I shiver, partly from his touch and partly from the breeze wafting through the canal tunnel. After all, I’m still very naked.
“Think about it.” He curls his hand beneath my jaw and strokes his thumb over my lips. “This doesn’t have to be a single occurrence. The three of us could join together in so many ways…not all of them sexual.”
I vent a short, anxious laugh. “And what about Christine?”
“She will return to us.”
“Will she?” I frown slightly, inspecting the visible half of his handsome face. “How can she trust either of us after all this? You won’t even reveal your whole self to her, or to me.”
He turns aside and bites his lip. “That’s for your own safety. I will not endanger the people I love.”
My breath catches. “The people you love?”
“I think this is love.” He touches his chest. “Before, all I heard were the screams and moans of the dead, but now I have music inside me always, and it is louder when you or Christine are near. I suffer this violent need to be with you, against you, inside you—to protect you and seek the best for you. I will defy and destroy anyone who might threaten your well-being or your dreams. Is that love?”
I draw in a slow, purposeful breath, trying to calm my racingheart. “I’m fairly fucking sure that it is.”
“I was afraid so.” He says it despairingly and walks a few steps away, his shoulders sagging again. The glance he throws over his shoulder at me is flooded with so much pain that I feel it stab my own heart like a shard of mirrored glass. “It is the ultimate selfishness,” he murmurs, “that I cannot remove myself from Christine’s life and yours. But I cannot live without her, nor can I exist without you, poet, because she is my soul and you are my heart. I would give you both up if I could, but I am not strong enough to face that darkness again. Not alone.”
His voice breaks on the last word, and that quiver of emotion finishes me. I stride forward and wrap both arms around him from behind, resting my cheek against his back. It’s the tightest hug I’ve given anyone in a long time—maybe ever.
He stiffens. “What are you doing? Do you want to fuck again?”
“Not right now. I’m just giving you a hug.”
“A hug,” he repeats.
“Apparently you need one.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
Chuckling, I step back. “Turn around so we can do this properly. That’s right, facing me. Lift your arms and wrap them around me as I hold you. There. And if it’s a friend-type hug, you can grip the other person and then clap them on the back, like this.”
“Hm.” His arms tighten around me, and he whispers into my hair, “What if it’s not a friend-type hug?”
My pulse kicks up again as I become suddenly hyperaware of his right hand, which is sliding down my back. His long, warm fingers cup my bare ass cheek, and he squeezes lightly, sending delicious tingles across my skin. I’m instantly hard, my dick throbbing against his through the blanket tied around his waist.
I clear my dry throat. “Well…if enough comfort has beenprovided, it can shift into a different kind of hug. Maybe something called a sword fight.”
He rears back a little, frowning. But when I point out the swords in question, realization dawns on his face, along with a grin that belongs on the face of the Devil himself.
The blanket hits the floor, and it’s my body against his, muscle and bone and skin and raw, pulsing desire. He speaks to me while we grind and stroke by turns. He calls me “poet” and “my brilliant darling” and “good fucking boy.” He comes immediately after I do, sprinkling the muscles of my stomach while they’re still tense from my own orgasm.
Afterward he brings me a robe and wraps himself in one as well. We explore the potential of his digital piano, plus a few apps and programs I wanted to show him. His capacity for learning seems limitless, and he grasps information much faster than a human could. We’re deep in a conversation about music theory when a ghost pops out of his laptop screen, eliciting a sharp yell from me.
“Master,” the ghost says to the Phantom, without apologizing for startling me. “You instructed Agnes to take the lady Christine back to her room, yes?”
“Of course.” He frowns.
“Well, far be it from me to gossip,” says the ghost with a smug expression on her round face, “but Christine never arrived at her room, and one of the other ghosts said they saw her stumbling through the northeast hallway, looking quite ill and faint.”
“What?” The Phantom leaps up from his chair and bellows, “Agnes!” in a voice that shakes the concrete floor and the brick walls around us. Goose bumps erupt over every inch of my skin at the dreadful power of that voice.
A ghost appears instantly, conjured by his roar, apparently againsther will. She coughs nervously and adjusts her flowered hat. “My lord?”
“Agnes,” says the Phantom in a smooth, beautiful, menacing tone. “Did you lead Christine safely to her room?”
The ghost squirms, pinning her lips together as if struggling not to speak.
