She reached up to thread her fingers through his hair and his
lips descended onto hers again. He ravaged her mouth, pushing her back against
the piano keys until she was forced to arch her back because of the angle. He
slipped his arm around her lower back and pulled her up against him, tearing
his lips away from hers and trailing deliberate, smoldering kisses down the
column of her throat.
She sighed and let her head fall back as he nibbled and teased
her skin, following the low cut line of her dress. He felt her heart thundering,
and he reached up to unclasp and remove her necklace, then trailed his tongue
lazily across one side of her collarbone and back up her neck to nip her
earlobe. He delved his fingers into her thick, lustrous hair and played his
lips along her jaw a little longer before finding her mouth again.
He tried to get his wildly spinning mind under control enough
to send the music dancing through her as he had done before. It was difficult
to concentrate when everything in him was wrapped up in her, but he managed to
regain some semblance of balance and sent some notes drifting and cavorting
through her, just enough to make her tremble.
It worked. She groaned softly and bit down on his bottom lip.
He gave a quiet chuckle, delighting in the effect his talent had on her. She
made him feel so sexy, so wanted, so alive.
Her fingers found their way beneath his shirt and trailed up
his sides, leaving lines of scorching fire in their wake. She drew her nails
lightly back down and he shivered.
“Liron.” His name left her lips in the sultriest breath of
sound. “Do you really think I could be your mate?”
“There is no one in this world or any other better suited to
me than you,” he murmured while moving his lips to her neck again.
“I want to stay here,” she whispered.
“I want that as well.”
“I want to always stay here. I want to be yours.” He slowly
drew his fingers up her bare arm in a music-infused caress. She shuddered and
her hands came up to grip his shoulders. She pushed him back gently, enough for
her to stand up straight, and broke just enough of the spell to be taken
seriously. “I mean it. I want to be yours.”
He nodded, frowning in slight confusion. “I’ve never denied
you, Melody. As long as you want to stay here, you are welcome to.”
Something in her gaze softened, and she reached up to touch
his face. “Liron, I’m not saying, ‘I want to be yours until I get bored.’ I’m
not going to do what Elizabeth did.”
He flinched at the mere mention of her name and looked down.
The thought of Melody abandoning him was a hundred times worse than when his
former wife had walked out on him. In such a short amount of time, she had
wrapped herself around him that much.
She sighed and continued to touch his face, his chest, his
shoulders. Anywhere her hands fell, she soothed and caressed. He closed his
eyes, holding those precious touches close to his heart. “I don’t know how much
you know about the human world, but where I come from, many people spend their
lives feeling like they don’t really belong anywhere. Like they are alone, an
oddity. The only time I ever felt like I truly belonged was when I was
surrounded by music. When I went to Juilliard, when I would play in the
orchestra, when I would compose. Being lost within the notes and the sweeping
sound felt like home to me. And I shared it with my parents, so I never felt
lost or alone.
“When they died, it was like I could never get back to that
place again. It felt hollow and cold when I tried. Liron, it wasn’t until I
found you and came here that I felt that again. That safety and sense of
belonging. It no longer exists in my world. It exists with you. Maybe by human
standards, it doesn’t make sense, but I don’t even care. I’ve fallen in love
with you, and I’m starting to realize that maybe I just think more like a
muse.”
Liron’s heart tripped over itself at her words. Could she
really love him? Because of his disastrous marriage, he had begun to think he
was incapable of being loved. Could someone as wonderful, as inspiring and
lovely as Melody, really want him? The realization that she wanted to give him
everything he had longed for and been denied was overwhelming.
He sighed and leaned in to rest his forehead against hers.
“It’s the strangest thing,” he murmured. “I was paired with Elizabeth as my
perfect muse mate. We were supposed to inspire one another and, in turn,
inspire humans. She was unhappy with her life, her world, her arrangement with
me. She wanted riches and grandeur and a short life full of material things and
fame. Then, a human woman walks into my world, full of passion and beauty, with
a connection to me that is so strong, I hear compositions when she enters the
room. Elizabeth abandoned me because she thought like a human, and wanted a
human life. At random, I was given a human who thinks like a muse. And not just
any muse. The perfect one for me.”
She snuggled closer to him. “Maybe I was misplaced for
awhile. Now, I finally found home again.”
His breath caught in his throat and emotion overwhelmed him
like a tidal wave. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. She felt
perfect against him, and his heart was so full. “Stay with me,” he whispered,
burying his hands in her golden hair. “Stay with me always. Be mine. My mate,
my inspiration, my song.”
She pulled back to look up at him and grinned. “Liron Tabor,
I thought you’d never get around to actually asking me. I refused to be the one
to propose to you.”
He laughed and claimed her lips with his again.
“So, when do we get to do it?” she asked.
He pulled back and frowned in bewilderment. “Pardon?”
She grasped his hands in hers. “Let’s do it now!”
His lust-induced brain was having difficulty latching onto
what she was actually talking about. “Do…what exactly?”
She frowned. “Well, you said all we had to do was find two
witnesses and claim each other or something, right?”
Muse marriage…that’s what she was referring to. Right.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts. “Yes.”
“Well, let’s go!”
“Now?” She may have thought like a muse, but her time frame
still existed on human. “Melody, it’s the middle of the night. You haven’t
slept in almost an entire day and you had a very emotional evening. Do you
really think it’s best to—?”
“No,
you
haven’t slept. I slept for a couple hours when
I went back home. But that’s because my entire day took up like two hours or
whatever in your world. And what are you trying to tell me? That you don’t want
to do it?”
At the sly way her eyebrow raised, he was beginning to wonder
if she was intentionally making his thoughts go south. His body raged like an
inferno, and he briefly considered if any of this was a good idea. She could
very well kill him by the end of all of this. His blood could reach a degree
that was impossible for his body to sustain and he could spontaneously combust.
Or, given the fact that he’d been celibate for a really long time by both human
and muse standards, he could have a heart attack right there, if he even
remembered how to make love to a woman at all. It wasn’t like Elizabeth had
given him much practice.
“Liron?” She shook his hand and frowned at him, concern that
he might actually be changing his mind flashing over her lovely features.
His heart melted and all doubts vanished from his mind as
love for her chased them all away. He took her face in his hands and kissed
her, then pulled back and grinned. “All right, let’s go.”
Chapter Fourteen
The woman who came to the door of the house that Liron and
Melody invaded looked like she had literally just crawled out of bed. Her brown
hair was sticking up in about five different directions, and she was rubbing
groggily at her puffy eyes.
“Hi!” Melody greeted. Behind the woman, a man came trudging
up, his red stocking cap making him look very gnomelike. “Oh, good! There are
two of you!” She squeezed Liron’s hand and suppressed a giggle. His rich, quiet
chuckle inflamed her, and the joy she felt surge to life within her heart was overpowering.
She turned to face him and shook his hand. “Go on,” she
urged.
He raised an eyebrow. “Me first?”
“Well, sure. I don’t know what I’m doing!”
He grinned and reached out to tuck back an errant strand of
her hair. “Melody…uh….” He frowned in question.*
“Hoffman,” she supplied.
“Melody Hoffman, I claim you as my mate, my inspiration and
chosen one.” The warmth in his gaze was almost tangible.
His words seemed to flow through her and take root in her
heart, and she closed her eyes, letting out a shaky breath. If she didn’t know
any better, she would have sworn that they actually filled a place within her
that had been waiting for them, for him, forever. None of it made any sense.
None of it had to.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. She lost herself
within the bottomless depth of his gaze, and while none of this was how she had
ever envisioned herself getting married, nothing had ever felt more natural and
right to her. “Liron Tabor,” she murmured. “I claim you as my mate…my
inspiration and my chosen one.” The joy on his face was like the sunrise to
her. She stared at him for a long moment, feeling such peace, such contented
wonder, when she looked into his eyes.
The man cleared his throat suddenly. “Are you two finished?
Because, with all due respect, we’d like to go back to sleep now.”
Melody and Liron turned to face the groggy couple. She glanced
back up at Liron. “Are we finished?” It was all so simple. Could things in life
really be that simple? You feel creative? Then create something. You love
someone? Just tell them and you’re legally married. You’re emotional? It’s
perfectly acceptable. The philosophy was so hard for her to wrap her mind
around, but her heart embraced it as the most natural thing in the universe.
Liron nodded that they were indeed finished, and he took her
hand to lead her away from the small, thatched hut they had run to closest to
Liron’s home. The couple shut the door and Melody turned, followed Liron down
the sandy path to the cliffs for several paces, then stopped in bewilderment.
She felt like her brain was having a difficult time catching up with reality.
“Oh my gosh,” she murmured. “I’m your wife.”
He turned to face her, alarm clouding his beautiful face. “Do
you regret your decision?”
She shook her head emphatically. “No, no, it’s just….” She
shook her head again as it seemed to be the only action capable of expressing
how rattled her mind felt. She looked up at him and smiled. “People don’t do
things like that in my world. Ever. I mean, not unless they’re drunk and in
Vegas.” He arched an eyebrow in mild confusion. She giggled and took his hand,
twining their fingers as she continued to stroll down to the shore.
“Humans have a constant battle between mind and heart,” she
explained. “We are taught that what we feel is treacherous. It can get us into
trouble if we follow our emotions without thinking them through. And, for the
most part, that’s true in my world. Blindly following your emotions can get you
into a wealth of trouble where I come from. The human world is full of lies and
deceit and people taking advantage of others.”
“We have that here, as well, Melody,” he interrupted.
“Caution is a necessary part of life in any dimension, but muses are creative
beings. And in order to create, we must embrace our emotions. Emotion is vital
to creation.”
She smiled at the simple explanation. Maybe that was why his
world appealed to her so much. “With humans, it’s much more complicated,” she
continued. They reached the shore and she bent down to remove her shoes so she
could walk in the sand. “For example, tonight, or maybe it was three days ago
by now.” She shook her head. “Who knows? Time is all messed up for me right
now.” He laughed softly and his fingers tightened over hers. “Anyway, when I
was at that symphony, the piece I heard upset me. I had an emotional meltdown.
Here, you held me, you listened to me, you let me cry and let my emotions run
their course.”
“Well, of course. What else would I do?”
She smiled wryly. “Look at me like you feared for my sanity
because it’s not ‘healthy’ to be having such an emotional reaction a year after
my parents passed away.”
He blinked in obvious bewilderment and frowned. “That’s
ridiculous. That kind of loss is not something you can eradicate from your
being. And grief is something personal. There is no formula for it.”
They stopped close by where they had shared their passionate
moment before, and Melody sighed as she turned to look at the sea. The water
was inky in the darkness and the air was moist and electric. Off in the
distance, lightning lit up the sky and made the waves angry and turbulent. A
storm was rolling in, but was still far enough away to be of no imminent danger.
“I know that, but humans are taught that, if you haven’t moved on, you don’t
know how. Life doesn’t stop, so you’re not supposed to stop either. Keep busy
and you won’t hurt. Bury it until it’s so far down you forget about it…until
you’re fifty and it all comes back to kick your butt and you have a nervous
breakdown.” She rolled her eyes. “Our society is stupid, the philosophies we
live by. Emotions are sometimes seen as the enemy, and if you are an emotional
creature, and you don’t want everyone telling you that you need therapy, you
had better learn to hide everything you’re feeling behind a great big, giant,
fake smile.”
He snorted his displeasure. “I will never ask you to hide
what you feel from me.”
She turned to face him and smiled. “I know that. I know I
don’t need to worry about that here. That’s why, even though my human mind,
which has been conditioned for twenty-seven years to never trust my emotions,
was screaming at me back there that I was doing the most impulsive, stupid
thing I could have ever imagined, my heart knew it was right.” She stepped
closer to him and ran her palms up his chest in the way he liked. “My heart has
always known you were right. Ever since I played your music.”