by Teri Wilson
She spun her head around before she could stop herself.
Julian didn’t even look surprised. His sapphire gaze burned into her, all knowing, all seeing. With a barely perceptible smile and one arched brow, he seemed more satisfied than shocked.
He knew she could hear. Had he known it all along? But then his gaze dropped to her mouth, and she saw something else in the depths of those discerning eyes.
Intention.
Kiss me, Tessa.
He didn’t say it again. He didn’t need to. The air around them was thick with those words. Tessa could still hear them whirling in her mind like a favorite song. They rang like a melody that somehow expressed everything her heart was screaming to say when she’d been too shy, too afraid to speak.
The way he was looking at her mouth made her feel a little bit wicked. She hadn’t felt that way in a very long time, if ever. And she liked it. She liked it a lot.
Her lips parted, and she rose up on tiptoe, but before she could do as he’d said and kiss him, Julian groaned and claimed her mouth with his.
At once, she was flooded with sensation—the hard press of the ballet barre against the small of her back as Julian leaned into her, the sound of her heart beating wildly in her ears, as if she’d just done a series of fouetté turns, and the fierce hunger of Julian’s kiss...the taste of him, warm and wonderful, like brandy on a snowy night.
Tessa had never been kissed like this before. Ever. It made her head spin, and it made her do other things, too. Things she’d never imagined herself doing, like whimpering helplessly into Julian’s mouth and clawing at his back until the fabric of his grey dress shirt was balled in her fists.
Julian’s hands were suddenly in her hair, untangling her ballerina bun, and his body—hard...so very, very hard—was pressed against her, hemming her in. Somewhere in the back of her mind, beneath the delirious haze of arousal, she was aware of a profound shift taking place. A wall coming down.
Since the moment she’d fallen a year ago and lost her hearing, she’d felt as if she’d been living on the outside of things. She could still talk, obviously, and she could read lips to communicate. But the silence was always there, an invisible obstacle between Tessa and everyone else.
At first, she’d railed against it. But then Owen had given voice to her worst fears and told her he no longer felt close to her. He’d walked away, all because she could no longer hear. Afterward, she’d embraced the silence. She’d used it as a barrier to protect herself from being hurt again. From falling.
As Julian deepened the kiss, slanting his mouth over hers and grinding his erection against her center, she felt like a participant in her life again, rather than an observer. No longer on the outside. She was at the center of her world. Not just her world. The world. The center of everything.
She let her hands slide lower, and lower still, until they were on Julian’s hips, pulling him more firmly against her. Now that the wall had come down, she needed more. More sound, more sensation, more life. More of him—this astonishing, enigmatic man who’d found a way through.
“Julian,” she whispered as he dipped his head to kiss the hollow of her throat. If she’d been able to think straight—if she’d been able to think at all—she might have been embarrassed. Surely he could feel the frantic beat of her pulse beneath his lips. He could taste the effect he had on her.
But what did it matter? He knew, anyway. He’d probably known that she felt drawn to him from the moment she’d first seen him, beautiful and brooding, in the train station. He seemed to know everything else about her. There was no sense in hiding.
She didn’t want to hide anymore. Not from him, and not from the desire that was flowing through her, making her shiver all over.
“Yes, love?” he murmured.
God, that sound...his voice. Hearing it felt almost as good as an actual caress. Almost...
“Touch me,” she said, letting her coat slip off her shoulders and fall to the floor, before reaching for the tie of her wraparound sweater.
Her hands shook so much that she couldn’t unfasten the bow. Julian tipped her chin upward and kissed her—softly, slowly this time—and he took over, untying her sweater and peeling it away, along with her leotard. The air was shockingly cold on her exposed breasts.
Tessa inhaled a shuddering breath as Julian looked at her. Then he lifted his gaze to hers and held up his hand, palm forward, with all five fingers up in the air. His blue eyes glittered in the darkness, and he moved his hand in a circular motion over his face. He was talking to her again with his hands. Signing.
Beautiful.
A lump lodged in Tessa’s throat, and she reached for him, cupping his face in her hands and drawing the pad of her thumb across his skillful mouth. Just as she made contact with the scar tissue on his face, Julian caught her wrist in his grasp and gently placed her hand on the ballet barre. He did the same with her other hand and held them both in place, his musical fingers circling her wrists like bracelets.
Then he kissed his way down the curve of her neck and across her collarbone, until his mouth was on her breast, and the chill that had hit her so hard and fast was replaced with the searing heat of Julian’s lips, the wet relief of his tongue.
Oh, God.
Tessa’s eyes drifted closed. The last thing she saw before she gave herself up to Julian’s touch and the beckoning darkness was her mirrored reflection. Languidly arched against the barre, heavy lidded and breathless, while Julian pleasured her with his mouth.
She didn’t look at all like herself. Such a provocative image. It would no doubt be burned into her memory from here on out. She was sure to remember it every time she stood in that spot, pointing her toes and going through her daily ballet exercises.
Plié, élevé, dégagé.
It was almost like signing—speaking without words, using her body to communicate. Tessa had been a dancer all her life. Like most ballerinas, she thought of her body as a tool. But right then, it felt like more. So much more.
With her eyes shut, everything began moving in a blur of quickened breaths and rapid heartbeats. Julian’s hands were everywhere, and Tessa felt like she was on fire. Molten. Burning from the inside out.
Her knees buckled, and Julian lowered her to the studio floor. She was barely aware of the wood beneath her. It seemed as if every nerve ending in her body was reaching for Julian, seeking his touch, his kiss...his everything.
She tugged at his shirt, but her limbs had gone so pleasantly limp that her efforts were ineffective. Julian gathered her wrists in his hands again and pinned her arms over her head while he carefully finished undressing her. And then she was completely bare, right there in the ballet studio. It was such an inconceivable idea, that if Tessa would have thought about it, she wouldn’t have believed it.
But she didn’t want to think anymore. She just wanted to experience the moment with him. She wanted to be connected to another person for once. How had she gone so long without it? Without this?
“Look at me, Tessa,” he murmured against her ear, and she felt the low scrape of his voice as much as she heard it.
Her eyes fluttered open. Julian loomed over her with his hands planted on either side of her head.
“You’re beautiful.” This time he said it instead of signing it. Tessa watched his mouth form the words, captivated by the shape of his lips and the jagged scar beside them. He had the most exquisite mouth she’d ever seen. Mysterious. A mouth full of secrets.
“So are you,” she said, and she meant every word.
Julian’s eyes went as dark as sapphires. He lowered his head, and that lovely mouth of his made a trail straight down the middle of her body, starting at the base of her throat, moving slowly, deliberately, down her breastbone, until his five o’clock shadow grazed the tender skin on her belly.
Tessa took a sharp, shuddering inhale, as she realized
he’d also begun to move his fingertips up the inside of her thigh. She’d wanted more, and he was giving it to her. But it was almost too much. She couldn’t catch her breath, and the heat swirling through her body was suddenly concentrated between her legs.
Her hips rose off the floor, seeking relief, and Julian kissed her again. In the most intimate way possible.
Tessa buried her hands in Julian’s hair, and somewhere in her consciousness, she was aware that she was writhing beneath him, crying his name.
This, she thought. This is what it means to let someone inside. She’d wanted connection. Once she’d realized he wanted it, too, she’d craved it. But she’d been wholly unprepared for how overwhelming it would feel. How blissful. How exquisitely vulnerable.
“Yes,” she whimpered.
Julian’s mouth moved faster, kissing, licking, tasting, and just when she thought the pleasure might kill her, he slipped a finger inside her, and she shattered.
Her climax hit hard and fast. She felt like she was blossoming from the very center of her body, unfolding in Julian’s hands. Still he stroked her, kissing the sensitive inside of her thigh and moving his magic, musical fingers inside and out, prolonging her orgasm, until she had nothing left to give.
Like a piece of music drifting toward the coda after its swell.
* * *
It was supposed to be a kiss. Just an innocent kiss. It wasn’t supposed to go any further than that.
But when Julian’s lips had first touched Tessa’s, he’d known he was in trouble. She was so responsive, so willing, that he’d lost his head. He’d forgotten all the reasons that touching her was a bad idea and lost himself in the sweetness of her, in the thrill of sharing her light.
He wanted to make her feel good. He wanted to make her feel. To let go like she never had before.
When she came apart, it was the most dazzling thing he’d ever seen. While she still pulsed against his hand, he lifted his head to look at her face, and it wasn’t her seductively parted lips or her heavily lidded eyes that captivated him so.
Rather, it was her astonished expression that made his heart feel like it was being squeezed in a vise. She’d opened up for him, and he’d shown her a part of herself that she hadn’t known existed. A beautiful, vulnerable part that was so damned desirable, it brought Julian to his knees.
Then he made the mistake of taking his eyes off her...just for a fraction of a second. But it was long enough to catch a glimpse of his reflection in the studio mirrors. Long enough to see the scar on his face and remember.
“I want you, Julian.” Tessa rose up on her knees and reached for him, placing her hand on his fly and the swell of his erection.
Starlight streamed through windows overhead, bathing her lithe body in pale, shimmering light, and she looked almost too beautiful to be real. He throbbed beneath her touch, and it would have been so easy to take her right then, right there. He wanted her more than he wanted to take his next breath.
But it wasn’t that simple. Not anymore. He wasn’t the old Julian, and his face wasn’t the only part of him that was scarred.
Maybe if he hadn’t been surrounded on every side by his reflection, he could have gone through with it. They could have properly finished what they’d started. But he couldn’t seem to ignore all those godforsaken mirrors.
I want you, Julian.
She didn’t know what she was saying.
“Babe, we...” We can’t. I can’t. Not here.
Tessa kissed him before he could get the rest of the words out. And for a moment, he nearly forgot again. He closed his eyes and groaned while she caressed him over his trousers. Her hand on his erection was almost unbearable. He couldn’t stop now...it seemed impossible. Not when she was right there, in his arms, offering herself to him. So gloriously naked.
Her body was perfect—long and lean from years of ballet, and as strong as it was supple. Like a marble statue come to life, something Michelangelo had created, all gently sloping curves and Renaissance femininity.
It was that perfection that brought him back from the brink. Tessa slid her hand from his fly to his shirt, unfastened the top button and then moved to the next. Julian looked down at her beautiful breasts and delicate nipples, as soft and pink as ballet slippers, and he caught her wrist to stop her.
He could have avoided the shirt altogether, unzipped his fly and taken her without getting undressed. He thought about it. He’d been thinking about doing that very thing for days, truth be told. But it seemed wrong. He’d already committed enough sins tonight, and it was too late, anyway. Tessa was already peering up at him with questions shining in her eyes. Questions he didn’t want to answer.
He shook his head. “No.”
The confusion in her gaze melted into something else, something that made Julian feel more like a monster than he ever had before. Her eyes were filled with hurt, brimming with shiny, unshed tears.
“No?” She blinked. Then she said it again, louder and dripping with incredulity. “No?”
A dullness took root in Julian’s chest. It was the exact opposite of the arousal he’d been drowning in just moments before. This was all his fault...that look in her eyes, the shame and embarrassment in her voice...all of it.
He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Tessa.”
It was too little, too late.
“Stop,” she said. She signed the word at the same time, holding out her left palm and bringing her right hand down on it at a right angle, as if slicing something in two.
The meaning of the gesture wasn’t lost on Julian. He’d screwed up, and now whatever tenuous connection they had was broken.
Tessa’s gaze dropped to her bare breasts, and her cheeks flamed pink in the darkness. She stood and began scrambling back into her clothes. Julian tried to help, and she pushed his hands away. He could only stand and watch while she turned her back and finished getting dressed.
“I’m sorry,” he said. When she didn’t acknowledge him, he said it again, louder, uncertain just how much she could hear. “I’m sorry.”
Tessa covered her ears with her hands and shook her head.
She could hear him, all right.
She just didn’t want to listen.
Chapter Nine
Tessa woke up the next morning, and the shame she’d felt the night before came crashing down on her again the second she opened her eyes.
She’d never been so mortified in her life.
Julian’s way of letting her know that he’d figured out she could hear had been to demand that she kiss him. Like an idiot, she obeyed. She hadn’t even explained how or why she could hear him. Then somehow she’d ended up naked on the studio floor, trembling from her very first orgasm.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, she’d all but begged him to have sex with her, and he’d stopped her. He’d rejected her. After playing her body like an instrument, he was finished. Done. No explanation, no string of words at all.
Just no.
She’d been completely exposed, and he hadn’t shed a single article of clothing. His forest green tie with the tiny white polka dots had hardly been crooked. Tessa had been forced to fumble her way back into her dance clothes while he stood there watching.
She’d wanted to die.
Just thinking about it made her want to die all over again. It also made her want to grab hold of Julian’s fancy, Sinatra-esque tie and strangle him with it.
She sighed. Long and loud. How could she show her face at rehearsal today? How could she stand at the barre in the exact spot where he’d kissed her silly, while he pounded away on the piano in the corner of the room?
And how on earth was she going to survive practicing with him after hours?
“Mr. B, I’ve made a huge mistake,” she muttered. “The hugest.”
The dog always slept at the foot of her bed.
He must have sensed something was wrong, because he’d spent the night with his little furry body tucked into the crook of her neck. At the sound of Tessa’s voice, he lifted his head and licked the side of her face.
As sweet as Mr. B’s intentions had likely been, the sleeping situation was less than ideal. Tessa now had a stiff neck, in addition to her very wounded pride. She sat up and moved her head from side to side, wincing in pain.
She wasn’t even out of bed yet and already the day was a disaster. Perfect.
Tessa tossed off the covers, grabbed a leotard and tights from her dresser and pulled them on, trying her hardest not to think about the last time she’d gone through the same ritual. It was no use. Everything about the night before was burned permanently into her consciousness. She couldn’t forget a thing about it if she’d tried.
Oh, how she tried.
“I’ll teach the early-morning class today,” she said as she walked into the kitchen of the Wilde family brownstone and poured herself a giant cup of coffee.
Her mother glanced up from the table, where a stack of invoices, a checkbook and several spreadsheets sat in front of her. “Good morning. Are you sure you want to teach? Don’t you have rehearsal today?”
Tessa sipped her coffee and reminded herself to read her mother’s lips when she spoke, even though the kitchen was quiet enough for her to make sense of what she was hearing.
Her mom sounded different than she did before Tessa’s accident. Older. The fall had taken its toll on everyone.
Tessa swallowed. She hated not telling her mother that she might be getting her hearing back for good. If she did, though, her mother would insist on talking to Dr. Spencer, and then Tessa would have to battle both of them to keep her part in the ballet.
She’d tell her family after opening night. It was only three weeks away. By then, everything would be fine.
“Rehearsal doesn’t start until ten. Let me take the first class. Adult beginner ballet, right? It’ll be fun.” Fun was a stretch, but it would definitely be a distraction, and that’s precisely what Tessa needed.