Overture (North Security, #1)(12)

“Condoms are mandatory,” she says obediently.

That’s good, but it’s not enough. How could it possibly be enough? How could it convey to her how many assholes were out there, waiting for the chance to take advantage of her?

Is this how fathers feel when they send their daughters into the world?

I’m not her father. Not even close. I can’t imagine Ambassador Brooks having this conversation with his daughter, even if he had lived to have the chance. He wasn’t exactly a concerned father. His daughter had been a little secretary in his house, given orders and expected to follow them.

Are you treating her any better, North?

“Samantha.”

She blinks up at me, so damn trusting. I want her to look at me that way with my cock in her mouth, with her eyes watering. “Yes, sir?”

“Call me Liam.”

A little cough that’s the closest she comes to telling me no. “Is there anything else?”

Damned if this little violin prodigy doesn’t know how to dismiss a hardened, experienced soldier. She sits there so fucking prim and so heartbreakingly pretty I don’t know how to handle it. Maybe she is ready to go out into the world, to experience sex, to discover how much better a climax can be when given by someone else’s hand, but I’m not ready for it. Not even close.





CHAPTER EIGHT





The Japanese word “karaoke” comes from a phrase meaning “empty orchestra.”


SAMANTHA

Four years old. Saint Petersburg. The teacher suggested that I be placed in the music program so that it would be easier for me to acclimate to the school. Daddy signed the paper because it wouldn’t cost anything. The school provided an ancient basswood violin with a hard plastic case. A wrinkled instruction booklet showed how to place your fingers and introductory sheet music. I stayed up night after night working my fingers until they were raw.

That began my love affair with the violin.

Even when I’m not playing, the music lives inside me.

I’m still warm between my legs, my body ready for something that’s never happened except in my imagination. I’ve made love with music a thousand times, but never with a man. Especially not the man who invades my thoughts every time I touch myself. He’s invading my thoughts right now, those green eyes and stern mouth a hazy picture in my mind. Muscles bunching in his jaw as he thinks about what to say next.

Things like, It isn’t right that I let my own… discomfort get in the way of your sex education. That’s what he thinks of when it comes to me and sex—discomfort.

I run up the stairs, still feeling the strings against my finger pads, the powder in the air. The hard gaze of Liam North. The sensations should be different, the structure of a violin wholly apart from the tangle of feelings I have around the man. They blur together anyway, a physical symphony I play and play.

When I get to my room, Laney is there. She’s been my best friend ever since I moved here. She holds a black long-sleeve sweater in one hand and a black floor-length skirt in the other. “Oh my God,” she says on a moan. “You could work in a funeral home.”

“Concert dress,” I say, rueful. There are black skirts in velvet and cotton and silk. Mandatory for playing in an orchestra, and even once I started playing solo, I still follow the rules.

“What about if you have to go to a party?”

“After a concert?”

“Is music all you think about? Don’t answer that.”

Actually my mind is flush with other thoughts, far more illicit, after the most uncomfortable sex talk in the history of sex talks. “It doesn’t matter what I wear. We’re not going to meet guys.”

“Aha!” She holds up a blouse with silk ruffles and no sleeves. I usually pair it with a black camisole underneath and a thin suit jacket over the top, the fabric stretchy enough so I can raise my arms and play violin. “This will be sexy in a prim librarian kind of way.”

“Why am I trying to look sexy?”

“Because we’re going to sneak out and go to a club tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“This is for Cody. You can’t say no.”

A few weeks ago Cody confided that the new coach at Kingston High made him nervous. That’s how he said it—made him nervous. We thought maybe he was one of those macho bastards who would hit someone if they didn’t run laps fast enough. It took some coaxing on Laney’s part to get Cody to reveal what he really meant.

That he got a little too close to the boys he was supposed to be coaching.

“How is going to a club going to help Cody?”

“Ohhh, and these will be great underneath.”

I stare at the tiny scrap of black fabric she’s wearing. Spandex. “Those are booty shorts. They go under my skirt so I don’t accidentally flash five hundred people after Brahms’s ‘Sonata No. 3.’”

“We can pair them with some stockings I saw in your drawer. That flash of thigh is going to be the sexiest thing these boys have ever seen.”

“They’re basically underwear. Why do we have to go to a club to help Cody? Why can’t we help in a library? Somewhere that we can wear regular clothes and go during the day?”

“Because this guy has incriminating evidence on Coach Price.”