Concerto (North Security 2)

“Go to bed,” I say, hoarse from the restraint it takes to not bear her down on the floor and invade her body like an animal, in full view of her violin and my office. These symbols of my guardianship and her childhood made witness. “It’s late.”

I move to stand up, but her hand touches my cock. It just reaches out and lands on my cock, only denim and cotton separating her flesh from mine. A wave of desire overtakes me, and the only thing I can do is freeze.

“Let me,” she says, still breathless, almost begging. “Let me touch you.”

“No.” The word comes out like a slap, and she flinches.

“I want to please you.”

There is no hell that would be deep enough, hot enough, painful enough for me. “I took advantage of you. And now you want to please me?”

Anger shoulders aside the lust in her eyes. “You took advantage of me? No, Liam. I made this decision.”

“Really? You put on that dress because you wanted to make me insane with desire? You wore no panties so I wouldn’t rip them to shreds? You spread your legs because you knew I would eat you like a madman?” She looks so beautiful as she comes. Her hoarse cries are sweeter music than anything her violin could produce. She’s everything good and pure and right in this world, and all I can think about is defiling her again.

Her cheeks turn pink. “I didn’t plan this, but I chose it all the same. I could have said no.”

“It wouldn’t have stopped me.”

“Liar,” she says, softly, almost sadly. “You didn’t take advantage of me, and you couldn’t hurt me if you tried. Not like this. You hurt me in other ways. By telling me that you don’t want a relationship after the tour. That you don’t love me. I love you, you know that? I do, but you don’t care. You’re too busy fighting with your demons.”

“I’m not fighting demons, sweetheart. I am one.”

Her eyes are wide and luminous. “You really believe that, don’t you?” she says, her voice wondering. “Why do you believe that?”

With a growl I push away from her, pacing across the parquet floor, damning the iron-hard erection in my jeans. “If you knew the number of people I killed you wouldn’t ask that.”

“Almost everyone on your payroll is ex-military,” she says in an outrageously reasonable tone. “Do you think they’re bad people?”

“Of course not.”

“Then what makes you different?”

I can’t possibly explain all the deep-rooted ways. When you grow up with abusive parents you either hate the world or you find a way to rationalize their behavior. You think, maybe they’re right. Maybe they see something in me that’s fundamentally flawed. Maybe I should drink dirty well water to survive, only to throw it back up, and then stew in it for the next twenty-four hours before my father sends the rope down. Samantha knows something about shitty parents, but she doesn’t know my secrets—and God willing she never will.

That’s how I leave her, collapsed on her practice chair, boneless with satiated desire, hurt a clear bell in her eyes.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The most expensive violin ever sold cost $16 million.

SAMANTHA

When I wake up in the morning, I’m back in my bed, Liam nowhere to be seen. I don’t feel one year older or one day older. I’m a million years older, not because of the clock ticking away—but because of what happened with Liam last night. I examine myself in the mirror—the same brown eyes and brown hair. The same slight build that by some quirk of nature gave me the ability to play the violin with a speed and grace that astonished kings. Well, so much for being a child prodigy. It’s my eighteenth birthday.

I’m not a child any longer.

Liam North doesn’t have custody of me anymore.

The knowledge should give me a sense of independence, of grief. Of power and loss in equal measure. For surely I’ve lost as much as I’ve gained as the calendar flicked past yesterday. I don’t feel any of those things, only a curious hollowness. Maybe I’m in a kind of emotional shock, my body resorting to numbness in order to avoid the pain.

There is only one thing that could possibly cut through the gauzy material that separates me from reality right now. The same thing that has always helped me hurt and heal, the lodestone of all my emotion. And that’s music. After a quick shower I make my way downstairs.

Standing in the doorway, I know immediately that something is different.

That something is wrong.

The violin I’ve used for the past five years is a lovely Nicolo Amati, its bearing proud, its sound clear. There are multiple cracks that have been professionally repaired. It is on the whole weatherworn and discolored, the pedigree exceeding its appearance.