Concerto (North Security 2)

There is more than welcome in her eyes. There’s challenge.

SAMANTHA

I don’t expect him to actually touch me. “Four,” he says, and I begin the opening rise of Beethoven’s “5 Secrets.” They’re moving and sweet, with a touch of melancholy.

His eyes flicker with a deep shame. He doesn’t want to want me, which is what makes it so sad. The music is how I speak to him. It’s how he speaks back to me, his head bowed before me. Does it really matter so much whether I’m seventeen or eighteen? Does it really matter that a piece of paper makes him my guardian? He does not have a monopoly on being protective. It’s not only him who decides what happens here.

I want to guard him from the onyx shadows in his green eyes.

“Three,” he murmurs, and I expect him to walk away.

The bow moves almost on its own, my limbs forming around the instrument the way it wants. It’s a sensual experience, playing the violin. I didn’t realize how much until now.

He touches my lips with his thumb, the movement bold. His hand trails lower, over the shape of my breasts and the concave of my stomach.

“Two,” he says, pushing my legs. The backs of his knuckles brush the insides of my thighs, and everything in me tightens. Muscle memory is a powerful thing, and I manage to keep playing without missing a single note. Two fingers slip beneath the slit of the dress. Those green eyes widen, and I know he’s shocked that I’m not wearing anything underneath.

My regular panties left an obvious line in the thin fabric of the dress. I’ll need something else to wear underneath—a thong. Though at the moment having nothing feels more right than anything I could buy at a store.

“One,” he says, his voice almost sympathetic. Rough finger pads open my most private place, searching and inexorable. I’ve never felt so exposed, even with nothing bared to his sight.

The hard part isn’t playing the notes. It’s keeping the tempo the same. My hands want to speed up, my body moving toward an uncertain peak. He finds a well of moisture and draws it up, his forefinger circling my clit. My breath shudders out of me.

“Keep playing,” he murmurs, his thumb moving to my clit, his fingers searching below.

My eyes fall shut, but my hands know what to do even without watching. The bow meets the strings in perfect accord, the tempo rising only slightly. “Don’t stop,” I say on a moan.

A humorless huff of laughter. “I couldn’t.”

His hands move with startling knowledge of my body, as if he’s been practicing for ten thousand hours, as if I’m his instrument to play. Pleasure swirls inside me, soft at first, and then louder, unmistakable. Orgasm wrenches my body with sudden violence.

A loud screech rents the air as my bow rubs discordant against the strings.

In the aftermath of my climax, Liam gently strokes the inside of my thigh. My body twitches and sighs, struggling for equilibrium. I open my eyes to find him watching me.

“You stopped playing,” he says, his tone grave, a hint of erotic playfulness lurking deep in those moss-green eyes. “We’ll have to start over again. And again. Until you get it right.”

“Oh no,” I protest weakly, not sure my body can take another ounce of pleasure.

“Oh yes,” he says, a note of mock regre

t in his voice. “Practice makes perfect.”

My limbs feel like they’re made of jelly as I play the opening rise of Beethoven’s “5 Secrets” again. Liam’s fingers work with devastating accuracy to bring me to the peak. I tighten my hold on the neck of the violin, determined to finish this time, to play the song to completion.

Then he spreads my legs wider and presses his mouth to my core, and I’m lost.

LIAM

I rest my forehead against the inside of her thigh, breathing roughly, struggling to control the lust raging in my veins. My lips feel swollen from kissing her. The scent of her arousal engraves my memory for safekeeping. There will be no time when I don’t think of this night, when it doesn’t make me hard. When I don’t wish I could do it again.

Samantha makes little whimpers, as if it’s too much, as if she’s oversensitive even though I’m not touching her anymore. There’s no way she can know how the sounds incense me, how I want to make her come again just to prove that she can take more. I’ll show her, I’ll make her. Some shred of reason holds me back. Perhaps the certainty that I would not be able to keep from fucking her if I heard her come again, if I felt her liquid on my lips, her secret muscles clenching my tongue as if they could draw it inside her body.

“God,” she says, sounding shattered. Sounding broken.

I did that to her.

The irony rises over me, a shadow with weight, a goddamn cross to bear. God, she says again, but it doesn’t have anything to do with a divine being. It’s the other guy. The one who’s always been inside me. By touching Samantha, I finally proved my father right. The devil lives inside me. Doesn’t he? And the worst part, the truly unforgivable part, is that I would do it again. Now that I know Samantha’s intimate flavor I can’t imagine not knowing. It seems like not breathing. Not living. And I’d gave up any miniscule chance at redemption to have it.