Angel Hands (7 page)

***

"I am going to seduce you."

He felt a strange, unfamiliar surge of pride and power rush through him as he said those words aloud. He had thought them so many times, whispered them so many times in the past few weeks, that he could almost trick his mind into remembering that he had transformed thought to speech. But the moment he declared his intentions, he knew he hadn't. Nothing prepared him for the erotic thrill of watching the color drain from Mireille's face or seeing her eyes dilate and grow wide.

"You wouldn't dare," she whispered, narrowing her eyes and stiffening in his hold.

"I never dare. I simply do."

"Well, you shan't this time."

"You have very little say in the matter."

"Oh no? I beg to differ. If I say nothing, then you will have forced me. If I say nothing-"

"Words," he whispered, bringing his lips close to hers, "are not always necessary."

And then he kissed her.

And she kissed him back.

Then, she suddenly tried to shove him away, as if her kiss had merely been a diversionary tactic to set the stage for her escape.

Her struggle merely inflamed him more. Roughly, he continued to hold her pinned against the wall, but now, he hitched her up so that her hips rested on his knee and her bosom was almost level with his mouth.

He kissed her with all his rage, his anger, his need. He left a trail of bites and tastes along her jaw and then down the side of her neck, and was rewarded with the sound of her breath catching in her throat and a moan that she tried to strangle into silence.

Oh, for how many weeks since he had first kept her in his lair, half-naked and spitting-mad, had he dreamt these unholy dreams about her? His body ached with his need, and he crushed himself against her.

Roughly, he ripped open her bodice, barely registering that her own hands were no longer pushing but now pulling at him. His fingers yanked down the top of her chemisette, exposing a perfect breast to him, and he clamped his lips around it, suckling, biting, teething, licking and nuzzling. He felt her squirming against him, her moans no longer miscarried in her throat. No, now, he felt her hands snaking through his hair, pulling him harder to her. He felt the roll of her hips and responded with his own.

This was it.

He would take her here on the cold, cold stone, making her a woman and himself a man by the force of his own passion. He could sense she wanted it, too, that she was tired of waiting…

"Well?"

***

"Well?” Mireille snapped. “What's it to be? Hot oil or the rack?"

She was tired of waiting for her phantom fellow to answer her with the expected threat. After pinning her against the wall, all he had done was stare at her. He hadn't moved an inch. She had been a little disconcerted at the glazing over of his eyes as he had gazed down at her, and she felt his rather obvious arousal grind into her hips.

He blinked twice, as if coming to, and Mireille felt a vague stab of anxiety as he looked down at her with the kind of undisguised lust that Carcasonne had revealed earlier. Only this time, the lust in his eyes was...well, not welcome, no, certainly not...but neither was it entirely repugnant.

She took a quick breath in, and for an instant, almost believed that he would kiss her. His eyes were half-lidded, and his lips parted.

"Monsieur, you do an excellent imitation of a dead carp," she said, trying to regain control of the situation.

"Says the harping fishwife!" he snarled back, all the lust fled from his expression.

Mireille surprised herself with the laugh that bubbled up inside her and spilled out as inelegant giggles and snorts. The phantom stepped back quickly, releasing her as if she was a burning coal. Through the tears of her mirth, she thought she saw a look of genuine astonishment on his face.

"
Bon soir
," she said as her laughter subsided and a faint smile lingered like the last moments of sunset before twilight. "I will be going now."

She saw him looking at her, his eyes almost glowing with some unreadable emotion.

"I still have not said you can leave." His voice was as cold as the water in the canals, cold as stone, and hot as fire.

"Do you want me to stay?"

She had meant to be challenging and impertinent, yet, for a moment, he seemed to hesitate.

Their eyes met, and they both quickly looked away.

“Until next week,” he said flatly, still not looking at her.

“Same time,” she confirmed, gazing everywhere but at him.

“You had best leave now.”

“I was already going.”

“Well, now you
may
go.”

The urge to have the last word was almost overpowering. Digging her nails into her palms, she turned and marched back out the way she came. She plotted how the next time, she would be the one to dismiss him, then stopped in her tracks. It was absolutely horrifying.

She was actually looking forward to the next time.

9. Of Ceasing and Desisting

"Like hell!"

Raymond looked up from the draft of the program he was studying to find Mireille throwing down an official-looking letter and pacing around her small office like an adorably enraged kitten.

"Mireille? What is the matter?"

"A 'cease and desist' letter is the matter," she spat, glaring at the letter.

"From lawyers?"

"No, from God," she snapped back, then stopped and looked a little ashamed. "I'm sorry, Raymond. Do not mind my nasty temper. This production has me on edge."

"So I've noticed," he replied quietly, getting up and coming around to put his hands on her shoulders, and trying not to feel hurt when she seemed to flinch slightly at his touch. "You did promise to tell me if you were in trouble, and as your friend, I want to help you."

Mireille bit her lip and gave him an inscrutable look. "Just produce the best damned opera you can," she said finally. "Let me deal with God and lawyers. You have divas to worry about."

Raymond laughed. Gingerly, he let his hands drift down from her shoulders to encircle her waist, praying she wouldn't pull away. The need to hold her, to feel her heartbeat next to his, was getting stronger and more irresistible every minute he spent in her presence.

To his complete joy, she didn't pull away, nor did she stiffen. For the first time, she felt soft and pliant under his touch. He tried to meet her eyes, but she looked away. Yet, he felt as though he didn't need to see her eyes to know what lurked there—exhaustion, sadness, an unspoken need for love and comfort. Gently, he enfolded her fully in his embrace, relishing as her head fell against his shoulder.

Tenderly, he kissed the top of her head.

"Mireille,
la belle
Mireille, my dearest Mireille," he whispered sand was rewarded with the feeling of her melting into his arms, her small hands tentatively coming up to cling to his lapels. "My Mireille, my heart," he murmured, burying his face in her honey-colored hair.

He was so close to his goal, so close to having her turn to him for his love, for his heart, which would welcome her and keep her safe and close for the rest of their days. With each day that had passed, his patience has been rewarded by increasing measures of her trust. Instinctively, he knew that her mysterious excuses and secret sadness would soon spill out in whispered words, and then he could exorcise her past, her hurt, and free her to live and love again—with him.

"Raymond, I..."

He stayed silent, his heart pounding, ready for her.

The sound of wood splintering and crashing all around them shattered the moment. He tried to hold onto Mireille, but she jumped out of his embrace as if his arms were made of fire.

"Go!" she ordered brusquely, unceremoniously pushing him towards the door as the cracking, shuddering sounds of destruction grew in intensity.

"What? Why? Mireille, what the hell is going on?"

"Get out of here!" she yelled against the deafening noise. "Go! Say nothing to anyone!"

In his confusion and surprise, he found himself outside the door of her office, with the bolt clicking from the inside. As surely as he knew his name, he knew she was in trouble, and no bolt or door was going to stop him from getting to her.

He wasn't sure what cracked first—the door or his shoulder, but it didn't matter. All that mattered was getting to her, and the wood quickly splintered and gave way to his assault. He stumbled into her office.

She was gone.

Gone, vanished, as if taken by a ghost...

The pieces fell into place like a ghastly puzzle. Pierre Buprès be damned! The "Opera Ghost" was still here. Mireille knew—had known all along, damn her stubborn secretiveness—and that damned ghost-man had preyed on her!

Raymond strode out of her office, wrapped in fell meditation. He would get Mireille back and save both her and the Opéra de Paris from that madman.

And that was a promise.

***

Mireille had expected the phantom to storm into her office. She hadn't counted on being yanked through an opening in the wall and pinned against rough wooden boards in a secret corridor.

"Not one sound."

He had brought his finger to her lips, his eyes promising a threat if she disobeyed. She scanned his half-face for the real degree of his menace. An edge of true fear sliced through her for the first time as she met his blue gaze, blurred by a haze of rage that burned within his eyes.

It was fear that held her still as his gloved hand moved from her lips to the top of her collar and began undoing the buttons of her bodice, one by one with aching deliberation until the next button would have revealed the edge of her chemisette and begun a much more dangerous descent.

Dizziness enveloped her, and her breath couldn't squeeze in or out of her lungs. He leaned in and brushed his lips along the exposed skin of her chest and neck, skimming them up along her throat and jaw until his breath was hot against her ear.

"Mine," he whispered. "Mine and no one else's, for business and pleasure."

His hand came back up from that dangerous next button and cupped her cheek, his thumb tracing her lips.

"Remember that, Mireille," he murmured, letting his mouth sample her jaw again and his free hand slipped around her waist to span the small of her back.

Just as she was about to speak, he picked her up and spun her around so that the dizziness took over and the world splashed back and forth. When her head stopped throbbing a moment later, she was back in her office, alone.

At that moment, all her strength deserted her—the infallible, indefatigable, indomitable Mireille Dubienne. She sank to her knees and hugged herself, huge sobs welling up within her, choking her and tearing her weary heart into jagged, raw pieces of misery.

And, there was still that damned cease and desist letter from the Vicomte de Chagnard she would have to deal with.

***

He watched her through the spy hole, his concern growing uncomfortably. He hadn't meant to make her so distraught. Well, yes, he had, but now that he saw Mireille broken, he realized he didn't like it. Worse yet, he didn't like the fact that he had been the means of breaking her like that.

He cursed himself for not having been able to control his emotions when he saw that soft little boy, Raymond, holding Mireille...or more accurately, when he saw Mireille soften in that little boy's arms. It wasn't supposed to matter to him. She was
his
. His prey, his amusement, his pawn to be played.

He disdained trying to rationalize his fit of jealousy as having wanted to make sure she was completely under his spell and no one else's—that he needed absolute control over her in order to make his plans work. He was man enough to admit to himself that he wanted her to desire him, to surrender to him and no one but him, and not just as a worthy opponent in a game of strategy, but as a woman surrenders to a man when yearning can no longer be fought.

It wasn't love. No. Not love at all. It was lust. Pure, heated, liquid desire for her body to be tangled with his. He was this close to vowing that she'd cry his name in passion before she ever murmured an endearment to that little boy.

Slipping away silently, he let his knotted thoughts unravel. What had started as a game was now something deadly serious. She knew of his existence. She knew his hideout. She knew his face and voice and touch. She was very dangerous. Kristin hadn't been dangerous to his existence like Mireille was. Mireille could destroy him and send him to the gallows. Kristin's danger had been very different, and he had experienced its consequences. Never again with that, with love. He’d never again walk into danger like that.

Yet, Mireille's danger was just as intoxicating and just as able to provoke a loss of control in him, as evidenced by his punishment of the walls and boards when he saw her in another man's arms. His desire, a man's desire for a woman, was becoming nearly uncontrollable every time he was near her. He wasn't even sure how many more times he could tease her without losing control of himself. God, how he wanted her! Damn her!

There was only one antidote to the poison in his veins, one way out of this haze of desire that clouded his judgment.

He would have to take her, make her his.

He would have to finish this little game of seduction once and for all.

10. Of Managers and Vicomtes

A knock at the door of her office made Mireille look up briefly from the sheaf of papers she was reading through.

For a moment, her temper flared, and she was tempted to tell the caller to go to hell, but she realized that it was only her bad mood and not the fault of her caller.