Chapter 11 #2
I concentrate on Phillipe as he makes his way to the shelves on the wall. He crouches down to reach into the bottom. I’m so focused on his broad back and amazing ass that I don’t even notice what he is holding in his hand until he stands. It’s an old instrument case.
Almost instantaneously, it feels as though the oxygen in the room has been removed.
I can’t breathe as he stops at the desk just a few feet from me and gently places the case down.
Immediately, I know what is in there. He doesn’t have to tell me.
As I stand there silently staring at him, my brain is screaming, Why?
Why on earth does he have Chantel’s violin? How?
It has been reported that the astronomically expensive Stradivarius, passed down for years through the Rosenberg family, was never recovered. It is still reported as missing to this day.
I have no idea how he has it, but I know that the instrument inside that case is a violin. I know it is Diva.
I’m also very aware of what he’s going to ask me to do. I have seen the collection and studied each piece for hours on end.
None of that matters, though, as the locks on the old case are flicked open.
As he lifts the lid, my eyes are automatically drawn to the contents like a moth to a flame. This right here is the other piece in the huge, distorted puzzle that is them, and it is about to be handed to me.
He reaches into the case, which is lined with what looks like red silk. He lovingly—yes, lovingly is the only way I can describe the way he is touching the instrument—cradles Chantel’s Stradivarius as he removes it from its resting place.
My mouth falls open as he turns and walks toward me. He’s cradling it as though it is his child. When he holds it out to me, I look at him as if he is insane and begin shaking my head.
“Apparently, I am going to trust you. Here, take this.”
Looking at the violin, I am very aware, all of a sudden, that I’m standing here naked.
And yet somehow, that is not the most bizarre part of this equation.
No, the most bizarre part is that he thinks I can and will be responsible for hanging on to an instrument that is not only worth more than a million dollars but is also reportedly a missing family heirloom.
Not to mention it means more to him than the entire house we are both standing in.
Shaking my head again, I raise my eyes from the beautiful Diva. “No. I can’t use that to model with.”
“Here. You need it to model with,” he says, pushing it closer to me.
I step away from him, refusing to take a hold of what I know to essentially be his heart.
“No. Don’t you have a spare one?” I realize how stupid that sounds, but so does the fact that he wants me to hold her violin.
He steps closer then takes my right hand in a firm grip and tugs me to him. Placing the neck of the violin in my hand, I have no choice but to close my fingers around it tightly. I’m afraid I might drop it, smashing it into little pieces.
“See, it won’t hurt you,” he reassures me. “You seem spooked tonight. That’s what it is.” Bending down until our noses are almost touching, he asks, “What happened this afternoon?”
Denial falls smoothly off my tongue. “Nothing happened.”
“You’re lying.”
Raising my head, I bring the violin up close to my body. “How do you want me to hold this?”
Strong, nimble fingers grip my wrist where my pulse is beating a rapid tattoo.
“Once you are seated against the wall, cross your legs, rest the bottom on your calves, and let the handle nestle between these beautiful breasts of yours.” He reaches up to run the back of his fingers gently over the curve of one of the breasts in question.
I gasp. They are still sensitive from earlier. As he repeats the move, I clamp my bottom lip between my teeth.
That’s when a seductive grin appears. “I like teeth,” he tells me before turning on his heel, making his way back to the easel. He’s letting me know that, all along, he’s been aware of the sensual journal entry I read earlier, and he knows, somehow, that I’m hiding a secret.
What he doesn’t know is that secret involves a dark-haired woman with talented hands. My secret involves the woman he so obsessively loved, a woman he has admitted to wanting close by at all times.
Well, that woman has crept into my mind. Somehow, she has stolen my very sanity, because now I want her hands on me. I begged for her to touch me until I, too, lost myself in the beauty of a fantasy—a fantasy I still don’t fully understand.
She is aroused. As she sits there holding the violin, Phillipe can tell that Gemma is one hundred percent aroused. Her breasts are beautifully flushed, and her nipples are nice and tight.
When he handed her the violin, her eyes dilated, and he could have sworn that he could smell her arousal—and was reminded of the passage she must have been up to. A moment in time that changed him as a person.
He wants to talk to her about what she read.
Once he is behind the easel, he looks over to where she sits. The violin’s handle is resting against her skin, and her hands are holding it with so much care that he can’t help but feel moved by her attentiveness.
“So, tell me, Gemma, what did you learn this afternoon?”
“I’m here to ask you questions, not the other way around.”
“You are being quiet, so I’m trying to start an open forum.”
“Well, I don’t need one,” she tells him firmly. “If you weren’t so disagreeable this afternoon, I wouldn’t feel this way.”
“And how do you feel?”
“Confused,” she admits immediately.
“What are you confused about?” He genuinely wants to know.
“You. Her. Both of you together,” she tells him, licking her lips.
She shifts, and he wonders for a moment if she is aroused by what she just said. I believe she is.
“What is it about us together that’s confusing to you?”
“I don’t know.” She quickly adds, “That’s a lie, and I promised myself I wouldn’t do that.”
“What? Lie?”
“Yes.” She nods. “You seem so different through her eyes.”
Silence stretches between them as the weight of her reply floats across the air.
“Interesting choice of words. How do I seem different?”
He watches her red fingertips caress the side of the violin as she continues looking down at it. “With her, you seemed…happy.”
Phillipe nods. “I was happy, happier than I had ever been. I guess it showed. What do I seem to be now?”
Gemma turns her head and looks at him with narrowed eyes. “Angry, sad, hurt.”
Placing his brush on the easel, he moves over to her. He’s tired of not being able to do what he wants, and right now, he wants to touch.
“Angry?” he asks, stopping and crouching down before her.
She raises her eyes to his. “Yes, that day I saw you, you were in your room and…”
Phillipe cocks his head and waits. Let her say it.
“And you were hurting yourself. Why? Why are you hurting and punishing yourself if you didn’t do anything to be sorry for? I don’t understand. I’m confused.”
Phillipe runs the pad of his finger against the hard tip of her full breast. “Have you ever had a moment of passion that was so deep and so fucking perfect that you know you will never have it again?”
Gemma’s gaze moves to his lips before shifting back to his eyes.
“Have you?”
She shakes her head. “Have you?”
Phillipe feels the side of his mouth pull up into an ironic smirk. “Yes, and no matter what I do, I can’t seem to capture it again.”
I’m holding the violin so tight that I start to think I might accidentally crush it. What is he trying to tell me? He is so close to me that I can smell the scent that always seems to cling to him. It’s making my head spin.
“I don’t understand,” I finally manage to say.
His heated stare wanders all over my face but never dips below my neck. I can’t explain why, but it makes me even more aroused that he doesn’t feel the need to outright stare at the obvious. It’s almost as if he has memorized it already.
He stands and walks around me, running the tip of his finger against my shoulders, until he’s behind me, where he kneels down. I can feel the fabric of his clothes pressed against my back and bare skin.
“What I mean, Gemma, is that I’ve experienced a moment so perfect that it remains unequaled.”
I think about that for a moment as a shiver runs down my spine, starting where his warm fingertips are touching the base of my neck.
“So, what you’re saying is that because the moment was perfect, you can’t feel that pleasure anymore?”
“What do you think I mean?” he asks, his mouth now joining his fingers on my left shoulder.
I dare myself to say it. Just do it. Don’t be a coward.
“I think you have been ruined since the night Chantel took you in her hands and pleasured you. I think you have trouble doing that on your own now, so instead, you punish yourself. You hurt yourself, trying to get where you want to go, and you get frustrated because you can’t. ”
As my speech comes to a definite end, he stops the lazy kisses.
He gets on his knees behind me as he smooths his hands around my waist and moves down between my thighs to cup my aching sex.
All the while, I am clutching her violin, just as she once did.
The only difference in this scenario is that I know I am using it as a shield. Against what, though, I have no clue.
Removing his hands from between my legs, he moves his palms up my thighs to run his fingers over mine where I still hold the violin. He traces each finger, slipping in between, and then his mouth is by my ear.
“What makes you think I don’t get there? And let’s be clear here, Gemma. Say exactly what you mean.”
Taking a breath, I feel my breasts rise on each side of Diva, reminding me that she’s here in the room again. “The morning I saw you.”
“Yes?”
“You didn’t—”
“Didn’t what, Gemma?”
“Come. You didn’t come.”
“But in the vineyard, inside of you, I came,” he reminds me.
I feel my core clench, and I have to shift because there is no way to tighten my naked thighs with my legs crossed as they are.