Chapter 29 The Cat Gets All Melty
The Cat Gets All Melty
DELILAH
The house is as still as a crypt, and the candle on my nightstand seems to burn with punitive slowness.
Silence has always haunted me, but it’s worse now—ever since the party collapsed, since nobody could keep the facade together, and everyone’s hidden cracks yawned wide open in the middle of the living room.
The echoes of that night remain at the Maison, even though the glasses have been washed, the wine stains blotted, the shattered picture frames buried at the bottom of the recycling.
It’s as if the air still vibrates with what happened when Wilde stepped into the light, back from the dead like some sort of romance novel zombie.
My extended family is angry and restless as they try to work out their own emotions about it, especially regarding how it affects Rafe and me.
Sleep is a myth right now—I walk the grounds at night as I try to make peace with the universe, knowing that people under my care violated its tenets so boldly.
I lie down with the best of intentions, but my body refuses to obey.
Instead, I toss and turn, limbs tangling in silk sheets that feel more like restraints than comfort.
Sometimes I surrender to the insomnia to pace the bluffs again, barefoot with my familiars observing me.
It’s in these moments—when exhaustion has me so thoroughly in its jaws that my thoughts shimmer, fragmenting at the edges—that he finds me.
Taurus will materialize from some shadowy doorway, his hair tousled, eyes luminous and gentle, and pull me close with no words.
He smells of jasmine and his tobacco and the sleep I can’t seem to find on my own.
Sometimes, if I’m lucky, he’ll hum a tune—some half-remembered lullaby, or something he’s made up on the spot—and the vibration of his voice will settle me, at least for a little while.
But even when I drift off under his lullaby as he guides me back to our room, it is never true rest. My dreams tilt at the impossible, veering from pleasure to panic in the space of a breath.
Wilde is always there: his familiar smile twisted in the guise of his demon, smug and ready to take me back to the incident in front of everyone at the party as retribution.
I wake up tangled in sheets and sweat, heart galloping, sure that I’m tied down again.
Even when Taurus is lying right next to me, I can’t shake the sense that he will see me that way and disappear as his image of me shatters.
Occasionally, my mate will wake, sigh, and brush the hair from my face while I pretend I’ve been asleep the whole time.
It’s a little game we play that allows both of us to avoid the fears we don’t want to give voice to in the dead of the night.
These endless nights have their impact. My reflection in the mirror is wan, eyes rimmed red, the color from my cheeks leached away as if by a slow poison.
My patience is a scraped-out barrel; even small demands from the world—emails, phone calls, duties—feel insurmountable.
Still, in some perverse way, my Company work is easier.
The brain fog blunts my natural humanity in a way that makes me more efficient and quicker to complete them without asking questions.
I care less, so the reasons ‘why’ aren’t important to me as they are when I’m on my game.
But my personal life is spiraling. I snap at friends, ignore texts, and refuse to deal with the business of helping the Resistance members deal with this insanity.
Every interaction feels like a rehearsal for the next apology because it always comes back to my previous refusal to help create the abomination now walking around our community.
Taurus says not to worry, but I worry anyway—I built this place as a refuge, and now it’s a war zone.
It’s a struggle to muster the energy for even basic acts of self-preservation.
I survive on hunting at work, the takeout Taurus brings me at night, and whatever random things I crave because of Maeve.
When I eat, it’s ravenous, like I’m trying to fill not just my stomach but every hollow part of me that’s opened up in the last week.
At dinner, Taurus sits next to me, watching me shovel food into my mouth, and there’s a tenderness in his gaze that makes me want to cry.
Other times, he leaves me alone, but never for long.
I think he’s afraid of what would happen if I were left completely to my own devices.
I know Talia must be experiencing the same with Rafe; he has struggled quietly with all this drama as long as I have, including his own guilt about the incident.
When I wake up today and my husband is not here, it’s like a puzzle with all the edge pieces missing.
I grope for him in the half-light, hand clutching at empty sheets.
For a moment I lie perfectly still, as if my body—so used to being curled around the warmth of his—might fool itself into conjuring the missing heat.
The duvet is bunched up around my hips, the sheets still faintly warm where he had been, but now there’s only an indentation and the ghost of his scent.
I blink, half-blind from the persistent ache behind my eyelids, and reach out hoping my arm will brush against a familiar thigh, a shoulder, maybe the delicate arch of an instep.
All my hand finds is the cold slack of the fitted sheet and a tangle of my hair.
I get up, shivering as my feet hit the wood floor, and reach for one of his shirts on the back of the chair.
It’s oversized and soft as down, smelling faintly of him, which makes it better than a hug but worse than nothing at all.
There’s a lazy comfort in pulling on the shirt and letting it settle around my frame, the sleeves falling past my fingertips and the hem grazing my thighs.
I catch sight of myself in the closet mirror: bedhead like an electrocuted dandelion, lips chapped, one eye goopier than the other.
I look like a person who needs to be rescued from a hostage situation, which, in a sense, I am.
The house is silent. I get up, pull on my robe, and shuffle into the hallway.
The air smells faintly of coffee, but there’s none in my room; it must have been his.
I pad from room to room, his absence prickling me until I can barely swallow.
I check his study—neat and untouched as usual.
The kitchen is empty, except for a used espresso mug.
Every object out of place is a clue, every crumb a breadcrumb in a narrative I have to reconstruct.
I consider calling out his name, but the hush is so profound I can’t bring myself to break it.
So I do a perimeter check, like a security guard in my own life.
I peer through the frosted glass of the back door in the kitchen into the garden and pool area, but he’s not there.
Circling back to our bedroom, my heart skips a beat every time I pass a mirror and catch my gaunt reflection.
There’s no note on the nightstand, so maybe his mission was last minute.
It’s not until I close my eyes and concentrate—all my focus, all my willpower, every sense straining towards the faintest possibility—that I feel him in the music room.
Of course. I should have known.
I shuffle down the hall, turn the old brass handle, and there he is, exactly where he always is when the world becomes too much: perched on the piano bench and bathed in golden early light.
Inside the room, the air is cooler, the dust motes floating in shafts of light like so many microscopic galaxies.
He’s sitting sideways on the bench, legs stretched out in the only pair of pajamas he’s ever owned—a pair I bought him, midnight blue silk in the color of his eyes.
Taurus is shirtless, his back tight with tension, hair a tumble of spiky, bleached morning messiness.
There’s a tumbler of scotch on the closed lid, sweating in the morning air.
My mate plays with his whole body, each chord a small violence, each run up the keys a sprint towards something just out of reach.
I hover in the doorway, arms tight around my waist, and just watch.
He’s playing one of my favorite pieces, but slowly, in a mournful rhythm, as if searching for a memory lodged deep in the cracks of the ivory keys.
It’s so tender it makes my ribs ache.
When he finishes, the sudden silence is electric.
He sits there for a second, fingers pressed motionless to the keys, shoulders shuddering with the residue of effort.
I step forward, feet silent on the parquet, and touch the edge of the piano—not him, not yet, but the place where his sound lives.
The instrument vibrates faintly, and I feel as though I’m touching his pulse through wood and steel.
Taurus turns his head and gives me a smile that’s half apology, half dare.
His eyes are sharp, bright, pulling me in the way they always do, and for a moment the tension drains from the room.
The sight of me in his shirt pleases him, and he lifts his glass in a silent toast before taking a slow, deliberate sip.
My expression is wry as I ask, “No mission this AM?”
Shaking his head, he grins at me. “Morning, heart of mine. Why are you up this early after staying up so late? You resemble a ‘morning after’ scene in a French film.”
I shake my hair over my shoulders and chuckle throatily. “All tousled and sexy, huh?”
He nods, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “Might be appropriate to pop up on the lid and give me a Baker Boys if you’re inclined.”
I blink in disbelief. “I can not believe that Mr. ‘Respect the Expensive Stuff’ asked me to climb up on a twenty-thousand-dollar piano and roll around like a cat in heat, even if it is pretty much on the nose.”
Tilting his head, he says, “Eighty thousand, actually.”
Gaping like a hooked fish, I wait for him to change his mind, and when he doesn’t, I finally shrug nonchalantly. “If you insist.”
I hoist myself onto the lid and roll onto my stomach.
Propping my chin in my hands, I smile as I look down at him.
He plays the intro to my favorite Beethoven piece, and I sigh happily.
The hammers hitting the strings vibrate through the lid, and I realize this must be what it feels like when I purr.
If so, I know why they like it now; it’s soothing as hell.
“Like that, love?” he asks, looking up at me.
“Hell, yeah,” I murmur, stretching out as I roll onto my back and breathe deeply.
He chuckles, and I can sense his eyes on me. “Can’t say I’m gonna complain about the view.”
I snort, knowing that he can see right up my shirt from his vantage point. “Of course, you won’t. You have a true bird’s-eye view of your favorite fetish.”
“You got me there, love. In fact, you can get me just about anywhere.” He pauses for a moment and then corrects himself. “As long as you’re mindful of the duster.”
Closing my eyes, I sigh as he finishes the piece. “What’s next, piano man?”
He smiles and slides into the next melody, fingers moving over the keys.
I roll back onto my stomach, recognizing it.
That sappy fool is singing from the movie we watched last week about the French dancer who falls in love with the writer.
To think he called it ‘my second favorite hooker with a heart of gold’ flick and I smacked him.
I cross my ankles and swing my feet up, listening to the lyrics as he sings, grinning like a fool.
Perhaps this is exactly what I’ve needed—gentle distraction and comfort.
It’s been a rough time since Sari and her minions ruined the party.
People have scurried into hidey-holes, and my family is going through the strain of the unknown, lurking attack that is coming.
But my spouse, my heart, he remains the same clone he’s been the entire time I’ve known him.
He can pluck my strings as easily as he presses the keys on this piano.
When he does, he can find the vicious predator, the playful minx, the fluffy kitten and the haughty intellectual without even trying.
Right now, we’re at fluffy kitten and I’m melted on the lid, staring at him like a bloody groupie. He opens his mouth to start the chorus of the song, and I join in, singing along in harmony. Like everything else we do, our voices blend as if someone made them to do so.
As the last strains of the music fade, he gives me a wink, and I sigh. “I am such a goober. Look at what a sappy nit you make of me.”
“You think I’d get good money for the blackmail pics, my little milk dud?”
My nose wrinkles and I huff, mussing his hair. “You screw it up every time. Good thing I like asses.”
“Especially mine. I keep telling you it’s your fetish.”
“It’s not like you have a problem with that.” I trail my fingers down his cheek, giving him a hungry stare.
“Not a bloody one,” he says, grinning wolfishly. He stands and yanks me off the piano, bobbing his eyebrows. “Care to find out just how little I mind?”
“Maybe...”
He reaches back and gives my bum a swat. “The last one there is a huffy kitty!” Apparating in a blink, he’s gone, and I stomp my foot.
“Ooh... that man!”
I disappear in a trail of purple and silver sparkles, chasing after him. After all, he really has a nice ass, and I might as well go check it out.
Maybe today will suck a little less.