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His hands are the only part of himself that he managed to safeguard from the violence that marred the rest of his body, and he is grateful for that small mercy. They are soft against the softest velvet skin he has ever touched.
She has brought his hands to her neck, and he feels the smoothness of it over tendons that are taut as she looks up at him; feels the delicacy of the short fine hair at the base of her skull which makes her close her eyes and sigh when he strokes there. He wonders what it would mean to be able to touch all of her this way, to discover if she is soft and supple like this everywhere else. He is almost embarrassed by the thought. He loves her – there is no doubt about that – his heart pounds madly in his chest at every thought of her, but he never entertained the idea that something more could happen. Not with him. Not with the deformed creature that he is.
All he ever wanted for her was a bright future in the world of opera. All he ever let himself feel love for was her voice, her singing. Everything else was a foolish wish, a hopeless fantasy, an unreachable utopia.
Holding her as close as he is, is the realization of all his impossible dreams.
She opens her eyes, and he ascends to heaven, loses himself in the celestial colours they hold, the shades of light and slightly darker blues and the grey flecks that make them so unique. She is expecting something, he can tell, but for the life of him he cannot understand what.
Her eyes are inquisitive, but he does not have answers for questions he does not comprehend. He is older than her, he should probably know, but life did not prepare him to confront situations such as these and his brain – his brilliant mind that can conjure up music and theatrical scenes and fantastic imageries and princely palaces with a mere thought – is drawing a pitiful blank. He cannot come to terms with the fact that she might want him to be a man, a real man, with physical wants and needs and –
Desires.
Oh, he has had plenty of those since he discovered that men and women were complementary, but he forced them to the deepest recesses of his mind, with savage intent. They were a nuisance and a distraction from his greater goals. For who would ever love a monster? Who would ever look past the rotted façade and think of him as a human being?
He feels the tension of her neck change under his hands. She is reaching towards him. A kiss. She wants a kiss! He remembers his first two kisses, the taste of her lips upon his, they are branded in his memory, and he will take them with him to his grave as the most precious gift this life has given him. They will be the sweet remembrance that even he – at least once in his miserable existence – had been touched by an angel.
He is powerless to resist. He wants it. He wants her lips on his. He wants to feel the caress of her breath touch his mouth; he wants her to breathe life into him. He wants to taste that sweetness and yet at the same time he is afraid of overstepping boundaries. He has already done that in the utmost disastrous manner. He has already hurt her and if he has learned anything from what has happened in the last few days, it is that he will never cross that line with her. Never again.
He raises his right hand and strokes her lightly under her chin. His thumb grazes the length of her bottom lip, and he feels and sees her lips purse in a phantom kiss.
The invitation is clear.
His breath burns in his lungs, his joints protest under the weight of expectation, his muscles quiver both in anticipation and fear. He answers her beckoning, a powerless Ulysses giving in to the siren’s call, his mouth meeting hers, until his heart explodes and the only thing tethering him to this mortal coil are her arms twining around his body like vines on trellises.
Can a man forget his name? Can a kiss wipe out an entire existence and give new life to a barren soul that has been wandering, lost and asunder? For he feels a true power residing within her, one which makes him feel alive and whole and cleansed of all his sins.
When their lips part, he is at a loss for words. He fears that no language will ever be enough to unravel the tangle of feelings he harbours for her. He questions his sanity, he questions his actions, he questions his whole life. He has never known love, yet love is all he can think of faced now with her. It is at once innocent and childish, fresh and invigorating, yet profound and mature and all-encompassing at the same time. He wants to drown in it.
He feels emboldened and the next steps do not feel so hard. Her hands are under his jacket, roaming his back, stroking his chest. They attack the buttons of his waistcoat, and he savagely squashes the feelings of inadequacy that threaten to rise when he compares himself to the viscount that she has left on the coast of Brittany.
Upon returning, she told him there was an empty spot in her heart that gnawed at her, something that compelled her to come back, that without him she felt a part of herself missing, and it is a feeling that resonates deeply within him. It is the same gaping hole he felt in his chest after she returned his ring and was whisked away too quickly. They both understand something deeper links them. It is the shiver that runs down a spine when a note is delivered with perfect pitch, the harmony of the world enclosed in seven black dots on staved paper, the passions of life echoed in an opera, life and death narrated on stage and the unexplainable pull that artists feel towards their art. It can be shared, yes, but never truly understood by someone who is not intimate with it.
She loved the boy – she said – she loved their shared past and the memories that were linked to their youth, but the fire that burns in her veins, the one that she inherited from her father, matches the one that ravages the soul of her angel, the man who gave her music and shaped her voice, and she cannot, will not, live without him. She told him he is a part of her soul, worth the sacrifice of an empty life of assured comfort.
He holds her close to stop her frantic advances and it proves to be his undoing. He only succeeds in making her more tangible, more real. All the barriers he built between them to safeguard her and to avoid his fall into temptation have long since shattered. Her perfume fills his nostrils, and he lets himself float in that sweet sensation with eyes closed.
He knows his time is running short. He knows she came back for him and has expectations, whether she is willing to voice them or not. Brave soul that she is, she returned to lure him out of the dark and show him that there is a world of light out there that might warm him too, if only he consents to try.
And what happens next is a blur of skin and sweat, of kisses and caresses and fumbling in the dark and learning that bodies have curves and angles, hard places, and soft ones and that it is not easy to fit them all together, except when it is.
He was a creature of the dark, no sunrise-kissed lover beside him. It was a miracle he had ever had a lover.
There is only blackness when he wakes up the next morning and the weight of what he has done lies heavy on his chest. She is sleeping beside him – a solid presence, no longer ethereal as he has idealized her for so long – beautiful, and still innocent, even more so with her eyes closed and her mind hopefully wrapped in pleasant dreams.
The naked shoulder peeking from under the sheet is distracting him and undermines his resolve. It is there, tempting him, mocking him, as he dresses in haste, like a thief in the night needing to vacate the crime scene as fast as he can.
Her luscious hair sprawled on his pillow, branching out and taking possession of it, resemble the snakes of Medusa. Barely open lips are begging for one last kiss. And like the proverbial moth he is attracted by the brightest flame of all. He sits at the end of the bed, his back to the bedpost, and contemplates her figure. He could have turned to stone indeed, the way he holds his breath so as to not wake her up.
She is an angel fallen to earth, what could he ever hope to give her?
He gave her a voice, he gave her his music, he gave her his love and it was not enough. It will not be enough in the long run.
Lucifer himself spit him out of hell. He has no place near a creature of the heavens. He must go, he must leave before he corrupts the only pure thing that ever graced his existence. His muscles are coiled and ready to leave the bed when he makes one last mistake.
He looks at her face and finds that her eyes are open. They are wide awake and present and accusing. He sees fury and disappointment there. He wonders how long he has been having this whole conversation with himself and how much of a witness she has been to it.
The rumpled sheet cannot contain her body anymore. The shy shoulder peeking out becomes two and oh, her slender collarbones follow and her perfect breasts until all of her is at last bared again to his sight and she crawls to him like a feral beast and settles on his lap, her arms snaking around his neck. Her eyes never falter.
She is light as a feather, but he feels weighed down by a thousand pounds. The contrast between her nakedness and his being dressed, her warm body and his cold one, her light and his darkness, her purity, his wretchedness, is dissolving his rationality. He knows that she knows what he was about to do. It seems that the night they just spent together has given her an insight into him that she would never have obtained otherwise.
He pleads with his eyes, asks for understanding, but she is having none of it. It is her kiss that melts all resistance, all objections. It is hot and demanding and commanding. And he understands that it is too late to refuse, too late to turn back. For now, the path ahead has been chosen for him, just as he chose hers for her when they first met. It is a liberating quid pro quo.
His hands become alive again and alight on her thighs and follow the line of her body upwards over her flaring ribs, her shoulders and neck. They infiltrate the softness of her hair and settle there as if in their rightful place. He allows himself to enjoy what it means to be at peace for the first time in his life. He looks forward to this even though he already knows it will not be easy.
His saving grace is the knowledge that she will be there with him. With her at his side, he knows there is nothing that he will not be able to accomplish.