Chapter Ten
They walked fifteen blocks to his apartment. He held her tacos for her. Gwen felt like there was a battle waging in her stomach. She was no longer hungry at all, just…nauseated.
They didn’t talk. He didn’t look at her as they walked.
Surprisingly, he lived on 84th and Park. So she clearly was wrong about him not going north of 72nd.
Not that any of that mattered now, because she was getting in an elevator with Xander Thorne, heading up to the eighth floor. The doors closed, and she looked at their reflections in the steel.
Christ, she looked like an idiot. In leggings and Converse, with a nice top. Why didn’t she wear a dress to lunch today? She usually did. And her hair was tossed up.
The elevator smelled like tacos.
He stood next to her in his dark jeans and gray T-shirt. So tall in the blurred reflection.
“This is a nice building,” she squeaked.
He nodded. “I moved in last year.”
Her head did a strange nod-nod-nod-nod-nod thing, like once wasn’t enough.
The doors opened, and his hand shot out to hold them, so she could walk out first. He led her to the left and pulled out his keys, jingling in the silent hallway. Her throat was dry when the lock clicked, and he held the door open for her again.
She had no clue what she had just signed up for. Xander Thorne holding a civilized conversation with her? Xander Thorne agreeing to “jam” with her?
Her mind whited out for a moment as she realized “jam” might be a cool, hip slang way of saying “hook up” in the music world. That made her stomach tumble in not altogether unpleasing ways.
She entered the apartment. The kitchen to the right, with modern appliances and dark countertops. The living area straight ahead, with leather couches and the largest television Gwen had ever seen mounted on the wall.
A bag crinkled behind her, and she turned to see him place the takeout on the kitchen counter, tossing down his keys.
He looked at her quickly before saying, “This way,” and leading her down a small hall. One door was half closed, and she could make out the edge of a large bed through the crack. She shook the image clear, as he led her into the second room—a music studio.
Gwen gasped silently as the lights flipped on. She saw instruments hanging from the walls, soundproofing foam lining the sides of the room, and a huge desk with screens and microphones in the corner.
“Is this where you record for Thorne and Roses?” she asked, turning over her shoulder to see him still in the doorway.
“No, we go to a studio for that. This is just…” He ran a hand through his hair. “My own.”
She nodded, biting back the rest of her questions.
The Stradivarius sat in the corner of the room, next to the window. Gwen gravitated like a moon toward the cello, not daring to run her fingers over the neck like she wanted to. She eyed the walls. A solitary electric violin among a sea of cellos.
She was about to ask him to take it down, when her eye caught on the cello he played in most Thorne and Roses videos and concerts. The one he had held on the cover of the orchestra magazine. An electric cello that was basically a stick with strings. An angry red color with black markings that he held between his legs while sweating and tossing his hair around.
Now Gwen’s fingers did reach out, stroking the side, fingering the strings to feel their resistance.
She felt him come to stand beside her, and she dropped her hand, blushing. “Sorry.”
“Do you want to play her?”
She turned her head to him, and he looked down. “‘Her?’” she chuckled. “Your electric cello is a female?” She lifted a brow at him.
He looked away, a small blush rising on his pale skin. “Ruby,” he said quietly, taking the cello off the wall and grabbing the bow. “You don’t name your instruments?”
Instrument. Singular.
“I—no.”
He gave her a skeptical look.
“I guess,” she stumbled, rolling her eyes. “I guess I used to call my violin ‘Squeaky.’ But…” She laughed, looking down at the floor. She heard a rumble from his chest that could have been a laugh. “But I don’t…you know”—she gestured—“have an entire room full of girlfriends.”
He stuttered a laugh, and she turned to look at him. His face was younger when he laughed. He carried the electric cello— “Ruby”—to the center of the room, bringing a chair over. “Room full of girlfriends,” he muttered, smiling. He looked up and pointed at the violin. “That one’s Victor.”
She grinned and said, “So, you don’t discriminate?”
He started uncoiling a cord, eyes focused on his hands. “Well, Victor doesn’t go between my legs.”
Her smile broke into a laugh. She tried to take it back, breathing air back in, but her grin couldn’t be erased.
He plugged in the cello, flipped a few switches on the amps, and gestured for her to come sit. She moved to him on wobbly knees and sat on the very edge of the chair. Their fingers brushed when he handed her the bow, and before she could blush about it, she dragged it across the strings, and the speakers sang. She smiled, fascinated by how she could make the music here, with her hands and fingers, and send it somewhere else.
She played a scale, feeling the floor vibrate under her. Pulling the bow across the thin instrument, she ran through the beginning of Bach’s Cello Suites. She laughed as she missed a few notes, listening to the amp pick up every mistake.
She looked up at him, about to apologize for butchering Bach in his music shrine, and found him still standing just to her left, his eyes watching her fingers. She needed to tilt her head to see him, and also put all her focus into not looking at his eye-level crotch.
“Ruby is wonderful,” she settled on, looking back at the instrument. “Is she the one you play on tour?” she asked innocently, as if she didn’t already know.
She glanced his way when he didn’t respond. He jerked and said, “Yes. And others.”
Moving to the computer, he leaned down and shook the mouse until the screen came on. He pressed a few buttons in a complicated program on one screen, and Gwen saw that the other screen had a sheet music program open.
“Will you play it again?” he said, jumping to the amp next, fiddling with the dials.
When he stood, she pulled the bow across the strings, and the entire room shook. She looked up at him with wide eyes and said, “Shit, that’s loud.”
He smiled, and she played Bach’s Cello Suites again. She got more of the notes this time, but she also couldn’t concentrate on what she was playing because the room vibrated with every stroke.
She paused, finding him sitting in his computer chair watching her, leaning forward onto his knees.
“Do your neighbors ever complain?” she asked.
“They’ll knock on the walls if they’re home.” He shrugged. “Or call the police.”
She laughed, but it seemed like he was completely serious. She glanced over his shoulder at the computer with the sheet music, and asked, “What are you working on?”
You know, like artists do.
He turned to see the computer screen she referred to. “Oh. Just a few things for rehearsal this afternoon.” He took the mouse and opened a new window.
“When is rehearsal?”
“Twenty minutes ago.”
She stared at him, clicking away at the desktop.
“Oh. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have kept you—”
“No, no. It’s all just ‘hurry up and wait’ anyway.” He hit a button, and something started printing. “Do you want to sight-read something?”
She thought about how often he was late to Pops rehearsals, strolling in with his Ray-Bans on and giving Nathan a mocking smile when he would say, “Thank you for joining us, Mr. Thorne.” She wondered if Alex Fitzgerald would ever have been late for a rehearsal.
She swallowed her chastising words about timeliness and finally heard his question as he brought a music stand in front of her.
“Sure,” she squeaked. “Is this something the band plays?” She wasn’t sure she could call it sight-reading if she’d already downloaded it from iTunes and memorized the music he was collecting from the printer, but he didn’t have to know that.
“No, it’s new.” He dropped the pages on the stand and moved back to the amp, twisting knobs.
She stared down at the untitled page. No tempo markings, no bow markings. Just a flurry of eighth notes and triplets on a staff. He returned to his chair, facing her, running his hand through his hair again. She watched the way it fell exactly back into place, efforts futile.
“What’s the tempo?” she asked.
He looked up from her fingers and blinked a few times. “There isn’t one. The piece…doesn’t exist yet. Do what feels natural to you.” He swallowed, and he held her eyes as he said, “Don’t worry. It’s not a love song.”
His lips twitched, and she felt herself smile back.
Gwen looked down at the sheet music. She was tempted to take it very under-tempo, just so she could save face and not make mistakes. But the first few measures were blurring together in a swirl of notes and arpeggios.
She set the bow to Ruby’s strings, and chose her heartbeat for a tempo, dragging the bow across, listening to the speakers hum back at her. An aggravated tune, twisting like wind and biting like the cold.
And then peace. Gwen placed a rallentando at the end of the measure, pouring the sound into the next, soothing the tension.
A quick pull into another storm, but calmer, with structure. And then her eyes flickered to the next page, and she found fingerpicking notated, quick rhythms like rain.
She slowed, fumbling to free her fingers of the bow for the plucking, and found the pace again while her fingers pulled at the strings, the electric bass pulsing the air with notes and rhythms.
A quick change back to the bow—Gwen could tell it was supposed to be sudden; the raindrop rhythm didn’t even complete the phrase.
She felt her breath catch as the end ramped up. A challenging progression toward another arpeggio, fumbling down, down—to something low and almost incomplete.
Then the tonic, the resolution. And then peace.
Quiet. Gwen stared at the page, wondering at its completion. After so long in aggravating phrases, to end so softly…She double-checked that she hadn’t missed an accidental.
“Was I even close?” She laughed, turning to him.
Elbows on his knees again, leaning forward like his body begged him to be elsewhere. His eyes were dark, deep brown locked onto her face.
She watched his throat move and his lips press together before he asked, “Why did you choose violin over cello?”
She stared back at him, her neck craned to the right to see him.
“I was better at violin,” she whispered.
She looked away, feeling very open and vulnerable under his stare, feeling something twisting in her stomach, low and dark. Like music.
“What about you? Why did you choose cello over violin?” she asked, glancing at him.
In the pause, he took a deep breath, and she did the same.
“I was better at violin,” he echoed.
She blinked at him, watching his eyes slide over her face. There he was. She thought she could maybe see Alex in him then. A perfectionist, always striving to be something better. The person who started the Cello Suites over when he found one small issue. Xander didn’t strive. Xander didn’t need to prove himself.
“Play it again?” he asked.
She glanced over the music again and began, very aware of intonation and vibrato. And his eyes on her. She began. When she was sight-reading, she couldn’t focus on anything but the page. But now that she was more comfortable, she focused on every little movement he made, and whether it meant she was doing it right or wrong.
He stood suddenly, and she cut off. He knelt next to the amp, twisting dials, and then jumping to lean over the computer, clicking at a few programs. “You don’t feel it, do you?”
“Sorry?”
“Play it again,” he muttered, clicking through to a new screen. He turned back to her, stepping close and pushing his hair back. “Everything is too precise. You don’t feel it.” He looked down at her, taking in her posture, seated forward, practically falling off the chair. “Start from the beginning.”
She turned back to the music, back to the arpeggios and gliding rhythms. She placed the bow to the strings, and the room thundered. She gasped. He’d turned everything up, rocking the room.
She started over, wincing at the noise. The cops would be here soon. Her shoulders tightened against the vibrations.
“No,” he called out over the sound. She pulled the bow off, but there was an echo setting on, pulsing. “You don’t have to be so tense.”
She tried again, and the chair jerked as he pulled her and the cello backward, closer to the speaker. She gasped soundlessly under the screech of the cello as the bow jumped, scraping against the strings in an odd shriek.
He turned her so the speaker was at her back, screaming into her spine. He spoke into her ear. She could feel his body leaning over the back of her chair.
“This is something you’re creating,” he whispered, just loud enough over the echoes. He reached around and plucked a string on the neck of the cello—the sound bouncing through the room. “Can you feel it? Here?” A finger on her back, between her shoulder blades.
She shivered. And nodded, focusing on the vibrations.
Both his hands landed on her shoulders, palms warm through her shirt. “This is where you tense. Don’t focus here.”
Her skin prickled, chills running down her arms into her fingers. He’d known. He’d noticed her exact tension.
She placed the bow to the strings, her left hand rearranging its place on the neck, and tried the piece again. She got through the first four measures with her heart beating in her ears, before his left hand slid down her shoulder, rounding her arm to her wrist. His thumb rubbed a circle, and his voice brushed her ear. “Relax.”
She remembered his insult: She holds the cello like a subway pole.
Her grip loosened, and she missed a few notes, not having the calluses on her fingers to make up for her grip. She shook her head, frustrated with herself.
“It’s all right. Play it again.”
Mabel never taught her like this. She would let her finish a piece and then give notes, showing her how to do better. She was never this…hands-on. For a fleeting moment, she wondered how Mabel had taught him.
She started from the beginning, focusing on her left hand, relaxing. He kept his fingers light on her wrist to remind her, his body hovering over her, other hand still on her shoulder. She got all the way to the fingerpicking section this time before he stopped her again.
“Play it again. Don’t be afraid of it.”
She frowned, not sure what was wrong that time. The bow dragged, and he stopped her after the second measure. Just as she was about to tell him to just let her fucking play it, he lifted off of her, twisting quickly to the computer.
“I want you to hear the difference,” he said, clicking buttons and opening another page. She watched him press a red button, and a recording line traveled across the screen, flat-lining. He reached over and plucked at a string, and they watched the vibration in the program.
She turned back to the music, and the awareness that they were recording overwhelmed her. It added a pressure that live performance didn’t have. She took a breath and focused on releasing her wrist, letting her fingers move lightly.
He let her get to the end this time, but immediately told her to start again. “That take is out of the way. You’re better than that take.”
She snapped her head up to him and glared. “Oh, I am?” Her tone was caustic. “Thank you.”
“You are,” he said simply. “But if you worry about who’s listening, you’ll never be fully playing.” He stood to the side of the chair, towering over her and forcing her to be fully aware of his body as they talked.
Her breath was coming quickly, and she wondered again about the Plaza. What would have happened if they hadn’t been interrupted? Did he want her like she wanted him?
Something darkened in his eyes, and she realized she was staring. She shook herself and turned back to the sheet music, almost memorized now.
His hands returned to her shoulders just as she began to pull the bow, palms rounding outward, fingers brushing down to the tops of her triceps. Her skin broke out in goose bumps.
She felt as riled up and itchy as the beginning section’s aggravated arpeggios alluded to. She danced across the strings, keeping her left fingers light but pushing through with an irritation.
“Yes,” he breathed into her ear. She felt the barest whisper of his lips across the skin. “Good.” His left hand traced across her shoulder. “No matter how frustrated you are”—fingers brushing across her pulse—“you have to be gentle with her neck.”
Gwen swallowed. And she knew he could feel it. She’d never felt music like this before. Like she was a part of it. Like it could do things to her body. Or maybe that was just being in his presence.
She danced out of the arpeggios, and as she slowed for the next section, pulling the bow smoothly, she felt his fingers on her throat tapping lightly along with her left hand.
“Keep going.”
He shifted behind her as she moved into the next section— less wild than the first but still a whirlwind. And then he was behind her. Fitting into the space between her back and the back of the chair, sitting with his thighs on either side of her, his hands steadying himself on her hips.
The bow screeched, and the speaker thundered behind them.
“It’s all right,” he murmured into her neck. “Let’s do it together.”
She started from the beginning without prompting. She could feel his breath on her skin, his fingertips light on her waist. She moved through the second measure, not sure if she wanted this to be over or to go on forever. And then he leaned forward, pressing his chest flush against her spine, pushing her body forward—and then back.
Moving her.
Like musicians do.
She thought of Alex Fitzgerald, his torso twisting with the violin. Hilary Hahn’s elbows dipping through difficult stanzas. Yo-Yo Ma’s closed eyes and shaking head.
She could feel his ribs expand, breathing into the music, and then he rolled into her again like waves in the ocean of this song. Lulling her.
The vibration of the music humming through his chest and into her spine was intoxicating. She found a rhythm of her own against his body, eyes drifting. Their bodies were rolling together, sensually. At the picking section, she felt his right hand tapping against her waist, whether consciously or not, finding the notes against her body.
And then.
And then.
Breath on her neck. His face turning slowly into her hair. Lips plucking across her skin, dragging like the bow in her hands.
She sighed, the room swallowing it. Swallowing her whole.
His fingers stayed light on her waist, and it only heated her further, her body starting to move in directions just to feel more pressure from him.
She slowed to the ending resolution, and she could feel his lips hovering over her skin, as if asking permission. She started over without pause, back to the beginning.
Don’t stop, she told him with the bow.
His lips grazed her ear. And the tension in the arpeggios sailed, her fingers knowing them so well, she could close her eyes as his tongue pressed to her skin.
She flowed into the slow peace of the second section, and his right hand slid across her stomach, pressing his palm to her.
She hummed in harmony.
The chair vibrated under her, teasing her open legs. He shifted against her at the tempo change, and she gasped to feel him hard against her back. His lips sucked slowly on her neck.
Her arms shook with fatigue and something else. And the music drifted through her, coiling inside.
She began to pluck at the strings. His fingers danced over her waistband, and she knew what came next. She bobbed her head in a small nod, feeling her cheekbone brush against his jaw. His fingers dipped into her leggings.
Her knees squeezed the cello braces on either side. And her ragged breath brought her back against his chest in short waves, pressing them together.
His fingers tumbled down, sliding beneath her underwear and running through her. Her head was spinning, eyes fluttering, and she couldn’t even hear the music anymore, just the sound of his breath, harsh in her ear.
Rubbing her, drifting across her clit, as she switched back to the bow. His lips kissed wetly at her jaw, sucking at her.
Her hips rolled against his fingers, the bow jumping off the strings for a moment, and he groaned into her skin, his hips pressing forward tightly against her backside, and his left hand squeezed at her side.
A frenzied pace. She closed her eyes and tried to picture the sheet music, building to the end as his finger slipped down and pressed lightly at her entrance. She moaned, tilting her head onto his shoulder, playing music only she could hear, and just as he pushed inside of her, his other hand ran up her stomach to cover her breast, squeezing her close to him.
The song was almost finished.
He slid in and out of her, her muscles twitching and her legs pressing tight on the braces.
His tongue lapped at her neck, his fingers ran across her nipple, and his thumb twisted to press at her clit.
“Alex.”
Her hips jumped, clenching his fingers inside of her as she came, deliciously. Her arms shook, pulling the bow across the strings. The tonic. The resolution.
Her thighs shivered against his. Her throat clicked around air. Her core fluttered in time with the vibrations in the room.
His fingers slipped out of her, his other hand running slow circles around her breast through her shirt, his lips in her hair.
“I knew it,” he whispered, voice shaking. “Perfect. I knew you were capable of it.”
Her eyes snapped open.
The room bounced and shook in front of her face.
Just earlier that day she’d been warned—Don’t let anyone tell you what you’re capable of. Even if it sounds like a compliment.
His lips grazed across her pulse.
She jumped, standing from the chair, slipping out of his arms, and stumbling to the computer. She fumbled to hit the space bar with the cello and bow in her hands, stopping the recording. Just the cello piped in through the amp and wires. It didn’t record—it didn’t hear her.
She spun to face him. Black eyes stared back at her. He sat in the chair, legs spread wide from where he’d cradled her, thick bulge in his dark denim jeans. He breathed sharply, dragging in air, staring at her like she was prey, stalking her.
And maybe that’s what she was.
How many other young musicians were “anything but ordinary”? How many other girls did he bring back to his apartment to make music with, confusing their senses with praise and blaring speakers?
Why would he do this? Why would he have her over in the first place? And she realized with a sharp breath—
First chair.
Was she here to be humiliated? Was this revenge for taking away his spot, his legacy? And had she made it easy for him, by being half gone for him before she’d even walked through the door?
Xander’s eyes blinked back the heat, brows knitting together. “Gwen?”
She flinched, and cleared her throat. “I have to go.”
Placing Ruby and the bow down on the ground as softly as possible, she snatched up her tote bag.
“Go? What’s wrong?” he asked, starting to stand up gingerly. “You were just starting to feel it.”
Her head snapped to him, gaze cold. With Mabel’s warning running through her head, she spat, “I didn’t come here for a lesson.”
With legs still shaking from her climax, she darted out of his studio, passing the dark bedroom and the expensive furniture and the uneaten tacos, throwing the door open wide and taking the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator.
She flew out of the building like she was being chased, and it only took half a block to realize that she wasn’t.
Gwen buckled over, leaning on her knees and catching her breath.
Perfect. I knew you were capable of it.
She shook her head, trying to clear his voice from it, along with all of Mabel’s warnings. Things she said about Nathan and Ava that seemed to echo—
“Miss, are you all right?”
She jerked her head up. An older woman walking her corgi had stopped and was staring at her.
“Oh, I’m fine. I just—”
—had Xander Thorne’s fingers in my underwear.
“I’m fine,” she settled on, waving the woman away.
The corgi barked at her, like it knew she didn’t belong on this street. Or like it could smell Xander on her.
Gwen hefted her tote on her shoulder and walked briskly to the nearest subway.
Her heart pounded with the hum of the city, and she tried not to think about how her core was still throbbing.
She’d had orgasms before.
She’d had plenty of orgasms before.
She’d had plenty of good orgasms before.
What she hadn’t had was an orgasm with another person.
Ever.
And there hadn’t been “another person” very often, either.
There had been Ronnie Schultz from high school. He’d laid her down across the couch in his basement and kissed her until their clothes were off.
And Kevin Peters, an old friend from her first neighborhood who she’d caught up with two years ago. He was a year older than she was. They’d ended up having sex on an air mattress on the floor of his apartment.
She hadn’t come either time.
Gwen was at the 6 train, sliding her card through the turnstile and running for a closing door before she could stop to think what this meant.
Maybe all that had happened was that Xander Thorne wanted to have sex with her.
And she wanted to have sex with him—had thought about it plenty of times—but things had moved too fast in there. She hadn’t felt that raw passion with Ronnie or Kevin or anyone else in her life.
Ronnie had asked her to take out the recycling when she left, and Kevin had texted her a week later to invite her to Trader Joe’s—to carry bags, she’d found out later. She’d felt thoroughly discarded by each of them. If Xander Thorne only wanted sex from her, she didn’t think she could handle that. To be discarded by him.
And furthermore, she still wondered what this was about for him. Just another groupie to play with? An “extraordinary” girl until the sheets were cold?
Or was it truly about the orchestra? Was he throwing her off her game just days before the first rehearsal, payback for taking first chair?
If he’d wanted to get her all turned around, confusing her before her big day, then he’d done a pretty good job.
She leaned on the subway doors as the train pulled away from the station, her mind circling the realization of how easy it had been to get her in his apartment. How easy it had been for him to find excuses to put his hands on her.
How easy she’d made it for him.