“He left? Where did he go?”
“Oh, nowhere. He left me, not London.” She swallowed nervously. “There was another woman.”
It hurt still to say the words. Hurt still to be reminded of the pain Oliver had inflicted on her fledgling heart. She looked down, abruptly lost in the pain of the past.
“What a fucking idiot,” Max murmured, and Bo looked up again.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing,” Max said smoothly, before sitting up and hauling Bo into his lap. “You’re better off without him, you know that, right?”
She nodded. Willa said that. Lisa said that. Ida said that. Even Geoffrey said it. It still didn’t make it hurt any less.
“Did you love him?” Max asked, and there was something new in his voice. A tone she hadn’t heard before.
“What?”
“Did you love him?” Max asked again, and his gaze was intent upon her face, which he stroked with a feather-light touch.
“I must have loved him, or it wouldn’t have hurt so much,” Bo reasoned, but Max shook his head.
“No. Rejection stings, Bo. You don’t have to have been in love with . . . Oliver, wasn’t it? You don’t have to have loved Oliver to have been hurt by him.”
“I really liked him though,” she said, and Max gave a soft smile.
“Liking someone isn’t the same as loving someone, trust me. Loving someone is beautiful, even if they never love you back.”
Bo didn’t understand that. How was love beautiful if it hurt? How was love ever beautiful if it wasn’t shared? She frowned, but Max smiled again, leaning towards her.
“When you fall in love, you’ll know it. You’ll feel it, right in here.” He laid a hand over her heart. “You’ll feel it.”
“Like a concerto,” Bo offered, and Max laughed.
“What makes you say that?”
“When you play, that’s where I feel it,” Bo replied. “In here.” She put her own hand over Max’s chest, and the rhythm of his breathing suddenly changed in a way that was familiar to her. Lightning quick, he flipped her onto her back, caging her beneath him in the way she loved.
“Muscle memory,” he whispered, bending to press a kiss on her collarbone. “That’s all my playing is: muscle memory. I know all the notes, how and when to play them.” Softly, he trailed a finger down her body, so that she squirmed delightedly. “I know how hard to press them too,” Max carried on, and now his finger reached the juncture between her legs. She inhaled sharply as he lightly pressed against her most sensitive part, rubbing softly so that she had to chew on her lip to stop from crying out. “I know how hard to press them, so that they make the best, most wonderful noise.”
“Play me harder,” she managed to utter, lost now entirely to the feelings coursing through her body.
“I will,” Max promised, though his finger still moved in a frustratingly soft way. “I want to commit you to my muscle memory. I want to know all the ways to play you so that you make those gorgeous noises you do . . . sounds I feel, right in here.” He gestured to his chest once more, and Bo felt something a little like happiness flood through her. A happiness which mixed with her lust to make the most perfect of cocktails.
“Please,” she now begged, opening her legs wider for him, and Max nodded, lowering himself against her. Abruptly, he stopped, looking deep into her eyes.
“You might just be the best thing I’ve ever had the privilege of playing,” he whispered. “Have I ever told you that? Being with you is a privilege, and don’t ever let anyone make you feel differently. Not ever again.”
Chapter Seventeen
She started to feel it at the oddest of times and in the most inconvenient of ways.It, that thing Max had talked of, a feeling he said she would know in her heart. She began to feel it, began to recognize it, though she didn’t dare put a name to it. Wouldn’t dare put a name to it. Putting a name to it acknowledged it, gave it shape and a reality she wasn’t quite ready to face. It was almost as if she didn’t name it, it wasn’t really happening. If she didn’t name it, she didn’t feel it.
Except, of course, that she did.
She felt it when she went to Max’s one evening to use the shower and heard him playing. It was a piece she was beginning to know well, and once she was clean, she snuck into his study to listen, tiptoeing into the room before sinking into her usual corner silently. Max gave no indication he knew she was there until half an hour later, when his fingers stilled, and his shoulders went lax.
“Come here,” he ordered, without even turning around, a little out of breath. She went up to him, resting a hand on his shoulder, and he hauled her in front of him, lifting her onto the piano keys and dropping to his knees.
He ate her out on his eighty-five-thousand-pound Yamaha, and she couldn’t find it within herself to care. Also, for someone with aspirations to be a florist, she could have done a littlepersonalpruning herself, but again, couldn’t find it within herself to give a shit. Neither did Max apparently, given the voracity and fervour with which he licked at her. It was afterwards, when she was lying naked on the floor with him that she began to feel it . . . a warmth within her chest, somewhere between an ache of longing and feeling of belonging, which only strengthened when Max sat up, going to his piano and sitting naked on the stool. He began to play again, the same piece asbefore, and she rolled onto her back, letting the notes wash over her.
