Archie blinked. No one wanted to hear their artistic endeavor almost called…boring. But he half suspected she might be saying exactly that. It was quite possibly the first time in his life anyone had almost called him boring.
She spread her hands wide and apologetic. “You’ve written yourself into a corner.”
As she began humming, his fingers intuitively began playing, in perfect synch with the road she was leading him down. “So you’re suggesting I take it…” He let his fingers do the rest of his talking.
She nodded. “Into the minor scale.”
And like that, the piece opened up, and fresh vistas spread before him, even as the emotion of the music deepened and took on an unexpected complexity.
A feeling took wing inside him and soared. This specific feeling—of creation, of freedom—the promise of it was what pushed him out of bed in the mornings. It was what he lived for. If happiness had a purified form, it lay here. If he could bottle it, he could sell it for the price of diamonds.
He lifted his hands off the keys and shot to his feet, reaching for the pencil behind his ear. Line by line, the notes flew from his mind and onto paper. He saw the piece clearly to the end now, and understood it was his best work yet.
And it was thanks to the woman standing by his side—his muse—watching quietly and nodding every so often while he transcribed her suggestions. The dark mood that had hung over his work these lastseveral months lifted, and light entered his soul. The transformation was no more or less dramatic than that.
Some five minutes—or fifty minutes—later, he straightened. It was done. What relief lay within that simple sentence. He met Miss Hart’s gaze with a smile. He might never stop smiling. “I could kiss you,” he said, without thinking.
Miss Hart blushed, and her gaze skittered away. “I’m sure there’s no need for that.”
Archie’s brow gathered. Of a sudden, he wanted to kiss her. A simple kiss of gratitude, really.
He leaned over and bussed a quick peck on her cheek.
She laughed. He did, too.
“And if we do it like the Italians…” He leaned in and kissed her other cheek.
But he made a mistake with the second kiss.
He inhaled.
And allowed his senses to fill with her.Lemon…roses…Valentina…
And when she laughed this time, knowledge entered her eyes.
And when he leaned in again, she didn’t shy away. She let him press his mouth against her lush, ruby-red, made-for-sin lips. In fact, she might have leaned in a little herself. Then she exhaled a light sigh into his mouth.
Her arms reached around his neck, her fingernails lightly grazing along the nape, sending shivers up his spine, at the same moment his hand cupped the back of her head and the other found the small of her back. Shorter than him by a good ten inches, her body strained up the length of his, and the kiss deepened as he turned her around so her back pressed against the piano. His cock, hard and ready, pushed against her belly, and guided by instinct rather than experience, her hips gave a swivel.
Oh, Lord.
He could have her here…now…against the piano. That was what the swivel of her hips and urgent whimpers of desire were telling him.
In truth, it had always been a fantasy of his—to tup a woman silly against a piano.
But with Valentina… It would be no mere tupping.
On a wave of noble determination and self-denial, he removed his hands from her body and stepped away. Separated by mere inches, they stared at each other, gasping for air. She was deliciously tousled, her lips puffy and kiss-crushed—a fantasy come to life.
He took another step back.
For her.
For himself.
“I, um…” She touched fingertips to those lips in need of more thorough kissing. “I need to go to bed.”
“Alone?” he asked.
