Bonus Scene A Burning Theater In Paris #2
I’m not the ruler or the master here, no matter what I’ve been pretending. She is the queen before whom I will always bow in willing obedience. I took her and claimed her, but she owns me, body, mind, and soul.
“Let me taste him in your mouth,” she whispers.
“Naughty words for a virgin ballet girl,” I whisper back.
“I’ve heard plenty of licentious talk at the opera,” she retorts. “And I suspect you’re a virgin, too. Aren’t you, Angel?”
I swallow hard, and she chuckles lightly, her breath drifting over my lips.
“Am I the only one who isn’t a virgin?” Raoul cocks an eyebrow, a naughty smirk curling his lips. “Do I get to give both of you lessons?”
“It appears so,” Christine murmurs against my mouth.
“How exciting!” he crows. “I saw a naughty painting once, something truly debauched that I’ve always wanted to try. I shall put a leather collar around that thick, strong neck of yours, Ghost, and have you naked on all fours while I flick your ass with my riding crop—”
“Pace yourself, darling,” Christine admonishes.
“You’re scaring him. I can feel how fast his heart is beating.
” She sinks her lips onto mine, a soft and soothing pressure.
The tip of her tongue explores the twisted corner of my mouth, the part that’s tugged a bit sideways by my scars.
The sensitive questing of that little tongue is the most erotic thing I’ve ever felt, and my cock hardens still more.
“You’re about to burst from those trousers, Ghost,” Raoul comments.
Christine looks down at my crotch. Her hand floats tentatively above the bulge before settling there, light as a butterfly, warm as the sun.
I can’t suppress a groan, and her pupils dilate with pleasure at the sound. She rubs her palm over me confidently, triggering sensations more intense and exquisite than anything I’ve felt from my own hand.
“Take him out, Christine,” Raoul says. “I want to see him.”
She glances up at me, questioning, and when I nod, she undoes the buttons on either side of my trousers and folds down the flap. My cock springs out, monstrously erect, leaking helpless desire from the tip.
The sight of my own nakedness, when my scarred face is already so exposed, is almost too much for me to bear.
I feel a surge of panic, of violence. I want to hurt them both, make them bleed and scream before they have the chance to laugh and mock me.
Once I’ve crushed them, I will flee into the darkness and hide myself in some deep hole, in some forgotten tunnel of the city.
I picture myself seizing Christine’s tender throat in my hand and crushing the voice box that produces such heavenly sounds.
I imagine smashing Raoul’s skull against the frame of the cab, knocking the light from his eyes.
My shaking hands curl into powerful fists as I struggle to restrain the brutal impulses that have guided and protected me for so many years.
“My god,” breathes Raoul. “That is a magnificent cock.”
“Beautiful,” Christine agrees, tracing a delicate finger along my length.
She looks up at me to see my reaction, and the sweetness of her expression tears my soul apart.
She wants me to feel good. She craves my pleasure.
And that gentle selflessness breaks me, dismantles me, dissipates all the anger in my body.
Raoul slips off the opposite seat, dropping to his knees between my thighs. “May I try something?” he asks. “I’ve done it twice for friends of mine at parties, but they weren’t nearly this big.”
I suspect what he might be planning to do, and with a harsh swallow, I nod.
Raoul wraps a hand around my length and dips the head between his lips. Christine lets out a soft, excited gasp, clinging to my shoulder, her fingers finding my breast and toying with the nipple while the Viscount de Chagny sucks my cock.
The easy, nonchalant way Raoul took me struck a chord in my heart, vibrating the very strings of my soul. As if tasting my cock is the natural progression of the fervent rivalry between us.
The cab rattles over a particularly rough stretch of cobblestones, and Raoul is thrown forward. He chokes on me, then pulls off, laughing. “Perhaps this should wait until we reach my house.”
“Perhaps,” I agree.
Christine buttons me up again and kisses my face several times before joining Raoul on his side of the cab.
She kisses his mouth, then looks at me, as if checking to see if I’m able to handle witnessing their intimacy.
There’s a familiar surge of jealousy in my heart, but it’s not an overwhelming tide—merely a small ripple.
I am beginning to understand that her heart is big enough for both of us.
Raoul having her doesn’t mean that I’m left alone in the darkness—I can be part of their union, too.
And what is more holy than a trinity?
When we reach the de Chagny estate, Raoul escorts us inside while his butler pays the cab driver.
I scan our surroundings—fine carpets, rich tapestries, and heavy, glossy furniture laden with delicate vases, relics of exotic travel, statuary, and cigar boxes.
Raoul appears to collect the boxes; there is one on nearly every surface, including the bookshelves.
Mentally, I begin to design one for him—part music box, part puzzle box, with a place for the finest of cigars at the center. It shall be my gift to him someday—a token to show my gratitude.
I’m not skilled at showing gratitude. I’ve never had much to be grateful for.
But I feel thankful to Raoul with an intensity that borders on the obsessive.
Ever since he took my mouth and then my cock, looking at him feels like the early days I spent watching Christine.
It’s as if I’m truly seeing him for the first time.
But I can’t look at him for very long without feeling a restless ache in my soul, a yearning as familiar to me as breathing.
I need Christine. I must seek out her face, her voice, her skin.
Whatever I might find with Raoul, she remains my beauty, my angel, my muse.
I’m addicted to her very existence, and the greatest joy of this new situation is that at last I will be able to touch her, taste her, and sink myself inside her, as I’ve longed to do so many times.
For the first months of my acquaintance with Christine, I wouldn’t allow myself to think about my physical attraction to her.
She was a lofty ideal, and it felt sacrilegious to imagine sex with her.
But as I came to know her better, I realized that her sexuality was part of her nature.
Her desires fueled much of her singing. Her passion guided her body through each dance she performed for the opera.
She is a creature of light, beauty, and talent, but she has every right to be earthly, sensual, and naughty as she pleases.
She is a human being, not just a goddess for me to worship, and I came to view her as both.
Her fingers lace through mine as we follow Raoul deeper into his enormous house.
This grandeur is as unfamiliar and unexpected to her as it is to me.
She has lived at the opera since her father’s death, and the dormitories for the ballet girls provide only the basic accommodations—certainly not luxuries on this level.
While Christine may have entertained thoughts of living at Raoul’s estate someday, I know she wasn’t planning to come here so soon—certainly not on the very night that was supposed to end in my capture by the Paris police.
The thought strikes doubt into my heart.
What if this is part of a game these two are playing, an elaborate ruse to lull me into submission before they betray me?
What if there are policemen or guards hiding behind the doors we pass, lurking between the curtains, slinking in alcoves, ready to leap out and clap me in irons?
My steps slow as my breathing escalates.
Christine looks at me questioningly. “Angel?”
My chest heaves, yet I can’t seem to draw a full breath.
My eyes dart from side to side, watching for traps, for tricks, for tormentors.
If I am not the one setting the snares and causing the torment, I must be a target.
I can’t let my guard down, or I will be cornered, captured, and seen for what I really am.
I can’t breathe. I let go of Christine’s hand and bend over, grasping my thighs.
“Raoul, wait,” Christine calls. Her fingers press between my shoulder blades, rubbing in comforting circles.
Raoul comes back to us. “Is he all right?”
“It’s too much,” Christine says quietly. “It’s been a difficult night for all of us.”
“Tell me I won’t be caged,” I rasp out. “Tell me you don’t have men waiting to seize me, like you did at the theater.”
Raoul’s voice is shadowed with regret. “I did work with the police to apprehend you, yes. We used Christine as bait and performed your opera to coax you out. But I had misgivings the whole time, especially when I saw you onstage with her. The way you sang together—the way you loved her and ached for her so openly out there, for everyone to see—I wept. I hated you, and I admired you, and I wept.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, feeling the pull of the scars on my right temple. I still can’t breathe, but I hold on to his voice like a tether, like a promise.
“I changed, Ghost,” Raoul says softly. “Or perhaps I merely released what was inside me all along. I came to your lair for her, yes, but for you as well. I wanted to see who you really were—if there remained any goodness or mercy in your heart. I craved the violence of our mutual conflict. I wanted to taste your anger and your passion. And then, when you let us go, I saw your brokenness.”
He drops to one knee on the carpet in front of me, cups my face like I held his, and forces me to meet his eyes. “I have been broken, too. In a different way, but no less deeply and wretchedly. I see you. I care about you. And that means I will never try to entrap you again.”