“It comes naturally.”
They shared a laugh, and Kellen reached for one of her score sheets. He propped it on the stand above the fall board. Reading the notes scattered along the staff, he played them slowly, but correctly. She fought the urge to play over him, to get the tempo up to where it belonged. She didn’t know why, but it bothered her beyond reason when anyone took liberties with her music and didn’t play it exactly as she envisioned it.
When the song shifted to a lower register, his arm brushed hers and his fingers went still.
She glanced at him to find him sitting with his eyes closed.
“I should go,” he said.
“Why? I don’t want you to go.”
“Because I’m incredibly attracted to you, and I don’t think I’m quite ready to act on it.”
Well, in that case, there was no way she was letting him leave.
Chapter Five
He wasn't sure why Dawn had him in knots. She hadn't been overly flirtatious. She looked nothing like Sara. Dawn had gorgeous, deep red hair, hazel eyes flecked with green, and adorable freckles on her long, straight nose. Her lips were thinner than Sara's had been. She was tall, long limbed and fine boned. She didn't smell like Sara or sound like her or say things that reminded him of phrases Sara used to say. Dawn was nothing like Sara. Kellen couldn't remember the last time he'd looked at any woman and not been reminded of Sara at all. He couldn’t remember, because it had never happened. He didn't know if he should feel relieved or guilty or sad. What he mostly felt was aroused.
"You're attracted to me?" Dawn asked, her expressive hazel eyes wide. "Because you're doing a good job of hiding it. Why do you draw away when I touch you? You make me feel like I have cooties."
"I don't want to be attracted to you."
"Are you married? Engaged?"
"I wish I were." He might as well just tell her what she was up against. "Are you attracted to me too?" He thought she was, but before he started saying things to scare her away and remind himself of the emptiness inside, he needed to make sure the revelation was worth the pain.
"Yeah, I am definitely attracted to you," she said. "I can't imagine there's a woman on the planet who wouldn't be."
He rolled his eyes. He didn't need her flattery. He just needed her to shoot straight with him.
"The woman I planned to marry died, so technically I'm not attached. But spiritually and emotionally I'm in a relationship that doesn't exist."
She stared at him, her eyes searching his until he had to look away. "Well, that sucks," she said. "Kind of hard for me to compete with someone who can do no wrong."
Not the empathy and sympathy to which he was accustomed. Dawn’s eyes were dry and she wasn't doing that annoying pat his hand and avoid his gaze thing that so many people did when he told them about Sara.
"Okay,” she said, turning back to her keyboard. “I'm going to start the song again and when I get to my stuck spot, I’d like you to play whatever occurs to you."
That was it? She wasn't going to hound him with questions and overwhelm him with so many memories of Sara that he was forced to retreat inside himself again? She wasn’t going to give him a reason to push her away? He didn’t know how to respond.
She started playing her unfinished composition and as before, the collection of notes lifted his spirit, made him yearn for the song to never end. With each successive note he felt happier, more alive, more connected to something than he had in years. When Dawn reached her final note, Kellen prepared to take over, but three additional notes poured from her fingers. She straightened on the bench beside him and played the three notes again. And again. Then she sang them in the most beautiful falsetto he had ever heard and played them yet again.
She released a long breath, the tension draining from her body. "Three is better than none."
"And better than crap."
She beamed and gave him a hasty hug. "I think my muse is intimidated by your crap, Kellen."
He fought the urge to wrap his arms around her and hold her close. He still wasn't sure how he felt about his attraction to her. It felt different than when he got sexually excited when a woman made unwanted advances toward him. Yeah, his cock got hard when women came on to him, but he felt so guilty about his body's reaction that he couldn’t bring himself to give in to his sexual needs.
Sitting next to Dawn, he felt stirrings of lust, but the place she touched him was deeper than his baser needs. She touched him where his music resided. Sara had never touched that part of him. When they'd been together, he'd almost given up music. Sole Regret’s first album hadn’t been the success they’d hoped. With Sara in college and Kellen holding down odd jobs to pay the bills, they’d been hopelessly broke. Once Sara’s medical bills started to pile up, it seemed the only thing to do was leave the band and find a decent job. He’d wanted to provide for her. Only Owen’s insistence that Kellen stay had kept him from giving up the band entirely. Owen had believed in Sole Regret when Kellen had completely lost hope on their dream. Owen ever the optimist. Owen who always put other’s needs before his own. Owen onboard for anything at any time. Owen...
God, what was he going to do about Owen? Kellen had made a complete mess of their friendship and just when he thought he finally had their relationship back on its proper track, he did something completely stupid. Like tie Owen to a pommel and show a woman how to give him a proper hand job by demonstration. What in the fuck had he been thinking last night?
Dawn abruptly stopped playing. "You're not listening," she said. "Are you bored?"
"No. I just have a lot on my mind," he said. "Don't stop. This song is like a break in the clouds during a storm."
"The eye of your hurricane."
He chuckled. His life was definitely in a whirlwind. "Exactly."
"If you want to talk about her, I'll listen," she said, playing softly again.
"Do you want me to talk about her?"
Dawn shook her head. "Not particularly. I'm sure if you loved her, she was wonderful."
"Sometimes I hate her for what she's done to me." Kellen tensed. Had he really just admitted that aloud? He’d never even admitted that to himself. I didn’t mean it, Sara. I could never hate you.
"I can understand that," Dawn said.
He somehow doubted it.
“Have you ever been in love?” he asked.
Dawn hesitated, and then she nodded. “But he didn’t love me in return. He thought I was a silly little girl and in retrospect, I was. I was sixteen and he was in his thirties. He’d been my piano teacher for years before my hormones kicked into high gear and I made a complete idiot of myself by throwing myself at him.”
“I’m sure if you hadn’t been jailbait, he would have caught you. What was his name?”
“Pierre,” she said, releasing a dreamy sigh.
“Pierre?” Kellen chuckled. “You’re kidding, right?”
“He’s French,” she said stiffly.
“Vous êtes plus belle que les étoiles, mon amour,” he whispered close to her ear.
She swayed against him, and he wrapped an arm around her back to keep her from tumbling from the piano bench.
“You speak French?” she said.
“Just that one sentence,” he said. He didn’t even remember exactly what it meant. Something about the stars being beautiful.
“So if I said, je suis très excitée par vous, you wouldn’t know what I meant?”
“Sounds kinky,” he teased.
“It could be.”
She tilted her head to look up at him. There were mere inches between their lips. Would she taste as decadent as she looked? The green flecks in her eyes caught Kellen’s attention. So exotic. His heart thudded faster and faster as he leaned closer. He hadn’t kissed a woman since Sara. Hadn’t wanted to. He sure the fuck wanted to now.
Dawn pressed a fingertip against his lips. “Hold that thought,” she said and shifted away to pound on her keyboard with renewed vigor.
Kellen
stifled a groan. He felt torn between his yearning to devour this woman’s sensual mouth and his desire to be a part of the soaring composition she was creating right beside him. Dawn played with her eyes closed, her fingers moving swiftly over the keys. The loose bodice of her dress fell open as she rocked forward to press the foot pedals, and Kellen caught a glimpse of the soft swell of one breast and an expanse of pale freckles decorating the smooth alabaster skin of her chest. Would he find freckles elsewhere? In places hidden from his view? On her belly? Her thighs? His cock twitched as he thought about kissing every freckle he discovered until she spread her legs for him. Would she allow him to sample her fluids with his tongue? Permit him to breathe the musk of her arousal while he treated her pussy to the same deep, plundering kisses he craved from her mouth? He wanted to hear his name gasped, moaned, screamed as she came over and over again at the insistence of his tongue, his lips, his teeth.
When he noticed the pair of thin boxer shorts she’d loaned him were tented with his obvious arousal, he was glad she had her eyes closed. He shifted so that his belly was against the piano and his erection was hidden from view. He tried not to imagine fucking Dawn on the lid of her grand piano, with her dress bunched up around her waist and her bare breasts spilling from her bodice. Tried but failed. He could almost feel her heels digging into his ass, her heat gripping him. He wiped at sweat that formed at the base of his throat.
This was what he got for denying his needs for so long. And it didn’t help that the song she was composing held the cadence of the sea—the repetition of surge and withdrawal, peak and valley—that was suddenly a lot more sexual to him than it should have been.
The storm raged outside, producing a clap of thunder so loud the windows rattled. Dawn jumped and pressed a hand to the center of her chest. “Oh,” she said, “that startled me. Sometimes I get lost in my music and forget there’s a world beyond my own sound.”
“I get the same way on stage sometimes,” he said.
She gnawed on her lips while she considered him closely. “You look a bit tense,” she said. “Is the song not working for you? You can be honest.”
The song was working for him in ways he was sure she hadn’t intended. He couldn’t very well tell her that it turned him on. Of course in his current state of sexual frustration, just about everything turned him on. He’d even gotten turned on while tying Owen last night.
He’d bound Owen so a woman could have her way with him, but seeing him like that… Kellen hadn’t been able to keep his hands off him and had ultimately fled the room with a stiff cock. How fucked up was that?
Habitual masturbation helped ease Kellen’s frustration, but it just wasn’t the same as touching another, as being touched by someone he loved and trusted. He’d touched Owen—and had once allowed Owen to touch him—because in whatever alternate universe his morals were now living, that was not cheating on Sara. Even though he’d convinced himself of that, how in the hell did he explain any of that shit to Owen? Owen who was down for anything as long as it felt good. Owen who loved everyone unconditionally. Kellen had taken advantage of Owen’s nature, and he felt terrible about it. Not terrible enough to have an honest conversation with him. Too awkward. What could he possibly say to make things right?
“Earth to Kellen,” Dawn said. “Are you feeling this song at all?”
“If I was honest about what this song does to me,” Kellen said, “you’d toss me back into the storm. Which actually might be for the best.”
“What does it do to you?” she asked.
He leaned back from the keyboard and glanced down at his lap. She followed his gaze and gasped at the very noticeable bulge in his shorts. “Oh!”
He rubbed at his eyebrow. She must think he only had one thing on his mind, which wasn’t far from the truth. “I’ll go.”
She grabbed his thigh before he could climb from the bench. “This song does similar things to me,” she whispered. “I can’t stop thinking about sex.” She stared at him, all beautiful and beguiling, and his cock jerked. “I can’t stop thinking about sex with you.”
His mouth went dry.
“I’ve never gotten aroused while composing a song,” she said, “so it must be the company.”
Her hand slipped up his thigh, and his belly clenched. If she touched him there, he was going to explode.
“Don’t leave. I need to see where this takes me and I’m afraid if you go, I’ll never finish.”
When she removed her hand and placed it over the keys, he groaned.
“I’m sorry to be selfish,” she said, “but I have to keep going. I’m consumed by the melody now and I don’t want to stop until I’m finished. I hope you understand.”
Kellen understood perfectly. He never stopped until his partner was finished. At least, when he’d actually allowed himself to have partners, it had been that way.
Her fingers flew across the keys, drawing so many positive emotions from Kellen that he could have kissed her in gratitude. The song was a celebration of sensuality, and it had been far too long since he’d celebrated. The enraptured expression on Dawn’s face as she worked through the composition over and over again made him want to drag her to the floor and claim her. Lose himself in her body. He’d already lost himself to her passion.
A flash of lightning illuminated Dawn’s lovely face. An instant later, they were bathed in darkness. The storm seemed to grow louder as the humming appliances and the air conditioning system fell silent.
“I’ll try to find candles,” Dawn said. “I think there are some in the kitchen.”
Kellen reached out to touch her and found the warm skin of her hand resting on her thigh.
“We don’t need light to hear the music,” he said, “or to feel it. Don’t bother.” Plus, he really didn’t mind sitting with her in the dark while the heavens battled outside. He could get as aroused as he liked, and she wouldn’t be able to see it. Too bad the lights hadn’t gone out before he’d revealed his not-so-little secret. Before he’d been so absorbed in the sight of her and the music she created that he’d lost his mind and drawn attention to his painfully hard dick.
Lightning flashed, giving him a quick glimpse of her contemplative expression.
The rain lashed against the windows and wind howled through the rafters. The entire house swayed slightly on its sturdy stilts. Even so, Kellen was so fixated on the woman beside him that the most pronounced sound for him was her breathing.
Dawn turned her hand, still resting on her thigh, until her palm met his and held his hand in a loose grip.
“You’re right,” she whispered. “We don’t need light. Just sound.”
And touch.
Kellen’s thumb stroked her skin. Why did holding her hand feel so intimate? Why did it feel so right?
“Kellen?” she said.
“Yeah?”
“What was her name?”
His heart twisted, and he tugged his hand free of hers. He focused on the rivulets of rainwater flowing down the windowpanes against a background of distant flickers. “Sara,” he said around the lump in his throat. “Her name was Sara.”
“Sorry,” Dawn said. “I shouldn’t have brought her up. It’s just…” She took a deep breath. “If I had a man who loved me even half as much as you obviously still love her, I’d consider myself blessed.”
“I don’t feel blessed.” Damned. That’s how he felt. Damned.
Dawn leaned against his arm, and her free hand slid along his lower back. Kellen held his breath, not wanting to be comforted by her simple gesture, but he was. It felt wonderful to relax against her and allow himself that small bit of feminine contact.
“So why are you single, Dawn O’Reilly?” he asked. “A beautiful, sexy, talented, intelligent, successful woman such as yourself should be taken.”
Her arm tightened around his back, which pulled her closer to his side. She was so warm. Smelled so sweet. He was glad of the darkness so he could experience her on an entirely new level. He’d b
een overwhelmed with the sight of her before; now his other senses had the opportunity to be dazzled. He leaned closer and detected a hint of honeysuckle on her skin.
“Just busy I guess,” she said. “I haven’t been able to find the right man. Or maybe I was waiting for him to find me.”
Kellen closed his eyes and swallowed. He wasn’t ready to be the right man for her. How did he convey that without hurting her feelings? There was absolutely nothing standing in his way but himself, but he sure as hell wasn’t prepared to clear the road ahead just because this woman had his hormones in an uproar.
“Dawn, I…”
She drew away, and he immediately missed the feel of her hand