Ethan stopped at the door of the hotel room. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Wait.” Good or bad, it was out of her mouth now. All she could do was commit and go forward. Or change the subject. Tell him he had lint on his coat? No. This wasn’t the time to lose her nerve, or to worry about what he might think. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t be scared forever. And she wouldn’t be scared now.
His eyes were nearly black in the shadow of the hall. “That might not be the best idea.”
“I want to … play for you. The song I started in Australia. I want you to hear it.”
He hesitated, his hands curled into fists, a muscle in his jaw shifting.
“Ethan …”
He took one step into the room. The tense lines in his body, the pronounced tendons in the backs of his hands, were proof of just how tightly he was hanging on to his control and told her that he knew what she was really asking.
And that by coming in, he hadn’t committed to saying yes.
The risk of rejection was high. A little bit scary. But a lot worth it. Because Ethan did want her. And it was their connection, one that had nothing to do with the two of them but everything to do with their parents, that held him back. Maybe it should hold her back too. But she had never felt like her mother’s actions, away from the cloistered life of music, had included her in any way.
She felt separate from their parents’ history, separate in a way Ethan couldn’t because of how it had affected his family. But maybe if he saw her, if he knew that she was nothing like her mother. Maybe then he would want to want her.
Ethan walked to the couch, his eyes trained on her as he worked the knot on his black silk tie. Her senses felt heightened. She could hear the slide of fabric over fabric as he tugged at it, could feel her heartbeat through her entire body. She could taste something in the air between them. Foreign and exciting. Tantalizing.
Maybe he had committed to her unspoken question. If it was even a question. It felt more like a command.
She moved to the piano, trying to imagine that there was a crowd, trying hard to hold on to her nerve. That crowd back at the party had been much easier to deal with. Even then she had felt Ethan watching her, had been compelled to turn and look at him. But it was easier to do with so many other people there. An audience of one was always much harder to perform for.
Because the more people there were, the more they blurred into an indistinguishable mass. When there were fewer of them, it suddenly became personal.
But rather than shutting Ethan out, she thought of just how he made her feel. She took a deep breath, put her hands on the keys and started playing. Slowly at first. She thought about ice cream and the beach. Ethan’s hands on her body. His lips on hers. She didn’t think about the future or about anything other than the immediate feelings Ethan gave her.
Lust, excitement. Happiness.
She shut everything out, everything except Ethan, and she played. Played for herself, to imprint the memories of what they’d shared inside her, to put it out there, the way some people would write in a diary. She wrote it into the song.
One she would be able to play whenever she wanted. Whenever she missed Ethan after all of this was done. Something to bring back the memories, clear and sharp, of what it had been like to be with him.
To simply share a conversation with him. A moment of pleasure.
Everything built to a crescendo, the rise of the music intense, exciting, mirroring how she felt now. The need for him. The fear he would say no. The fear he might say yes.
And then she stopped. It was quiet in the room, except for the sound of her uneven breathing. She took her shaking fingers from the keys and turned to him.
“That can’t be the end,” he said softly.
She shook her head and stood up, rounding the piano bench and moving towards the couch. “It’s not. But I … I don’t know how it ends. I was hoping you could show me.”
The air was thick between them. Ethan sat unmoving, gripping the arm of the couch. She took another step toward him and his chest rose sharply, his fingers tightening their hold on the fabric.
“How do you want it to end, Noelle?” he asked, his voice tight, rough. Like each word took supreme effort to speak.
“I’d like to start where things left off that night in Australia. And I’d like them to end where they should have ended then.”
“It should have ended before it started that night.”
“But it didn’t.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple dipping with the motion. “No. It didn’t.”
She took another step, stopping when she was right in front of him, her legs touching his. “So it’s too late for that. We can ignore it, and neither of us is doing a great job of that, or we can see what it would be like. You and me.”
She lifted her foot from the floor and rested her knee on the couch, next to his thigh. He lifted his hand and caught her wrist. “No matter what happens here, there will never be ‘you and me.’ I don’t say that to hurt you, just to warn you. I’m not the kind of man who does forever. I don’t even do long-term.” He let go of her wrist and traced the line of her arm with his finger, up past her shoulder, the curve of her neck, along her jaw. He touched her lips, the contact soft. Erotic. “But what I do, I do well.”
“That’s all I’m asking from you, Ethan. Nothing more. I don’t have any idea what I’m going to do when all of this is over, but that’s not what I’m thinking about. Not now. For once I just want to … live. Right in the moment. To enjoy every last bit of now. To enjoy wanting you. The rest of it doesn’t matter. Not right now.”
She lifted her other foot off the floor, resting her knee beside his other thigh. He curved his arm around her body and placed his hand on her lower back, the heat of his flesh through her thin silk dress warming her, spreading sweet heat through her body, pooling in her belly, flowing out to her limbs, making them feel heavy.
He captured her mouth with his, their breathing mixing together, harsh and uneven. He slid his other hand down her thigh, gripping the skirt of her dress and tugging it upward, pushing slick silk up around her hips.
His hand met the bare skin of her buttocks. She’d gone with the filmy-fabric-friendly option of a thong when she’d dressed tonight. She was glad she had now. Even more so when a harsh groan escaped his lips and he squeezed her gently.
She gasped when he dipped his finger beneath her underwear, teasing her lightly, sliding over damp flesh.
He pulled his lips away from hers, pressed them to her neck. “How do you want this?” he asked. “I want you to set the tempo. Show me what you like. Show me how you think the song ends.”
She put her hands on his shoulders and tilted her hips, a sharp whimper escaping her lips when the movement pushed his fingers forward, the tips grazing the sensitive bundle of nerves at the apex of her thighs.
“Good,” he said, his voice hoarse.
She repeated the motion, pleasure streaking through her like fire. She tilted her head down and rested it on his shoulder as she continued to move over his hand. He dipped one finger inside her and all the tension that had been building in her broke, unraveling, spiraling through her in waves of sweet satisfaction, so acute it was almost painful.
She leaned against him, her entire body limp, weak. Her dress was clinging to her damp skin, her hair sticking to her neck. And he didn’t seem to mind. He wrapped his arms around her and held her on his lap, his lips by her ear.
“I wondered if you would be as passionate about making love as you are about playing the piano. I think that question was just answered.”
“For me too,” she said softly.