Page 38 of Our Strange Duet

Stacked sheets rested along every open surface. There were shelves of scores. Some had been printed and properly bound, but most looked handmade, compositions still being worked on. There were dozens of them, hundreds, maybe thousands.

The space reminded me of a dragon’s lair, but instead of mountains of pilfered gold, my Angel hoarded his creations.

It was the most wondrous thing I’d ever seen.

Standing at its center, surrounded by such genius, was exhilarating. My hands twitched, drawn by an immediate compulsion to create something myself. My throat flexed, wanting to sing through every sheet of music I saw, ready to make my mark on each melody. I’d never felt such a power before. I wanted to take everything I knew the Angel had seen in me and turn it into art. Masterpieces hungered to escape me. Whole worlds were ready to be composed and crafted.

I turned, eager to work, and caught the Angel as he removed his cloak, revealing a solid, muscular frame in a beautifully appointed suit. His back was to me as he took off the fedora, setting it aside with the cloak on a tufted chaise.

His fingers clenched its velvet back, as if steadying himself, before he turned to me.

I let out a soft sound of confusion.

For there, instead of the handsome features I’d spent so much time dreaming up, was the hard and unyielding plane of a white mask.

Chapter 14

“Sing,” he said, an unfair commandment now that he had stopped and my voice had nothing it could attempt to match.

I didn’t want to sing anymore. I wanted to cross the space between us and run my fingers over the mask. It covered the whole of his right side. I wanted to cup its curves and stare at the beautiful half a face it left exposed, trying to understand its presence.

Did he fear I could not handle seeing the full force of his magnitude? Was my mortal mind truly so terribly weak?

Instinctively, I reached out, but he caught my hand, pressing his thumb against the delicate skin of my inner wrist and sending a sudden rush of sensations down my middle.

“Sing.”

I let out a soft gasp of a note.

“Sing,” he insisted, and my song grew stronger. “Sing for me!”

The note I’d been flirting with—the same high E I’d struck earlier that night to end Elissa’s aria—flowed out and hung in the smoky air. It was as full and bright as a blue moon, ringing and true.

I clapped my hands over my mouth, stunned by its purity, and looked to see if the Angel was as surprised as I felt.

He was smiling, the visible corner of his lips rising and revealing a dimple. His unshaded eye was a warm brown, like fresh roasted coffee.

He has such a beautiful smile.

The thought came unbidden, nothing more than a simple observation, but its effect was immediate.

A torrid flush broke across my chest, then spread through my limbs and down my torso. I felt it coil in my belly, flexing and writhing as if it were a living thing. I had to look away, hoping he didn’t see the heat claiming me, praying he couldn’t guess my thoughts.

Desire.

Even as I recognized its alluring tug, I was forced to acknowledge that I had never, never before felt the full potency of the word. Not truly. Not in my chaste daydreams of that boy in the front row. Not in my wistful yearnings from Raoul’s summer holiday so many years ago. Not even in my darkest thoughts wondered in the middle of even darker nights. Not like this.

It rose within me, making my breasts feel tight and tender. It caused my lips to part and my breath to grow heavy. It tugged at my limbs, readying them to reach out and touch, reach out and caress, reach out and pull him down to me so that I might press myself against him, stand on tiptoe, and drag him into a kiss so passionate he’d whip off my robe and take me then and there.

And I knew then that I was a terribly wicked creature.

Who could look upon the face of an angel and feel compelled not to hide away with a sense of cowering awe, but to step closer? To reach out and run their hands over the planes of his face. To twine their fingers in the locks of his hair. To brush their mouth to…

I let out a gasp as even wilder fantasies flooded my mind. Images I didn’t understand, glimpses of things I’d certainly never experienced, but which left me wanting, hungering, for them. It was a reaction so strong that I felt a physical ache, an insane urge to slip my hand around his neck and lead us both to ruin.

I wanted to feel his lips upon mine, to feel them work their way down my neck, parting to lick my clavicle as his fingers made their way up my thighs, reaching higher and higher until—

“Christine,” he murmured, immediately silencing my thoughts.