19. The Pianist
The Pianist
I tell myself that his absence wasn’t my fault.
The day went as normal—lessons with Henri this morning, a quiet afternoon to myself, a bit more guided practice with him before dinner. He picks things up quickly. I was eager to practice for myself, being in such a good mood. Eager to see him.
It’s twisted, tutoring the young boy in the morning, and speaking with his dead brother at night. Keeping this a secret from Henri, from the family, from everyone. Reece said the Ghost was just a rumor.
Does anybody know the Ghost is real? Do the Beauchenes know their eldest son isn’t dead? If they do…
It’s a truth I’m not sure I want to unravel. Why would the family keep such a secret?
And then I chastise myself, because I’m no better.
I was so eager to see him, and then—
Nothing.
His absence was a rejection as clear as any. No matter what I played, no matter how many times I ran through his waltz, he never showed himself. It wasn’t long into my practice that I began to feel foolish—embarassed by my wanting and chastising myself for even thinking he really owed me anything.
Maybe he was a ghost. Maybe somehow I’d summoned him with my music. Maybe today I did not do well enough to conjure his form.
Maybe I’d imagined everything last night, and imagined everything the night before. Maybe he didn’t really exist.
I ready myself for bed in a haze, analyzing everything from the last two days, absentmindedly brushing my hair and changing my clothes. I hope, when I wash my face in the bathroom, I will open my eyes to his mask in the mirror. I hope I will feel his eyes on me again.
Nothing.
All day, nothing.
It’s not too late in the evening when I finally crawl under the plush sheets, but when my eyes seem to open a second later, the silence of midnight has descended upon the house and the clock on the wall reads only a few minutes into the morning.
But the quiet is not what startles me.
A figure stands at the foot of my bed, cloaked in shadows. I know it’s him, I know it’s him, by the set of his shoulders and the way I can feel him staring at me, into me, like a predator taking a moment to observe its prey before lunging.
I gasp at the sudden chill sending all my hair on edge.
He knows I’m awake.
The chair is still shoved under the doorknob. How did he get in here?
I sit up, slowly, holding the blanket to my chest, feeling entirely exposed.
“Why are you here?” I whisper. A stupid question because he hasn’t left me alone since I arrived. For a moment, I’m not sure he heard me.
Except he did, because he’s hitching a knee up onto the bed, limbs barely visible in the dark, his ghostly white mask only illuminated enough by the moon outside.
I don’t move a muscle when the mattress gives under his weight.
His hand finds my leg through the covers. On hands and knees, he’s crawling over the bed to me. Grips my ankle, the blanket the only thing separating us, and I have the immediate urge to rip away, to run from the bed and into the hall and scream until the whole house is awake.
Except they’ll look at me like I’m crazy and insist I was only having a nightmare.
I can’t convince my limbs to move.
His hand slowly glides up my leg in rapt fascination.
He touches me with a possessiveness, as though it is his right.
Fingers trailing up to my knee, maybe he can feel my thighs already beginning to quake.
A thrill begins to tingle low in my belly.
This spirit sent to haunt me, peering at me, gauging my reaction. Touching me just to see what happens.
My heart is racing, my fists curling into the blanket. “Bastien.”
He pauses, eyes glinting in the darkness.
And then he inches closer, until he’s right before me, the black mass of his body in the dark blocking out the few slivers of light coming from beyond the curtains.
His hand palms my thigh and it’s so startlingly intimate, my breath hitches in my throat.
Frozen in shock, in terror, my voice escaping me, my mind going haywire. He grabs the blanket and gently pulls.
In my terror, I let him.
Last night, he was so close, and yet so far, and I thought it was going to drive me crazy. Now—
The blanket falls from my fingers, and I let him slowly pull it from my body, uncovering me like he needs to see what I look like underneath, and suddenly there’s only air between us. This black mass of ghost, though still very much alive, looming over me.
I can hear the soft cadence of his breath. He’s close, so close, but he hasn’t touched me, skin to skin, hovering over me like a child peering down at an ant on the pavement.
Through the dark, I can feel him moving, but I don’t know what he’s doing until his fingertips are brushing against my cheek. His voice comes out a breathy whisper but it’s all male, all want. “Can I…?”
I gasp at his touch, and he falters for just a moment, before he’s trailing them over my cheek, down my jaw. Brushing hair behind my ear. Tracing the ridge of my nose. Softly grazing my lip.
I should have left this house the moment the haunting became real. I should have left long ago.
His thumb trails along my bottom lip with a little more pressure, and I am all electricity, my terror mixing into something dark and wanting and just as curious as the predator above me.
I can’t see him and inexplicably, foolishly, it has my toes curling, my body ignoring the screaming alarm going off in my head. I’m frozen still, unsure what to do, afraid to move, because I don’t know what he wants.
How many times has he watched me sleeping? How many times has he stood at the foot of my bed, exactly like tonight? What if I hadn’t woken up?
The image of him, moving in the dark only a few nights ago—
“Can I do this?” he whispers again, and suddenly I’m full of the need to hear his voice, his full voice, and not just this whisper. He trails his fingers down my face, along the column of my throat, and I’m nodding, giving him permission, unable to say no.
I want to see him. I want to reach over and switch on the light, but I know it’ll only chase him away.
He’s straddling my legs now, the sturdy weight of him pressing me to the bed, hands wandering across my shoulders, down to my chest, before he places his palm over my breast. My back arches just the slightest bit. All I can think is oh no oh no oh no.
He touches me like he’s never done this before, never used his hands for gentle things.
And with each touch he’s claiming me for his own, grasping with a self assuredness, like he knows I’d let him.
At night, you are mine.
And I agreed to it.
“Is this good?” he asks.
I bite my lip, afraid to speak, nodding instead. And he can see me in the dark, his eyes so used to living in the shadows, that maybe to him I’m clear as day.
Maybe he’s not human after all, and I’m letting some terrifying spirit grope a human woman—an incubus, sitting in my lap, damning my soul, taking everything from me.
He hums, the sound so soft in the silent dark.
His fingers massage my breast, and it’s everything I can do to stay quiet, biting my lip so hard I think I taste blood.
And then his fingertips are at my nipple, brushing against the stiff peak, and he pinches—lightly—drawing another gasp from me.
He does it again, more roughly this time, and I hear him gasp too.
The red hot feeling of lust, overwhelming and terrifyingly intense, rushes all throughout my body.
He plays with me for only a second more, and then the white shape of his mask moves, and he’s leaning down, his breath hot on my face, as though he needs to see every bit of my reaction to the way he’s touching me.
I want to see him. I want to see him so badly I think I’ll go mad. It’s too dark to make anything out. His face is only inches from mine, the mask discarded next to my hip. My lips tingle, an electric anticipation, knowing he’s so close.
“Can I do this?” he’s asking again, and before I can answer, he brushes his lips on mine.
The answer would have been yes. It would have been please. But I didn’t even need to beg, because he’s pressing his lips to mine, almost hesitantly, like he’s afraid I’ll shove him away, and there’s stubble along his jaw and the maleness of it has me melting.
He pulls away after a second, and I feel his eyes searching my face, his palm pressed against my breast, before he makes us meet again.
I open my mouth to him, and he seems to know what that means.
Suddenly he has one knee between mine, his hands coming up to my jaw, holding my face still.
His mouth moves against mine with a sudden fervor, those sharp wolf’s-teeth nipping at my lip, his tongue tasting at mine, probing, curious and domineering.
He’s thought about this, some innate part of me understands. He’s wanted this. Probably for a while.
One hand snakes to the hair at my nape, tangling there.
He realizes he can move me as he wants, pulling at the strands.
It has my back arching at the bright flash of pain, gasping against his lips.
The fingers of his other hand grip my jaw, fingers biting into my flesh. Violence hiding just below his surface.
He moves away. “Can I do more?” he asks.
The way he says the words, I know what he wants, I know he wants to go further.
“I—”
I don’t want him to ask, I just want him to do it.
His hand trails from my jaw to my slip. I only wore a thin nightgown tonight, made of little more than a layer of silk.
He drags the strap off my shoulder. His fingers trail the slope from my throat to my chest, down to my arm and back, making a map of my skin to remember later.
Then he’s flicking the other strap off too, so my slip is sliding down my middle, exposing my chest to the air.
He untangles his grip from my hair, and I don’t know what he’s doing, still blind in the darkness, until his breath returns, hot against the flesh of my chest. I bite back a moan when his tongue finds my nipple, fisting my hands in the sheets to keep from touching him.