Dark Notes(121)

“Oh my God, Emeric. Pinch me.”

He does, right on the nipple, hard enough to make me yelp.

Leading me to the ornate wrap-around bar, he leans against the edge. “When I bought it a few months ago, I tried to find a loophole, but because of this”—he points at the shelves of liquor on the wall—“your name won’t be on the business license until you’re twenty-one.” He lifts my hand and presses a kiss to my fingers. “By then you’ll be Mrs. Ivory Marceaux.”

My heart sings a swooning melody. “You sure about that?”

“You bet your sweet ass.” He slams his palm against my butt with an echoing whack. “Go explore.”

There’s so much to take in I’m trembling against the significance of it. A piano bar. Just like my dad.

Shivery, joyous tears fall down my cheeks as I make a circuit around high-top tables, soft red velvet chairs, and black leather settees. Candlelight chandeliers illuminate the space in a warm glow. And the pianos…

I pause beside one of the Steinways, and my finger instantly finds a familiar scratch on the lid. My watery gaze latches onto Emeric across the room.

Braced against the bar, he slides a stick of gum in his mouth and crosses his ankles. “I bought it the day I met Stogie. It’s yours.”

I glance back at the piano and swallow around the happiness swelling in my throat. “You’re going to make me ugly cry.”

“I’ll buy you a piano every day for the rest of your life just to see your beautiful tears.” He prowls toward me, hands clasped behind his back.

That look in his eyes, the devotion rimmed in desire, is my centering pitch, my musical note, the one that induces the perfect wave of vibrations inside me, balancing me.

He moves up behind me, slips an arm around my waist, and holds me against him, his cock hardening against my ass. “Stogie sold his shop.”

I glance back at him, startled.

He brushes his mouth against my ear. “Pain in the ass won’t retire, but we worked something out. He’s helping me with the inventory and hiring, and I set him up in one of those Creole townhouses a block away.”

Overcome with emotions, I try to unscramble my brain, parsing through everything he’s done and the future he’s spread out before me. “What about your teaching? How does this bar fulfill that?”

“I still have you. When you outgrow me—”

“I’ll never outgrow you.”

“—there’s a full second floor with a separate entrance in back. I’ll open a School of Old-guy Rock to the public and teach metal on the piano.”

Wow. He’s thought of everything, which leaves me with only one thing to say.

Thank you. I could vocalize it a million times over, but I don’t have to. He sees the salty rivers coursing down my cheeks. He feels the trembling of my body against his. He hears the rushing whistle in my breaths.

Words aren’t needed because we have something better. Our own notes. It’s just us and our song, the tune pulsing between us, nourishing, fusing, and making us one.

He turns me in his arms and clutches me snugly against him. I lock my hands behind his back, rest my cheek on the warm wall of his chest, and close my eyes as he sways us to the beat of our hearts. Someday soon, we’ll do this, right here, as the crowd applauds and cheers and pleads for an encore.

I sigh. Reality is better than any dream I imagined.

He hooks a finger beneath my chin, lifts my face, and puts his mouth on mine. He tastes like cinnamon and desire, his firm lips a devouring comfort of familiarity.

He passes me his gum with a roll of his tongue. The next sweeping stroke reclaims it. The bite of his teeth on my lip holds us together.

His hands slide beneath the dress and grip the backs of my thighs, lifting me to the edge of the piano so he can deepen the kiss. So he can tease his fingers between my legs. So he can rip—

There go my panties, tossed in a shred of silk behind him.

I grasp at his sexy hair as his fingers sink inside me, my tissues rioting beneath the sensual affection of his touch. His other hand yanks down the bodice of my dress. Then his lips are there, wrapped around my nipple, sucking it deep into his hot mouth.

My head falls back, my spine bowing against the brace of his arm at my back as moans spill from my mouth. Jesus, he knows how to work those fingers. On the piano. In my *. Around my heart.

I love this man. I love him, and when he’s ninety and I’m eighty, I’ll still love him. I grin at the image of his wrinkly body.

His eyes lift to mine, and his mouth releases my nipple. “What’s so funny?”

I trace the wet curve of his lip with a finger. “When you’re too old to get it up, I’ll still love you.”

He curls his fingers inside me and puts his face in mine, baring his teeth in a wicked smile. “Viagra, sweetheart.”

I shake my head. He has a solution for everything.

He removes his fingers from inside me and tackles the button on his jeans. “I’ve spent every day here for the last three weeks.” He releases his zipper and yanks the skirt of my dress out of the way. “Every day imagining f*cking you here, just like this.”

“You could’ve told me.” I balance on the ledge of the piano, my bare legs trembling around his hips. “I would’ve come.”

“Oh, Ivory.” He notches the broad head of his cock against my *. “You’re going to come.”