Queen of Quarantine

by Caroline Peckham

  “It’s a family,” Kyan snapped. “I wouldn’t just let any man fuck my woman. But I love the three of them too. It’s the only way that it ever could have worked for us.”

  “So you fuck them as well?” Niall asked him, pointing between Saint and Blake and tilting his head like he was picturing it. I mean, it wasn’t a terrible picture, so I gave it a little imagining myself for the hell of it.

  “No,” Kyan grunted, his lips lifting with a hint of amusement. “They couldn’t handle me.”

  “Well, I can’t say my horizons are broadened every day, but you’ve definitely given me food for thought,” Niall said, sounding like this really was giving him a lot to think about as he smiled widely at us.

  He chuckled, looking to Blake. “Sorry about that then, lad. Look at it this way though, now you can say you survived the wrath of the best hitman in the state – which I don’t think anyone else has ever done. Ever. Not once. I don’t leave bodies kicking. Or twitching. So everybody wins.” He stepped closer to Kyan, lowering his voice. “So tell me more about this arrangement? Do you have a schedule? Or do you all just whip your dicks out and -” He waved his hand between us all. “Act like animals whenever the feelin’ takes ya?”

  “I’ll tell you about it another time,” Kyan muttered, helping me to my feet. He checked me over closely then kissed the corner of my mouth when he was satisfied I was okay.

  Niall gazed at us all with some dawning thought shining in his eyes. “Well,” he said, moving to pick up the crowbar then heading over to the tools on the wall. “I just came here to grab a few new friends.” He piled a couple of saws in his arms along with a hammer and a pair of pliers. “I have places to be, skulls to batter, eyeballs to pluck out. I’ll be wanting that chat though, Kyan. And I’ll keep my mouth shut too – Pa won’t like you letting yer friends touch your girl no matter what way you wanna paint it to him. See ya around.” He headed out of the door whistling casually and my shoulders dropped.

  Blake and Saint moved up close behind me and we all pressed together in an embrace, though it wasn’t quite enough. I missed Nash’s presence like a lost limb.

  “Your uncle is a lunatic,” Blake muttered.

  “He was looking out for family though,” Saint reasoned and I knew he had a point, but I was still pissed at him.

  “Violence is Niall’s answer to everything,” Kyan said.

  I sighed. “Let’s just never piss off the Grim Reaper again.”

  T uning a piano was not something I had ever really wished to spend my time doing, but in the years I'd spent playing on the grand piano back at Everlake, I'd found that I was much better off doing it myself. Once, the school had hired a man to come and tune it and I could only assume he'd had some sort of brain haemorrhage while working on my instrument because after he was done the poor thing sounded like a cat being drawn backwards through an alleyway by a pitbull with the shits.

  Suffice to say, I had the man fired, his business destroyed, reputation torn apart and I was almost certain he'd been evicted from his home too. It probably wasn't enough of a punishment for the torture he'd inflicted upon my piano, but at the time I'd had exams to focus on, so I hadn't been able to exact sufficient revenge. The knowledge that he got off so lightly still haunted me whenever I heard the dulcet sound of a badly tuned instrument, so he was on my mind as I worked on the piano in Liam O'Brien's drawing room. Would it be worth me checking up on that buffoon? Seeing if he had anything else I could take from him in payment for his failure?

  I sighed as I decided to have mercy on him. It wasn't that I felt he'd been sufficiently punished, but I could admit I had bigger fish to fry at the current moment and the diversion of my attention was unnecessary.

  Liam’s grand piano was much neglected, tucked away here in the rear corner of the room. But I'd found myself in need of the instrument to alleviate some of my tension so had decided to take on the task of giving it life again.

  As I finally finished up, I packed away the tuning tools that one of the household staff had acquired for me and closed the cover with a soft exhale.

  My blood was tingling tonight, my fingers itching for the keys and as I glanced out of the window at the dark grounds beyond, I took my seat before the instrument and laid my fingers down lightly.

  The song I started with was slow, heady, full of dark promises and sweet truths. As my fingers danced across the keys, I could feel the tension slipping from my body as my heart rate slowed and I closed my eyes as I sank into the simplicity of the piece, letting it wrap around me and take me to a better place.

  Music poured from the poor, neglected piano and I smiled a little as I felt it coming to life after fuck knew how many years of sitting here forgotten. Instruments needed life to be breathed into them by the masters of their creation. They had a soul that ached to create beauty and wonder, and it was damn near criminal to let such a beautiful piano lay dormant and ignored.

  The door opened behind me as I transitioned into my fourth piece, the music growing more complicated as I went, my fingers moving faster, the sound burrowing deeper into my core.

  Tatum dropped onto the stool beside me, the sweet honey blossom and vanilla scent of her rising up to me and making me sigh as I continued to play, the song quickening in pace, building and building until it came crashing down.

  I turned to look at her as the last note hung in the air, slowing my pace as I split my attention to give her some of it, playing Killing Me Softly by the Fugees. A smile lifted Tatum's lips and she reached out to lay her right hand on top of mine, aligning our fingers so that she could feel the movements of the music as I created it.

  "Does my pain call to you? Or am I just lucky that you always appear whenever I'm most in need of your company?" I asked her and she leaned in a little closer, placing a kiss against the side of my neck which made the hairs rise along my spine.

  "You call to me, Saint," she replied, shifting her hand from my fingers, up my arm and over the sleeve of the black suit jacket I was wearing. She was still dressed up for dinner too, the silky black evening gown dipping low to reveal the full curves of her breasts while her stocking clad thigh pressed against my trousers.

  "Mmm," I turned my gaze back to the keys as I continued to play, moving the song on to Halo by Beyoncé.

  "I think you may just communicate better with music than you do with words," Tatum teased and I shrugged.

  "It's more eloquent," I supplied. "I think the world would be a better place if we all just communicated via music.”

  Tatum breathed a laugh. "How do you even know all of these songs by heart? I swear you don't even listen to pop music and yet I feel like I could name practically any song and you'd start playing it with no problem."

  "How many songs do you know the words to?" I asked her.

  "I dunno. Hundreds...thousands maybe. Once they start playing the words just pop into my head."

  "It's the same for me, but I just memorise the music as well," I said. “And I don't have anything against pop music, or any kind of music. I only ask that what I listen to emotes and captures true emotion. Music should hurt, bring joy, resonate with memories or just make you feel. If it does that, it has value beyond all the money in the world as far as I'm concerned."

  "You're just a big old romantic at heart, aren't you?" Tatum asked and I scoffed.

  "If you say so, siren."

  "Can I put you to the test then?" she asked as the song came towards the end.

  "Are you hoping to trip me up?" I asked her, playing Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus next and smirking at her. I wasn’t certain if she was the one who had come crashing into my life or if it was the other way around, but it seemed fitting for us.

  "Maybe."

  "Only if you indulge in a fantasy for me then," I said, bobbing my chin towards the top of the piano. "Lay up on there while I play."

  "Are you going to ravish me on top of a piano, Mr Memphis?" Tatum gasped mockingly.

  "In a room where your husband's ps
ychotic grandfather may walk in at any moment? That sounds like a rather foolish suggestion. I learned my lesson the last time with Niall. I quite like my head being attached to my body."

  "It is such a clever head," she agreed as she got to her feet and climbed up on top of the piano for me.

  I smiled at her as she draped herself across it, her grin saying she thought this was ridiculous even as she embodied the perfection of the fantasy I wished for. Her long legs lay across the piano and her dress rode up to expose the lacy tops of her stockings, making me groan with longing.

  I drank in the sight of her as I continued playing and she started throwing random song titles at me, trying to catch me out with different genres and ages of music. But I managed to capture each choice she selected, replicating the music on the piano for her until she was laughing and reaching out to stroke a burning path along my jaw with her fingertips.

  "What's got you feeling so down?" she asked in a soft voice, those blue eyes of hers looking right into my soul.

  "Down?" I asked as I continued to let my fingers drift over the keys, flowing back into the familiar patterns of Mozart as the music wound its way around my soul.

  "The music you were playing before I came in here was all so...sad," she said, looking down at my fingers as I realised I'd slipped into a rather melancholy choice now too.

  "Hmm." I kept playing and Tatum didn't push me as I considered whether there was much merit to her observation. I hadn't been sitting here feeling sorry for myself per se, but I supposed I had been lost to my thoughts and memories, aching for this outlet.

  "When I was a boy," I said eventually, keeping my eyes on the keys. "Ten years old, to be precise. My father went away on a business trip. So I decided to take it upon myself to figure out one of his secrets."

  "What secrets?" Tatum breathed and I shrugged.

  "I have never been allowed to know too much of anything the man is up to. He is something of an enigma - or at least that is what he attempts to be. But I'd been observing him closely, studying my enemy if you will, and I believed that I had figured out the combination to the lock on his filing cabinet. I'd been summoned to his office earlier that week for a lecture on the importance of hierarchy within an empire and I suppose I was a fool for not realising that had been a warning, but-"

  "But you were just a kid," she supplied, and I nodded once in acknowledgment of that even if it still irritated me.

  "Anyway, I waited until the dead of night when all of the house staff would be asleep and my mother would be half comatose after taking her nightly sleeping pills, and I crept from my bed. I slipped along the dark corridors and made my way to his office. The door was unlocked, which again should have clued me in, but I foolishly believed I was just lucky." I scoffed lightly at how naive I'd been. "I headed into his office with a little flashlight I'd taken from the kitchen drawer that morning and I flicked it on. I crept across the carpet in my flannel pyjamas and bare feet then I made it to the filing cabinet."

  I breathed out slowly and continued to play, lost in the way a chill had caressed my skin as I stood there looking at that drawer, how cold the metal handle had felt against my fingers and the way my heart had raced with the idea of finally getting one up on him.

  "What was in the drawer?" Tatum asked when she couldn't take it anymore and I offered her a smile which I knew didn't reach my eyes as I shrugged a shoulder.

  "A letter. I can still see the words of it as if I took a damn photograph and plastered it to the backs of my eyelids. ‘What did I tell you about respecting my privacy, boy?’"

  "He set a trap?" she gasped, and I nodded again.

  "There was a camera recording the office. I suppose it had a motion sensor and a delayed timer on it because as I threw the drawer closed in alarm, his computer monitor flashed to life and showed me the feed from it. I could see myself standing in the centre of his office, the camera angled down to record the entire room. I turned and fled, fear consuming me as I raced all the way back to my bedroom, flung the door closed behind me and dove beneath the sheets."

  "What did he do to punish you?"

  "He didn't return from his trip for three more days and I am still unsure whether those seventy-two torturous hours were worse than his actual return. I was beyond afraid of what retribution he'd demand of me and the fear made me throw up every time I tried to eat." I shuddered at the memory of the bile coating my tongue and my stomach rumbling pitifully as I failed to keep anything down. "When he finally returned, he didn't speak a word to me. He removed his gloves and coat then strode to the dining room silently, not even casting a glance my way as I was forced to hound after him. He sat down with my mother at his side and ate his dinner, ignoring me while yet again, I failed to eat mine. I just...waited."

  "Saint," Tatum murmured, reaching out to stroke my face again and I leaned into her touch as I continued to play.

  "He laid his knife and fork down carefully, pressed his napkin to his lips then looked right over my head as he said in a firm voice, 'I do not wish to have a son who does not respect me or my privacy. Therefore, until further notice, I want it known that I have no son. No one in this household can see or hear him, much less speak to or feed him. Perhaps, in time he will learn to show enough respect that he may earn his way back into this family. But until then, Saint Memphis does not exist.'"

  "He...I don't understand," Tatum breathed but there were tears in her blue eyes which said she did.

  I stopped playing to wipe one away as it fell and she caught my hand, holding it to her cheek as I was captured in her gaze.

  "For two months and thirteen days, not one person I saw acknowledged me in any way. I wasn't allowed out. I had no access to the internet or a phone and no one even spoke in my presence. I existed as a ghost in my father's home, scavenging food from the kitchen at night once I managed to stomach it at all. It was...perhaps the worst punishment I have ever suffered at his hands. You cannot fully comprehend the loneliness of a little boy trapped and-"

  Tatum leaned forward and pressed her lips to mine, tears streaming down her face so that the salty taste of them bled between our lips as my heart thumped harder from the memories and my breath caught tight in my chest.

  Her fingers slid into my hair as I kissed her slowly, devouring the taste of her pain and mine, wanting to pull back and tell her it was alright while not quite finding the strength in me to do it just yet.

  Her tears fell against my cheeks and it was so close to feeling something real that my heart began to race and the tightness in my muscles seemed to grow then relax like the push and pull of the tide.

  I drew back and kissed her cheeks, one after another, tasting her tears and willing them away.

  "Don't hurt for me, siren," I breathed. "I'm not that little boy anymore. I'm-"

  "I'll never let you feel like that again," she promised. "Not once. Not ever. You'll never be alone again, and you'll never feel unwanted. That man was no father to you. He's not your family. But we're here now and you'll never be on the outside of anything ever again."

  I inhaled those words, soaking them in and letting them wind their way around my heart until they were beating through my veins and permeating every piece of me.

  My throat was thick at the weight of what I felt for this girl. This creature born to ruin me and recast me anew.

  "I'm sorry for the pain I have caused you," I murmured, sliding my fingers through her long hair and twisting it around them gently. "I'm sorry I didn't accept what you are sooner."

  "And what's that?" she whispered, her lips brushing against my cheek like the wings of a butterfly.

  "Everything," I replied simply, unable to put it into words more eloquently than that because there was no language on earth that could encompass the depths of what I felt for her. My obsession with her had gone too far, my infatuation unstoppable now and never ending. She would never be rid of me. There was no place in this world or the next where I wouldn't find her, follow her, worship her. She was my li
ght when all I'd ever known was dark and now that I could see, I refused to be blinded ever again. Because it would destroy me if I was.

  There were no words that could convey all of that, but perhaps there was music. This melody had been writhing through my body and soul for so long that I knew it was desperate to escape. And I found myself needing to share it with her so that she might have a chance of understanding what she was to me.

  I took my hand from her hair and leaned back, looking into her blue eyes which still shimmered with tears as I licked my lips and tasted her sorrow on them.

  Who was this creature who saw so much and offered me more than I ever could have presumed to take? How was it she seemed to see so much in me when I wasn't even sure there had been anything here to find? She brought out a side of me I hadn't known existed but had clearly been starving in wait of her. And now it was going to gorge itself on everything she had to offer, and I had no desire to even try and stop it.

  "I wrote this for you," I said, laying my hands back down on the piano.

  "You wrote me a song?" she asked, biting her lip to try and hide a shy smile and the thought of this pleasing her so much loosened a knot in my chest.

  "I don't sing, siren," I replied with a faint snort of amusement. "But I do play. So I wrote you a symphony - though I only have a piano to hand and am lacking the orchestra which would be necessary to bring it to life, so it's just this simple piece."

  "Simple?" she teased like she knew it would be anything but and I allowed myself a smile.

  "As simple as I am able," I conceded.

  She shifted back to watch me from the top of the piano and I drank in the sight of her as my fingers moved into position over the keys. I exhaled slowly, finding peace in the music even before it had begun to pour from my soul then I began.