SHE AWOKE SOME TIME later to a quiet, darkened bedroom, feeling as if she’d just finished a triathlon and come in first. For every ache, there was a stunningly thorough sense of satisfaction to compensate. The bed beside her was empty and she sat up, registering a slice of light coming from the mostly closed sitting-room door. Soft strains of music reached her.
Nick? At the piano? His statement that he was a different man with different music suddenly took on a larger meaning. He expressed himself through music. If he felt anything like she did just now, making music was the very place he’d go.
Spotting a hotel robe flung across a nearby chair, she snagged it and headed for the bathroom. The warm spray of the shower felt wonderful, and by the time she donned the fluffy robe again, she felt ready to face him.
He was indeed at the piano when she padded barefoot into the parlor. Halfway across the sitting room, she was stopped in her tracks by a dreamy piano concerto. Liszt? Mozart? Schumann? One of those classical guys. Nick was playing with his eyes closed, totally absorbed, looking as if every note resounded in his soul.
As she listened, he began to vary the tempo and emphasis of certain phrases, giving them a more contemporary sound. The transition to another style was seamless, natural, almost effortless. Drawn to this glimpse of him in the grip of a very different passion, she moved silently to the piano and watched as he transitioned back to the classical mode.
Her concept of him changed yet again. He was a true musician. This wasn’t garage band stuff; this took training and discipline as much as desire. And to be able to shift so easily, so creatively between styles…
He was a man of unexpected depths. Just seeing him like this, soul-bared, expressing himself honestly, joyfully in music, was enough to topple the rest of her defenses. In that moment, she felt a connection to him unlike any she’d felt to a man before. It seemed like her entire life had been preparing her for this moment. Nothing had ever seemed so right.
NICK OPENED HIS EYES and was startled by the sight of Samantha leaning on the piano, her eyes luminous with wonder. He had pulled on jeans before heading to the piano, but at that moment he felt more than naked; he felt exposed in a way that made every nerve in his body go strangely quiet. Claiming that inner calm, he focused on her flushed cheeks and tousled hair. In her eyes he saw warmth, acceptance, recognition. She liked what she saw and heard. He relaxed in a way he’d never experienced with a woman.
“You didn’t learn that from old Eric Clapton albums,” she said.
“Juilliard.” He ran a complex finger exercise up and down the keyboard to demonstrate. “For a while. Until I fell in with bad company.”
“Rockers?” She leaned her elbows on the piano top.
“Guitars.” He chuckled. “My piano teacher was horrified.”
“How did we not hear that you were a ‘serious’ musician?”
“When you’re a Top Forty rocker, you don’t exactly want that kind of stuff getting around. It ruins the fast-and-loose image.”
“So you’re a classically trained musician who pitched the ‘purity of art’ for commercial success,” she said.
“Guilty as charged.” He launched into a jazz improvisation. “It was all fun and fame games at first. Then I got bored and felt trapped and tried to do something more original.” He felt a reflex tightening in his gut at the recall of old battles, but forced it to relax again.
“But it didn’t work,” she concluded for him.
Perceptive woman.
“I got taken to school about the reality of the music business.” He paused in the middle of a promising melody line. “And I found out I still had a hell of a lot to learn, about music, about myself.”
“So that’s why you haven’t recorded for a while?”
“It would be easy to say yes.” He took a deep breath, wondering if she would understand. “But the truth is, nobody wanted anything from me but the old pop-rock schlock. I doubt they even want that anymore.”
“Hey.” She scowled. “A lot of people loved that ‘schlock.’”
“Yeah. Pimple-faced adolescents, dance-club studs and hard-bangin’ groupies.” Sarcasm crept in. “Quite a stellar musical legacy—‘helping frat boys get laid since 1996.’ Now available in sound bites—” his voice went TV-announcer resonant “—coming to a valentine near you.”
“That’s a little harsh,” she said, caught between a smile and a scowl.
“Yeah? How would you feel, if your best days were chopped up to use as punchlines in valentines?” The question came out harsher than he had intended.
“My best work is the punchlines of valentines.” He tensed, his hands still on the keys until she smiled. “But I see your point. Put that way, it doesn’t exactly sound flattering.” She slid around the piano and looked at him with genuine warmth.
“But you need to know, Nick, that we chose your music, your signature lines and phrases, because people recognize them instantly and love to hear them.” She paused for a breath. “I love to hear them.”
The glow in her eyes registered “sincerity,” causing his heart to trip.
“You were a fan back in the day?” he said, conjuring an image of a nubile young Samantha Drexel in a schoolgirl uniform, gyrating to his sexed-up music. His whole body snapped taut.
“I slept beneath a poster of you on my dorm wall at Cornell,” she said. “Almost lost my virginity on the dance floor to ‘Make Me Yours.’”
“You and half the teenage girls in North America.” He shook his head. “It’s a wonder I wasn’t stoned by village elders after each concert.”
When he looked up, her expression was so unguarded, so earnest that he could actually see the young girl she had been. If only he had—no, if he’d met her then, she might have been just one more honey, one more anonymous night in a monotonous string of hotel rooms. He traced her cheek with his knuckles. Now she was more. But how much more?
“A lot of people fell in love to your music, you know. Including me.” She nodded ruefully. “Twice. With the same damned guy.”
“Same damned guy?” His gaze flew to her bare ring finger and he felt a slide of relief. “He’s not still around?”
“No. Thank heaven. It was a college romance that I thought deserved a second chance.” There was a hint of pain in her face. “Turned out I was wrong.”
“Thank heaven,” he echoed, making room for her and patting the bench beside him.
“Play me something,” she said, tucking her feet primly under the bench, then laying a hand on his upper thigh. “One of your new songs. I want to hear more of the evolved you. The real Nicholas Stack.”
“Okay. But I should warn you that your hand—” he glanced at the supple fingers splayed across his leg “—is very near my restart button.”
She leaned into his shoulder while purposefully tightening her grip on his thigh. “And your hands on those keys are near mine. Play.”
With a sound that was part growl, part chuckle, he began to play, demonstrating the differences between his old sound and what he was doing now. Jazz was more fluid and free-form, he told her, then proceeded to show her how his megahit “Baby Tonight” could have an entirely different impact when done in that style.
At the end of the song she looked up in amazement.
“That’s what you want to do now?” She sounded as if she’d been holding her breath. When he nodded, she ran her hand down his arm and caressed his fingers. “That’s amazing! Why aren’t they following you around recording and releasing every blessed note you play?”
He chuckled. “Good question.”
“More.” Her eyes shone. “Play some more.”
Savoring the excitement in her face, he warned that the next song was a work in progress, then began to unspool a provocative jazz number that had always made him think of a woman’s body swaying in invitation. She melted against him; he could feel her tensing and relaxing, responding viscerally at all the right places. She apparently experienced music with her whole body.
He understood that kind of connection. It was the way he immersed himself in his music and experienced it with every part of his being. He closed his eyes, willing the song to touch and move her, wanting to share with her what he felt when he created it.
“No lyrics?” she whispered dryly, her hand tightening on his thigh.
“Not yet.” He poured the passion rising in him through the instrument, caressing the keys the way he yearned to touch her lush body.
“It’s wonderful.” She laid a cheek against his shoulder. “It’s like you’ve captured a heartbeat. Mine. You could call it ‘Variations on Samantha Drexel’s Heartbeat.’ Play it again.”
When she rose to stand behind him, he canted his head while he played and was rewarded with nibbles up his neck to his ear. Shivers shot down his spine as she circled him with her arms and ran her hands over his shoulders and bare chest, exploring him.
The soft prickle of the terry robe against his back gave way to something sleeker, warmer and softer. Breasts? Was she—She was rubbing hers against him! His arousal went from zero to sixty as he both felt and glimpsed the robe falling to the floor. He would have stopped in the middle of the song, but she bent and ordered huskily in his ear, “Keep playing…if you want me to keep playing.”
Peeling open her robe, she dragged the tips of her naked breasts against his bare shoulders, soothing and stimulating her nipples at the same time. She swayed with the music, pressing softer and harder as the music rose and fell. As that sensual ache spread through the rest of her, she dropped the robe altogether and pressed her body against him, undulating against his broad back, tantalizing him.
His hands stilled on the keys. She raised her head enough to ask “Want me to stop?” before raking her teeth over his throbbing pulse.
Watching the way his body tensed and flexed in response to her provocative actions, she sank to the floor on her knees behind him, circling his waist with her arms and working the snap and zipper of his jeans. He was commando this time. His penis came free, filling her hands, and he rocked against her grip, thrusting into the pressure of her palms. He managed only a few more bars before pulling her up and across his lap.
“You are, without a doubt, the best audience I’ve ever had.” His voice was ragged with need as his gaze settled on her breasts. “Those are downright magnificent, sweetheart. I’m gonna see them in my dreams.”
She pushed to her knees on the bench and slid a leg across his lap, bringing her chest level with his eyes.
“Knock yourself out, Stackman.” She arched her shoulders to emphasize the offer. “They’re all yours.” He seemed frozen, so she cupped one breast and thrust it higher, offering it to him. With a groan, he fastened on it and sucked sharply, sending raw pleasure streaking to her sex again. She shuddered and began to slide her wet heat up and down his erection.
His head came up, lips glistening, eyes dark and luminous.
“Pocket—” he rasped, trembling as he searched for the opening.
She shifted her leg, ran her hand down the fabric until she found the condom. She pulled it out and pressed it into his palm.
“You do it,” she said against his lips, “I’m busy.”
Seconds later his hands were on her hips, guiding her down onto him. The angle was perfect, the contact was intense, and it didn’t take long for both of them to see stars. And skyrockets. And colliding planets. It was a whole damned NASA launch of sexual release.
Even more remarkable was the afterglow. He held her tightly, and as she laid her head on his shoulder, he stroked her hair. When she found the energy to caress his face, he pressed a kiss into her palm. That simple gesture seemed somehow the most intimate act of the whole night. It was tenderness distilled.
They showered together and dried each other with the hotel’s big, fluffy towels, reveling in that intimacy. When she reluctantly drew away to head for her clothes, he followed and dragged them out of her hands.
“So that’s how it is with you Ivy League business types. A red-hot quickie or three and it’s off to the next poor, innocent musician?” He pulled her against his big, warm body. “The least you can do is stay and cuddle with me for a while.”
She laughed but sensed an earnest desire beneath his teasing and let him walk her back to the bed. Climbing in with her, he pulled her against him and murmured that he could really get used to the feel of her in his arms.
Tears stung her eyes and she had to close them.
This was every woman’s fantasy…