positioned in Erik’s bedchamber, that those months of sharing their music and conversation had been the stepping-stones to what she felt now. Not just a physical relationship, but a deep, abiding connection that transcended what his hands and lips did to her, that made her feel more than a passion…that made her feel as if she knew him, understood him. As if he was the most important thing in her life.

  She realized that she’d found what the beautiful woman she’d admired must have had: love and happiness, and no loneliness. But she wasn’t wearing a beautiful gown. And she wasn’t standing onstage in front of a roaring audience, bathed in the limelight.