I cringed. “A little, but I honestly don’t remember much about it.”
He nodded. “That’s okay. If you know how to read, you can learn how to read music. It’s like learning another language. It just takes time and commitment.”
Time and commitment.
I was all too willing to give it if it meant I got to spend more time with him.
“That sounds…difficult.”
Movement twitched that gorgeous mouth almost into a grin. “And here I thought you were up for the challenge.”
“I am…I just…I don’t want to disappoint you.”
A sound of frustration jutted from his nose. “Don’t think that’s a possibility, Alexis.”
He sighed again before he reached down and pulled out the stool. “Sit,” he said, and I complied. He rested his hands on my shoulders. A shiver raced down my spine.
What was he doing to me?
“I’m going to give you some things to study at home before I see you next time. But for today, the thing I want you to take away is music is all about feeling. Yes, there are techniques and rules, and you’re going to learn all of those. But music lives above them. Beyond them. Despite them.”
His breaths were all around me, his presence eclipsing me from behind.
Energy lapped and pulsed, his heart erratic where it pounded at my back. He leaned in, arms caging, fingers poised at the keys. His muscles twitched and bowed, and I swore I could see the ink imprinted on his skin begging to play.
The shiver of that bleeding star.
“Lay your hands over mine.”
My breath was a rasp when I did. Everything came alive, zapping and sparking in the air.
I could feel his sharp inhale, the way his big body trembled where he stood behind me, the quake of his hands as he played a single chord.
A gush of air rushed from his mouth as soon as he did, as if he were staggered by the sound echoing against the walls.
I felt it the moment he gave, the enormity strike in the room when he began to play.
Talented fingers flew across the keys, taking mine with them.
They spun a web of beauty.
A maze of sorrow.
I shuddered, wanting to beg him to sing the lyrics. To show me it all. What lived in his mind and dwelled in his spirit.
His voice grated in my ear. “Do you feel it, Alexis? It’s about tapping into the emotion. The pain. The joy. The love. The lust.” Those last words were rough, spinning through my senses. Heat pounded through my body.
I moved with him.
With the feeling.
With the ebb and flow of his body.
His fingers flew. The song growing in intensity. Something magical.
“Do you feel it?” The words were a pant, as if he were captured. Removed. Lost in a place that, for a time, only belonged to me and to him.
“It’s alive. A light shining somewhere in space, just waiting for us to harness it. To capture it. To give it a voice and life. Tell me you feel it.”
“Yes.” It left me on a needy rasp.
Because I could.
I could feel it.
I could feel the intensity. I could feel the beauty. I could feel his talent.
A tremble of desire vibrated through my being, and I could feel his erection pushing into my back.
Maybe it was only that, the lust that bled from the song.
A song that was somehow both desperate and bittersweet.
Foreign and somehow known.
But I wanted to get closer. Turn and find what would be on his face. The passion and need.
“Does it always feel like this? Every time you play? Every time you’re on a stage?”
The song slowed, his heart still a thunder, his breaths choppy and short. He hesitated before he finally said, “Only here…when I’m in front of a piano.”
I couldn’t stop myself. I angled around the side of him so I could see his face.
It dizzied my senses that were already overwhelmed. “Then why the drums?”
Those brown eyes raged in a full-blown war. As if he were trapped in a vacant space between the power of that song and the shackles of his reality. “Because I owe my life to my brother.”
At his admission, a breath parted my lips. I knew he was offering me a veiled part of himself. A glimpse into that place that too often went dim. Part of his truth.
Bewildered, I searched his face and his expression and those hypnotic eyes. My mind raced with all the questions that seemed silenced on my tongue.
Warily, he reached out, his hand splayed wide. He cupped the entire side of my face.
I trembled, couldn’t breathe.
“Lex.” It was a murmur that twisted my belly into a thousand intricate knots, while every other part of me came undone.
Completely at his mercy.
I swore I could see it, the desire that crackled in the atmosphere.
A shrill ring sliced through the intensity.
Zee jerked back as if he’d been burned. I blinked, fighting the flash of rejection that welled too fast and stung my eyes.
How did he manage to make me question things I’d never questioned before? I’d never been the kind of girl to doubt my value or merit, yet there I sat with my head spinning.
I had no clue where I stood, if I was falling, and if I was, where I was going to land.
Because I found the only thing I wanted with him was to start.
And every word out of Zee’s mouth pointed at the temporary.
He raked a hand down his face. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?” I pressed, digging deeper, desperate for something. Desperate for him to let me into the place I could feel him steadily taking me to, whether he wanted me there or not.
The words left his mouth like a dirty confession. “I’m sorry I can’t seem to stay away from you.”
My voice was the softest plea. “What if I don’t want you to?”
Bitterness curved his mouth, words tight with regret. “And what if I don’t have anything good to give you?”
“Everyone has something to offer, Zee. Everyone. Living is a choice. We decide how we wake up each morning and face the day. Either we’re led by hope or ruled by fear. And I won’t let circumstances define me. Maybe I’m a fool, because I will stand or I will fall, but I will never, ever allow fear to clip my wings.”
I glanced back at the piano, my spirit still dancing with the magnitude of his song that had been held back for too long, with the stark, blinding reality that for some reason this man had stopped living for himself.
I turned back to look up at him. “Maybe you’ve just forgotten how to fly.”
Pain lashed across his face. “No man is free if he’s already condemned.”
His words struck me like sorrow, and I wanted to reach out. Hold him. Touch him. Beg him to touch me.
His phone rang again. Cursing under his breath, he glanced at it, gripping it so tight I thought he would crush it in his hand. “I’m sorry. I need to return this.”
Disappointment slowed my nod. “I guess that’s my cue, then.”
Feeling like I’d run a marathon, dragged and pushed and pulled, I stood from the piano, reached down, and grabbed my bag. Slinging it over my shoulder, I headed for the door.