Chapter Sixteen #2
“You only have yourself to blame for that. You started that hypnotizing hand massage thing.” I turned in the entryway of his house.
Three years didn’t change much about a place like this.
Same marble tiles, same curved stairway, same shiny black baby grand at the bottom of the stairs.
It all seemed a little smaller than I remembered though.
Still huge. More spacious than any other house I’d ever stayed in.
But in my memory, it had seemed larger than life.
I’d spent so much time here, especially before the tour. There was a guest room upstairs that I’d considered mine for a little while just because we’d be up late talking and making music and ordering ungodly amounts of pizza.
I glanced into the living room, not sure what to expect.
It wasn’t like Skye was the kind of kid that left toys and craft supplies everywhere—and they’d obviously cleaned before coming to Wild Fields—but every mid-century modern detail was still in the exact space I remembered it in.
I wouldn’t have known anyone besides Brooks lived here.
When I looked back, Brooks still stood by the door, watching me, giving me the space to return to this place.
“You know, you promised to teach me to play this thing,” I said and lifted the key cover off the piano. I pressed a single high note, the sound echoing clearly in the round and hollow space of the entryway. This really was the perfect spot for acoustics.
“I feel like I broke a lot of promises to you,” he said, still frozen.
“They’re not broken.” I played another note and listened to it fade in the room. “Just delayed.”
Finally, he moved. He joined me by the piano, stepping up behind me. His warmth pressed against my back, and his comforting scent filled my nostrils, as he reached his arms around me and guided my hands to the keys.
“Start on the E.” He gently pushed my finger down on the corresponding key.
“D sharp.” He guided me to the next note.
“Back to E.” For a few moments, I let him direct me into playing a short melody, captivated by his voice in my ear and the feel of his hands around mine.
Until I recognized the tune, laughed, and turned around between him and the piano.
“Really? Beethoven?” Not exactly the kind of music you expected from Brooks Monroe.
“ ‘Für Elise.’ ”
“I know what it’s called. I’m just surprised.”
His hands slid over my waist, and his eyes followed his own touch as he ran his fingers down my sides, to my hips, gliding along the floral detailing there.
“There’s theories about who Elise was. There was a young woman called Elisabeth, but there’s very little proof that people in her life called her Elise. ”
Brooks stepped closer, his foot falling between mine. I automatically shifted back just a little, my backside colliding with the keyboard. A wild cacophony filled the room, and his hands steadied around my waist, keeping me balanced on the edge of the piano.
“She was an incredibly talented singer,” Brooks continued, “but much younger than him. Around twenty years. They actually met when she was still a teenager. She sang her debut opera at seventeen. For years, they were part of the same group of talented musicians and composers and poets, and they became really close friends. It was a meeting of the minds.”
It wasn’t hard to connect the dots. A younger singer.
Coming together in this bubble of creativity.
Years of friendship. A nickname nobody else used.
Okay, I’d been twenty years old when we’d met, but I probably also had a much higher life expectancy than an opera singer born in the eighteenth century.
Seventeen was a little creepy, but probably marriageable age back then.
“What happened?” I asked, voice hoarse.
Brooks bent down, lowering his lips to my throat. “She turned him down,” he said and kissed a path along my collarbone.
My eyes fell shut, my senses closing in on the heat of his mouth on my skin.
Brooks brought his second foot between mine, nudging my legs apart. I grabbed his shoulders for support as my weight teetered on the piano.
“No happy ending?” I asked.
“That depends, I guess.” Brooks pulled up my skirt bit by bit, organza and chiffon turning into a cloud around my waist. “Elisabeth lived a long life, got married, had children who became artists and musicians themselves, and traveled the world with her husband.”
“Good for her,” I mumbled, as the cold tickle of air against my exposed flesh distracted me.
Despite all the layers of this skirt, somehow every pair of underwear I owned had thrown wrinkles under the tight bodice.
I hadn’t regretted going commando until right now, when I felt the trickle of arousal just from being exposed to him like this.
God, I had to look desperate. Fair enough, after sharing a bed with him every night without a single orgasm, I was desperate.
I just hadn’t meant to put it on display like this.
“Mm-hmm.” Brooks took hold of my knee and hooked it around his waist, opening me up and shamelessly watching my muscles pulse for him.
“And Beethoven?” I asked breathlessly.
“He…uhm…” He rasped a laugh. “Fuck, it’s hard to concentrate when you’re so pretty with your legs spread for me.”
I squirmed as his words unfurled a thick pressure at the base of my spine.
Clearly, Brooks saw that reaction reach the space between my thighs too, because he smirked and let his hand slide up my thigh. His fingers dug into my flesh, opening me wider without even touching me where it mattered.
“Music history is a very new kind of dirty talk to me,” I breathed. “Sorta works though.”
“Beethoven started to lose his hearing and got sick. By all means, not a happy end, but in that time, after he parted ways with Elise, he composed some of his most iconic pieces. ‘Ode to Joy’?” Brooks let a single finger trail the delicate skin of my outer lips as he held me open.
Need pulsed under his touch, but he didn’t give me the kind of pressure I craved.
God, I had to be close to dripping on his piano.
“Without being able to hear it, he wrote music that was centuries more advanced than that of his peers but disregarded in his own time. He became legendary.”
Not the kind of ending I’d hoped for. Not when I thought he’d brought up “Für Elise” because of how it correlated to us. Then again, he wasn’t wrong. The happy end depended on the definition.
“Enough history,” I said nonetheless and pulled him to me. I kissed him feverishly and he didn’t hesitate to return the energy. His hand between my legs stilled, but in this bruising, biting, breathless kiss, I still tried to tilt my hips a little, meet his fingers, find my release.
“Tell me what you like,” he gasped.
“Dark chocolate, sandalwood, strappy sandals.”
“In bed, Addie love,” he chuckled and leaned against my forehead. “I’m good with just about anything, so you tell me if there’s anything you want. Do you want me to fuck you on this piano? Want to have slow cuddly sex in bed? Blindfold you? I’m game. Or if there’s anything you hate…”
“I won’t give you a blow job.” I rushed the words out, too aware of how much of a dealbreaker they were for many men. “Like…ever. I already don’t like having to do the touching and then with my mouth?!”
“What about me going down on you?”
“I like being touched, just not the other way around. Consider me a one-way street.”
He kissed the top of my nose. “You’re a pillow princess.”
“No, I really don’t need a pillow. I don’t even need a bed. I like being on top every once in a while, too. You don’t have to treat me like a princess. I think I’d prefer it if you didn’t. But I’m not going to fondle you or lick you.” I really sucked at explaining this.
“Fondle me?” he chuckled.
“Okay, the moment is over. The mood has passed.” I rolled my eyes at him but didn’t make a move to actually put any distance between us.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get you back in the mood in no time.
I’m very giving.” His mouth sunk to the delicate skin over my pulse point, his voice lowering to a rasp.
“Very generous.” His lips traced down my neck to the hollow of my collarbone, and I was sure he felt every stuttering breath in my throat under his kisses.
“More than happy to hand out pleasure.” The hand that had stilled between my legs shifted, and he dipped a single digit into me.
“Oh fuck,” I gasped, my spine arching at the hot sparks his touch was setting off deep in my core.
He slowly moved his finger, drawing whimpers from my throat with each leisurely thrust. “You’re dripping for me, Addie baby.”
I tried to respond but all that came out was a high-pitched moan when he pushed a second finger into me. My inner walls pulsed at the strain around him. And it was a strain. Damn, his hands were big. My legs fell wider, the piano stuttering notes beneath me.
“I knew I loved your voice when I first heard you sing, but your moans are an even sweeter sound.”
I tried to shift my hips to meet his thrust but my delicate balance on the piano barely gave me an inch of leeway.
I didn’t even have to figure out the words to ask for what I needed.
His mouth crashed over mine again, firm enough to shift us until I leaned back on the top of the piano.
I still had no room to move, but I was less reliant on Brooks to hold me upright, and he used that newfound liberty with his hand.
His strokes came faster, harder, stoking the fire in my veins.
He reduced me to moans and whimpers and I clawed at his shirt just to keep myself from falling as my muscles trembled and my knees jerked around him.