Slowly, she began to play the music the way it was intended to be played, and she was swept away within the beautiful notes once again.
* * * *
The castle looked different in the light of day than it had the night before. Sunlight streamed through the stained glass windows, casting rainbows across the stone. Outside, she could hear the crashing of the ocean waves. “Liron?” she called, excited that she had managed to open the gateway again. It was a cool power to be able to have, traveling between dimensions. She wasn’t sure how she would get back home again, but eventually, something would trigger the portal, as her alarm clock had done before. Right now, she wasn’t really that concerned. She felt drudgery when she was home. A house full of painful memories, a job she abhorred, and an irritating man who didn’t know how to take no for an answer. Liron had made her feel more warmth in one night than she had experienced in over a year. His world was different, and was not marred by things that would only remind her of hurt.
“Liron?” she called again, stepping further into the room to look around. “Liron, where are you?”
He suddenly rounded the corner, looking shocked and slightly bewildered. “Melody,” he murmured. “You came back.”
She grinned, her heart beating wildly at his presence, and especially at the way his gaze raked over her. “I wanted to see if I could,” she said, hooking her thumbs in her belt loops and rocking on the balls of her feet. She shrugged. “Besides, I wanted to see you again.” She admitted it quietly and chewed on her bottom lip.
He stared at her for a second, his eyes full of surprise and so much warmth she felt herself blush.
He stepped toward her and let his eyes appraise her before they came up to meet hers. “You look breathtaking.”
“Better than wine-soaked PJ’s, right?” she teased.
He smiled. “You looked beautiful even in that, but today….” He shook his head. “What is the occasion?”
There was a hint of playfulness in his eyes and his tone, so she went with it. “Coming to see you, you idiot.” She put her hand on her hip in mock annoyance. “You’re going to take me on a date.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Am I?” He folded his arms across his chest, continuing the game.
She gave a flippant shrug. “Well, if you don’t want to, fine. I’ll just go back home. I’m sure Rob would be more than thrilled for me to give him another shot.” She pivoted on her heel with a snotty air and turned to face the far side of his living room. Lots of gray stone met her gaze and she chewed on her bottom lip with a frown. “As soon as I figure out how….”
His rich chuckle heated her blood and he came up behind her, placing his hands on her bare shoulders and letting his fingers trail tantalizingly down her arms. Feather-soft notes filled her mind and tingles exploded across her skin. “It seems you have encountered a problem.” He whispered it against her ear, and her heart tumbled over itself as his breath tickled the hair at the nape of her neck. “And I am not terribly pleased with the idea of this Rob fellow.”
She grinned and leaned back toward him instinctively. “Then do something about it.”
He laughed softly and moved away. She turned around to face him, and he offered her his arm in a very old world, gentlemanly gesture. “Shall we?”
Chapter Eight
Melody had been to the ocean once when she was small. Her parents had taken her to Disneyland and they’d spent a day at the beach. She had enjoyed playing in the waves and building sandcastles. But the Southern California coast was nothing like what she was currently looking at. There were no sunbathers or surfers here. No one playing beach volleyball. There was hardly any beach at all. Only craggy cliffs and jagged rock that the waves flung themselves against, sending salty spray and foam into the air.
This ocean was angry, violent, powerful, and bewitching. It was so much more dramatic than what she had seen as a child. She wished her parents could have seen it. It was nature’s symphony, as Liron had said. She knew her mother and father would have heard it too, and would have loved to share in the wondrous crescendo each wave built before breaking into the rock.
“Have you always loved the sea?” she asked Liron, turning her head to look at him over her shoulder. He stood stoically behind her, allowing her space with her thoughts.
They had left his home to come walking down here, and she was surprised at how ordinary everything looked. She didn’t know what she had been expecting. Green men and a pink sun maybe…something much more befitting to inter-dimensional travel. But the sky was still blue. The grass was still green. And this ocean was the most magnificent thing she had ever seen.
Liron stepped closer until he was standing beside her and he nodded. “I grew up here, played along these rocks. I have never had any desire to live anywhere else. Elizabeth hated it.” He looked down and shrugged. “Said the noise kept her awake and the salt in the air bothered her skin.”
Melody rolled her eyes. “What a hag.”
Liron chuckled and gave her a sidelong glance. “I am curious to see how many names you can come up with for my ex-wife.”
“Oh, I have plenty,” she grumbled. “How could anyone not fall in love with this?” She stretched her arms out to indicate the breathtaking expanse before her.
“I spent a lot of time asking myself that. As well as how come she could never fall in love with me.”
“Because she was blind, deaf, dumb, and stupid.”
He raised an eyebrow. “How do you figure?”
“Well, any woman with half a brain can see that you’re super hot, so there’s the dumb and blind part.” She glanced at him and saw him smile shyly while his face flushed a faint shade of pink. She grinned. His bashfulness was a refreshing change from Rob’s arrogance. “You worshipped the ground she walked on, and any woman who could turn her nose up at that is friggin’ stupid. Plus,”—she held her arms out again and shook them for emphasis—“look at this! How could she not hear the music in this? It’s like the most extraordinary concerto ever created, only better because it’s pure. No man-made composition could ever compare to the perfection of this. You could spend a lifetime trying to put notes to it to describe it, and it would always, always fall short.” She shook her head and closed her eyes, breathing deep and letting her ears fill with the melodies only someone with true musical aptitude and appreciation could hear.
When she opened her eyes and looked at him, she found him regarding her thoughtfully with admiration and wonder reflected in his blue depths. “What?” she questioned.
“You have such a complete understanding and deep love of music.”
She smiled even though a pang of grief stabbed through her heart. “Both my parents were musicians. My mom, a violinist and my dad, a cellist. I grew up listening to Sibelius and Vivaldi. Pachelbel in D was what my mother hummed to me when I was a child, and if there was ever a Saturday that I didn’t wake up to my father playing cello until all his bow hair fell out, I knew he was either out of town or had the flu.” She gave a little laugh at the memories, regardless of the ache they created in her heart. “Needless to say, I didn’t stand much of chance. By the time I graduated high school, I was accomplished at piano, flute, and viola, and I could pick my way through some stuff on the guitar.” He smirked and she shrugged. “I dated a rocker guy for a little while.”
He grinned. “If I didn’t know better, I would think you had been raised by muses.”
She shook her head and averted her gaze back out to the sea, remembering her parents and the wonderful years she had spent with them. “No…just two incredibly talented people.” She couldn’t mistake the sadness in her voice, and she knew Liron heard it too.
“Have you always been a musician then?” he queried.
She nodded and forced a small smile. “I loved music as much as they did. We all played in an orchestra together. I was working on a concerto for a while, but….” She shrugged and let the sentence remain unformed.
“Melody.” His voice w
as a velvet sweep of sound that caressed over her in a wave of sinful warmth. “What happened?”
She chewed on her bottom lip and looked up at him, a torturous sorrow welling up within her until her chest felt like it would shatter into pieces from the enormity of the pressure. “They died last year in a car accident.” She felt the tears burn, but she knew they would never fall.
He stepped forward with no hesitation and placed his hands on her shoulders, gently rubbing up and down in a comforting gesture.
“I was working on a concerto for the orchestra, one that would have featured all of us. But I haven’t been able to look at it since. I hadn’t even played piano until my friend Nikki brought me your music. Your piece is the first thing I’ve played since the morning before the accident.”
He sighed and pulled her into the refuge of his embrace, which immediately surrounded her in warm, wonderful notes. “I’m sorry, Melody. That kind of loss is something I cannot comprehend and makes my grief over Elizabeth seem childish and silly.”
She shook her head in disagreement as she nestled deeper into his arms, relishing the strength that he provided. “Loss is loss, Liron. One should not be compared with the other. And it was your loss I identified with, that I heard within the notes of that score. However twisted it sounds, your loss was what called out to me, and what I reached out for last night when I was playing. Your pain took my mind off of mine. All I wanted to do was soothe the ache I felt in that song.”
He pulled away enough to look down at her, and he took her face in his hands, lifting it so he could gaze into her eyes. “Why would you want to do that? You didn’t know I was real.”
“No, but I knew the music had an origin, and I didn’t think anyone else should have to feel the same kind of heartache I did.”
He stared at her for a long moment, several undecipherable emotions flashing through his eyes. Slowly, he extended his fingers across her jaw, behind her ears and to the clip that held her hair captive. “Then the pain Elizabeth caused me when she left was really a gift in disguise,” he murmured. Deftly, he unclasped her clip and her hair tumbled down and around her shoulders in thick waves, unruly with the sea breeze.
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
He buried his fingers in her hair and trailed them through the length. “I wrote that music because I wanted her to know the pain she caused by leaving me, the devotion and longing I still had for her. Somehow, that music survived all these years and touched something within you. That, in turn, brought you to me.” His eyes met hers with intensity, with meaning and sincerity. “And that is truly, above all other things, a gift.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, basking in the feel of his gentle fingers in her hair. Even that simple touch made her hear low, tinkling bells. She pressed closer to him, her lonely, broken heart craving the kindness that he offered so freely. She smiled a little as her senses filled with the smell of the sea, the feel of Liron standing so close to her, his hands in her hair, his music in her mind. She heard the cry of seagulls and the thunder of the waves. The heat of his body permeated hers, and the warmth of his soul reached her cold, shattered heart.
He trailed his lips in a line of tender kisses from her cheek to her temple. Butterflies took flight in her stomach while infernal heat exploded through her body. Nothing she had ever experienced felt as good as being close to him. Liron was gentle strength and patient compassion all wrapped up in wondrous music. He was everything she cherished, admired, and craved.
“Melody,” he whispered, his breath against her ear causing her to shiver. “Do you have anything pressing that will cause your world to come crashing back into mine and take you away again?”
She smiled and slipped an arm around his neck to fit them closer together. “Not that I can think of. And even if something, or someone, tried to interrupt, I have the ability to ignore the portal and not go back through it.”
One of his hands stayed in her hair while the other one traveled over her shoulder and down her spine to rest at her lower back. “Good. Because I find myself unwilling to part with you at the moment.”
She giggled and pulled back just enough to be able to look at him. He was smiling, and her heart sighed. “I don’t think I mind.”
His smile blossomed into a ravenously beautiful grin, and she leaned back into his body, craving his touch and transfixed with his perfect mouth. She remembered the night before, how close they had come to kissing. What would she have to do to get him to try again? The way his eyes smoldered, she didn’t think he would need too much convincing. Heck, with the way her body smoldered, she might be the one to make the first move.
But before either of them could do anything, a shrill cry sounded from above and drew Liron’s attention away from her. He stepped back and held his arm out as a large, golden falcon swooped down and landed on it. Liron smiled and reached his other hand up to smooth the bird’s feathers. “Let us have a more formal introduction,” he said. “Melody, meet Siegfried.” He stepped closer and extended his arm out to her. “Go on, he won’t hurt you. He’s all noise and sass.”
Melody giggled and reached out to trail her fingers gently across his wings. “I don’t know. I think he may have been jealous of how close I was to you,” she teased.
Liron looked up at her, his eyes burning. “He’ll just have to learn to share.”
His words made her heartbeat falter, and she took in the beauty of the moment, the beauty of him. Standing there, his dark hair blowing gently in the breeze, a large bird of prey perched on his arm, with the roiling, tempestuous sea as his backdrop, Liron was beyond beautiful, beyond breathtaking. He was beyond anything she had ever imagined.
His smile lit up her whole being. “Would you like to see more of my world?” he invited. “I did promise you a date after all.” The wicked gleam in his eye was sexy on a whole new level.
When Rob had bullied her into the several dates they had gone on, Melody had always felt this sort of obligatory acceptance. But she’d known in the back of her mind that at the end of it, she would be left feeling drained, unsatisfied, and annoyed. She was thrilled at the possibility of spending the evening with Liron, experiencing this extraordinary world and learning more about the man who brought to life so much music and so much feeling within her that she had thought long gone.
The whole last year of her life she had been searching for a distraction, something to take her mind off of the empty, gaping hole her parents’ death had left in her heart. Liron didn’t distract her, didn’t fill her mind with useless things that would make her forget about music. Liron was music. Every inch of his being was etched from it. If anything, his presence should have been painful, a constant reminder of what she had lost. But it wasn’t. It was soothing and soft, a gentle, prodding remembrance of why she had fallen in love with music in the first place.
Music heals. Art heals.
Her father had said it countless times. But she had turned her back on that truth because surviving through the pain to find the healing on the other side had been too difficult.
“Melody?” She glanced up at Liron, who was looking at her in concern. He sent Siegfried back up into the sky and reached out to her. “Are you all right?”
She sighed and made herself smile. “I’m fine.”
He arched an eyebrow, and she knew he didn’t believe her at all, but he didn’t push the subject. Instead, he took her hand in his and brought her wrist to his lips, kissing the inside of it with so much kindness her blood turned to lava, her heart threatened to burst, and the most amazing notes and chords exploded within her mind.
Before she knew what she was doing, she was back in his arms, clutching onto him with a desperation that was not like her. Her fingers dug into his back, and her body trembled with the weight of her emotions. She squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face against his chest, trying to find sanctuary in his warmth, his smell, and the music that made up who he was. Music was the one thing that had never abandoned her, e
ven when she had tried to abandon it. It stayed with her even now, in every beat of Liron’s magnificent heart.
“Liron,” she whispered. “Please, show me your world. Just keep me here and away from my world. It’s a cold, bleak place. All I know is pain there, sorrow and loneliness. I don’t want to feel that anymore. I want to hear music again.”
His arms tightened around her and he held her close. “It’s not your world that is bleak, Melody,” he murmured against her hair. “It’s only a place, just as this is only a place. It’s your heart that is cold and lonely. I know because mine has been also. I, too, want to hear music again.”
She looked up at him, knowing her eyes had to look desperate and lost. “I want to forget,” she all but pleaded. “Please, help me forget.”
The blue of his eyes turned darker with sincere understanding. “I can’t make you forget, Melody. Even if you try and succeed for a time, the pain you are running from will always be there, waiting to attack you when you least expect it.” He shook his head and framed her face with his hands. “All you can do is move forward. You will never hear music as you once did, but that does not mean it can’t be just as beautiful in a different way.” He cupped her jaw in his palm and feathered his thumb across her cheek. “I heard nothing for many, many years after Elizabeth left me. I feared I would never hear anything again. I figured she had destroyed my ability to do so. I never thought it would return to me in the form of a crashing, shrieking, frightened woman who had accidentally transported herself into my living room and kept insisting I was a hallucination.”
Melody laughed in spite of herself.
Liron smiled. “Nevertheless, I heard the music all the same. It came rushing back to me with your trust, your care, your blind faith in me and my ability to keep you safe. I realized last night after you returned to your home, that music, like all art and all things creative, is eternal. It is a gift to hear the beauty you and I do. It is a gift to feel it as we do. It, like emotion, may change shape. Its notes may become different because of what we experience. A different instrument may be required to convey meanings that maybe were not there before. But, like a shadow, it is always there. It is always within us. You just have to find strength enough to listen, and not be afraid of what it may sound like.”
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