In Harmony (16 page)

The door opened behind me. I killed the movie window with a split-second to spare.

“Let’s go for good old-fashioned pepperoni,” Natasha told me. Then, looking at my reddened face, “What?”

“Nothing,” I squeaked. Then, because that didn’t sound very convincing, “A porn site popped up.”

“Oh, Karen.” She kissed the top of my head. “Bless your innocence.”

***

A week went by. Connor and I started to rehearse every day, at his place and—with a lot of persuasion—in the practice rooms at Fenbrook. I got used to the rooftop, after the first few times. I’d bring coffee from Starbucks and we’d sit there alternating playing with warming our hands on the cardboard cups. Once you got over the shock, playing outdoors looking over the city was sort of…liberating. We practiced the first two sections—mine and his—until they shone, and we started to sound good. The way Connor would change the odd note here and there each time drove me nuts, and I had to beg and plead with him before he gave me a written score, but I started to get a very tentative feeling that just maybe we could pull it off.

I asked him every time I saw him how his classes were going. We each had a big essay on Stravinsky to complete, and whenever I asked him about it he got sullen and evasive. Eventually, I had to stop badgering him for fear of making him give up completely.

It was four days before I could speak to Clarissa without going beet-red, and it was lucky that I didn’t run into Neil during that time. Every time his name was mentioned, I could see his tan body against her paler one, his muscled ass tight as he thrust into her from behind. My guilt of having invaded their privacy by watching it was nothing compared to my guilt over how it had made me feel. It wasn’t
them,
as such—I wasn’t turned on by Neil, or Clarissa, or even the two of them together. It was the raw, hot nature of it, the realness of it. I couldn’t stop thinking about how it would feel to be taken like that.

And that thought brought me back to Connor and the fact that, despite still not being sure if I even liked him, he haunted my every waking thought.

Not just my waking thoughts, either. Midway through the week, I had the dream.

Chapter 10

Interlude – Karen’s Dream

Shafts of summer sunlight were lancing down from the windows, catching dust motes that betrayed the servants’ laziness. Under my dress, my corset held me tighter than any lover, forcing me to focus on every shallow breath.

As I fanned myself against the heat, there was a commotion at the door. A man in strange, tight blue trousers and a shining black jacket burst in.

“My apologies, Lady Karen,” panted my butler, clutching the arm he’d injured in the war. “I couldn’t stop him.”

“That’s perfectly alright, Daniel,” I told him, making a mental note to fire him. “I’m sure you did your best. Sir! Explain yourself!”

He walked closer, swaggering in his heavy black boots. Perhaps he was one of the workmen repairing the roof in the east wing. My heart fluttered as I remembered how some of the brutes had attempted to catch glimpses of me undressing through my bedroom window.

He was still coming. “Sir! I must protest!” I said, noting the muddy boot prints he was leaving across the marble. The poor maid would be on her knees for hours.

He didn’t stop, and there was a dark gleam in his eyes now. Fourteen generations of good breeding gave me the strength to stand my ground. “Sir! Please!”

He stopped only when he stood so close to me that I could feel the heat radiating from his body. With one finger, he lifted my chin and stared down at me with blazing eyes that sent a strange ripple through my body.

I opened my mouth to say, “Sir!” again, but suddenly his lips were upon me, and to my horror his tongue was demanding entrance to my mouth. My fists beat weakly against his back for a moment, but then I felt myself go limp in his arms. He caught me easily as I swooned, hoisting me up in his arms.

“Will there be anything else, Lady Karen?” my butler asked as the man carried me up the stairs.

I hung there limply, eyes half-closed and arms thrown out over my head. “No…” I managed.

In my room, he threw me on the bed, duck down pillows bouncing onto the floor. He stripped my dress from my helpless body as I writhed, caught between passion and protest, his boots dirtying the sheets. He lay kisses on me as he worked, and by the time he had me twisting and thrashing in just my corset and underthings, I was quite beside myself. “Sir!” I gasped as his lips found my heaving bosom, “I am not that sort of woman! You mistake me for Lady Natasha, or Lady Clarissa, or Jasmine, the town harlot!”

He spoke, at last, and his accent seemed very far from England. “Karen,” he growled. “Karen!”

With deft hands, he loosened the laces of my corset and stripped it off, my naked breasts throbbing in the cool air. He feasted on them, his tongue finding my nipples as I gasped and trembled beneath him. He stripped me of my undergarments and I threw one hand over my eyes to shut out the sight of my coming ravishment. But I could not deny the way my traitorous body was reacting to his expert touch, and a second later I lifted my hands to gaze up at him.

He was already naked, and I gasped anew at the sight of him, his manhood like that of a proud stallion. “But Sir!” I told him. “I am a—”

No. I could not bring myself to tell him. He must not know that he was about to plunder my maidenhood. He was no doubt used to far more worldly women.

And then he was running his palms over my pale, trembling thighs and I realized even his hands were filthy, marring my noble body forever. But I didn’t care, the spiraling energy that coursed through my body with his every touch robbing me of any sense. His hands slid up to cup my breasts and I groaned, arching my body towards him like some cheap whore.

He was already hard, I saw. Hard and throbbing and ready to rob me of that which I had kept for so long. “Sir!” I begged, “Be gentle!” But a part of me didn’t want that, didn’t want the delicate touch of a gentleman, and I spread my thighs wantonly for his entry.

He thrust inside me and I threw back my head and groaned. His weight settled between my open legs as he began to move, each inch a tight, silken delight…and I could protest no longer. “Sir!” I gasped, head thrashing on the pillows, “Sir! Take me! Take me!”

“Yes,” said Connor.

***

I sat bolt upright with a gasp that sucked in half the air in the room. My darkened bedroom was cool, but my body was damp with sweat, the t-shirt I’d been sleeping in stuck to my heaving bosom—

Heaving breasts,
I corrected.

I slid from the bed and found my legs were shaking. When I reached down, my lips were puffy and slick.

I staggered through to the bedroom and turned on the light. The sight of own disbelieving, panting face in the mirror was enough to bring it home to me.

I couldn’t deny it any longer. I was firmly in lust with Connor Locke.

Chapter 11

He wasn’t there.

I sat in the lecture theater looking at his empty seat, one finger swirling round and round on the touchpad of my laptop. There were a million reasons why he might not have shown up for Geisler’s class: he might be off auditioning for some bar gig, he might be sleeping off a hangover, or he might have talked some actress into a torrid liaison and still be in her bed. That last one made my mind begin to wander. Probably they’d been at it all night and they were still dozing, him spooning her from behind, his strong arms wrapped protectively around her—

I pushed the image away. There was another reason why he might have chosen not to show up, and it was the one that worried me most.

Geisler called an end to the lecture and asked us to pick up our essays as we left. I packed away my things at the slowest pace I possibly could, eventually resorting to dropping my pen three times to ensure I was the last one to leave. He handed me my essay as I left, a red A circled in the top corner.

There were no others left on his desk.

***

I called Connor as soon as I got outside and he picked up almost immediately—which only confirmed my suspicions. I didn’t mention the essay, just telling him that we needed to meet,
now,
but I knew he’d be able to tell something was up from my tone.

He told me to meet him at his gym, not far from his apartment, and I jumped straight in a cab. This was too important to wait.

***

My father thought gyms were for posers, preferring trail running, so I’d never been a member of one. Clarissa had given me a guest pass to hers, though, and for one morning I’d walked amongst the toned, lean bodies in their Lycra and headphones, in an airy space filled with softly humming treadmills and beautiful, sculpture-like weight machines.

This was not that sort of gym.

The walls were breezeblocks, whitewashed so long ago that they were a crumbling gray, fading to sickly yellow near the ceiling where the cigarette smoke had collected until they finally banned smoking. The boxing ring had been fixed so many times the surface looked more tape than canvas, the ropes fraying and worn. There was a metal bucket beside it and I looked up at the ceiling for the leak. Then I saw someone spit in it.

No one there was without a tattoo, and they weren’t the black, tribal bands or Chinese characters you see on men in their teens and twenties. These were faded, blue-green designs stretched over muscles hardened by brawling: names and knives and devils riding motorcycles.

I was the only woman. I’d like to say that every head turned to watch me, that I could feel all the testosterone spike into lust, but this was
me
. I barely warranted a glance, even with the cello case on my back, before they turned back to their punch bags and medicine balls.

Connor was near the back, stripped to the waist and throwing punches at a bag that was as big as me. His muscles shone with sweat, his hair damp with it. He looked wonderful
,
even through the haze of my anger.

“What?” he asked, and it was like the snapping jaws of a wounded animal.

“You didn’t even hand it in, did you?” I asked coldly. “You didn’t even bother.”

His gloved fist thumped into the bag, the impact of it making me jump. “I did my best.”

“How could you do your best when you didn’t even
hand it in?!”

He hammered the bag, two quick punches and then a final, harder one. The bag swayed, its chain creaking. Anger was darkening his face now. “I don’t have to answer to you. You knew what I was like when you got into this.” He punched the bag again for emphasis, grinding his fist into the yielding softness.

“If you flunk, I flunk,” I told him, the words hissing between my teeth. “I could have helped you! If you were having problems with it you could have just asked!”

He glanced at me, then focused on the bag, throwing a quick flurry of punches at it. One of them skated off the side, and as the bag swung back towards him he had to step back, missing his next shot. “It’s not that simple.”

I pushed between him and the bag. “Then tell me. Tell me what’s so hard about writing an essay.”

He glared at me. “Get away from the bag, Karen.”

I’d disliked him, sometimes, but I’d never been scared of him before. I was then, just for a second. The moment stretched out, building and building until one of us had to give in.

I shook my head at him in disappointment and walked away. Behind me, I heard him slamming punch after vicious punch into the bag, putting all his energy into hitting something he could never beat.

***

I should have got a cab as soon as I left the gym. The streets in Connor’s area weren’t the worst in New York by any means, but they were a long way from the best. But I was lost in thought, trudging on as the slush soaked through my sneakers and left them as chilled and numb as my brain.

I wanted him. Even angry as I’d been, the sight of his lean body with its strong, broad back had still been enough to send little ribbons of desire twirling right down to my core. But the more I wanted him, the less I understood him. I knew now that, behind the cocky exterior, he was just as insecure as the rest of us. I could sense that he was smart—much smarter than he let on. So why not at least
try
with the essay? I could have understood an F, but to not hand one in at all…why would he do that, except to spite me?

I’d built him up in my mind, turned him into some sort of romantic hero. I had to remember he was still the Connor I’d always known. Loud. Arrogant. A dropout. And where women were concerned, only after one thing—well, from
other
women, not from me. I still had no idea why he’d even agreed to my plan in the first place, except that he must have pitied me. And the worst part was, however badly it went, I had no choice but to stick with him. He was still my only chance.