In Harmony (33 page)

I slid my fingers through his hair. My mouth was open in a silent scream of ecstasy as his tongue plunged up inside me, his lips working at my damp folds in a hungry kiss. His thumbs were stroking the soft skin of my thighs, super-sensitive places no one had ever touched before—how did he
know?!
With every brush of his hands, every thrust of his tongue, every drag of that rough, hot flesh against my silky walls, I felt myself lift higher and higher. I was actually straining upward, my head thrown back and my breasts reaching for the ceiling. I’d closed my eyes at some point and the idea that someone could silently open the door and see us, that we’d never know until it was too late, only made it hotter.

Connor started to work at me harder, faster, his upper lip rubbing at my clit until I ground myself against him. I was panting, inner thighs aching from having my knees spread wide but, as I twisted my feet and the panties finally dropped to the floor, I spread my legs even wider for him. Every time I shifted or moved on the keyboard, another few notes would echo around the room—anyone listening from the corridor would surely wonder what the hell we were doing in there, and then they might—The thought of being caught twisted together with the pleasure, building with it, both enhancing the other, until I was a helpless mass of raw nerves, twisting and bucking against him. When he drew his tongue out of me and pinned me hard against the keys, palms keeping my thighs spread wide, I knew something was coming…but I didn’t know what. I opened my eyes and found myself looking right into his, staring up at me with a mixture of hunger and something that looked like victory. I just sat there panting, submissive to whatever he cared to do to me, and that was all the encouragement he needed.

His lips captured my clit, tongue licking and circling, and I let out a high shriek. I could feel the orgasm roaring towards me now, inevitable—the only question was how big it was going to be. Connor’s face was pressed hard against me, his tongue insistent, working faster and faster at my throbbing bud. I instinctively tried to close my thighs, the sensations almost too much, but his shoulders were like steel between my legs, keeping me helplessly spread. I was under his control.

The energy started to spiral higher and higher inside me, unstoppable. Free now to use his hands, he pushed one underneath me, the thumb stroking at my soaking lips, the palm under my ass. My hips were swirling and thrusting now, just as Jasmine had taught me but without any conscious thought. His other hand pushed its way up under my dress, sliding up my straining body to squeeze my breast, and I felt the orgasm begin to break over me—

Just as it did, the hand under my ass moved. One finger softly pressing—

I came, crying out long and hard, the walls ringing with the sounds of my pleasure. I ground against his mouth, wanting him to touch every part of me, taste me,
eat
me. Nothing existed right then except Connor and me, all my worries forgotten.

I shuddered and cried out again, the climax rolling through my body in waves, making me alternately tense and quiver. I stared down into Connor’s eyes, and I’d never felt so completely connected to anyone in my entire life.

I slumped on the keys, my hands finally loosening in his hair and falling either side of me, unleashing their own crashes of notes. I panted, unable to speak, as he stood up….

…and unbuckled his belt.

I swallowed, wanting it but not quite believing that he’d dare—that
we
would dare. “God, we can’t—”

He didn’t even bother arguing with me, just pushed down his jeans and shorts. His cock sprang out, rock hard.

I looked at the door one last time and then something flashed through me, white-hot and so fast I only felt its aftermath. I opened my thighs wider, feeling my moist lips throb in the cool air.

I wanted it.

He rolled on a condom and then the thick head of him was spearing into me, spreading my wet folds in a way that made me clasp my arms around his back, the hot hardness of him sliding deep along velvet walls that were already slick, my body welcoming him in. His hands lifted my legs and I let my thighs wrap around his waist as he slid deeper, my ass just barely on the keys.

He started to thrust and it was different to the first time, the thickness of him stretching me in whole new ways thanks to our position. His thighs were warm between mine and as I squeezed his body I could feel the smooth power of his muscles under the skin, bunching and flexing, driving him into me. My chin was resting on his shoulder, but as he started to thrust faster I drew back a little so that I could look into his eyes. Our faces were inches apart, both of us speechless and staring, just panting at each other as he pounded into me, long hot thrusts into my clenching tightness. My ankles pulled against the backs of his legs, pulling him in as I felt a new climax coil and tense inside me, quick and whipcord tight.

“Come for me,” he said, both an order and a granting of permission. The thought exploded in my brain, that I was going to come
for him,
under his touch, my body wrapped around his cock. Connor. My boyfriend. My lover.

My fingers dug hard into the muscles of his back and I came, a different sort of climax. It didn’t roll through me like the first one, leaving me weak and helpless; it was like a surge of raw energy, hot and ancient, and it left me crackling with power. I was coming for him and, seconds later, as he pushed deep, gasped, and throbbed inside me, I knew that he’d come for me, too. I’d known, on some level, that he had power over me since he’d first saved me on the steps—even if I hadn’t admitted it. It was a heady rush to realize that I had the same power over him.

The silence that followed should have been heavy and awkward—we should have pulled our clothes together and blushed and been unable to meet each other’s eyes. But it didn’t feel like that at all—it felt like we’d connected on a new level. Like we were a team, somehow. I would have been mortified if anyone had come in and seen us but, as I slipped down off the piano and pulled my panties on, Connor’s gaze didn’t make me embarrassed at all. I felt…free.

“Better?” he asked, a smile in his voice.

“Better.” I kissed him tenderly and lingered on it, not wanting to lose the afterglow.

“We need to do that more often,” he told me. “You
especially
need it.”

Now I
was
a little embarrassed. “Because I’m uptight?” I asked, remembering what he’d said in the storeroom. That it could be fixed, and that he knew exactly how to fix it. I shivered, in an entirely nice way.

He chuckled and pulled me close. “You cling onto things very tightly. I think sex helps you let go, a little bit.” He considered. “Not that I’m any better.”

“You don’t strike me as someone who needs help to relax.” I sat down and picked up my cello.

He shook his head. “Not relaxing, but…I get frustrated. Do you have any idea how often we have to read stuff? I don’t mean books. I mean blogs and TV news tickers and directions and….” He sighed, as if he was getting annoyed just thinking about it. “And every time that happens, and my brain turns it all into a jumble, I get angry.”

“So how do you deal with that?” I asked.

“You’ve already seen. At the gym.”

I thought back to him pounding the bag, the muscles in his back hard as oak, shining with sweat as he drove his fist into the canvas again and again, driven by the essay he hadn’t been able to write. I remembered how angry I’d been at him that day, when I thought the problem was laziness, and winced. “Sorry,” I said instinctively.

“You didn’t know. And I’m glad you kept on at me, and worked it out. Knowing what the problem is makes it a fuck of a lot easier. Still makes me mad, though.”

I thought of the bag swaying and creaking on its chain. It had seemed so pointless, when I’d watched him—however much he hit it, it would never break. Now I saw it in a new way—it wasn’t about trying to destroy something, I realized, it was about releasing something toxic from him. The bag was just there to soak up his anger—the fact it couldn’t be destroyed was the whole point.

And that gave me an idea.

“Your gym….” I said slowly. “Can anyone join?”

***

“I feel like they’re all looking at me,” said Natasha out of the corner of her mouth. “Are they?”

I checked behind her. Yes, a fair few of the guys were gazing at us—her, more than me—and I could see their eyes run down the length of her long, dancer’s legs. It really wasn’t that surprising—there probably hadn’t been a woman in the gym since the last time I was there, and now there were two at once.

“Not at all,” I lied. I watched as Connor spoke quietly to Darrell, showing him how to throw a jab. Darrell looked even worse than when I’d seen him in Flicker, strung out and shaky as a drug addict denied his fix. Which wasn’t so far from the truth, in a way. “He hasn’t worked, still?” I asked.

Natasha shook her head. “The workshop’s still covered in dustsheets.”

I nodded. Connor looked at home here, in his raggedy clothes; Darrell looked distinctly out of place. He had just as much muscle as the other guys here, his arms powerful from heaving chunks of metal around in the workshop. But unlike the others, he didn’t want to be here. His idea of working out was hammering something into shape, not uselessly hitting a bag, and I suspected Natasha had had to drag him to meet us.

“Snap back,” Connor told Darrell, his Irish accent a soft growl, “And keep your guard up.”

Darrell nodded, looking unconvinced, and tapped his gloves together a few times. Then he hit the bag half-heartedly.

“I don’t know,” whispered Natasha. “I can see what you were trying to do, and—seriously—thanks. But I don’t think he can just let it out like Connor can. I mean, I don’t know Connor, but what Darrell’s dealing with is this deep-rooted thing he can’t get away from….”

I nodded absently as I watched. My own fists were bunching, I wanted it to work so much. Connor’s problems were pretty deep-rooted too….

“Go from the hip,” Connor told Darrell, demonstrating a hook. “Try to land it in the kidneys.”

Darrell thumped the bag, but he kept glancing around as if embarrassed. He was doing it, but he wasn’t into it. Duty, not rage, was driving him.

I sighed and shrugged. “Sorry,” I said to Natasha. “I thought—”

“Now paint a face on the fucker,” Connor said.

I saw Darrell blink.

“Make it into a
him.
Or a
them,
” Connor told him.

Darrell blinked another couple of times and then nodded. And his eyes narrowed.

He punched, hitting the bag dead center, and then just stopped dead, his hand still pressed hard against the bag. I could see the surprise on his face—for the first time, it had been satisfying.

He drew his fist back and hit it again. And again. And then did a hook, burying his fist into a tender kidney. His next punch was high, and it wasn’t a bag he was hitting anymore—it was a face.

Natasha took a half step forward, amazed. Something was happening, right in front of us. The monster that Darrell had chained up in his head, the one that had driven him to create weapon after weapon, that kept him awake every night, was finally being released. Not into another gleaming instrument of death, but as raw energy, power that made the bag creak and swing on its chain. His punches grew harder and harder and he moved instinctively to hit the bag on all sides, to
destroy
it.

Sweat soaked his vest, his shoulders gleaming with it. There was a light in his eyes that I hadn’t seen in months and even though I knew it must be scary for Natasha to see him like this—just like it had been for me, with Connor, I knew she needed to see it. This was a part of him, and always would be. His lips were drawn back over his teeth, his fists hammering at the bag with a force that must have been painful. Around us, men turned to look and then nodded with understanding.

Watching it come out of him was unsettling—it was almost as if he’d been possessed by a spirit, since he quit his job. The anger had been consuming him, and now that it was leaving him I could see the Darrell we all knew emerge from underneath. The bag swung and creaked on its chain, absorbing his rage, for a long time.

When Darrell finally dropped his hands and staggered against the bag, barely able to lift his arms, he was soaked with sweat…and he was
him
again.

“Are you okay?” Natasha asked, running over and putting her arms around him.

He was panting, barely able to speak. “I…want…to…come back tomorrow,” he said at last. He looked at Connor and gave him a nod of thanks. And then he gave me one, too.

Natasha hugged him close and I could see her eyes were wet with tears.
Thank you,
she mouthed over his back. I caught Connor’s eye, and he held out a hand and pulled me up against him, beaming at the other couple. He barely knew Darrell, but he was glad to have helped him—would train with him every day, if that’s what he needed, just because it was the right thing to do.

And that’s when I finally stopped torturing myself and accepted it. I’d known it all along, I think, from the moment my father had made his offer—I just hadn’t faced up to it. I pulled Connor into a kiss and let the heat of his body soak into me, giving me the strength I needed to tell myself the truth.