My sadness crested, doing its best to mute the outside world. But something tickled my ears, something harsh and hated and harrowing.
No.
Music.
Classical music.
The notes threw me headfirst back into my nightmare.
He’s here.
He’s not dead.
He’s come back for me.
My back bellowed. My skin sticky from dream-blood and sweat. I couldn’t stop my body or the instinct to run.
My legs bolted from the bed before my mind even knew I was standing. I flew across the suite, charged into the corridor, and galloped.
I ran and ran, down plush carpet and past expensive artwork.
I careened into walls and clamped hands over my ears for silence.
Yet the music chased me. Threatened me. Warned me that it would catch me, and when it did, I would die.
Sobs interfered with my breathing. I bounced into another wall, shredding my shoulder on an intricate gilded sconce. My blood smeared the neutral paint as I stumbled forward.
I didn’t know where I was going. My brain wasn’t cohesive. All I could think about was the music.
Music.
Music.
I came to a door. The door opened beneath my fumbling fingers. My bare feet flew up the stairs. Up, up, up. Away from hell. Fly to heaven. Where there was no more music or the devil.
Hitting a deck above, the rhythm and classical notes reached a level higher than ever before. The instrument weaving and ducking, playing with me in its sinister way.
I couldn’t think.
My hands remained clamped over my ears. My breath sticky in my sob-coughing lungs.
Stop!
I ran down another corridor.
But instead of the music growing quieter, it grew louder, louder. It ricocheted in my ears; it reverberated in my skull.
I want it out.
I want it to stop
Please, make it stop.
My arm bled faster as my heart pumped to keep me running.
And then the corridor ended. A dead end. I was trapped.
Alrik’s chuckle danced on a cello’s string.
I lost it.
Ramming my bleeding shoulder into the door at the end of the corridor, I exploded into a room.
A room where the music lived and breathed.
And in the centre of the music sat the maestro and creator of my worst enemy.
Elder.
The world went black.
SOMETHING PALE AND bleeding soared across my threshold.
Part of me noticed and twitched to stop, but the rest of me was captive to my cello. I couldn’t stop until the final beat. I couldn’t end so suddenly.
My body shook as my fingers held the sweetest note, my bow singing over the strings, the music building louder and stronger and so damn alive it killed me to murder it all in the name of a song.
But I’d reached the end.
It was over.
I tore my callused fingers from the strings; my bow hovered, barely kissing the instrument.
Silence shattered over me.
I looked up just as the midnight interloper collapsed in a jumbled pile, unconscious.
My cello twanged as I caught a string with my bow, launching from my chair.
Pim.
It took three seconds to gently deposit my cello on the floor, two to cross the suite, one to slam to my knees, and zero to gather her naked, clammy body into my arms.
What the fuck is she doing here?
How did she find my quarters? What the hell happened? Violence painted my thoughts. If any of my staff had hurt her, they’d be meeting Moby Dick tonight.
“Pimlico. Open your eyes.”
She didn’t.
Her lips were slack, her face gaunt and haunted with shadows. Her blood streaked my arm where a small graze on her bicep wept. She was as frigid as ice and as lifeless as a corpse.
“Wake up.” Keeping her in my embrace, I climbed to my feet. For a girl with long legs and such fire, she weighed next to nothing.
What was she doing here?
Did she hurt herself deliberately or was it an accident?
My heart raced as questions piled on top of questions.
Was she trying to kill herself?
I’d been an asshole to her for days but only because she’d undone me. I couldn’t look at her without feeling her warm, wet mouth or her lips on my cock. I’d told her I wouldn’t touch her, but it was for my sake, not hers. I couldn’t touch her. I couldn’t have her. Because if I did, that would be the end. My issues wouldn’t let me have anything less.
But now guilt lacerated me. I’d stolen her to give her a better life. And I’d turned my back on her, telling her she was a whore and not something I wanted.
Shit.
Laying her gently on my bed, I tugged the covers from beneath her and laid them over her nakedness. Her nipples were almost the colour of her pale flesh, the shadows between her legs reminding me she was a woman but still so young. She’d been through so much already. What fucking right did I have to make her feel so belittled?
Tucking her in, I turned on the bedside light and called the kitchen. Melinda, the head chef, answered even this late. “Kitchen.”