was aware of what she’d just given away—how in the nine days she had been on his island her mind-set had already altered.
He raised his hands and pulled a face to indicate his nonchalance about such matters. What did he care if she played with the music in front of her or not? All he cared was that she played it.
‘I’ll play without the accompaniment.’
‘Stop stalling and play.’
She swallowed and nodded, then closed her eyes.
Her bow struck the first note.
And bounced off the string.
He watched her closely. The hand holding the violin—the hand with the short nails, which he suddenly realised were kept that length to stop them inadvertently hitting the strings when playing—was holding the instrument in a death grip. The hand holding the bow was shaking. It came to him in flash why her nails seemed so familiar. His grandmother had kept her nails in the same fashion.
‘Take some deep breaths,’ he instructed, hooking an ankle over his knee, making sure to keep his tone low and unthreatening.
She gave a sharp nod and, eyes still closed, inhaled deeply through her nose.
It made no difference. The bow bounced off the strings again.
She breathed in again.
The same thing happened.
‘What are you thinking of right now?’ he asked after a few minutes had passed, the only sound the intermittent bounce of her bow on the strings whenever she made another attempt to play. Her distress was palpable. ‘What’s in your head?’
‘That I feel naked.’
Her eyes opened and blinked a couple of times before fixing on him. Even with Amalie at the other end of the room he could see the starkness in her stare.
‘Do you ever have that dream where you go somewhere and are surrounded by people doing ordinary things, and you look down and discover you have nothing on?’
‘I am aware of people having those dreams,’ he conceded, although it wasn’t one he’d personally experienced.
No, his dreams—nightmares—were infinitely darker, his own powerlessness represented by having to relive that last evening with his parents, when he’d jumped onto his father’s back and pounded at him with his little fists.
His father had bucked him off with such force that he’d clattered to the floor and hit his head on the corner of their bed. In his dreams he had to relive his mother holding him in her arms, soothing him, kissing his sore, bleeding head and wiping away his tears which had mingled with her own.
It was the last time he’d seen them.
He hadn’t been allowed to see them when they’d lain in state. The condition of their bodies had been so bad that closed caskets had been deemed the only option.
And that was the worst of his nightmares—when he would walk into the family chapel and lift the lids of their coffins to see the ravages the car crash had wreaked on them. His imagination in those nightmares was limitless...
‘Try and imagine it, because it’s the closest I can come to explaining how I feel right now,’ she said, her voice as stark as the panic in her eyes.
For the first time he believed—truly believed—that her fear was genuine. He’d always believed it was real, but had assumed she’d been exaggerating for effect.
This was no exaggeration.
‘You feel naked?’ he asked evenly. He, more than anyone, knew how the imagination could run amok, the fear of the unknown so much worse than reality. He also knew how he could help her take the first step to overcome it.
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
The strange distance Amalie had seen settling over him had dissipated, and his attention on her was focused and strong.
‘Then there is only one solution. You must be naked.’
‘What...?’
But her solitary word hardly made it past her vocal cords. Talos had leant forward and was pulling his shoes and socks off.
What was he doing?
His hands went to his shirt. Before she could comprehend what she was seeing he’d deftly undone all the buttons.
‘What are you doing?’
He got to his feet.
If she hadn’t already pressed herself against the wall she would have taken a step back. She would have turned and run.
But there was nowhere for her to run to—not without getting past him first.
‘The only way you’re going to overcome your fear of nakedness is to play naked.’
His tone was calm, at complete odds with the panic careering through her.
She could not dislodge her tongue from the roof of her mouth.
He shrugged his arms out of his shirt and hung it on the back of a dining chair.
His torso was magnificent, broad and muscular, his skin a golden bronze. A light smattering of black hair covered his defined pecs, somehow tempering the muscularity.
As nonchalant as if he were undressing alone for a shower, he tugged at the belt of his trousers, then undid the button and pulled the zip down.
‘Please, stop,’ she beseeched him.
He fixed her with a stare that spoke no nonsense, then pulled his trousers down, taking his underwear with them. Stepping out of them, he folded and placed them over his shirt, then propped himself against the wall, his full attention back on her.
‘I am not going to force you to take your clothes off,’ he said, in that same deep, calm tone. ‘But if you play naked for me now you will have lived out your worst fear and in the process you will have overcome it. I would not have you at the disadvantage of being naked alone so I have removed my clothes to put us on an equal footing. I will stay here, where I stand. You have my word that I will not take a step closer to you. Unless,’ he added with the wolfish grin she was becoming familiar with, ‘you ask me to.’
All she could do was shake her head mutely, but not with the terror he was reading in her, but because she’d been rendered speechless.
She’d known Talos naked would be a sight to behold, but she had never dreamed how magnificent he would be.
Why him? she wondered desperately.
Why did her body choose this man to respond to?
Why did it have to respond at all?
She knew what desire looked like, had seen her mother in its grip so many times, then seen her heart broken as her most recent lover tired of the incessant diva demands and ended things, shattering her mother’s heart and fragile ego.
Passion and its companion desire were dangerous things she wanted no part of, had shied away from since early adolescence. Hearts were made to be broken, and it was desire that pulled you into its clutches.
All those protections she’d placed around her libido and sense of self were crumbling.
Talos’s grin dropped. ‘I said I would help you, little songbird, but you have to help yourself too. You have to take the first step.’
Her breaths were coming so hard she could feel the air expanding her lungs.
She thought frantically. She hadn’t ever shown her naked body to a man before. Her few boyfriends had never put pressure on her, respecting her need to wait, the lie she’d told them in order to defer any kind of physicality. Kind men. Safe men.
Was it the safety she’d sought that had kept alive her fear of performing?