Page 110 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

I knew well enough that the best-laid plans often went to shit. So I had plans A through E. And not one of those included Elena Lombardi.

They couldn’t.

I heard it the moment the elevator doors parted.

The music.

The very quality of it had transformed my apartment from the familiar masculine oasis I’d spent the last three months of my life locked inside into something ethereal. I could picture the Italian countryside outside Tore’s house as if I’d stepped through a looking glass. The olive trees bursting with tangy fruit, the sloping waves of hillside gone from green to gold under the summer’s intense rays. I was reminded of the first time I’d visited as a boy, the wonder I’d felt at seeing grapes on the vine, the tart burst of an unripe merlot exploding like a sour grenade on my tongue. I’d always enjoyed music, but I’d never been to see a concert pianist, and now I wondered how I could have been so remiss.

Because the magic Elena pulled from that instrument was art I felt plucking at the strings of my own soul.

The last of the sunset spilled syrupy light like apricot juice through the windows, the glistening of it pooling directly under the grand piano no one ever played in the corner of my living room.

She sat on the bench, head bowed as if in prayer, eyes closed lightly, lids just touching as she moved with the power of the song that flowed through her fingers and into the keys. Her hair was longer than it had been when I first met her, tumbling down her shoulders, a shifting, shimmering mass of carmine silk. The bare skin of her arms was pebbled with goose bumps as if she was just as affected by the force of her song.

I moved closer.

Wild dogs and armed Cosa Nostrasoldaticouldn’t have kept me from moving closer to witness Elena Lombardi like I had never seen her before.

It was different this time than the first when she had played such a sad tune in her brownstone that night I showed up to test her mettle. The notes she stroked softly out of the ivory and black keys weren’t sad or lonely.

They were bright as the syrupy sun, as that burst of tart grape juice on my tongue.

This was the reason there was music; when words suffered from limitations, and the only way you could express those gargantuan nameless emotions was through song.

I wanted to know if she played it for me.

If the gold bright notes were about us.

With Elena, it was never as straightforward as simply asking her for the answer. Like music from the keys, it had to be coaxed out with masterful hands.

So I didn’t say a word as I crossed the room on silent, impatient strides. The sound swelled vividly all around us, so she didn’t notice when I stopped just a hairsbreadth away from her, swaying back in its black nightgown.

I didn’t want to disturb the sonata, but my hands burned, and the only thing that could put out the fire was the cool touch of her skin against mine. Gently, I whispered my fingertips up her slender biceps, over her shoulders, and gathered her wine-red hair in my hands.

She didn’t falter.

In fact, my touch seemed only to spur her through the climax of the song, her fingers like water rushing over the keys, a river of sound.

I moved the heavy length of hair over one shoulder, baring the long white column of her neck.

I needed to know if the pulse that throbbed justtherebeneath the skin tapped out the same tattoo as the notes she played, so I bent to press my lips to her neck. The warm, floral scent of Chanel number 5 perfumed her satin skin. So lightly against skin so soft that I barely felt it as I feathered my mouth up and down that delicate throat.

“Sei bellissima,” I murmured as I touched my tongue to that fluttering pulse point.

It was a habit I’d built around her, this need to feel her heart beat, to feel the woman who thought she was made of ice pulse with fire.

A little shiver worked between her shoulder blades, but her fingers didn’t miss their cue.

“Do you play for me,lottatrice? Because this sounds like the sweetest song of surrender,” I continued low against her ear, my teeth scraping down the side of her throat.

The soft hiccup of breath through her parted lips. They were free of red lipstick, a natural color like ripe plum I wanted to suck into my mouth.

Seducing Elena was mesmeric. I got tangled up in the same mechanisms I used to soothe her, transfixed by her subtle, storied responses to even the slightest touch, the most innocent of phrases.

There was such longing in her, a deep well of it that until now, until me, had gone untapped.

It was drugging to know I had access to all that dormant sensuality.