Odette took his hand and raised it to her lips.Sucked the tip of his finger.She nipped, and the imprint of her teeth shot a glorious spasm of pleasure lined with pain through him, the tiny flicks of her tongue which followed melting him into his seat.Piano keys jutted against his back as he splayed his thighs wider to bring her close.He scraped his teeth over her soft stomach, over the bump of her ribs, kissing, memorising where she was salty and where she was sweet.When he took her nipple into his mouth again, she guided his hand over her arse and between her thighs to push his finger into her warmth once more.Her groan echoed through the vast room, the melody of it thick in the air while he grunted, rough and low.
‘Ask me to stay.’Cassius ran his fingertip around her nub.
‘Ask if you can,’ she said, breathless.
Cassius held his finger still.Odette wiggled against him and whimpered when he did not respond.‘Ask,’ he repeated.
Odette bent so that her mouth brushed his ear, her warm breath sending gooseflesh down his neck, prickling against his collar and bristling with longing.‘Why are you pretending you don’t want me?’She ran her palm along his thigh and over his cock.A deep rumble escaped him as she stroked his length, so hard now that it formed a tight peak beneath his trousers.‘If I unbuttoned you and climbed on top of you, would you push me away?’A button, and another, as she flipped him apart.‘If I bent over the piano, would you sit back on your bench and refuse me?’
‘I want you to want me,’ he rasped.‘I want you to choose me.Just once.’
And something in her stance, in her posture, shifted.
‘Follow me.’Odette hooked a finger around his, like a link in a chain, and drew him to standing.Her bare feet made almost no sound against the floor even as his shoes clipped against marble.Mesmerised, he obeyed as she led him down the hallway and deeper into the house, past all the rooms he knew, then further, into unfamiliar spaces.He shot scant glances at their shapes as they passed, but his gaze always returned to her naked back.At last, she stopped before a door and turned to kiss him.
‘My private chambers,’ she whispered, as they broke apart.‘Join me?’
‘More,’ he dared.‘Beg me.’
Odette slid her palm down his front and beneath his waistband, her access eased by his unbuttoned flies where she’d begun to unfasten him at the piano.As she stroked his cock, she licked her lips.‘Beg you?’The words were toys in her mouth, mere trinkets.Like she admired them, but could not decide if they appealed to her enough to keep, or if she would toss them away.
She knew he would do anything she wanted.If she decided to flip his words and send him to his knees instead to grovel, then all she had to do was breathe the command and he would.What kind of man asked to be asked, begged to be begged?She pandered to his longing as an indulgence.
‘You should know,’ she said, as she opened the door to walk backwards, leading him inside, ‘that I have never invited a man in here.’She pushed his coat from his shoulders.Freed his waistcoat, then his shirt.The cuffs snagged, and Odette brought his wrists close as she unthreaded each button, pausing to kiss and lick the place where his veins pounded.‘But you have been in this room with me many times.’Another lick, and she guided his shirt off his body.It crumpled to the floor in a tangle of white, stark against the patterns on the rug.‘After some performances, when you have watched me all night, I imagine you as I stroke myself.I think of you as I bring myself to pleasure.’
‘You lie,’ he said, his words dissolving into a groan as she pressed her lips against the delicate skin beneath his jaw.He ran his palm over her hips, circled her areola, and pinched her nipple.God, her skin was soft as ribbons.
‘Why would I lie?’Her teeth scraped his Adam’s apple.‘Do you not know how intoxicating you are?How many eyes watch you as you conduct, including mine?Please,’ she gasped, and her warm breath shivered across the places where she had kissed him.‘Join me in my bed before you leave.Give me a memory of you here with me before you go.Give me one glorious night of nothing but fucking you.’
Cassius tangled his fingers in her hair and drew her face close to his.He searched her eyes for any hint of falseness.How could he believe that she’d ever thought of him for more than a second?Impossible.She couldn’t have.And certainly not in the way he thought about her.
‘I should have followed,’ she whispered.
‘I should have stayed.’
The past melted away as he sought her mouth, as he kissed her hard and breathed her in.Between her fumbling with his waistband and him moving his hands over her body like she was a symphony he could master, he slipped off his shoes, leaving them behind as they staggered towards the bed.She lit a candle, then laid back against the pillows as he stripped in haste, and when his socks snagged and he stumbled, balancing precariously on one leg for a beat, she laughed.At last, he stood naked before her, bare and erect.
She languidly opened her thighs.
‘Do I still need to beg?’she asked.
Cassius could only shake his head as he crawled onto the mattress.He started at her ankle, kissed the dip just beneath the bone.Kissed his way over the sleek strength of her calf to the curve behind her knees.Traced the slowest track across her thighs, first one, then the other, drawing patterns with his tongue until he had writ his name on her body.Lapped at her plump lips.When he stroked along her slit with lazy and languid sweeps of his tongue that circled her nub, she arched, thighs widening, and moaned so loud he felt the vibrations through his palms.He sucked, tasted, caressed her.Odette gripped his hair as she rocked against him, and he lapped faster, fucking her with his tongue, dipping in and out of her salt, her mustiness, her tang, imprinting the taste of her glorious intimacy.She panted, her moans shifting higher, and clenched her thighs against his cheeks.He deliberately slowed his little flicks as she rode him, writhing as she gasped his name.
‘Yes, Cassius.Yes, yes,yes.’
One final gasp, and she crumpled.
Cassius pulled back.Knelt above her.Wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.Gloriously dishevelled, naked, sweat shimmering against her skin.Just a woman.Her back still arched, she heaved a breath and twisted against the sheets.
Cassius rested his palm on her knee.He drew together all the beautiful pieces of her that he knew so well—the confident lilt of her chin, the way she stroked her collarbone, her poise, her grace, her presence.A flicker from the candle, her skin golden and pink like a sunrise over the sea, like heaven.He’d broken himself against the hard lines of his anger for far too long, but here, in this bed, shewasjust a woman.Not a goddess, but a woman who could be loved and adored.Who could fit into his life.Just a woman that he loved, and had loved, since the moment he’d kissed her.
Cassius pressed the head of his cock against her and pushed in just far enough to cover his crown, then withdrew.More.He needed more.Resolve abandoned, he thrust deep into her.Odette moaned, and he fell against her chest, pressing her into the bed.She hooked her ankles behind his back, and he fucked her hard, shamelessly and fast, chasing his climax until it broke and he spent inside her.
Immaculate heaven.And in the quiet of their parallel bodies, a calm grew at his centre and drew him to her, a peace that fear or anger could not break.
He surrendered to it.From now until forever, he would love her.
Every tiny piece, every memory, every note.
