Liron's Melody (18 page)

His arms encompassed her and his lips met hers in a tender,
yet needy kiss that turned her whole body to mush. The wind picked up, tossing
her hair and tugging at her dress, causing her to mold herself more intimately
to Liron. Something shifted between them, morphing with the realization that
they belonged to one another now. No barriers, no limits, no rules. She was
his, and he was hers. And she couldn’t help but feel as if she had been waiting
her whole life for this very moment. This very scene. It was better than any
written song, any composition, for this was the song created by the rhythm of
their hearts beating in tandem. It was theirs, their song together. He had been
the missing piece of her concerto all along.

Pulling away with a soft breath, Liron looked down into her
eyes and she saw the same longing in his gaze that she herself felt. Without
any words, he took her hand and led her down the shore to where the craggy
cliffs had created a bridge of sorts. There was a large hole eaten away out of
the rock, open on both ends, but creating a shelter from any kind of
inhospitable weather.

He turned to face her, and searched her eyes once again. Her
breath caught at the smoldering desire she saw burning within his blue gaze,
and her heart melted at the silent question that she could still read within
it. She let out a soft sigh and reached up to push his hair back from his face
and trail her fingers down the line of his jaw.

The tender gesture caused him to shiver and he squeezed his
eyes shut, bringing his forehead to rest against hers. “Melody,” he whispered,
his voice holding an ache to it.

“Shhh,” she breathed, wrapping her arms around his neck. “I’m
not going anywhere. I’m yours now. Always. I promise.” She lifted her lips to
his to seal her vow, meaning it within the very depths of her soul. She didn’t
care that her human mind said it was ludicrous and hasty. Her heart knew it had
finally found home.

He took her face in both of his hands as he kissed her,
parting her lips to deepen it. She rose on her toes to press herself fully
against his strong frame. Lovely, wonderful notes invaded her mind, and she
felt their vibrations in every cell of her body.

He slipped his arm around her waist and, with infinite
gentleness, lowered her to the soft sand below. He kissed and nibbled at her
lips in an unhurried fashion that belied the hunger she felt within him just
below the surface. She reached up to tangle her fingers in his hair and
banished any lingering doubt from her mind. Whenever she was with Liron,
everything else fell away.

“You are such a gift,” he whispered as he kissed his way down
her throat and across her collarbone. “I don’t know what I did to end up with
such a perfect present.”

She smiled. “You wrote a music score that spoke to my heart,”
she murmured. Her fingers absently trailed over the buttons of his shirt and
began to undo them.

He sat back and hastily removed the garment, throwing it off
to the side and smiling softly down at her. “That score
was
my heart.”

She sat up and ran her hands up his chest, delighting in how
much more sinful the simple touch was when her fingers were gliding over his
bare skin. He was all lithe muscle, lean and elegant.

He shivered. “I don’t know what it is about when you do that.
It makes all my thoughts scatter.”

She grinned and pressed soft kisses here and there, without
an agenda, just wanting to feel and taste his skin. She slid her hands around
to his back and twined her arms around him, resting her cheek on his chest. She
closed her eyes and sighed in contentment. “Your heart is a symphony, Liron.”

His arms tightened around her for a moment before he took her
face in his hands and tilted her lips up to meet his. He claimed them in a
fierce, impassioned kiss, his tongue marauding her mouth in a primal, wild
dance that made her heartbeat trip over itself in its attempt to accelerate so
quickly.

He guided her back down onto the sand and she tangled her
fingers in his hair as he explored her mouth. After a few moments, he pulled
away just enough to cause her to protest. He smiled down at her and caressed
her cheek before lowering his lips so that they hovered just above hers. She
could feel his breath, and with every warm exhale that touched her lips, the
softest, faintest sounds of whispering music filtered through her. She closed
her eyes and fidgeted, trying to seal the kiss he was teasing her with. She
wanted to feel the velvet softness of his lips, wanted to satiate her hunger
for him, as well as for the music she couldn’t quite hear completely.

His low chuckle caused a louder burst of notes in her mind,
and they traveled through her like electricity, lighting her ablaze for the
rest of the song and the rest of its creator.

Instead of kissing her lips as she had anticipated, Liron
turned his attention to her collarbone. He pressed a gentle kiss there, and she
sucked her breath in as another measure of music cavorted through her body,
heart, and mind.

With deliberate slowness, he ran his palm across her bare
shoulder and down the feminine curves of her body. She almost convulsed at the
river of fire and erotic music he left in his wake.

His hand stopped at her knee, where he hooked his fingers
behind it and bent her leg. The skirt of her dress slithered down her skin to
gather at her waist, and his musical caress followed the path of the fabric.
Her breath caught as her body began to feel like an orchestra of its own.
Everywhere he touched, a different part of her being came alive with a
different sound. Her mind filled with the most amazing melodies of his heart
while her body burned in a slow ache.

She barely felt him pull her dress over her head. The cold
ocean air hitting her bare skin was the only indication, but he quickly took
the chill away with the infernal caress of his hands and lips. She squirmed,
trying to find some sort of coherent thought within the maelstrom of notes and
sensations he built with every erotic sweep of his fingers, lips, and tongue.
Her fingers tangled in his hair while his mouth explored her body in an
unhurried journey that was going to drive her insane.

“Liron,” she managed to rasp out, tugging gently on the silky
strands. “I can’t think…this isn’t fair.”

His low chuckle was like the rumble of a kettledrum. He
dragged his lips in a slow line of kisses up her throat. “What isn’t fair?”

“I….” She struggled to remember how to verbalize while his
hands did wicked things. “I want to touch you too, but I can’t even….” She
groaned as another wave of sultry music pulsed through her.

“Shhh,” he breathed against her ear. “There will be time for
that later.”

“But….” She gasped as he blanketed her body with his, and
somewhere in the back of her mind, she realized he had managed to discard the
rest of both of their clothing. When that had happened, she had no idea. His
hips nestled against hers and she shivered.

“We have many nights and days ahead of us that we can explore
one another, if you so desire,” he whispered. “For now, please give me this
chance to show you what you mean to me.”

He kissed her long and thorough, and every nerve in her body
thrummed with a song of its own—his song. She opened her eyes and forced
herself to focus through the haze of passion and feeling that swept through
her. The way he had said that statement,
“if you so desire,”
made her
heart ache. He was still afraid that she would not want him after this, that
there was something about him that had turned Elizabeth off and that he would
do the same to her. How could he think that? More importantly, how could
Elizabeth have spurned him when he had the power to make someone feel so much?
He had loved her, which meant he had lavished this same kind of affection on
her. How could she have felt nothing? Melody thought she was going to explode
inside a cyclone of sensations. How could Elizabeth have just endured that
instead of falling so hard for him at the realization that he’d felt so much
for her?

Melody both hated and loved Liron’s ex-wife. She hated her
for hurting Liron, but she rejoiced in the fact that because of her idiocy, he
now belonged to Melody. And she knew it might take some time to convince him
completely, but she would make him realize how incredible he was, in every way.
He would come to never doubt her feelings for him, or how talented and
desirable he really was. No one else had ever made her feel the way he did, not
in the smallest measurement. She was lost, and she was addicted. Addicted to
his touch, his heart, and his resplendent song.

She gazed into his blue eyes. They had turned stormy with his
passion, mirroring the turbulent sea. Lightning lit up the sky as the storm
moved closer, and thunder rumbled low and ominous. Behind them, the waves
crashed. It seemed the whole world was making music, taking part in the
overture that Liron was creating just for her.

He reached behind him to grasp one of her legs and bend it at
the knee, sliding his fingers across her skin in a decadent, velvet caress that
made what little rational thought she had fly away into the night. He settled
himself more intimately against her and dropped a slow, languorous kiss to her
lips.

When he pulled back, he took her hand and placed her palm
over his heart. She surfaced enough from the haze of feeling she was trapped
within to look up into his beautiful face. All she saw there was devotion and
desire, complete and total rapture. For her. It was so overwhelming she felt
tears burn behind her eyes.

But before the emotion could take over, he lowered his lips
to hers again and claimed her body with his, sending such a tremendous wave of
wonderful sound sweeping through her that she didn’t even recognize the noise
that was torn from her throat. She shuddered and clutched him close to her
while he buried his face against her neck and let out a shaky breath. He whispered
her name like it was the most cherished word he had ever spoken, and she felt
her heart beating in tandem with his, playing the same wonderful song. The
music that made up his person surged into her, connecting them on every
available level.

Lightning flickered again overhead, followed by the gentle
roll of thunder. The rhythm of the ocean waves seemed to match the rhythm of
Liron’s body against hers and the tempo of their synchronized heartbeats. The music
she felt and heard, along with the tremendous pleasure rippling through her
with every movement Liron made, coalesced into one symphonic masterpiece. It
coiled tighter within her, took over all of her senses, and she lost herself
within the sound and the passion as all of the elements climbed toward
crescendo.

She’d never felt anything like it as the realm of reality
fractured and dissolved into a world full of nothing but the purest music and
burning emotion. At that moment,
she
was the music and he, the
conductor. She was lost to him in every way. Her heart, her body, the song of
her soul—all of it belonged to him.

After what felt like an eternity of slow boiling, burning,
erotic musical sensation, every note within Melody converged with the physical
pleasure of Liron’s lovemaking and exploded inside her like white-hot energy.
She arched her back and dug her fingers into his shoulders as wave after wave
of ecstatic light and sound crashed over her.

She expected the feeling to ebb, but it didn’t. Liron kissed
her, never breaking the pulsing sonata that coursed through her blood and
wrapped around her heart and every part of her body. Melody whimpered and
writhed against him, certain that she would incinerate if he made her feel any more,
but Liron was relentless. He took her over the edge again, bringing to life
notes and chords inside of her that she never even knew existed. He turned her
entire being into an orchestra, opened up secret chambers in her heart that
filled with love for him, and only then did he allow his song to come to
completion.

As Melody slowly drifted back into the real world, Liron
pulled her up close to him, dropping lazy kisses along her shoulder and neck.
Melody couldn’t think, could barely function. She snuggled up against Liron and
basked in the warm, thrumming sensation that still pulsed throughout her body.

“That…that was….” She couldn’t complete the sentence because
moving her lips and tongue required too much effort.

His soft chuckle filled her with warmth as he wrapped her up
in his arms and nuzzled the back of her neck. “Yes, it was.”

She smiled and relaxed against him, enjoying the feel of his
skin touching hers, of his arm wrapped around her waist, of knowing she was
his. The sky was lightening with the coming of dawn, but dark storm clouds
roiled overhead and a drizzling rain began to mist the air.

Melody sighed. They were protected from the weather in their
nature-made shelter, and she was in no great hurry to move. For the first time
in what seemed like so long, her heart was full and content. She planned on
holding onto that for as long as possible.

Chapter Fifteen

She was aware of the rain peppering the stained glass window
in Liron’s bedroom as she was roused from slumber. She didn’t know how long she
had slept, only that the warmth of Liron’s embrace provided the perfect haven
for her to rest.

They had dressed and returned to Liron’s home, where they’d
bathed and eaten, then climbed into his bed, contented and exhausted. It felt
close to evening, and she smiled at the thought that they had slept the day
away.

She remained where she was for several minutes, basking in
the serenity of the sound of the rain and the feel of Liron’s arm wrapped
securely around her. She realized this was her bed now, her home. It should
have frightened her, with the idea being so foreign, but it didn’t. Her heart
was happy here, sated, and she had no desire to return to her cold world.
There, she was sad, lonely, and condemned for her emotions. Here, she was with
Liron, her mate, who understood her and embraced both her emotions and her passion
for music. She fit here, and her place in her world had vanished with the death
of her parents. There was nothing left for her there now.