‘So serious.’She pressed her nose against his cheek.‘Why?’
‘I was thinking of how good we are together,’ he said, and tucked her against his chest.
‘You are too dramatic.You said it yourself.It is just fucking.’
‘We could be more.’
Odette twisted against him, her body slotting into the pocket between his side and his arm.She placed her palm on his chest and rested her chin against the back of her hand.The tips of her hair tickled the soft parts of him, and in the depth of his mind he fought to contain what he’d felt for so long, but had never ever given hope to, let alone voice.
‘Come to Vienna with me,’ he said, instead.
Her brows creased.‘Pardon?’
‘Vienna.You have heard of it?’He nudged her side, and they both laughed.‘A home for those of us without a home.A home for lovers of music.Just imagine our days.Our nights.It could be magic.Surely, we have earnt it?’
‘I have a home.’She ran a finger down his cheek and across his chin.The slightest touch from her became a movement to be memorised, because even as he laid his heart bare, he could not tell if she would receive it with care or stomp it with her heel.‘Here, I have been so happy.’
‘It is just a little street.’The threat of her rejection ignited anger in him, and the hard edge of hurt leapt into his words faster than it should have.But he had carried it for too long and had nothing left to wait for.He might as well let it fill the room.
‘Ever so small,’ she said, draping herself over his chest.‘But it is still my home.’
‘After the show has finished its run?Come then?’
Every hue of blue that spring owned danced in her eyes.A smile, a breath, and with a swift contortion, Odette pushed herself up, swung her leg over him and sat perched across him.Thighs either side of his torso, her toes wriggled against his calves and her sex pressed against his cock, which roused against her warmth and wetness.She rubbed against him, and he lay back, captivated, slowly growing hard beneath her body once more.
‘No talk of tomorrow.’She pushed her fingers into her hair and shook out her locks so that every golden ringlet tumbled over her shoulders.‘No talk of next.Tonight is for fucking.’And she raised herself onto her knees, guided his cock to her cunt, and slid herself down his length.He grunted, pressed inside her, and let the world disappear.
Chapter 17
Thecoolcottondrapedacross Odette’s shoulders.She folded into it as Cassius tugged the sheet beneath her chin.His fingertips, so deft and light, brushed her forehead as he tucked a loose curl behind her ear, then bent to kiss her temple.He muttered something, but through the fog of waking and another burst of the hum, she could not quite decipher the words.They sounded a little likeThink on it.Please.
As he groped his way through the grey dawn and into a chair to slip on his shoes, Odette tried to find sleep again, to brush away his departure, but she could not stop herself from watching.They both would have done that.Dressed in the dark to escape before morning or watched a lover grapple with buttons and hems.Gent that he was, Cassius probably assisted with fastenings and cords, whereas she never wore outfits that required a man’s assistance for such illicit meetings.She always made sure she could manage everything alone.
How long had she loved him for?It felt like forever.And in a way, perhaps, that was true.He was one of the few friends who’d known her since before she’d become a sensation.Through working together, bickering all the while, love of a kind had grown alongside the friendship.He scared others with his desire for control and demands for perfection, but not her, because she kept to the same standards for excellence.The constant need for precision sat at her core like a metronome, so of course they’d found a harmonious way of working together as it kept pulling them into sync.
But this?This pounding in her chest, the ache in her stomach, the need in her sex.The longing to be held, to be close, to be filled by him, to simplybebeside him and watch time pass—it was both familiar and foreign, innate and strange.
And wonderful.
Incredibly wonderful.
And the worst thing imaginable.
She’d meant for this night to banish her longing, had meant to experience him and leave, fully satiated.But she craved him more than before now, and not just the way he made her scream, how he controlled her pleasure only to let it unleash on her in a tempest…
No, she craved the way he looked at her.How he smiled at her when he almost never smiled at others.His kisses.His touch.
He paused at the door and regarded her with the same steady look, the same easy confidence that she could draw from basements, pits, and his podium.His lips stretched into a lopsided smile, and his mouth formed words she could not make out.
As he left, the door closed soundlessly behind him.
Her heart ached in her chest.Yet, somehow, it felt as if it were leaving with him.
Sunlight stretched out from behind the curtains.It filled the gaps between the white paint and the wood finishes of her furniture, lit the grain and knots of the floor, and bounced off the plaster cornices above.It even glinted off the glass that cupped the lamps.Of all the days for London to shine, why would the sun choose a day when all she wanted was to weep?
For years, she’d seen that look.
For years, he’d given her that smile, even as he refused to laugh.
