AllFreeNovel
Share Us
ChapterNineteen
Skye
Gideon playsthe piano like he touches me. With reverence and passion. He starts soft and tender, and the melody of the piece is haunting. I watch his long, slender fingers stretch and reach and stroke. The muscles in his forearms flex, even his biceps flex as the music strains to something louder and more intense. For a few moments, he pounds the keys with unbridled strength. His face is drawn in a severe frown, his gaze on the keyboard, though I know he’s not seeing the black and white keys. He stares at a fixed spot as his hands demand sound and his body sways.
When he’s done, sweat has gathered on his forehead along his hairline. Even his wrists and hands are shiny with a thin sheen of sweat. He hangs his head and rests his hands in his lap. In the silence, I hear echoes of the music. It’s solitary and lonely and so raw, I feel like I’ve watched, overheard, something private and intimate. I want him to play more, another piece, even if it’s the same one he just finished. I just want to hear Gideon’s music—the sounds he hears in his head. I want to watch him move over the keyboard again.
There’s so much more to Gideon Reece than I ever thought possible. Even though he’s not even a year younger than Chloe and me, even though she and I are thirty, I’ve always just envisioned him as a kid. There’s nothing childlike or innocent about him. He’s a dark, brooding man with intense passion that I’ve now seen and heard in his music and felt when he’s inside me.
I wonder what Chloe would say if I told her I might love him.
I want him to play more. But I want him to touch me now. In that same way. In his sacred space. In this five-by-five room with the warped wooden floor and battered piano. No lock on the door. No window. Just me and Gideon and the music he just played from his heart.
“What do you see?” My voice is thick and quiet. The music still fills the small space, even though he’s finished. I lean into him again, rest my cheek on his side. Heat radiates from his body, the same as when we make love.
“What?” He doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t even lift his head.
“When you play.” I slide my arm around his waist and kiss the back of his arm. “What do you see?”
“The keys,” he says simply.
“Liar.”
He jerks his chin up and looks at me with a guarded expression. Deep grooves line his forehead, and his dark eyes search mine. I don’t know what he’s looking for, but I know what I want, need, to give him. His eyes narrow as I stand and hitch my skirt up over my hips, but I don’t stop. Gideon leans back when I slip one leg over his lap to straddle him, but he doesn’t lift his hands to touch me. It’s okay. He’s emotionally drained and stripped bare, and I need him to know I see that. And I cherish what he’s given me.
I don’t want to ride him in a crazy frenzy of nudity and sweat. I want to worship him.
I want to love him.
The scruff on his face is soft on my hands. His dark gaze, his refusal to tell me what he sees when he plays—the mystery of who Gideon Reece is, because even his sister doesn’t know—makes my heart ache in the sweetest, saddest way. With my eyes open, I brush his lips with mine. Like a whisper. Again and again, I kiss him like the flutter of butterfly wings, and finally, I trail kisses over the side of his face and nip gently at the skin below his ear.
Under the sweat, I smell his cologne and I’m back in my bed, where his scent now lingers in my sheets. I don’t want him to leave. St. Louis. The Hep Cat. My apartment. I don’t want things to ever change now that he’s in my life.
Saying that to him would be the same as starting his car for him and tapping the trunk as he drives away. I show him what I’m feeling instead. I kiss him. His neck, his chin, his eyelids. I dig my fingers into his hair and touch his mouth with mine again. When he parts his lips, I’m greedy, and I devour him.
I love that he kisses me and expects nothing more.
Still, at the moment, I want to give him more. I drop my hands to his sides and ease his t-shirt up. With his heavy gaze still on me, he lifts his arms and allows me to tug it off, and then I kiss him again. His mouth. His neck. His chest. I can’t get to every part of him I want to love, not without moving from his lap, and I don’t want to. I love the feel of his soft, worn khakis under my bare thighs. His face made of stone, he watches when I slide back enough to open the khakis and free him. He’s hot and ready, and for a moment, I have the crazy desire to slide over him bare, with nothing between us.
He stutters a deep sigh, and I feel his warm breath on my face, my neck. Stroking my thumb over the crown of his cock, I peek up at him and find his eyes are closed, the tension in his face now slack. He reaches blindly for his wallet, juggles me on his lap for a moment, and then he’s got it, and he’s pulling out a condom.
I tear the package open and roll the intruding piece of rubber over his cock as he slides his hand between my legs and moves my panties aside. Our eyes lock as I impale myself on him and hold on as I move over him, slow and deep, intending to savor the moment and not rush to get it done.
His fingers dig into my hips as he holds onto me. I probably haven’t had sex like this—mostly clothed with important things bared—in years. But this is different. I’m not in the backseat of a car with a college boy who smells like beer and football sweat. I don’t care that my nipples are beaded painfully hard, and I hardly notice the pull of my panties stretched to accommodate him. In this moment, it’s him inside me, the way he fills me so completely. The tight fit of our bodies. The slow, measured movements as I ease up and down over him. It’s the way he watches me watch him. His soft curls tangled around my fingers. The way he bares his teeth when he’s going to come.
He touches me then, and I’m so close to the edge, I bury my face in his neck and chant his name. His body jerks in my arms as his relief claims him, and then together, we revel in the feeling of the tender moment and slowly, we fall back to earth. My face still buried in his neck, his arms wrapped possessively around my waist.
“What do you see?” I ask him again. I press the tip of my tongue to his neck and feel his pulse beat there.
“That I’ll never be enough.” His answer is a knife in my heart. “And I’ll never find the things other people want.”
“Gideon.” I stroke my fingers over his lips.
“I don’t even get why other people want the things they do.”
I have to assume he means love. Relationships. Families. And though his answer hurts me, because I want that with him, it hurts me more that he doesn’t love himself enough to want more in his life.
“Will you play for me again?” I lift my head to look him in the eyes.
“Now?” His lips curl in a tiny, playful smile.
“No.” I kiss the corner of his mouth. “But one day?”
“Do you want me to?” He tips his head back to study my face.
Afraid I might gush all the things I’ve been thinking—when he played, when we made love—I bite my lip and nod.
“I do.”
“Then I will.”
