Phantom: A Dark Retelling (Tattered Curtain Series)

Sol

Just hearing my pretty muse’s high notes could make me come, but when I’m inside her at the same time, it’s a whole different harmony.

Scarlett is still propped up on top of the keyboard, breathing heavily against my chest. The peaks of her bare breasts poke through my shirt and I wish we could be skin to skin.

I’ve never been fully unclothed in front of a woman before, but with Scarlett, I desperately want to feel her velvet touch against my scars. Her fierce nails would have felt divine embedded in my back rather than my T-shirt. But while she insists that she wasn’t turned off by my missing eye, there’s no way she’d feel the same if she saw the rest of me. What I have with Scarlett will always be shrouded in darkness, no matter how much I wish to go into the light with her. Phantoms don’t survive in the light.

I straighten up, still inside of her, and stroke her glistening alabaster skin, almost iridescent in the firelight. Like the moon.

“You are my moonlight,” I whisper against her shoulder in a kiss.

“And you are my midnight,” she murmurs back, her silver eyes sleepy from the endorphins her orgasm released, despite having just woken up.

Her declaration sends my heart soaring… and my mind backtracking. Whatever this is with Scarlett started out as an obsession, but what it is now is so much more, in so little time. And I can’t do more.

But I also can’t do less.

She is my sweet angel and I am her selfish demon. The spotlight? I can give her that. Nothing makes me happier than seeing Scarlett fulfilling her dream. But I can never give her the sunlight. Letting the world see what the Chatelains did to me is unacceptable. Dark shadows and night are my future. Right now, she’s under the spell that my mask radiates. It gives an air of mystery and affords me both anonymity and notoriety, depending on the circumstance. But once the mask disappears, so does the novelty. Especially when the horror of my past comes to light.

My heart twists inside my chest at the thought, stealing my breath. If she glimpses underneath my mask, she’ll never be able to look at me the way she does now. It’ll either end in disgust, or pity. The second would break me.

I hold her hips as I finally withdraw from her warmth. Scarlett’s soft muscles cling to my bare cock as I drag myself out. I’ve always used condoms, but I won’t with her. I’ll be damned if I ever put something between us.

The faintest pink tinge glosses my cock in the firelight, and my primal, savage heart thumps like a bass drum roll at the sight of my cum seeping from her swollen lips.

That brief moment of hesitation I had over keeping Scarlett all to myself disappears entirely as I imagine her swollen with my Bordeaux heir. Before I can stop myself, I swipe my cock through our cum, smearing all of mine that I can see back onto my shaft before I sheath myself with her pussy, sealing all of my cum inside of her. I can’t waste a drop.

She gasps at my reentry and encircles my neck with her arms. My grip tightens on her thighs and I carry her to the piano bench I kicked against the wall. Once I sit down, I lean my back against the wall and grind up into her more, making sure her pussy swallows every last drop of my seed.

Her hands explore me, dragging down my chest before trying to sneak underneath the hem of my T-shirt. I catch them before they get too far and return them to my shoulders. She doesn’t seem to mind my change in course and rests her head against me. Her warm breath sighs against my neck, making goose bumps erupt underneath my shirt. A quick gasp makes me freeze.

“Sol… we… we didn’t use protection.”

Protection. The word makes me growl. As if she would ever need protection from me.

She tries to sit up, but I capture her in my arms and press her entire body flush to mine, allowing her now racing heartbeat to feel the calm, sated one in my chest.

“I’m clean, Scarlett. There’s been no one in over a year.”

She relaxes slightly, but still clutches my shirt. “Well, that’s good. And at least I’ve got an implant.”

“A what?” I jerk back to look down at her.

“A birth control implant. I’ve got one. So we don’t have to worry about any baby Bordeauxs running around.”

She says it flippantly, and an irrational sense of betrayal burns in my chest, but I calm my expression.

How the fuck did I not know this?

“Where is it?”

Even as I ask, I know it’s a bad idea. Already, I’m having visions of me in a possessive trance, removing it myself before fucking a child into her with triumph.

Her wary eyes narrow. “I don’t think I’m going to tell you.”

“Excuse me?” I ask, my right brow rising despite the mask adhered to it.

She watches me before finally shaking her head. “Yeah, I’m definitely not telling you. Your face has evil scheme written all over it. I’ve always wanted a big family, but I’m not having kids until I’m good and ready.”

I stroke my finger down her naked arm, mesmerized by the goose bumps that float in my wake. “I plan to know every inch of your body, Scarlett. I could find it myself, you know.”

“I’m sure you could.” Her smirk softens and those gorgeous moonlight eyes of hers silently beg me. “But I also think you’ll respect me on this. Trapping me won’t let you keep me, Sol.”

Her words catch me off guard. I open my mouth to argue, but guilt slowly filters through the possessive haze clouding my judgment.

I’d had the urge to do exactly that, trap her into being with me. Fate intervened at the beginning of our relationship, and now that I’ve had her, I would cut her implant out in a heartbeat. But keeping her would be all the more satisfying if she made the decision.

“What if destiny says fuck your birth control? What would you do?”

She rolls her eyes like I’m not dead serious. New Orleanians are full of their superstitions, and while the Phantom of the French Quarter may be one of them, I still have my own beliefs.

“I can’t argue with fate. If it decides we’re meant to be then I guess you’re stuck with me.”

A devilish grin lifts my lips as I shift underneath her, burying my cock farther inside her and tempting fate.

“It seems I’m stuck in you.”

She barks out a laugh and groans at the awful joke. “No one ever talks about the Phantom of the French Quarter’s corny sense of humor.”

This time, even the right side of my face lifts underneath my mask as my smile spreads. “It’s only for you, mon amour.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep your reputation intact. By the way, did you know that people say the Phantom is a god in bed—”

Before she can finish that thought, I clutch her to me and pick her up to lay her back on the piano bench. In that one swift move, I stay flush against her, my stern face filling her vision. My loose pants slip down my ass, but at this angle, she can’t see the skin that’s been revealed. I never left her pussy, so I shove my half-hard cock as deep as I can go, thrusting inside her until my rage gets under control.

“No, I can’t again. Please.” Even as she pleads with me not to, her heels dig into my back, begging for more.

“As far as I’m concerned, there’s never been anyone but you, Scarlett. No one before you mattered.”

Her wide eyes soften but she presses those pretty bow lips together. I grind into her, already feeling her renewed arousal coating my cock. I use my thumb on her clit and swirl the little nub underneath my finger as I lift up her leg and curve my strokes to reach that spot that makes her sing. She finally lets go of a moan and I growl at her again.

“Tell me you understand.”

“I understand,” she gives in and I begin to pound inside her.

A second time would normally take much longer to come again, if at all, but my cock has been weeping in my hand for Scarlett’s tight pussy for over a year now. It’s eager to claim her again and already hard as steel.

“Come, pretty muse.”

She moans at my command and my spine tingles while the base of my shaft tenses. My finger on her clit works in tandem with my cock to find the perfect rhythm. Pleasure calls to my angel and she’s singing for me, contracting her inner muscles around my cock as she comes. Her cunt begs me to fill her up with my seed as it massages my length with its tight grip, daring fate while my orgasm barrels into me and I explode inside her quaking pussy.

Once her contractions are mere flutters and she’s squirming underneath me, my thumb finally leaves her clit. I sit up on the piano bench and lean back against the wall with her sated in my arms. She collapses against my chest and I knead her back muscles with my fingers, stealing a glance at my watch. If I’m to go, I need to get ready soon, but fuck, I don’t want to leave Scarlett’s body yet.

“What’re we doing today? It’s a Sunday, so I don’t have class.” She chuckles against my neck. “Will you even let me go to class tomorrow?”

We.

That’s the first thing I hear.

What’re we doing today.

The way she’s already so quickly referring to us as a plurality makes it easier to answer for tomorrow.

“If you feel happy and healthy, like you do right now, then I’ll let you go.”

She sits up, her pretty lips parted, obviously as surprised by my admission as I am. “Let me go? Seriously?”

“Yes, you’re here because I wanted to make sure you didn’t hurt yourself. If you feel good tomorrow, there’s… no reason for you to stay here anymore.”

“No… reason? None at all? You’ll just let me go and we’ll be done?”

My brow furrows, pulling at my mask. “Done? Oh, no, ma jolie petite muse. I’ll never be done with you.”

She smiles back at me, but a curious narrowing of her eyes betrays her uncertainty.

You and me both.

Whatever this is can’t be good for her and it’s impossible to maintain for me, but I have no idea how to fight this pull between us, and I don’t want to.

She blinks away her hesitance and returns to my chest. “Well, if I’m stuck with you, tell me what we’re doing.”

I take another glance at my watch and a thought crosses my mind.

“Get ready for the day. There’s something I’d like to show you.”