Melody let out a wavering, shaky sound and turned her
attention to Liron. “Why?” she muttered. “Seriously…
why
?”
He grimaced and went to her. “Melody, I am so very sorry. It
was my fault for stopping in the doorway.”
Her shock slowly transformed into agitation, and she shook
her arms sharply. “Why do I seem to be spending my time with you covered in
liquids?” she snapped.
“Please, let me get you a change of clothes,” the woman said,
flitting and fussing over Melody in a way that was really no help whatsoever.
“My daughter is very slim, as you are. I am sure you can fit into something of
hers. Please, I am so sorry, madam. Come inside and I will tend to this.” She
took Melody’s hand and started to tug her in the direction of the tavern.
“Dinner is on the house as well. I insist.”
Melody shot a scathing scowl over her shoulder at Liron as
she stiffly followed after the woman. Liron trailed after them into the tavern
and up the stairs. The woman ushered Melody into a room where there was a
heated argument for several moments between the tavern owner and another girl,
presumably her daughter, before the owner came out again and all but fled down
the stairs.
“Gwennie will see to your lady, sir!” she shouted back at him
as she hurried away. “And I will tell my husband to cook you the finest steak
chili. We just slaughtered a cow this morning!”
Liron blinked, then sighed and leaned back against the wall
to wait, much like he had done the night before. He had only been standing
there for maybe ten minutes at the most when the door flew open again and a
young girl stormed out looking irate.
She faced him and stabbed her finger in the direction of the
room. “Go and tend to your lady!” she commanded.
Liron arched an eyebrow and stood up straight. “I beg your
pardon?”
She huffed and shoved a strand of her sandy hair off of her
freckled face. “I’m not trying to be rude here, but I can’t sit around and dote
on her because my mother is a clod. I have things to do!” She glanced at the
stairs, then sidled up to Liron and spoke behind her hand in a hushed tone. “I
have
a man
to do.”
He frowned and stared at her for a few seconds. “That
was…entirely too much unnecessary information,” he stated.
She rolled her eyes and spun toward the stairs. “I laid out
some clothing for her. So just do what you need to do and let yourself out.”
She rushed down the staircase.
Liron stared after her, then heaved a sigh and opened the
door. He strode in and stopped short at seeing a tub in the center of the room,
with a scowling Melody in it. A scowling,
naked
Melody. He squeezed his
eyes shut and turned his head to the side as the door swung closed behind him.
“Oh, good lord!” he cried.
“Well, gee, Liron. That’s
just
the kind of reaction I
was hoping for.” Her voice was saturated in aggravated sarcasm.
“Forgive me, I didn’t know…. I mean—the girl….” He felt like
a blabbering fool. “She never said….” He huffed. “I’m sorry. I will wait
outside and let you dry off. She didn’t tell me you were…indisposed.” He
turned.
“Liron, gimme a break. What are you, twelve? I know what
parts I have and so do you. I don’t care! Just get me a freaking towel so I can
get out of this freaking tub!”
He swallowed once, twice, and then somehow managed to gather
the strength to be able to open his eyes and turn to look at her while keeping
his body in check.
It was a monumental task.
Sure, he knew all about female anatomy. That did not mean
that he was great at getting his male anatomy to cooperate when he was suddenly
thrown right in front of a wet, naked woman who he so happened to be horribly
attracted to. Gentleman or not, he was still a man. Certain things were just
biological.
He stifled a groan as he stepped toward her and grabbed the
towel that had been placed on a chair just out of her reach. “How come they
decided to bathe you?” he asked, chancing a glance up at her.
Just look into
her eyes. Look into her eyes.
Her eyes were very unamused.
“Well, because. I had hog slop running down my cleavage, so
there was that.”
A laugh was torn from him at her curt tone, and he handed the
towel out to her, averting his eyes as she stood up and stepped out of the tub.
He grasped another towel and turned back to her once she had wrapped the first
one around herself. His heart softened. She looked bedraggled and war-torn. Her
eye makeup had run tracks down her cheeks and her lustrous blonde hair was damp
and stringy.
He smiled and guided her to sit on the edge of the tub. Then,
he took the towel he held and started to gently wipe the rogue makeup off of
her cheeks.
She made a small, growling noise in the back of her throat.
“I don’t even want to know what I look like. Those women practically stripped
me and shoved me into that tub.”
He chuckled and tipped her chin up so he could get the black
from under her eyes. They captured him and some of the irritation in them
warmed into a slow-burning desire. His gaze traveled from her eyes to her lips,
full and soft and begging for attention. He lowered his head toward her,
abandoning the process of wiping off her makeup. She slid her hands up the
front of his chest, encouraging him, drawing him closer.
He closed his eyes and took her face in his hands, leaning
forward and down to reach her lips, which had become the object of his obsession
over the past twenty-four hours. She tilted her chin up to him, welcoming his
advance.
She wavered beneath his touch and let out a startled shriek
as she started to lose her balance and tilt backward. Reflexively, she grasped
a handful of his shirt to steady herself, and succeeded in pulling him so far
forward he couldn’t catch himself in time. He barely had a chance to shout
before he toppled over her and sent them both over the edge of the tub and back
into the lukewarm water.
Melody got the worst of it, being completely submerged under
his body weight while he flailed around like a fish out of water trying to
right himself. He flipped over so as not to drown her and landed in the water
backside first with his legs curling over the side of the tub. Melody emerged,
coughing and sputtering, looking more despondent than the first time.
They looked at one another, and Liron suppressed a wince,
sure she was going to be furious at him. But to his surprise, a warm smile
curved her lips and she started to laugh softly. “I’m beginning to think
kissing you is a bad idea.”
He chuckled and shook his head. He extracted himself from the
tub and reached a hand out to help her out as well. As she stood, the towel she
had been wearing slipped off in a waterlogged heap, and he squeezed his eyes
shut with a groan he couldn’t have contained if he’d tried.
To Melody’s credit, she didn’t razz him about it. She moved
around him while he strategically kept his eyes closed, passing with a soft
touch on his arm.
A few seconds later, an aggravated curse drew his attention,
followed by her exclaimed, “Are you freaking kidding me?”
He opened his eyes and turned to where she stood in a skimpy,
two-piece, purple outfit he usually only saw belly dancers wear. Tiny, silver
bells adorned the flimsy, sheer skirt and tinkled when Melody moved.
For a moment, as his body flamed beyond a temperature he
thought was healthy, he wondered if maybe having her in this outfit was worse
than having her naked.
“What is this all about?” she cried in obvious exasperation.
He swallowed hard and tried to tear his attention away from
her flat, toned stomach. “The girl who assisted you must be a dance muse,” he
responded absently while his gaze traveled from her stomach down to her long
legs barely visible through the gauzy skirt.
“Well la-dee-da!” she cried. “I’m not an anything muse and I
look like some sort of gypsy hooker!”
He chuckled and moved forward to take her hands in his and
draw her close. “I have seen many women in my time,” he murmured against her
ear. “And never have they made me burn the way you do.” He pressed a gentle
kiss to her jawline before pulling back to look into her eyes. “You do
not
look
like a gypsy hooker.” She let out a disgruntled growl, and he reached up to
push a few damp strands of hair off of her face. “If it makes you feel any
better whatsoever, my entire midsection is soaked through.”
She glanced down at the band of wet across his torso and hips
and giggled.
He shook his head and held his hand out to her. “This is
hardly what I had in mind when I decided to take you on your date.”
She grinned and placed her delicate hand in his. Long,
slender fingers, a true musician’s hand. “What, you mean an absent-minded woman
spilling hog slop all down my shirt, an irritated girl stripping me and shoving
me into a bathtub, you attempting to be suave and kiss me only to fall into the
tub yourself and try to drown me, and me getting stuck in some atrocious belly
dancing costume for the rest of the evening wasn’t your idea of a romantic
time?”
He chuckled. “Well, when you put it that way, it is a bit of
an adventure, isn’t it?”
“Definitely more of an adventure than I’ve had in awhile.”
He squeezed her fingers and led her out of the room. “Come on.
I was promised the best steak chili this establishment has to offer on the
house. At least we got that out of the deal.”
She whimpered and held back. He glanced at her over his
shoulder in concern.
“Do I really have to go out there in this?”
He allowed his gaze to sweep appraisingly over her once
again. “Melody, what are you worried about? You look so amazing I can’t keep my
eyes on you for too long or else my mind will become filled with dark, wicked notes.”
Her eyes filled with something warm and sensual at his words,
and she moved to place her arm around his waist and snuggle against his side.
“Okay, but only you can hear that kind of music when you look at me. If anyone
else does, I’m gonna kick them in the head.”
He laughed softly and pulled her close against him. “I fully
support that plan.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, then continued to
lead them out of the room. The fact that he heard music at all when he looked
at her was amazing. He had not heard anything in so long. She inspired him the
way he was supposed to inspire humans, the way a muse mate was supposed to
inspire another muse. The things he heard rivaled what he had heard when he’d
loved Elizabeth.
He knew it was possible for a muse and a human to be mated,
but he had not imagined that the inspiration would be the same. Now that he
knew it could be, or could possibly be more powerful than a muse/muse mating,
he didn’t want to think about what it would be like when Melody decided to go
back to her own world. A horrendous, torturous pain filled his heart when he
let his mind travel to that inevitability.
Had Elizabeth felt that for her human? What she had felt had
to have been strong enough for her to transcend the boundary between the two
realms and exist within the human world. If she had felt even remotely for her human
what Liron was beginning to feel for Melody, he could almost understand why she
had done what she had.
Almost.
Stealing his music was still an underhanded thing he couldn’t
quite get over. But loving someone…. He was starting to realize he had loved
the idea of Elizabeth more than he had loved the person. What was blossoming
inside of him for Melody was so much stronger and so much more powerful.
He didn’t want to consider the possibility of her leaving,
even though he knew she had to eventually. When she did, he wondered if he
would desire to remain in his realm at all. He really had nothing there. If he
decided he wanted to come back to her world with her, would she welcome him?
His emotions were surging so fast, it was impossible to
decipher them all. Accompanied with the influx of music he heard and felt
within him when he had heard nothing for so long, his insides felt like a
raging typhoon. It would be a miracle if he survived all of this.
But as he glanced down at Melody, at her hand placed trustingly
in his as he guided her down the staircase and into the main hall of the
tavern, he wondered if he wanted to survive. A huge part of him wanted to be
lost to her for all time.
That was the part that frightened him.
Chapter Ten
Melody watched in rapt fascination as the marketplace came
alive with the set of the sun. While she and Liron had eaten dinner inside of
the tavern, the merchants had closed up shop and performers of all sorts had
made the marketplace their stage.
The steak chili they had eaten had been wonderful. Not quite
worth getting hog slop dumped on her and being forced into a belly dancing
costume, but wonderful nonetheless. She and Liron had shared amazing
conversation about music, and as soon as they had finished, he had brought her
back out here to witness the festivities.
Melody had never seen anything like it in her life. It was as
if she had fallen into
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
or something else just
as whimsical. Musicians played a variety of instruments ranging from violins
and cellos to flutes, bagpipes, guitars, and drums, while dancers of all kinds,
both men and women, lost themselves within the music in the middle of the
marketplace square. Most of them were dressed as she was, in scarves and bells,
like some kind of throwback to the Celtic and gypsy world, but others were
dressed in things closer to leotards while their dancing resembled the modern,
lyrical dance of her era. Others, loners, sat around on the outskirts
scribbling on paper with quill pens, and a group of scholarly men and women off
in the distance argued and debated about something they were apparently very
vehement about. Some joined the musicians with their lovely soprano and
baritone voices, and others sat scattered around drawing or painting on easels.
Fire jugglers also took up space amidst the dancers, garbed in menacing black
and silver, like Gothic art. Some of them had face piercings and intricate
tattoos.