Phantom: A Dark Retelling (Tattered Curtain Series)

Scarlett

My eyes snap open, but I don’t know why.

There’s no alarm, but I’m still wide awake at—I roll over and move the white roses aside to see the clock on the bedside table—six a.m. I stifle a groan and rub my weary eyes. The last time I woke up this early voluntarily was probably when I was an infant and I feel like whining like one right now. We didn’t go to bed too late, so I had a reasonable amount of rest. Still, a tempting part of me wants to roll over and go back to sleep, but another is already trying to figure out what woke me.

I sit up to take stock of my surroundings—trying to find what tripped that wire in my brain—when it hits me.

That seductive Sazerac scent still embraces me, but its owner is nowhere to be found. And the piano music I’ve craved over the past year is playing, but barely audible, as if Sol’s trying to keep quiet.

Ugh, why the hell is he up so early? All I want to do is grab him by his collar and drag him back to bed to sleep. Or hey, if we’re in bed, not sleeping would be fun, too.

At the prospect of doing one, or both, of those things, I hop out of bed and head to the bathroom to run through my morning routine. Whatever he’s working on, I want to listen before I interrupt him, and I’m afraid he’ll stop if he hears me moving around.

Once I finish taking my medicine and getting ready, I keep his T-shirt on but find a thong in a small stack of my clothes on a nearby dresser and slide it on. Ready enough, I tiptoe silently to his den where he’s playing a beautiful piece I’ve only heard through the vents in my dorm.

The den is warm and cozy, illuminated by the blazing fireplace and candles from his desk. Sol is so immersed in his piece that I wonder if he would’ve heard me with a bulldozer. From this view, I can see the expressive side of his face furrowed in concentration. His forehead above his dark brow is wrinkled, his soft lips a hard line, and that midnight eye is ablaze with focus. My eyes can’t help but travel farther down his form.

The black long-sleeved shirt hides the tattoos I know are underneath the fabric, but I can still see his shoulder muscles move with every octave change. His biceps stretch the cotton with each chord. He’s absolutely mesmerizing.

I stand in the doorway, leaning against the wooden frame, watching him until my eyes flit around the room to the photographs on the wall. The glow from the candles and fireplace flickers over every one, giving each a more mysterious backdrop. They’re gorgeous and I’m more than a little jealous of whoever got to be behind the camera lens.

After glancing over all the frames hanging on the walls, I go back to admiring the way his hands fly over the piano until he reaches the lowest octave. His fingers falter on the keys and he stops abruptly, stiffening and staring carefully straight ahead.

“Scarlett, I didn’t realize you’d be up so soon.”

“Yeah, about that… if you’re an early riser, this is so not going to work out. I’m a night owl through and through, mister.”

He doesn’t chuckle along with me and only keeps staring at the wall. His lack of response makes me frown, but I try a different tactic.

“Did you take the photos? I remember you saying you wanted to travel the world—”

“Ben took them for me,” he interrupts. His voice is gentle but his words are clipped. “Listen, I’ll meet you in the bedroom. I’m sorry my playing woke you.”

“Your playing didn’t wake me, but you not being in bed holding me did. Come back and sleep with me for a few hours,” I insist and try to step forward, but he flinches and I halt in my tracks. “I, um… I slept really well and woke up naturally. It’s early for a weekend but I think with being down here, not having any light makes it easier to fall asleep and stay that way.”

He jerks his head once in a nod. “Good… I must’ve lost track of time, then. I’ll meet you in the bedroom. We can talk about today’s plans.”

“Sol… are you okay? Why won’t you look at me?” I inch closer and keep going despite the way his muscles bunch up on his back. “Sol, look at me.”

He swallows but remains facing forward. “Scarlett, I—”

“Sol, look at me,” I demand, barely resisting the urge to stomp my foot at him.

When he looks up at me, I finally see his face. He’s got his bone-white skull mask on still, but an eye patch covers his right eye.

“Oh my god.” My hand flies to my lips. “Sol, are you okay?”

He flinches at my question. “Yes, I’m fine—”

I rush to him anyway and reach for his eye patch, but he captures my wrist.

“You said you wouldn’t,” he accuses, pain clouding his face, as he reminds me of the promise I made to him in bed.

“And I won’t. Not your mask, but your eye… are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he growls back, but there’s no menace to it. It’s more like he’s… embarrassed?

“Sol, why do you have an eye patch on?”

He sighs before letting go of my wrist and answering. “You may know that my eye on this side… it’s a prosthetic.”

I nod slowly. Jaime had said Sol has a fake eye, but I didn’t fully know what that meant. I’m thankful he’s willing to explain it to me. Maybe one day he’ll explain how he got it, but this already looks painful for him to talk about, so I let him take the reins.

“It’s an acrylic shell that was fitted over an implant in my eye socket,” he continues. “The color prosthetic doesn’t fit perfectly. I put one of my comfortable ones on so that my eyelid can still work normally. This one is just a clear acrylic layer over tissue. I’ll go change it now—”

“No.” Taking a chance, I slide over his lap, straddling him with my legs dangling over the piano bench before he can stand up.

I quickly realize when my core meets the bulge in his thin pajama pants that I didn’t think this all the way through.

He’s fully dressed in his pajamas and I’m in a T-shirt and panties, but this position is so intimate it doesn’t feel like we’re clothed. Desire that I try to ignore already twists my lower belly as he settles his large palms around my hips.

Curiosity wrinkles the uncovered side of his brow, reminding me to tug my dirty mind back from the gutter.

My hands drift to his face and I watch his midnight eye as I slowly go to the patch on the left side. His jaw is hard as stone and his cheek tenses underneath my fingertips. I wait for him to relax, like I’m trying to rescue a wounded animal caught in a trap. When his hands lessen their tight grip around my hips, I ask softly, barely audible over the blood rushing in my ears.

“May I?”

He scans my face as if he’s trying to assess whether I have an ulterior motive. It aches to know that someone has betrayed him so much in a moment like this that he struggles to trust me now. I keep absolutely still to avoid spooking him. Finally, he sighs heavily and nods once.

My heartbeat is thudding in my chest as I curve my nails underneath the black cloth patch and pull it up. His eyes slam shut as soon as I can reveal what’s underneath, and I toss the patch to the side. His fingertips tremble against my skin.

I kiss him softly before whispering against his warm lips, “Open your eyes, Sol.”

A breath shudders from him, and I pull back as he slowly lifts both eyelids.

The sparkling midnight one is pleading with me for something. Acceptance? Mercy?

But the other eye… is gone.

His eyelid blinks and behaves exactly the same, but in the place of that dull-blue iris I’m used to, reddish-pink tissue blinks back at me, protected by the clear prosthetic. The bare socket that should contain an eyeball like its counterpart looks vulnerable beneath his thick black lashes.

He looks vulnerable… for me.

I keep my gaze on his midnight eye as I cup his maskless cheek with my hand.

“You’re safe with me, Sol.”

Giving him plenty of time to stop me, I lean in with my lips parted, not sure if he’ll welcome my touch. As he meets me halfway and his hand threads through my hair, surprise and relief releases the tension in my shoulders. Our lips brush once until he presses against mine. It’s tender at first, and my skin tingles as his other hand travels up my back. But when his fingers fist my hair, those tingles become light pinpricks of ecstasy right before he devours me.

Need floods to my core instantly and I moan into his mouth while grinding against his hardening shaft. Every cell in my body wants to show him I accept him for the way he is. To everyone else, he’s the Phantom of the French Quarter, but to me, he’s my demon of music.

“You don’t get to hide from me, either,” I murmur against his lips. “I want you.”

He growls as he kisses me with an intensity that takes my breath away, as if my declaration was exactly what he was waiting for.

The hand on my back shifts to my waist and he tugs me down against his shaft to the point that if we weren’t clothed, he’d be halfway inside me. My core aches to be filled as arousal dampens my panties. His tangled fingers extricate themselves from my long hair to wrap around my nape and he uses the angle to dive his tongue into my gasping mouth. His length pushes against my entrance, making the head hit my clit just right, but it’s not enough right now.

“I need more, Sol, please.”

His broad shoulders tilt forward, surrounding me and forcing my back into the piano keys behind me. Discordant notes play against my spine and reverberate from the open grand piano against the stone walls, but the cacophony only heightens our desperation. My thighs hug his waist as I try to ride him, desperately wishing we were naked.

Sol’s nimble fingers leave my nape and my head rests against the paper-covered music stand as he strokes my breast.

“Oh, Sol, I’m ruining your sheet music.” I try to squirm away, but he licks up my neck, rippling pleasure down my skin before scattering the sheets onto the rug.

“Fuck my music. The only music I want to hear right now are the high notes you hit when I make you come.”

His hands dive underneath my shirt before tugging it completely off. He crumples it up like a makeshift pillow, and props it on the keyboard behind my back, protecting my spine from the ivory keys. With my shirt off, he drops open-mouthed kisses along my collarbone down to my cleavage. He then swirls his tongue around my nipple while kneading the other. His fingers roll over each breast, like he’s playing a slow song on my skin and he sucks hard on my peak, drawing his name from my mouth in a high-pitched moan.

He encourages me as he switches his mouth’s attention from one nipple to the other. “That’s it, sing for me, my sweet muse.”

While he flicks his tongue over my other bud, one hand skates down my skin to my waist, leaving goose bumps behind it. The other teases my already soaked diamond-hard tip. His fingers stretch across my spine and massage the muscles in my lower back. When his cock pulses against the thin fabric of my panties, I try to circle my hips to create more friction.

“Please. This isn’t enough. I need… I need more. I want all of it.”

“And you’ll get it.”

He nips my breast, and I yelp, but he soothes the bite with his tongue before sucking nearly half my other breast into his mouth so hard that he pulls me up from the piano. My hands are in a frenzy, working at his cotton collar, trying to take his shirt off, but he quickly lifts me and plops my ass down onto the keys, blaring more wild notes from the piano’s depths. He kicks away the piano bench behind him, giving him more room to kneel between my legs.

When he looks up at me, the candlelight dances on his white mask. His midnight eye is hungry with need, and I stroke his hair back from the right side of his face, uncovering the pink tissue of the bare socket.

“Am I hideous?” he asks in a hoarse whisper, and my heart skips an aching beat.

This huge, strong man—the Phantom of the French Quarter, a King in New Orleans, and my demon of music—is kneeling before me, trusting me with the pain of his past.

“Outside of your family… how many people have seen you this way?”

He shakes his head. “Only you.”

My breath expands in my lungs even as I bend down to meet his eyes. Gratitude over this moment pumps through my veins, and I cup both of his cheeks.

“A sight so precious could never be anything less than exquisite.”

His lips lift on both sides, and the genuine appreciation there fills me up like his smile does his face. My demon loves to be praised, it seems.

He reaches up to grab the back of my neck and takes my mouth in a scorching kiss. My curls fall over him like a curtain, hiding us from the world. While his lips move furiously against mine, he slides his other hand up the sensitive skin of my inner thigh, making me shiver. As he moves closer and closer to my center, it’s hard for me to concentrate. It’s only seconds before those skilled fingers tease my thong-covered entrance, seducing a moan from my lungs.

“So wet for me, pretty muse. Do you want my cock to fill you up?”

“Yes, please, Sol.”

“Say it.”

Shyness makes me hesitate before I repeat his words back to him. “I… I need your cock to fill me up, please.”

“You’ve never been filled before, have you, belle muse?”

“No. Never. You’re the one I want first.”

He growls against my lips. “This is your only warning, Scarlett. I won’t settle for ‘first.’ I’ll be your only. Nothing less.”

My stomach flips at the gravity of his promise. When he pulls away from our kiss and spreads my legs, his gaze challenges me to stop him, but I don’t.

“Your words don’t scare me, Sol. Neither do you.”

He smirks as he drapes my legs over his shoulders and fits between my thighs. “Then you won’t mind if I make you scream.”

He swipes his tongue up my panty-clad center. I moan and clutch the edge of the piano, depressing the keys and making an angry, passionate chord before tilting my head back.

He nips my clit through my panties, sparking a yelp from me and my eyes flash to his.

“Watch me. Tell me how good I make you feel.”

“So good, Sol—”

He growls against my thong before hooking his finger in a strap and snapping it off. I cry out at the way it abrades my skin but I forget all about the sting when he blows cool air on my bare pussy. Without wasting another moment, he sits up on his knees, forcing my legs higher over his shoulders.

My heels dig into his shoulder blades as he wraps one arm around my thigh. He spreads me open, revealing my clit for his tongue, and takes one long taste. I watch, trembling with pleasure and mesmerized by that long muscle escaping his lips and swirling around my tiny bundle of nerves, making me tingle inside and out.

He snakes one hand up and probes my opening with his finger, soaking my desire all the way up each knuckle before watching me as he pushes the whole thing inside my channel. I cry out his name and free the piano keys under one hand to pull his thick black hair.

“Sol, I’m so full already. This is so good. So… amazing. Your tongue—oh god!” I’m trying to tell him how it feels, but I’m so intoxicated by the rising orgasm his tongue and finger are coaxing from me that my words are a slurred, lust-drunk mess.

His middle finger plays in my arousal too, and just when I think I’m about to come, he pulls out all the way. I groan at the emptiness but he soon fills it with both fingers, making my inner muscles stretch to accommodate his long digits.

“You need to relax, baby. I’m trying to get you used to the feeling, but I’m bigger than just my fingers.”

“I… I love it. I just want you.”

“The next time you come will be on my cock, I can’t stand to think of your tight cunt squeezing anything else.” I nod my head in agreement, unable to do anything else while my body is overwhelmed with sensation. My muscles in my lower belly, my arms, my thighs, all tense as I feel the wave rising within me, begging to crash down. I push against Sol’s eager tongue, ride his fingers, and tug on his hair, forgetting that I want him inside of me when I come. I’m too consumed with chasing that peak, like a constant scale up and up and up the keys of a piano and just when my body’s about to reach the highest note, he stops, withdrawing from my core entirely.

“Sol!” I cry out.

My eyes snap open. I hadn’t even realized I’d closed them and it’s just in time to see Sol stand and tug his loose pants down, revealing his long, massive cock. The head weeps with precum, and I see the wet stain it’s left on the fabric, but my eyes widen at his size and my legs begin to close instinctively.

“Wait… no, you’re too big. I can’t.”

He wraps his hands in my hair and tilts my head up to see the determined look in his eye. “You will take me, Scarlett.”

“But,” I protest, even as he coats his length through my arousal with his other hand. “I’ve never… I can’t—”

“Shh… shh… shh… pretty muse.” He lays his forehead against mine and whispers against my lips. “You will take me, Scarlett. I will stretch this tight pussy, until all you crave is my cock inside you when you come.”

He explores my opening with his shaft, pushing in slightly. I shake my head, despite the fact that I desperately want to be full of him. A small whimper escapes me as his thick cockhead spreads me apart.

My inner muscles tighten and his hand leaves his cock to caress my spine, while the other keeps a firm grip on my hip.

“Relax, mon amour. I will never hurt you more than this. Not unless you beg for it.”

“Please, Sol…” I plead now, although for what, I’m not sure. Part of me desperately wants to come, but I’m also more than a little nervous about my first time hurting like hell.

His hand kneads gently down my spine and rests on my other hip as he rocks in and out, a little deeper each time. I grab the collar of his T-shirt and tug him closer. The trapped air in my lungs escapes on panting breaths.

I tell my body to ease the tension while inhaling one unsteady breath through my nose. On my exhale, Sol’s fingers dig into my hips and he suddenly thrusts hard inside me. I scream out his name and clutch his shirt. He curses before wrapping his arms around me, as if to keep me from somehow running away from him when he’s speared inside me. The strong embrace is surprisingly comforting though, and his warm whispers against my forehead soothe me as my body adjusts to this delicious invasion.

It takes several breaths before I realize he’s humming against my forehead and playing with my hair. Calm trickles through me and my heart rate begins to normalize. My knuckles are white against his dark shirt and he gently pulls them apart with one hand before placing my hands on the keyboard. I immediately clutch the lip of the piano and depress the keys. My mind captures several notes and collects them into a chord I’ll never forget.

He lifts my chin to meet his midnight eye. “You are ready for me to move, Scarlett.”

My eyes burn and my face must show all my uncertainty. I’m still not sure he hasn’t split me in half, but if not, one wrong move will definitely do the trick. Even as I shake my head, he uses his thumb to wipe a small tear away and nods back at me.

“You are, mon amour. You are mine and you were made for me. Trust me.”

My Phantom keeps holding my cheeks as he eases his hard length out and in with a tenderness that I didn’t expect, especially not with the desire still burning in his midnight gaze. After a few more gentle thrusts, his hands leave my face and he scoops his arms underneath the crook of my knees. In the next move, he curves into me and—

“Oh… my… Sol,” I moan, loud and long, wordlessly encouraging him to go faster.

My fingers dig into the keys as he lifts my legs and drives inside me, stroking something in my depths that triggers that increasing octave again.

“Yes, sing for me, my sweet angel. Sing.”

I hadn’t even realized I was still moaning, my mind so lost on the motion between my thighs. His thrusts grow more arrhythmic as I climb that peak and my heels dig into his back again, taking over the task of keeping this angle, freeing his arms.

One hand caresses my cheek and pulls me in for a kiss while the other hooks around the rim of the open piano. The chords and notes we make are loud, chaotic, and reverberate off the stone walls. Our kisses grow just as frantic as his thrusts, until our lips tear apart and all we can do is breathe harshly against each other’s lips.

Every muscle tenses again and my palms grow damp on the piano. I release my grip and cling to his shirt instead, shortening the distance between us even more, making it impossible for him to pull out far.

He goes back to latching his fingers around my hip and grinds against my clit. Using his strong grip on the piano rim like a headboard, he pushes deep inside me. His tip massages against a spot that increases the tempo of the pulses in my inner walls.

My entire body is squeezing him, inside and out, and my core tightens around him, trying to keep him inside me. The crescendo my orgasm has been climbing to finally reaches that high note and I cry out his name as I tumble down.

“Fuck, Scarlett. Yes, mon amour, sing for me, strangle my cock just like that.”

His chest muscles tense underneath my fingertips and he arches his neck back with a curse. The left side of his face flushes and contorts in ecstasy as he looks back down at our connection and grits his teeth. He grips my ass to pull me flush to him before he thrusts one last time. His deep bass croons my name against my neck as we both drift into oblivion.