Page 42 of Dangerous Control


Font Size:  

“I don’t mean to be a bitch,” she murmured against my shoulder. “I don’t know why I’m angry with you. I mean, I know why, but I still love you. I can’t believe you still made me a violin.”

“I told you I would.”

She drew away from me. I held the case while she wiped at tears, then she sat in one of the two chairs in the small room. I sat in the other and took out the instrument I’d built for her.

“It’s only partially glued, so it’s delicate,” I said, handing it to her. “You don’t need to play that much. Just enough for me to see the way…”The way to finish it.Were we finished, Lala Nyquist and I? There was a new and uneasy tension between us. It would probably always be there, because I hadn’t had the strength to keep my dick in my pants.

“This is so pretty, Milo.” She ran a finger along the edge of the fingerboard, and around the curve of the lower bout. “It’s so beautiful.” She gazed at the trim I’d placed along the center of the scroll and plucked one of the strings. I could see her tumbling into love with it, and it made everything that came before this moment worthwhile.

“I used those strings you like,” I said. “The heavy-gauge gut. They’ll take a while to stretch, but they’ll suit this instrument’s tone.”

“You thought of everything.”

She was still gazing at it, like a mother at her newborn child. I nudged her knee with mine. “Play it, Alice. Let’s hear how it sounds.”

She looked teary again, but she collected herself and lifted the violin to her shoulder, positioning it beneath her chin. I watched to be sure it fit comfortably, that my measurements had been accurate. She settled right into it. “Nice,” she said. “Hand me my bow?”

I gave her the bow she’d used for tonight’s performance. I imagined shehadbought that, because it suited her tone and playing style far better than the violin she’d borrowed. She closed her eyes before she drew it across the strings in an open A.

“It might need a little tuning,” I said.

“It’s fine.”

She played a few more notes, gently turning the pegs and using the tuners to get the tone she wanted. I watched her expression as she played a short violin piece by her favorite composer, Vivaldi. The fit was true, and the sound she produced lifted the hair on my arms. It was that amazing. This new instrument was as good as the Grapeleaf, or better, and it wasn’t even finished yet.

“Oh, Milo,” she said when she lifted the bow.

She was in love with the violin. I couldn’t give her everything she wanted from me, but I could give her this. She touched my hand, like words were beyond her. “How did you do this?” she finally asked. “It’s perfect.”

“Because I know you. I know what you need.”

I meant the words in reference to the instrument, but in the small room, with the emotions flowing, they sounded dangerously sexual. She turned the instrument over in her lap, trying to hide the blush that her Nordic skin always gave away. Then her eyes widened.

“Oh, wow.”

“What?”

She touched the back, traced her fingers over the small heart I thought I’d hidden so well in the maple and varnish. “There was a heart shape like this in the grain of my old violin. That’s kind of amazing, to have it happen twice.” She looked up at me then. My face must have given me away. “You did this? You made the heart?”

“Yes.”

“To make it look like my old one?”

I laughed, a rueful, self-conscious sound. “I had a small hand in making your Grapeleaf, Alice. When I was alone in the studio with it, applying varnish, I hid a heart on it too. My father never knew.” I paused, thinking of the many times he and my mother had pushed me toward Alice. “Or maybe he did. Anyway, it shouldn’t affect the tone.”

She blinked down at the heart. “Why didn’t you tell me you put a heart on the Grapeleaf? Why didn’t you show me? It would have made it more special to me.”

I laughed again. “You were in love with some other boy then, some adolescent Swedish beefcake. I couldn’t compete.” I’d been skinny and pimply well into my twenties, and always so dark against her joy and lightness. Her perfection.

She shook her head. “I wasn’t in love with that guy. Puppy love, maybe, but only because you were out of reach.” She traced the back of the violin, noting all the care I’d taken to create smooth, solid resonance in the fluid lines. “Thank you for this. For everything.”

“I hope it brings you a lot of money when you sell it. I’ll have it done in a couple weeks, if you want to line up some buyers.”

She gave a half-tearful laugh. “You know I’m not selling it. I’m going to have to find an apartment with a fire and explosion proof chamber built in, because if I ever lost this thing, it would kill me.”

She handed back the violin, and I put it in the case I’d also fashioned especially for her, or, at least, her instrument. She put away her bow and we stood to move toward the door, but we bumped into each other in the cramped space. I reached to steady her, smiling. She gazed back at me, not quite smiling.

I wasn’t sure what happened then. A spark, a need, a re-ignition of the pull we couldn’t shake. I cupped her face between my hands, pressing my fingertips to the lattice of her braids as our lips connected.Be gentle. Show her you’re not the monster she’s heard about.But I was that monster, and she shredded my control.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com