Overture (North Security, #1)

Once a principal had called my father. This is incredible news, the woman had said. Your son is extremely gifted. I spent three days and three nights in the well because of those test scores. I learned to get the answer wrong enough times not to attract attention, after that.

I never really believed the devil lived inside me. If I believed in the devil, then I had to believe in God, and he had abandoned me too long ago for me to speak his name—even to myself. It wasn’t the devil, precisely. It was me. Simply me. As I’d traced my fingers along the moss-damp bottom of the well, I knew that I deserved to be down here. That every glimpse of sunlight was a gift I didn’t deserve.

That every sweet thing I’d ever have would have to be stolen.

“And then when that love started to change into something else, when it was spiked with desire, I didn’t know how to handle that. It was better and so much worse at the same time.”

“You don’t have to be afraid of it.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Maybe it’s time that I gave you the sex talk,” she says, her tone impish. “So that way you’ll know what you’re doing. Repeat after me: condoms are mandatory.”

A bark of laughter escapes me. “I never stood a chance against you, did I?”

Her humor fades. “You’ve done a pretty good job resisting this.”

Part of me still wants to deny it. Stubborn to a fault, that’s me. But I can’t pretend not to want her anymore. Lust thrums through my body in visible shudders. Being this close to her, touching her, but not having her—it’s enough to rip me to shreds. “I shouldn’t have kissed you.”

“How much longer?” she whispers.

My internal clock is accurate down to the second. “A minute.”

“What would you do to me? If I were over eighteen?”

Heat races through my veins. “I shouldn’t have kissed you, but I would do it again. And again. And again until you moaned into my mouth. And then I’d move lower, down your body. To your shoulders and your stomach. Your breasts. It’s all I can think about.”

Her chest rises and falls with rapid breaths. “Keep going.”

How did I ever think I was the one with control in this relationship? Because I made rules and she followed them, but that was always her choice. I only ever had as much control as she gave me. And I’m helpless in the face of her desire. “I want to kiss you between your legs, to taste you, to drink you in and make you push your hips against my face. And all the while you’ll play the violin, so perfect, so perfect, because you don’t know how to make a mistake, not even if you tried.”

Her eyes are wide and dark and luminous. “Liam.”

“But then I would find your clit. It would already be hard and throbbing. Slick. I’d flick it with my tongue, again and again, ruthless, not caring that you’d beg me to go slower or softer. Your hands would falter, and there would be a terrible sound from the violin, because you would come hard enough to forget.”

“How much longer?” she says on a tortured breath.

At some point my words stopped being hypothetical. They became a promise, and every muscle in me strains for completion. My whole body aches to hear the beautiful sounds as she rises and the terrible screech as she comes for me.

“Almost doesn’t count,” I mutter, grim and aching.

“Now.”

I shake my head, my eyes not leaving hers. She’s heavy-lidded, her lips gently parted. “Ten,” I tell her. “Nine. Eight.”

She moves her violin back into place, her arms up as the bow goes into position. How many times have I seen her like this? And yet she’s completely different. It can’t be the seconds ticking away. Nothing as external as time. Something’s changed inside her.

“Seven. Six. Five.”

The first note enters the air around us, and I feel it deep inside my body. In my muscle and bone. In my cock, which pushes against the rough denim of my jeans.

There is more than welcome in her eyes. There’s challenge.


SAMANTHA

I don’t expect him to actually touch me. “Four,” he says, and I begin the opening rise of Beethoven’s “5 Secrets.” They’re moving and sweet, with a touch of melancholy.

His eyes flicker with a deep shame. He doesn’t want to want me, which is what makes it so sad. The music is how I speak to him. It’s how he speaks back to me, his head bowed before me. Does it really matter so much whether I’m seventeen or eighteen? Does it really matter that a piece of paper makes him my guardian? He does not have a monopoly on being protective. It’s not only him who decides what happens here.

I want to guard him from the onyx shadows in his green eyes.

“Three,” he murmurs, and I expect him to walk away.

The bow moves almost on its own, my limbs forming around the instrument the way it wants. It’s a sensual experience, playing the violin. I didn’t realize how much until now.

He touches my lips with his thumb, the movement bold. His hand trails lower, over the shape of my breasts and the concave of my stomach.

“Two,” he says, pushing my legs. The backs of his knuckles brush the insides of my thighs, and everything in me tightens. Muscle memory is a powerful thing, and I manage to keep playing without missing a single note. Two fingers slip beneath the slit of the dress. Those green eyes widen, and I know he’s shocked that I’m not wearing anything underneath.

My regular panties left an obvious line in the thin fabric of the dress. I’ll need something else to wear underneath—a thong. Though at the moment having nothing feels more right than anything I could buy at a store.

“One,” he says, his voice almost sympathetic. Rough finger pads open my most private place, searching and inexorable. I’ve never felt so exposed, even with nothing bared to his sight.

The hard part isn’t playing the notes. It’s keeping the tempo the same. My hands want to speed up, my body moving toward an uncertain peak. He finds a well of moisture and draws it up, his forefinger circling my clit. My breath shudders out of me.

“Keep playing,” he murmurs, his thumb moving to my clit, his fingers searching below.

My eyes fall shut, but my hands know what to do even without watching. The bow meets the strings in perfect accord, the tempo rising only slightly. “Don’t stop,” I say on a moan.

A humorless huff of laughter. “I couldn’t.”

His hands move with startling knowledge of my body, as if he’s been practicing for ten thousand hours, as if I’m his instrument to play. Pleasure swirls inside me, soft at first, and then louder, unmistakable. Orgasm wrenches my body with sudden violence.

A loud screech rents the air as my bow rubs discordant against the strings.

In the aftermath of my climax, Liam gently strokes the inside of my thigh. My body twitches and sighs, struggling for equilibrium. I open my eyes to find him watching me.

“You stopped playing,” he says, his tone grave, a hint of erotic playfulness lurking deep in those moss-green eyes. “We’ll have to start over again. And again. Until you get it right.”

“Oh no,” I protest weakly, not sure my body can take another ounce of pleasure.

“Oh yes,” he says, a note of mock regret in his voice. “Practice makes perfect.”

My limbs feel like they’re made of jelly as I play the opening rise of Beethoven’s “5 Secrets” again. Liam’s fingers work with devastating accuracy to bring me to the peak. I tighten my hold on the neck of the violin, determined to finish this time, to play the song to completion.

Then he spreads my legs wider and presses his mouth to my core, and I’m lost.


LIAM