Falling for Mister Wrong

by Lizzie Shane

  She studied the chocolate bits sticking to the inside of her mug. “I kept performing after I came of age. I didn’t want to lose that bond with the music. I met Mimi and we became friends, and when she married Ty and left the symphony to move to Colorado and have kids, I realized I was envious. I wanted that quiet life. I loved music, but I could take or leave performing. My public life had such a complicated history and sometimes I still felt like I was letting my mother control me when I played venues she’d always wanted me to play. I kept performing for another couple years—and there were nights when it was magnificent, but also times when it felt like drudgery and I just wanted to walk away. Then Mimi’s son was born and I came to visit and we talked for hours about music and life and loneliness and what I really wanted and I realized I didn’t have to be on stage to still have the piano in my life. It took another ten months to finish out my contracts and phase myself out of the life, but then it was over and I moved here and now…”

  “Now you just play for me.”

  She toasted him with her empty mug. “An audience of one.”

  He caught the mug as she waved it, plucking it out of her hand and setting it aside with his. He reached for her, his long arms spanning the distance she’d put between them. “Come here.”

  “W-what?” And just like that, her nerves were back, jangling even more frantically than before.

  “I promised you a massage,” he said softly, gesturing to her tense shoulders. “I’d hate for sore muscles to ruin your first memory of skiing.”

  “I… uh…”

  His fingertips grazed her shoulder near her neck, giving a gentle squeeze.

  Caitlyn launched out of her seat like the couch had a built-in eject button. “You like Chopin?”

  She fled to the piano, feeling safe only when her fingers touched the keys. She hadn’t panicked like this with Daniel, but he hadn’t made her feel this wild syncopation in her blood. It was too much. Will was too much.

  He didn’t chase after her—thank God—simply turning on the couch to watch her as she began to play Chopin’s Prelude in B Minor. It was called the Heartbeat Prelude with its steady pulse-like repetition, but her fingers rushed through the notes too fast, making the heart race. He waited until the short piece concluded before strolling to the piano. She plunged into another Chopin, a nocturne this time, but she didn’t know it as well and her fingers faltered on the notes. She broke off and fumbled in the wooden chest beside the piano where she kept the music. She almost tore the book when she found it, spreading it open on the piano’s stand and reminding herself to breathe as Will perched on the piano bench beside her.

  “Caitlyn.”

  She flubbed the intro again, unable to focus on the notes on the page in front of her.

  Will didn’t touch her, aside from his shoulder brushing lightly against hers. “Caitlyn, I was just flirting. We don’t have to do anything.”

  She stared down at her hands, frozen on the keys. “I don’t want you to stop,” she whispered, before forcing herself to look up and meet his impossibly deep brown eyes. “I’m just no good at this stuff.”

  His lips quirked in that heartbreaker of a smile. “I beg to differ.”

  She bumped him with her shoulder. “You know what I mean. I never know what to do with myself or if I’m doing the right thing.”

  “Do what feels right. It won’t be the wrong thing.”

  What felt right. It felt right to be with him. To have his warmth pressed along her side. She wanted his hands on her again, but couldn’t imagine how to get from here to there. She didn’t want to be the aggressor, but how to invite him to touch… She’d only ever known how to seduce with the piano.

  His favorite.

  Caitlyn struck the opening chord of the Pathetique. She was close enough to hear Will’s indrawn breath and feel the slight shift in his body, angling toward her. He was taller than her, even sitting, but she didn’t feel like she was in his shadow, so much as protected by his heat. His warmth seemed to wrap around her as the opening chords sang from the piano’s strings.

  She was breathless with anticipation, waiting for the first touch, the hairs lifting on her arms as she played. She’d never thought of the Pathetique as a particularly erotic sonata, but she was suddenly aware of the sensualism that soaked the opening minutes, building.

  His hand whispered over the small of her back, not quite touching, just shifting the soft fabric of her shirt, and she held a fermata far longer than it warranted, the moment suspended in that almost touch. Her breasts already felt swollen inside her bra, the nipples furled into tight points. Tension coiled in her stomach, heat gathering between her legs—and he hadn’t even touched her yet.

  Then, right as she began the first falling run, his lips fell on the point where her neck met her shoulder and Caitlyn’s head sagged back on a gasp. Thank God for muscle memory or her hands would surely have faltered. She kept playing, her focus splintered as the piece grew more rapid and intense, building to its own climax and Will’s lips caressed their way up her neck.

  His heat pressed against one side of her body, his arm curving around her, the lightest of touches gliding up her other side, from her hip, along the indent of her waist, teasing her ribs, flirting with the outer edge of her breast, then back down before he got to where she really wanted his hands, and then her fingers did fumble.

  “That is very distracting,” she whispered, barely recognizing the husky breathiness of her own voice.

  He hummed against the skin of her neck and she nearly came right then. “Do you want me to stop?”

  Stop? She wanted to compose a symphony for him. “No.”

  The word was barely audible, the unwritten pauses in the music growing longer. She was never going to make it to the second movement—which she had always thought was the most romantic part of the Pathetique, but what did she know?

  His mouth reached the underside of her jaw, the curve of her ear. The soft tug of his lips on her lobe made her miss a note. Then another as he made a little mmm sound, as if he was enjoying this as much as she was. Impossible. It was too good. He’d be a puddle on the floor if he felt even half of the sensations shivering through her body.

  His other hand came around, careful not to get in the way of her arms as she played, and rested gently just above her knee. Then he squeezed.

  Just that. Just a little squeeze and Caitlyn’s brain completely disconnected from her body. She turned her face toward him, only an inch, but it was all the invitation he needed. His lips were on hers, a low groan of need reaching her ears—his? hers?—and her fingers forgot how to play. She twisted toward him, one hand gripping his T-shirt at his collarbone while the other wrapped around the wrist of the hand that was still gently massaging her leg. His other arm curved all the way around her back, gripping her side—she’d had no idea a man putting his hand on the line of her waist could make her feel so sexy, but then everything Will did was sexy.

  His tongue teased her lower lip and then slipped into her mouth and—oh Sweet Jesus, this was a kiss. Every stroke, every taste drove her higher until she was dizzy with the vertigo of it.

  The hand on her leg roamed upward and why wasn’t she wearing a skirt? Clearly she needed to be wearing a skirt! He stopped at the top of her thigh, centimeters away from where she wanted him most. They were both fully clothed, necking on her piano bench, but she had never been so turned on in her entire life. One touch would be all it would take to send her flying. One little touch…

  He stood abruptly, eyes wild, and shoved the piano bench with her on it away from the piano with a grating scrape across the floor, so fast Caitlyn was forced to grab for it or go flying off. He grabbed both her knees, pushed them apart, and knelt between them so her thighs were pressed against his ribcage, his body between her and the keys. Drawing her down for another kiss, his hands were deft on the buttons of her blouse.

  Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.

  Her brain was jabbering, but she didn�
�t care. Then her shirt was open and he was looking at her and swearing worshipfully and he pulled down the cups of her bra with his teeth and oh my God, she was going to die.

  But what a way to go.

  Chapter Thirty

  His mouth was—okay, suction? Good. Teeth? Also, surprisingly, good. And that flicky tongue thing? Sweet Mozart’s Toes. Amazing.

  Her bra had somehow vanished, along with her shirt, and now she felt the brush of fingers against her lower stomach as he wrestled with the button on her jeans.

  And what was she doing? Sitting there like a bump on a log. Or a lump on a piano bench, gripping the edges for dear life and forgetting that she had hands and she really ought to use them.

  She got a fistful of the back of his shirt. “You’re wearing too many clothes.”

  Will grunted something she could only assume was affirmative against her skin and then he was moving at warp speed. On his feet—

  Oh no. Your mouth was doing such good work…

  Whipping his shirt off over his head and—

  Okay, this was good too. The man had muscles on his muscles—all sculpted and with just enough hair to remind her that he was a Man, with a capital M. He popped the buttons on his own jeans, but before he could shove them down, he looked up, his eyes landed on her half-naked self and that wildness—she was really starting to love that wildness—entered them and he lunged for her.

  He lifted her, guiding her legs around his waist as her arms naturally found their way around his neck. His mouth sealed on hers and he spun them, about to set her down—

  “Not on the piano!”

  The sound he made was half-laugh, half-groan. He hitched her against him with a palm on her ass, shot a single, hopeless look at the steep steps up to the loft and then closed the distance to the couch so fast the fluffy cushions were a soft pressure against her back before she even realized what was happening.

  His weight pressed her down deeper into them and she decided she didn’t care about anything that was happening other than him.

  She spread her legs, his weight settling into the cradle between them. She could feel the hard length of him and she undulated against it—for once not caring if it was the correct foreplay technique, because damn, who cared? That felt amazing.

  Kissing his way along her throat, he lifted his weight off her just enough to slip a hand between them, pressing it flat against her stomach and sneaking beneath the unbuttoned waistband of her jeans. She almost whimpered when he found her nub, rolling it beneath one finger. His fingers slipped deeper and he moaned, “Jesus, you’re so wet.”

  She had no idea what to say to that. Hell yes I am, get down there and finish the job seemed a little too forward somehow. So she just grabbed his wrist, held on tight, and pushed her hips up against his hand. He swore again, fumbling one-handed to shove down his own jeans, as his fingers worked her higher, his mouth against the underside of her jaw—

  He froze, instantly utterly still above her. “Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.”

  “Will?”

  “Do you have something?”

  Something? As in I’ve got something for you right here, big boy? Because hell yes, she… “Oh….” Crap. Condoms. “I don’t usually do this sort of…”

  He took over the swearing. “I’m going to die.” He jerked his partially lowered jeans back up his hips.

  “Do you have anything downstairs?”

  He shook his head. “Lately I haven’t…” His expression firmed with resolve. “It’s okay. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.” His hand, still wedged inside her jeans, began to move.

  Caitlyn squirmed. “I want to… Will… take care of you… oh God… too.”

  She reached for his waistband and he groaned, dodging. “Don’t worry about me, darlin’. I’ve got you.”

  And did he ever have her. She was about to have the most shattering orgasm of her life. With Will. Only he looked like he was in more pain that ecstasy and she wanted him with her.

  “Will, stop.”

  He went statue still. “Are you okay? Did I—”

  She stroked her hands through the slightly sweat-damp strands of his not-quite-black hair. “I don’t want to do this without you. How long would it take you to get a condom?”

  “Lodge convenience store. Eight minutes roundtrip if I take the Jeep. Seven and a half if there’s no line.”

  She almost laughed. Her brain was barely functioning, but she should have known a man would know how to calculate the distance between him and sex down to the second. “Well, get going, champ.”

  His fingers moved one more time, driving a hard gasp from her lips that he caught with his, dragging her into a long drugging kiss. “Just marking my place,” he murmured as he disentangled himself from her and the sucking depth of the couch cushions.

  He didn’t bother trying to find his shirt, just grabbed his ski jacket from the drying rack and threw it on over his bare chest. Caitlyn didn’t bother covering herself. She’d never felt sexier in her life. She raised both arms above her head, arching her back and watching her man stomp his feet into his boots.

  He looked at her once, groaned and adjusted his jeans before walking—stiffly—to the door. “Six minutes. Tops.”

  Six minutes.

  Six minutes when normally her brain would intrude and her doubts would surface and she’d be a gibbering mess of insecurity by the time he got back. But tonight was different. She was different with him. He made her feel like there was no right or wrong. No adequate or inadequate. No worry about being good enough. Just want and need and yes.

  She lay sprawled in semi-sexual abandon, gazing up at the mountain, feeling drunk on Will and so absolutely perfect she couldn’t imagine how the moment could be any better. Or rather she could. It would be better in four and a half minutes when he got back.

  This was right. Everything had finally fallen into place.

  She shimmied out of her jeans, debating for a while about whether or not to take off her panties, then remembered the teeth thing with her bra and decided to leave them on. She adjusted her position on the couch, trying to find the sexiest possible recline.

  It wasn’t a very long couch, she realized. Long enough for her to lay on comfortably, but Will was a fair bit taller than she was. Either his feet or his head were going to be hitting the end. That wouldn’t do. She could go up to the loft and wait for them on her bed up there, but she didn’t want him to break something in his rush up the steps when he got back… and really it felt wrong to change the venue. This was where they had started. This was where she wanted to finish this.

  In front of the fire…

  Caitlyn hopped off the couch, grabbed the cushions and pillows and began arranging them into a nest on the floor. She grabbed her favorite velvet-soft throw and threw it over the entire cushy pile. Not exactly a bear-skin rug, but not far from it. Perfect.

  She smoothed her hair, debated running to the bathroom for a quick teeth brushing, but decided there were more important things than chocolate breath.

  Lights dimmed. Candles lit. The Pathetique and a carefully selected classical playlist drifting softly from the stereo.

  Caitlyn heard footsteps on the stairs and rushed to arrange herself in her Rose in Titanic sprawl on the pillows as the door opened.

  Will stepped in, already shedding his jacket, and his eyes sparked with something wicked and promising as he drank her in. “You’ve been busy.”

  He tossed the condom box on the floor beside her nest, kicking off his boots. She eyed the Costco-sized box. “You’re planning to be.”

  He grinned, shucking his jeans and boxers in a single move that left her mouth watering. “I figured better safe than sorry. I have a feeling this might be a long night.”

  Caitlyn wet her lips, eyeing all that lithe, muscular masculinity with unmasked anticipation as he came down to kneel over her. “Sounds perfect,” she whispered, right before he caught her lips.

  And it was.

  Chapte
r Thirty-One

  Caitlyn woke the next morning in her own bed, with only a note for company. Will’s absence wasn’t a surprise—he’d warned her before they fell asleep that his classes started earlier than hers and he’d try not to wake her when he left.

  During their talks last night between more athletic activities, she’d learned that his classes began even before the mountain opened some days, especially on Fridays and weekends when they had more tourists, whereas Caitlyn’s students were almost all in school and her schedule tended to be heaviest during lunch hour and after school let out.

  She had a handful of homeschooled students who filled in the gaps—many of them with parents who drove them in from hours away for the privilege of taking lessons from the great Caitlyn Gregg—but her early mornings were typically her own. She’d experimented, her first year, with having before school lessons and discovered that both she and her students hated the early mornings.

  Her first lesson on Fridays wasn’t until eleven and it was only quarter to nine, so she didn’t leap out of bed right away, taking a moment to enjoy the pleasant, sensual soreness in her body. She had a dopey grin on her face even before she reached for the note he’d left.