Chapter 1
ONE
Verity
I always suspected God has favorites, but watching Wright Bellamy perform onstage, now I know for sure.
How else do you explain a man who looks like that—his face a landscape of sculpted bones and slumberous eyes and a mouth made for sin—but who plays the piano like God Himself anointed those hands?
“If I were into guys,” my girlfriend, Petra, says, stealing my margarita and taking a sip, “I’d hit that.”
I laugh a little breathlessly, accepting my drink when she passes it back to me, and letting my eyes drift to the stage.
In the dimness of the club, the brightest thing in the whole room is the pool of light cast over Wright, gilding him in shades of copper and dark gold.
Leanly muscled, he has wide shoulders and a strong chest. The tapered elegance of his fingers moving deftly across the piano comes as a surprise—a touch so light it seems to barely skim the keys.
Is that how he touches a lover?
“I heard he was some kind of prodigy as a kid,” our friend Ezekiel whispers, jarring me from my wandering thoughts. “Now they say he’s the best musician to come through here in decades.”
I pull my glance from the stage and give Ezekiel my full attention. “He attends Finley?”
“Yeah, a senior,” Petra says, stealing a French fry from my plate. “But he’s already got early acceptance into Juilliard’s grad program.”
“Okay, Miss I Ain’t Hungry.” I slap her hand playfully, but then feed her another fry dripping with ketchup.
“I wasn’t hungry.” Petra grins and chews. “Till I saw your plate. You make everything look better. Especially that dress you rocking tonight. Damn, baby.”
Her eyes hungrily rake my breasts, fully covered with deceptive modesty since I’m not wearing a bra, and my nipples pique through the thin silk of my dress in the club’s air-conditioning.
“Can’t wait to get you home,” she says, her doe-brown eyes heating.
“I’mma hold you to it.” I nod to the margarita she’s sipping on, her third. “You know how you get after a few of those. Watch. I’ll be putting your ass to bed and you’ll be all talk.”
“Oh, I’ll stay up for you,” she says, leaning in and nibbling my ear.
“We still partying at your place tomorrow?” Gillian, Ezekiel’s girlfriend, asks, eyeing Petra over the rim of her martini.
“I’m down.” Petra grabs another fry and looks at me. “You want to, baby?”
“Why not?” I shrug and laugh without humor. “Not like I have a project due Monday or anything.”
“Still having trouble with the screenplay?” Ezekiel asks.
“Understatement.” I blow out a frustrated breath. “I thought I had it, but then all my inspiration dried up and I’m back to square one.”
“Bet I can inspire you,” Petra whispers in my ear, her hand under the table sliding over my knee and brushing inside my thigh.
My breath hitches and I turn to capture her lips in a light kiss. Everything with Petra is light. We both prefer it that way for now. She’s the best lover I’ve ever had. Not that I’ve had many, but of the guys and girls I’ve let this close, she’s topped them all.
“You two are disgustingly sweet,” Ezekiel complains with a grin that turns salacious. “Let me know when we can get in on all that sugar.”
Petra slants a look at me that holds a question.
It’s not the first time Ezekiel and Gillian have hinted they’d like to swap or do a threesome, foursome…
some-some. Petra doesn’t do monogamy. I knew that from the beginning.
She was one of the first people I met when I transferred to Finley at the start of the semester two months ago.
The attraction was instant, and it only took her a week to get me in her bed, which quickly became a regular occurrence.
When we decided to take it beyond just fucking, she immediately clarified she still didn’t want monogamy, and I said I understood.
The first time I showed up unannounced, though, and passed a girl from my psych class leaving Petra’s apartment with a ring of fresh hickeys on her neck, I cried.
We decided then to discuss other partners and agree before we slept with someone else.
That helped ease me into an arrangement I’d never thought I would allow, much less enjoy.
College is where you figure a lot of things out about yourself, and I’m not sure I’ll always want an open relationship, but for now, this one suits me.
In our time together, I’ve never been tempted to try a threesome, though.
Gillian and Ezekiel aren’t changing my mind.
When I give a tiny shake of my head to Petra’s unspoken question, she chuckles and squeezes my knee.
Onstage, Wright Bellamy shifts into a jazz number and we, like the rest of the room, fall silent. When I study my friends, their expressions are as rapt as everyone else’s. Wright pours the song out like honey, dripping, clinging to the air, ensorcelling the crowd until the last note.
“So you guys know him?” I ask, dragging my eyes from the stage and back to the table as the crowd applauds.
Petra pauses, one of my fries poised at her lips, her gaze speculative. “Yeah. Finley’s not a big college. I met him when we were freshmen, so I’ve known him four years, though we don’t see each other much anymore. All the girls were losing their minds over him soon as he hit the campus.”
If he was anywhere near as fine then as he is now, I can see why.
“Not all the girls,” I tease, brushing that thought aside to lean over and settle my mouth over hers.
“Well, the ones who like dick.” She smiles into our kiss. “Not me, no.”
“We had a few classes together sophomore year,” Gillian says around a bite of her burger. “He’s cool. Kind of intense sometimes, but cool.”
“What do you mean by intense?” I ask.
“You know how creative people are.” She shrugs and washes her food down with a gulp of beer.
“No,” Petra says wryly. “Verity would have no idea about those creative types, being a film major and all.”
“Oh. Right.” Gillian presses the back of her hand to her mouth to catch a giggle. “Well, you’re not like that, Verity. You’re almost… I don’t know, shy.”
“I wasn’t even sure you talked the first few times we hung out,” Ezekiel adds. “I told Petra, ‘That mute girl fine as hell.’”
“Fuck you, Zeke,” I laugh with an eye roll for good measure. I’m not shy exactly, but it does take a minute for me to open up around new people.
“It’s them quiet ones you gotta watch,” Ezekiel says with a playful leer and a wink.
“Anyway,” Gillian continues. “The guy’s like… big-personality vibes. He’s not over the top, but always draws a crowd.”
That prompts another question, but before I can ask it, the words melt on my tongue as Wright’s voice winds through the room, so deep and rich it’s like a physical presence and sends an actual shiver down my spine.
He sings, too? It should be a crime to have that voice and those hands.
And that face. And that body. And that charisma that seems to effortlessly command the entire room from behind a piano in a circle of light.
“I’mma sing a little Anita Baker,” he says, slanting a grin over the crowd. “Some Luther. Remember back in the day, Sunday night, listening to the quiet storm on the radio?”
People in the crowd snap and clap their approval.
“What y’all know ’bout quiet storm?” He turns up the wattage on his smile, his deep voice rolling through the packed club. I couldn’t look away if someone paid me to.
He ends the set with “As” by Stevie Wonder.
His voice, reaching for the high notes and rasping over the lower ones, raises goose bumps all over my body.
I’ll never hear this song the same again.
He’s stolen it. Claimed it—the haunting notes captured in this small, crowded club on a night when I was completely unsuspecting.
Unaware that a man like this would arrest my attention so completely with dark mysterious eyes and a piano bent to his will.
The last note dies and his eyes seem to caress each face in the crowd, but it feels like something he’s practiced, cultivated for performances to make you feel you’re the only one in the room.
But then his stare falls on me.
And stays.
His fingers don’t falter over the melody he’s coaxing from the piano, but even as his hands glide over the keys, he seems to still, a new alertness cracking his studied expression.
I should look away because the longer his eyes rest on my face, the warmer my cheeks heat.
I swallow with difficulty, my throat tightening and my mouth going dry.
Without looking away, I reach for my margarita, breaking the strange spell when my hand hits the glass and knocks it over.
“Shit,” I mutter, hastily grabbing a napkin to mop up the liquid soaking our table.
“You okay?” Petra grabs a few napkins to help clean up the mess I’ve made.
“Yeah, I’m good. Not paying attention.”
Or paying too much attention to the man onstage. Wright has moved on, the practiced charm back in place and his eyes elsewhere. I should be relieved, but it feels a little cold without the heat of that stare.
“You wanna meet him?” Petra asks with a knowing smirk.
“Who?” I squeeze a soggy napkin and toss it onto the table. “Me? Meet… huh?”
“You don’t have to hide it.” Petra shakes her head, setting the Kool-Aid–pink tips of her locs dancing across the sleek muscles of her arms and shoulders. “I know you.”
“I don’t need to meet him.”
“You know it wouldn’t bother me if you met him,” she whispers. “And did more if you want.”
I release a slow, measured breath, hoping to regulate the pounding of my heart.
“I don’t need to meet him,” I repeat, injecting firmness into my voice.