Chapter Twenty-six

Dieppe, France

The waves crashed in the distance, and the air was dense with salt. The sea seemed to calm the gypsy life, for once a gypsy reached the sea where else could he wander? Months had passed without pursuit. France was large, but the time would come when they’d have to move again. For now they rested, and Erik watched Anna stare out the door as she marveled at the sea she had never seen before. Erik pondered her distance. Somehow he would find a way to repay her and the kindness and all the sacrifices of strangers along the way.

Philippe mirrored the waves as he rolled on the small bed, chasing something in the air that held his interest. Pappy was off taking care of their needs, working for the family that owned this property in trade for shelter. They’d all fallen into roles and routines that had become commonplace. When Philippe gasped, Erik turned his attention toward the bed.

Confounded, he followed his infant’s eyes and tried to trace whatever spirit had caught his attention this time. Philippe batted the air frantically.

“What?” Erik demanded in clipped German.

His son turned his eyes toward the sound of his voice. Erik folded his arms against his chest and scowled, expecting a response.

“Well?” he insisted, pushing off the wall. Philippe let out a string of nonsense and continued to chase his ghost. Erik drilled a disapproving look into Anna’s back. She seemed oblivious to his fuss.

“Are you hungry? Tired?” With a weary glace to Anna’s current lack of interest, he lifted Philippe and perched his wobbly legs on his thighs. He winced as Philippe’s little palms pounded into his unmasked face. Silly babble drooled out his mouth. “Yes, I am quite aware. Your father has no face.” He volleyed his head to block Philippe’s unrelenting pounding. “You, at least, have the beauty of your mother.”

Anna turned her head.“You find me beautiful?”

Insecure disbelief hid behind her tone. Erik frowned as she rolled her attention back out the door. He turned from his son to let his eyes roam over the small hovel they currently called shelter and pondered the vacant look to her eye. Philippe bounced unsteadily on his lap as he strengthened his tiny legs for walking. He could give his son and Anna a life of privilege if circumstances were different. They didn’t deserve this.

“Can we stay here, Erik? Right here, in this tiny shack by the sea?”

Erik’s brows rushed up in surprise, given his current thoughts. He laid Philippe back on the bed where he instantly found something of interest in the salty air around him. “We can stay as long as we are able, Anna. I only wish I could give you more.”

“What more could I want? I have you, Philippe and Pappy. I don’t need more.”

“Perhaps.” He shared the door. He slipped his hand behind her braid, enjoying how her highlights shown in the sun and how velvety it felt against his knuckles. “I will give you a home someday. This will not last forever. Chagny will give up and I will provide you with all the riches in the world. I will take you out on Sundays, entertain you during the week, and I will fill our house with music.” He caressed the faded and stained ribbon wound around her braid. “You have my word.”

“You would give me your music?”

“It has always been yours.”

“The music was Christine’s.”

Ah. There was the reason for her distance. Erik stopped stroking her braid at the mention of that name. It hadn’t been spoken for quite some time. “The music stopped being Christine’s the moment my son was born. You have given me a gift Christine never did—compassion and a beautiful, perfect child. How could I not love the woman who did that with all my heart and soul?” This time, he contemplated the surf. “Erik can exist without Christine.”

“So you have truly let her go?”

Glancing at Anna sideways, he understood for the first time why she was so reserved. “I let her go during a barn fire. I let her go in a prison cell. I let her go in Lyon. Nothing in that moment felt right. Nothing has felt right since I hurt my Anna.”

Anna leaned her head against the doorframe. She wondered aloud, “Why do you call me that? My Anna?”

“When a woman has seen my face as you have, she belongs to me.”

“Christine saw your face. Years ago.”

“Not as you have.” Erik turned her chin to force her to look at him. “Christine took what she wanted from me when she took my first mask and burned it.” He nodded mask abandoned on Philippe’s bed. “Do you think in all my life I ever asked anyone to remove my mask?” Anna shook her head. “But I asked you. The only person in my life I ever asked or wanted to look upon my face was you. You became a part of me the night we danced at the masquerade. You became my missing link, my freedom and simply—my Anna.” He turned from her. “And I miss my Anna.”

She leaned off the doorframe, choosing instead to lean against his chest and draw his arms around her. Erik sighed. She was warm, always so warm.

Anna coiled her hands around his waist and stared into his eyes. “I’ve missed you.”

Baffled, Erik looked at her. Could those words mean what he wanted them too? That he’d be allowed back in to love her in the ways he so genuinely wanted and needed to? He had respected her in the months since Lyon, giving her the time and the space she needed to heal from raw wounds he had caused in her. They both had needed time to sort through madness and misunderstood feelings. He brushed the windswept strands of hair away from her face.

“Pardon?”

“Teach me to love without fear.”

Erik lost himself in the complexity he found in her eyes. “Me, teach you to love?”

“I always thought it would be simple to love, but it’s not. You’ve never been frightened. You’ve always been a man to fear—by the very nature of this face alone.”

A jolt of desire raced through his body when Anna caressed his cheek.

“But you’ve never feared so much as the most basic of emotions,” she marveled. “I always have. I always knew I would find love but was terrified of what would happen when I did. You never feared love.”

“You foolish child. How can you, of all people, be so naïve and innocent? The one thing in life I feared the most was love. Anna, I have done nothing in these last few months that has shown you an ounce of respect. How can you say you need me to teach you about love when it is I that have learned from you?”

“What could you possibly have learned from me?”

Did she really not know? “That I need not fear my madness. I can live with it. That my face can be looked upon in something other than horror; that I can live with the consequences of my choices like a normal man and be bound by the rules of a world I shunned. That I can…” he looked to his son still in awe of him, “…create beauty. That Erik is…” He squeezed his eyes shut, willing that part of his persona away. “I am vulnerable in my madness and being vulnerable, is a strength.”

Erik’s hands kneaded her shoulders as he stared into her watery eyes. For the first time, he did not view himself as above the human race. He only saw himself as a man who wanted the simplest of things: a warm hand in his, a companion at night, and a child to raise.

“I will repay you, Anna. Someday I will repay all the Samaritans in my life. That is my promise to you. If you will have me more imperfect than ever.”

Erik tipped her chin until she met his gaze. His lips brushed against hers. She smiled. The way her lips parted wrung his heart, and Erik’s body surged with a burning need.

God, he loved her. But he dared not put his heart first. He looked at her with apprehension, worried that memories would surface for both of them and chase away what time had so carefully begun to heal. Anna turned back inside and sat at the edge of the second bed.

Erik hesitated. The screaming tyranny of his body wanted to lunge on her, but instead he took a few hesitant steps toward her. He reached out and traced her face from the tip of her forehead down to her chin. He lowered himself next to her.

Gently, as if he did not want to shatter the most fragile gift, he laid her backward and spent every last minute of the waning daylight spooning her close against him. They listened to the waves and smelled the salt air as they watched their son squirm and chase invisible ghosts. Eventually, there was music in Erik’s mind—an achingly slow and sensual tune, one he would never share and one he swore he would never put on paper.

His head moved slowly to the sounds of the notes that rolled within him. His thin and nimble fingers moved back and forth, undoing the length of Anna’s braid. He placed her name into her ear, his voice a husky tremor.

He forced her shoulder down, turning her to face him. Slanting his mouth over hers, his cold lips heated with her salty taste. The music rose. He often wished she could hear this music, but for now, he just wanted it to be his. He may be the one to listen to it, but his Anna would always be the one to feel it.

“Anna?”

When she replied by opening her mouth and deepening their kiss, his moan was swallowed by her passion for the moment. He teased her lower lip with his tongue as a thrill of anticipation uncurled in his core.

In time there was nothing between them but Anna’s auburn locks and the music in Erik’s mind. He hovered above her, covering her in his kisses, not wanted to rush the moment. Anna wrapped herself around him. Taking the invitation, Erik joined their bodies completely. He buried himself deeply in her heat, relishing the way she shuddered as his body responded to the decadent way she felt around him. Tight. Complete. Lush.

Erik moaned.

The music in his mind demanded he move. He rocked into her in time to the sounds conducting her with care and adoration. Not a note was to be missed, not a beat or a stroke were to be passed by or rushed. His body bowed and swayed against her, the tempo in his mind and the pace in which he loved remaining steady and constant in his thrusts for the longest time.

Erik only heard music like this with her: primed in its harmony, balanced in its counterpoint. He slowed his conducting, not wanting the music to end. He stared at her flushed face. Her eyes were closed; her lips parted in a tiny ‘o.’

The image was to be savored, the contrast of her supple body below his monstrous form, enjoyed.

There was no other way to share music like this. Anna’s breathing quickened as the flush on her face colored her chest. He followed with his lips, never permitting them to leave her flesh. Her back lifted from the bed, offering him more and he took all she presented, moving his needs into her deeply with the arch of her hips. Erik was the conductor for the moment, but she was the maestro. Anna taught him every last note and chord and created the stanzas he so adored. Eye closed, he lifted his head to the ceiling. There were deep tones to the music rumbling low inside him and high melodious tones drifting above. His head moved back and forth as he stared down at her. Anna’s eyes were filling with anticipation. Her breast heaved.

Erik smiled.

Slowly, he lifted her hands above her head and pinned her lightly against the bed. His mind filled with gentle sounds. Those notes were hers. He listened and followed the music letting it dictate his every move. Each hand pinned her down so she could not protest; Erik lifted the bulk of his weight from atop her. He continued to slide into her as a bow would across the finest of violins, gently leaning in and out of the notes, sometimes caressing other times pressing harder. Anna’s back arched. Her breasts tightened. She called his name breathlessly. Her passage convulsed around him as she gasped in pleasure.

He smiled and tilted his head as the music heightened with her cries. It was stronger now, more daring and a bit faster. He shifted his conducting to match what he was hearing and feeling, moving in such a way as to be a part of what he was discovering all over again. If he did ever put this symphony it on paper, it would be unmatched. The music he composed swelled to a fevered pace. He did not hold back any longer.

What was adagissimo for Anna slid aside, and the music demanded an affrettando. Wild notes drove Erik’s beat, curving the woman beneath him to additional planes of pleasure while unrelentingly driving wave after wave of desire through him. A tremolo was demanded and he moved with great rapidity, repeating the same beat. Like a bow hammering—accenting the martelé against the stings—Erik did not stop until the crescendo came, and he cried out with its great surge of sound. He sought Anna’s lips when it did, wanting nothing more than to be connected to her in every way possible. He shuddered, crushing her tiny frame in his embrace until he was empty within her. They laid together in exhausted silence. For a long while, neither spoke.

“Erik?” Anna murmured. Erik rolled lazily toward her and the quiet sounds of their son. “I think we’ve learned a lot from Philippe.”

Erik buried his face in her hair before rolling atop her. That music began again as Anna smiled at him. He clenched his teeth to tether the wave of emotion surging from the recess of his heart, mind, and soul. Erik’s lips trembled as he sought hers. He kissed her with all the love and passion he could muster. He memorized every last sensation she caused. His voice cracked as he rested his forehead against hers locking their gaze, and entwining their bodies as close as he could get them. He mumbled best he could through his tears.

“Anna, which Philippe?”