Liron's Melody (9 page)

She thought of Liron’s eyes, his touch, his kind
attentiveness and subtle, graceful sensuality. She remembered how he had
infused her with music while he had held her protectively in his arms.

Slowly, she began to play the music the way it was intended
to be played, and she was swept away within the beautiful notes once again.

* * * *

The castle looked different in the light of day than it had
the night before. Sunlight streamed through the stained glass windows, casting
rainbows across the stone. Outside, she could hear the crashing of the ocean
waves. “Liron?” she called, excited that she had managed to open the gateway
again. It was a cool power to be able to have, traveling between dimensions.
She wasn’t sure how she would get back home again, but eventually, something
would trigger the portal, as her alarm clock had done before. Right now, she
wasn’t really that concerned. She felt drudgery when she was home. A house full
of painful memories, a job she abhorred, and an irritating man who didn’t know
how to take no for an answer. Liron had made her feel more warmth in one night
than she had experienced in over a year. His world was different, and was not
marred by things that would only remind her of hurt.

“Liron?” she called again, stepping further into the room to
look around. “Liron, where are you?”

He suddenly rounded the corner, looking shocked and slightly
bewildered. “Melody,” he murmured. “You came back.”

She grinned, her heart beating wildly at his presence, and
especially at the way his gaze raked over her. “I wanted to see if I could,”
she said, hooking her thumbs in her belt loops and rocking on the balls of her
feet. She shrugged. “Besides, I wanted to see you again.” She admitted it
quietly and chewed on her bottom lip.

He stared at her for a second, his eyes full of surprise and
so much warmth she felt herself blush.

He stepped toward her and let his eyes appraise her before
they came up to meet hers. “You look breathtaking.”

“Better than wine-soaked PJ’s, right?” she teased.

He smiled. “You looked beautiful even in that, but today….”
He shook his head. “What is the occasion?”

There was a hint of playfulness in his eyes and his tone, so
she went with it. “Coming to see you, you idiot.” She put her hand on her hip
in mock annoyance. “You’re going to take me on a date.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Am I?” He folded his arms across his
chest, continuing the game.

She gave a flippant shrug. “Well, if you don’t want to, fine.
I’ll just go back home. I’m sure Rob would be more than thrilled for me to give
him another shot.” She pivoted on her heel with a snotty air and turned to face
the far side of his living room. Lots of gray stone met her gaze and she chewed
on her bottom lip with a frown. “As soon as I figure out how….”

His rich chuckle heated her blood and he came up behind her,
placing his hands on her bare shoulders and letting his fingers trail
tantalizingly down her arms. Feather-soft notes filled her mind and tingles
exploded across her skin. “It seems you have encountered a problem.” He
whispered it against her ear, and her heart tumbled over itself as his breath
tickled the hair at the nape of her neck. “And I am not terribly pleased with
the idea of this Rob fellow.”

She grinned and leaned back toward him instinctively. “Then
do something about it.”

He laughed softly and moved away. She turned around to face
him, and he offered her his arm in a very old world, gentlemanly gesture.
“Shall we?”

Chapter Eight

Melody had been to the ocean once when she was small. Her
parents had taken her to Disneyland and they’d spent a day at the beach. She
had enjoyed playing in the waves and building sandcastles. But the Southern
California coast was nothing like what she was currently looking at. There were
no sunbathers or surfers here. No one playing beach volleyball. There was
hardly any beach at all. Only craggy cliffs and jagged rock that the waves
flung themselves against, sending salty spray and foam into the air.

This ocean was angry, violent, powerful, and bewitching. It
was so much more dramatic than what she had seen as a child. She wished her
parents could have seen it. It was nature’s symphony, as Liron had said. She
knew her mother and father would have heard it too, and would have loved to
share in the wondrous crescendo each wave built before breaking into the rock.

“Have you always loved the sea?” she asked Liron, turning her
head to look at him over her shoulder. He stood stoically behind her, allowing
her space with her thoughts.

They had left his home to come walking down here, and she was
surprised at how ordinary everything looked. She didn’t know what she had been
expecting. Green men and a pink sun maybe…something much more befitting to
inter-dimensional travel. But the sky was still blue. The grass was still
green. And this ocean was the most magnificent thing she had ever seen.

Liron stepped closer until he was standing beside her and he
nodded. “I grew up here, played along these rocks. I have never had any desire
to live anywhere else. Elizabeth hated it.” He looked down and shrugged. “Said
the noise kept her awake and the salt in the air bothered her skin.”

Melody rolled her eyes. “What a hag.”

Liron chuckled and gave her a sidelong glance. “I am curious
to see how many names you can come up with for my ex-wife.”

“Oh, I have plenty,” she grumbled. “How could anyone not fall
in love with this?” She stretched her arms out to indicate the breathtaking
expanse before her.

“I spent a lot of time asking myself that. As well as how
come she could never fall in love with me.”

“Because she was blind, deaf, dumb, and stupid.”

He raised an eyebrow. “How do you figure?”

“Well, any woman with half a brain can see that you’re super
hot, so there’s the dumb and blind part.” She glanced at him and saw him smile
shyly while his face flushed a faint shade of pink. She grinned. His
bashfulness was a refreshing change from Rob’s arrogance. “You worshipped the
ground she walked on, and any woman who could turn her nose up at that is
friggin’ stupid. Plus,”—she held her arms out again and shook them for
emphasis—“look at this! How could she
not
hear the music in this? It’s
like the most extraordinary concerto ever created, only better because it’s
pure. No man-made composition could ever compare to the perfection of this. You
could spend a lifetime trying to put notes to it to describe it, and it would
always, always fall short.” She shook her head and closed her eyes, breathing
deep and letting her ears fill with the melodies only someone with true musical
aptitude and appreciation could hear.

When she opened her eyes and looked at him, she found him
regarding her thoughtfully with admiration and wonder reflected in his blue
depths. “What?” she questioned.

“You have such a complete understanding and deep love of
music.”

She smiled even though a pang of grief stabbed through her
heart. “Both my parents were musicians. My mom, a violinist and my dad, a
cellist. I grew up listening to Sibelius and Vivaldi.
Pachelbel in D
was
what my mother hummed to me when I was a child, and if there was ever a
Saturday that I
didn’t
wake up to my father playing cello until all his
bow hair fell out, I knew he was either out of town or had the flu.” She gave a
little laugh at the memories, regardless of the ache they created in her heart.
“Needless to say, I didn’t stand much of chance. By the time I graduated high
school, I was accomplished at piano, flute, and viola, and I could pick my way
through some stuff on the guitar.” He smirked and she shrugged. “I dated a
rocker guy for a little while.”

He grinned. “If I didn’t know better, I would think you had
been raised by muses.”

She shook her head and averted her gaze back out to the sea,
remembering her parents and the wonderful years she had spent with them. “No…just
two incredibly talented people.” She couldn’t mistake the sadness in her voice,
and she knew Liron heard it too.

“Have you always been a musician then?” he queried.

She nodded and forced a small smile. “I loved music as much
as they did. We all played in an orchestra together. I was working on a
concerto for a while, but….” She shrugged and let the sentence remain unformed.

“Melody.” His voice was a velvet sweep of sound that caressed
over her in a wave of sinful warmth. “What happened?”

She chewed on her bottom lip and looked up at him, a
torturous sorrow welling up within her until her chest felt like it would
shatter into pieces from the enormity of the pressure. “They died last year in
a car accident.” She felt the tears burn, but she knew they would never fall.

He stepped forward with no hesitation and placed his hands on
her shoulders, gently rubbing up and down in a comforting gesture.

“I was working on a concerto for the orchestra, one that
would have featured all of us. But I haven’t been able to look at it since. I
hadn’t even played piano until my friend Nikki brought me your music. Your
piece is the first thing I’ve played since the morning before the accident.”

He sighed and pulled her into the refuge of his embrace,
which immediately surrounded her in warm, wonderful notes. “I’m sorry, Melody. That
kind of loss is something I cannot comprehend and makes my grief over Elizabeth
seem childish and silly.”

She shook her head in disagreement as she nestled deeper into
his arms, relishing the strength that he provided. “Loss is loss, Liron. One
should not be compared with the other. And it was your loss I identified with,
that I heard within the notes of that score. However twisted it sounds, your
loss was what called out to me, and what I reached out for last night when I
was playing. Your pain took my mind off of mine. All I wanted to do was soothe
the ache I felt in that song.”

He pulled away enough to look down at her, and he took her
face in his hands, lifting it so he could gaze into her eyes. “Why would you
want to do that? You didn’t know I was real.”

“No, but I knew the music had an origin, and I didn’t think
anyone else should have to feel the same kind of heartache I did.”

He stared at her for a long moment, several undecipherable
emotions flashing through his eyes. Slowly, he extended his fingers across her
jaw, behind her ears and to the clip that held her hair captive. “Then the pain
Elizabeth caused me when she left was really a gift in disguise,” he murmured.
Deftly, he unclasped her clip and her hair tumbled down and around her
shoulders in thick waves, unruly with the sea breeze.

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

He buried his fingers in her hair and trailed them through
the length. “I wrote that music because I wanted her to know the pain she
caused by leaving me, the devotion and longing I still had for her. Somehow,
that music survived all these years and touched something within you. That, in
turn, brought you to me.” His eyes met hers with intensity, with meaning and
sincerity. “And that is truly, above all other things, a gift.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, basking in the feel of his
gentle fingers in her hair. Even that simple touch made her hear low, tinkling
bells. She pressed closer to him, her lonely, broken heart craving the kindness
that he offered so freely. She smiled a little as her senses filled with the
smell of the sea, the feel of Liron standing so close to her, his hands in her
hair, his music in her mind. She heard the cry of seagulls and the thunder of
the waves. The heat of his body permeated hers, and the warmth of his soul
reached her cold, shattered heart.

He trailed his lips in a line of tender kisses from her cheek
to her temple. Butterflies took flight in her stomach while infernal heat
exploded through her body. Nothing she had ever experienced felt as good as
being close to him. Liron was gentle strength and patient compassion all
wrapped up in wondrous music. He was everything she cherished, admired, and
craved.

“Melody,” he whispered, his breath against her ear causing
her to shiver. “Do you have anything pressing that will cause your world to
come crashing back into mine and take you away again?”

She smiled and slipped an arm around his neck to fit them
closer together. “Not that I can think of. And even if something, or someone,
tried to interrupt, I have the ability to ignore the portal and not go back
through it.”

One of his hands stayed in her hair while the other one
traveled over her shoulder and down her spine to rest at her lower back. “Good.
Because I find myself unwilling to part with you at the moment.”

She giggled and pulled back just enough to be able to look at
him. He was smiling, and her heart sighed. “I don’t think I mind.”

His smile blossomed into a ravenously beautiful grin, and she
leaned back into his body, craving his touch and transfixed with his perfect
mouth. She remembered the night before, how close they had come to kissing.
What would she have to do to get him to try again? The way his eyes smoldered,
she didn’t think he would need too much convincing. Heck, with the way her body
smoldered,
she
might be the one to make the first move.

But before either of them could do anything, a shrill cry
sounded from above and drew Liron’s attention away from her. He stepped back
and held his arm out as a large, golden falcon swooped down and landed on it.
Liron smiled and reached his other hand up to smooth the bird’s feathers. “Let
us have a more formal introduction,” he said. “Melody, meet Siegfried.” He
stepped closer and extended his arm out to her. “Go on, he won’t hurt you. He’s
all noise and sass.”

Melody giggled and reached out to trail her fingers gently
across his wings. “I don’t know. I think he may have been jealous of how close
I was to you,” she teased.