A Million Different Ways (Horn Duet 1)

Then she stepped aside.

He was suspended in mid-air, hanging from the straps on the ceiling, while I stood paralyzed in the doorway and admired him as openly as I would a piece of fine art in a museum. Or the statue of David I had seen in Florence…only better, bigger––definitely certain parts of him seemed to be. His face was tight in concentration. Not even the hardness of his expression could diminish the flawlessness of his masculine beauty. With sweat trickling down the suntanned skin of his bare chest, he lowered his body by slow inches, balancing only on his arms. Strained by the effort, those arms were bulging and rigid, trembling slightly.

There wasn’t a hint of youth or softness anywhere on him, clearly scraped off by the sharp edges of life. The remains of those experiences were as evident from a distance as a neon sign blinking Danger here! Proceed at your own risk! As I watched him in a state of hyperawareness, something clicked into place. An insight. The truth of it absolute.

This man lived behind an impenetrable fortress. He had locked himself up and thrown away the key. His body was still among the living, but his mind had checked out.

The woman placed her hands on him. One on his corrugated abdomen, the other on his lower back. I couldn’t tell if she was steadying or fondling him. Not that I blamed her––that six pack begged to be touched. She just needed to do a better job pretending she wasn’t doing it for her sake.

My gaze traveled to the dusting of hair that disappeared under the black pants barely hanging on his hipbones. The end of his tan line was visible, marking the dip between bone and muscle. And then the oddest thing happened. An image flashed before my eyes…my lips…on that bare patch of skin disappearing under his pants. A scalding heat swiftly rose up my neck, followed almost immediately by a mist of sweat collecting above my lips. I wiped it away with the back of my hand and bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste a faint trace of blood.

He suddenly looked up and a spark of recognition entered his eyes. So much for him not remembering that evening. Then his lids dropped to half-mast and his mouth turned sullen. Imprisoned in his intense gaze, my skin began to itch with an awareness that something unpleasant was coming.

He let himself down gracefully, careful to land on his good leg. The woman’s eyes followed his and revealed a face as striking as the rest of her. Her wide, full mouth turned pouty when she saw me.

“I think that’s good enough for today, Yvette.” His voice was low and measured, his attention never wavering from me.

“Bien sûr, same time tomorrow?” Her expression managed to look both coy and adoring. I wanted to roll my eyes, though wisely refrained.

“No…let’s do it next week,” he answered while he motioned me forward with a flick of his arrogant index finger.

I took a deep breath, fixed my gaze on a point over his shoulder, and walked over to him. I could feel him examining me as he took the glass from the tray. I turned to leave when he stopped me again with that finger.

“Stay.” Stay?

He casually stepped closer to me, and it took everything I had not to take a giant step back. Every nerve ending in my body was on high alert. The size of him this up close and personal was overwhelming. The scent of him, expensive soap and clean male sweat, affected my body in ways my intellect couldn’t even begin to understand.

The woman’s gaze skipped back and forth between us. She was waiting for privacy, wanted the rude creature to herself. And I would have been more than happy to oblige her, but he wouldn’t dismiss me. Instead, he took small sips of his putrid green drink and waited patiently for her to collect her gym bag. Her shoulders sagged as she walked towards the door.

“See you next week, Yvette.”

I thought I heard amusement in his voice and glanced up, though I couldn’t have been more wrong. His face was unnaturally still, not even a blink to prove that he was in fact human. Yvette grumbled her goodbye in French. As she walked out, a desperate urge to beg her to stay came over me.

The second she disappeared the air between us grew thin, as if I was suddenly standing in high altitude, laboring for every breath. His heavy stare was all over me while he drank his witch’s brew and dried the sweat off his chest with a small, white towel. Crawling through a pit of vipers would have been less unnerving. He was toying with me and we both knew it.