Liron looked up at her, his eyes burning. “He’ll just have to
learn to share.”
His words made her heartbeat falter, and she took in the
beauty of the moment, the beauty of him. Standing there, his dark hair blowing
gently in the breeze, a large bird of prey perched on his arm, with the
roiling, tempestuous sea as his backdrop, Liron was beyond beautiful, beyond
breathtaking. He was beyond anything she had ever imagined.
His smile lit up her whole being. “Would you like to see more
of my world?” he invited. “I did promise you a date after all.” The wicked
gleam in his eye was sexy on a whole new level.
When Rob had bullied her into the several dates they had gone
on, Melody had always felt this sort of obligatory acceptance. But she’d known
in the back of her mind that at the end of it, she would be left feeling
drained, unsatisfied, and annoyed. She was thrilled at the possibility of
spending the evening with Liron, experiencing this extraordinary world and
learning more about the man who brought to life so much music and so much
feeling within her that she had thought long gone.
The whole last year of her life she had been searching for a
distraction, something to take her mind off of the empty, gaping hole her
parents’ death had left in her heart. Liron didn’t distract her, didn’t fill
her mind with useless things that would make her forget about music. Liron
was
music. Every inch of his being was etched from it. If anything, his presence
should have been painful, a constant reminder of what she had lost. But it
wasn’t. It was soothing and soft, a gentle, prodding remembrance of why she had
fallen in love with music in the first place.
Music heals. Art heals.
Her father had said it countless times. But she had turned
her back on that truth because surviving through the pain to find the healing
on the other side had been too difficult.
“Melody?” She glanced up at Liron, who was looking at her in
concern. He sent Siegfried back up into the sky and reached out to her. “Are
you all right?”
She sighed and made herself smile. “I’m fine.”
He arched an eyebrow, and she knew he didn’t believe her at
all, but he didn’t push the subject. Instead, he took her hand in his and
brought her wrist to his lips, kissing the inside of it with so much kindness
her blood turned to lava, her heart threatened to burst, and the most amazing
notes and chords exploded within her mind.
Before she knew what she was doing, she was back in his arms,
clutching onto him with a desperation that was not like her. Her fingers dug
into his back, and her body trembled with the weight of her emotions. She
squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face against his chest, trying to find
sanctuary in his warmth, his smell, and the music that made up who he was.
Music was the one thing that had never abandoned her, even when she had tried
to abandon it. It stayed with her even now, in every beat of Liron’s
magnificent heart.
“Liron,” she whispered. “Please, show me your world. Just
keep me here and away from my world. It’s a cold, bleak place. All I know is
pain there, sorrow and loneliness. I don’t want to feel that anymore. I want to
hear music again.”
His arms tightened around her and he held her close. “It’s
not your world that is bleak, Melody,” he murmured against her hair. “It’s only
a place, just as this is only a place. It’s your heart that is cold and lonely.
I know because mine has been also. I, too, want to hear music again.”
She looked up at him, knowing her eyes had to look desperate
and lost. “I want to forget,” she all but pleaded. “Please, help me forget.”
The blue of his eyes turned darker with sincere
understanding. “I can’t make you forget, Melody. Even if you try and succeed
for a time, the pain you are running from will always be there, waiting to
attack you when you least expect it.” He shook his head and framed her face
with his hands. “All you can do is move forward. You will never hear music as
you once did, but that does not mean it can’t be just as beautiful in a
different way.” He cupped her jaw in his palm and feathered his thumb across
her cheek. “I heard nothing for many, many years after Elizabeth left me. I
feared I would never hear anything again. I figured she had destroyed my
ability to do so. I never thought it would return to me in the form of a
crashing, shrieking, frightened woman who had accidentally transported herself
into my living room and kept insisting I was a hallucination.”
Melody laughed in spite of herself.
Liron smiled. “Nevertheless, I heard the music all the same.
It came rushing back to me with your trust, your care, your blind faith in me
and my ability to keep you safe. I realized last night after you returned to
your home, that music, like all art and all things creative, is eternal. It is
a gift to hear the beauty you and I do. It is a gift to feel it as we do. It,
like emotion, may change shape. Its notes may become different because of what
we experience. A different instrument may be required to convey meanings that
maybe were not there before. But, like a shadow, it is always there. It is
always within us. You just have to find strength enough to listen, and not be
afraid of what it may sound like.”
Melody stared up at him, enraptured and mesmerized. The truth
in his words made her heart shiver. And the way he looked at her…it set her
body aflame and cocooned her in compassion all at the same time. It was a
heady, drugging sensation and she wanted more of him. More of his touch, more
of his words, more of his wisdom and his care.
She shook her head, and he frowned.
“What?” he questioned with a skeptical look.
“Your ex-wife really was a psycho hose beast.”
He blinked in bewilderment. “A what?”
“Psycho hose beast. You know, from
Wayne’s World
?”
“Wayne’s what?”
She rolled her eyes and waved her hand. “It’s a movie. Never
mind. She was a jerk. And I think maybe I hate her.”
He chuckled and his arms around her tightened, causing his
hips to press against hers in an intimate way that made her brain spin around
in her skull. “I don’t. Her stolen music score brought me you.”
“You keep saying that.”
“I keep meaning it.”
She smiled and rested her cheek against his chest for a
moment, listening to his heart as it matched the pounding of the ocean waves. His
arms were the most tranquil place she had been since her parents had died.
Every time he held her, she felt like she could finally rest.
“Psycho hose beast,” he muttered. “That doesn’t even make
sense.”
She laughed and grinned up at him. “Sure it does. She sucked
the life out of you. Like a vacuum. A hose. You know?”
His eyebrows drew together in a kind of pained expression.
“Maybe I will keep you here. The popular culture and urban slang of your world
is….”
She nodded while he searched for the words. “I know. It makes
your IQ drop a couple points.” He smirked and she toyed with the buttons of his
shirt. “Show me your world, Liron. Show me everything.”
“That might take awhile,” he said with a soft laugh.
She ran her palms up his chest and knew she’d never meant
anything so much as what she was about to say, regardless of how irrational it
was. Her pain was less when she was with Liron. It was less because he
understood in a way no one at home possibly could. He didn’t make her feel
stupid, or like she needed to get a grip. He didn’t give her that concerned for
her sanity look like Nikki did. He just listened, and held her, and calmed her
with music when things became too overwhelming.
Music. The only language she had ever really been good at.
The only therapy that had ever worked.
Reaching up to tuck back a strand of his hair, she murmured,
“I might be inclined to stay.”
Chapter Nine
Liron was in danger. Serious danger.
He watched as Melody wandered through the marketplace,
awestruck, her eyes filled with wonderment. He looked down at where her fingers
were twined with his. She had been holding his hand since they’d left the
cliffs, as if she didn’t want to be too far from him. Every time they severed
the connection for her to look at a vendor’s wares, she sought his touch again
as soon as she had finished.
The things she brought to life within him made what he felt
for Elizabeth when he’d first met her seem trivial. He had been blown away by
her beauty and her grace, by the music he had heard when he’d looked at her.
But he had never been able to explore his feelings for her. She had never let
him. He had been in love with a possibility that had never become a reality.
But Melody…. She was completely different. She seemed to seek
his touch, his presence. She had come back to him, even though she had been so
unsettled by her unexpected journey into his world. She had returned because
she had
wanted to
, not out of obligation. Not because she’d had no other
choice. She had desired his world, his company. She had desired him. It was a
simple thing, he imagined, but held so much force it rocked the very core of
him.
She understood his nature, what made him who he was. She
understood music with a depth he had never experienced from anyone other than
another musical muse. And they shared the same pain, that same empty, aching
loss. They both knew what it was like to have their inspiration die. His
loneliness had brought her to him, and as a result, they had both rediscovered
music in each other.
He was in danger of wanting her so completely he feared he
would never be the same.
But he couldn’t help but think that maybe that was a good
thing. The fear he should have felt, the trepidation, wasn’t there. His broken
and bruised heart felt comfortable with Melody. Safe. And for the first time
ever, he felt like maybe he could move past hope, past a possibility, and learn
what it was like to share himself with another.
Maybe….
Twilight had descended as the two of them had spent several
hours perusing the wares of the vendors and traders in the marketplace. The
shopkeepers started to close up their booths, much to Melody’s dismay, and
Liron led her down the street. “In several hours the marketplace will be alive
again, with a different kind of entertainment,” he said with a smile. “But
until then, would you like some dinner?” He stopped outside the door of one of
the more reputable taverns.
She glanced up at the sign, then put one hand on her hip and
cocked her head in a playful, flirty gesture. “You know, Rob has taken me to
dinner a couple times at a few really upscale places, and the feeling I’ve
generally had when I’ve gone has been slight nausea, despite the delicious
food. Now, I’m standing outside some seedy tavern, and I really can’t wait to
find out what’s on the menu.” One of her eyebrows arched up in a teasing
expression. “I’m beginning to think maybe my problem was the company.”
He narrowed his eyes and feigned irritation. “Who is this man
you keep referring to? He sounds rather unpleasant, and I don’t think I like
the fact that he keeps making an appearance in our conversation.”
Her laughter lightened his heart in a way he had seldom
experienced. Knowing he had been the one to cause it made it that much more
magical. “What’s wrong, Liron? Do you feel threatened?” She came up close to
him, her eyes seducing him with their burning sensuality.
His insides ignited. The fact that she asked, that the
possibility even entered her mind, meant that she acknowledged the mutual
attraction between them. It was difficult not to. Sexual tension arced between
them like electricity. Every time she came near him, his body reminded him of
how completely un-dormant he was.
He buried his hands in her hair, relishing the silken strands
as they slipped through his fingers. “And if I do?”
She ran her palms up his chest again in the way that made his
knees want to give out every time she did it. “Don’t be.”
Her tempting lips were turned up to him, beckoning, pleading
for him to claim them with his. For one horrible moment, he wondered if he
would even remember how to kiss a woman. It had been so bloody long.
He had loved Elizabeth instantly. And he was horribly infatuated
with this woman. Apparently, his heart’s idea of playing it safe was waiting a
night before deciding it wanted to hand itself over to a woman. Every second he
was with Melody, every teasing glance she shot him, every piece of spunk, every
time she ran her palms across his chest the way she liked to do, he stumbled
more and more into frightening territory.
He wanted to guard his heart, wanted to be safe, aloof. But
he couldn’t.
Not when she made him hear rhapsodies.
He lowered his lips toward hers, aching to sample her taste,
feel the petal softness of her mouth against his. It was an all-consuming
desire. One he was powerless to resist.
She tilted her face up to his, accepting, welcoming….
“Hold your horses! I have to go and feed the pigs if you want
to stay in business, you lazy scoundrel!”
A large woman with a bosom that could have swallowed a small
child burst out of the tavern door, carrying a pan full of hog slop. She was
too busy yelling over her shoulder at the “lazy scoundrel” to see Liron and
Melody, who were positioned in a rather bad place directly in her path. Liron
saw what was coming, and tried to move Melody out of the way, but his reflexes
were not as quick as he might have hoped, and the woman was an unstoppable
force.
She ceased shouting long enough to turn around and plow
straight into Melody, overturning the pan, which cascaded down the front of her
splendid outfit.
Melody shrieked and stumbled back, then looked down at her
shirt and pants in horror.
“Madam, I’m so sorry!” the woman cried. “I wasn’t paying
attention to where I was going!”