by Skye Warren
“North.”
“Clear,” he says in a drawl that sounds knowing.
“Your command,” I say, flipping my connection to off.
The static goes quiet. My heartbeat thuds so loud I’m sure the birds and the crickets in the trees around the house can hear it. Hoarse curse words escape me on every thrust. Uneven movements take my hips. I’m so close to coming I feel an early spurt come from the tip. Her eyes widen, but she swallows it down like a good girl. Fuck. So good. Yes.
It’s a physical pain to pull out of her mouth. Her jaw must be sore, but I don’t give her a break. Instead I drag her up and kiss her, rubbing my tongue along hers, thanking her, worshipping her the only way I know how.
The lace doesn’t want to untie. I rip it apart to free her hands. She gasps in surprise. Maybe dismay over the gown. I’ll buy her another one. I’ll buy her fifty of them. I spin her around. She grabs the wide stone balcony to catch herself. That’s all the warning I give her before I reach down to flip up her skirts. Ah. God. Her ass looks like a pale peach heart framed by the piles of red satin. I pull down her black lace panties so they trap her ankles in place. Then I plunge inside her burning heat, groaning with the exquisite pleasure of it, only the smallest part of me worried about how quickly I stretched her tender skin. She’s gone stock-still. Her knuckles turn white where she clutches the balustrade. She’s wet enough, almost dripping down her legs, but that doesn’t mean she was ready for me. I should have fingered her first. I should have tongued her instead of fucking her as hard and as fast as I would my fist. There’s no pulling out of this heaven. All I can do is reach around to tap her clit. She sucks in a breath when I find it. There’s no soft tease this time. No slow climb. I rub firmly across it, in a way that might actually hurt, but it will also hurl her over the other side. Her climax rises fast and slams into her. She ripples around my cock, milking me, forcing my own orgasm in wild, reckless pulses against her innermost muscles.
The aftermath comes to me in slow, drifting notes. It takes me a while to realize I’m crushing her against the stone. Longer to know that my come drips down her leg. Guilt. Regret. The things she didn’t want me to feel, except I can’t stop being myself—not even for the woman I love.
I press a kiss to her naked shoulder. “Did I hurt you?”
She doesn’t answer. Panic rises in my throat. I spin her around to look at her face. She looks… frantic. Her cheeks are flushed. Something glazes her eyes. Tears? Arousal? I can’t deny that she still looks turned on, a woman well-fucked and ready for more. Desperate for it.
“You came, didn’t you?” I felt the clench of her pussy around me.
Her teeth are chattering. “I did. I did, but—”
But there’s more pressure built inside. It needs release. I pull her into my arms and drift into the corner of the balcony, where ivy gives us some cover from the stars. “Shhh,” I say, pressing an endless kiss to her crown. “I’ll make it better. Let me, let me. Relax, little prodigy.”
I rub her clit nice and slow this time, despite the urgent way she hitches her hips. It’s more of a soothing caress than an inciting one. She leans into my body, searching, searching. Her whole body goes rigid. She comes with a gush of warmth on my fingers, enough to make my cock throb awake again.
She leans her head back against the stone façade. Her eyes are closed. The urgency is gone, but the melancholy rises to the surface. It was too much for her. Maybe not too much for her body, but for her emotions, especially considering what she learned about her mother tonight. I would beat myself up for it, but self-recrimination takes a back seat to my concern for her. I tug her dress up to cover her breasts and smooth the skirt down. Except for the wild riot of curls around her shoulders, you might not know she’s just been fucked hard. Even so, there’s no way she’s going back to the ballroom. I dust off my tux jacket from the marble floor and throw it over her shoulders.
Her lids rise. She looks dazed. The lights are too dim, like stars a hundred million miles away. It makes worry beat against my ribs. Finally she focuses on me. “Alexander would have never done it like that.”
I shake my head.
“I liked it,” she says, her voice wobbling at the end.
Then she bursts out crying. It’s not a soft cry. Not a silent one. The sobs are enough to wrack her body. An earthquake in human form. She cries like she’s lost everything in the world, the way a young girl might cry in an orphanage—except she’d been dry eyed all those years ago.
I hold her close to my body, knowing it’s a thin comfort I offer, feeling her thinness, her frailty, the breakable thread of her as she pours her grief into my chest.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The main groups of singing insects are cicadas, grasshoppers, locusts and crickets. Each species produces a distinctive sound. In almost all cases, only the males sing.
Bethany
I’m dancing with a vicomte when Alexander Fox finds me.
He stands against the wall, his expression indicating that it’s time. He’s always been charming and respectful to me. It makes me wonder what would have happened if his United States counterparts had been that way. Without the reality show or the elaborate staging, would we have been so vulnerable? Would the shooting have happened? The shot did more than blast through Liam North’s body. Layers of muscle and bone. One of the strongest men I’ve ever met. It took him down, because in the end he’s still a man—not a god. It shook more than him, because the tour ended. I know I’m not the only one who’s nervous about getting back on a stage. Performers are a suspicious lot. Maybe the tour shouldn’t have been resurrected. Maybe it should have ended that day in New York City, even if that feels like defeat.
The song ends, and the vicomte twirls me around with a flourish. He’s twice my age, but that sort of thing doesn’t matter to these people. My skin color matters, though. Enough to make me wonder if he’s giving me that gallant smile because he’s interested in me—or because he thinks I’ll give him a quick fuck in the bathroom. Even rich people like quickies.
Well, it doesn’t matter what he wants from me. I’m here to do a job. It’s best to begin before the nerves paralyze me completely. Performers are superstitious, but I come from New Orleans. I threw salt over my shoulder and hanging garlic over my bed since I was a little girl. My mind knows that the shooting happened because Samantha’s father was in business with bad people. The ancient part of my mind wonders if standing on a stage with her again is a good idea.
It takes some searching to find Romeo. I have to ask for the man with broad shoulders and an earring in his left ear. It makes him look vaguely like a pirate. Eventually I stumble across a row of closed doors. It’s like a bad game show, where I’m probably going to end up embarrassed.
The first door opens to reveal three people engaged in a very acrobatic arrangement. It could easily be something on the floor of Cirque du Monde—clothed, of course. I murmur a quick apology and shut the door, even though I don’t think they noticed me.
The second door reveals a woman being pleasured by a man who must be half his age. There’s a stark enough difference that I wonder whether she’s the aristocracy in this relationship.
The third door finally reveals two men, their clothes half-shed across the sitting room. Romeo has the man backed up against a window ledge. They’re making out with mouths clashing, hands clenched. I clear my throat. “Romeo,” I whisper. And then louder, “Romeo!”
I wouldn’t normally interrupt him, except that we promised to do this small performance. It felt like a safe way to ease back into dancing. It’s been hard to start after the shooting.
He tears himself away with clear reluctance. I recognize the word he uses in Spanish, even though it’s slang and extremely rude. “Tell them to wait.”
“They’re signing our checks, so no, I’m not going to tell them that.”
With a groan, he steps back. “Wait here,” he says gruffly.
“I’m sorry,” I tell the anon
ymous other person. I have no intention of knowing who it is—and certainly wouldn’t mind if Romeo played with any of the guests. Recognition makes me do a double take. I manage a weak smile at the man before Romeo reaches the door.
“A servant?” I hiss when he’s outside. “I don’t think Frans would—”
“Oh, he’d rather I fuck one of his fancy counts or barons? Like I’m some kind of performing monkey. Dance when he wants. Suck dick when he wants.”
A flinch. “You’re going to get him in trouble.”
“Don’t worry about him. Besides, you’re the one making sex eyes at the man who’s probably going to get all of us killed.”
Anger lances through me. Along with worry. “I don’t make sex eyes at anyone, thank you very much. And what do you mean, he’ll get us killed?”
“That’s what they’re trying to do. You didn’t know? That’s the purpose of this concert. To draw out whoever was after Samantha in New York.”
We reach the top of the stairs, and I manage a bright smile despite my concern. I have a long history of giving a fake façade. Most people think I’m happy and calm. They think I’m at peace no matter what turmoil’s inside me. Romeo holds his arm out, and I place my hand in it. He’s wearing a black costume tuxedo with a yellow cumberbund. He’s the worker bee. I’m the queen. We pass by the man in question—Joshua North. His green eyes take me in with cool appraisal. Of everyone in the room, he doesn’t look fooled. He knows I’m worried. Then again, that’s only fair. Because he also knows why.
We take our places in the center of the ballroom. A hush falls over the crowd. The quartet already knows the piece we need. Romeo does a wide sweeping step, his form utter perfection. Like me, he knows how to fake it. No matter his desire for the servant or his worry over the concert. We’re like the musicians on the Titanic. We continue playing even when the ship goes down. He lifts me up, and I make my circle around the hive. I’m the queen of all I survey, even if I can never leave my post. The dance passes without flaw. Perfect technique. Endless practice will do that. I’m lucky that my partner has the same devotion to practice as me. We end with a bow and curtsey. The whole room erupts into applause. So much praise. Wonder. They’re easily pleased once plied with champagne. Only one man in the room doesn’t clap. He watches me instead, his green gaze troubled, as if he’s only now felt the water at his ankles, only now realized the ship we’re on is sinking.
Josh
I should have done this yesterday but I stayed in Paris to watch Bethany’s performance last night. So do otherwise ordinary men turn into fools for women. Not women, plural. A single woman. She had been incandescent in the center of that ballroom. Utterly regal. Unfortunately, she’s also very much off-limits. The only way I know how to be with a woman is to fuck. Hard. Fast. And then leave. For reasons I haven’t quite deciphered, I don’t want to do that with her.
After ten hours of flights to our compound in Texas and ten hours of flights back, I have the violin in hand. I would give Samantha a hard time about needing this particular violin, except I understand it. I like my particular gun. I can use another one in a pinch, but there’s something about mine that fits better in my hand, that aims better, that shoots better. She probably wouldn’t appreciate the comparison.
A knock on the apartments next to hers. I don’t wait for an answer, because there are some benefits to being a younger brother—and being an annoying shit is one of them. I push open the door. Liam stands at the window, holding a cup of coffee. He looks like he’s thinking deep thoughts. Instead he’s probably calculating whether there are any openings in the chateau’s security. There aren’t.
“You’re welcome,” I say, setting the violin down on the sofa. When wood and catgut goes for a couple million dollars, it gets to sit on cushions instead of a table.
He glances at the case, not looking particularly grateful. “Thank you.”
I throw myself onto an armchair, wincing a little at how it creaks. Damn antique furniture isn’t made to hold a man and his six-pack. “I should have brought it to her, so I could at least enjoy the way she freaks out and starts petting it like it’s a kitten.”
Liam looks out the window some more.
Suspicion makes me sit up straighter. More creaking. Goddamn. “Unless you think she won’t be happy to see the violin? It’s weird she didn’t mind it more, not being able to play.”
“She’s a violinist.”
That’s what he said in that tiny town near Nantes. The more he says it, the more I wonder if something has changed. That girl was all about her violin. When he first adopted her, I barely heard her speak, but she could damn well play. All night. All day. I ended up moving my bedroom across the compound so I could actually sleep. “She better be, considering there are two thousand rich-ass French people lining up to watch her play next week.”
He doesn’t respond, which probably means he’s really worried.
I study his profile, wondering when the hell he turned into an old man. I suppose if he’s old then I am, too. “How old are you, now? Thirty-six? Thirty-seven?”
“Thirty-five.”
“You act like a monk.”
He snorts, which probably alludes to his bad, bad thoughts about sweet little Samantha. Real monks probably have worse thoughts. And walk around with erections all day. Why else wear a robe? “They’re going to make a move on her during the concert.”
“Of course they are. That’s the whole point.”
“I need you to be careful.”
That makes me pause. The plan is that he’ll provide close cover to Samantha. Because, let’s face it, it’s not like he could leave her side anyway. I’ll be the one leading the team to capture whoever’s in the audience. We have men placed strategically throughout the theatre. It took some negotiating to place that number, considering how many euros each seat is going for. They’ll probably send more than one person this time. It’s my job to take them down. I wouldn’t expect Liam to worry about me. “You know I can take care of myself,” I say lightly.
His expression darkens. “I know. You’ve been doing it long enough.”
The reference hangs in the air between us, the past real enough I can smell the sweet grass and rotting garbage. “I don’t blame you for leaving. Hell, I’d have happily left you behind if I could have.”
“No,” he says thoughtfully. “I don’t think so. You were always the most loyal.”
That makes me laugh. “Jesus. Does she have your brain fucked up from all the sex?”
“Don’t talk about her that way.”
“It was a bad scene.” That’s really an understatement. Our father had been a crazy fucker who thought his children were the devil, spawn of the wife who left him. He was the hardest on Liam. “If I blame anyone it was the adults who could have stopped it.”
“There was the teacher who tried.”
“Those trash bags filled with our dirty shit.” I shake my head. We had been moved to a temporary foster home, three boys who barely took baths or knew how to communicate without our fists. The foster mother had been horrified. The foster father had been disgusted.
“And then dear old dad killed her cat. It was only a matter of time after that.”
“Is that what happened? I didn’t remember.”
Liam looks at me, pain in his dark green eyes. “Probably because you were busy being traumatized at the bottom of that goddamn well.”
I shift, uncomfortable that he’s brought it up after all this time. Our dad had dropped me down there. At least I’d been old enough to land on my feet. When he’d tossed Elijah down after me, it was pure fucking luck that I managed to catch him. Then I held him up until my arms were shaking, made of jelly, trying to keep him out of the sick water, trying to ignore the things that slithered in it. “What brought this up?” I ask, standing to get rid of the memories—slick, damp, cold. “Some things are better left in the past.”
“Most things are. The past has a way of catching up.”
&
nbsp; “Very poetic.”
“Just take care of yourself, okay? I couldn’t protect you then. I failed you then, but I don’t want to see you die. Not even for Samantha.”
“I don’t plan to die for Samantha,” I say with a laugh, even though it’s not precisely true. I’ve been waiting to die for a long time. It may as well be for something that would bring my brother peace.
CHAPTER TWELVE
In England, Henry VIII ordered the licensing of minstrels and players. The punishment for non-compliance was to be whipped.
Liam
Part of me thinks that if she only sees the violin, touches it, plays it, it will all rush back to her. The other part of me knows that won’t happen.
I carry the case into her rooms and set it down on the bed. She pulls the blanket up around her. I might have set down a live snake on the bedspread, that’s how horrified she looks. “What is that?”
“You know what it is.” I turn to the small wet bar in her room and pour two fingers of whiskey. Something to loosen the grip her fear has on her.
She swallows it and coughs. “It’s late.”
“Not too late to play. I remember when I used to have to pry the bow from your hand and send you to bed, because you’d have played straight until dawn.”
“That was a long time ago. I was young and stupid.”
“You were young and scared.” Scared of me, which felt terrible. And deserved. She didn’t know me. Didn’t know what I was capable of. The truth is—she’s still young and scared.
I was old, like my brother said. Old enough that I had no business touching her. Definitely no business sitting on her bed, not that it stopped me. I put my hand on her knee. “Better that you get it over with now. Only the first time will hurt. It’ll get easier after that.”
