In Harmony (13 page)

“I can’t dance,” I squeaked.

“You’re doing fine.” We were barely moving, just a few steps in each direction as we turned slowly around. But even that was hazardous in my ridiculous heels, and I staggered and had to hang onto his arm to stay upright. It felt as solid as iron, and I was reminded of how he’d caught me on the steps. He was even stronger than he looked.

Unfortunately, not even he could make me a better dancer. I recovered, but kept tripping over my own feet, my face going red as I felt everyone looking. “Connor—”

And then he pulled me even closer to him and lifted me, my shoes just leaving the floor. He swept me round without apparent effort, and without my stumbling it actually looked good. “Better?” he asked.

I was panting. The whole length of my body seemed to be molded to his. His broad chest was pressed against my breasts, and the touch of him there was making my nipples rise and harden despite me willing them not to. His arm around my waist meant that my groin was mashed to his, and I was uncomfortably aware of the hardness I could feel along the inside of his thigh, and the effect it was having on my body—a dark, twisting heat inside me that I could already feel turning to moisture.
This is Connor, for God’s sake! What’s the matter with me?

I looked up at him, helpless. I expected him to be smirking, or outright chuckling at me. I thought he’d make some crude comment, but what I saw in his eyes took my breath away.

He looked just as helpless as me.

The music ended and the arm around my waist eased free—almost reluctantly. I was away across the floor immediately, heading for the safety of the edge. Jasmine was waiting for me, open-mouthed.

“What was
that?”
she asked.

“Nothing. Him being stupid.”

I couldn’t stop myself looking back over my shoulder at him. He was still standing there, watching me.

“It didn’t look like nothing,” Jasmine told me. “Do you want to know what it looked like?”

“Not particularly.”

“It looked like he wanted to get some Irish inside you.”

I winced. “Thanks. Classy.”

“I’m serious. I think he likes you!”

I shook my head. “He likes…
them.”
And I pointed to yet another tall blonde who was cuddling up to Connor, running her hand over his back. “He’s just messing around with me to annoy me, because he knows I have to work with him.”

Jasmine frowned. “You don’t…like
him
, do you?”

I rolled my eyes. “God, of course not!”

Chapter 7

That night, when the canapés were all gone and the champagne all drunk, when we’d offered our help in cleaning up and been politely refused by Natasha, when we’d half-carried a slightly drunk Jasmine to the cab and taken her home…I thought about Connor.

I was alone in my apartment, still wearing the dress—although I’d slipped off the Heels of Death and was enjoying the blessed relief of bare feet. I was sitting facing the window, playing my cello and looking out at the city lights. I hadn’t had much to drink, just enough to make my mind a little dreamy and random. I let my thoughts guide my playing, my body just a conduit.

Connor Locke was long, low notes—the sound of my impending doom. What did I really know about my nemesis? Irish. Bad boy. Arrogant. Drunk, more often than he should be. Magnetic to women—at least, a certain type of women. And yet from what I could see, he never stayed with one for very long.

Except Ruth. What sort of woman had tamed him for long enough—or made him fall hard enough—that he wanted her name permanently etched on his body?

He was enjoying playing with me—I could see that much. He was like a cat with a mouse, knowing that I could never really escape but wanting to draw out the game as long as possible. Exactly how much was he going to make me suffer, over the next three months? Enough that I’d break and call the whole thing off?

It occurred to me that maybe that was what he wanted. If I refused to work with him, he could walk away and all the blame would be on me. Was he just looking for a way out, one that wouldn’t make him look like the bad guy?

The weird thing was, I couldn’t imagine Connor minding being the bad guy. He seemed like he’d embrace the role. So why, then, was he playing with me? Just because he found it amusing?

I stopped playing, and then started again as I thought about how his body had felt. The movements of my bow got smaller, faster. Notes rippling down over the hard ridges of his abs. Curving and soaring as they arced over the broad swell of his chest. Then hard, strong strokes as the music flowed over the thick muscles of his shoulders, down his back to his—

I broke off abruptly and sat there with the bow resting on the strings. Something had started inside me, a swirling heat that I visualized as deep, deep scarlet, and I wasn’t sure how to shut it off.

A part of me wasn’t sure I
wanted
to shut it off.

I laid the cello carefully down and started pacing. It wasn’t getting turned on that bothered me; it was getting turned on by
him
.
Think about something else.
I stared at my composition notes, but that only made me think of Connor. I slipped out of the dress and hung it up neatly so I could give it back to Clarissa the next day, but that left me in my underwear, and rogue thoughts of Connor’s hands on me started to creep in.

This is ridiculous! I do
not
like him!
I told myself. It was just a purely physical reaction, I decided. Like getting goose bumps when you’re cold—nothing you can do about it. My body simply didn’t know any better, didn’t care that he was a loud-mouthed, brash idiot who coasted on his talent. It was only interested in how big his hand had seemed when he gripped my arm. How his chest had felt against my breasts when he pressed me to him, how his hard cock—

I closed my eyes. This was getting out of control.

I’d go to bed. I’d go to bed and sleep, and in the morning I’d be back to normal. I’d go to bed and I would absolutely
not
play with myself.

Minutes later, I was lying there under the covers in just my panties. Normally, I threw on an oversize t-shirt, but that night I didn’t bother. Going topless didn’t mean I was going to give in to temptation, though. Not at all.

I turned over, unable to get comfortable. It was like an itch, deep inside my body, impossible to ignore. It wasn’t completely dark in my bedroom, enough of the city lights making it through the blinds to light up the white covers and the wide, queen-sized bed. A bed that had only ever had one person in it, the entire time I’d been at Fenbrook. The only time it saw any sort of action was when I—

No. Not to memories of him. Not while thinking of his smirk and his twinkling eyes.

I turned over again. Then again. The swirling heat didn’t fade, but grew more and more intense until—

I slid one hand down my body and under the thin fabric of my panties. Eyes tight shut, fingertips stroking along my lips, up and down, up and down….

There was too much weight on me. I kicked the comforter off and lay there almost naked. I tried to keep my mind empty, but Connor’s face was there immediately and I let out a groan of anger that sounded a lot like lust.
Think of Sven!
I thought desperately.
Strong hands working your back, all slippery with oil….

But my body didn’t want Sven. I felt the ghosts of other hands on my body, on my arm and back. Felt my nipples stiffening at the memory of him.

We all have our preferred positions. Mine is on my back, knees wide, heels digging into the bed. My fingers were slick with my moisture now, stroking up and down my lips, and my thumb was beginning to circle my clit. Ripples of energy were skittering down my body, growing stronger each time. I could feel the orgasm building inside me, but there was something missing, something not right.

It doesn’t feel like him,
a traitorous little voice told me.
That’s what’s wrong.

I pushed the thought away, and let my knees flop wider. I was panting now, my fingers frantic at my opening, feeling the lips swell and spread. My thumb kept circling my clit, so super-sensitive it was almost painful, yet I wanted to stroke it raw. I was desperate, aching for release in a way I’d never known before.

I could feel the orgasm trapped inside me like a tethered balloon. However fast I stroked and rubbed, it refused to rise any higher. I needed something else.

I swung myself off the bed and yanked out the carton of books. They were in neat alphabetical order, double-stacked with the filthier ones on the lower level. But when I pulled out the five bodice-rippers at the end, they revealed my other secret. A black, unmarked box which I opened with shaking fingers. Inside, a translucent pink dildo.

I’d tried a couple. A vibrator was good, in its own way, but I never got over the alien-ness of the buzzing. It felt too mechanical, too unrealistic. And the dildos I’d seen with carefully textured surfaces, with their skin colors ranging from ivory to black, had gone too far in the other direction. Mine, though, was made of some jelly-like material, and the color helped, too. It didn’t look
too
real. Yet when you closed your eyes….

I quickly stripped off my panties and lay back on the bed. I teased myself with it a little first, tracing my lips with the head, imagining some faceless man doing the same. But he wouldn’t stay faceless. However hard I tried, it was Connor I saw. Connor’s thick biceps either side of my head, as he supported his weight above me. Connor’s tight ass flexing as he positioned himself to—

I rolled my head back and groaned as I slid the head into me, feeling myself stretch. Just the thought of it, of the man I thought of as an arch-enemy entering me, was enough to send my climax rising and twisting, almost faster than I could control. In my mind he started to thrust, and I stroked the dildo back and forth, my teeth biting my bottom lip as the smooth rubber stretched my walls. My heels grew warm as they rubbed back and forth on the bed, and I imagined gripping his ass with both hands and pulling him in deeper….

I arched my back as it slid into me, gasping as it opened me up. I’d started to sweat, my breath coming in choking gasps. But it wasn’t enough. This was Connor, I realized, inserted into my normal Sven fantasy.

He wouldn’t take you like this,
the little voice in my head said. I ignored it for a moment but when it came back, I allowed the thought to creep in. How
would
Connor Locke take me?

Without even thinking about it, I rolled over onto my hands and knees, one arm under me to keep the dildo moving. Immediately, it was better, more
real.
I had my eyes tightly closed, but I imagined there was a mirror in front of me, and in the reflection I could see Connor, driving into me from behind.

I let my body slump forward onto my shoulders my head awkwardly turned to the side, so I could rub at my clit with my other hand. I was driving the dildo in deep, now, deeper than I normally would.
He wouldn’t care. He wouldn’t care that I’m a virgin, he’d drive it in fast and deep and oh God so big—

I imagined those big hands on my hips, hard fingers digging into my flesh. I arched my back and dragged my breasts along the sheet so that it caressed my nipples, burning sparks leaping from them straight down to my groin. I could feel myself teetering on the edge and as I shoved the dildo in one last time, all the way to its root, I gasped, “C—Conner!”

The orgasm ripped through me, starting at my head and rippling down to my core, then exploding outwards to devour me completely. I could feel my legs twitching, my body clenching and squirming around the rubber length buried in me. I was heaving for breath, rivulets of sweat running down my chest to drip from my aching nipples. When the climax passed, I was a shuddering, weak-kneed mess.

***

I woke naked, the comforter dragged half over me in the night, the dildo nestling against my thigh, warm and intimate from my body heat. I could feel the traces of my shameful arousal on my inner thighs, and there was no denying the pleasant soreness. I really had done all that…while thinking about Connor.

I took a long shower and decided that it had been an aberration. Probably I’d been a little drunk from all the champagne. Anyway, it was out of my system. Things could go back to normal.

Only he seemed determined that nothing would be normal at all.

There was a message on my phone, surprisingly early in the morning for Connor to have been up—I wondered if he’d gone to bed at all.
Call me about rehearsal.

I was due to meet him the coming Thursday for our next rehearsal. I sighed—did he want to cancel or reschedule?

I dialed him and he answered immediately. “Hi. Sleep well?” he asked.

My face was immediately burning.
There’s no way he could know.
“Like a baby.”

I heard Connor smile. “I must have tired you out….”