“If I told you I was honestly, seriously considering it, would you…I mean….” Her words trailed off, and he looked up to see that she had averted her gaze to the ground. Her bold bravado had slipped; she seemed lost and confused. She flushed and shook her head. “What am I saying?”
He smiled softly and cupped her cheek in his palm. “What are you saying?”
She fixed him with a sidelong glance and snorted. “I’m not sure, but it sounded an awful lot like I was going to propose to you, didn’t it?” Her face turned a deeper shade of crimson and he chuckled.
He pushed her hair back, exposing her neck, and he tilted her chin sideways so he could access it with his lips. He trailed soft kisses down her jaw and along the column of her throat, drawing a soft sigh from her. He felt the hammering of her pulse and was delighted that he could affect her the same way she seemed to affect him. He swirled his tongue along that pulse and smiled at her sharp intake of breath.
“Whatever you decide, I will support you,” he whispered between kisses. “If you wish to choose me, and remain in this world, you will make me the happiest man in any dimension. But if you decide that you need to return to your world, I will find a way to follow you there…and I’ll be your dutiful stalker.” Her laughter was more musical to him than any instrument he had ever heard. Her arms tightened around his neck, pulling him closer, and he buried his face against her shoulder.
“Would you really do that, Liron?” she asked after a few moments, pulling back so that she could look into his eyes. “Follow me to my world?”
He searched her beautiful blue depths and lost himself there. “You have brought me life again,” he murmured. “You have brought me laughter and light. You have brought me music again. I would follow you anywhere.”
So many emotions reflected in her eyes that he couldn’t put a label on all of them. She nestled in his arms, snuggled against him with so much warmth and so much trust. His heart ached at the affection she showed him, the acceptance and the want of him. For so long he had wondered what it would feel like to be wanted. He had never imagined it would be so all-consuming, so life-altering. He had never imagined that something as simple as feeling wanted would end up being not simple at all, or that he would be ready to drop his whole world, everything he had ever known, just to be near one woman.
But he would.
Because there was no way he could go without the song she brought to life within him. Not now that he had heard it
A loud knocking and the incessant ringing of a bell ripped him out of his precious moment with Melody. She lifted her head with a frown and looked at him. “You expecting someone?” she queried.
He shook his head and his heart fell as he glanced past her shoulder to the far side of his room. “That’s not for me, my lovely.” He pointed over to where her home had manifested itself across his floor and walls.
She glanced over her shoulder and her surprise was more than apparent. She pushed herself off of his lap and into a standing position, then went over toward the portal into her world.
“Melody? Melody, are you in there?” A distinct, feminine voice could be heard while the bell continued to ring.
Liron arched an eyebrow. “Friend of yours?”
She looked back at him with shock etched into her features. She pointed to the daylight streaming through her window. “How long have I been here?”
“Melody!” The woman hollered again, as if she’d heard the conversation. “Where are you? I haven’t heard from you in four days!”
Melody started. “Four days?” she practically screeched. “Oh my gosh, I’m gonna get fired!” She spun and held her hands out to him, which he immediately took. Regret washed over her features. “Liron, I have to go back for a little bit, just to make sure everyone knows I’m okay. No one knew I was going anywhere. They’re going to be worried. And I probably lost my job.”
He brought her fingers to his lips and kissed them tenderly. “Of course.”
She stepped closer to him and caressed the length of his hair. “I’ll come back as soon as I can, okay?”
He smiled, even though his heart ached at the thought of her leaving for any amount of time. “I’ll be here.”
She smiled at him and her eyes filled with warmth. “Promise?”
He lowered his lips to hers and kissed her slowly, cherishing the petal-softness of her perfect mouth. He nuzzled his nose against hers when he pulled away. “Always.”
“Melody!” Ringringringringring! Her friend was extremely persistent.
She stepped out of his embrace and started toward the doorway to her world. She stopped when she reached the threshold and looked back at him. She smiled and blew him a kiss that pierced his heart. Then, she was gone.
He tried to ignore the horrible fear that, this time, she would not be able to return to him. She had the music score, which was the key to her ability to travel. And besides, even if she was unable to reach him, somehow, he would find a way to get to the human world. He would not be parted from her now that he had found her. She was his life song. And as long as she wished it, he would move heaven and earth to be by her side.
* * * *
Melody wasted no time in heading toward the door once she was back in her world. By the sound of it, Nikki was about to have a nervous breakdown. And she couldn’t really blame her, in all reality. The fact that she had actually been gone for four days was hard for her to wrap her mind around. By her calculations, she had only been with Liron for maybe three quarters of a day. The fact that time went so much faster in her world was something she couldn’t quite get used to.
She opened the door, revealing Nikki looking first frantic, then aggravated. “Melody!” she all but screamed. “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick!” She yanked the screen door open and barreled in without waiting for an invitation. “I called your cell phone about a hundred times. Where were you that you couldn’t call me—?” She stopped short as she noticed Melody’s attire and her eyebrow rose in perplexed curiosity. “What in the world are you wearing?”
“Uh….” She searched for words. “It’s my new hobby. Belly dancing.”
“Belly dancing.” Nikki sounded about as convinced as a parent who had just caught their child doing something questionable. She folded her arms. “And this took up so much of your time that you couldn’t bother to call back your best friend who thought you were dead somewhere?” She was back to screaming again. “I went by your work and they said they hadn’t heard from you either! It’s not like you to no call, no show, Mel. What is going on?”
“I went out of town.” It wasn’t really a lie. She had gone out of town.
Nikki blinked in bewilderment. “You went out of town? On a whim? Where did you go?”
“To the coast,” she replied quickly, then tried to hide the flush that crept into her cheeks at her memory of kissing Liron at the cliffs.
Nikki stared at her for several long moments, as if trying to assess whether or not Melody had finally lost her mind. Then, she cocked her head to the side and her eyes narrowed like she was picking up on something she was trying to figure out. Slowly, her eyes widened and she sucked in a breath. “Oh my gosh, you met someone.” It was a statement of fact, not a question, and Melody’s face betrayed her by blushing worse. “You did!” Nikki screeched. “You have to tell me!” She snatched Melody’s wrist and hauled her down to sit next to her on the couch. “First, tell me why you decided to go to the coast anyway.”
“Uh….” She didn’t want to lie to her friend, but how was she supposed to explain that she had somehow defied the laws of physics and traveled to another dimension? Or that the man she had met was not really a man by human standards, but a who-knew-how-old muse whose touch made her hear and feel music? Or that she was seriously contemplating the idea of staying in that dimension permanently and making said muse her mate when she really hadn’t known him for longer than a couple days? She could barely comprehend all of that on her own. How did s
he expect Nikki to?
So she decided to tell the closest thing to the truth that she could without sounding like a lunatic. “Actually, I did some research on that music score and managed to find out where a…relative of the composer lived. I decided to track him down on a whim.” Close enough.
Nikki raised an eyebrow. “Like a friggin’ stalker? Dang, Mel. Did you hide in his bushes too?”
Melody laughed and swatted her friend on the arm. “No…I dunno. I needed to get away for awhile, you know? So I just decided to go.”
“And you found this dude?”
Melody’s cheeks turned hot again, and she wanted to smack herself. What was she? Thirteen? “Yeah, I found him.” Her voice sounded so breathy it was ridiculous.
“And?” Nikki was practically bouncing in place.
Melody giggled. “He’s a musician too.”
Nikki snorted with a look that said, no duh. “Well, of course.”
“We talked about music a lot, played some….” Shivers worked along her spine at the recollection of the music his touch infused her with. She glanced up at Nikki, who was looking at her with a knowing smirk and a sparkle in her eyes.
“Are you going to see him again?”
Melody bit her bottom lip. “Yes, I would like to. As soon as possible.”
Nikki raised both of her eyebrows in surprise. “Shoot, you have it bad, girl! You need to tell me absolutely everything, pronto. Let’s go grab some lunch.”
“Okay, lemme put on something a little more presentable, huh?” She stood and headed to her bedroom. In truth, she really wanted to take a hot shower. She still felt groady from the hog slop incident.
“Mel?”
She turned to look at Nikki over her shoulder.
Nikki gave her a look full of mischief. “He’s super hot, isn’t he?”
Melody felt something melt inside of her, and she nodded dreamily. “Oh yeah.”
Chapter Twelve
Melody returned home from lunch with Nikki feeling lighthearted and happy. She had divulged as much as would make sense about Liron, and Nikki’s positive personality had been contagious. True, she didn’t know that Melody was considering going and living in an alternate universe, but that aside, Nikki had given her the green light on the whole thing. Melody figured her friend was probably just happy to see her doing something other than moping around like a misplaced zombie.
Setting her purse and keys down, Melody went over to her answering machine and checked for messages. There were about a hundred from Nikki, frantically wondering where she had vanished to, and about a hundred more from Rob. She rolled her eyes and deleted her way through those as quickly as possible. She had no desire to deal with him at the moment. Now that she thought about it, she had no idea why she had ever given him the time of day in the first place. Just because he was a distraction, she guessed. He took her mind off of her pain for half a second and filled it with annoyance instead. Yeah, that was healthy.
She smirked and her heart did acrobatics at the recollection of Liron’s musical touch and kisses. She much preferred his kind of distraction. And after being inundated with music for the past whoever-actually-knew-how-long, she didn’t understand how she could have ever thought she could live without it in her life. What a coward she had been.
In harmony with her wandering thoughts, a message came from the music director of the orchestra she had once been part of. He told her that he was guest conducting a different orchestra at a large music festival nearby and wanted to invite her.
Melody glanced at the calendar. The event was tonight. Her first reaction was to avoid it at all costs, but then something inside of her made her think twice. There would be no harm in going to watch an old friend, and there was no reason for her to be afraid of music anymore. It lived and breathed within her; she could not escape it, and she would be doing a disservice to herself and her parents’ memory if she tried.
She looked at the clock, then headed back to her bedroom. She had about three hours before the festival began. She’d find something presentable to wear and make an appearance.
As she walked down the hall, she glanced at Liron’s music and smiled to herself. She was anxious to get back to him, but it could wait until after the festival. She also had some business to attend to before she headed back to Liron’s world. Such as calling her job to ask when she could pick up her last paycheck, since even if they let her, she would not be returning. Whether she decided to stay in Liron’s world or not, she would not continue to work at a dead-end job she abhorred when she could be doing something else she loved.
She couldn’t hide from her passion anymore. Music found her regardless of where she went or how she tried to avoid it. It found her and called to her.
And she wanted to answer.
* * * *
She felt beautiful as she took her seat in the balcony at the theatre. She had dressed to kill, knowing that, after she returned home from the concert, she would be going back to Liron, and she wanted to knock his socks off. She was dressed in a navy blue dress that came to her knees with a V-neck that showed more than its fair share of cleavage. At her throat, she wore a silver and sapphire necklace her mother had given her when she’d graduated from Juilliard, and she had her blonde waves flowing free with only the sides pinned back with silver clips. She knew Liron liked to bury his fingers in it, so she figured she would make it easier for him to do just that.
She didn’t feel as apprehensive as she had imagined she would as she sat through the first half of the show. The music was wonderful, and her anxiety diminished to the point that she actually found herself wrapped up in and enjoying the pieces as she once had, before the accident.
She settled in for the second half of the show as the lights dimmed and the curtain raised again, delighting in how Liron’s influence had taken so much of the pain out of her life that had been associated with music. She had never really wanted to stop playing, to stop loving it. Just, after the accident, she hadn’t been able to face it. Not when all of it held so many memories of her once-happy family and life.
Her friends had given her the “if you fall off the horse” speech so many different ways she couldn’t see straight, and she’d known the truth of their words in her heart, but she just hadn’t been able to embrace music the way she once had. It felt like it no longer had a place after her parents were gone. Even though she knew all of that reasoning had been illogical and only her grief talking, that’s how she’d felt all the same.
Liron had changed all of that. Liron was music. Every elegant move of his body, every tender touch, everything that made him who he was. All of it was made of music. And she hadn’t realized how much her soul still craved it, how empty she was without it, until he’d taken her in his arms and erased her pain with the gentleness of his song.
Melody sat back in her chair with a contented sigh as the music began, but the contentment was replaced by horrendous panic. At the first few notes, her heart dropped out of her chest and fell into an empty void, the ache within her so strong and instant that it stole her breath.
The haunting opening of Adagio in G Minor weaved its way through the theatre and, against her will, images of her parents filled her mind on the last day she had seen them, followed by images of their heart-wrenching funeral. She squeezed her eyes shut as the pain increased to something almost tangible. It was like someone had ripped open a still-tender wound and poured acid in it.
She tried to sit there and breathe it out, but the piece was long, and she was being constantly flooded by images of her happy-go-lucky, laughing father, her gentle mother, the three of them all playing their instruments together in a joyous kind of ruckus, then of the somber, tormenting melancholy of their caskets surrounded by flowers while the orchestra played this song in memoriam. And she stood all alone. Because regardless of the continued caring words and embraces, that was exactly what she had been. And that’s what she still was. In this world anyway.
She had to get
out of there. If she stayed one more minute, she was going to suffocate.
Propelling herself out of the chair with not as much dignity as she would have liked, she fled from the theatre. Her chest felt like someone was squeezing it in a vise, and she couldn’t take a decent breath. She ran down the stairs and out the front door, finally managing to wheeze in a painful gasp of air when she got into her car and slammed the door. It was only then that she realized she had tears streaming down her face.
She touched them, stunned, because she had not been able to release tears since her parents had died. She had felt them sting, but they had never spilled over. They felt like they were burning as they fell.
Turning her car on and pulling out of the parking lot, she let them run without bothering to wipe them away. There was something morbidly therapeutic about the feel of them trailing down her cheeks.
When she reached her house, she pulled into the driveway, turned off the engine, and just sat there, crying softly. She finally wiped her eyes, but more tears replaced them as memories of her parents barraged her until her already broken heart felt like it was shattering all over again.
A sudden knock on her window made her scream and she jumped, looking up to see Rob peering curiously in at her. She rolled the window down and scowled at him. “You scared the freaking crap out of me!” she all but shouted.
“Sorry. What are you just sitting in the car for?” His gaze roamed over her face for a second before he frowned. “Have you been crying?”
She rolled her eyes and shoved her door open. Brilliant assessment.
“What happened?” he prodded as she climbed out.
“Nothing,” she muttered. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, where were you? More importantly, where have you been? I thought you were avoiding me or something.”
Gee, what would give you that impression? “I was away,” she answered vaguely.
He made a rude noise in his throat. “Nice. Thanks for telling me.”
“I wasn’t aware that I needed a permission slip.”
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