Her voice caressed him. He couldn't have been more moved if she'd reached out and run her hand down the side of his face. More than an emotional or physical response, that voice drew on something more deeply intrinsic to his nature. It felt as if her voice was reaching into his heart, past the damage, past the wasteland, and...
... he didn't know what. He didn't know. But Erik was at once both terrified and wildly ravenous for whatever it was she was doing to him.
"Here," he repeated more softly, a croon that just missed the sound of a response back in song. He wouldn't sing with her. He couldn't bear to do that so soon after Christine. But as the light reflected off the polished stage and bounced off the lapels of his suit jacket, he found himself drawing away from her. He couldn't approach that circle of light. That was her area, never his own. No, he lived in the shadows. He'd merely forgotten this, after Christine.
It was so much easier in the darkness. The deep and glorious dark.