Chapter 22 Raoul
Raoul
Seeing Christine again is like breathing fresh air after being locked in a dark closet for days, yet I feel oddly awkward around her, and she seems a little withdrawn from me, too.
I wore contacts tonight to accommodate the mask. Contacts usually make my eyes feel dry and itchy, but the new brand I’m trying isn’t too bad. Still, I keep touching the mask where the bridge of my nose would be, to push up the nonexistent glasses. A nervous habit I’ve developed, I guess.
“How did rehearsals go?” I ask Christine, and I want to bite my tongue for it, because just a week ago, my tongue was inside her, and now all I can do is ask about work.
I blunder ahead without giving her the chance to reply.
“Sorry I was absent. My family is excited that I finally unlocked my other form.”
Alarm flares in her eyes, and she steps closer, shushing me.
She’s right; I spoke too loudly. But we’re masked, and everyone else is busy drinking, taking selfies, grinding, and dancing.
“Your family,” she says tentatively. “They treated you so badly in the past.”
“Because they wanted me to change on their timeline.”
“And now?”
“Now…” I scoff bitterly. “Now, for the first time in my life, they value me. They’re not embarrassed of me. I’m a wolf, one of the higher animals. A predator.”
Her eyes harden behind her glossy mask. “If that’s all they see, they don’t really understand your worth.”
“Yeah…they don’t seem too concerned with anything except my wolf form,” I admit. “My preferences and my consent aren’t high priorities right now.”
She actually growls, a threatening purr deep in her throat. Her anger isn’t directed at me, though. She’s furious with my family on my behalf. A sign that maybe, just maybe, she’s coming to terms with this. Accepting me for who I am.
A slow thrill rolls through my stomach. Emboldened, I reach out and lightly grasp her wrist like I did the day she auditioned for me.
“Christine,” I say softly.
She inhales, sharp and quick, then releases the breath gradually, yielding to my touch. “Do you want me to kill any of them for you?”
I laugh, but her echoing laugh is shaky, strained. She wasn’t joking.
“I would, you know,” she says, beneath the violent thrum of the music.
“That’s the horror of it all. He has already killed for me.
I’d kill for you, and I’d kill for him—” She shudders.
“The things we might do, Raoul. It’s unthinkable.
I never wanted to be part of any murderous, supernatural family.
That’s why I can’t do this with either of you, much as I want to. ”
She withdraws her wrist, her cool fingers slipping through mine. She glides away, and I let her go.
I fucking let her go.
She drifts through the crowd, a graceful figure with sheathed claws and hidden fangs. Beauty and the beast in one elegant form.
Lyrics begin to unspool through my head, not married to a melody, just poetic phrases unfurling on their own.
I take my phone from the inner pocket of my suit jacket and hurry toward an arched doorway, one that leads away from the polished floors and glittering chandeliers to the comparative gloom of a hallway.
I pass by restrooms and a couple closets, then duck into a half-open door.
The room beyond is cluttered with folded tables and stacked chairs.
Flicking the switch by the door, I spot a shabby, stiff-looking couch, the kind that might have been classy in the 1960s.
I stretch out on the couch, take off my mask, and begin typing lyrics into my notes app.
It’s a compulsion I can’t resist. Once the muse has been satisfied, I’ll go after Christine.
I’m deep in the flow of the creative river when I smell him.
I don’t have to look up. No one else carries that mystical forest scent, like the spicy earth and towering pines of a long-forgotten world, like death and life braided into one dark, delicious aroma.
His presence snaps my fragile connection to the muse and, along with it, my patience. Saving the note with a taut sigh, I sit up.
He’s leaning in the doorway, one shoulder propped against the frame, his arms folded, gloved hands cupping his biceps.
His suit is deep red—the darkest red I’ve ever seen—with a matching hooded cloak.
His mask is satin black, with ridges along his cheekbones and hollows beneath them.
The mask covers every bit of his face, featuring its own set of grim, full lips.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” I say.
The Phantom cocks his head.
“Did you think I wouldn’t know you?” My laugh sounds a little breathless, even to me. “I can smell the cologne you used to mask your scent. But I’m connected to my wolf now. I would know your fragrance even if someone doused you in gasoline.”
He tilts away from the doorframe and strides toward me, methodical and menacing. My blood roars at his approach.
It’s about time I admit to myself that I have a mask kink.
“I was writing,” I protest. “You interrupted me.”
The Phantom reaches the couch. He towers over me, his belt at the level of my eyes.
His gloved fingers grasp the buckle, ease the prong through the hole, and draw out the leather slowly, slowly.
I swallow, licking my lips, mesmerized. He has some power to charm me, some charisma I can’t resist. By the time he unzips his pants, my mouth is already watering.
His gloved hand cups my jaw, pulls it down. He strokes his leather-cloaked thumb over the flat of my tongue.
I’m trembling like a wounded animal, like a pet craving a treat. Please, master. My dick lifted the second I smelled him, and it’s unbearably hard now, hot and straining against the inseam of my pants.
Holding my jaws open, he silently feeds me his cock. I take it so deep that I choke, my eyes wide and watering, fully conscious that anyone could walk into this room and see me gagging on the dick of a cloaked stranger. It would be all over social media within the hour.
The Phantom runs his gloved fingers over my hair, then clasps a handful and thrusts his cock into my mouth brutally, relentlessly.
Tears stream from the corners of my eyes, but I don’t try to pull away.
I grip the vest he’s wearing, two crimson handfuls, and I relax my throat even more, accepting the thick heat of his flesh gratefully.
I didn’t even know I needed this from him, this assurance that no matter what my family believes, they don’t control me. He does. Because I let him.
The Collective made me shift for them this week, over and over.
I did it again and again for different groups of relatives and acquaintances, for every shifter in Nashville, or so it seemed.
My sister didn’t care that I was uncomfortable being naked in front of them all.
“Get used to it,” she said with a shrug.
“This is who we are. Now that you’ve come into your birthright, we need witnesses.
We need to secure our rank among the other families. No one can challenge us now.”
By us, she always means herself.
She wants me to breed with a female shifter of good stock. She’s already got a spreadsheet of “viable candidates.”
She would hate it if she knew I was sitting on this couch, giving head to the god of death.
I gag, and the Phantom pulls back, letting me compose myself.
I take only a second to control the reflex before I’m grabbing him, sliding his length back into my mouth, sucking him with such reckless enthusiasm that his breath goes ragged under his mask.
He comes violently, with a harsh shudder that gives me a rush of wicked glee.
His dick spurts over my tongue, and cum hits the back of my throat.
I suck and swallow, welcoming the viscous heat.
The moment my lips slide off the wet head of his cock, he takes me by the throat and drags me upright. He lifts the lower edge of his mask and crushes his mouth to mine.
I think I’ve died, drowned in a blissful lake of liquid fire. His kiss sweeps me away, tears me out of myself, and yet I’m more me than I’ve ever been. With his mouth, he gives me all the power and glory I’ve craved for years.
“I love you,” he says.
Three quiet words in the half-dark. Any other guy, I’d take that declaration with a grain of salt. Like man, you just came in my mouth. Of course you think I’m your one and only. But with him, it’s different. The raw fragility of his tone tells me he means it.
“I love you, too.” No poetry of mine has ever been deeper or more sincere.
He kisses me again, warm and fierce, then settles his mask in place. “Promise you won’t hate me for what I’m going to do.”
I frown, pulling back a little. “What are you going to do?”
“I am going to ruin your night. And save your musical.”