Total pages in book: 767
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
His eyes never leave mine as he wraps a hand around my throat. He squeezes, and I whimper against the blissful pressure.
I love the way he holds me. “Harder.”
His fingers tighten, and he drives his hips faster, ruthless in his urgency.
We strain toward each other, hands clutching, eyes locked as we soar, lost in our private world of notes and dreams.
Ivory
Three years later.
People from all over the world come to the French Quarter for food, culture, and music. Bourbon Street is an endless party, day and night. Our dueling piano bar is smack at the center of it, booming with the overflow of enthusiastic tourists. Most nights, the line out the door snakes around two blocks.
The sound of laughter, clinking glasses, and scuffing shoes charges the atmosphere with excitement. We’re so crammed in tonight the combined body heat stifles the air, made hotter by the bright lights above me.
I shudder with happy nerves and take a long draw from my beer, returning it to the shelf on my piano.
Stogie sits behind the bar, as old as the ninety-year rafters, smiling a youthful smile. Laura and Frank Marceaux sip their drinks in the seating area, surrounded by their friends.
Sharing the bench beside me, Emeric faces the other way, the shift of his hips creating a pleasurable glide against mine.
Our pianos sit in opposite directions and slightly off-center to allow elbow room as we play side by side.
He leans back against the keyboard of my piano, his eyes sweeping over my fitted ivory dress. “You look good enough to eat tonight, Mrs. Marceaux.”
I take in his jeans, white t-shirt, and gray fedora, and damn near purr with appreciation. “Hope you’re hungry, Mr. Marceaux.”
“Endlessly.” He launches at me, gripping my hair and giving me a kiss so scandalous the crowd explodes in whistles and catcalls.
When he breaks the kiss, my body swims in his lingering heat.
I focus on his bright blue eyes. “What are we dueling first?”
Grinning, he poises his fingers on his keyboard and nudges his shoulder against mine. “Guns N’ Roses.”
I tilt my smile upward and shiver beneath the lights. “And Kodaline.”
Then the music begins…
Overture
By
SKYE WARREN
Chapter One
Beethoven would count out exactly sixty coffee beans each time he had a cup
SAMANTHA
The whir of the espresso machine lures me downstairs.
I’m not naturally an early riser, especially on a Saturday, but Liam always waits for me. The food could get cold, but he’d still be there, with his newspaper and his endless patience and his deep green eyes.
He gives me a small nod in greeting.
Only the sound of foaming milk breaks the morning quiet. There’s avocado toast with walnut oil and fresh lemon juice at my place. On the other side of the table, scrambled egg whites and steamed broccoli. A ritual we’ve shared for the past six years…
And it’s going to end in a matter of weeks when I graduate high school.
When I turn eighteen. When I leave for the music tour that will take me around the country and across the globe… away from the man I’ve come to need more than I should.
“The interviewer from Classical Notes should be here at noon,” he says, handing me a steaming mug with Earl Grey and lavender and a liberal splash of cream. He would never use anything as sweet and unnecessary as cream in his own drinks, but thankfully he’s never controlled what I eat. He only controls everything else.
The reporter is doing a profile on me for the magazine. The famous child prodigy. Ugh. That’s the last thing a seventeen-year-old girl wants to be called—a child.
I’m almost an adult now, but the label follows me around.
I take a fortifying sip of the hot liquid, closing my eyes against the burn. When I open them again, Liam looks at me with a strange expression. That’s when I realize I let out a moan of pleasure. “Sounds good,” I say a little too brightly, trying to cover my embarrassment.
He clears his throat and takes a seat at the head of the table. “Right. Well. I doubt the interview will take very long. I’ll let him know you need to practice.”
A strange thrill moves through me. Defiance? Not exactly, but I feel energized all the same. He doesn’t have to protect me anymore. And soon he won’t have the right. The tour is going to change everything for me—and between us. I look forward to it as much as I dread it. “I do need to practice, but you don’t have to rush the interview.”
“Remember,” he says as if I hadn’t spoken. “You don’t have to answer anything you don’t like. If a question gets too personal, I’ll step in.”
My cheeks heat. Of course I know why he’s being so protective. There were some disastrous interviews when I was six, seven, eight years old. Daddy didn’t care to be in the room with me. Some of the questions would be inappropriate or downright aggressive. The classical music world is basically a viper’s nest, and child prodigies are regarded with a mixture of awe and distrust.