Page 25 of Angel’s Flight (The Phantom Saga #4)

Genoa

E rik could barely make out the port from the window of their room.

There were a few boats moored at the docks – flimsy wooden things meant for fishing or pleasure – and they seemed like toys in comparison to the great steel hull of the steamship waiting in her berth.

Even though it was past midnight, men were at work loading the holds with goods to be transported along with the throng of people that would board in the morning.

Most of them were bound for America. But not them.

Because of what Erik had brought upon them, they would disembark in Dover, England, and fumble their way onward from there.

He didn’t like the idea. He resented that they had to sail through the Mediterranean for days to avoid setting foot in France.

He detested that he still couldn’t sleep, even next to his wife.

He didn’t like any of this. He hated it.

And he hated himself for bringing it all upon them.

She doesn’t deserve this, a voice whispered in his ear.

A breeze rose off the sea, heavy with the scent of salt, cool against his bare face as he stared out into the night. He had loved the sea when he first saw it as a child when he had thought it meant adventure. Now it was a mystery, like everything else.

“Why are you awake?”

Erik turned to look at Christine, propped up on her elbow in the bed. The watery moonlight cast the room in shades of black and blue, making her skin look ghostly pale where it peaked out from her white chemise. Pale as a ghost.

“Bad dream,” Erik answered. “I remembered the horrors of English food.”

“As if you’d remember to eat without me,” Christine smiled in reply. “What is it, really?”

Erik braced himself. He didn’t want to say it, but he couldn’t lie to her. Maybe confessing his sins would help. Maybe if she knew the depth of his shame, she would forgive him.

“I shouldn’t have acted so rashly,” Erik confessed, shoulders sagging under the weight of his guilt. “Hurting Bidaut. Going to Geneva at all. I went too far with Pauline.”

“It was part of the plan,” Christine consoled him, voice gentle as night. “We had to convince her, and I wanted to see her hurt.”

Erik dared to move to the bed, kneeling on the floor so he could look up into Christine’s pensive face. “It’s normal to want to hurt the people who hurt us. That betray us.”

“It’s normal, but it’s not good,” Christine countered. “You were right to trick Bidaut, to save us, but not to give in to that violence.”

“I’m sorry,” Erik repeated as if it would matter. A fresh pang of shame bloomed in his chest. He didn’t deserve the kindness in her eyes, and soon, she’d realize that. “I can never say it enough.”

“Erik,” Christine whispered, placing her hand against his bare cheek. “I forgive you. That is the promise I made to you because I love you.”

“I don’t deserve forgiveness,” Erik said before he could stop himself. “At least, I don’t feel like I deserve it tonight.”

“Would you rather I punish you?” Christine scoffed, but it made something strange prickle under Erik’s skin as he bowed his head.

“Sometimes, I think I would,” he confessed in the barest whisper, his mind drifting back to the last time they had made love and the way she had yanked his hair and clawed his skin. How the pain he deserved had become pleasure and peace.

“What are you talking about?” Christine asked, voice tense.

“Things feel better, sometimes, when you...” Erik began, unsure of how to articulate this. “When you’re in control. When you give me what I deserve.”

“What you think you deserve, you mean,” Christine finished for him, clearly aghast, sitting up in the bed and boxing him in between her legs as she took his hands. “I don’t want to hurt you. You’ve already been hurt enough in your life.”

“That’s...” Erik dared to look up at her, imagining his ruined face in the moonlight. Did he look contrite or horrific? Or both? “That’s what makes it better. To feel pain or to be bound by you. Somehow, it makes the past hurt less. It makes me feel safe to be controlled and—”

“Punished.” Christine finished for him, soft, but not disgusted. Her eyes were unreadable as she looked down on him from high above him. “You don’t...”

“Please,” Erik begged, dropping his head to kiss the hem of her chemise and then the cool skin of her calf. “Please, let me serve you. Give me my penance. Make me your dog and teach me to be gentle, after all I’ve done.”

“I don’t know how,” Christine breathed back as Erik laid his forehead upon her foot. He could feel her trembling. Or was it him?

“Command me. Please.”

He held his breath, eyes closed as his shame and need warred within him. He needed her to do this; dear God, he needed it or he would tear himself apart.

“Get up. Now.” Christine’s voice was entirely changed – husky, confident, and unquestionable. Erik scrambled to obey, standing before her in the watery blue moonlight. “Take off your trousers.”

Erik was quick to comply, once again, exposing his fully naked body to her eyes and the chilly air of the night.

Christine looked at him with hooded, lustful eyes as he did.

She drew off her chemise in turn, exposing the ivory contours of her body to his eyes.

Round breasts and hips, soft belly, and the thatch of hair below it.

Utter perfection before his eyes, in perfect contrast to his scarred, ruined flesh. He couldn’t help but reach for her.

Christine slapped away his hand.

“I didn’t command that,” she chided. Erik’s pulse quickened and his blood began to move in one specific direction. Christine smirked as she looked him over. “Does that make you hard? To be reprimanded like an errant boy?”

“It does.”

Christine’s eyes darkened further as she advanced on him until she was an inch away. She lightly tapped his cheek with her open palm. It wasn’t a slap. It was a test. Or a warning. “I didn’t say you could speak, either.”

Erik nearly groaned at the word, but he bit his lip and nodded in turn. He would obey.

Christine leaned towards him, her cheek against his, her breath jagged against his ear as she exhaled. “I will stop if you say to stop.”

Erik nodded again. He understood.

Christine nuzzled against his neck, dropping gentle kisses along his collarbone, lulling him into a haze.

Before she bit. Her teeth sank into the meat of his shoulder, not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough to hurt.

The pain was brief, but it hit Erik like the first swig of liquor, deliciously clouding his mind.

Again, soft kisses, and another bite on his bicep.

Then along his chest, before she grabbed him and held him close as she sucked a brutal mark right above his heart.

Erik was fully hard now, his cock pressed between them and leaking for her.

It was hard to stay standing as she kept up the random patterns of pecks and then pain, but she was holding him, her elegant nails driving deep into his skin and that was bliss too.

His hips moved of their own accord, seeking the relief of friction for the organ trapped between them.

This time, the slap was real.

Erik blinked at his mistress, his cheek smarting and his head spinning.

Her expression was one of delight and power like he had rarely seen, yet it was amazing.

He almost wilted as she seized him again and clamped her teeth on one nipple, sucking and worrying it with her teeth so that he had no idea what to feel.

She pinched the other between her fingers, twisting it and sending electric pulses of sensation all through him.

“Oh, God, that’s so good,” he whimpered.

This time, the slap left him reeling, the pain and punishment hitting him like a beautiful wave come to drown him. He fell to his knees, unable to stand, and Christine grabbed him by his long hair, hauling him to where she wanted him to be as she tumbled back on the bed.

“Serve me,” she ordered and pressed his face between her thighs. With delirious joy, he obeyed.

She tasted like honey and spice. She was wet and hot against his tongue and lips, quivering with desire for him – for this – as he devoured her. She tugged his hair hard and steered him exactly where she wanted him as he licked and sucked.

“Fuck, yes, there! Use your hands. Fill me up,” Christine panted above him.

Erik did as he was told, penetrating her with three fingers that slipped so easily inside as she writhed, thighs clenching upon his shoulder.

His cock was so hard and untouched that it ached, but the pain melded with the delight of her pulling hard on his hair and then driving her nails into his neck.

God, he might come from this. Just from the ecstasy of being hers. Giving her his submission and penance.

She came with a long moan, her body freezing and then convulsing with the orgasm as Erik looked up from his place between her thighs. Nothing had ever been more beautiful. He would crawl over hot coals and broken glass to be with her if she commanded it. He would suffer however she would let him.

“On the bed,” Christine gasped when she released him and Erik scrambled to comply.

She straddled him the moment he was prone, drawing his arms above him and to the brass frame of their rented bed.

She guided his fingers around the smooth metal, looking down at him from within the curtain of her falling hair.

“Do not let go. If you do, you won’t come tonight. And do not come until I command it.”

Erik bit back a protest and tightened his grip. His brain was a fog of need, his body singing at every touch Christine gifted him with, from her nails raking down his chest and legs to the hungry kisses and nips at his thighs and then her mouth engulfed his cock.