Intermezzo

Delphine
Dryden

A disappointed ballerina, a brooding composer, a few days in
Paris that may change their lives forever…

Is it the sparkle of lamplight on a rain-drenched Parisian
street? The thrill of a clandestine clinch in a foreign hotel? Maybe it’s the
universal urge to go back and relive that one crucial moment, knowing now what
you didn’t know then.

Whatever it is, it’s ridiculously hot. Intense.
Lustful.
And this time, Lily and Aidan aren’t sure they’re willing to walk away from
each other when the night is over.

A
Romantica®
contemporary erotic romance
from Ellora’s Cave

The smell of pine needles always took Lily right back. It
called up a chain of other memories that were stored in her senses for instant
replay. The rasp of the horizontal log that her shoulders had braced against,
unprotected by her camisole. The slight tang of blood in her mouth, because
that first kiss had been a little over-the-top. Neither of them had learned
much finesse yet. Neither of them had known enough to mind. The sounds of the
forest on a sultry night, the tug of damp clothes against sweaty skin. A breeze
had started just as he’d entered her, chilling them, making it almost too cool
except where their bodies met in that most ancient method of sharing heat.

Lily could recall his profile, razor-sharp and classical in
silhouette, when he turned to stare into the forest at a sudden nearby noise.
His dark hair had flopped forward into his eyes when he turned back and paid
attention to Lily again. To the girl he had courted and treated like a princess
all week. The girl he was fucking up against the back wall of the rough-hewn proscenium,
on the stage where the young performers at the camp put on shows.

The college students, there as guest instructors and
performers, were supposed to be the grown-ups. They were supposed to be
responsible, help educate the young campers, set a good example. But Lily had
been flattered by his attentions all week, even though she was the star and
received attention as if it were her due back then. He hadn’t made his own mark
yet but he was so handsome, with an intangible something that caught the eye and
made people assume he was headed for great things. He could have had almost any
girl there. Lily could have resisted, but she simply didn’t want to. She was
still too young herself to care all that much about responsibility.

It wasn’t as though they were alone in their momentary
madness. After the watery roadhouse beer, the dizzy dancing to jukebox tunes,
the whole crew of visiting instructors and performers had gone collectively
crazy with the heat. Lily doubted there was a dark corner anywhere in the camp
that summer night that didn’t host its own frantically coupling pair.

He’d been tall, but in heels her legs were nearly as long as
his. She had wound one long limb around his waist and he’d held it there with
his long pianist’s fingers. Slid his hand farther up until he could cup her ass
on one side and feel their joining with his fingertips. Lily had gasped as he’d
spread her wider, thrust deeper…clamped his mouth over hers, silencing her,
because the risk of getting caught was already too high even without the noise.

It was an almost brutal kiss. She had given it right back,
digging her fingernails sharply into his back, hard enough that he clearly felt
it even through his t-shirt. Both of them remained more or less clothed,
although Lily would realize the next morning that she was missing her
underwear. She never did know when exactly she had lost track of them or where
they wound up.

He had started out forceful but slow, measured. After that
kiss, though, something had seemed to snap in both of them. His strokes grew
faster, less controlled, and Lily’s hips worked in a frantic tempo trying to
keep up. She’d been startled when she realized she was actually going to come,
that something in the angle or the mood was adding the missing ingredient she’d
sought in vain with her ex-boyfriend Matt. Matt had been the first, and he had
worked at it. So had she. Self-conscious stopping and starting, clumsy fingers
attempting to stimulate a clitoris that had already given up in boredom and
exasperation.

That time, with that second man, it had been no work at all.
It had been like breathing, like unforced laughter. Like dancing when you
already knew the steps in your muscles and didn’t have to think anymore.

She remembered how the sensation worked its way outward, spreading
from the spot where her pelvis was tipped to let him brush against her clit
with each push. It had curled there, nestling between her hips, then exploded
into brilliant pleasure that rushed from her belly to her toes and all the way
up to her brain. The pleasure pitched higher and higher as he began to respond
in kind.

It was quite possible Lily had made a noise at that point.
Even in retrospect, it seemed to have warranted a noise. She’d wanted to scream
out that orgasm. She’d wanted to clasp this strange, dark man closer in the
night in gratitude and relief as his wicked hips pivoted against hers again and
again, and he came into her with a barely stifled groan of his own.

She had to be quiet or the campers might hear. She couldn’t
tighten her arms around him in a grateful hug, because she didn’t know him that
well and she was trying to be cool and worldly. She was the prima, after all,
and he was the adoring fan. At nineteen, she was still that foolish.

He’d hugged her, though, as his spent penis slipped from her
quivering body. That was some consolation at least. They had breathed at each
other, trembling, and Lily remembered his hand at the back of her neck as a
comforting, almost loving weight. She’d been grateful for the dark. It had
hidden the tears that fell as she’d dragged herself back from the treacherous
edge of falling hard for somebody she couldn’t have. Somebody who was moving to
New York after the camp was through, all the way across the country from Lily’s
home in LA. A man who would be gone the next day, but that night had
unwittingly taught her why she was not the type who should indulge in casual
sex.

The next morning, from the porch of the mess cabin, Lily had
snuck a last look at her dark lover through the window of a car as he settled
himself into the seat. He had squirmed a bit, reaching for his back with a
puzzled look, then grinned slightly as his fingers found the small abrasions
Lily knew her nails had left.

Lily, stuck at the camp all that next day until her own bus
ride home in the evening, had one hell of a time explaining to her cabin mates
about the splinters on her shoulder blades.

The air on the plane managed to be chilly and stifling at
the same time. Lily felt it in her bones, especially the aching arch of her
right foot, as she swayed down the aisle past the musicians and members of the
corps
de ballet
.

Six hours into a ten-hour flight, the passengers looked a
little glassy-eyed and restive. Most of them were with the company, and the
group had relaxed into that informal familiarity traveling entertainers are
prone to. They joshed, preened, bitched and flirted as the inevitable pairing
off kicked into high gear. Lily was grateful sometimes for the new, stricter
rules about airplane restrooms. At least none of her dancers would be joining
the mile-high club during this trip.

The air freshener in the tiny restroom compartment was
cloying and aggressively pine scented. Lily couldn’t help but smile. It was
such an incongruous memory to accost her in a place like that, but the smell of
pine always did it. It had been almost seven years, but that particular memory
never seemed to fade. Her one wild fling might not have secured her a
membership in the mile-high club, but it had definitely been in the same
spirit. Hurried, furtive and absolutely thrilling. Emotionally, it had been
such
a bad idea. Physically, however, it was still the standard by which she judged
first encounters.

What would her nineteen-year-old self have done differently,
Lily wondered, had she known she was probably having the best sex of her life?
On reflection, she thought it was probably better that she hadn’t known at the
time. Her weeks of heartbreak and Häagen-Dazs had been bad enough as it was.

On the way back to her seat, she paused next to Dmitri and
gave the elderly conductor a gentle squeeze on the shoulder.

“Do you need anything?”

He shook his head and patted her hand, thanking her, and
Lily moved on. She never dreamed it would be the last time they spoke. But two
hours later, waking from a fitful nap, she saw one of the flight attendants
walking far too quickly down the aisle with an improbably large first-aid kit
in hand, and through the muffled murmur of the plane she heard clear noises of
distress.

Nothing in that first-aid kit, however, was any use to a
sweet, seventy-nine-year-old man who had suffered a swift and fatal stroke.
Dmitri had complained of a headache earlier but had appeared to be sleeping
peacefully for over an hour when one of his seatmates, trying to squeeze by to
get to the aisle, had discovered the conductor’s condition. In all likelihood,
Dmitri was already dead by the time the flight attendants started trying to
revive him.

The plane stayed on course to Paris.

* * * * *

Things were grim, that first evening in Paris. The company
members sat around the handful of cafés near the hotel, telling somber
anecdotes and looking shell-shocked.

David Russo, the ballet’s director, had gone from the
airport to the hospital and back again. Because Lily was the dance captain—and
David knew she would deal with the information responsibly—she got the phone
updates. David relayed it all to Lily to relay on to the company—the reports he
had filled out on poor Dmitri’s behalf, the preliminary findings about the
cause of death. The phone calls made to family back in the States. Arrangements
to fly the body back home.

“And one more thing, but you have to keep this one between
us for now.”

“Okay, shoot.” She sipped at the wine in front of her,
barely tasting the decent cabernet.

“I think I may be able to get a backup conductor.”

“Really? Who and how?”

David sighed. “Promise you’ll keep it quiet until I know for
sure. He hasn’t agreed to do it yet, and he didn’t sound very happy about it,
but Aidan Byrne is in Paris right now. A complete coincidence. If anybody could
step in and conduct this without much rehearsal, it would obviously be him.”

Aidan Byrne. The dynamic, world-famous composer of the music
that had inspired the ballet they were performing. He was a brilliant man, a
star in his own musical circles, but not one known for his even and magnanimous
temper.

He was nobody Lily had ever expected to see again.

“I guess he would have a stake in seeing that this tour
wasn’t cancelled,” Lily replied in a neutral tone while her stomach performed
an unpleasant pirouette. “It’s the European premier for the music, right? Even
if it’s only us.”

“That may be part of the problem,” David admitted. Lily
could almost see him over the phone, tugging on his shaggy beard as he muddled
over the issue at hand. “Byrne has never really been a big fan of this
production. The ballet was great publicity for him, and in theory he’s a fan of
collaboration. But I gather he sort of regretted giving permission for it after
he saw the opening in San Francisco two years ago.”

The first troupe to perform the new ballet had been plagued
by everything from injuries and personnel issues to set production difficulties
caused by a seasonal lumber shortage. The premier had been so disastrous that
the show ran only a few performances before shutting down. Lily’s company had
essentially staged a new premiere, to great critical success, but Aidan Byrne
had never seen their production of “his” ballet.

“David, this doesn’t sound all that promising, if he’s that
hostile to the whole project.” Had she sounded too hopeful for a second there?

“I know, I know, but I’ve known Aidan since college. I think
he might do it if I can appeal to his better nature. It’s not like we’re the
same company that screwed it up when he saw it before. Besides, this is such a
weird situation. Who could resist being part of a story like this one’s going
to be?”

Lily was skeptical but kept it to herself, along with her
private reasons for half hoping David’s appeal failed.

Later, when David called back with the news that Aidan Byrne
had agreed to cut his sabbatical short and join them as emergency guest
conductor until another replacement could be found, she was glad she had kept
her mouth shut.

Lily had learned the hard way not to do one-night stands,
but at least she’d been spared the lesson about the embarrassing morning after.
Now, it seemed, her seven-year reprieve from that lesson was coming to an end.

* * * * *

“We’ve met before,” Byrne said when David introduced him to
Lily the next day. It was almost, but not quite, a question. He was frowning,
clearly trying to place her.

Lily named the place and year, saw his eyebrows flick up as
he made the connection, and the second question came into his eyes. She could
almost hear him thinking it. That girl on the last night, was Lily the name, he
couldn’t quite recall…?

“I was there with the ballet troupe from college, doing a
two-week collaborative performance workshop,” she explained to David, grateful
for the excuse to look away from Aidan, who had only grown better looking in
the seven years since she’d seen him last. He owed his meteoric rise to fame
during that time to his phenomenal talent, but Lily was sure his phenomenal
looks hadn’t hurt. “We taught some classes and did an exhibition performance
for the campers at the end. Mr. Byrne was there as a guest conducting
instructor for a week or so. We left around the same time, I think.”

“Ah, music camp.” David sounded all too familiar with the
subject.

“Yes, music camp. Although I don’t think it really counts
the same if you’re a teacher, not a camper.”

“It’s exactly the same,” David said. “You’re a geek. Face
it, Lil.”

Aidan cleared his throat, drawing their attention. “I’ll run
through with the orchestra and make notes today. This afternoon we can meet to
discuss tomorrow’s combined rehearsal.”

David nodded then slapped his hand to his forehead. “I’ll
have to leave by around four. I have to go the airline office again about…well,
you know.”

“Have you even slept, David?” Standing next to him, Lily
could see the dark circles under his eyes and the unbrushed wildness of his
already unruly mop of hair.

“Um. Not as such, no. But I won’t be driving so that’ll be
okay, and this is just paperwork. I’ll be back in time for dinner if traffic
isn’t too bad. Then sleep, hopefully.”

A look of sympathy softened the stern lines of Aidan’s face,
and he gripped his friend’s shoulder awkwardly. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could
have met him. From what I’ve overheard this morning it’s obvious he was really
special to everybody here.”

“He was the heart of this thing,” David admitted, not even
trying to hide the tear that crept down his face and disappeared into his
beard.

“I’m sure Miss Draper and I can finish up on our own if
there are still things to go over. You take care of whatever you need to then
get some rest, man.”

It was odd, Lily thought, that it took such a tragedy to
pull the mask off people sometimes. Aidan looked years younger in that moment,
all his stony self-assurance and formality gone as he tried with little success
to comfort David. She could see the boy he’d been, so much less intimidating
than the man he had become.

His words must have helped in some way, because David
clapped him on the back and nodded as if much more had been said.

“Right. Okay. So, Lily, if everybody’s ready, we’ll use the
CD to do a brush-through for now. Let’s get this thing moving, folks.”

David moved away, leaving Lily and Aidan to stare at each
other, Lily in awkward silence and Aidan with a thoughtful expression.

“It’s Lily, by the way,” she said, trying to sound no more
than pleasant and professional. “Not Miss Draper.”

“Have we met some other time, maybe more recently?” His
lips, curling in vague bemusement as he tried to place her more firmly, formed
an entrancing arc. Lily tried not to stare. The room seemed warmer suddenly.

“I don’t think so. Just…camp. Good old camp.”

“Have you ever worked in New York? Or in London?”

Lily couldn’t help but laugh. “I wish, but no. Los Angeles
and Seattle. We can’t all be rock stars.”

“Rock star? I like the sound of that. Not a bad reputation
to have, but I wish I had the paycheck to go with it,” Aidan said with a rakish
grin that made Lily’s hormones fire in all directions. Had his eyes always had
that wolfish intensity?

“Don’t we all? I know David’s already—”

“The hair,” Aidan interrupted. Lily blinked at the non
sequitur. “Your hair was different back then. You had it almost black, like a
Goth thing. And maybe parted in the middle? You always wore it pulled straight
back. Anyway, I couldn’t quite place you at first. Sorry about that.”

“That’s the natural color, I have highlights now. And that’s
okay. It was a long time ago.” She twiddled a finger through a long
chocolate-colored tress that had stolen over her shoulder.

“You look great. How have you been, Lily?”

“Good. You?”

“Great, great.”

These obvious lies sat between them, ungainly and impossible
to ignore. Her derailed career, his recent divorce…nobody was good, nobody was
great. After a moment, Aidan shrugged. “We can tell each other our sordid
stories over dinner tonight, maybe?”

Lily’s smile was more genuine this time. “I’d like that.”

“I have to confess, I’m a little surprised. I would have
thought you’d be the prima here. In a bigger company than this frankly. You
seemed so focused on that goal.”

“I was.” She cleared her throat, banishing the sudden
tightness there, and gave him a tight smile. “That’s my dinner story, I guess.”

The gripping saga of how my star has fallen while yours
has risen
, Lily thought.
Poetic dinnertime tales for the lovelorn
.

“It’s a date,” he said.

“So to speak. Listen, I’m sure you’ve heard this from David
about a hundred times already, but thank you for helping us on such short
notice.”

She offered her hand, striving to regain some
professionalism, but he took it and lifted it to his lips. Even that light
brush of a kiss made Lily’s pulse stutter and race.

He lingered over her hand a little too long, seeming
reluctant to release it. “You’re welcome. I confess I still have reservations,
but I don’t mind being proven wrong.”

Lily had her doubts about that. Aidan Byrne’s reputation
suggested otherwise, at least. On the other hand, his reputation also painted
him as cold and reserved. Nothing about the way he was currently looking at her
said “cold” or “reserved”.

She suspected his expression was only a mirror of her own.