43. The Pianist #2
“You’re a waking dreamer,” he continues, whispering right in my ear. “A somnambulist.”
“I don’t—I’ve never—”
He exhales a laugh, his other hand falling to my hip. And still, I stare at his name etched into the stone above me. I’ve inspected this dozens of times, I realize. I’ve found myself here many moonlit nights. How did I not know?
“You’ve done it since the first night.”
“Why? Why haven’t you told me?”
He turns me so I have no choice but to stare up at his mask, gripping my jaw. “At first, to play with you. To torment you further. But then I saw it freed your mind and I thought maybe I could offer you some relief, despite everything.”
“Relief?” A sad laugh slips past my lips. I don’t even try to pull away from him.
“Yes. You arrived here so… blank, and sad, running from something. And it became clear this state released you from that.”
“Did you—” My throat catches. “What did you do to me while I—did you fuck me?”
I remember begging him. I remember falling to my knees and running my hands over his thighs. And not so long ago, he had woken me up with his cock between my legs.
“No,” he says, dark eyes flicking between mine. “Though I was tempted. You wanted it. But I wanted you to remember when I fucked you. Every time.”
I do remember. I remember it all. I can’t stop remembering—can’t stop thinking about his body moving against mine, his hands touching me, everywhere, my skin alight with a burning desire, only doused when the sun rises. Every day, every night, thinking about him.
He’s destroyed my mind, because no other thought lingers long enough anymore.
“You—” My voice fails me, and I think my knees will too, but Bastien holds me up, his grip tight on my jaw.
The nights I thought he left me alone—he hadn’t. I’d been waiting for him, waking disappointed and disoriented, thinking I hadn’t been enough. That he simply hadn’t wanted me enough.
But he was always there.
“You were my play thing, Mallary. You were brought here to be mine.”
His breath is hot on my face, my cheeks, even through the mask, but I’m so numb from the cold, so numb from the memories, and I don’t know if I’ll ever warm up again, my skin melding with the snow. My fingers tighten on his wrists, to push him away or hold him to me, I don’t know.
“Don’t act surprised now,” he says. “It’s been this way between us since the first night.”
“Bastien.”
“I’ve done nothing,” he says, “but free you. That’s all I’ve been trying to do—help you see how good we could be together.”
The air is dry ice in my lungs, each breath sharp and painful. “What…?”
“You don’t have to lie to yourself anymore. It’s okay, Mal, I’ve got you.” Cradling my face, he presses his forehead to mine. “Isn’t it nice? You don’t have to pretend anymore.”
“Pretend what?”
“Shh.” His fingers are soft on my cheekbones, reverent. “You and I don’t have to hide anymore.”
Something comes back to me the moment he says the words.
His plans—muttered out into the air one night beneath the stars. What he wants to do to the Beauchenes, to all of them. All of the things they’ve done.
How he needs his revenge.
I remember it all.
“Bastien, we can’t do this, you can’t—” I’m shaking my head, or trying to, but his grip is iron-solid, and I couldn’t pull away from him if I wanted.
“And why can’t I? Why can’t I kill them all?”
Every argument dies on my lips. Because there is no good argument, knowing what he’s had to endure. Knowing how fractured his mind has become, and how he’s pieced it back together himself.
Is it his fault? Falling to pieces because of the life he’s lived? Cracking under the pressure of his family, having just the right brain chemistry to give in to that darkness? Is it his fault that he turned out this way?
Is it mine?
“The part of you conditioned to be good is resisting. But you know that I have to do it.”
I lean forward, hoping my proximity affects him, clouds his mind the way he does to me. “What if we just run away?”
He laughs under his breath, lifts the mask just enough to nip at my lip, sucking it between his teeth and biting down to draw a gasp from me. Taking the moment as an invitation to slip his tongue inside, sliding against mine. Consuming me, breathing me in.
I think he’s forgotten what I’ve said, until he’s wrenching himself away. Putting distance between us, his lips bruised. “You know I can’t leave.”
“You aren’t stuck here.” I don’t let him back away too much, my fingers twisting in his sweater. Snowflakes melt on my skin, tiny shards of ice amongst the fibers of his clothing. “We could just take a car. Drive far, far away.”
“No.” He shakes his head, his vise-grip on my wrists tightening. “I can’t.”
“You know where the keys are, don’t you?”
“This house, it’s mine—”
“All you have to do is steal them, and we can be miles away in an hour. Before they even realize.”
“I will not leave until it’s mine.”
His chest rises with every breath. He’s so starkly alive, his breath fogging between us, his eyes glistening with unshed passion. I wonder how I ever thought he was a ghost.
“And you will help me. You want to help me.”
“Don’t act as though you know what I want—”
His arm bands around my waist, pulling my chest flush with his. “You deny yourself, even now. When you know everything.” He breathes sharply through his teeth in frustration, almost a growl. “So stubborn. I thought we had trained that out of you.”
Heat ignites in my skin. “Baz, I’m serious.”
“So am I.” He turns me quickly in his arms, so my ass is pressed against his hard cock. “It seems I have to fix this now.”
“Baz—”
He pins my wrists to the tomb’s wall above my head, his other hand shoving my leggings down over my hips. The air is frigid against my exposed skin, but soon he’s pressed against me again, his cock free, sliding between my thighs, the contact of his body exquisitely warm.
Shamelessly, without thought, my back arches. Offering myself up to him.
I hear him spit into his free hand, and then his cock is slipping inside, all in one slow thrust. A low groan rumbles in his chest as he bottoms out.
And then he stays like that, stretching me out, his body pressing me to the cold tomb wall, and I’m pinned in place and on the verge of whining.
I bite my lip in the same spot he nipped it, squeezing my eyes shut, but unable to stop my hips from angling back toward him. Needing friction, muscles spasming.
“We’re not leaving,” he says. “Not until you… help me. Not until you admit that you and I are the same.”
“The same?” My cheek pressed to the wall, I blink, surprised to feel tears pinching at the backs of my eyes. With every breath, my hips cant towards his, my thighs burning with the effort not to grind against him, knowing if I move, he won’t give me what my pussy so desperately wants.
“What is it?” he taunts. “Need something?”
“Yes, Baz, please—”
“You’re begging, and yet you know exactly what you need to do. This is all up to you, Mallary.”
I grit my teeth together as my legs begin to shake. “I can’t.”
“You can.” His free hand travels from my hip up my waist, across my stomach, under my sweater and between my breasts, caging me against him, feeling my heart stuttering beneath his palm. “You can.”
“I—” My breath catches in my throat. The air is so thin, so cold, I suddenly feel like I’m suffocating. I feel like I’ll combust into stardust. “How would I help you?”
“Just play the music” he murmurs against my skin. “You’ve already caught everyone’s attention, for better or worse. All you need to do is perform. Let them hear what we’ve done together.”
I’m barely listening, my fingers digging into the stone wall, sure my nails are chipping against the rough surface, my pussy quivering at his cock impaling me, needing him to move. He seems so unaffected, speaking without any trouble.
“Perform?” I push the word out.
“Our piece.” His palm, above my heart, pushes my rib cage even tighter against his body. Like he wants to crush me against him, pull me into the safety of his bones, and never let me go.
“While you—”
“Yes.”
I think he would crush my heart in his hands if he could.
“Say yes, Mallary.”
It’s an effort to form the word. A tear escapes my lashes. “Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“I’ll—play your music.”
“I knew you would.” He releases my wrists, only to tighten his fist in my hair, angling my face toward him. I begin to go dizzy, like he’s sucked up all the oxygen. “What else?”
My mind is blank, struggling to focus on anything but the physical: his fist tangled in my hair, his cock still sheathed inside of me; the arc of pain in my neck at the angle, the stinging at my scalp, the ache in my thighs, the numbness of my fingers.
“What else?” he repeats.
Shaking my head, angling my hips again. Mindless to anything but the inferno in my veins, the promise of climax.
He tsks between his teeth. “No. You haven’t learned yet.”
I have the fleeting thought that I like this—he could break me into pieces and I’d let him. He could snap my neck, crush my fingers so I could never play again, blind me, and I’d let him. I would say whatever he wanted, just so he would fuck me.
So I do.
“Teach me.” I mouth the words but they’re silent. “Make me perfect.”
“You are perfect,” he growls. His cock twitches inside me again. “You play perfectly. You lie perfectly. You sit there and take my cock so perfectly. You scream so perfectly.” Over and over, listing countless things.
His hips finally move against mine, just a nudge, and I almost weep with relief.
“You lie so well you hide the truth from yourself.”
“I—I don’t lie.” I insist. “I’m not lying.”
He hums, nuzzling his face into my neck. The plaster is warm. I want him to bite down. To tear my flesh. To drink my blood. Consume me wholly until there’s nothing left. Gnaw on my bones and sharpen them to blades.
“Case in point.” He leans back, releasing my hair, both hands falling to my hips. “What else?”
Another tear escapes, scorching a trail down my cheek. I’m not crying. But it feels like I am.