Chapter 19 – Reese
THE POISON BECOMES THE ANTIDOTE
REESE
Iwalked into the music room and spent way too long taking my violin out and rubbing rosin on the bow. I stood facing the wall as I tried to get my dick to cooperate, but it wasn’t listening to me.
I thought it was a combination of literally everything that just happened that was turning me on—Dakota’s genuine concern, him touching me like that, and then threatening to rip all my clothes off in public.
I never knew I wanted that, but holy fucking shit as soon as he said it in that pissed off, gravelly voice, all the blood in my body went right to my dick.
My heart wouldn’t listen to me, either. It just kept trying to punch its way out of my chest. The moment Dakota walked into the room and closed the door, my entire being was attuned to him. I half expected him—and if I was being honest, wanted him—to come up behind me and…and do something.
Touch me.
What the hell was it about Dakota Voss that made me lose my whole damn mind?
Now I was getting injured because I couldn’t get him out of my head.
I wasn’t lying when I told him how I got the bruise. I’d accidentally bumped into the door frame in the library restroom because I wasn’t paying attention—because I’d been thinking about Dakota.
“What are you thinking about?”
His rough voice scraped over my scalp, immediately pulling me from my thoughts.
I turned to find him sitting on one of the chairs across from me, watching me intently. His violin was on his lap and he’d draped his arm across the back of the chair next to him, loosely holding the bow in those pretty fingers. He tapped it against the empty seat as he waited for me to answer.
You.
“Nothing,” I lied. Another lie to add to the tally. “Let’s just start, okay?”
Dakota’s expression was entirely unreadable, and it unnerved me. Was he seeing through all my lies and debating how to handle me?
And why did I suddenly need him to do just that?
“Where have you been hiding?”
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
I scowled at his bow, then at Dakota when he smiled.
“Actually, I’ve been working on our duet.” I pulled out the sheet music from my bag, then suddenly remembered he couldn’t read it.
Shit.
Not once while I’d been writing out the notes did I even think about the fact that he couldn’t read sheet music. Not once did it ever cross my mind.
Fuck, I was such a self-centered little prick.
I stared at the sheet music, then glanced up at Dakota, who was still smiling at me.
“You just gotta play it and I’ll be able to learn it. I don’t need that.” He nodded at the papers in my hand, and when his eyes met mine again, my heart skipped a beat. “I just need you.”
Those words were like a gut-punch, like falling from a ten-story building and landing on a bed of nails.
“Okay,” I said, my voice too quiet.
I set the sheet music on the stand in front of me, tucked my violin under my chin, and started to play.
It was a minor piece in ternary form, so the melody in the beginning was slow and serene. It became angry and agitated in the middle, then smoothed back into the beginning melody. This was only one part of it, though.
I was on the last few notes of the final section when I glanced over at Dakota. He was watching me so intensely that I faltered on the next note and winced when the sharp, discordant sound rang out in the room.
“What?” I said, feeling vulnerable.
He shook his head slowly. “Nothing.”
“Then don’t stare at me like that.”
He tilted his head. “Like what?”
“Like—” I pointed my bow at his face. “—that.”
“Like you’re incredible?” he said softly, his eyes boring into mine so deeply it felt like he was looking right into my soul.
I was sure he could hear the pounding of my heart in this small, soundproof room. There wasn’t anywhere for the frantic thump thump thump of it to go. I was also sure that there wasn’t any oxygen in here, and someone had turned the heat up.
Dakota was drawing me into some kind of trance with those dark eyes.
I realized I hadn’t said anything and opened my mouth to deny his words, but he looked away, notching his violin beneath his chin and readying his bow.
He raised a brow at me. “We’ll play this one together and then figure out the second part, right? So start from the beginning?”
“Okay,” I said, unable to take my eyes off him. He looked so damn good with a violin in his hands.
“Okay.” He winked at me, but there was no humor or mischief in his eyes anymore; instead they were filled with something weighty and meaningful and a little bit…fragile.
“Okay,” I said again, positioning my bow. “You don’t need me to play it again?”
A bit of amusement crept into his eyes, and he smiled. “I think I’ve got it,” he said, lips curving in a small smile.
I shifted in my chair and cleared my throat. “Um…okay.” I glanced at him one last time, then inhaled deeply and dragged my bow across the E string.
When Dakota began playing with me, I could barely focus on what I was doing. A huge part of me wanted to stop playing and just watch and listen to Dakota because…
He was fucking incredible.
He put his whole body into the music, and halfway through the song, little glances weren’t enough and I watched him play in earnest. His eyes were closed, his brows knitted together as he moved, those lithe fingers expertly sliding and vibrating the strings in the exact places I had.
It all flowed like molten gold, the most beautiful warmth spilling from him.
When I’d seen him play a long, long time ago, I remembered thinking he wasn’t real, he couldn’t be—no child could play like that.
This was the boy that made me fall in love with music, the boy who’d captured all my attention when I was a lost, angry kid, the boy I’d admired and idolized.
This was the boy that haunted my dreams and tormented my reality.
This was the boy I’d forgotten for so long he’d become a man.
He was the reason I was even sitting here right now, across from him, in this stuffy booth on a cold January afternoon.
He was better than I’d ever be, and it seemed so effortless for him. The muscles in his forearms shifted beneath his skin, the veins on the back of his hands drawing my focus, the tendons rising with the movement.
I never thought I’d find veins and tendons sexy, but right now I wanted to lick and bite my way across every inch of his flesh. A sudden annoyance flared—he was holding the violin so lovingly, this lifeless instrument getting to feel his fingers and how they moved.
Those hands had made me come. They were mine. For me.
I wanted to grab his violin and throw it aside, slip between his parted thighs and watch those fingers curl over the waistband of my pants and slowly slide them down, to wrap themselves around my hard cock and squeeze, to grab my hip and—
“Reese?”
I dragged my eyes up to Dakota’s. He’d stopped playing, and so had I, and I wasn’t sure when that had happened or how long I’d been sitting there staring at his hands and fantasizing about him touching me.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, setting his violin and bow on the seat next to him. He stood up and started moving toward me, and I made some kind of sound in my throat.
“Nothing, I just spaced out for a second—hey! What are you doing?” I cried when he plucked my violin and bow from my hands and set them gently on the empty seat beside me.
He crouched in front of me, wrapping his fingers around the legs of my chair.
My legs were spread open, and the whole thing felt obscene.
My groin was a foot away from his face, and was he going to do something?
Touch me? Was that why he came over here?
To slide those big, gorgeous hands up my thighs and squeeze? To—
“I’ve been worried about you for days, and when I finally get to see you again, you’ve got a bruise on your face,” Dakota said.
His voice was rough and thick and deep, and there was a seriousness in his expression that ate at my heart.
“I’m sorry if what I said upset you, if I’m the reason you’ve been gone, if you feel like you can’t even be in your own room.
I know I’m a lot, but I—” Something pained crept across his face, and he clenched his jaw.
I jumped when he suddenly laid his head on my thigh, sucking in a sharp breath as he rubbed his face against my leg.
“I’m sorry, Reese,” he whispered. “I just can’t stop thinking about you.”
I lifted my hand, hovering over his head. It was shaking above him, and I didn’t want to watch it tremble any longer, so I set it on his head and threaded my fingers through his hair. He closed his eyes and groaned, like it was a relief to have me touch him like this.
He was so distraught, and I couldn’t let him stay that way. I had no idea when he’d come to care about my well-being so much, or even why, but…in this moment, I couldn’t let him keep feeling like this if I had the power to make it stop.
“Dakota,” I said softly, sifting his hair through my fingers. He turned his face and looked up at me, and I couldn’t help moving my hand down until I was able to brush my thumb underneath his left eye over the two big freckles there.
He was so damn pretty.
“You’re not the reason I stayed away, okay? And I’m the one who should be sorry. Nobody hurt me, I just—” Heat spread across my chest and burned up my face. “I just walked into a door frame,” I mumbled. “I swear.”
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” Dakota asked softly. I stared into his eyes, an overwhelming surge of emotions crashing violently through me.
And in that moment, for whatever reason, the tiger lily he’d laid on my pillow popped into my head.
A knot in my chest twisted painfully.
No one had ever gotten me a flower before. No one had ever paid as much attention to me as Dakota did, and—
“No,” I managed to say, even though my throat felt like it was closing up. “Just my face.”
For once, I’d told him the truth.