Madame Usher's voice receded into the background. The door on the far end of the hall hung open. I stepped in front of it, and curiosity drew my gaze inside.
Sprawled across an enormous canopy bed hung with blue curtains was the most beautiful guy I’d ever seen. He was my age, but the look in his slate-grey eyes was older and dripping with sin, like he’d seen some shit and was responsible for most of it. Soft lips set into a cruel slash as haunted eyes flickered over my body.
Familiarhaunted eyes.
Eyes I’d recognize anywhere.
It can’t be.
I willed myself to turn away, but my gaze drew down his naked chest, across the ink that curved around his pecs, down impossibly sculpted arms to his hands, where treble clef tattoos danced across long fingers.
It was none other than Dorien fucking Valencourt.
My childhood friend, the boy who’d torn my heart out and stomped it so hard that I’d never open it for anyone else, shot me a wily smile as his fingers stroked the most enormous cock I’d ever seen.
Chapter Five
Faye
Dorien Valencourt.
This is impossible. Of all the gin joints in all the world, how can he be here? There’s no way.
Sound the fucktrumpets, I’m doomed.
My throat dried. I tried to tear my eyes away, but they’d fixed on that cock like I was radar and it was a German U-boat – a rigid vessel plundering the oceans…
Ahem.
Dorien slid his perfect body off the bed. He didn’t bother to throw a towel over himself or pull on a shirt or anything, because the universe was not that fucking kind to me. As he strode toward the door, my mind flicked between past and present.
Dorien’s shit-eating grin as he smeared peanut butter into another student’s clarinet. Dorien embracing me with joy when we found out we would be in the same advanced class. Dorien’s cold eyes stripping my soul bare as he told me we weren’t friends anymore—
Me with my eyes ringed in red, sitting in that uncomfortable plastic chair in Mom’s hospital room, staring in rapt attention at my computer screen as it played a montage of Dorien’s concert footage from his last tour with Broken Muse. My body responding with fire and flame as those same inked fingers danced over the keys.
The other two musicians playing with Dorien were hot as sin, too, but that just made things worse. An African American cellist shredded his bow across the strings, his beaded cornrows swinging around his head as he contorted the music to his will. He turned his head toward the camera, and the instant my eyes met his midnight orbs I felt a sizzle run down my spine – a magnet pulling me into the screen, into a twisted world where a guy like that would notice a girl like me. Then the camera flicked to the violinist – a white-haired beauty with eyes of pure ice, whose long fingers curled around the strings with such exquisite grace an unshed tear squeezed from my eye. And I thought I’d already cried all the tears I had in me…
As the memories flooded me, recognition flashed in Dorien’s eyes. His stride faltered for just a moment, but he regained himself, wiping over his expression with a hardness that sent a shiver down my spine.
“Stay out of my private room, trash.” Dorien’s voice was like music on my body, strumming me in all the right places even as he insulted me.
The door slammed in my face, the sound ricocheting through the house like a gunshot. From Aroha’s room, I heard a bow screech across the strings and someone curse.
Dorien, what’s happened to you?
The old Dorien, my childhood best friend, was a total ham. He was always playing practical jokes and trying to make me laugh when I got too serious. He loved to make people laugh, to make them adore him.
I saw nothing of that bright, fun little dude in those stony eyes. All the fun had been sucked out of Dorien’s soul. Sure, he was fucking gorgeous beyond belief, but what good were brooding good looks and playboy ways if you were shriveled up inside?
His soul may be shriveled, but his dick—
I had to bite my lip to stop myself salivating. What was wrong with me? Get a grip,Faye. You’re here so your mother can get the best medical care, and that’s it. You’re definitely 100% not here to chase after a guy who already rejected you once.
If Madame Usher noticed Dorien’s nakedness, she seemed unperturbed. She continued my tour past a row of guest suites, bathrooms, another tiny practice room, a small gallery/storage room filled with instruments donated to the school, and a library in a double-height room filled with dusty old books and scores no one had ever read. I nodded and listened with half an ear, my mind occupied with Dorien.
What changed him?
Why is he here?
