What are you doing! The warning blares inside my head.
His thigh twitches beneath my palm where I’ve unwittingly placed my hand.
Oh, my God.
Mortification washes over me in excruciating colors of red, as I back away enough to see the disapproval darkening his eyes.
He snatches up my wrist from his lap, startling me, and I wonder if he’ll slap me across the face with my own hand. “You misunderstand my intent.”
“I’m sorry.” Cheeks burning with humiliation, I can’t bring myself to look at him. “I thought you …. I mean we …. I thought you wanted …”
“You’re a teenager. Practically a child. I’m a grown man.” The derision in his voice is thick and condescending.
“I’m not a child,” I snap, the distraction of his insult smoldering my embarrassment. “You had no problem kissing me before, as I recall.”
Eye twitching, jaw shifting, he stares back at me. “A drunken mistake, as I said.”
A mistake. I was a mistake.
I try not to let the harsh blow of his mockery slip beneath my skin, but I can’t help it. “You really are something.” I hate that my voice cracks on the last word, and I have to look away momentarily when the stinging rims of my eyes threaten tears. “You and I aren’t so different, you know.” Twisting my arm still caught in his grasp, I break loose and peel back the sleeve of my shirt to show the scars across my arm. “I know what it’s like to push people away, too.”
He doesn’t spare them so much as a glance. “You think your small inconspicuous scars make us alike? You are nothing like me, Isa. You have no idea what I am, or what I’ve done to earn my scars.”
“You’re not a monster. Nor the devil everyone says you are. Devils don’t help people.” Beneath the cold shadows in his eyes lies a flicker of warmth, so subtle, I almost wonder if I’m imagining it. “You’re just alone. Like me.”
He snorts a mirthless laugh. “I’ve never been alone. That’s the problem with having money. There’s always someone who wants it.”
“Is money always your excuse? Because mine was always that they weren’t smart enough. Mature enough.”
A muscle in his jaw tics, as I imagine him grinding my words in his teeth.
“What do you want, Isa?” He lifts my wrist to his face, holding it there as he kisses the skinny white lines across my skin. “You want me to fuck you? So you can add more to your collection?”
“Fuck you.” I wrench my arm back, but he tightens his grip. “You don’t have to be cruel.”
“I do. It’s the nature of my being. You’re right, though. I’ve done a number of sadistic things to myself over the years.” He runs his thumb over my scars, as if reading them, and that flickering warmth returns again. “But depriving myself has always been the worst.”
The sadness, the loneliness in his voice tugs at my heart, and for a brief moment, I wonder if this is his honesty bleeding through the steel. Arm still propped in the air, I uncurl my fist to touch his face.
He recoils, throwing my hand off of him, his expression guarded and hard all over again.
The humiliation flares to life a second time, and I jolt up from the piano bench. “Never mind. I’m just …. It was stupid.”
A hard tug of my arm jerks me into him until my butt slams back against the bench. Palm to my chin, he holds my face, and devours my breath in a white hot kiss.
Butterflies explode in my stomach, my heart fluttering out of control, a menagerie of wings and victory trapped inside of me. My head is dizzy and my muscles are weak, and it’s a damn good thing I’m sitting down, or I’d have probably passed out. I reach out to hold onto something, and my fingertips are greeted by the hard bunched muscles of his biceps.
A feral growl rattles in his chest, and his fingers curl tighter, his tongue dipping past my teeth. With heightened fervor, he kisses me harder, and his hand slides to my nape, the tight grip there thwarting any chance to steal a breath. “I’m tired of these fucking games with you,” he says through his teeth.
A warm palm skates up my thigh, and when he reaches beyond the hem of my skirt, I gasp into his mouth.
His touch falls away, and he breaks the kiss, leaving a cold and bitter emptiness between us. Tongue sweeping across his lips, he stares back at me, with rapid breaths and flared nostrils.
The enthralled look on his face reminds me of an animal that’s just gotten a taste of blood and hasn’t decided whether to spare, or finish off, the rest.
Gaze locked on his, I escort his hand up my thigh and beneath my skirt, my own hands trembling with fear and excitement. “It’s okay,” I whisper.
His breaths hasten, and the amber of his eyes is swallowed up by the blackness of his dilated pupils. At the first skim of his fingertips over the damp cotton of my panties, I watch his expression sharpen to a knowing smirk. I suck in a breath and close my eyes, concentrating on the tickle at the barrier to my flesh beneath.
I’ve been with boys, I’ve been touched by boys, but never a man so forbidden and off-limits as Lucian Blackthorne. The exotic animal trapped in a cage. It’s like falling into a tank, not knowing if the circling shark will ultimately devour me.
Warm breath hits my neck, just as in my dreams, as he runs his finger up and down the indentation he’s made, the slit of sensitivity. A shaky blast of air escapes my parted lips.
I brace one palm on the bench, squirming against his intrusive fingers, and spread my knees open to allow him access. “Oh, yes,” I breathe, and suck my bottom lip between my teeth, until the coppery flavor puckers my tongue.
“You’re my curse. Staying away from you, is like trying to hold my breath when the tide is rising.” His words dance around my head, the deep timbre of his voice titillating my senses. “I want to drown in you.”
I tip my head back, and the coarse scratch of his facial hair against my throat adds a delicious tickle, as he pushes my panties aside, rougher than expected, for the bare skin beneath.
He doesn’t fumble in his movements, like boys my age. Every touch is deliberate and brimming with assurance that I’ll be a hot, wet mess afterward.
“I hate that I could fuck you for hours and never tire of it.” He kisses along the edge of my jaw, and on instinct I turn to face him. Tongue dancing over my lips, he licks the blood I’ve drawn, before sealing my mouth in a possessive kiss. His fingertips gather the sticky fluids he’s worked up between my thighs, and he spreads it up over my swollen clit, gently rubbing my sensitive nub like a tiny pet he’s trying to rouse from slumber. “Everything about you pisses me off,” he grits against my mouth, the radiating tension hot and dangerous, while his fingertips work me beneath my skirt.
I let out a moan and lift my hips off the bench toward his unforgiving strokes. My belly curls, muscles tight, and my shirt is suddenly too tight, the scratchy fabric tickling my nipples through the lacy bra. Releasing my neck, he seems to take notice of the hard peaks and scrapes the tip of his thumb over the sensitive buds.
A tortured whimper leaks from my mouth, my whole body stiff, as if wires run beneath my skin.
“The way your body responds to my touch. Like the strings of a piano when the hammer strikes it. Every note of a song that I write. A song you keep begging me to play.”