by Lindsey Hart
“The same way you were going to do it before, I guess,” she whispered. She pulled away and he was relieved to see she was smiling again, delicately, but it reached her eyes. “I might be a virgin, but I’m not a saint.” That scarlet blush was back, burning on her cheeks. “I know how to pleasure myself. I’m not afraid. I just didn’t know how to tell you and I couldn’t not, because you’d find out anyway.” She swallowed hard. “Are you going to take off my dress or are you going to walk away and not give us what we both desperately want?”
“I’m not going to walk away,” he said huskily, and his hand fisted in the silk folds of her robe.
CHAPTER 15
Leena
In all her darkest dreams and fantasies, she kept hidden away, she’d imagined this moment a thousand times. No, likely more than that. She’d dreamed of Dallas when she was asleep, and she thought of him when she was awake. She’d never actually believed that the moment would be a reality.
He ran his hand up her leg, stroking her softly, gently, as though gentling her, playing her like he would his music. She wanted to be his piano, her body his instrument. She wanted him to make her sing, to bring her to a life truer than anything she’d ever known. She wanted him to teach her what it meant to be free.
Her body burned under his touch. Her blood was lightning, electricity, hot and wild, zinging through her veins. Dallas stroked her again so very gently. This time he was bolder, his hand caressing up the length of her thigh. His fingers fisted in her robe again and jerked it upwards, exposing her.
She wanted to slam her legs shut, but the way he was looking at her, as though she was the most perfect woman in the entire world, kept her modesty at bay. She was so slippery and wet she felt trickles of her own desire running down her thighs. Part of her wished that he’d just throw her back on the bed, cover her with his massive form and take her swiftly and roughly. She wanted it over with and done so that she could enjoy him gently, less feverish, the second time.
Her sex ached as he brushed his thumb over her. She whimpered, her hips bucking up in response. She couldn’t control the movement. Her body knew what it wanted. She wanted him and she wanted him more desperately than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. None of her fantasies compared to the real thing. The real Dallas, the flesh and blood and rigid, straining, rock-hard muscle.
When he finally rose up over her, his hands by her shoulders, she thought she’d weep in relief. Her hands tangled in the flaxen strands of his hair. She brought his face to hers and he claimed her lips with a fury and a passion that shocked her. He loved like he played, with his entire being.
“Dallas,” she moaned. “Please. Please, I need you inside of me. I can’t wait. Just do it.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he panted, the warmth of his breath like the whisper of a feather against her neck.
“You won’t. Even if it does hurt, I don’t care. I’ve wanted this for so long…”
Dallas groaned. A violent tremor ripped through him. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. He pressed closer, letting the hardness of his cock settle on her thigh. She couldn’t help it. She wriggled her hips, grinding against him, trying to fit him to where she wanted him most.
“You are so beautiful,” Dallas ground out. “So damn perfect.”
This time the shivers were all hers. “You are amazing. You are everything I have ever wanted. Make me yours.”
“Mine,” he echoed. “You’re mine, Leena. My wife.” He said the word with amazement, as though truly realizing for the first time what it really meant.
“My husband.”
“I should… get you ready first.” He shifted, went to reach between them, but she stopped him with another hard grind of her hips.
“No. I don’t want your hand. I mean, I do, but it’s not what I want right now. I want you. Inside of me. Filling me. I want the pain.”
“Leena…”
“I’ve only ever imagined this with you. I wanted to give this to you. You’re the only man I ever loved.” She knew she’d said it before, told him and he’d nearly left in his panic, but she had to tell him again. She wanted him to know. To truly understand what it meant, a lifetime of love and longing.
She slowly shifted, lifting her hips under him and wrapping her legs around his waist. Dallas groaned. She felt his cock kick against her thigh. It made the throbbing at the center of her that much worse, feeling him so close, so very close and so rock hard.
“I’ll go slow,” he said hoarsely.
“Fast or slow, I don’t care. Just please, let me feel you.” Her nails bit into the golden flesh of his shoulder. She leaned in and inhaled, flooding her senses with the scent that was Dallas. A scent she knew so well and loved so very much. It was a scent she craved when they were apart for anything more than a day, that tang of sweet skin and sweat and music, of wild, unbridled male, undiluted by cologne or aftershave or anything artificial.
“Leena, I’m going to lose it here.”
“Then lose it.” Her thighs tightened around his hips. “Just damn lose it, Dallas. It’s what I need.”
Dallas rocked his hips. She cried out when she felt him at her sex, slick and wet and so very hot. She closed her eyes as he moved to her entrance. Lord, he was huge and she felt so very small and tight. She knew it was going to hurt, but she hadn’t been lying when she said she wanted it. She lifted her hips again, bucking them up, trying to force him inside.
He braced himself, shifting all his weight to his hands. And then slowly, achingly slowly, he entered her. The pain of it was sweet and acrid, biting and glorious. She couldn’t stop herself. She thrust her hips upward, slamming her pelvis into his. He plunged deep with the movement, tearing through her barrier.
Leena cried out, but she didn’t stop. Her thighs tightened, and her heels dug into the backs of Dallas’ legs and she used the leverage to rock herself hard against him. His cock filled her, the thickness delicious and unbearably sweet.
She felt the shivers of desire unfurl deep in her stomach. She knew what it was to give herself an orgasm and she knew she wasn’t far. She wanted to hold it off. She didn’t want it yet, not when the pleasure was so perfect. She wanted to hang on for just a little longer.
Dallas moved above her. His motions were hard and swift. He pulled out, leaving just the tip of his cock inside. She nearly cried out at the lost sweetness of him before he plunged back in. He thrust harder, filling her completely, hitting spots she didn’t even know she had. He moved faster, harder, with every single stroke.
“Dallas,” she panted. Her nails bit into his shoulders as lights burst behind her eyes. “Oh, god, Dallas…”
“Come for me Leena,” he commanded. “I want to feel you come around me.”
“Dallas…” when he said those things, it drove her into madness.
He kept thrusting harder, harder, faster. She wasn’t prepared for him to shift away, put all his weight on one hand and slam the other under her hips. His fingers bit into the tender flesh of her ass. He kneaded her hips for just a second before he raised her hips up further as he pistoned in and out of her body.
She couldn’t hold on any longer. The swirling sensation, the sweet, liquid heat inside of her unfurled and she cried out. She shuddered and bucked wildly as she screamed something out. She couldn’t tell. It didn’t even sound like words. She panted and gasped as wave after sweet wave rolled over her. Her hands scrabbled at his back, marring the beautiful golden velvet skin stretched over taut muscle.
“I love you, Dallas,” she sobbed near his ear, hardly aware that the words had been ripped from her heart and given voice.
Dallas shuddered violently, thrusting harder and harder. She knew he was going to come and she suddenly panicked, as they hadn’t even thought about the consequences. She opened her mouth to say something and then Dallas pulled out.
She watched, mesmerized, as he stroked his hand up and down the length of his shaft. He worked himself for stroke after stroke befo
re he finally came. The jets were hot and fluid on her stomach. They hit her overheated skin and she was surprised at how rapidly they cooled.
Leena didn’t know what possessed her, but she reached down, dipped her index finger in the trail on her stomach and brought it to her mouth. She sighed in rapture as the salty tang of him hit her tongue.
“Leena? What are you…” Dallas ground out. “Please, don’t do that.”
Her eyes flew open and she stared into his fiery grey orbs. They were dark, wild, far from sated. Her body quickened at the hunger there. She was sore, achingly so, but she wanted more. A rush of moisture trickled down her thigh as she wriggled under his strong body.
“Why not?”
“Because I… I won’t be able to control myself if I see you do things like that.”
“Who said I wanted you to control yourself?”
“Leena, this is your first time. I don’t want… I don’t want to hurt you. It might not hurt now, but later-”
“Then let it hurt later. I want it to. I want more.”
Dallas groaned. “We don’t have protection. We’re playing with fire.”
“There are other ways of finding pleasure. We don’t have to gamble.”
“Leena…”
She was already shifting out from under him. He rolled away so that she could move freely. He froze on the other side of the bed as she took his cock in her hand. She pumped him gently before she lowered her face. She didn’t know how the rest of the night was going to play out. She didn’t know if Dallas would still be there come morning or if she’d be just another regret or distraction. She was scared and uncertain and it made her bold. If this was the one night she had with him, she was going to make it an unforgettable one.
CHAPTER 16
Dallas
Rapture. Bliss. Transcendence. He searched through his head for other words, but nothing seemed right. He couldn’t remember a single time in his life when he’d ever felt so at peace. There was no single word that could do justice to what he felt.
Leena’s beautiful limbs were twined with his, their legs tangled, one of his arms thrown out protectively over her chest and shoulders. She breathed deeply, evenly, though she wasn’t asleep. He was on his side and she lay staring up at the ceiling, hardly blinking.
I love you, Dallas.
Those whispered words at the height of passion burned in his soul, twisted in a heart he’d always thought had no room for anyone or anything else. He was wrong. Leena had been there for so long, he just hadn’t realized it. She’d never dared tell him how she truly felt. He’d never given her a reason to.
Leena spoke, her voice gentle, a mere whisper and a tickle of breath next to his ear. “My mother always wanted to be a concert pianist. She started playing when she was a little girl and it was her dream to one day do it for a living or perform, or something. I don’t know exactly, I just know piano was her life. She met my dad when she was twenty. He was a musician too, just not the same kind as she was. He was in a band. They weren’t looking for anything permanent, but she found out she was pregnant. They stayed together, got married. He got a real job and she gave up piano. That would have been it, but she never really gave up her dream. She wanted to live it through me, I guess. She was the one who taught me piano to start, but then she made me go to lessons with people who were anything but… nice I guess. They were very demanding, always wanted perfection. I wasn’t allowed to go out and be a regular kid. My whole life was piano. Always piano. That’s how I met- Hannah.” At the sound of her name, they both froze. Her voice trailed off.
Dallas swallowed back the rising tide of sorrow. It was always so sharp and acute, even after the passage of so many years. She’d been his first love, a love he had never been able to express. And now, lying next to Leena, their sweat still drying, their bodies twisted up together, his heart torn up and strangely at peace all at once, her name felt like an intrusion.
“Go ahead,” he said softly. Neither of them moved. The silence of the room was like a cloak over them and Leena said nothing for a long time.
“I- met- I met Hannah at this piano school during the summer. We hit it off instantly. Her parents were far more lenient. When she said she wanted to learn how to sing and be an actress on Broadway or something, they were proud of her. They did everything they could to make that come true for her. They wanted to give her the best. They found you.”
He scoffed softly, but Leena didn’t make a sound. It made him feel strange, to think that it was how she thought of him. “And she was scared to death of me.”
“She was,” Leena admitted softly. “She asked me if I would go with her. She didn’t like the darkness of the house or how- uh- broody you were.”
“I know exactly how I was and am. Of my many faults, thinking too highly of myself isn’t one.”
“You have no idea how amazing you truly are.”
Dallas didn’t scoff or laugh again or make fun of Leena. He glanced up at her and his chest flooded with warmth at the tenderness in her eyes. “So, you started coming. And your parents were okay with that?”
“Yes. Only because I told my mother that you were a genius. The best musician I had ever seen. I told her how much I could learn from you that I didn’t already know.”
“You were flawless even then, weren’t you?”
“Technically yes, but I will never be as good as you. Your gift, or uh- curse, whatever you want to call it, comes from inside. You always played with this passion, this incredible darkness and light that I could never hope to touch. I was forced into playing. I never truly wanted it. I liked it, I guess, in some way, but so much of me hated it.”
“And you weren’t coming with Hannah to learn anything at all.”
“No, you’re wrong.” Leena’s hand moved to the crown of his head. She slowly caressed his hair, lifting the long strands, running her fingers through them. It was entirely soothing, probably for her as well. “I learned so much. Everything you taught Hannah, I soaked up. It was the first time in my life I was choosing to learn. You were such a good teacher, Dallas.”
“Hardly.”
“You were. No matter what you thought, Hannah responded to you. She wanted to be the best and that’s why she kept coming back. She eventually learned that you were harmless.”
“Long after you did, I suppose.”
“I knew you were harmless from the start. I lived with two people who were musicians or at least, were at one time. I wasn’t a stranger to darkness or… well, I guess my mom had some struggles with depression. She tried not to let me see, but I could tell. She was just so obsessive about the piano. It was like a trigger for her, one she could obviously never escape. It was this weird cycle. I think that was part of the reason I hated it so much. Aside from being driven to it and chained to it and not being allowed to be a normal kid, it just symbolized all this lost hope for her own life and all this hope for me.”
Dallas sighed. “I guess I should thank her then. You would never have seen through me otherwise.”
“I don’t know.” Leena’s hand kept smoothing through his hair. He didn’t even know if she was aware of what she was doing, but it felt as good as having her there with him. “I didn’t mind cleaning up for you. I did it often enough at home. I had chores and everything. I knew how to vacuum and wash dishes and dust and all that. My mom was pretty fastidious about keeping our house spotless too.”
“I don’t know why you ever would have wanted to do that.”
“Because it helped you.” Their gazes locked as he looked up and she looked down and he could tell that for her it was the most natural thing in the world.
I took so much for granted. Everything she did. Everything she was. Everything she is.
“You… you shouldn’t have had to do any of that for me. You shouldn’t have had to see me like… like I was.”
“If you were a mess or if you were perfect, I didn’t care. I was amazed by you. At your talent. At your rawness. At the way you f
elt things, even if most people wouldn’t say it was healthy.”
“It wasn’t healthy. It still isn’t.”
“I know, but I’m not afraid of it. I’ve tried to help you until you were ready to help yourself.”
“You saved me, Leena. After Hannah died. I was so lost. I’d never felt anything like that- that level of despair before. I just wanted to lay there and die.”
Her hand stilled on his head and her eyes welled with tears. “I know,” she whispered thickly. “I know that. I couldn’t let you. I knew you would never love me, so I gave you what I could.”
“It was what you did that brought me out of it. You have no idea what it was like to wake up and find it next to me, perfect, the ending there like I’d written it myself. It was just such a shock to see the writing there, different than my own, the notes, so much smaller, neater. I had no idea what happened. It was like she had come as an angel and given it to me to tell me that I was going to be okay.”
“You must have been disappointed to find out that I had done it.”
“No. I was amazed. I know you don’t think so and I know I never told you or showed you, but you came out of nowhere. Here was this girl who was just Hannah’s friend, the strange girl who cleaned my house for something to do, a twenty year old girl, writes me a piece of music that was so advanced, so well beyond her years, equal or better to what I had written. That alone was enough to shake me out of my stupor. You cleared the fog. It still hurt. God, it still hurts when I think of her, but you gave me a reason to keep going.”
“That’s… Dallas, you have no idea what that means.” Tears trickled down Leena’s cheeks. They wrung him out inside, but her eyes weren’t sad, they burned into his, filled with amazement and joy and so much love.
“Your own gift, I never even considered that you played. I didn’t know until you sat down at the piano with me, in front of everyone. I don’t know why I never considered it.”