He hands me a glass. I take it. My fingers brush his. His skin is warm. "To Vance," I whisper, raising the glass.
Alaric freezes. His eyes, dark and swirling with that silver fire, lock onto mine. A slow, wicked smile spreads across his face. "To obstacles removed," he corrects, clinking his glass against mine.
We drink. The liquid burns all the way down, settling in my stomach like molten lead. It pairs perfectly with the darkness inside me.
Alaric sets his glass down and walks around the bench. "Scoot over."
I shift to the left, making room for him on the leather seat. He sits. The bench groans under our combined weight. He is so big that his thigh presses firmly against mine, a wall of solid muscle. His arm brushes my shoulder. The heat radiating off him is immense, enveloping me in his scent—sandalwood, cognac, and the faint, metallic tang of the storm.
"Have you ever played four hands?" he asks, lifting the fallboard to reveal the keys.
"In conservatory," I answer. "With instructors. It was always... crowded."
"Instructors teach you to stay in your lane," Alaric says, cracking his knuckles. The sound is loud, violent. "They teach you boundaries. Treble and Bass. Yours and Mine." He places his hands on the keys. His hands are massive, spanning an octave and a half effortlessly. The veins in his forearms stand out against the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt. "I don't believe in boundaries, Elodie."
He plays a chord. C Minor. Dark, resonant, heavy. "Rachmaninoff," he commands. "Concerto Number 2. Second movement."
"That’s for piano and orchestra," I argue automatically. "We can't play it with just four hands."
"We can," he counters. "I will be the orchestra. You be the soloist. I will provide the foundation. You provide the soul." He turns his head, his nose brushing my cheek. "Do you trust me to catch you?"
"I trust you to break me," I whisper.
"Then let's break it together."
He begins. He plays the orchestral opening—the slow, rolling arpeggios that sound like deep water. His touch is surprisingly tender for a man capable of murder. He coaxes the sound out of the instrument, deep and mournful.Dum... da-da-dum...
I wait for my entry. I count the beats.One, two, three.My hands hover over the keys. The tremor is gone. I enter.
My melody floats above his accompaniment—a lonely, aching line of notes that speaks of longing. It works. God, it works.
His left hand crosses under my right. His arm brushes my breast. I gasp, faltering for a microsecond, but he covers the gap with a swell of volume, carrying me. "Don't stop," he murmurs, his eyes closed, his head thrown back. "Feel me."
We play. The music swells, filling the room, filling the empty spaces in my chest. It is an intimacy far deeper than the sex we had last night. In bed, he dominated me. He took. Here... here we are partners. We are one organism with twenty fingers.
His rhythm dictates my breath. When he slows down (rubato), I slow down. When he accelerates, pushing the tempo with a chaotic intensity, I chase him. My fingers fly across the upper register. His hands thunder in the bass. We are weaving a tapestry of sound. We are arguing. We are making love. We are warring.
His leg presses harder against mine. I push back. The friction is maddening. The vibration of the piano strings travels up my arms, through my spine, and settles between my legs. I am aroused. Violently, painfully aroused by the sheer competence of him. By the beauty he is creatingwithme.
We reach the climax of the movement. Our hands are flying. At one point, our fingers tangle—a clash of skin and bone—but we don't stop. We disentangle and keep playing, the mistake turning into a dissonance that resolves into a perfect, shining major chord.
We hold the final note. The sound decays slowly into the silence of the room. Neither of us moves. My hands are still on the keys. His hands are resting on his thighs. We are breathing heavily, in sync.
"You are incredible," Alaric whispers. The confession sounds torn out of him.
I turn to look at him. He is staring at me with a look of raw, undisguised hunger. But it’s not just sexual hunger. It’s the hunger of a man who has found the missing piece of his soul and is terrified of losing it. "You're not bad yourself," I say breathlessly. "For a butcher."
He laughs. It’s a real laugh—deep, throaty, genuine. "A butcher who knows his anatomy."
He reaches into the inside pocket of his discarded jacket, which is draped over the piano. He pulls out a file folder. It is thick. Cream-colored. Stamped with the Hallowed Halls seal. He places it on the music stand, covering the sheet music we didn't need.
"What is that?" I ask, the spell breaking slightly.
"The Coda," he says. "The final movement of our little duet." He taps the folder. "Open it."
I hesitate. The last time he showed me something—the MP3 player—it shattered my reality. "Is it another recording?"
"Better. It is the Partiture of your life."
