As always, as their mouths met and her warm lips touched his, he reached into her black hair, as light as silken yarn, and caressed the soft skin of her arm, sliding his hand around to the small of her back and breathing in that sweet jasmine scent of her perfume, a sugary blue confection that mixed with the taste of her in his mouth.
She kissed him back, just as hungry as he was. It had been almost two months since they had been able to meet, which was far, far too long.
But right away, as always, they were in perfect harmony.
Rehearsal
Xan watched the freeways of Los Angeles, snarls of charcoal ribbons that the autos all seemed to navigate without error, while Natasha drove them to somewhere they could rehearse.
She drove up to the Walt Disney Concert Hall, a building that looked like a wave of liquid stainless steel had splashed against a rock and shined in Xan’s eyes like a high soprano thrill, and down into the parking garage under it.
She said, “Since I’m with the L.A. Phil, I have keys to the rehearsal rooms.”
“Excellent,” he said. They carried their cases up the elevator and through the unfinished cement back halls. Xan had learned years ago that asking to carry Natasha’s cello case would be met with laser-glare silence, while insisting on carrying it was an efficient way to start a month-long fight.
In the silent rehearsal hall, a concert grand piano hulked in one corner like a lacquered black sailboat with an ebony sail. Two piano benches lined up behind it.
Though four music stands stood in the middle of the room, there were no chairs.
“Shit,” muttered Natasha. “Someone stole all the damn chairs again.”
“We can use the piano benches. I never lean back anyway.”
“Okay, fine. Let’s work for a couple hours, anyway. You’ll be fine. I promise that I’ll get you up to par.” She found the sheet music in her cello case and handed it to him.
He cleared his throat to dispel the annoyance. She had no way of knowing that he practiced daily for hours, usually by sneaking out to the tour’s RV and playing in the complete darkness so he could see the colors better. “As you wish.”
“Oh, my God. Seriously, stop it. A couple times through, and you’ll be up to speed.” She extended the endpin on the base of her cello and spun the cello in her hand like she was a jazz musician.
Xan tried not to be insulted as he arranged the sheet music on the stand that she thought he needed to be brought up to speed, especially for such a terribly common piece as String Quartet Number 19 in C Major, K. 465 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, nicknamed “Dissonance.”
He had performed it dozens of times, starting when he was twelve.
He could play the first violin’s part in his sleep, and considering his schedule at Juilliard, he probably had.
He could play “Dissonance” better than most pianists could plink out “Heart and Soul.”
The colors in it were incredible. Xan couldn’t ever forget them.
All this, he didn’t say. Natasha wouldn’t be impressed. He needed to prove it.
So he would.
They set two piano benches beside and cheated toward each other so they could check in during the piece.
Xan reached out and trailed his fingers down her arm. She didn’t move away. If anything, she leaned into his hand.
He stepped closer, running both his hands down her arms, but she backed up, sat on the bench, and nudged him aside her cello. “I can’t get my instrument between my legs with you in the way.”
“As the actress said to the bishop.” He grinned.
She laughed, but said, “Come on. Let’s get on with this.”
Again, he could have said his line, but he refrained.
Xan opened his guitar case and felt a tug toward the acoustic guitar inside. He hadn’t worked on his guitar yet today. He would have to find time later. Inside the thick foam-lined lid, he popped a snap, revealing a cavity carved out for his violin. The only people who usually saw it were airline security personnel manning an X-ray scanner.
He positioned his violin under the left side of his jaw. The chinrest felt right under his jaw, comfortable, and it locked into place like an extension of himself.
He hated it.
For Natasha, her strong fingers already running up and down the neck of her cello as she warmed up, her other arm working the long bow across the strings to drive the music out of the instrument, Xan would perform with the violin.
God, she was beautiful, sitting there with her cello, the full skirt of her black dress allowing her to play that gorgeous instrument with an hourglass shape reminiscent of her own.
“Dissonance” was about a half an hour long and in four movements. Natasha set a nice pace, and they sawed through it without the second violin and viola that were supposed to provide the middle timbres.
Xan tried not to look smug that he hadn’t dropped a note.
“Pretty good,” Natasha said. “Once more time through?”
“Of course.” Xan had no intention of playing the piece all the way through.
They began as usual, with Natasha playing the drumbeat of quiet, ominous, dark blue C’s on her cello. Xan waited the few beats where the viola and second violin should have joined in with notes that completed a melancholy C-minor chord, and he drew a bright A out of his violin, which sounded so bare without the other instruments and amplified the dissonance at his sixth above Natasha’s notes. The colors clashed behind his closed eyes in a way that Mozart probably never intended, but it amused Xan. The few bars of dissonance resolved into a joyous splash of a C-major chord.
He played for about fifteen minutes, through the first two movements, and then let his notes play lighter, and lighter, until he set down his violin.
Natasha didn’t glance at him, supposedly absorbed in her own music.
Xan straddled her bench behind her, pressing his body against her back.
Natasha concentrated on her music as if he wasn’t there.
The third time was the charm, some said. Maybe this time, he could get her to drop her bow.
He rubbed his palms down her legs, which were braced wide on either side of the cello, the thick fabric of her dress rough on his hands. He flipped her skirt up to get underneath and slid his hands over her thighs. When he drew his hands around to her ass, at first he thought she wasn’t wearing underwear, but the thin elastic of a thong caught on his thumb.
Her legs quivered just little in his hands. He was getting to her already. Xan smiled.
He took his time, caressing her strong back and pinched waist through her clothes, enjoying the feel of her buttery skin, while he breathed on the back of her neck, bared by the wide neckline of her dress that stretched almost all the way to the points of her shoulders, letting his breath roll down her spine. That sugary blue pastry of her perfume plus her feminine scent made his mouth water.
When his hands came around to cup her breasts, she leaned back against him and rested her head back on his shoulder, still playing her cello. Her fingers crawled up the neck of the instrument, and she drew the bow across the strings below without looking. It was impressive, as impressive as the first time he had tried this.
He circled her breasts, running his thumbs across the peaks until he felt them harden under her dress. Her breathing roughened, but her playing never faltered.
Xan dove his hand down her ribs and stomach, feeling all those womanly curves that turned him on when he just thought about her. Her skirt was in the way, that long skirt, and he fought, flipping the fabric, to get his hand under it and then slide his fingers into her panties. She was already slick inside, and he drew the wetness out of her, slipping over her skin.
She arched her back, her round bum rubbing against him through his pants and driving herself down on his hand, and she gasped. The notes thrummed out of her cello without missing a beat.
At the end of the trio and thus the third movement, she moved on to the fourth. Just a few minutes left.
Xan unzipped his fly, rolled on a condom that he had pocketed just in case, and pressed between her shoulder blades, rolling her forward. He lifted her hips, moved forward, held her thong aside, and settled her over himself. He slid into her, feeling her warmth around himself, and stroked into her.
She whimpered but kept playing. Xan wrapped one arm around her waist and drew her back to lie against him.
He moved in her, gently. One had to play fair in this game. Jerking her around to make her drop the bow would be unfair. He reached under her skirt again and circled his fingers around her clit, feeling her tighten on him.
His fingers moved in time to her music, and her playing didn’t falter as he thrust slowly into her. It had been two months since the last time he’d had her, and he was famished for her, so he couldn’t last.
The music was coming to its crescendo, too.
She played the last few bars, sawing the bow across the strings of the cello, as Xan thrummed his fingers on her clit and bit down on the back of her neck, and her hips jerked forward as she cried out. One more thrust inside her soft body, and he came, too, panting against her back.
She dragged the last few notes out of the cello, a little more tremulous than was usual as she breathed hard, staring at the ceiling. Her body shook in his arms, the aftershocks still running through her.
Someday, someday, he swore to all that was holy, he was going to make her drop that damn bow.
Performance
Xan wore his white tie and tails tuxedo, bowed politely to the group of about three hundred guests assembled in the ballroom of a mansion overlooking the mountains above Los Angeles, and sat down to play.
Before the recital, Natasha had insisted (to the second violinist’s great annoyance) that they should keep all their parts the same and only replace Kieran with Xan as first violin, not reshuffle everyone.
Their rehearsal that afternoon seemed to have convinced her that he could play the music, or convinced her of something, anyway.
Xan managed every note impeccably for the first half, but during the third movement, the Menuetto, an exuberant minuet, Xan glanced over at Natasha, who held the body of her cello between her knees while she played. As she caught his eye, she subtly arched her back and clenched her thighs around the instrument.
Xan almost dropped his violin, and he returned to concentrating on the sheet music, because as his blood rushed through his body, he was in imminent danger of being subjected to one of the most embarrassing things that can happen to male musician onstage. While playing the violin, he couldn’t even cross his legs. His feet needed to be balanced on the floor to play properly.
After a few bars, he regained his composure, and he assured himself that it was probably only because he had been surprised.
He looked back at Natasha and met her sultry, dark eyes. He ground his chin into the chinrest of his violin and watched her dusky cheeks turn rosy.
This time, she averted her eyes and watched her sheet music. Her neck bowed as she played her cello, baring the nape of her neck where he liked to bite when he was behind her.
Now he was doing it to himself. He turned back to his music and followed the notes, even though he didn’t really need to look. He knew the music, and his fingers made the music he heard in his head.
Natasha caught his eye again, and the sparkle in her dark eyes was meant for him as her fingers slid up and down the long, thick neck of her cello.
Xan sucked in cool air, trying to calm the wild energy spiraling through his body already. He leaned upstage, toward the second violinist, raising his outside leg to conceal his fly. The ring box in his pants pocket poked him.
They had to stop.
They were up there on the dais, eye-fucking, while several hundred people surrounded them, all in chairs, facing them.
Xan glanced over the crowd.
Many audience members were staring at their programs in their hands, waiting for the string quartet to be over so they could go home, having both donated to charity and appreciated the arts enough for one day.
Some were sporting that glazed expression that chamber music can inspire in the elderly or uneducated.
A few had closed their eyes and the expression on their rapt expressions on their faces suggested they were either fellow syntesthetes and the colors flashing through their minds would alert them instantly if Xan dropped a single note or, statistically more likely, they were dead drunk. The wine had been rather good and plentiful for a charity event.
In the back row, one gray-haired man had thrown back his head, and his much younger date seated beside him was bobbing rhythmically while she stared straight ahead, listening to the music.
Xan was rather offended, not by the guy getting a hand job in the back row, but by everyone falling asleep to his music. He was a twenty-three year old rock star. He wanted this crowd on their feet and dancing, he wanted their hearts thumping and their fists in the air, and he couldn’t do that with a damn violin latched onto his face.
Xan turned back to Natasha.
She lowered her dark eyes, lashes brushing her cheeks, and watched her music.
He could have put the ring inside her cello, or in her case, if he had had the chance. She could have found it, and then he could have gotten down on one knee and dredged up the perfect words to say, and it could have been beautiful.
Damn it. He had missed that chance. Time was growing short. His plane to rejoin the tour left the next morning.
Frosting Shots
After the charity performance, Natasha drove Xan to her new-favorite dessert place called Frosting Shots. From the bright counter, they bought three thin slices of undecorated cake—yellow butter, blue velvet, and flourless chocolate—plus half a dozen shot glasses piped full of buttercreams and whipped ganaches to share. Xan loosened his white bow tie at his throat so he could swallow, the ends flapping on his chest, and flipped the coat tails behind him while he perched on the small cafe chair.
They sat together, scooping their forks into the frosting shots and picking at the slices of cake, their feet entwined beneath the table and covered by Natasha’s voluminous skirt. Her stout cello case leaned against the wall next to Xan’s guitar case because they were in downtown Los Angeles. You don’t leave stuff in cars in downtown L.A. that you would like to see again. Her cello and Xan’s violin each would cost more than half the houses in L.A. to replace, if it were possible to replace those fine, old, Italian instruments.
Xan slid his fork into the dark chocolate cake, so dark the the bitterness of the chocolate made his mind sing deep bass notes, and the overhead lights glinted on the silken ganache.
Again, he could have hidden the ring in the cake or a frosting cup, if he had thought about it and had some advance notice.
However, getting mud-like ganache out of the prongs around those diamonds and that emerald would have been impossible. Proposing with a sticky, dirty ring and then immediately sending it off to Paris to be cleaned would have been ridiculous.
It was better this way. Less fanfare. More heart. He slid his hand into his pocket and grasped the black velvet box.
Natasha slid a bite of blue velvet cake between her luscious lips and sipped her wine. “So, you want to come back to my place?”
“Or you can come back to mine. I splurged and rented a bungalow at the Pink Palace.”
Natasha smiled, but concern showed in her lovely eyes. “The Beverly Hills Hotel a lot of splurge, Xan. Playing rock music at small clubs can’t be that good to you.”
He smiled, contemplating their first night together while engaged. “You’re worth it.”
“We went to conservatory together, buddy. You don’t have to do this.”
“Just for tonight.”
She set down her fork and reached across the table to hold his hand. He flipped his hand over to take her muscular fingers in his, running his fingers over the musicians’ calluses on the tips of her fingers, below her blunt, trimmed-back fingernails. She said, “I’d like
that.”
“It doesn’t have to just be tonight.” He leaned over the cake, still holding her hand in his right and grasping the velvet box in his pocket with his other hand, and he watched for her reaction. “Come on tour with me for the summer.”
Her blink, startled and pained, cut him. “Oh, God, Xan. I can’t. I’ve meaning to talk to you about something.”
Xan let one eyebrow dip in a mildly quizzical reaction, not letting her see that his whole body had broken a cold sweat. He had a tendency to wear his heart on his sleeve, but he had gone to boarding school in Switzerland from the time he was five years old through high school. He could snap himself closed when he needed to. “About what?”
“I’m going to be traveling a lot as first chair, and I’ve gotten an opportunity to play with the China National Symphony Orchestra this summer. I’m going to be gone for three months. The L.A. Phil released me for the summer season.”
“I’ll wait. You can come on tour with me after that.”
She asked, “And give up first chair for what? Are you going to write a cello part in—what’s that song of yours—‘Nine Levels of Tortured Souls?’”
“Actually, a string quartet in that one would sound pretty damn cool.”
“But then the season here runs Fall through June. Music is my life, Xan.”
He sat back in the chair, still holding her hand. “Just music?”
“I’m a nun, Xan. I’m a high priestess of music and its Vestal Virgin. When we signed on the dotted line for Juilliard, we signed our marriage licenses.”
Xan slid his hand out of his pocket, leaving the ring box inside. “We can go on as we are, respecting one another’s art and commitment.”
“Music is a bitch mistress. It takes everything that I have, every speck of energy and time. People look at me and assume that I got here because I’m a token or something, but the very first time we had blind auditions, I moved up to first chair. I’m in there every day, fighting as hard as I can, and I’m good at it.”
[Billionaires in Disguise 01.0] Every Breath You Take Page 2
