16. Chapter 16 #2
But when he laid his fingers on the keys, they did not find the notes of Chopin or Rossini.
Not even Offenbach, for which she’d received a mediocre review that had flung her into a dramatic fit at the time.
Instead, his fingers sought out the notes of the song he’d played back then, in the basement.
The song where he’d arranged the notes to skip over the broken strings and discovered the melody that exercised her entire range.
Slowly at first, one note after the other, then faster, lither, Cassius flowed into its gentle undulations and cadence.
The tune was scrappy at the start until it filled and found its pace, it was sweet and then dark with thumping chords and shifting pedals, it whispered, then gave a shout.
He closed his eyes, and the music was in him, gliding from his heart and along his veins, into his fingers and back again.
And although he felt her brush against his side as she sat beside him, it didn’t disturb him, didn’t matter, because nothing mattered.
Because it wasn’t her song. Nor was it his.
It was their song. It was a song for lost homes, homes they only knew from other people’s memories turned into stories, homes that didn’t exist, homes lost to time and ruled by another country’s boots.
It was a song of forgotten hopes, one that wept for all the people they should have made memories with, who were now nothing more than lint and dust.
Odette hummed a few notes. Then the hum turned to words that she sang low and under her breath.
And though I will kraj
in you I will find my
own
way
home…
Cassius rested. ‘You remember,’ he said.
‘You remember,’ she said.
‘Such a long time to carry a memory.’ Cassius cupped her cheek and ran his thumb across her bottom lip, then leant in, claiming them before he could hesitate and think better of it.
He was here to start the end, not kiss her, but she tasted so sweet, her lips so soft, and she opened with a sigh.
Chasing the invitation, he moved closer, pressing deeper. Warmth, longing, and champagne.
He pulled back and rested his forehead against hers.
‘Why not me. Why all of them, but never me.’
‘You walked away,’ she countered.
‘You didn’t follow.’
‘You are right,’ she said, as she set her fingers against the keys, tapping out another simple scale.
‘I watched you go. I wanted to call out, but I couldn’t.
I did not know who I was. I knew I was on the edge of something.
And you… you were larger than the curtains and the stage and even the music.
And I knew that if I followed, I would have lost myself in you. ’
‘We keep finding each other, though, don’t we?’
Odette played, her notes filling the silence. ‘Why don’t you like my opera?’ she asked.
‘I do like it. Ezra is very talented.’
‘So it is better? No longer adequate?’
Cassius shook his head and looked down. ‘It is still only adequate.’
Odette slammed the keys, then sat back to face him. ‘Why?’
He played the opening notes of her lament to the moon.
She hummed it, perfectly, her voice and the tune in sync.
‘A peasant girl, lured by an evil lord with a promise of wealth? In love with a simple boy who will give her… what exactly? A life tending his fires, having his children? And the ending? Why would you want that story to be your opera.’
‘Audiences love those endings. Carmen, La Traviata. I would not have a career without those parts.’
‘But they are not you.’
‘And what would you make me?’
‘A goddess.’
She laughed. ‘I am not a goddess. I am only a woman who can sing.’
‘Not to me.’ Cassius stilled, his fingers resting on the keys as the last of the notes faded.
His chest caved with horror and apprehension at the realisation of what he had just said.
Three words, three tiny words, and the eternity of the confession weighed heavy inside them.
‘If I wrote you an opera, you would not sing to the moon. You would be the moon. You would light the night, make tides swell and recede. You would provide cover for smugglers and dark deeds or give hope to those who are lost and light their way.’
Odette stood. Cassius twisted on the piano bench to turn his back to the keys, like in the pit, so that he could face her.
‘Why must I be a goddess? Why so much? I am just a woman.’ With a slow tug, she pulled the sash at her waist until the bow broke, and the length of silk hung loose.
She untied the knot. Her gown parted, and with a shrug, she slipped it from her shoulders to crumple at her feet.
She kicked off her slippers. ‘Nothing more,’ she said, as she gathered the hem of her chemise into her palms to pull it over her head. ‘And nothing less.’
Just a woman, she said. Not with apology, but with fire.
Just a woman. The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen beyond a painting or a statue.
And even then, she could make artists weep.
And he, just a man, let his hardening cock influence his gaze, let it draw him to the light pink circles of her nipples, let his eyes linger on the curves of her hips, then skim the dip and crescent of her stomach, and finally, come to rest on the dark slit between her thighs and her smooth, shaved mound.
Odette reached her hands over her head, interlaced her fingers, and stretched as she turned in one perfect circle.
‘This is all that I am. Can I be just this, and only this?’ She walked her fingers along his arm and stepped into the space between his thighs. ‘Can I be just a woman?’
Cassius slid his palm along her thigh, beneath her arse, and inched his finger between her smooth folds from behind, teasing at her cunt.
A perfect groan burst from her lips as he pushed a finger inside her.
He arched to find her nipple and drew it into his mouth, running his tongue over the point as it hardened.
She grew slicker as he thrust his finger inside her, and when he withdrew and tasted the tang of her, he could not contain a moan.
Odette took his hand and raised it to her lips.
Sucked the tip of his finger. She nipped, and the imprint of her teeth shot a glorious spasm of pleasure lined with pain through him, the tiny flicks of her tongue which followed melting him into his seat.
Piano keys jutted against his back as he splayed his thighs wider to bring her close.
He scraped his teeth over her soft stomach, over the bump of her ribs, kissing, memorising where she was salty and where she was sweet.
When he took her nipple into his mouth again, she guided his hand over her arse and between her thighs to push his finger into her warmth once more.
Her groan echoed through the vast room, the melody of it thick in the air while he grunted, rough and low.
‘Ask me to stay.’ Cassius ran his fingertip around her nub.
‘Ask if you can,’ she said, breathless.
Cassius held his finger still. Odette wiggled against him and whimpered when he did not respond. ‘Ask,’ he repeated.
Odette bent so that her mouth brushed his ear, her warm breath sending gooseflesh down his neck, prickling against his collar and bristling with longing.
‘Why are you pretending you don’t want me?
’ She ran her palm along his thigh and over his cock.
A deep rumble escaped him as she stroked his length, so hard now that it formed a tight peak beneath his trousers.
‘If I unbuttoned you and climbed on top of you, would you push me away?’ A button, and another, as she flipped him apart.
‘If I bent over the piano, would you sit back on your bench and refuse me?’
‘I want you to want me,’ he rasped. ‘I want you to choose me. Just once.’
And something in her stance, in her posture, shifted.
‘Follow me.’ Odette hooked a finger around his, like a link in a chain, and drew him to standing.
Her bare feet made almost no sound against the floor even as his shoes clipped against marble.
Mesmerised, he obeyed as she led him down the hallway and deeper into the house, past all the rooms he knew, then further, into unfamiliar spaces.
He shot scant glances at their shapes as they passed, but his gaze always returned to her naked back.
At last, she stopped before a door and turned to kiss him.
‘My private chambers,’ she whispered, as they broke apart. ‘Join me?’
‘More,’ he dared. ‘Beg me.’
Odette slid her palm down his front and beneath his waistband, her access eased by his unbuttoned flies where she’d begun to unfasten him at the piano.
As she stroked his cock, she licked her lips.
‘Beg you?’ The words were toys in her mouth, mere trinkets.
Like she admired them, but could not decide if they appealed to her enough to keep, or if she would toss them away.
She knew he would do anything she wanted. If she decided to flip his words and send him to his knees instead to grovel, then all she had to do was breathe the command and he would. What kind of man asked to be asked, begged to be begged? She pandered to his longing as an indulgence.
‘You should know,’ she said, as she opened the door to walk backwards, leading him inside, ‘that I have never invited a man in here.’ She pushed his coat from his shoulders.
Freed his waistcoat, then his shirt. The cuffs snagged, and Odette brought his wrists close as she unthreaded each button, pausing to kiss and lick the place where his veins pounded.
‘But you have been in this room with me many times.’ Another lick, and she guided his shirt off his body.
It crumpled to the floor in a tangle of white, stark against the patterns on the rug.
‘After some performances, when you have watched me all night, I imagine you as I stroke myself. I think of you as I bring myself to pleasure.’