Chapter 4 #3
I wasn’t joking about the private concert.
When I walk into the room, Rowan is standing by the Noctis. He must have heard me arrive, because he jerks his gaze up and sets his jaw, bracing for a fight he knows he can’t win.
“There he is at last. My pretty musician.” I hold out my hand. “Ciaran Virel.”
His mouth tightens on everything he wants to say and won’t.
After a long moment, he finally takes it. His hand is smaller and cold, long fingers tightening around mine for one brief, reluctant second before he pulls away. His lashes flutter before he lifts his head, green eyes still wary, still ready to bolt. “You’re the guy who chased after me. Why?”
My heartbeat kicks harder at the memory, at the shock in his face, at the insane pull to do it again.
“What can I say?” I let one shoulder lift. “You looked like you wanted to get caught. What were you doing at the Black Chapel anyway?”
He looks appalled as his face flushes. “I—I…”
I tilt my head and take him in. The way his long lashes dip when he blinks. The way his flush has spread down to his throat.
“That’s none of your business,” he says, breath unsteady, but there’s a sharp edge under it now.
“Mm, perhaps. Perhaps not.” I turn back to the bar and grab two bottles of beer. “Drink?”
“I don’t drink.”
Removing the cap with my teeth, I hand him the bottle. “You do tonight.”
He takes it anyway.
I consider that my first victory before settling into the only seat in the room, a big armchair meant for only one spectator: me. “Ready when you are.”
Rowan glares at me. “I shouldn’t have come, but Damaris thought it was better to find out what you wanted than keep guessing.”
“Damaris sounds clever.”
He snorts but doesn’t reply. Instead, he takes a nearly violent swig from his drink, sets the bottle down, and reaches for the bow, settling the Noctis against his body with the kind of easy familiarity that changes him the second he touches it.
His fingers adjust by instinct, his shoulders easing as he draws the first note across the strings, the sound deep enough to vibrate somewhere beneath my ribs.
His eyes slide closed as the melody unspools between us, and for one stupid second, I almost let mine do the same. The music gets under my skin fast, winding through the silence and making itself impossible to ignore, but it’s him I can’t stop looking at.
The way his shoulders loosen. The way his mouth softens. The way every trace of tension slips away the second he gives in to it.
I close the distance before I can think too hard about it, slow enough that he feels me coming. His eyes open the second he senses me there, the note catching under the bow.
“Keep going,” I murmur. “Don’t stop for me.”
The flush in his face deepens, but he plays on, despite the obvious urge to bolt.
I like that he stays.
Close enough now to feel the heat of him. I watch his throat work as he swallows around whatever this is doing to him. His breathing has gone shallow. The band at his wrist flickers amber before my gaze drags back to his face.
I lift a hand and drag my fingers slowly through the hair at his temple. The soft pale strands catch over my knuckles. He shivers hard enough the note almost breaks. The sound stirs something low in my chest I decide to file away for later.
He keeps playing anyway. Jaw tight, bow steady.
I lean in until my mouth grazes the shell of his ear.
“That’s it. Give me all of it.”
His breath stutters, but he plays on, hands precise, his whole body lit with the effort of holding himself together. I hold my ground. I let him feel exactly how little room I’ve left him. Let him wonder what I’ll do with all that control the second it slips.
“There’s a secret in the way you play, Rowan. I’m going to enjoy taking you apart until I’ve heard all of it.”
The bow goes still.
For a second I think I’ve pushed too far. That he’ll bolt after all. Instead he turns his head, close enough now that I feel his breath catch, and meets my eyes.
“Then you’ll be waiting a while.” His voice shakes. He says it anyway. “I don’t come apart for people who corner me in the dark.”
Something in my chest sharpens to a point. There it is. The spine under all that flinching.
“We’ll see, pretty musician.” I straighten. Let the silence stretch a beat too long. “Careful. Don’t go wandering off where I can’t keep an eye on you.”
He holds his silence this time. Just grips the Noctis against his body, jaw set, done handing me anything else.
I hold his gaze one last second and smile just enough to make it worse. “Thank you for playing for me. Goodnight.”
Then I leave him there with the silence, the instrument, and whatever the hell his heart is doing now.
Upstairs, the party is loud enough to shake the floor. I take the steps slow. The shiver that ran through him when I touched his hair comes up them with me. The amber flash at his wrist. The sound of him trying to play through it.
It means nothing, of course. He’s a job.
A pretty one.
But a job, regardless.
Dad said to watch him.
He never said what to do once I started enjoying it.