Sitting next to Dawn, he felt stirrings of lust, but the place she touched him was deeper than his baser needs. She touched him where his music resided. Sara had never touched that part of him. When they'd been together, he'd almost given up music. Sole Regret’s first album hadn’t been the success they’d hoped. With Sara in college and Kellen holding down odd jobs to pay the bills, they’d been hopelessly broke. Once Sara’s medical bills started to pile up, it seemed the only thing to do was leave the band and find a decent job. He’d wanted to provide for her. Only Owen’s insistence that Kellen stay had kept him from giving up the band entirely. Owen had believed in Sole Regret when Kellen had completely lost hope on their dream. Owen ever the optimist. Owen who always put other’s needs before his own. Owen onboard for anything at any time. Owen...
God, what was he going to do about Owen? Kellen had made a complete mess of their friendship and just when he thought he finally had their relationship back on its proper track, he did something completely stupid. Like tie Owen to a pommel and show a woman how to give him a proper hand job by demonstration. What in the f**k had he been thinking last night?
Dawn abruptly stopped playing. "You're not listening," she said. "Are you bored?"
"No. I just have a lot on my mind," he said. "Don't stop. This song is like a break in the clouds during a storm."
"The eye of your hurricane."
He chuckled. His life was definitely in a whirlwind. "Exactly."
"If you want to talk about her, I'll listen," she said, playing softly again.
"Do you want me to talk about her?"
Dawn shook her head. "Not particularly. I'm sure if you loved her, she was wonderful."
"Sometimes I hate her for what she's done to me." Kellen tensed. Had he really just admitted that aloud? He’d never even admitted that to himself. I didn’t mean it, Sara. I could never hate you.
"I can understand that," Dawn said.
He somehow doubted it.
“Have you ever been in love?” he asked.
Dawn hesitated, and then she nodded. “But he didn’t love me in return. He thought I was a silly little girl and in retrospect, I was. I was sixteen and he was in his thirties. He’d been my piano teacher for years before my hormones kicked into high gear and I made a complete idiot of myself by throwing myself at him.”
“I’m sure if you hadn’t been jailbait, he would have caught you. What was his name?”
“Pierre,” she said, releasing a dreamy sigh.
“Pierre?” Kellen chuckled. “You’re kidding, right?”
“He’s French,” she said stiffly.
“Vous êtes plus belle que les étoiles, mon amour,” he whispered close to her ear.
She swayed against him, and he wrapped an arm around her back to keep her from tumbling from the piano bench.
“You speak French?” she said.
“Just that one sentence,” he said. He didn’t even remember exactly what it meant. Something about the stars being beautiful.
“So if I said, je suis très excitée par vous, you wouldn’t know what I meant?”
“Sounds kinky,” he teased.
“It could be.”
She tilted her head to look up at him. There were mere inches between their lips. Would she taste as decadent as she looked? The green flecks in her eyes caught Kellen’s attention. So exotic. His heart thudded faster and faster as he leaned closer. He hadn’t kissed a woman since Sara. Hadn’t wanted to. He sure the f**k wanted to now.
Dawn pressed a fingertip against his lips. “Hold that thought,” she said and shifted away to pound on her keyboard with renewed vigor.
Kellen stifled a groan. He felt torn between his yearning to devour this woman’s sensual mouth and his desire to be a part of the soaring composition she was creating right beside him. Dawn played with her eyes closed, her fingers moving swiftly over the keys. The loose bodice of her dress fell open as she rocked forward to press the foot pedals, and Kellen caught a glimpse of the soft swell of one breast and an expanse of pale freckles decorating the smooth alabaster skin of her chest. Would he find freckles elsewhere? In places hidden from his view? On her belly? Her thighs? His c**k twitched as he thought about kissing every freckle he discovered until she spread her legs for him. Would she allow him to sample her fluids with his tongue? Permit him to breathe the musk of her arousal while he treated her pu**y to the same deep, plundering kisses he craved from her mouth? He wanted to hear his name gasped, moaned, screamed as she came over and over again at the insistence of his tongue, his lips, his teeth.
When he noticed the pair of thin boxer shorts she’d loaned him were tented with his obvious arousal, he was glad she had her eyes closed. He shifted so that his belly was against the piano and his erection was hidden from view. He tried not to imagine f**king Dawn on the lid of her grand piano, with her dress bunched up around her waist and her bare br**sts spilling from her bodice. Tried but failed. He could almost feel her heels digging into his ass, her heat gripping him. He wiped at sweat that formed at the base of his throat.
This was what he got for denying his needs for so long. And it didn’t help that the song she was composing held the cadence of the sea—the repetition of surge and withdrawal, peak and valley—that was suddenly a lot more sexual to him than it should have been.
The storm raged outside, producing a clap of thunder so loud the windows rattled. Dawn jumped and pressed a hand to the center of her chest. “Oh,” she said, “that startled me. Sometimes I get lost in my music and forget there’s a world beyond my own sound.”
“I get the same way on stage sometimes,” he said.
She gnawed on her lips while she considered him closely. “You look a bit tense,” she said. “Is the song not working for you? You can be honest.”
The song was working for him in ways he was sure she hadn’t intended. He couldn’t very well tell her that it turned him on. Of course in his current state of sexual frustration, just about everything turned him on. He’d even gotten turned on while tying Owen last night.
He’d bound Owen so a woman could have her way with him, but seeing him like that… Kellen hadn’t been able to keep his hands off him and had ultimately fled the room with a stiff cock. How f**ked up was that?
Habitual mast***ation helped ease Kellen’s frustration, but it just wasn’t the same as touching another, as being touched by someone he loved and trusted. He’d touched Owen—and had once allowed Owen to touch him—because in whatever alternate universe his morals were now living, that was not cheating on Sara. Even though he’d convinced himself of that, how in the hell did he explain any of that shit to Owen? Owen who was down for anything as long as it felt good. Owen who loved everyone unconditionally. Kellen had taken advantage of Owen’s nature, and he felt terrible about it. Not terrible enough to have an honest conversation with him. Too awkward. What could he possibly say to make things right?