♪ "--One final question!
How long should we to wait
before we're o n e?" ♪
Christine swayed her hips along the subtle curl of his back, followed the line of spine while she felt the chiffon of her dress' fabric bunch up and press in the lack of space between them.
Nearly intoxicated with the thrill of it she allowed thin wrists to nearly float in the air, to hover so delicately in the space above his head,
Christine felt the arch of a spine, the slow coil of bones, languidly, curling as a snake;
she paused, glanced towards the audience from beneath thick eyelashes, gaze heady, knowing and all too confident.
For but a moment, Christine found herself breathless...
--and his hands were shaking when she caught them in a firm grasp, fingers clamping instantaneously, c l a i m i n g.
And, oh, the exhilaration!
-- Yet still he trembled, and only briefly did her mind wander,
had she distracted Piangi from an actor's pointed focus?
No, she wouldn't flatter herself, pushed the unwanted ponderings from her mind. This was a c t i n g, in every sense of the word. Though, how would it be had it not been acting? Had the passion taken place elsewhere than a stage, shared with only t w o, no audience, no lights....
The heat of their bodies mingled and melted when she leaned over him,
♪ "When will the blood begin to race,
the sleeping bud burst into bloom?"
Christine's grip remained unyielding when she dropped her arms -- choreography took ahold and she kept his hand clasped in hers, dragged the both of their arms along the fabric of the cloak;
first, her left hand crawled along the silhouette of a leg, bundled fists pressed so firmly into one another and then along the silk of the fabric.
She did the same with her right, felt the subtle heat of his skin from beneath the silk and skittered the edges of her nails along blackness--
...in the process her chest p r e s s e d against the figure's back, the lilt of her words growing ever closer to the muffled shape of a head, straddled knees further entrapping the man...
Ah! So consumed was she by the character, by the alias in which her confidence was unmatched, hands unwavering! It was unlike anything young Daae had ever felt -- the tightness coiling like a knot in her stomach, the radiation of warmth expelling from her flushed cheeks.
Another beat, and Christine expertly, insistently outstretched the both of their hands in a single gesture, fingers still clamped and guiding--
♪ "When will the flames at last
c
o
n
s
u
m
e
us?" ♪
When the note lowered Christine crossed their arms ever so s l o w l y,
hands going with a painful dragging to cross over the thin chest of the man who sat in front of her.
It was tortuously slow -- her palms pressed, nails dug, all against the flat plane of a chest, bodies further moving into closeness--
The lilt of her voice dipped, then, and Christine's head trilled the note from against the silhouette of a head, the angle of a cheek--
of a hollow, harrowing cheek,
of a cheek not belonging to the overweight Don Juan.
Fear--! Oh, the fear, and the soprano absolutely jumped, the held note jittering violently of apprehension and severed characterization. She recoiled instantly from her seated position at the table.