In Harmony (32 page)

***

Connor called me later that morning, and I reassured him that everything was fine. I didn’t tell him about my father’s offer, because I needed the decision to be mine and mine alone. I tried to tell myself that nothing had changed—we were still in love and we could stick to our plan and it would be as if my father’s visit had never happened.

Except that was a lie. Everything was different, because now my father’s offer sat there throbbing at the back of my mind, dark and cancerous, eating away at our happiness.

I needed a break, so I met Jasmine in Harper’s for a debrief. I’d heard her, Natasha and Clarissa dissect tens of encounters between them, but I’d never before been the one with the secret, the one eager to tell her story. I put everything that was going on with my father and the recital to one side for a few moments. A girl only gets to share this particular story once. As I walked between the tables to where Jasmine was sitting, I was
gleeful.

Jasmine already had the coffees waiting, to ensure I could launch into it as soon as I got there. “Sooo?” she asked as I sat down.

I opened my mouth and then closed it again. Suddenly, I was very aware of all the other people in the café, some of them just a few feet away at the next table.

“Go on!” Jasmine told me.

I looked sideways at the table of women next to me. Glanced at the chattering guys behind me. I’d never thought about it when it was one of the others telling their stories, but now that it was
me….

“They’re not listening,” Jasmine told me. “I mean, they can
hear,
but they tune it out. You could confess to murder and they wouldn’t react. It’s the polite lie of the coffee shop.”

I looked around again and bit my lip.

Jasmine picked up a fork. “If you don’t tell me about the sex
right now,
I will do bad things to you.”

I cleared my throat. “Well, we started kissing as soon as we got back to my place.” That seemed safe enough. “Then we were on the sofa, with his hands all over me.”

“Gropey?”

“No! Not gropey at all. Lovely.”

“Go on.”

“He ran his hands up under my dress.” I was grinning now, remembering it. “He loved the stockings!”

Jasmine looked smug.

“And then I…I sucked his
C-O-C-K.
”

Jasmine put her palm to her face. “Karen, spelling it out isn’t going to stop them understanding. They’re not four.”

I looked around again, red-faced. No one seemed to be paying any attention—or they were doing a good job of hiding it.

“How was his cock?” asked Jasmine, quite loudly.

I ducked down in my seat. “Jasmine!”

“What?”

“I can’t—do we really talk about that?”

“We always talk about it when it’s one of
our
boyfriends. You must remember the Darrell vs. Neil conversation.”

I did. That one had gotten quite heated. I flushed. “It just seems wrong to…you know. Discuss him.”

“It’s normal. Spill.”

I relegated myself to it, and then smirked. “It was lovely. Gorgeous.”

“Big?”

I nodded. “Yes. I mean, big compared to”—I almost said
my dildo—“
what I’ve…seen.” Something suddenly occurred to me. “Oh my God! Is he sitting somewhere discussing
me?”

Jasmine shook her head. “Nope. It’s a girl thing. Men are too uptight.”

That made me feel slightly better, although a tiny part of me was curious as to what Connor would have said about me. “OK, so…he stopped me, because he was going to…you know. Reach his conclusion
.”

Jasmine winced. “Just say
come!”

“Anyway,” I said hotly, “he carried me through to the bedroom—”

“He
carried
you?”

“Yep.”

“Hot.”

“I know. And he dropped me on the bed, and I took my dress off. And then he took me.”

Jasmine frowned. “Took you where?”

“No,
took
me.”

“Oh! You didn’t just lie there, did you?”

I tried to think back to it. Everything had moved so fast…now that she mentioned it, I had a horrible feeling that I
had
just lain there. But then I’d been feeling very…ravished. “I’m not sure. But he loved it. He told me.”

A chattering crowd of girls were queuing next to us, and Jasmine had to raise her voice over them. “And did you?”

“Oh yes. It was fantastic.”

“No, I mean
did you?
Did you come?”

“Oh!” I almost laughed. “Yes, I came twice,” I said loudly.

Jasmine just stared at me. I was suddenly aware that the café was completely silent, and that everyone was trying very hard not to look at me.

Jasmine raised her hand. “Check, please.”

Chapter 24

As the recitals approached, the other musicians went into full-blown panic mode. From behind every practice room door came strains of Mozart and Schubert, Beethoven and Brahms and—from the contemporary groups—wild rock and edgy, experimental keyboard solos. No one else was crazy enough to mix the two styles.
At least we’ll sound unusual, when we fail.

It had been a full day since my father arrived and I wasn’t any closer to making a decision. Before he’d showed up, I’d been reasonably optimistic about our chances—we had four of the six sections nailed and the fifth, the one I’d composed after we’d had sex, was sounding good—but now, listening to everyone else rehearse their safe, traditional choices, a big part of me was wondering what the hell I was doing. I had an out, a chance to go back to what I knew. I could perform solo and have a much safer shot at the orchestra….

All I had to do was screw Connor over in the process.

As if to mock my tension, Connor was happier than I’d ever seen him, beaming all over his gorgeous face and casting little glances at me across the room as we played. Every look made my heart lift…followed by a ripple of doubt and cold, dark fear, like thunder after the lightning. Was I a heartless bitch to even consider doing it…or a lovesick idiot for not having done it already? Connor would want me to do it—even beg me to—which was why I couldn’t tell him.

“Penny for ‘em,” he said suddenly as we came to the end of the fourth section.

Since all the practice rooms were full of over-caffeinated, sleep-deprived musicians we’d bagged the main hall. A cavernous room, gloomy and cold, it nevertheless had fantastic acoustics. The notes bounced off polished wood floors and dark paneled walls, soaring towards a ceiling I could barely see. An aging but still beautiful grand piano stood in one corner, its black lacquer a mirror I’d occasionally catch a glimpse of us in. I kept seeing the dress I was wearing—nothing special, just a black and white, knee length thing—and doing a double take. The dress was sort of an experiment. It was
weird,
not being in jeans and a sweatshirt. And kind of nice.

I shrugged. “I’m thinking you need to get to work on the final section. You’re behind.” I meant it to sound jokey, but it came out sullen.

He stood up and closed the gap between us. I’d let my hair fall forward and cover my face, hiding behind it just like I used to before I met him. He gently brushed it back. “What’s really the matter?”

I tried to think of something convincing. “I’m worried about Jasmine,” I said at last. Which at least was true.

“What’s wrong with Jasmine? She seems like she can handle herself.”

That was exactly what I was worried about. Jasmine was so used to coping on her own I wasn’t sure she knew how to ask for help, even when things got really bad. She was serious about the escorting thing and I didn’t know how to talk her out of it; I sometimes wondered how far off the rails she’d already be, if she didn’t have the sobering presence of the rest of us. “Money trouble,” I told him. And then couldn’t tell him anything else, which made me feel even worse.

He brushed back my hair from my other cheek. “You ever think you worry too much about other people and not enough about yourself?”

I gave a bitter little laugh. “Connor, all I do
is worry about myself.”

“I don’t mean worry as in
stress about it.
I mean worry as in
look after yourself.
Like, putting yourself first sometimes.”

A hard knot formed in my stomach.
Did he know?
Had my father tracked him down and talked to him, and this was Connor’s way of nudging me in the right direction, without letting on that he knew?

Connor crouched down in front of me so that he was gazing right into my eyes. “Your
thing…
the New York Phil. That’s what you really want? I mean, what
you
really want?”

I’d wondered the same thing since we started working together. When Dan had first broken his arm, my reaction had been almost instinctive—I
had
to graduate, I
had
to get into the orchestra, as surely as I had to breathe, or eat. Now, after the latest talk with my father, I was questioning whose dream I was trying so hard to fulfill. I wanted it…I’d wanted it for as long as I could remember. But it was starting to feel like fear of failure, not passion, was driving me.

“Yes,” I told Connor eventually, and even I could hear how conflicted it sounded.

He sighed. “What you need is to relax. Put down the cello.”

“We need to practice.”

“Karen Montfort, put down the cello and lift your skirt.”

I felt a rush of heat scald my face and instinctively turned to see if anyone had heard, but we were alone in the massive hall. “
What?!”

He didn’t give me a chance to answer, just scooped me up into his arms and lifted me with an impatient sigh, the sort you’d give when picking up an errant kitten. His strong arms pressed me to his chest and despite a yelp and a “
Connor!”
and a kicking of legs, I was carried across the room. My chin was resting on his shoulder, looking over his back, so I couldn’t see where we were going. My first clue was when I heard him lift the lid of the grand piano, exposing the keys; my second was when I felt him lift the hem of my dress, exposing
me.

I swallowed quickly. “Connor, we can’t—”

He put me gently down on the keys, and I gasped as they shifted and sank beneath my ass, a discordant cacophony echoing around the hall. He’d lifted my dress up to my hips, and the panties I’d chosen—skimpy black briefs, which was my idea of daring—left a good deal of bare skin exposed to press against the chill ivory. Worse, I’d experimented by wearing hold ups again and I could feel his eyes raking over the lacy tops. I could feel the situation sliding out of control.

“The door’s not locked,” I said quickly.

His eyes twinkled. “I know.”

His warm palms slid over the outside of my hips, his thumbs just toying with the slender waistband of my panties. Then he dropped to his knees, his shoulders nudging my knees apart, and I gaped as I realized what he had in mind. I felt his hot breath on that sensitive crease at the top of my thigh and my hands clutched at the edge of the piano. “Connor, we
can’t!”
I said tightly. He ignored me. I started to say it again, but his tongue traced that same line, drawing a burning trail just where leg meets body, and it came out as “Connor, we
caaaaaan’t!”

His fingers hooked into the waistband of my briefs. “Lift,” he told me. He didn’t move his face away, so the word was a hot rush of air against my tingling flesh.

I looked over his shoulder at the doors to the hall. Closed, but not locked. We’d stopped playing—how long before some curious music student—or even worse, a member of staff—opened them a crack to see if there was anyone in here?

Connor looked up at me, and in those blue-gray eyes was something I hadn’t seen before. Raw lust, and
command.
He knew exactly what he wanted. “Karen,” he told me, “lift your beautiful arse.”

My resistance melted like snow under a spring sun. I pressed my palms against the keys, lifting myself a little, and with a whisper of fabric he slid my panties down my thighs and let them drop to my ankles. I was naked and exposed to him, soft curls of hair trembling under his breath, lips spreading as he pushed my knees farther apart. My panties were tangled on my shoes, trapping my feet together, and that made it feel even sluttier, somehow, the heat he was awakening deep inside me turning to hot slickness. My ass, naked now, pressed against ivory that was growing warm from my body.

And then he was pressing his face between my thighs and all rational thought stopped. The touch of his tongue, first, circling inwards along my thigh, slowly but inexorably, my whole body twisting in response. His lips, that perfect blend of hard and soft, laying kisses along the creases of my thighs and then along the soft, damp curls, moving towards—