"Say it, say it louder," she coaxed, arching backward to place her hands on his thighs. Her breasts jutted out in front of her and he focused avidly on them.
"I want… to fuck… you…"
"Fuck me, then. Fuck me."
And then suddenly, she was on her back, and Guy was rearing over her, using his knee to keep her legs apart as he gripped her shoulders. He slammed inside of her, slammed into her quim, into the top of her vagina, harder and harder, faster and faster. Carlotta moaned as he hit that inner spot, ramming against it, until she quaked with an orgasm from the inside out.
She reached up behind and grabbed the iron scrollwork, felt her breasts jouncing and bouncing with his desperate rhythm. Her orgasm went on and on; she lifted her hips, met his, violently, with every thrust. It was hot and wet and they slid together, in and out, in and out… He groaned, cried out, jammed himself inside her one final time, and she felt him coursing inside the long hot tunnel of her, and she shuddered too.
He collapsed on her, his heavy, sweaty body deliciously hot, his chest ramming against her breasts.
Carlotta slapped him on the bare ass. "We will discuss your punishment tomorrow."
And, knees trembling, she rolled from the bed, grinning, determined to sing tonight… and to snare herself a comte. Ghost or no ghost.
Raoul crossed the stage rapidly, resisting the desire to duck when he heard a particularly loud crash behind him. Only hours before the evening's performance, it was a madhouse in here! However could they be ready in time?
The chaos was deafening. He tightened his fingers around the huge bunch of stems he carried. This was even worse than being on a ship's deck during a violent storm, trying to secure the lines and keep oneself from being washed overboard.
Someone was hammering nails onto a piece of scenery with great vigor; a backdrop was being lowered from its high rigging and had been caught on something, so it was now being shaken with a violence that caused Raoul no little concern. A piece of glass was being fitted into the hole in a wall of scenery; someone shouted to "Watch out!" and another person yelled, "Behind you!"
All in all, he wished he'd chosen a less direct route to the backstage dressing rooms than through the front doors of the Opera House, down among the stalls, up onto the stage, and behind it. Particularly during the day, when there were no performances, but instead this cacophony of preparation for the performance of Faust that night.
He stepped around a flat being carried from the seemingly depthless wings, and, adjusting his hat so that it sat straight on his crown, he hurried along between more flats, tables, costumiers, carpenters, wigmakers, and scenery docks, finding his way only by chance because, of course, he'd been to Christine's dressing room only one time.
But as it turned out, Raoul did not need to find his way to her private room, for as he passed along the hall, one of the dancers, whose name he had no reason to recall, attracted his attention. "Are you looking for Miss Daaé?" she asked. But she gave him a look from under her lashes, complete with dimple and tucked chin, that suggested she would prefer he was not.
"I am indeed. Do you know where she is?"
"She is in the foyer de la danse," she replied.
Raoul picked up his pace. The dancers' lounge was the place where the performers met their admirers after performances, and at other convenient times. He did not wish to imagine Christine—for he could not think of her as Miss Daaé, having known her as a young girl—meeting any other admirers but himself.
By the time he found his way to the lounge, after making two misturns, he had worked himself into a bit of a state. Why did his pulse race so when he thought of her? Why did the thought of another man even looking at her make his fingers tighten?
When he opened the door—flung it, really—he found a scene much worse than he'd feared.
There was Christine, seated on a lush pink velvet sofa, in a room that looked too much like the boudoir of a courtesan for his comfort. Everything was plush and stuffed and velvet: chairs, sofas, large cushions on the floor, even three large square fabric cubes topped with glass that acted as tables. The colors burned sensually: rosy pink, crimson, royal purple, and saffron.
Wine bottles, platters of cakes and frontages and bread, bowls of glistening grapes and bright oranges and dusky brown pears, empty glasses, filled glasses—all of these trappings of entertainment littered the tables and hung in the hands of the men… the nearly dozen men… who fawned over his Christine. There were other dancers in the room, and two girls that he recognized, vaguely, as singers, but they did not hold the attention of their guests as did Christine.
She looked up when he came in, and it was not merely vanity that caused him to see the pleasure and true delight in her face. She smiled. Her fair cheeks became rosy and her blue eyes sparkled.
Raoul was not a Chagny for nothing, and never had he worn the mantle so well. "Good afternoon, Miss Daaé. I apologize for my tardiness in coming to call for you, as I'd promised last evening. Shall we go?"
He walked over to her, making his way through her admirers, and extended his arm to her. Their eyes met, and he couldn't help but catch his breath at her glorious beauty. She looked so innocent, so young, so pure.
And he had loved her for so long.
Christine rose, and his heart swelled, for until she did, he was not altogether certain she would support his presumption.
"For me?" she asked, smiling, looking at the massive bunch of hothouse roses he still held.
He'd forgotten them; but even in the midst of that little embarrassment, he did not mind. For she was coming with him. "Of course, mademoiselle. Pure white roses, tipped with the blush of pink… only for you."
If Christine's other admirers were affronted at his sudden whisking away of the object of their affection, Raoul did not notice. He had a goddess on his arm, and he knew nothing else.
Even though it was a winter's day, he wanted to take her outside… away from the dark busyness of the theater, away from the clamor of her other admirers. He settled her comfortably in his carriage, tucking fox- and rabbit-fur blankets about her legs and then wrapping the softest of ermines around her shoulders.
A fresh snow sparkled and would have blinded him if he'd not had his top-hat brim down low over his eyes. "Where shall we go?" he asked, turning to smile at her.
"Wherever you wish."
He glanced at her as the carriage started off, the horse's hooves clip-clopping smartly as they turned along the busy rue de la Paix. Her ivory cheeks had blossomed pink in the chill air, and even the tip of her perfect nose had reddened. He thought she looked delectable.
But while he was watching her, she was watching everything else. It occurred to him that she probably did not often have the luxury of taking a carriage ride through the streets of Paris. If she left the Opera House, it was likely rare, and on foot.
Raoul turned his attention to the rue and looked at it as she must see it, with its occasional closed carriages and caped men in tall hats driving them. Women and men walked along the brick streets too, both garbed in subdued, but fashionable, clothing for the messy winter months, holding umbrellas as they did in nearly every season—to protect them from sun, rain, or snow.
Raoul noticed the street vendors calling out to sell fromages and fruits and bread, dressed in clothing not much better than what Christine herself wore, and dodging a trio of scruffy dogs that bothered them underfoot.
When they turned along the Left Bank, the icy Seine lay unbroken in a long stretch of white. They were flanked on the other side by a rough wall that separated the street from the road, and the river. And then he saw the spidery, wrought-iron atrocity that was just beginning to take form on the riverfront ahead of them.
Christine must have heard his snort of disgust, for she turned her attention away from the sights to look at him. "You do not like this new tower that is being built?"
"Indeed not," he replied. "Monsieur Eiffel will destroy the Parisian silhouette, with this tall, gangly monstrosity. I have seen drawings of what it will look like when it is finished, and I cannot believe the mayor has allowed such an affront to take place in our beautiful city."
Christine gave him an innocent smile that eased some of his annoyance. "But it is for the celebration of the centenary of your Great Revolution. And there is no intention that they shall leave it standing after, is there?"
"I certainly hope not, but we will have to look at it for at least two more years. And you might recall that it was not my revolution," he chided gently. "My family were some of the ones who lost more than our land during the Reign of Terror. But being Swedish, perhaps you are not as well versed in our history. At any rate," he said, determined to steer the conversation away from such unpleasantness and toward something more personal, "I hope you aren't angry with me for taking you away from your admirers."
"No, of course not, Raoul. I am pleased that you would care to be seen with me in public."
"Of course I do, Christine. I told you that I intend to court you."
She looked away. "I know that's what you said, but… well, that was last evening."
"You think that I might have changed my mind overnight? When all I could think of last night was you?"
"I was not suggesting that you would have changed your mind, but that perhaps you might have had some assistance."
"You speak of my brother, the one who himself had a widely known attachment to none other than La Sorelli." Raoul laughed, but it felt hollow. He hadn't spoken to Philippe yet, and although he had every intention of courting—and, if the truth be known, marrying—Christine Daaé, he acknowledged that it would likely take some convincing of his brother.
But he would do it. Philippe never denied him anything he truly wished; for he was twelve years older, and had always thought of Raoul as more of a son than a brother, since their mother had died when Raoul was born, and their father less than a decade later.
It was true, however, that Raoul did not like to think of angering or disappointing Philippe. That was why he'd gone to sea: to make something of himself that the comte would be proud of.