BABY, BABY, BABY

LEVI

I sit at the piano, my fingers tinkling over the keys without any thought as to what I’m doing. I like the emptiness of this room, the acoustics, and the dissonance of two flats being played at once that sends a tingle through my balls and up my spine. I think of her in that black dress. No. Not a dress. A gown. Her wedding gown, and I bow my head and lean it against the sleek white finish of the piano. Heavy footsteps echo through the room behind me, and I have half a mind to tell Margaux to fuck off because I’m attempting to wallow in my misery and that’s a little hard to do when the maid is encroaching on your space, but I don’t bother. She probably wouldn’t understand me anyway.

But when I turn my head, it isn’t Margaux who sits on the chair across from me, and it wasn’t her footsteps on the hardwood but her cello as she set it down leaning the beast back between her knees. It’s Brie. I’ve got a beast she can slide between her thighs, but my little French Japanese princess isn’t having a bar of that.

She lets out an exasperated breath. “You want to make music?” Her accent’s so thick half the time I have no idea what she’s saying, but my dick’s still hard anyway.

“Yeah, I wanna make music, but I can’t. All I have is shit, an arse-load full of despair.” I give her a brittle smile as I play another chord. “And dissonance.”

Brielle studies me for a beat. She raises her bow. “Then use it, idiot.”

“Ah, Brie, I love it when you talk dirty.”

She gives me a wan smile and plucks the first few strains of a song I’m all too familiar with Nine Inch Nails’s “Hurt”. It isn’t at all like the original and for several bars, I get lost watching her play, her nimble fingers working quickly, and her bow gliding effortlessly across the taut strings. Her hair falls around her shoulders, shivering with each movement, a curtain of dark, glossy thread. She’s fucking gorgeous, and I’m hard as fuck. But I tell myself it’s because of the music, because how can my heart possibly be broken, smashed into a million pieces and still fall a little more for the Angry French Girl each time she plays?

I place my hands over the ivory and join her, hitting the notes in the bridge as furiously as her hands are plucking, and still there’s none of the menace and maliciousness of the original. This could be an entirely new piece of music, but I can feel all of the sadness and despair written within its melody.

I meet her eyes as we crest the bridge, and the tempo changes again, sliding back into the haunting melody of the verse and the outro. She holds my gaze as she plucks the last note and brings her bow to rest beside her cello.

For the first time since we met, she’s smiling—not that amused quirk of her lips, but an actual fucking smile, and goddam me if my chest doesn’t swell with pride because I got the devil to smile, and she just stole a piece of my heart that I didn’t even know still existed.

“Didn’t know you were a NIN fan.”

“I’m a music fan.” One dainty shoulder lifts in a shrug. “I find beauty in all melody.”

I cock a brow. “Even Bieber’s?”

She laughs and raises her bow, plucking several notes of the shit song that made him famous at like eight. I cover my ears, even though I could pretty much hear her play anything and still find enjoyment in it.

“Jesus, make it stop.”

She rolls her eyes.

“So, does that mean you find Taint’s music beautiful?”

“No.”

“What?” I frown. “Why? Because it’s mine?”

“I think you’re capable of more.”

I stare, incredulous. “More?”

“Your song writing is great, but your melodies are lacking.”

“Jesus. Don’t sugar coat it, sweetheart.”

“You asked.”

“And if I asked you to ride me?”

She raises her bow to the strings again and makes a distinctive womp wow sound. Words aren’t necessary.

My fingers glide across the ivory, playing the first few bars of “Your Sex is on Fire”. “You know anything else?”

“I know everything.”

“Why do I not doubt that?”

She shrugs again, her small shoulders lifting gracefully. “Because you’re not as stupid as you look?”

“I don’t know about that. I did invite an angry French girl to stay with me.”

She narrows her gaze. “I take it back, you are as stupid as you look.”

For the first time in days, I laugh, because she’s right. It wasn’t just her music that had me tracking down her agent. It was everything about her. What can I say? I like my women hot, smart, and mean as hell. That doesn’t just make me stupid, it makes me a fucking chump. “Yeah, I guess I am.”