Lucy’s whole life had been all about music. The quest for perfection. Hours when it had felt as if she’d never get anything right. The gruelling travel to another town, another city, when sometimes she hadn’t felt settled into any place she could call home.
She’d never thought there was anything else for her and she’d never wanted anything more—till this, and Stefano. His touch was like the music, filling her with the same wondrous heat, like a miracle.
His mouth dropped to hers now, his kisses slick and lush. There was no uncertainty. It was as if they’d been kissing each other for years—as if, for her, there’d been no one before him.
His hands stroked her body with reverence. Setting her on fire. Nothing mattered but the here and now and Stefano deep inside her body. As if he was connected to her soul in the rightness of how they moved together.
She wrapped her legs around his muscular thighs, the movement of him slow, aching, and every part of her shivered with the perfection of it. Of the time taken to pleasure her. Of the slow, inexorable burn in her core, the sweet ache that wound higher and tighter.
They moved together in perfect tune, as if they were made for one another. Tears pricked at her eyes. The sensation overwhelming her, hovering on the fine edge of pleasure and pain, held there for what felt like hours. She didn’t want it to stop, even though she knew things like this couldn’t last.
It would all fall down, this house of cards they’d built around themselves. But for however long it lasted, she would take it. She didn’t care. For all her life she’d been rooted in reality. Now she wanted to lose herself in the fantasy of them together.
The way he’d looked at her with wonder when she played—not with the critical gaze that everyone else employed, but with one of pure pleasure—was the same way he gazed at her body now, as if she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever glimpsed. And yet she couldn’t fall over the edge, still chasing it like some competition to finish.
‘More...’ she whispered against his lips.
‘I want you all afternoon. I want you into the night. And I want to make sure the pleasure lasts and lasts for you,cara.’
She couldn’t remember anyone who’d only thought of her. She had never really thought about herself—always about work, about practice, about what others would think. This...her pleasure being his sole focus...was like a bomb going off inside her. Not a slow burn, but an explosion that stole her breath, brought raging heat burning out from her core.
She wrapped herself around him and let it take her, until he joined her in a rush of ecstasy...
CHAPTER EIGHT
LUCYDRIFTEDINTOwakefulness surrounded by delicious warmth. There was a comforting weight over her waist. A hard body spooning her back.
She opened her eyes. The weather outside was gloomy again. But everything inside this room seemed to be bursting with sunshine.
The night before had been...astonishing. She’d only ever had one boyfriend. Her work and her practice had meant that there was little time, and with Viktor their passion had been in the music. It had hardly mattered that the physical side of things hadn’t set her on fire.
What a fool she’d been. Stefano was like nothing she could ever have dreamed. The way he’d cared for her, her pleasure, above everything...
That wicked slide of heat began its relentless journey through her again. The need inside urging her to turn in his arms, to kiss him and spend the day in bed, revisiting what they’d shared during the night.
Except she still hadn’t said anything about her violin. About the copies of the diary entries she carried. Before, she had been unsure of him. She had no excuses now...
The arm round her waist tightened, and with the merest brush of lips against her neck she forgot all else. She wriggled into Stefano, slick and aching. Felt the press of hardness in her back.
He chuckled. ‘I see your passion is not only in your playing.’
‘That’s not what other people have said.’
Stefano sat up and she turned. The covers had fallen from his body. She relished the hard etched muscles, the strong arms, the hair on his chest arrowing down to the juncture of his thighs. This was a man in his absolute prime and she craved every part of him.
‘What fools have said those things about you?’
Viktor. He’d made her practise and practise. He’d always said there was something ‘lacking’ in her music. Something she needed to find because if she did she might be extraordinary. She’d listened because, whilst he wasn’t first violin, he was a brilliant and renowned musician in his own right and she’d thought he had her best interests in mind.
All it had done was make her question her playing. But it felt wrong to mention him now, in this bed, after Stefano had made love to her all night. Had made her forget all her problems and replaced them with only the midnight certainty that she was beautiful and cherished.
Stefano’s eyes narrowed. ‘It was that ex-boyfriend, wasn’t it?’
‘He said my playing...“lacked”.’
Stefano spat out a string of words which she was sure were profanities from the way he said them, as if they were poison in his mouth.
‘Nobody who listens to you could fail to hear the passion in your music.Thisis where I feel it. Right here.’