I set my bow across the strings once again and took a measured breath. She took one too, in time with mine. I couldn’t possibly start without discussing this with her further. This was the precise reason I never mixed life with music. Things got messy. I didn’t want to turn down the opportunity to play with her, though, so I had to figure it out. Fast.
My breath turned into a heavy sigh as I leaned my cello against its stand and set the bow down. Savannah rolled her eyes and put her flute on its upright stand, clasping her hands on her lap.
“Is there a problem?”
My proximity to her was maddening.
The last time I was this close to her we were in bed … I couldn’t stand to be this close to her without touching her, and that was going to be a massive problem if we were to continue working together. I didn’t want it to be … I just wanted to touch her. Just one more time.
So I did.
I reached across the restless space between our bodies and gently set my hand on her thigh. The muscles up and down her thigh tensed in response.
“W-what are you doing?” Her voice staggered a bit as her eyes fell to my hand and made their way up my arm before resting on mine. Her brown eyes were nearly black as her large pupils took me in, and her chest was moving faster as her breathing became softly more erratic.
My mind froze. I had no clue what I was doing. I had no rational explanation for why I was sitting in a practice room at the conservatory with a student, helping her prepare for her senior recital on an instrument I knew little about. Or why my hand was on her thigh.
My lips barely opened. “I don’t know.”
She swallowed hard, never blinking or flicking her gaze elsewhere. “Don’t stop.”
I leaned forward, watching the hue of her cheeks turn from sun-kissed pink to breathless red as I got closer. Never once did she look away from me. She shifted in her seat, turning her knees toward me. My hand trembled as I slid it from her thigh, over the curve of her hip and up her side until it came to rest at the base of her neck where I cradled her chin in my hand. Her eyebrows pulled in a little and she leaned her head into my hand, sucking in a long, deep breath. Her lips looked fuller, begging to be kissed.
I considered pulling back, stopping this right then and there, but all the reasons I shouldn’t have been doing what I was doing vanished as her tongue tentatively slid across her lips, then disappeared back into her beautiful mouth. I brought my other hand to the opposite side of her face and pulled her face to mine. The tips of our noses touched as our mouths stood in a standoff, millimeters from each other.
Exactly enough distance to make a fatal error.
Nothing about her mouth was wrong. Nothing about the smell of lilies coming from somewhere between her neck and her hair was immoral. Nothing about my absolute desire for her was deniable.
In the span of the blink of an eye, our lips were pressed together as if by a force outside either one of us. Her hands clenched the sides of my torso as a high-pitched sigh found its way from her throat into my mouth. Needing to feel her hair between my fingers, I slid one of my hands around the back of her neck and through her long, wild, impossibly soft hair. I was lost to her in that moment, and I never wanted to find my way out of that hole.
Savannah
The first thing I noticed the morning after Gregory kissed me in the practice room was that my lips were swollen, and my muscles tense and aroused. But it wasn’t the physical impact ... it was the emotional. Everything had changed. Again. We’d broken all the rules … then set new ones, and then broke those. That afternoon we kissed ... then practiced... then kissed more. The feel of his lips against mine was unexpectedly intense, fraught with tension, and thinking about it the next morning made me moan a little.
I’d gotten back to my room that night after practice, and Marcia immediately saw something was going on. So, in slow, hesitant sentences, every moment thinking I was going to be judged by her, I told Marcia the story.
Instead of the condemnation I expected, I got a hug. And then a near whispered, urgent request for details. We sat on her bed, talking and laughing, and for the first time since all of this started with Gregory, I didn’t feel like I needed to hide. After all, no matter how close we were, Nathan would never understand or support my love for Gregory. He would never approve. Honestly, I didn’t know if I even approved. Of myself. The more we kissed, however, and the more we said we loved each other, the less I cared.
The next day I arrived to practice early. He was already there, and the door was slightly open, so I heard him playing as I walked down the length of the practice hall, my heart thumping with each step. I stopped outside the room to watch and listen. He was playing Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, a haunting and melodic composition.
His back was to the door. I stood watching, my eyes taking in the muscles of his shoulders and the slight sway of his head as he played. For a man who kept his emotions under such tight constraints, the passion in his music was heart stopping. I stood, watching, arrested, until he finished. As I watched him play, I realized I was incredibly unsure of myself. Unsure of what our strange make out session in the practice room meant.
Nothing about our situation had changed. I was still a student. He was still a professor. Moreover, he was still an arrogant, obsessed man who claimed that personal relationships had no place in his life. No amount of kissing could cure that.
My insecurity washed away in an instant when he turned around, his blue eyes meeting mine. I felt his gaze all the way down my spine, and his eyes barely left me throughout the practice session.
When we were finished, he set his cello in its stand and approached me. He lifted his left hand, tenderly cupping my chin.
“Savannah ...”
I swallowed.
“We can’t do this,” I whispered. “Not here.”
“Monday. Practice at my house. Six o’clock.”