Unmasqued

by Colette Gale

“But I love Erik,” she said, again. She’d been saying it over and over, pleading for her release, asking him to take her back.

  And each time, he replied calmly, as if he’d never heard her say it before. “No, Christine. I love you. You belong with me.”

  “Raoul. Please!”

  “No, Christine,” he said. “You are trying my patience. Do not ask me again.”

  She turned her face toward the padded wall and tried not to cry. Tried to think of a way she might get out of the carriage…but then what? Where would she go? How would she get there? She had no money, no one to contact.

  Her thoughts were interrupted when the carriage rolled to a halt, and she looked out of the little window. They were in the yard of a small inn.

  An inn.

  “Are we…stopping here?” she asked.

  Raoul gave her an odd look as he unlocked the door. “Of course. We’ll stop for the night and then move on in the morning. My ship is awaiting us. Come. And,” he said, pausing at the door, “don’t make a scene. There is no one to help you here, nowhere for you to go. Don’t be foolish.”

  Christine was weary; she could hardly believe what had happened this day. It was only early this morning that she’d tried to creep out of the house and escape…and now here she was, heaven knew where, with Raoul. And she had no idea where Erik was.

  Sooner than she thought possible, Christine was following Raoul up a set of narrow, dark stairs in the inn, dreading what would happen once they found themselves behind the closed door.

  She prayed she did not have to fight off yet another Chagny brother tonight.

  “Raoul,” she said after the innkeeper left, and they were alone. She knew she was looking at him with wide, frightened eyes.

  He turned to her. “Get into bed.”

  The look in his eyes made her shiver deep inside, but she dared not refuse. He, at least, would not hurt her.

  “I…need help,” she said quietly, turning her back to him. He unbuttoned her gown and unhooked her corset. His hands strayed over her shoulders, brushing the light linen of her shift, and she braced herself.

  As her gown slid away, and the corset fell to the ground, he turned her in that pool of fabric until she faced him. Tipping her head up firmly, he bent to kiss her.

  Christine tried not to pull away as his lips touched hers, but she wanted to. Instead, she let him kiss her, let his lips trace hers and his tongue slip into her mouth. She closed her eyes and let him touch her, on her shoulders, grazing over her throat and down to cup one of her breasts, now free and loose under her chemise.

  At last he pulled away, his breathing unsteady. She stepped back, warily. Waiting.

  “Get into bed,” he said again. And he turned and left the room.

  When the door closed, Christine leaped toward it, looking for a lock, but there was nothing to keep him out.

  Shivering from the chill and from nerves, she climbed into the bed. This night would be filled, not with the abuse and pain she’d expected from Philippe, but with its own price and its own torture under the hands of a man who believed he loved her.

  As Erik did.

  Raoul would come to her as Erik did, with tenderness and love, and she would lie there and allow it. She had no choice.

  At first, she did not believe she’d sleep. She kept waiting for the sound of returning footsteps, of the soft click of the door when the knob would turn and open.

  Once, she heard steps, and her heart began to pound so hard she felt her entire body reverberate with it. She held her breath, listening for the turn of the knob…but nothing. It became silent again, except for the voices of the people in the pub below the inn.

  She must have fallen asleep at some point, for the next thing she knew, a heavy weight jolted the bed next to her. Christine's eyes flew open and she gasped in her breath to scream, automatically, not even thinking about how Raoul would react…but before she could, his mouth covered hers.

  The room was dark, lit only faintly by a sliver of moon shining through the window. There was nothing but shadow and the long body over her, the hands holding her, the mouth seeking hers.

  She tried to twist away, tried to push off the heavy weight that lay half on top of her, over her legs, unreasoning panic blaring through her. He held one of her shoulders, the other hand smoothing the hair away from her face. He fitted his mouth to hers with a tenderness she hadn’t expected, and she felt his face brush against her cheek, and it was wet.

  And she tasted him, at last, the rampant panic receding, and she felt the tremors in his chest as he breathed, and moved his lips with hers, their mouths equally desperate and their tongues slick and long.

  Tears leaked from her own eyes, trailing down along her temples into the pillow beneath as her breathing rose, quickening. His hands had left their hold and now moved along the length of her body to touch her in an echo of his brother’s greed earlier…but now with reverence, and familiarity, and comfort. She arched up when he pulled the chemise away, bringing her breasts up to him to touch.

  Her areolas gathered tightly, ready, as he brushed over them. She closed her eyes and sighed as he moved his mouth from her lips to press kisses all along her throat, sending dusky shivers down to her belly. He kissed a nipple with the slow, sensual swirl of tongue and lips and gentle teeth, making her twist beneath him, pulling desire from deep inside her with great, moving tugs.

  Christine sighed, her breath becoming uneven as the delicious build started. Her hands moved through his thick hair, brushed over the broad, strong width of his shoulders as he made her moan and need. Made all of the ugliness dissolve.

  Then he moved, shifting under the bedclothes. His hard, muscled legs, covered with a soft brush of hair, slid against hers as he lifted himself over her, raising his face to look down at hers. She gazed into the darkness, up into the shadow where his face was, and over the breadth of his shoulders to where the moon shone in. He touched her with long, confident fingers, and she was ready, swollen and wet.

  His breath came out in a long warm gust, a homecoming sigh, as he spread her legs, shifting between them, and at last…

  “Oh,” she cried softly as he eased in, rested his face against her cheek, head bowed and shoulders raised, and moved. Slowly, oh so slowly, as though to savor the moment, to permanently imprint it on his mind, to draw out every bit of beauty in their joining.

  Christine gently rocked beneath him, her eyesclosed again, her hands in his hair, her body as full as it could be. She brushed her hands over his chest, felt the warm hair, the unevenness of his muscles moving beneath, the square edges of his shoulders.

  “Christine,” he cried low and deep in her ear as he came, his great body trembling against her. She quivered her own release beneath him, the flush and bloom spreading from her pip up through her chest and arms.

  She drew him down onto her, taking his weight with pleasure, the heavy body warm and comforting there in the dark room.

  After a long while, she spoke, loath to break the peace, but the question clear in her tone. “Raoul?”

  “He's confined to the carriage. They’ll find him in the morning, after we’re gone.”

  “He’s…not hurt.”

  “No. A bump on the head. He never meant you harm, Christine. He couldn’t help but love you. As I do. And will.”

  She smiled against him, moved her fingers over the two parts of his beloved face. “You are the man I love. The only one.”

  “I want only to be with you, Christine. It’s nearly time for us to leave.”

  She glanced toward the window. “The sun will be up soon.”

  “I know. Our life together will begin in the sunlight, Christine. I’ll not hide in darkness again.”

  “My angel.”

  ~*~*~

  ~*~

  Biographer’s Afterword

  The Comte de Chagny was found in his private chambers four days after the great fire at the Paris Opera House. The cause of death was uncertain, but he was discovere
d in a most lewd position, his unclothed body spread-eagled from the waist down on an unusual-looking piece of furniture.

  His bright red, well-used cock was erect; his body showed signs of whip marks and restraints, even a dark red line around his throat. But he had a lascivious smile frozen on his face, and although common rumor had it that he’d died a happy man, the official word put out by the Chagny family was that he drowned in a tragic accident.

  Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny, disappeared from the family château, never to be seen again. The story the servants told was that he and the beautiful Christine Daaé had run off to marry, against the wishes of the comte, and they were bound for his ship to take to the sea.

  La Carlotta, the prima donna of the Opera House, and Madame Maude Giry, the mistress of the ballet corps, created a strange alliance, and opened what became one of the most celebrated brothels in turn-of-the-century Paris. Their girls were known far and wide as the most beautiful, most accommodating, and most talented prostitutes in Europe, rivaling even those of Marcel Jamet’s establishment at 122 rue de Provence. Some of their most frequent visitors included Messieurs Richard and Moncharmin, who, after the fire, gave up on opera theater and went back to their original, lucrative business of trash disposal.

  According to her journals, Christine and Erik used the funds he’d saved from his years of salary paid by the Opera House managers, and sailed for America. They lived happily in New York City, where Erik wrote music and Christine performed onstage with the likes of Sarah Bernhardt.

  Those patrons of the theater and music in New York became familiar with the man who wore a cream-colored mask covering half his face with the same flair a pirate might wear his eye patch. The women found him mysterious and dangerous, and half the men wished they had an excuse to don such an intriguing article.

  Eventually, Christine and Erik would move to a newly thriving city called Hollywood, where they would use their musical talent to work on some theatrical productions known as moving pictures. Erik and Christine became friends with a young man by the name of Lon Chaney, who would eventually star in a film called The Phantom of the Opera.

  But that is, perhaps, best saved for another volume.

  Letter from the Author Regarding Her Next Work

  * * *

  Not long after I finished compiling the documentation that became Unmasqued, in which was revealed the true story of The Phantom of the Opera, I was fortunate enough to acquire some personal effects that shed new light on another familiar tale: that of The Count of Monte Cristo.

  Alexandre Dumas's novel of betrayal and revenge tells the story of the horribly wronged Edmond Dantès, and his bid for vengeance against the villains—his friends—who sent him to prison for fourteen years. The tale has been adapted for film and television, and has been translated and republished, abridged and dissected in numerous ways since its initial publication.

  However, through my acquisition of the personal diaries and letters of one of the most pivotal players in the narrative, I’ve discovered that the story told by Dumas—along with its other adaptations—is incomplete and misleading.

  I have had the pleasure of studying and organizing into a fleshed-out, chronological tale the journals of Mercédès Herrera, the first and true love of Edmond Dantès, who is as much a victim of the events told by Dumas as Dantès was. Perhaps even more so.

  Her diaries and personal letters bring to light a much different and more accurate chronicle about what occurred during the years of Dantès’s imprisonment, and what really happened when he came back to Paris as the wealthy, learned, and powerful Count of Monte Cristo.

  In addition, her story reveals that there is much more that came to pass in her life and that of her lover after the pages of Dumas’s book have run out.

  Thus, my next project will be to make public the true story—with all its explicit details taken directly from her personal effects—of Edmond Dantès and Mercédès Herrera, a pair of lovers separated by greed, jealousy, tragedy, and revenge.

  Titled Master, it is the story of The Count of Monte Cristo as it has never been told before.

  * * *

  Colette Gale

  August 2007

  Other Seduced Classics

  from Colette Gale…

  Master

  An Erotic Novel

  of the

  Count of Monte Cristo

  * * *

  Bound by Honor

  An Erotic Novel

  of the

  Robin Hood Legend

  * * *

  The Erotic Adventures of Jane in the Jungle

  Entwined

  Entangled

  Enticed

  Enthralled

  Enamored

  ~*~

  Colette Gale is the pen name for a New York Times and USA Today bestselling, award-winning author with over twenty books published in more than seven languages.

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