“You fucking love it, you got off so hard on being terrified.”
I was too spent to find the smart words to counter him, so I turned on my heel and ran barefoot down the stairs. This time, when I looked back, he wasn’t following me. He was standing there with his pants still unfastened, leaning on the railing, gazing after me. The belt hung from his fingers. There was a satisfied, smug expression on his perfect face.
“Stop staring,” I hissed.
“I can’t help myself,” he said. “I love watching you go down.”
The sound of his laughter echoed through the stairwell as I spun and practically fled to the door on the second floor. I had no dignity left because I knew he was right. The evidence was slipping down my thighs and wetting the bottoms of my feet. It was throbbing in the place where his belt had cut into my hips.
And there was no going back from this, but I would deny it because it was too terrifying to face.
I ran down the hall and fell against our bedroom door, panting hard. In the corner, the judgemental marble face gazed down at me. The scales in its fist seemed to tilt.
Little whore who likes being terrified, it whispered. So starved for attention she’ll take anything she’s given.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Fuck him and all his statues.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
PEREGRINE
I left her in our bed the next morning, sleeping soundly and went to the office to drown in work. It was the best way to beat back the demons in my head. Except I couldn’t get anything done because my mind was saturated in the image of her draped over the stairwell with her skirt shoved up around her waist. Her spine arced as she came around me. Her hair-raising scream echoing down to the basement.
She’d loved it, I’d never felt her come so hard. And her refusal to acknowledge what she enjoyed was a thorn in my side.
In the late afternoon, I gave up and left the office and headed back home. It was a clear fall day and the air was crisp and cool, smelling faintly of falling leaves. I took the long way around the neighborhood, trying to clear my head.
But my mind just kept wandering back to her. Back to the soft, terrified angel in my arms and the ecstasy I’d burned with in that fucking stairwell.
Somehow I ended up at the academy. I parked the car and entered through the great front gates, following the stone pathway to the quad. There were three stone buildings looming over me and through the windows I picked up on the sounds of music. Of voices clashing and blending with organs, pianos, and cellos. I paused below the archway and caught the steady thumping of dancers through the window above me. There was an aura of heavy concentration about the grounds.
I entered a building labeled the Hall for Vocal Arts and strode to the front desk. The girl there had thick, curly hair and round glasses and she was buried in a book. When she saw me, she sat it aside and gaped openly as I leaned on the desk. I knew I probably looked strange among these students, who were all in their early twenties.
“I’m looking for a vocal student,” I said. “Rosalia Antonucci Calo.”
“Um…why?” she said, narrowing her gaze suspiciously.
“I’m her husband, Peregrine Calo,” I said.
“You’re Lia’s husband?” she whispered. She pushed her glasses back up her nose, dragging her eyes over my body.
“In the flesh,” I said. “Now, where can I find her?”
She pointed down the hall to my left. “She’s in the auditorium practicing for the recital. I just saw her go in a few minutes ago.”
I thanked her and moved down the ancient hallway. The building was likely from the eighteenth century and the floors beneath my feet groaned and creaked as I passed over them. At the end was a set of double doors with a sign warning to be quiet. I checked my phone to make sure it was silenced and slipped through into the dark auditorium.
It was empty, save for a pale light over the stage. There was a piano to the stage right and on the bench sat a man in his fifties or sixties, rifling through papers. He wore a thick woolen sweater and his glasses rested on his head. I squinted as the curtain in the corner rustled and my wife walked out into the light.
She wore a short plaid skirt, black tights, little heeled oxfords, and a sweater that clung to her body. My God, she looked far too good to be going to school dressed like that. Surrounded every day by men who surely looked at her and thought the sort of things I was thinking right now. I crossed my arms over my chest, biting back my desire to stride down there and haul her ass back home.
She crossed the stage, her fists clenched at her sides, and the man at the piano began playing. I saw her place a hand on her upper stomach and take a breath. Hesitation passed over her face and disappeared. The piano swelled with a sudden, abrupt clamor of sound and she burst into song.
I stood there, open-mouthed. I’d heard her sing before, but that had been a simple, sweet aria and she clearly hadn’t given it everything. And obviously my wife was talented because she’d been accepted to the academy, but I hadn’t realized what that truly meant until now.
She was truly and deeply gifted in a way that tugged at the edges of my soul.
I knew the aria at once, I’d heard bits and pieces of it ringing from our music room. It was Mozart’s “Queen of the Night,” an incredibly difficult, stunning piece. She plunged through it, her dark eyes blazing and shoulders heaving, the sound reverberating through the auditorium. I stood, spellbound, the hair on the back of my neck erect.