Highly Strung (18 page)

She abandoned her thought processes and gave herself up to pure sensation. Soon all the barriers between them were gone and they lay, skin against skin, heart beating against heart, transferring warmth between them until it was no longer clear whose warmth and scent belonged to whom. An endless vortex of heat and wetness, need and tension, span Lydia around. She knew that she moved, she knew that she reached and touched. It was all she needed to know. She and Milan, joined, were the beginning and end of the universe.

After the kissing and feeling, the exploring and teasing, they plunged into the serious business of coupling. Lydia spread her thighs to welcome her lover, her one beloved, to hold him inside her and keep him for as long as she could. Filled with his cock, she was whole.

“I love you,” she whispered, over and over again.

“
Miluji tĕ
,” he said.

Her orgasm ripped her apart and remade her, and his, when it came shortly afterwards, completed the ceremony, which she thought of as a bonding ritual.

Now they were one. Now their life could begin.

She lay in a fog of satisfaction and unspeakable emotion for a long while, waiting for her mind to come back to her. Milan lay on top of her, so heavy and limp that she almost thought he might have lost consciousness. But eventually he stirred into life and rolled to the side, allowing her to breathe freely again.

“Are you okay?” he asked eventually, sounding worried.

“Of course.” She propped herself up on her elbows, squinting down at him. He looked scared. “Are you?”

“I really felt that,” he said. “I haven’t felt it like that…not for years.”

“Felt it like what?”

“I don’t know. I felt free, I guess. I wasn’t performing. I was just…letting my body… I don’t know. This all sounds stupid.”

“No, no, it doesn’t. It’s pretty amazing. I almost felt like I was having, like…” Lydia laughed self-consciously. “A spiritual experience.”

“Yes.” Milan nodded. “It was more than sex. An extra dimension.”

“What was so different?”

“I think… I was thinking about you. About how you were experiencing everything. It was all for you.”

“That’s it,” said Lydia. “I would call it love.”

“Would you?”

“Yes.”

He held her until the room grew dark.

“One thing about love,” he said at last.

“What?”

“It makes you hungry. I’m going to call room service.”

She giggled and snuggled closer into the crook of his elbow.

Chapter Twelve

Kisses woke Lydia—kisses leading to caresses, gentle at first then firmer until her breath was heavy and she radiated heat.

She lay beneath Milan, her arms around his neck, watching his chest rise and fall as he eased back and forth inside her. Her eyes were still gluey from sleep, her limbs lazy. The perfect conditions for slow, easy morning sex.

The hammering on the door, however, somewhat ruined the mood.

Milan uttered a Czech oath and tried to ignore it, speeding up his stroke.

“Milan,” whispered Lydia urgently.

“They can go away,” he growled.

But the hammering continued, followed by the rattling of a doorknob.

Milan held himself still, poised halfway through a push-up, waiting for the noise to cease or for the noisemaker to reveal his or her identity.

“Milan!” The voice was male, the accent Russian.

“Fuck off, Evgeny,” shouted Milan. “I’m sleeping.”

“No, you aren’t. Let me in, or I’ll wake everyone in this damn hotel.”

Milan sighed and crumpled on to Lydia’s spread-eagled body.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, pulling out of her and throwing on a bathrobe before striding to the door, erection poking against the satin.

Lydia sat up and let her shoulders slump. Reality time. Perhaps it really had all been too good to be true.

Within seconds, Evgeny had cannoned into the room, rumpled and scowling, dark hair mussed across his brow.

“I hope you slept well,” said Milan mildly. “Slept off all that vodka.”

“I’ve been awake all night,” he snarled. “Waiting for you. But I see that you’ve been busy with your little woman. What’s going on, Milan? When in Prague, do as the straight guys do? Is that it?”

“Don’t be stupid, Evgeny. Prague is one of the most tolerant cities in Eastern Europe. If I want to take a man out here, I can. I just prefer my lovers to be conscious.”

“I prefer mine to treat me like a human being, not a toy.”

“Touché. I’m sorry you feel that way. Now can you go back to your room, please?”

“We need to talk.”

Milan sighed.

“You’re right. We do need to talk. Okay, we have rehearsals from ten, breaking at one for lunch. Let’s have lunch together. We can talk then. Yes?”

“Okay,” said Evgeny sulkily.

“So we can get up and showered in peace now, yes?”

Evgeny said nothing, but flounced out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

Milan sat back down on the bed, reaching out a hand for Lydia before lying down beside her, seemingly intent on resuming their early morning activities. But she batted away the hand that delved down between her thighs and sat up, tossing hair out of her eyes.

“You’re going to break his heart,” she said.

Milan lay flat on his back, exhaling heavily at the ceiling.

“Am I?”

“Unless…what? Are you going to invite him to stay here too?”

“Do you think I should?”

Lydia held her tongue. She had never felt close to Evgeny. If she was honest, she had always seen him as a threat—not because he was Milan’s other lover, but because he had never got over his hostility and jealousy towards her. A permanent ménage dynamic between them didn’t seem viable.

“You don’t,” Milan deduced. “It’s okay. I agree with you. Evgeny is too angry and too difficult. He exhausts me. He needs an exclusive lover, and I can’t be that person.”

“That’s hard on him,” said Lydia quietly.

“In the short term, yes. In the long term, he will come to see that it’s for the best.”

“And you’re going to break it to him at lunchtime? He won’t be in a very good frame of mind for the concert.”

Milan frowned.

“That’s true. Maybe my timing could be better. You think I should wait until tonight, after the concert?”

“It might make more sense.”

“But my mother is coming. I don’t want her arriving backstage to some almighty drama.”

“Would she understand, about your having a male lover?”

“I don’t know. I think she’d be okay. I like to think she would. But I don’t know.”

“Hmm, difficult. Well, you’ve told him lunchtime now. I guess you’ll have to talk about something.”

“We’ll talk about you.” Milan kissed her extravagantly.

“Please don’t. You’ll drive him even wilder.” Lydia shivered, sensing impending doom, even though everything in her garden should be rosier than ever. She reminded herself that the future was bright. It was true that the Evgeny situation was unsustainable. She felt for him, but it couldn’t carry on.

Nonetheless, she felt too unsettled to eat much breakfast, and barely heard Vanessa’s chatter about her night out in Prague with the other percussionists.

Once inside the majestic concert hall on the banks of the river, she tried to focus hard on the music and nothing more, but every chord made her think of making her life here and being an adoptive Bohemian. Evgeny’s perma-glower across the floor from the cello section didn’t help either. The surging lyricism of the
Vltava
movement from
Má Vlast
made her so emotional, and so happy, that tears welled in her eyes. Could she really mean that much to Milan? Or would her precious dream be snatched away?

When they took a mid-morning break for coffee and pastries, Evgeny made a beeline for Lydia, dragging her away from Mary-Ann by the elbow.

“It’s not just me and Milan who need to talk,” he muttered, while Lydia made apologetic grimaces to a nonplussed Mary-Ann. “We should talk too.”

“Go on then. Talk,” said Lydia fearfully.

Milan was surrounded by his usual mob of string players, too far away to summon for help. She allowed Evgeny to lead her to the side of the stage and sit with her in the wings.

“I know your game,” he said. “You want him for yourself. That’s always been your game.”

“It isn’t a game to me,” said Lydia. “And I’d never stop Milan from seeing anyone. As if I could! He answers to nobody but himself, and you know that.”

“He’s pushing me away, and I know you’re behind it. Why do you hate me? What have I done to you?”

“Nothing! I don’t hate you, not at all.”

“You don’t like me either.”

Lydia shrugged. That much was true.

“The truth is, I get in your way. You want to catch Milan and wall him up in some suburban marriage, just like they all do.” He laughed bitterly. “Milan and monogamy will never mix, my dear. Better get used to the idea.”

“I am used to it,” insisted Lydia. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

Evgeny’s eyes narrowed.

“I want you to accept that Milan can’t give you what you want. Accept it and move on. Find yourself some straight, upstanding back-row violinist who can give you the dull, boring life you want.”

Lydia paused, considering this.

Did she know what she was signing up for? She would be living in a foreign city with a man she loved, but who wasn’t cut out for the exclusive relationship deal. What if he left her alone, night after night, while he partied in the gay bars of Vinohrady? What if he met a girl he liked better than her, a girl who spoke Czech and who understood him better? The enormity of the risk she was taking struck her hard in the chest, winding her. He wasn’t, after all, the most reliable man in the world.

It seemed that Evgeny had seen the hesitation he had wrought in her.

“You know it can’t work between you two, Lydia. You know he’s not cut out for happy ever afters.”

A shadow fell across them and they looked up at the stage, where Milan loomed, violin in hand.

“Lydia, I need to talk to all the violinists together. That section at the start of
Vltava
isn’t working out. Excuse her, Evgeny.”

“Of course.”

With relief, Lydia left Evgeny alone and followed Milan back to the violinists.

“What did he want?” he muttered.

“To split us up, of course.”

“Well, he isn’t going to do that, is he?”

Lydia smiled weakly at Milan’s enquiring expression.

“Never.”

“Good. Okay!”

He clapped his hands and the fiddlers thronged about him. Lydia tried to forget the conversation with Evgeny, but her unease wouldn’t shift, and it hung about her like a miasma until lunchtime came.

She watched Milan and Evgeny disappear for their date with a horrible twist of her stomach. However their talk went, it wasn’t likely to end well. Perhaps Evgeny would even be able to persuade Milan to change his mind, to go back to London, to give her up.

“You look a bit green, my love. Are you feeling all right?”

Lydia came to, shaking her head at a solicitous Mary-Ann.

“Sorry, I was miles away. Yes, yes, I’m fine. Just…hungry, I expect.”

“Come and have some lunch with me then. There’s a lovely place up near Old Town Square—Milan recommended it, and he should know.”

Lydia caught her breath. If Milan had recommended the place, then it was probably where he was taking Evgeny. She could keep an eye on them, make sure things didn’t get out of hand. And her presence might act as a reminder to Milan of how the conversation was supposed to go.

She smiled at Mary-Ann. “Sounds lovely. So you and Milan are getting on okay these days, then?”

Mary-Ann began walking purposefully towards the door.

“Oddly, yes. He seems to have found a good mood from somewhere. And there’s been none of that nonsense with him trying to get the strings to play out of tune or come in at the wrong moment since Budapest.”

“No, I’ve noticed that too.”

“It’s strange, because I thought this rehearsal was going to be the most serious test yet. Now we’re in Prague, playing music by Czech composers in his native city, I thought he would go bananas and bring out the big guns. But…nada. I don’t understand it, but I’m not going to question it. Long may it continue.”

Outside, the narrow streets of the Old Town were busy as tourists looked for likely spots to find their lunch. As they crossed Old Town Square, Lydia caught sight of Milan and Evgeny, standing under the awning of a restaurant, reading a menu together.

Mary-Ann chuckled. “Speak of the devil. And he’s obviously made it up with Evgeny—aww, how sweet. I must admit, they make a stunning couple.”

Lydia’s insides twisted again, this time with a pang of ugly jealousy.

Mary-Ann, oblivious, continued her speculations. “Perhaps that’s what’s behind the good mood. He’s in love. Oh, perhaps they’ll invite us to make up a foursome.”

“I hope not,” said Lydia unthinkingly.

“Really?” Mary-Ann stopped and gave her a quizzical look. “I thought you liked him.”

“Oh, yes, I do, but him and Evgeny—it’s all about the drama. I can’t be bothered.”

Mary-Ann chuckled. “I can imagine.”

They had arrived at the restaurant. Milan and Evgeny were tucked away in a corner and didn’t notice them. Lydia opted for a table on the opposite side of the room, where they wouldn’t be seen.

“Anyway,” said Mary-Ann briskly, “enough about Milan. I don’t want to sit with him either. I want to sit with you. What about you? Are you happy with the orchestra? How’s the tour been for you?”

“Wonderful,” said Lydia, meaning it. “It’s everything I’ve dreamed of since I was a child. Hard work, but what a payback when you hear the audience cheering and jumping to their feet at the end! There’s nothing like it.”

“No, there isn’t, is there? And it’s addictive too—once you’ve experienced it, you can’t go back. So you think you’ll stick with us?”

Lydia’s face fell. She couldn’t tell Mary-Ann the truth.

“Oh, I should think so,” she said, studying the menu hard.

“I hope you do,” said Mary-Ann urgently, lowering her voice. “I don’t think I’d still be here if it wasn’t for you, Lydia.”