by Teri Wilson
“Tessa,” he groaned, reaching for her, burying his hands in her hair.
It was too much. It felt too damn good. He wasn’t going to last if she didn’t stop. But he was slipping under, letting himself fall to a place where there were no lies, no truths, no painful memories to overcome. There was just pleasure and grace and the coppery softness of Tessa’s hair sliding through his fingers...the exquisite warmth of her mouth. He wanted to stay there as long as he could. Forever would have been nice.
He opened his eyes. “Babe, I need you to stop.”
She released him, peering up through the thick fringe of her eyelashes. Her gown slipped off one shoulder, and Julian didn’t dare move. He didn’t breathe. If he did, he’d climax then and there. He was mesmerized by the sight of her—the pristine shoulder, elegant collarbone, lips, cherry red and bee-stung from pleasuring him.
Forever.
The word rang in his head like a song from his past.
Tessa reached behind her to unzip her dress, and it fell into a silky pool of yellow on the bed. In one swift move, Julian rose up onto his elbows and switched their positions, so she was under him. Finally, he was in control.
That’s what he told himself, anyway, as he slipped a finger inside her and bent to take a perfect, rosy nipple into his mouth. But there was nothing controlled about the arousal pulsing through his veins when she arched beneath him. He’d barely touched her and already she was pulsing against his hand, ready to come apart. Ready...for him.
He positioned himself at her entrance, and she reached for him, guiding him home. With a single thrust, he entered her. Somewhere in the distance, Julian thought he heard music—a song so lush, so lovely, he nearly wept. He knew it couldn’t be real. It was an illusion, just like so much about this night.
But then Tessa rose up to take him fully inside—every part of him, scars and all—and the rhythm wrapped itself around his heart. Soulful. Pure.
Achingly sweet.
Chapter Thirteen
Sometime during the night, Tessa woke up and realized she was alone in the bed.
Eyes closed, her body pleasantly languid and tender, she stretched like a cat and reached for Julian. But the spot beside her was empty, and the sheets were cold to the touch.
He’s gone.
She couldn’t believe it. He’d left. After everything they’d done, he’d sneaked away in the middle of the night. A cold trickle of unease snaked its way up her spine.
She sat up and clutched the sheet to her bare body, squinting into the darkness. Moonlight streamed through the suite’s floor-to-ceiling windows, casting a faint light on the strange surroundings, and she realized she wasn’t alone after all. Julian was sitting at the spectacular grand piano, situated in the center of the room.
She gathered the sheet around her and walked toward him with fine white fabric trailing behind her as if it were the train on a dress. Her throat closed when she realized he’d put his shirt back on. But he’d left it unbuttoned, and he was still naked from the waist down. That was something.
“Hi,” she said.
He looked up, and his features relaxed into an easy smile—the kind of smile she never thought she’d see on Julian Shine’s face. The tightness in her throat loosened a bit.
Everything is fine.
Of course it was. Things were more than fine. He’d let her see him. She’d touched him. She’d kissed him. They’d made love. There was no reason at all for the nagging sense of dread that she couldn’t seem to shake.
Julian hadn’t gone anywhere. He was right there, with his hands dancing over the piano keys. Smiling.
“Sorry if I woke you,” he said. “There’s a melody in my head. I want to get it down before it slips away.”
Tessa swallowed. “It’s okay. You didn’t wake me.”
He reached a hand toward her. “Come here, beautiful.”
Her stomach did a little flip as she drew closer. He swiveled on the piano bench to face her and wove his fingers through hers to reel her in for a kiss that left her more than a little unsteady on her feet.
He took her face in his hands and looked her directly in the eye. “It’s my turn now. Let me see you.”
Her skin broke into a riot of goose bumps, but she did as he asked and dropped the sheet. Julian was already fully aroused, as if he’d been biding his time, waiting for her to wake up so he could ravish her once more. The thought brought a rush of heavenly warmth to her center.
She wanted him again. Tender, sweet and excruciatingly slow this time. She wanted it to last.
And last.
With the tip of his pointer finger, Julian traced the shape of a heart on her belly. Tessa’s head spun, as if she’d done a whole series of dizzying pirouettes. She’d wanted passion. She’d wanted to feel swept away again, like she had that night in the dance studio, when he’d left her a shivering, quaking mess of need. He’d given her those things again tonight. He’d given her everything she’d wanted.
But this...
This tenderness was more than she’d expected. It left her feeling raw and vulnerable in a whole new way, like she was trying as hard as she could to grasp something that was forever out of reach.
“Julian,” she pleaded.
He kissed her breasts and ran his hands down the back of her thighs, pulling her into his lap to straddle him. Then his hands slid to cup her bottom, and she lowered herself onto his erection with a shuddering gasp.
How could it feel so good again? So right? Would it be like this every time?
She closed her eyes and arched her back, reveling in the way he filled her. It was exquisite. He was exquisite, in every way.
The burn scars didn’t bother her. She’d been telling him the truth when she’d said they were simply a part of him, just like any other part.
He was at odds with his own body. The same body that made such beautiful music had also betrayed him. He still heard songs in his head, but he could no longer play the trumpet. The man he saw in the mirror now was a partial stranger.
Tessa knew what it was like to live like that. She’d experienced her own bodily civil war, embracing the graceful stretch of her limbs and the turnout of her feet, while also wishing she could be someone else from the neck up. She used to wish very hard for her love of dance to just wither and die. It would have made the past year so much easier. She hadn’t felt whole since the day she’d fallen, and she knew Julian felt that way, too.
Maybe now things would be different.
For both of them.
This wouldn’t be the last time they made love. There would be more nights like this. There had to be. She needed this as much as he did.
She slid her hands into his hair, anchoring herself to him as his thrusts grew deeper. She clenched around him, drawing a deep moan of pure male satisfaction from his lips as she went liquid inside. The pressure gathered and built, bearing down on her with an intensity that nearly made her weep.
And yet, somewhere beneath the swirl of desire, something was wrong. Very wrong. Tessa could sense it, but she was too lost in the delicious heat of the moment to figure out what it was. Her climax tore through her, and she cried out Julian’s name with tears streaming down her face.
It wasn’t until he reached to brush them away that she realized what was so terribly wrong.
His hands. Julian’s lovely, musical hands had been moving up and down the piano keys when she’d first found him sitting at the piano. He’d been playing a song.
But Tessa hadn’t heard a single note.
* * *
Dr. Spencer didn’t mince words. It was a quality that Tessa usually appreciated, but in this instance, she would have preferred a little sugarcoating. “I’m afraid the news isn’t good, Tessa.”
Mr. B trembled in Tessa’s lap. She ran a soothing hand over the little dog’s head and blink
ed backed tears.
She couldn’t cry. Not now. The early-morning emergency appointment with her doctor would already make her late for rehearsal. Walking into the studio red faced, with tears in her eyes, in front of the entire company would only make things worse. Not to mention the fact that if she cried, she wouldn’t be able to read Dr. Spencer’s lips. Sadly, that was once again a major necessity.
She took a steadying inhale. No tears. “I don’t understand. For weeks now, I’ve been able to hear. It was strange at first, but I’ve been getting used to it. I’ve been relying on it.”
Dr. Spencer’s gaze narrowed. “Relying on it? How so?”
“For dance.” Tessa swallowed. A lecture was surely coming her way.
“You’ve been dancing? I was under the impression you’ve been staying at home, avoiding unnecessary stimuli as I recommended.”
Tessa’s face went hot. She’d been doing the exact opposite, of course. Other than a quick stop at the brownstone this morning to change out of her evening gown and pick up Mr. B, she hadn’t been home at all for the past sixteen hours. Prior to that, her life for the past few weeks had been an endless cycle of not enough sleep, followed by teaching class and heading straight to rehearsal. There’d also been the extra practice sessions in the evening, not to mention the significant detour into Julian’s bed at the Bennington.
The phrase unnecessary stimuli echoed loudly in her consciousness.
No.
She refused to think about it that way. The night before had been very, very necessary. If she hadn’t been so blindsided by the fact that she couldn’t seem to hear anymore, she’d still be in bed with Julian right then. Instead, she’d rushed away as soon as the sun came up, citing her morning class at the Wilde School of Dance as an excuse, even though adult ballet never met on Monday morning.
She could have told him the truth, of course. But she didn’t want to. The night they’d spend together had been magical, and Tessa wanted to keep it that way. At least that was the excuse she told herself. On some level, she knew the reason was far more devastating.
She was afraid. Tessa was terrified to her core.
Admitting to Julian that she suddenly couldn’t hear would have made it real, and that couldn’t be the case. She wanted to hear him play the piano again. She wanted to hear her name falling from his lips and the low growling sound he made sometimes when he kissed her. She wanted to keep dancing to actual music. There had to be some sort of explanation, some way to fix whatever had gone wrong.
But apparently there wasn’t, because now Dr. Spencer was sitting across a desk from Tessa, telling her the news wasn’t good.
“Remember the audition I told you about? I got it. I was cast as the lead and made a full member of the company. I couldn’t walk away from that.” Should she have walked away? Would it have made a difference?
“Congratulations.” Dr. Spencer nodded, but she looked less than thrilled. “So you’ve been rehearsing all this time? You haven’t given yourself any chance to adjust to the changes you’ve been experiencing?”
Tessa fought the urge to argue, because in essence, the doctor was correct. “There hasn’t been time. The show opens this weekend.”
Four days from now.
If she could no longer hear the music, she’d have to relearn her part all over again, using different cues. It would take weeks of practice. Not days. She was going to lose her part. She’d probably even lose her place in the company. It would be as if the past few weeks had never happened at all.
“Tessa, the last time you were here, you were distressed. You told me you didn’t want to hear.” The sympathy in Dr. Spencer’s gaze was too much to bear.
Tessa wanted to scream. Can’t you just fix this? Fix me? Please. But she’d been asking those questions for over a year. Some things were impossible to fix. She should have understood that by now. “I changed my mind.”
Her mind wasn’t the only thing that had changed. Everything had changed. She hadn’t realized it at the time, but the moment her hearing returned, her whole life had turned itself around. She was a real ballerina now. She had Julian. She’d even begun to think she might be falling in love...
And now she was supposed to go back to how things were before?
Dr. Spencer balled her right hand into a fist, placed it against her chest and moved it in a clockwise motion. She was signing. I’m sorry.
Tessa heart nearly cracked in two.
She’d come full circle. She was back to silence and signing and struggling to keep up with simple conversation. Back to being the dancer who couldn’t hear and would never keep up. Back to reading lips.
Before long, she’d be right back to feeling lonely again.
She hugged Mr. B tighter to her chest. “Could it come back?”
“Anything is possible. Like I told you during our last appointment, head trauma is unpredictable. Your hearing test this morning indicates profound loss in both ears, just as it did before. The past few weeks could have just been an aberration. Or they could have been an indication of things to come. Right now, the only thing we can do is wait. Time will tell.”
Tessa sat very still and nodded. On the inside, she was screaming in protest. Time was the one thing she didn’t have.
“Very well, then. Drop by if anything changes. My door is always open.” Dr. Spencer stood, signaling the end of the appointment.
Tessa shook her hand, attached Mr. B’s leash to his collar and followed the little dog outside. A gust of wind sent her hair tumbling from its ballerina bun. The air was thick with the scent of roasting chestnuts and spiced apple cider. She felt cold all over, as if winter was nipping too closely on fall’s heels.
As she made her way through the city streets, which were bustling with sounds she could no longer hear—taxi drivers honking their horns, sirens wailing, the rumble of the subway underfoot, the music of Manhattan—Tessa began to cry.
This time, there was no stopping the flow of tears. She went ahead and let them fall.
* * *
Much to Julian’s dismay, he found Zander Wilde waiting for him in the hotel lobby, on his way out of the Bennington.
He would have much preferred a different Wilde sibling, specifically the one who’d slunk away from his bed in the early hours of the morning. Tessa had grown pensive as the sun came up. Quiet. While she got dressed, he’d sat on the piano bench—where they’d made love just hours before—and played “Dance, Ballerina, Dance” for her and gotten no reaction whatsoever.
He was trying his damnedest not to read too much into her suddenly bashful behavior. She’d given him no concrete reason to believe her feelings for him—assuming she had any—had changed. As he understood it, she had a ballet class to teach before rehearsal. It meant they couldn’t spend a lazy morning with breakfast in bed and more lovemaking, as he’d envisioned, but it was fine. She had responsibilities. They both did. The world hadn’t stopped spinning simply because he’d taken her to bed.
Still, something felt off. He wished it didn’t. He wished so hard that, by the time Zander approached him in the lobby, his jaw hurt from clenching his teeth so hard.
“Mr. Shine, I hope you enjoyed your stay.” Zander gave him a wide, easy smile that could only mean he had no idea that his sister had spent the night with Julian in the Duke Ellington Suite.
Julian wasn’t about to fill him in. “It was a pleasure.”
“Excellent. Do you have a minute to chat before you run off?” Zander glanced at the gold clock hanging from the gilded crown molding.
The time was just shy of 8:00 a.m. Julian didn’t need to be at the studio until 10:00 a.m., which Zander was probably well aware of. He and Tessa were close. He was part of the family that prided itself on keeping a watchful eye over her. Julian wouldn’t have been surprised if Zander knew his sister’s schedule like the back of his hand.
Julian had no choice but to agree to Zander’s request. “Sure.”
“Wonderful. Step right this way, and I’ll have some coffee brought round.” He escorted Julian to a pair of deep green velvet chairs, in a sitting area off the side of the lobby bar. The sign for The Circle Club loomed large, which came as no surprise. “Would you like anything in particular?”
“An espresso, please. A double.” He should have asked for a triple. He hadn’t exactly done much sleeping in the magnificent suite, and now he was going to have to fight off Zander’s request to play the piano at his club, when all he really wanted to do was make sure Tessa wasn’t mired in regret about giving herself to him.
His gut churned. It wasn’t true. There hadn’t been a trace of hesitancy in her gaze when she’d unbuttoned his shirt and seen his scars for the first time. She’d accepted him. She’d loved him. The things she’d said to him still echoed in his consciousness. He heard them every time he closed his eyes.
I love your body, Julian. All of it.
Zander slid a bottle of San Pellegrino and a demitasse cup, brimming with dark espresso, onto the small table, situated between the two chairs. Julian took a sizable swallow of the sparkling water and then sipped his coffee, while Zander launched into another passionate description of his plans for his new jazz club.
To his credit, he sounded like a true jazz aficionado. He’d not only done his homework, but he’d invested a huge amount of money into the place. Original vinyl recordings by greats like Hank Mobley, Tubby Hayes and Rosemary Squires were framed and hanging on the walls. He’d also somehow acquired the piano that Thelonious Monk had played at Carnegie Hall, on one of his rare appearances during the 1970s.
“Impressive.” Julian placed the demitasse cup back on its saucer.
“Would you like to play something on it?” Zander nodded toward The Circle Club’s closed door.
Hell, yes, he wanted to play the Mad Monk’s piano. But not if it meant making a promise he knew he wouldn’t keep. “Sorry to disappoint you, Zander. I appreciate the offer, but I don’t play much jazz anymore.”
