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She doesn’t figure it out, though, until we’re walking right up to the doors of the Four Seasons Centre for Performing Arts.
“Hold on… Are we at the ballet?” she gasps. “Oh my God. I used to come here to watch The Nutcracker with my mom when I was a kid!” She turns big eyes on me as we approach a black-clad employee checking tickets. “Do we have tickets for tonight?”
“I don’t need tickets. I’m their largest donor and as such I have a private balcony they keep empty for my use.”
“For your use?” she echoes as we get waved inside. “You come here often?”
“Never,” I say. “I just write the cheques.”
“The Royal York Ballet, the Art Gallery of Ontario… Who knew that Elio Titone was such a generous supporter of the local arts?” she quips.
“It’s good to remind this city that I can give as much as I can take,” I tell her, placing my hand firmly on her lower back as I lead her further into the Four Seasons lobby. It’s huge, open, and modern in here, with pale wood floors and walls of windows letting in the glittering lights of downtown Toronto at night. Women in nice dresses and men in suits mill around, some of them with glasses of wine or ice cream bars in their hands, procured from the little bar near the doors that lead into the auditorium.
“I suppose it’s a good reminder for me, too,” she says quietly. “What’s the biggest donation you’ve ever made somewhere?”
“When I paid for the construction of the burn unit in the pediatric ICU of St. Michel’s Hospital.”
She stops walking to stare at me.
“Don’t give me that sappy, doe-eyed look,” I grunt. “It was a tax write-off.”
“I’m sure it was,” she says softly, but she’s still staring at me, those eyes burning a big blue hole through my brain. My fingers twitch against her back, my scars itching badly beneath my gloves. She looks like she’s going to say something else, something I’m not entirely sure I want to hear, when she’s cut off by a chime alerting patrons to head into the auditorium to find their seats. Deirdre closes her pretty mouth and doesn’t say anything else until I’ve led her up all the stairs to the top level.
“Which show are we seeing? I don’t know what’s playing this season,” she asks as an usher greets us and leads us to the door to my private balcony booth.
“Don’t know,” I reply. “I just knew there would be something on tonight. And live music. You’ll have a good view down into the symphony area.”
“Tonight’s show is Firebird,” the usher, a young man, tells us as he opens the door to my booth. My Songbird shoots me a look before going through the door, and I give her a grim smile in return, acknowledging the irony.
Firebird.
Of fucking course it is.
The door to the booth closes behind us with a hushed click. There are only two seats up here, side by side, both plush with dove-grey cushions. The modern look of the lobby continues into the vast space of the auditorium, the warm light cascading over curving architectural lines and the light, neutral-coloured floors and seats below us. For some reason I expected it to be all gaudy and musty in here with worn red velvet and brass everywhere, but it’s not. It almost feels airy. After making a quick mental map in my head of how I’d get Deirdre out in the case of a fire, I settle myself in one of the seats and watch her.
She doesn’t sit yet. She goes to the front of the small balcony, her fingers curling over the pale wood guardrail.
“You’re right!” she says, throwing me a thrilled look over her shoulder that makes something low in my belly clench, “I can see right down into the orchestra pit!”
The musicians must be warming up down there. Odd scrapes and jabs of instrumental sound create a rhythmless cloud of notes. I can pick out the string instruments, maybe even the violin from among them, but I feel nothing.
Only Deirdre’s playing does something to me. Gets its exquisite hooks into me and fucking yanks.
Apparently the chaotic-sounding warm-up is fascinating to my fiancée. She bends over further to get a better look.
“Careful,” I warn, frowning at the way she leans so cavalierly over the guardrail. When she doesn’t immediately respond, I stand and grasp her by the shoulder, pulling her upright. “I said be careful.”
“I was being careful,” she says, already twisting in my grip to try to peer back down again.
“Not careful enough,” I reply, dragging my knuckles along the exposed length of her upper back. “You don’t actually have wings, you know.”
“Well, I’m sure my fiancé will catch me,” she tosses out blithely. Cristo Santo, the wine must have made her all fucking sassy or something, because she seems to have no idea what she’s doing to me, hanging over this break-neck edge and calling me her fiancé like that.
“Go sit in your chair right fucking now,” I rasp, grasping at an errant orange curl with my finger and thumb and tugging it.
“Or what? Ouch!”
“Oh, Songbird,” I groan, thrusting my thickening cock against her ass and tugging on that cute little curl again. “You play a dangerous game when you ask me questions like that.”
