One look at those bright yellow eyes turns my vision into a wet blur.
A kitten. He brought a kitten home. My throat closes up.
Coal black fur covers the cat’s body from the peaks of the ears to the tip of the tail. I press my lips together as a sob rises up.
In the next heartbeat, I’m fucking crying. A damn mess of soggy snivels, runny nose, and noisy hiccups for no reason that makes sense. I did the same thing when my dad gave me Schubert.
I wipe my cheeks with the backs of my hands and slowly lower into a crouch, careful not to scare… Him? Her? Knowing Emeric, he’d want another male in the house.
Excitement races through me when I spy two charms hanging from the black collar.
I offer my hand in greeting. He sniffs my fingers, marks them, and makes me his. I melt.
Scooping him up, I nuzzle him against my neck and sink into the vibrating purr. I missed this so much.
With shaking fingers, I examine the silver charms. The first is a round ID tag with a name engraved. Kodaline.
The Irish pop band I played at my audition.
I shake my head, grinning. God, I love that man of mine.
The second charm is a heart-shaped locket with a raised treble clef on the front. I open the latch and a tiny folded note falls into my palm.
Sliding into the nearest stool, I set Kodaline on my lap and unravel the teeny piece of paper.
It’s an address in the French Quarter. Scrawled beneath the street name in his sexy male penmanship is, Don’t keep me waiting.
What has he done now?
I smile as I shower, fix my hair, and slip on a casual black rockabilly dress with gray rose print. The strapless bodice seductively hugs my cleavage. A flirty bow ties at the waist, and the skirt flares at the knees. I pair it with comfortable red pin-up pumps—as comfortable as heels can be anyway. The flats would be more practical, but I want to look good for him, for whatever he has planned.
My grin grows bigger and bigger on the drive there, making my cheeks ache in its refusal to go away. Smiling is as much a part of me as the clothes he picks out, the pain he pleasures me with, and the music he resonates in my heart.
With the address mapped on my phone, I follow the directions to a popular breakfast place in the French Quarter. The warm breeze kisses my face as I walk quickly along the flagstone passageway, surrounded by the ambiance of New Orleans’ salient history and architecture.
Sunlight glints off the steeples, gables, and dormered rooftops. Dew clings to the gas lamp posts. Eager tourists gather around the vendors setting up booths beneath the blooming trees in Jackson Square. It’s a beautiful southern morning. How could I have ever moved away from this?
I step into the restaurant and immediately spot him in a corner booth sipping his coffee. His blue eyes find mine, and for the second time this morning, I melt.
He watches me intently as I cross the busy dining room, his gaze roaming up and down and deep inside me.
When I reach the table, he stands and laces our fingers together. “You look ravishing.”
Black hair falls over the cropped sides in disheveled strands, no doubt molested by his fingers since the moment he woke. His cobalt blue button-up matches his eyes and hangs open over a white t-shirt. The relaxed denim of his jeans sits low on his tapered hips, a fit so perfect it’s as if every thread was woven to embrace his long-legged strides and cup his impressive bulge.
He looks like a man who intends to spend a lazy day strolling along the pier. Maybe that’s the plan?
“You look damn fine yourself.” I smile up at him. Rather than sitting across from him, I follow him in on his side, wrap my arms around his wide shoulders, and hold my lips to his. “Thank you for Kodaline.”
“Fast friends, I take it?”
“Insta-love.”
He steers the conversation through breakfast, keeping the chit-chat carefree and unassuming. He hasn’t told me how he spent my last three weeks of school, but his entire demeanor has been focused and fueled with purpose. When I pry, it’s always the same response. Trust me.
I’m getting that look now, the wait-and-see glimmer in his eyes. I don’t care what he’s keeping from me. I’m content to simply enjoy his company, holding his hand as his girlfriend and kissing his lips in public. No more hiding or living in fear. We’re finally free.
After breakfast, we meander along the narrow streets of the French Quarter, fingers intertwined, sharing lingering glances and smiles.
With shops below and homes above, the rows of buildings dazzle with scrolling brackets of hand-wrought iron, fluted ionic columns, and balconies famous for bead tossing.
He stops in front of one of these structures, pulls a keyring from his pocket, and tilts his head up. I follow his gaze and lose my breath.
A huge, round sign dangles on metal chains from beneath the towering overhang. Framed in black wrought iron scrollwork, the name of the business makes my mouth go dry.
Emeric and Ivory
Dueling Piano Bar
My breath returns in a whoosh, only to be taken again as Emeric swoops me off my feet. Cradling me against his chest, he unlocks the glass door and carries me over the threshold.
“Holy shit.” My heart pounds. My arms shiver. My entire body floats through a dream. “How did you—? When did you—? This is ours? I can’t even.”
“Easy.” He sets me down on wobbly legs and locks the door behind us. “Deep breaths.”
My chest heaves as I take in the deep mahogany walls, Gothic mirrors, and black and ivory mosaic floor tiles. It’s classy and sophisticated, trendy and cocktail lounge-ish. Right in the heart of the French Quarter, the property value alone on this place must’ve cost him millions. I’m stunned into stupefied silence.
Two grand pianos sit on a platform at the center, facing away from each other. The keyboards are close enough together to share the long bench between them. Those will be our pianos? Where we’ll play together? With the lights, the audience, the music?
“Oh my God, Emeric. Pinch me.”
He does, right on the nipple, hard enough to make me yelp.
Leading me to the ornate wrap-around bar, he leans against the edge. “When I bought it a few months ago, I tried to find a loophole, but because of this”—he points at the shelves of liquor on the wall—”your name won’t be on the business license until you’re twenty-one.” He lifts my hand and presses a kiss to my fingers. “By then you’ll be Mrs. Ivory Marceaux.”
My heart sings a swooning melody. “You sure about that?”
“You bet your sweet ass.” He slams his palm against my butt with an echoing whack. “Go explore.”
There’s so much to take in I’m trembling against the significance of it. A piano bar. Just like my dad.
Shivery, joyous tears fall down my cheeks as I make a circuit around high-top tables, soft red velvet chairs, and black leather settees. Candlelight chandeliers illuminate the space in a warm glow. And the pianos…
I pause beside one of the Steinways, and my finger instantly finds a familiar scratch on the lid. My watery gaze latches onto Emeric across the room.
Braced against the bar, he slides a stick of gum in his mouth and crosses his ankles. “I bought it the day I met Stogie. It’s yours.”
I glance back at the piano and swallow around the happiness swelling in my throat. “You’re going to make me ugly cry.”
“I’ll buy you a piano every day for the rest of your life just to see your beautiful tears.” He prowls toward me, hands clasped behind his back.
That look in his eyes, the devotion rimmed in desire, is my centering pitch, my musical note, the one that induces the perfect wave of vibrations inside me, balancing me.
He moves up behind me, slips an arm around my waist, and holds me against him, his cock hardening against my ass. “Stogie sold his shop.”
I glance back at him, startled.
He brushes his mouth against my ear. “Pain in the ass won’t retire, but we
worked something out. He’s helping me with the inventory and hiring, and I set him up in one of those Creole townhouses a block away.”
Overcome with emotions, I try to unscramble my brain, parsing through everything he’s done and the future he’s spread out before me. “What about your teaching? How does this bar fulfill that?”
“I still have you. When you outgrow me—”
“I’ll never outgrow you.”
“—there’s a full second floor with a separate entrance in back. I’ll open a School of Old-guy Rock to the public and teach metal on the piano.”
Wow. He’s thought of everything, which leaves me with only one thing to say.
Thank you. I could vocalize it a million times over, but I don’t have to. He sees the salty rivers coursing down my cheeks. He feels the trembling of my body against his. He hears the rushing whistle in my breaths.
Words aren’t needed because we have something better. Our own notes. It’s just us and our song, the tune pulsing between us, nourishing, fusing, and making us one.
He turns me in his arms and clutches me snugly against him. I lock my hands behind his back, rest my cheek on the warm wall of his chest, and close my eyes as he sways us to the beat of our hearts. Someday soon, we’ll do this, right here, as the crowd applauds and cheers and pleads for an encore.
I sigh. Reality is better than any dream I imagined.
He hooks a finger beneath my chin, lifts my face, and puts his mouth on mine. He tastes like cinnamon and desire, his firm lips a devouring comfort of familiarity.
He passes me his gum with a roll of his tongue. The next sweeping stroke reclaims it. The bite of his teeth on my lip holds us together.
His hands slide beneath the dress and grip the backs of my thighs, lifting me to the edge of the piano so he can deepen the kiss. So he can tease his fingers between my legs. So he can rip—
There go my panties, tossed in a shred of silk behind him.
I grasp at his sexy hair as his fingers sink inside me, my tissues rioting beneath the sensual affection of his touch. His other hand yanks down the bodice of my dress. Then his lips are there, wrapped around my nipple, sucking it deep into his hot mouth.
My head falls back, my spine bowing against the brace of his arm at my back as moans spill from my mouth. Jesus, he knows how to work those fingers. On the piano. In my pussy. Around my heart.
I love this man. I love him, and when he’s ninety and I’m eighty, I’ll still love him. I grin at the image of his wrinkly body.
His eyes lift to mine, and his mouth releases my nipple. “What’s so funny?”
I trace the wet curve of his lip with a finger. “When you’re too old to get it up, I’ll still love you.”
He curls his fingers inside me and puts his face in mine, baring his teeth in a wicked smile. “Viagra, sweetheart.”
I shake my head. He has a solution for everything.
He removes his fingers from inside me and tackles the button on his jeans. “I’ve spent every day here for the last three weeks.” He releases his zipper and yanks the skirt of my dress out of the way. “Every day imagining fucking you here, just like this.”
“You could’ve told me.” I balance on the ledge of the piano, my bare legs trembling around his hips. “I would’ve come.”
“Oh, Ivory.” He notches the broad head of his cock against my pussy. “You’re going to come.”
His gaze holds mine as he thrusts. A low deep groan rumbles in his chest.
Pleasure floods my body in whipping torrents, one on top of the other, gathering into an overwhelming haze of need.
He kisses me passionately as our bodies slide together, rocking against the edge of the piano. My fingers sink into his hair. Our breaths mingle in a harmony of panting groans, and my hips absorb the impact of his as he fucks us into a wild and frantic crescendo.
His eyes never leave mine as he wraps a hand around my throat. He squeezes, and I whimper against the blissful pressure.
I love the way he holds me. “Harder.”
His fingers tighten, and he drives his hips faster, ruthless in his urgency.
We strain toward each other, hands clutching, eyes locked as we soar, lost in our private world of notes and dreams.
Ivory
Three years later.
People from all over the world come to the French Quarter for food, culture, and music. Bourbon Street is an endless party, day and night. Our dueling piano bar is smack at the center of it, booming with the overflow of enthusiastic tourists. Most nights, the line out the door snakes around two blocks.
The sound of laughter, clinking glasses, and scuffing shoes charges the atmosphere with excitement. We’re so crammed in tonight the combined body heat stifles the air, made hotter by the bright lights above me.
I shudder with happy nerves and take a long draw from my beer, returning it to the shelf on my piano.
Stogie sits behind the bar, as old as the ninety-year rafters, smiling a youthful smile. Laura and Frank Marceaux sip their drinks in the seating area, surrounded by their friends.
Sharing the bench beside me, Emeric faces the other way, the shift of his hips creating a pleasurable glide against mine.
Our pianos sit in opposite directions and slightly off-center to allow elbow room as we play side by side.
He leans back against the keyboard of my piano, his eyes sweeping over my fitted ivory dress. “You look good enough to eat tonight, Mrs. Marceaux.”
I take in his jeans, white t-shirt, and gray fedora, and damn near purr with appreciation. “Hope you’re hungry, Mr. Marceaux.”
“Endlessly.” He launches at me, gripping my hair and giving me a kiss so scandalous the crowd explodes in whistles and catcalls.
When he breaks the kiss, my body swims in his lingering heat.
I focus on his bright blue eyes. “What are we dueling first?”
Grinning, he poises his fingers on his keyboard and nudges his shoulder against mine. “Guns N’ Roses.”
I tilt my smile upward and shiver beneath the lights. “And Kodaline.”
Then the music begins…
For more sexy and emotional romance from Pam Godwin, be sure to read ONE IS A PROMISE now >
Overture
By
SKYE WARREN
Chapter One
Beethoven would count out exactly sixty coffee beans each time he had a cup
SAMANTHA
The whir of the espresso machine lures me downstairs.
I’m not naturally an early riser, especially on a Saturday, but Liam always waits for me. The food could get cold, but he’d still be there, with his newspaper and his endless patience and his deep green eyes.
He gives me a small nod in greeting.
Only the sound of foaming milk breaks the morning quiet. There’s avocado toast with walnut oil and fresh lemon juice at my place. On the other side of the table, scrambled egg whites and steamed broccoli. A ritual we’ve shared for the past six years…
And it’s going to end in a matter of weeks when I graduate high school.
When I turn eighteen. When I leave for the music tour that will take me around the country and across the globe… away from the man I’ve come to need more than I should.
“The interviewer from Classical Notes should be here at noon,” he says, handing me a steaming mug with Earl Grey and lavender and a liberal splash of cream. He would never use anything as sweet and unnecessary as cream in his own drinks, but thankfully he’s never controlled what I eat. He only controls everything else.
The reporter is doing a profile on me for the magazine. The famous child prodigy. Ugh. That’s the last thing a seventeen-year-old girl wants to be called—a child.
I’m almost an adult now, but the label follows me around.
I take a fortifying sip of the hot liquid, closing my eyes against the burn. When I open them again, Liam looks at me with a strange expression. That’s when I realize I let out a moan of pleasure. “Sounds good,�
� I say a little too brightly, trying to cover my embarrassment.
He clears his throat and takes a seat at the head of the table. “Right. Well. I doubt the interview will take very long. I’ll let him know you need to practice.”
A strange thrill moves through me. Defiance? Not exactly, but I feel energized all the same. He doesn’t have to protect me anymore. And soon he won’t have the right. The tour is going to change everything for me—and between us. I look forward to it as much as I dread it. “I do need to practice, but you don’t have to rush the interview.”
“Remember,” he says as if I hadn’t spoken. “You don’t have to answer anything you don’t like. If a question gets too personal, I’ll step in.”
My cheeks heat. Of course I know why he’s being so protective. There were some disastrous interviews when I was six, seven, eight years old. Daddy didn’t care to be in the room with me. Some of the questions would be inappropriate or downright aggressive. The classical music world is basically a viper’s nest, and child prodigies are regarded with a mixture of awe and distrust.
And then there was the interviewer from a national newspaper. He had been ushered into the drawing room and left alone with me for thirty uncomfortable minutes, where he coaxed me to sit on his lap and nuzzled my neck. Daddy’s aide found me crying in a closet hours later.
All of that is in the past. I’m no longer a scared little girl.
I shrug as if it doesn’t bother me. “These classical music reporters ask the same questions. Who’s my favorite composer? Who do I want to play with in the future?”
Liam’s stern expression doesn’t waver. No doubt he remembers how I had trembled before the first interview, shortly after he got custody of me. I’d brokenly shared the story with him. At the time I was too afraid that he would give me away if I didn’t tell the truth, to make anything up. So I told him about the reporter who held me on his lap. From that moment on I never did an interview alone. Liam is always there, always protecting me.
Falling For The Forbidden Page 37
