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poeticsandaliens · 8 years ago

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A Pirate’s Life for Me Ch. 6

Here be swashbuckling and heavy smut.

AO3 Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11405793/chapters/27611445

Scully woke to the rhythmic slap of waves against the port wall and sharp prod at her waist. The Dutchman rocked, rolling loose objects across the floorboards. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and sat up, blinking at the harsh gleam of sunlight streaming through the porthole. Another prod against her ribs, and she turned around to find Stella Gibson pressing handle of her own flintlock pistol to her ribs.

“Today you learn to shoot,” Stella declared, dropping the pistol in her lap. “Not worth carrying a pistol if you can’t use it.”

Scully picked up the pistol and hefted it in her palm, stretching as she got to her feet. “Fair enough.” She hoped to God she wouldn’t have to use the pistol and clung desperately to the possibility of rescuing Mulder without a drop of blood shed. Board the ship, break him free, return undiscovered to the Dutchman.

She followed Stella to the deck, where a favorable wind billowed every sail and broke white-caps at their stern, and the owl that had latched onto the Flying Dutchman perched contentedly atop its front mast, sunning its wings. “How close are we?” she asked, eyeing the horizon as if rocky cliffs could emerge any moment.

“A couple days, if the wind keeps,” said Stella, taking off her hat. It wasn’t the red-feathered hat she wore every day, but black tri-cornered hat that’d clearly seen better days. She climbed to the upper deck and hung it from a spoke on the wheel. “Start with this,” she ordered briskly.

Scully nodded and cocked her pistol, aiming carefully at the hat. She’d shot her father’s pistol before, as a child, but she hadn’t been aiming at anything at particular. She’d tromped with her wandering seven-year-old feet into her father’s office and asked if she could shoot his gun, just so she knew how it felt. He had taken to her the edge of the white cliffs and placed the pistol in her tiny hands, clasping them in his own and cocking the gun. Then he’d aimed it at the horizon line and pushed her finger down on the trigger. She had stumbled backward, knocked off her feet by the pistol’s pushback, clasping her hands to her ears as the shot went off.

She blew her hair out of her face, narrowed her eyes, and pushed the trigger. The bang still took her by surprise, but to her disappointment, the hat remained untouched. Instead, her bullet struck the steering wheel, lodging in its base. She looked to Stella, wondering whether her bullet would affect the ship’s course. Stella arched one eyebrow indifferently.

A gust of wind splayed her hair over her face, sticking red curls to her lips and blocking her view. She tucked it back again, and once the wind died down, she raised the gun again until the prow of the ivory-carved ship lined up between her eyes. This time, she would aim higher, further left. She took the shot, and a sorrowful whooshing sound informed her the bullet had soared past its target and beyond the stern.

She wrinkled her nose—she’d secretly expected shooting to be an easy skill to learn. It looked easy enough when other people aimed a gun. She focused on the hat, pointing the barrel just above its patched tip, cocked and shot the pistol in one deft movement like Stella had done when she fired a warning shot at the HMS Beatrice. The hat burst open and dropped from the wheel, smoldering at the crown.

Scully grinned triumphantly and jogged up the stairs to retrieve the target. It was warm to the touch, with a gaping hole in its very center that smelled of leather and foul ash. She tossed it over the rail just as Stella made her way to the upper deck, offering her a wry smirk.

“Next lesson,” Stella announced without preamble. “Human targets.”

“Human targets?” How in God’s name did she aim to achieve that?

Stella nodded. “I stand by the wheel; you try to make a kill shot from below me.”

Scully’s jaw dropped. Absolutely not; Stella Gibson would not be the first person she put a bullet in. There was no way of knowing what might happen if she missed and shot Stella’s face, or stomach, or leg; Davy Jones already defied the laws of nature, and she was not about to gamble with curses she didn’t understand. She crossed her arms defiantly. “No. I refuse to shoot you.”

“Scully, you will most likely have to shoot a man aboard the Claudius if you ever want to see your friend Mulder again, much less bring him home with you. Sometimes you have to take a life in order to survive. To shoot a person, you have to practice on a person.”

“I know that,” Scully snapped. “But forgive me if I can’t swallow the idea of using you for target practice. By reason, you shouldn’t even be alive, and just because you’re comfortable with having no beating heart in your chest doesn’t mean I am. Have you considered the consequences if I miss thathole in your body that shouldn’t be there? You may be a scientific anomaly, but everything I’ve read and learned says the bullet’s still going to hurt, and I’m still acquainting myself with the notion that shooting someone in the chest won’t necessarily kill them. I’m not naive, Stella. But I don’t feel like aiming a pistol at your body to remind myself how dead you are even as you stand alive before me,” Scully finished with a huff. She flipped the pistol in her hand so she was gripping it by the barrel.

For a moment, Stella was as silent and stoic as if she were carved from wood. Her eyes were hard, her expression unreadable. She took a step toward Scully, and Scully stepped back, still squaring her shoulders for an argument.

“Scully,” she said softly, and Scully couldn’t tell whether she was furious or trying to reassure her. “Kind as it is of you to consider my safety, death and pain mean more to you than to they do to me. Firing your pistol at me unnerves you, and it used to unnerve me as well, Scully, but the only way you know you can be better on the draw than your enemy is if you’ve a person to practice on. You cannot hurt me. I swear to it, cross my—”

“Cross your damned heart, right,” Scully growled and marched down the stairs. She had come to terms with magic ships, and god-given curses, and the disappearing trifecta of bullet holes along Stella’s collarbone, but she want to face them as if they were normalcy. As if every day science casually made exceptions like Stella’s.

She positioned herself by the main mast and pointed her pistol at Stella, who stood on the upper deck with her hands on her hips. “What happens if I shoot you in the face?”

“Inconsequential!” Stella called back.

She cocked the gun and aimed decisively toward Stella’s chest. Just above where her vital organ should have been, high enough to account for gravity just as she’d done when she finally hit the hat. She pulled the trigger, and opened her eyes to see the billowing sleeve of Stella’s shirt sprout a smoking hole.

“Further right,” Stella shouted.

Gritting her teeth, Scully shifted her pistol to the right and gave two more shots before furiously reloading. When she looked up, Stella was strolling calmly down the stairs, two holes in her chest.

“You learn fast. You’re as precise as you’ll need to be, for now, and any more distance would make the shot almost impossible.” Then Stella drew her sword.

“I know how to spar,” Scully insisted sharply. Her father had taught her well, and after his death she had practiced religiously. Lieutenant Scully had always pressed upon his daughter that a duel by sword was the most honorable way to take a life and the most honorable way to die in combat. It took skill and fairness, and it always left an intact body for burial, unlike the cannons of a ship.

“Of course you do,” said Stella. “But you must learn how to shoot in the midst of a fight.”

Scully raised her brow, recalling what Dani had said about Stella dueling Spector by the pirate’s code. How she could have shot him but refused, because it would violate the Pirate Code as well as the code of a proper duel.

“That’s not a fair fight,” Scully protested. “It’s cheating, against everything a duel stands for, and beside that it’s against the Pirate Code.”

Stella sighed. “Sometimes, in the midst of a battle, no code of fairness is worth abiding by. As for the Pirate Code, since when did pirates heed the rules? We’re all scallywags, eccentrics and pragmatists serving our own brands of honor. You’re a pirate too, Scully, dressing as a sailor man and buying your goods from Tortuga.”

Pirate Code, she scoffed. Of course the honor in swordplay meant nothing to a pirate; of course death meant nothing to a woman who couldn’t die, and pain meant nothing to a woman who was literally heartless. Part of her had considered the Dutchman an adventure, but really, it was only a means to Mulder’s rescue. A way to bring him back so they could live out their lives in peace on Port Washington, studying legends of their own accord instead of having those same legends forced upon their lives. To travel with a pirate was infinitely valuable; to become a pirate was something very different. An unlawful act for the sake of justice versus an unlawful life, raiding ports and digging up gold for only selfish purposes.

“I am not a pirate,” Scully insisted, stamping her boot on the deck and shoving her pistol back into its holster. “I will not be lumped in with the criminals who killed my father, and I don’t invent my own morality as the need arises. Damn you!” she spat. “Damn you and your death-heralding organ and your bullet-holes and your callous disregard for human life.” She spun on her heel and marched across the deck, arms tightly folded.

“I am not callous,” she heard Stella say behind her. Her voice was cold and low and dangerous. “Every man and woman aboard my ship had been grievously mistreated by the British Crown. For how they looked, for what they believed, for who they loved. Black men who escaped from enslavement, young women ostracized for taking lovers before marriage, scholars who dared question their governors, a young woman sentenced to hang for being unwilling to marry a man.”

“Dani,” Scully murmured under her breath, her step halting momentarily.

She felt the tension rise before Stella spoke, thick with accusation. “You know Dani Ferrington?”

“I met her in Tortuga,” Scully said curtly. “What of it?”

“You didn’t say anything.”

Scully turned to find Stella staring her down, with drawn brows and a set jaw. “Why should I? I didn’t know a goddamned thing about you until I met Dani. I didn’t know who you were, where you came from, what you even did before you were a walking corpse on this haunted ship.”

Stella hissed, “It was not your business. You don’t know half of what I did before the Dutchman. This haunted ship is in my charge, and I reserve my right to keep secrets aboard it.”

“No, I don’t,” Scully snarled. “Perhaps you gunned down my father’s vessel. Perhaps you flew your precious skull and crossbones over his body as he drowned.”

“Fuck you,” spat Stella, pale eyes ablaze. “The Jolly Rodger was my freedom. It allowed me, as a woman, to do as a I pleased for the first time in my fucking life.”

“Well now you have eternity to do it, Davy Jones.” Scully whirled around and stalked toward her cabin. “Bloody pirates,” she muttered under her breath, descending the stairs with a clunking stomp until she was far enough below deck to close the trapdoor over her head. She slammed the door to the officer’s quarters and collapsed onto her cot.

She lay on her back, staring at the wooden ceiling. She could hear Stella’s boots pacing above her head, in time with the Dutchman’s steady rock. A pang of guilt struck her—not even Burns had managed to wind Stella up so tightly. Stella had broken his nose and banished him from her ship, but she had calmed as soon as he was out of sight. Clearly, Scully’s words struck a sore spot.

She had no right to call me a pirate. She can’t ask me to abandon my moral judgement a live a pirate’s life whilst at sea. She’s careless of death and discretion. But what had she expected from Stella Gibson—a deathless pirate captain who saw other people but once in ten years? When she’d set out for Los Barriles, she had sought a ferryman to bring her to Mulder, a shaky ally at best. Somehow, she’d wanted more from Stella—companionship, honesty, human connection, and she came to care for the Dutchman’s grim captain. She felt bad, accusing Stella of murdering her father; Stella would not take lives at random, and it was a stinging blow after all Stella had done to save her own father from Pagett’s curse.

She touched her sword and linen shirt. Nearly everything she was wearing belonged to Stella, and not only did it fit her perfectly, she enjoyed romping about in clothing intended for men. She had always imagined the look of a weathered sailor would not suit her, and when her sister had swooned for the young soldiers returning from sea, she had seen battered young men with wounds to be healed. She was always a doctor in her mind; even if the town practitioner would not take a woman as his apprentice, she had pictured herself tending to wounded soldiers and curing afflictions—saving lives. She supposed she was still saving Mulder’s life, by the sword and the sail instead of by medicine.

Watching Stella climb boldly to the Flying Dutchman’s mast in billowing coat sleeves and a captain’s hat seemed so far removed from those thin-stubbled young men hurrying off Navy ships and merchant vessels, eager for alcohol and courtship. Time had lent Stella an attractive confidence which the men’s dress, the gritty tales, the lines and scars of her experience only magnified. Like the unreachable horizon, Stella only grew more inviting with every moment spent at sea.

She rolled onto her side and watched a metal bit roll across the floor. The other day, when Stella had come off the mast with her coat undone and sweat on her brow, Scully had heard her mother’s voice in her head. It was something Maggie Scully had said years ago, when it first became apparent her daughter had grander plans than a strategic marriage— now I know you have the sea in your blood Dana. I know you won’t just find yourself a decent man and settle down, lay your archives to rest… but darling, don’t spend your whole life hoping for more than you can reach. If you can’t be a doctor, that will be that. Be happy. And maybe then you’ll meet a man who draws you in, who you love dearly like I did your old father, and he’ll not begrudge your dreams.

It had been days after she broke off courtship with a visiting practitioner. He was older, and charming, and arrived in Port Washington to bestow upon its local doctor the most recent medical advances. She’d been utterly taken with him. In hindsight, she had never been in love with him, so much as suffered an unfortunate infatuation—he was the first man who took her want to study medicine seriously, and he’d obliged her dreams with unofficial lessons. She had given him her virginity and to this day did not regret the choice, but the affair had proved short lived. Summoned back to England, he asked her accompany him and be his wife, under the condition she not continue her studies. Being married to a lady doctor, would tarnish his reputation, he’d informed her. She had curtly told him to go to Hell, and her mother had found her standing by the sea, glaring at his ship as it left the bay, wondering what to do next.

It was Stella’s utter self-assurance that reminded Scully of him. It was not the same quiet certainty with which Scully spoke her convictions, but a bluntness and way of carrying herself as if nothing would smite her or get in her way. It was as attractive in Stella as it was in her former lover, perhaps more so because as a woman, propriety expected Stella to do the opposite.

“Ready the guns!” Stella’s voice cut sharply into her thoughts, followed by the rumble of cannons rolling toward the gun ports and an unnerving creak along the ship’s starboard wall.

Scully rushed up the stairs. “Why are we firing?” she demanded.

Stella met her gaze coldly. “Kraken,” she hissed, jerking her chin to the starboard side. A suctioned tentacle had just crept over the railing and clung there discreetly.

Scully shook her head, hoping a splash of seawater might escape her ear. “I’m sorry, did you say kraken ? As in the kraken that doesn’t exist?”

“A kraken, Miss Scully. The deep sea is an unknown world; is a kraken so implausible? These monsters spawn legends for a reason—krakens do to ships what sharks do to unsuspecting swimmers.” Stella cocked her pistol and fired at the tentacle. It flinched and retreated.

Two more slimy tentacles snaked over the rail, wrapping around the Dutchman’s foremast. Scully scurried backwards, horrified. They were grey and muscular, leaving an oily sheen in their path, and the wood creaked beneath their grip. The girth of them was all of Scully’s height. Well. A kraken. She huffed aloud and pursed her lips. Perhaps after Davy Jones it isn’t so implausible.

“Nothing can sink the Flying Dutchman, correct?” She looked to Stella for affirmation.

“If the ship sinks it only repairs itself and re-surfaces,” said Stella, “but we don’t want that with you on board.” She fired two more bullets into the tentacles, but these were thicker, and they only squeezed the mast tighter. “Fuck,” she growled under her breath. Then, pointing her sword at the starboard hull. “ Fire!”

The flash and boom of cannon fire broke the ocean air as one by one, the Dutchman’s cannons emptied their load. Scully saw a triangular head erupt from the waves, and the tentacles released their ship. A splash, two more cannons. Then, as though the seafloor itself had risen, a low, thunderous rumble. Scully grabbed ahold of the netting to keep herself steady as the boat began to tremble.

Six tentacles crept over the starboard side, sliding across the deck and toward Stella. She deposited bullet after bullet into them, but they only spread like tree roots and curled over any surface they could. Scully pulled her gun from its holster and shot a tentacle coming toward her; it drifted to her left and wriggled about the floor, searching for something to grab onto. The bullets didn’t seem to deter the kraken’s thicker tentacles, so she put away the gun and took out her sword.

“Fire!”

Another round of cannons, and one tentacle distatched completely from its owner, spraying brine and salty flesh about the ship. Pieces of fish splattered on Scully’s shirt, and she gagged at the stench. Finally, the rumbling and shaking ceased, and Scully sliced at the Kraken’s closest arm. As soon as her sword broke its skin, it shivered and retreated, its severed tip shriveling and wiggling about the ship. She shivered in disgust.

“Fire all!” Stella shouted, and Scully spied her briefly on the quarterdeck. Two sets of cannons rang from both flanks, and the Dutchman shook in fury. It seemed the kraken was retreating as twenty-four bombards blasted into it. An alarmed coo from above her drew her attention to the owl circling her head and crying out. Another coo sounded, and a prickling sensation froze her in her tracks. It felt as though her feet had fallen asleep, like the life was being squeezed out of them.

She looked down with a gasp at two tentacles creeping up her ankles, suctioning to her boots. She sliced at one desperately, and then she was flailing helplessly as the remaining tentacle dragged her toward the rail. She tried to reach it with her sword to no avail, until her body hit the wall, and her foot, still in the kraken’s arm, was above her head. She stuck her blade into the wood, chopping the tentacle around her ankle.

Wincing, she got to her feet. The deck was a disaster, barrels and splinters strewn about, and its surface was coated with a vomit-inducing slime, the smell of which reduced Scully to repulsed gags.

Where is Stella?

“It’s gone,” an exhausted voice sounded behind her, and she turned, astonished, as Stella’s face appeared over the rail. She was soaked from head to toe, and she still carried her pistol in one hand. A bruised suction mark blossomed on her wrist. “Damned creature knocked me in,” she groused.

Scully breathed a sigh of relief. She knew Stella could not perish, but her concern was perfectly rational. “I thought it was going to sink us for a moment,” she said with a tired laugh, offering Stella a hand.

Stella nodded and accepted the assistance gratefully, hauling herself back on board. “That was quite an ordeal.” She wrinkled her nose. “Swab the deck!” she called, and a mop and broom bust through the cabin door to begin the tedious process of wiping the ship clean of slime. Then Stella pulled the bandanna off her head and trudged toward her cabin, beckoning Scully to follow. “Fresh clothes for us both.”

“How do I get this off me?” Scully grumbled, shaking the ooze from her hands. She dropped her sword and pistol on the deck. Her shoulders ached, and her knees felt as though they might give out from weakness or worry.

“The clothes will never stop smelling,” Stella replied, “but you’ll want to go for a swim.” Then she disappeared into her cabin and returned with a slightly rough cut of rock. “This will scrub it from your skin, and the salt will help. We can use a barrel of fresh water from the brig as well.”

“How did you escape the slime?” Scully muttered as Stella wrung the water from her shirtsleeves.

“Did most of my fighting in the water,” she said with a chuckle.

Scully took the stone and headed for the plank. Then she stopped, remembering how they’d left things before the fight. “I’m sorry I said you lacked honor.” She ran her hands over the soapstone and looked Stella in the eye. “And I’m sorry I accused you of killing my father.”

Stella glanced up from where she stood, stoking the furnace with an iron rod. “Forgiven,” she said simply. “I swear to you I did not kill him, if you need assurance. I am sorry I pushed you beyond your moral limits.”

“Forgiven.”

* * * * * * * *

It was nearly dark by the time Scully had ridded herself of the kraken’s slime. It had required hours of scrubbing and a full barrel of water to wash away the salt and fish-stench. She walked back to the captain’s cabin dripping and shivering, wearing a clean but damp shirt and breeches.

Smoke poured from the port-hole, and Scully sighed in relief. The furnace was burning. Hoping the heat might dry her hair more quickly, she walked into the cabin. Stella was hunched over the furnace, her bare back to the door and her shirt tied about her waist.

“Here’s your rock,” she said, trying not to stare.

Stella poked the coals with an iron rod. “Just put it on the table,” she said. Scully set the rock down on the dining table and inched back toward the door. “Miss Scully—”

“Just Scully,” she interrupted.

“Scully.” She stood up, the firelight flickering over her chest, casting the scar along her breast in a golden glow. John Jack’s bullet holes had completely disappeared, but there was a new white spot, two new little holes where Scully had shot her in the morning.

“What?”

“I don’t begrudge you talking to Dani. She wouldn’t have said a word if she didn’t trust you.”

“She saw me wearing your father’s sword.”

A pregnant pause. “I see.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “To be honest, I didn’t think you would board the Dutchman when you saw what I was. I didn’t think you want to know me, and I was comfortable with that. Perhaps, from tonight on, we speak openly.”

Scully dipped her chin in ascent. “I’d like that very much.” Her eyes drifted from Stella’s ice to the hearth-glow on her freckled skin, the lines of a sailor on her face and the wiry muscles along her arms that could only come from working on a ship. The shirt around her waist and the knees of her breeches were stained with soot; her stomach was firm, her posture staunch. Her silhouette appeared on the hardwood graceful and severe. She was a woman, a death-herald, a pirate.

“Do the walls come down now?” she asked.

Stella breathed deeply. “Yes.”

“Dani said you escaped the same death in England from which you rescued her. Why were you charged?”

Stella cocked her head, and Scully felt extremely exposed. “I had many a pleasurable night with many a traveling sailor, and I heard every fisherman’s tale imaginable. For that, I was nearly charged with prostitution,” she said plainly. “Then I was caught sleeping with a married woman, a young woman named Tanya. I was charged on penalty of death in part because I’d had sexual relations with a woman, in part because Tanya was not a white woman, and mostly because she was married—however unhappily.”

Scully stepped toward her. “How did you escape?”

“I got lucky. There was a large scale prison break; I escaped with the multitudes, and hearing plenty of pirate stories from my previous liaisons, I paid for passage from rum-runners and joined the first buccaneer crew I met.”

“Now you’re a pirate,” Scully finished.

Stella lifted her chin proudly. “Never shall we die.”

Scully gulped, but hard she tried, she couldn’t swallow her attraction. She wanted Stella Gibson; God, how she wanted her, this elegant deathless pirate. How her heart came to desire a woman whose own heart beat in a wooden box she could not say, but her stomach fluttered. She knew it was doomed; after all, Stella was immortal and ocean-bound. But, she thought, glancing at the furnace’s pale yellow glow, she ought to enjoy the fire while she could.

“Scully.” Stella’s voice roused her once more. Her vision felt warm and hazy, everything in the cabin blotted out except for Stella’s body drifting toward hers. “Join me in my bed tonight?” There was no pretense in the invitation, no wiggling of eyebrows or coy innuendo. A sordid, irresistable offer.

“God, yes,” she breathed, and Stella’s hand slipped over her waist, and her body pressed against the pirate’s bare torso. With only thin linen separating them, she felt every muscle flex beneath Stella’s skin. One callused hand cushioned the back of her head, the other resting on the small of her back, and she clung to the nape of Stella’s neck as she met her for a kiss.

Stella Gibson tasted of salt, perfume, and fine liquor; her lips were chapped and rough, but her tongue was gentle. Stella’s teeth nipped at her lower lip, then drifted downward, trailing kisses along her jawbone.

Scully traced her fingers down Stella’s back, fluttering over every scrape, muscle and freckle as if following a map to buried treasure. She leaned into the table and arched her back, bringing Stella into her until her legs clung to the shirt on Stella’s waist. It was an apt use of a shirt, far more appealing than wearing it. She welcomed the cool surface of Stella’s bare skin, smoother and colder than most living souls, but still flushed with lust. Stella’s cheeks were still rosy, and when Scully nibbled and sucked on her shoulder, it still left a blooming purple mark.

When Stella’s lips left her skin, the absence was like a splash of freezing water. “Perhaps we move—” Stella began breathily, cut off as Scully’s teeth drifted to her breast with soft kisses. “To somewhere” —a gasp— “more comfortable.”

At last tearing her mouth from Stella’s taut nipple, Scully nodded. She huffed, a high, ecstatic sound escaping her, as Stella’s hands slid under her ass and lifted her off the table. Stella’s lips met hers once more, and Scully held desperately to Stella’s hollow cheeks. They fumbled past the cramped dining space and into Stella’s personal quarters, where Stella lay her on a firm mattress. The bed was lavish, and it took up almost the entire room. The walls were bare and the ceiling low, but ornately embroidered pillows decorated half the bed, and the comforter upon which she lay was a rich scarlet.

Stella knelt before her, sweating a bit but utterly breathless. “Are you certain—”

“Positive,” Scully growled, reaching for the button Stella’s trousers and wriggling free of her shirtsleeves. Then Stella’s knees were on either side of her, and the pirate’s hands pushed her shirt over her head. She pushed Stella’s breeches away and rid herself of her own, and as soon as they bare, she pulled Stella’s weight on top of her. Skin on skin, scars on scars, breast on breast, Scully tangled herself wildly in Stella’s body. She felt a hand drift toward her aching center, and she grew wetter by the second. She curled into Stella’s teasing caresses, her teeth toying with Stella’s taut nipple and reveling as muscles clenched beneath her touch.

As Stella’s fingers inched between her legs, her own hand searched blindly until she trailed it down Stella’s stomach and toward her swollen center. They maneuvered in the crimson sheets, misaligned and knotted together like mangroves slowly weaving their roots together and sapping their lives from the sea, until finally they could be inside each other. Scully thrust and curled, rocking against Stella’s legs in time with the ship, at the same time experiencing the rush of Stella moving expertly within her. Her breath hitched; she let out a needy whimper. She thrust faster as Stella’s walls clenched around her fingers, and she knew her own body was doing the same, climbing with Stella, and the knowledge that she could bring such a grave, formidable woman to such unrestrained pleasure only excited her further.

She came first, crying out primally as if announcing their courtship to the sea. The rhythm of her hand grew ragged, but it was more than enough to push Stella over the edge, as moments later, a high-pitched moan and a ragged sigh passed Stella’s lips. Scully fell back beside her, admiring the ticks of Stella’s face as she descended back to reality. Her lower lip trembled slightly in orgasm, and it made Scully smile.

There she lay with Stella, reckless bodies on sweaty red sheets, entwined in the heart of the Flying Dutchman, bound beneath the fluttering Jolly Rodger. Scully’s copper hair lay splayed over Stella’s bare chest, wrapping around the mark of Davy Jones. Her muscles quaked, and she feared if she tried to stand she might collapse. So there she stayed, encased in Stella’s arms, until the ocean lulled her to sleep.

#Television: The X-Files #television: the fall #stella gibson #dana scully #stella x scully #a pirate's life for me #smut

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sosorryyall-blog · 8 years ago

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Part 1: The Phantom of the Opera. One.

Paris, 1887

Christine Daaé closed her eyes as the heavy, sumptuous silk billowed down over her laced form. She’d never dreamed she’d wear a costume of such finery, with the glitter of so many gems and the gushing fall of lace from every edge and flounce. The silk was pale rose pink and the jewels a rainbow of crimsons, fuchsias, and peridot green. Lace of all tones of white—pure snow, blue white, eggshell, aged ivory—dripped from the sleeves and brushed the floor. Tiny rosettes of pink and red silk grew in the holes of the lace pattern.

The costume was heavy and smelled like Carlotta’s cloying rose perfume, and when it surrounded her, it clogged Christine’s nose and caused her eyes to water. The aroma was not the pure scent of roses sent by her Ange de Musique, the scent that she gladly buried her nose within and drew deeply from. The smell from Carlotta’s discarded costume was rank and overpowering, just as Carlotta herself was.

Yet, and yet…Christine would wear it, for tonight she was to take the prima donna’s place in more than her gown. She would sing the aria of Juliet, from Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, in front of the entire Opera House because Carlotta, the Opera House’s star, had stormed off in a great snit earlier today. During rehearsal, one of the backdrops had fallen from its moorings a bit too close to the very costume Christine was now donning, but which at that time had been worn by the diva Carlotta. She had just had the pleasure of meeting the Opera House’s two new managers, Messieurs Moncharmin and Richard, when the wooden pole clattered to the stage. It brushed the edges of her gown, landing in a loud thump at her feet,

Carlotta bolted away as quickly as her generous form would allow when the length of heavy canvas tumbled to the ground, her bosoms and jowls bouncing and her outraged screams echoing in the sudden silence. She clapped her hand to her chest, sending off a puff of white powder from her bosom. “How dare it! How dare it!” she shrieked, yanking off her tall, feathery headdress and tossing it at one of the costumiers. “La Carlotta is ill! La Carlotta shall not sing!”

She stalked off the stage and disappeared in a froth of skirts and feathers, the new managers staring after her in shock.

Horrified whispers skittered around the stage and pit in her wake.

“It is the Opera Ghost!”

“He has done it again.”

“She could have been killed!”

“It was he who stole my powder puff,” hissed one of the dancers.

“He moves like a shadow,” added another.

“An evil creature he is,” chortled Joseph Buquet, the chief stagehand, bugging his eyes out to frighten the young dancers. “His eyes are like coals! His teeth blackened and rotted. His face is stretched tight, and yellow, and his black clothes hang from his bones. He will hunt you down and eat you for dinner!”

Madame Giry, the mistress of the corps de ballet, silenced the gossip with a sharp snap of her fingers and the glare of her jet-bead eyes. “Do not speak of what you do not know,” she ordered, looking sharply at Buquet, who had not troubled to keep his voice to a whisper. “Now, to work! You also, Sorelli. You might be our star dancer, but you must still focus on your practice!”

She directed the dancers behind the steel curtain that separated the ballet foyer from the rest of the stage. Mairie, the lead choreographer, bade the performers to continue their practice. If whispers and undertones continued, Madame Giry did not hear them… or, at least, did not acknowledge them.

It was surely a most unfortunate occurrence to happen on the very day the two new managers took over the reins of the famous Paris Opera House. The outgoing managers, Debienne and Poligny, had been respected and feared by the performers. But these new managers, Messieurs Richard and Moncharmin, who came from the trash-removal business, looked merely wide-eyed and full of consternation.

“Opera Ghost?” Christine, who had been standing near enough to hear their conversation, overheard Monsieur Moncharmin ask his companion. “Debienne and Poligny mentioned nothing about such a thing when they turned over this Opera House! What can be meant by this?”

Monsieur Richard, the taller and more dapper of the two men, tucked his hands in his waistcoat pockets and tipped onto his toes, murmuring in response to his companion, “Likely it is nothing but some bizarre legend, Armand. We are now in the theater business! They have many superstitions and stories and we shall learn of them as we progress. I’m sure it shall prove to be quite entertaining, in more ways than one.” He chuckled indulgently, then sobered. “More importantly, how shall we replace La Carlotta for tonight’s gala performance? There is no one else who can sing with such grace.”

“We cannot cancel the performance,” Moncharmin muttered. “Chagny shall be attending and everything must be in order.”

Then, before Christine could blink an eye, Madame Giry had whisked over from her management of the dancers and pulled her forward, thrusting her in front of the managers. “Miss Daaé will be a more-than-adequate replacement for La Carlotta this evening. Her singing has improved enormously in the last three months.”

Monsieur Richard looked down at Christine, arching one brow as he scanned her simple chorus costume, patched where it had been burned by a careless hair-curling iron, and frayed at the skirt’s hem. Christine’s palms dampened as she clasped her hands together, uncertain whether to dread or hope. It was the chance she’d never thought she’d have. “One of the dancer girls? I do not see how—”

“Come, Richard, it cannot hurt to give the girl a chance,” Moncharmin prodded. “After all, who else is there?” He made a sweeping gesture for Christine to step forward onto the main part of the stage, then turned to the maestro and snapped an order for him to play.

Her throat was so dry she wasn’t sure any note would come forth, Christine walked to center stage, her full, calf-length skirt bouncing with each step. The platform, which pitched at a gentle slant from the back down toward the gaslights along the edge, seemed vast and frightening, despite the fact that the seats in the stalls were completely empty.

A few awkward notes as the violinists found their chairs again, and the cellist readied his bow, for the orchestra had left their seats when the accident with the backdrop occurred and had to get re-settled…and then, as if she had waited an eternity, the melody.

She knew the music, and opened her mouth to sing, pushing her breath out as her angel had taught her, keeping her mouth rounded and her notes long and true until the end. As her song poured forth—hesitant at first, then a bit wobbly, then soft, then louder and clearer—Christine basked in the wonder of the most exciting moment of her seventeen years.

She closed her eyes, every detail of the beautiful Opera House printed on her memory, but in her imagination, she added people filling the rows of stalls that curved in an easy arch in front of the pit, and in the gallery beyond. The high, domed ceiling of the auditorium was painted with Lenepveu’s colorful rendition of the Muses, dancing gracefully in a circle of clouds. In the center of the painting stretched a long chain from which hung a magnificent crystal chandelier.

Boxes with crimson interiors adorned the walls of the auditorium, the closest ones near enough that Christine would be able to see the detail of any female spectator’s gown. Massive gold columns separated the boxes, and the front of each balcony was decorated with an ornate design of flowers, fleurs-de-lis, and cherubs. Above Christine’s head, over the proscenium, trumpeted more angels with their elegant instruments.

Even if the managers did not let her sing tonight, she was standing on the stage and doing it: doing the thing she had dreamed of, fantasized about, since she was young.

If this was to be her only chance, he had prepared her well for it, and she would enjoy every moment of it. Christine had learned that things changed much too quickly in life, and to seize joy when it was offered��for it was much too rare and precious.

When she finished singing, Christine could not resist making a grand curtsy, though there was no audience to see her. When she straightened up, she glanced first at Madame Giry—whose stern face held the barest sketch of approval—and then at the skeptical Monsieur Richard

He was smiling.

Now, as they prepared for the evening performance that was to celebrate the Opera House’s two new managers, as well as its new patrons, Madame stood behind Christine and surveyed her in the floor-to-ceiling mirror.

“You look beautiful, Christine,” she told her, critically examining her from the fall of the gown to the pile of dark hair at the top of her head. Their eyes met above the three busy costumiers that poked and prodded at Christine’s headdress, her shoes, her flounces. “He will be very pleased.”

At the mention of him, Christine felt the air stir in her small dressing room. It became warm, suddenly, yet the tip of her nose cooled; the hair on her arms lifted. Her cheeks burned while the shift in the air felt like a caress over the back of her bare shoulders and neck. If only her angel would show himself to her…come to her in person, instead of just in that hypnotic, pulling, beautiful voice he used when tutoring her in her singing.

“It is my greatest hope that I shall do so.” She was looking at the mirror directly in front of her, the item that dominated the small, narrow dressing room. The room he had insisted she use now that she was no longer in the chorus, according to Madame Giry.

“Come, now, you have done with the fussing!” Madame snapped at the frithering girls, who seemed to have noticed a change in the air and were casting about in fright. “Out!”

She shepherded everyone out and, with her hand on the door, turned to look at Christine. “He wishes a moment with you before you sing.”

Christine was startled. Their lessons, where he taught her to master her untutored voice and to feel the music throughout her entire being, occurred in the chapel, where she prayed for her father and mother, and where he had first spoken to her, or in the conservatoire. But never had he communicated with her at any other time. Would he speak to her now?

Madame was gone, and Christine stood in front of the mirror, looking at herself and the long expanse of empty chamber behind her. The light burned low and warm, yet the shadows loomed tall into the curved ceiling.

She felt him. He was there, her Ange de Musique, her Angel of Music. The air trembled and the gas lamps blinked out with a soft pop. Her heart fluttered in her chest; her palms grew damp just as they had done this afternoon. Yet she did not move, but watched as what had been her reflection in the grand mirror slid into nothing but glinting shades of silver, gray, and black.

And then…something light and warm, heavy and gentle, brushed over the back of her shoulders, along the curved edge of the back of her dress. She released her breath, and the warmth closed over her skin. Her heart beat rapidly; he was there! He was in the room with her!

Leather—smooth, cool, pliable—fingered over her skin, the dip of her delicate bones, brushing the long bareness of her neck. Heat rushed in the wake of his touch, sending sharp pleasure down into the depths of her belly. She closed her eyes, drew in a shudder, and reached out for the cold glass of the mirror in front of her. Her hand imprinted on its unyielding chill, an anomaly from the warmth that burned against her back.

He breathed, standing behind her, and she felt his height, strength, darkness wrapping around her. “On the stage, you will sing for me this night.”

As always, the timbre of his voice frightened her with its intensity, warmed her with its smooth cadence, teased her with its hint of mockery. It embodied the beauty of the music she loved so, with its rhythm and tone and its cool, unforgiving command. And tonight, instead of coming to her from some disembodied location, it was there, behind her, next to her. Touching her.

“I will.” She started to turn, to face him, desperately wanting to see him…but his hands on her shoulders stopped her. Firmly.

“No.”

She had never seen her ange, had heard him speak to her only in darkness such as this, or even in the low light of the conservatoire when she visited there alone to practice…in the chapel, when he sang in a low, ghostly murmur whilst she prayed for the soul of her lost father, and that of her mother, who’d died so long ago. Perhaps once she had felt him touch her, as he did tonight, but she had been sleeping and was not certain if it had been a dream.

This—his leather-covered hands smoothing over her shoulders and around to cup her neck, curving around her throat, leaving delicate shivers in their wake—was no dream. She’d often wondered if he was a spirit or a ghost. But the warm solidness behind her answered her question: He was no ghost.

He was a man, perhaps more…but he was no specter to dissolve into thin air. The Opera Ghost was an angel, with a darkly rich voice.

When he sang, a tenor.

When he coaxed, velvet smooth.

When he raged, cold and cutting as a stiletto.

“Christine…,” he breathed in her ear, his mouth close and warm. The syllables of her name were a deep, ringing well of elegant, coaxing tones.

The fingers of her right hand, splayed on the glass of the mirror, slipped a fraction from the nervous moisture beneath her palm. Her other hand reached up behind her head, collided with soft, sleek hair that did not belong to her. She dug her fingers into the heavy strands, felt the shift of his scalp under her finger pads as something behind her moved, pressing into the back of her hips. Hard, solid, hot, he was, and she felt it even through the layers of silk and crinolines. It caused a burst of warmth to flood to the place between her legs and Christine removed her hand from the mirror.

Her fingers were cold and moist, and they sought back behind her, brushing over the top of his head as her left hand had done…and then slid down over his temples, and touched something smooth and unexpected where his forehead would be—lifeless, cool, and yielding. Not flesh, not hair—

He shifted away from her touch, grabbing her hands and pulling them down behind her, between them, trapping them at the base of her spine, where the folds of his cloak billowed about. “Your boldness surprises me, Christine.”

“Why can I not see you?”

“When it is time.” Something hot and warm, faintly moist, touched her neck and sent shivers down to the base of her belly; she tried to turn toward him, but his hands gripped her wrists too tightly. “When it is time,” he repeated, his mouth against her delicate shoulder. “Now…you sing for me tonight. And if you please me, you shall be rewarded with my devotion.”

And then he was gone.

The lights fluttered back to life, and Christine was alone in her room. The only sign of what had occurred was the streak of fingerprints on the mirror…and a glistening trail of moisture along her neck.

The sea of faces, the heat from the hooded gas lamps at the edge of the stage, the strange constriction of the heavy costume…the blur of light and sound and the deep breaths that she needed to take…the mosaic of sensations swam in Christine’s mind as she sang. She felt the music tear from her body as if released by some pent-up energy. She heard the reverberation as the clear, high notes swelled and filled the stage alcove. And then she drew in her last breath and expelled the last note, and the sea of rapt faces turned into a mass of thunderous applause, cheers, shouts.

L’Ange de Musique would be pleased.

And over the shouts and whistles, she heard it, deep in her heart.…“Brava…bravissima…”

And in the wings of the stage, she saw Madame Giry, nodding and beaming with clear, studying eyes.

Christine was left in the midst of the stage to make a careful curtsy in her heavy, formfitting gown, over and over. Flowers, gloves, even hats, were tossed onstage at her feet.

From the box in which they were sitting, the Comte and Vicomte de Chagny watched Christine Daaé’s bowed head as she made her third curtsy. Still the crowd roared and applauded.

“Quite a lovely woman. Very lush,” mused Philippe, the comte, settling back in his seat. “It is no wonder the dancer La Sorelli never cared to introduce her to me during our attachment. Miss Daaé is her name? I wonder where she came from and how long she has been here. I have never seen her in the dancers’ lounge, nor in the singers’ lounge. I wonder where she has been hiding.”

“Her father died some years ago,” replied Raoul, his younger brother. “I do not know how long she has been here at the Opera House. I only learned she was here this week. I have not spoken with her in years.”

“So it is no wonder that you insisted that you would attend tonight, without your regular companion of Mademoiselle Le Rochet.”

Philippe noticed that Raoul had not taken his eyes from the dark-haired figure below. “I met Miss Daaé at the sea near Perros-Guirec some years ago.…Do you recall that summer? You were there too, that first day I met her and her father.”

“I am sure I would not forget such a lovely form if I had seen it before.” No, indeed. He was not accustomed to passing by such lovely womanhood without finding a way to sample it. And an actress, of course, would be simple and easy for the picking…despite the growing strength of the bourgeois, who believed that with the Third Republic and the rise of their class, the actresses had miraculously become modest and moral.

A laughable assumption.

“We were younger then. She was but a girl. I saved her scarf from being blown away by the surf—oh, look at her! She looks as though she might faint!” Raoul stood from his seat as if to rush to her side.

Philippe grabbed his arm and pulled him back. “Sit, dear brother. It is not fitting for a Chagny to make a fool of himself over a singer or dancer, even one as beautiful and gifted as she. And see, the others have caught her. She is not about to crumple to the floor in front of an entire opera house without someone else noticing.” Indeed, several of the dancers had rushed to her side and caught her as she began to sag. Her face did look pale. Philippe turned and considered Raoul thoughtfully. “You appear quite taken with her.”

“I’ve never met a more lovely, endearing woman. It was an unforgettable summer, and I spent a great deal of time with them. You were too busy with your own affairs to notice. I met her father, a great violinist, who would play for us…and she would sing. Only passably then, but with great promise. She sings more beautifully now than she ever has. Before Monsieur Daaé died, he would tell us wonderful stories about the Angel of Music and Little Lotte…tales from Sweden, where they were from. He never came to love it here in France, and often told us stories from their homeland, for which he was strongly homesick.” Raoul seemed lost in his memories, a fact that greatly annoyed Philippe, who preferred to live for the moment.

Philippe stood. “Then I would imagine you must hasten to congratulate Miss Daaé on her lovely performance. She will be delighted to renew your acquaintance, whilst I make my way to the dancers’ lounge, where La Sorelli is waiting to renew mine.” A smile played about his lips. This could be quite interesting, Philippe thought. When at last she came offstage, Christine was surrounded by the girls of the ballet corps, of which she had been a member until just this afternoon. Even if her new role was only temporary, the entire day had been like a dream. The girls squealed and clapped and bore her like a hero in their midst back to her dressing room, for what she had accomplished was in the heart of every one of them as well. Still light-headed from her experience, her fingers trembling and her knees weak, Christine nevertheless felt as though she could be no happier. She’d sung perfectly, clear and true, dressed in the heavy, gorgeous gown that looked as though it belonged to a queen. The applause had been for her, and her alone. The enraptured faces, rows after rows of them, had been in her honor.

It was as if she’d traveled back in time to the moment when as a very young child, she’d seen the beautiful lady…dressed in a glittering golden gown, seeded with pearls and rubies, her honey-colored hair coiffed in whorls and braids and little puffs around her ears, with more jewels and slender golden chains woven throughout…and she, little Christine, gazed up at her in adoration.

She would never forget that beautiful woman opening her lovely pink lips, so soft and plump and shiny, and the incredible sound that came from them. She remembered how her voice made Christine’s little heart expand in her chest, and how she wanted to touch the lady’s skirt where its scalloped hem brushed the stage directly in front of her eyes. How, looking up in awe, she had wanted to be up there herself, like a splendid bird, capable of making such sweet, pure sounds, and looking like a faery princess.

And she was certain that standing on the stage, in the midst of all the adoration, garbed as richly as a queen, the woman was happy. Joyous. Loved. She had to be. One could not be that beautiful and that adored and not be happy and secure.

Eventually, young Christine somehow convinced herself that the beautiful woman was really her mother, who had died when she was five. She used the memory as a talisman, as an aspiration and an escape from a life that was as colorless and bland as the woman’s gown was brilliant and warm.

Her lonely life, spent with her father, who still swam in his own grief for the loss of his wife, had few pleasures. Master Daaé was a famous violinist who traveled and took Christine with him everywhere; thus, she had no home, nor friends, and merely saw city after city from coaches and small hotel rooms. It was not until that long-ago summer by the sea at Perros-Guirec that her father decided to stay in one place. But that was years after Christine had seen, and fallen in love with, the beautiful lady.

And tonight, with shaking knees and churning belly, she’d become that beautiful lady of her dreams.

And now all would be well. She would be happy and loved and safe.

Now, as Christine reached her dressing room, a deep, masculine voice penetrated the high-pitched tones of her girlish companions. “Miss Daaé?”

The voice, not the disembodied one of her ange, but an earthly one, was close behind her and drew Christine from the task of unlocking the door of her room.

As she turned, his name came to her ears, hissed in the under-tow of voices from the excited girls.…“The Vicomte de Chagny! It is he! The new patron’s brother!”

She turned and saw him, recognition following immediately. “Raoul!” she exclaimed without thinking, for he was a friend from her childhood, one whom she’d come to know for a short, happy time during that summer by the sea.

How handsome he had grown, how tall and chiseled and elegant he was, from his slender fingers to his small, clipped mustache. His long blond hair, clubbed at the back of his neck, gleamed golden and tawny in the light. Clear blue eyes smiled at her, taking her back to those days when they’d played together and listened to her father’s stories about the Angel of Music. She recognized that he was wearing a naval uniform and was not surprised, for he’d loved the sea, even all those years ago.

She wondered what Raoul would say if she told him she’d been visited by a true ange, and that he’d been tutoring her for months. And that it was because of his tutoring that she had become the beautiful lady.

He stepped forward and the sea of girls parted before him like he was Moses. He removed the tasseled key from her hand. “Allow me, Miss Daaé.”

He unlocked her dressing room door, sending it open with a flourish. She brushed past him, noticing how the heavy gown dragged against his shiny boots and cuffed jacket.

He closed the door and they were alone.

Lamps glowed, and the shadows that seemed so often to be dramatic were now low and brown, and did not lurk in the corners as they were often wont to do. Flowers had already been brought into her room, and vases rested on every surface—the floor, the dressing table, the tea table, even the sitting stool. Roses, daisies, gillyflowers, lilies…filling the air with their perfume.

“Christine, you were magnificent.” Raoul came to her side, clasping her hand with his and drawing it to his perfect lips.

“Raoul, how lovely to see you again,” she replied, slipping her hand from his and brushing her fingers over his fine cheek. It was warm and smooth.

“You have grown up so. I could not believe it was you, my little Christine, singing like an angel.”

An angel.

Christine stepped back, suddenly nervous. “Raoul, I am no angel.”

But he did not seem to notice her apprehension. “You are, you are, beautiful angel. I shall have to make a point of returning to the opera every night, now that Philippe and I are the patrons and now that you are to be the new star.”

“I hope that I shall see you often,” she replied, and felt a change in the air. It was him. For some reason, she didn’t want him to know about Raoul, that she had an admirer. “Raoul, shall we leave here? I must speak to Messieurs Richard and Moncharmin, and I am hungry, and we have so much to talk about. It has been so many years.”

“Yes, indeed, I would be happy to escort you to dinner.”

She opened the door, and was greeted by a throng of admirers clutching flowers and waiting eagerly. “Oh, my,” she said, pleased and warm, but very, very aware of a barely tangible shift in the room’s mood behind her.

Raoul pushed past her. Blocking the door, as if to keep the others from seeing into the room, or, perhaps, seeing much of Christine, he turned toward her. “I shall bring my carriage around and come back for you shortly. Shall I call someone to help you change?”

“No…no, thank you, Raoul. I shall be able to take care of it myself.”

He closed the door and she was alone.

And then she realized that she wasn’t. “Madame Giry?”

“You did well tonight, Christine. But he will not be pleased if you neglect your rest in favor of social activities.” Madame Giry had moved behind her and was working quickly at the buttons that lined her spine.

The heavy costume fell away, and Madame’s warm hands moved over her shoulders and down her arms to push the silk to the floor. “Take care not to anger him, Christine. His wrath is not to be borne. Are you certain it is wise to go with the vicomte?”

So Christine’s worry that her angel would not be happy to know she already had an admirer was correct. “But…I must eat, madame. And he is nothing but an old friend, and the brother of the new patron. It can only be good for the success of the theater if he wishes to dine with me.”

Madame’s face, aged but still beautiful, turned hard with concern. She bent close to Christine’s ear, her breath warm and moist, sending prickling shivers along the edge of her neck. “Have a care, Christine, for as his pupil, you have the chance to be great, with or without the favor of the patron’s brother. If you please him, you will be cared for beyond your imagination. If you displease him, his wrath will be immense. He is brilliant and kind, but he is selfish and would not be willing to share you. Note well what I say, Christine. With him as your tutor, you need not worry about finding a protector, as the other girls do.”

Did she mean that her angel would be her protector? Or that he merely wished to be certain that she did not forget about her lessons?

Instead of asking, for Christine felt a strange squiggling feeling in her middle at the thought that he might hear, she twisted the subject. “A protector? Raoul? I do not think he has such an idea in his head. He is only an old friend, pleased to see me again. Nevertheless, I will heed your warning, madame,” Christine replied earnestly. She did not forget that it was her ange who had tutored her to this wondrous night. “It is only a dinner, to celebrate my debut.”

“I hope that you shall remember that, my dear. And it is fitting that you should celebrate. Now, quickly, let us change your clothing and get you prepared for dinner. It must be a short meal, so that you sleep well tonight. Look, I have brought you a gown to wear.”

Surprised, and embarrassed that she hadn’t thought for herself of what she would wear to dinner with a vicomte and the theater managers, Christine turned. “It’s beautiful. Where did it come from?”

It was striking, and very stylish, and nothing like any gown Christine had ever owned, or even seen up close. Certainly the opera costumes were all beautiful and bejeweled and ornate—the better to be seen from the boxes and the stalls—but they were too heavy and fancy to wear in the real world.

“I bullied Tiline into letting you borrow it,” Madame explained. “Her Monsieur Boulan has gifted her with many lovely gowns as of late.”

It was a dinner gown of deep garnet satin trimmed with gold lace that gathered in soft folds at the tops of her arms. The lace made a narrow vee from shoulder to shoulder in front and back, and where the dark red bodice gathered over her breasts, more gold lace hung along its lower edges.

The skirt was nearly as heavy as the costume Christine had been wearing, and fell in generous folds that were gathered up into a bustle at the base of her spine. A wide swath of gold satin draped from each side of the front of the skirt and was fastened over the bustle with a huge bow made from more gold lace festooned with white and red satin roses.

When she saw herself in the mirror, she hardly recognized herself as shy, lonely little Christine Daaé.

“Thank you, madame,” she said as she left the room at last.

Outside of her dressing room, the passageway was empty. Still, shadowed, silent…so unlike what Christine was used to, with the comings and goings of actors and costumiers and musicians, prop hands and stagehands…it was quiet and lonely. As she had been, it seemed, forever.

But now, tonight, she was a star. Everyone wanted to see her, speak to her, be with her. No longer the shy mouse of a girl, she was sought after by a vicomte! Even if he was an old friend, he would not have sought her out if he did not wish to see her.

She was no innocent girl. Madame Giry had seen to it that none of her little dancers—called rats de l’opéra for the fact that they often came to the theater young and straggly, and were seen as always being underfoot—were innocent ingenues, though they might appear to be. She instructed them in more than simply ballet. Madame felt each of the young rats was her responsibility, for many of them had chosen the profession over being a schoolmistress or working in manual labor, upon being orphaned or because their family became destitute.

The theater was a profession, Madame told them, that allowed a woman quite a bit of control over her life, including her choice of lover or protector—if she was young and pretty, or at least if she was talented both onstage and in the boudoir. Thus Madame had ensured that none of her charges were waiting to be deflowered and left with nothing to show for it. Her rats were taught how to take advantage, rather than be taken advantage of. She instructed them how to attract and select a good protector who would not be physically cruel in the boudoir and who would otherwise treat them well.

But Christine could not fathom that Raoul—good, handsome, polite Raoul, who had dashed into the surf to retrieve her scarf when it blew away—would dare have the thought of being a protector. It made her warm to even think of it.

Raoul did not fit the image of one. Christine had met the older gentlemen that took care of the two former dancers Tiline and Regina when those two began to have solos of their own and thus attracted attention to themselves. Their protectors had bloated cheeks, were pompous, and had squinting, beady eyes that seemed always to be looking right through the girls’ costumes—yet they patted the girls on the heads and brought them gifts and trinkets whenever they visited. If one did not look in their eyes, one might think they were no more than a father or favored uncle. But of course, that was not so, and Christine, who had not been a virgin since her sixteenth birthday, recognized all too well that the looks in their eyes were anything but paternal.

Now the two girls, who hardly had time any longer for the other dancers in the corps de ballet from which they had so recently graduated, complained of having to juggle the attentions of the older men, who paid for their costumes and jewelry and for their own small flats, with their interest in younger, more attractive and virile men who did not have the pocketbook…but had other amenities.

Christine herself had never been in a position to attract the attention of a possible protector. Even if she had, she would have taken care before doing so, for she was known as one of Madame Giry’s most virtuous girls. She was one who did not flirt, who did not make promises with her eyes, who took care that her bosom didn’t show and her ankles didn’t flash.

But perhaps tonight had changed everything. Now she had attracted great attention! Perhaps that was why Raoul had made his way so quickly backstage, and barricaded them in her dressing room. Perhaps he was merely trying to protect her from any other men who’d found her sudden, triumphant debut of interest.

No, she did not place Raoul in the same category as those pudgy, false-fatherly gentlemen who scanned the dancers and singers and actresses as if they were clusters of horseflesh…but neither did she dismiss him. Not at all. For he had been handsome and charming, and quite obviously pleased to see her.

Now, Christine should have been hurrying along the passageway toward the back door that led into the side alley, where Raoul would be waiting for her…but instead, she found herself moving back toward the stage. The place of her triumph.

She had rarely had occasion to be on the stage when the room, with its vast rows of seats and high, domed ceiling, was empty of everything but…echoes. Echoes of performances past, echoes of smoke from the doused lights, echoes of perfume and applause.

She wasn’t sure what drew her, but she heeded the innate call and walked out onto the stark wooden-planked stage. Her footsteps, nearly silent in slippers, took her to the monstrous stage’s center, and Christine stood, facing the invisible audience.

A whisper of air stirred, raising the hair all along her arms and at the base of her neck. She resisted the urge to look behind her; instead, she smoothed one hand up along her arm, then down, over her long glove, and then back up again. Waiting.

A sudden beam of limelight shot down from above, circling her in its white glow, cutting her off from the darkness around her. The sphere was compact, just large enough that she might walk two small steps before moving out of it and back into the empty black if she chose. It was warm; even though it had not pounded on her for long, the heat from the light above played across her bare shoulders and bosom, and over the upper parts of her arms that were not covered by her gloves.

The light dulled her eyesight as it did when she performed. She could not see the shadowy seats in the theater, nor could she see the red velvet curtains swagged at the edge of the proscenium. All she could see was the white beam of light; all she could feel was its increasing warmth.

“Christine…”

The sound of her name, faint, hollow, erotic, came from behind. Or perhaps above. She wasn’t sure.

“Ange?” she managed to ask. Her heart was suddenly thumping madly.

Before she could turn to look, she felt him behind her again, just as he had been in her dressing room. He had spoken to her, taught her, sung with her…but he had never appeared to her before. And now twice in one day.

His hands closed over her shoulders, the supple, tacky leather of his gloves grabbing at her delicate skin as he moved his palms down over her arms, pulling at the low, sweeping neckline of her gown. The fabric tightened over her breasts, uncovering her suddenly hard, sharp nipples, baring her skin to the heat of the light above.

“You pleased me greatly tonight,” he murmured in that low, melodious voice. It burned in her ear and sent waves of sharp prickles along her neck, down her arms, over her breasts and nipples, to her belly, and lower.

Christine dared to look down, and she saw black, gloved hands dark on her white shoulders and the deep, dark vee between her breasts lifted and pushed together by her corset, and the hint of pink from her areolas above the dark crimson gown. “Thank you,” she breathed, reaching up to cover one of his hands with hers. She felt the faintest tremor in his fingers, beneath her own, and wondered suddenly…was it from anger?

Or was it the same sudden trembling she felt over her body?

Now her white-gloved fingers splayed over his wide black ones, and she could feel the heat from him burn into her skin beneath. His free hand moved, threading fingers up into the back of her coiled hair, combing gently through it and then grasping to pull her head back. The beam of light struck her gaze and blinded her; she closed her eyes as sudden tears stung them.

From behind, his face moved against her; she felt warm flesh brush against her right jawline and then hot, soft lips press against her skin. Her head held immobile, her eyes closed against the searing light, Christine struggled to draw in a breath and succeeded only in shuddering and faintly sobbing as pleasure burned where he kissed her, drawing on her flesh, slowly, insistently.

His lips, warm, moist, gentle, inched along her jaw, down the side of her taut throat. Her neck ached; her lips parted; her knees weakened. Her fingers closed around his hand at her shoulder, while her other hand reached up to touch him behind her. She needed to feel him, to know him.

“No,” he snarled against her skin, and, releasing her hair, snatched at her questing fingers and pulled them away from his face. He moved quickly and imprisoned both of her wrists in one leathered hand, above her head.

He moved. She could feel him reach up, behind her, and then suddenly she felt something wrapping around her wrists. She gasped, and tried to pull her arms free, but he was too strong. Before she knew it, he’d secured her hands above her head, wrists crossed, elbows bent gently.

“Did you not know that curiosity killed the cat?” he murmured gently into her ear, his sudden anger seeming to have defused. He circled around so that he stood just next to her, but still slightly behind so that she could not see any part of his face…only the gloved hand and the long, black arm to which it was connected, the strong black leg that crossed in front of her skirt, and the shiny black shoe that stepped in the pool of light below.

She tried to move her hands down from the top of her head, but something held them there, something from above. She could do nothing but tug and pull and feel the sway of the rope as it swung from the catwalk above. Her heart beat faster; she could not seem to draw in a full breath.

“Now…,” he sighed, moving close to her, one hand in a vee at the front of her neck, cupping her throat, the other at her nape. “I shall show you how well your performance pleased me tonight.”

“Ange, please…” She could scarcely form the words…and for what she was pleading, she did not know.

His chuckle was quiet, but he did not respond with words. Instead, she felt his hand moving down her spine. The heavy weight of her gown loosened, gapping and falling away in the back where his nimble fingers undid the buttons Madame Giry had fastened only a short time ago.

His other hand slipped under the steel ribbing of her corset, sliding under her left breast and to lift it from the cup of her stays. His leather-covered thumb moved over her stark, hard nipple and she felt a jolt of pleasure spear into her belly, and then to the place between her legs. It flooded moist and hot there, and she pulled, trying to bring her arms to touch him, forgetting that she could not. The rope held, and she succeeded only in straining her arms and causing her ange to chuckle again.

“Relax, ma voix,” he murmured, his voice rougher than before. His thumb continued to rub across the sensitive part of her nipple, while the other hand slid down beneath the open buttons of her gown, down and around her buttocks.

Christine jerked when that hand found its way under her chemise and down into her drawers, cool leather fingers slicking down stickily, spreading the cleft of her rear. She tried to buck away, but he only pressed harder, his fingers sliding to cover the underside of one round buttock while his front hand slipped to the vee of her legs. His palm pressed there, into her sex, through her gown, and moved in a circular motion over the silk and lace that covered her.

Wrists bound above her, she was trapped between his hands, one set of fingers pushing her skirts down and between her legs, and the other urging her forward from behind, into his palm that cupped her. Her breasts were tight, her nipples painfully hard. Her arms were cold and prickly from lack of blood. The beam of light burned down on them and sweat dampened her face and shoulders and breasts, making her skin slick and heavy. She bucked her hips, trying to get free, or closer, or away—anything to relieve the pressure building inside her.

As he massaged her with his hands, pressing her between them, one warm leather finger slipped from behind, sliding through the wetness that pooled between her legs. Christine moaned when that finger, impersonal in its black case, slid inside her. He pushed her back, his other hand still in place at the juncture of her thighs, massaging just where the edge of her mound was.…How could he feel it, through all the reams of cloth?

Such thoughts fled when he removed his hand from her front and yanked hard at her corset, pulling it down and away from her heavy, tight breasts. She was poised, balanced, on the finger deep inside her, and her breasts were bare in the hot white light, pink nipples hard and pointing, aching when he brushed his hand over one, then the other. Mon Dieu, what if someone came upon them?

He pinched, tweaked, rubbed, and she moved her hips, swimming on that leather finger, trying to find something, some relief, some end. “Ah, yes,” he breathed into her ear. His voice was thick and deep. “You open yourself to me.…Yes, ma voix, yes, you may shudder and moan. It is a beautiful music you make now, on this stage. Performing only for me.”

Christine was no innocent when it came to pleasure of the body, but she had never felt the hot rush of lust combined with the inability to move as she wished, touch as she needed to. She’d never felt this rage of need she now felt, standing—no, dangling, for her knees sagged and she could no longer hold herself upright.

When he bent his dark head and closed his mouth around the nipple nearest him, Christine could hold back no longer. She cried out, felt the weight of her body straining on the rope above, dangling with her wrists held high and helpless. Wetness, moisture, liquid everywhere…between her legs, on her breast, sweat from the heat of the light—she was dripping, throbbing, panting.

She cried out, unable to hold back the frustration that built inside. His lips sucked at her nipple, drawing it so tightly into his mouth that she thought she must scream from the pain, and cry from the pleasure.

The finger inside her slipped free, rubbing over her engorged pip, straining between her nether lips, as she circled her hips, trying to move it closer, harder, faster, in the rhythm she needed. He lifted his mouth. “Come for me, Christine.…Come…now.”

His other hand again pushed back on her, holding her hips in place as that nimble finger worked from behind, round and round, slipping and gliding through her, until at last the pleasure peaked and she shuddered, crying out her orgasm from deep within.

Then there was only the aftermath: silence, but for their twin breaths, harsh and needy. The dull throb between her legs; the ache at the breast where he’d sucked so hard. His warm leather hand as it glided up and over her ass, bringing her wetness along with it over the round swell of her buttocks. He drew away from her breast, moving back behind her before she saw more than the gleam of dark hair. His hands settled on her shoulders and he pressed into her from behind.

She felt his erection; it pushed into the base of her bare back, through his trousers, insistent and promising. Hard, and it sent a renewal of lust through her middle, stabbing into her stomach.

“I trust that your pleasure was as great as mine,” he murmured, back at her ear again and safely out of her view. His voice was not smooth; it was uneven but low, as though he struggled to keep it steady. He moved his hands up along her arms, moving from her bare skin to the fine cotton gloves that stretched from elbow to wrist.

“I believe mine was the greater,” Christine replied, her own words shaky. “But if you will untie me, ange, I would like to touch you…and see you.”

“My name is Erik. You may call me that, but now is not the time. Behave yourself this night, ma voix, and I will come to you again soon. Your tutelage has only just begun.” She felt his chest lift and press against her from behind as he drew in a long, deep breath, held it, then released it.

His gloves, fingers spread, ran down from her wrists, over her face, jaw, and neck, smoothly over her bare breasts, pausing to massage them…then close and hard over her belly and to her throbbing sex. Heat followed the leather, and she sagged again under the weight of desire, closing her eyes and tipping her head back into the blare of light.

And then suddenly, he left. He left her burning and aching for more, her nipples hard and pointed, one redder than the other from his mouth, and sore. Her sex throbbing again, in memory and need. Her back cold without him behind her, her gown sagging from her uplifted arms.

And then, before she could fathom that he’d left her stranded and half-naked on the middle of the Opera House stage, something fell from above. Her arms dropped, still tied, to her waist, the rope slapping onto the hard wood at her feet.

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