Song of Seduction (13 page)

Tentatively, hardly daring to move for fear of breaking the spell, Mathilda tilted her head to read his expression. She had to know what those blue depths contained. Maybe regret? Happiness? She feared the discovery of a thoughtless lust that would belie his unfathomable declarations—declarations she dared not trust.

With the barest distance between their faces, she found the familiar web of tiny lines at the corners of his eyes—eyes filled with a wary, intense longing. Even now, he remained afraid of her, terrified she would disappear despite the clench of his arms. But he didn’t retreat. He held her close, still waiting. That he could seem so defenseless and yet so determined made clear the depth of his regard.

Arie De Voss. Her idol. Her maestro.

Out of the thousands who experienced the power of his music, he wanted
her.
That heady knowledge tossed Mathilda in exhilarating flight.

She pulled tingling hands from his scalp and touched delicate fingertips to his cheeks, his lips. His hair stood in wild thatches, pulling a wobbly giggle from her chest.

His breath rasped. “You tell me to comport myself, Tilda, but then you tangle my hair. I cannot win.”

His elusive sense of humor signaled her undoing.

His smile. She wanted to taste his smile.

Mathilda kissed her maestro with the unrestrained passion of a woman who held nothing in reserve. Her mouth became a partner to his and toiled at the happy task of learning him. Thoughts of retreat vanished. Impatience demanded more. The connection she had sensed on stage proved a mere prelude to this, a more staggering intimacy. Words, melodies—those powerful means of communication became ungainly barriers.

But rhythm…she understood rhythm. In the midst of their kiss, she wanted to melt into the man who held her enthralled. The steady push and withdraw of their tongues became her native language. It beat in her blood, a rising tide of delight surging beneath her skin.

Arie acknowledged her body’s request for more. He trailed a parade of kisses along the ridge of her jaw. He captured one earlobe between his lips, his teeth, and Mathilda recalled the moment, weeks earlier, when she had waited in expectation of just that touch. Now he advanced. Each deliberate taste aroused new, reckless sensations. She gasped at the tickle of his tongue. Her lungs stretched against her stays, frantic for breath enough to sustain her yearning.

Drowning, feeling her waking mind dip below the surface of the visible world, Mathilda experienced desire’s sharp onslaught. A rush of warmth unfurled in the pit of her stomach, sliding through her muscles in an exotic dance of need. She knew what that warmth meant.

After all, she was no innocent.

She was selfish. Decadent. Hungry.
Alive.

Arie pressed lower, suckling the tender stretch of her neck and nipping at the upper swell of her bosom. He ran his tongue along the lace edging her bodice, wetting the delicate trim and pressing it along her tender flesh. A surge of expectant moisture pooled between her legs. She grasped his head and dragged his mouth closer. He complied with her gasping, wordless command, plundering the sloping valley between her breasts while his hands gripped her backside.

Mathilda angled to straddle one of his solid thighs, pushing her body to his in a willful pursuit of release. Too many layers of bombazine thwarted her quest. She moaned against the top of his head and yanked at her skirts. Arie gathered the fabric of her gown and captured those folds in a hand at her back. He pressed the rigid heat of his arousal toward her pelvis, reinvigorating their hypnotic rhythm before taking her mouth once again.

The pull and clench of desire ripped through her. Chilled air flashed along her bare legs. She foresaw the next steps in their dance. He would enter her. She would experience a blaze of need. He would thrust and find his blind satisfaction, leaving her wanting.

Throughout her marriage, she had learned to accommodate that makeshift pattern with Jürgen. But the idea of standing against the wall of Arie’s studio, shaking and unsatisfied in light of his climax, proved enough to make her weep. Humiliation would place a distant second to frustration. She wanted
that
as much as she wanted
him.

“Wait.” She fought, pushing at his chest and the arms encircling her waist.

Heedless, he kissed her again. She struggled. Panic tarnished her delight. She only wanted to end their prelude to disappointment, but Arie dropped to his knees.

For the duration of a breath, she stood motionless with uncertainty and shock. He remained poised before her, still pinning the folds of her dress behind her back. Then his mouth was on her, sucking the tender span of her inner thighs. First one leg, then the other, Arie pulled at her curved flesh with the firm, insistent caress of his lips.

Mathilda writhed beneath his exploration, marveling at her quick return to a pinnacle of need. He tormented her, delaying any chance of satisfaction until she opened to him, helpless and desperate. Harsh sounds of passion echoed across the tiny room: her moaning pleas and the erotic resonance of his deep, sucking kisses along her thighs.

Melting into a puddle of yearning and anticipation, she became a greedy, wicked creature. He kissed and nipped her skin to the brink of insanity and still she craved more. She awaited the instant he would relent, when his tongue would part her wet folds. She wanted quick, searching strokes. Finding Arie’s scalp again, she threaded fingers into his hair and squeezed, pulling at the source of her torture.

“More.”

The single word hovered between them, a dictate, until Arie took her feminine center into his mouth. He pinned her between the hard, unyielding wall and the delicious suffering of that most intimate kiss. He licked. He sucked. He caught her ever so gently in his teeth.

A remarkable peace settled over her as he manipulated her body. She savored the moment when her satisfaction became a promise. Behind closed eyes, she could all but see her pleasure emerging like the sun from behind a billow of white. She relaxed against the wall, giving herself to his tongue and the strength of his restless, pulsing hands until, with a shudder and a groan, she liquefied.

At last.

When his lovely prodigy’s knees shook with a trembling borne of sated exhaustion, Arie drew her to the floor. He wrapped her body within the snare of his limbs, sliding along her supple length, returning eagerly to the mystery of her concealed bosom. His lips caressed the treasure of those upthrust curves while he cradled her head in his hand. He unfastened his breeches and hooked his other arm under one of her knees, drawing her leg toward the slim curve of her waist. Wet and contented, her flesh yielded sweetly, willingly, to his rigid phallus.

He groaned into the hollow of her neck, and he bowed his head to the stabbing ecstasy radiating to the furthest reaches of his mind. Mathilda gasped and whispered his name at his temple, urging him with the welcoming thrust of her hips. He understood nothing more than a driving need, accelerating the quick pulse of his thrusts.

The final jolt of his climax woke Arie from a fitful sleep.

Beset by irrepressible erotic images, he met the mid-March sunshine with a curse. Rolling his eyes in opposition to the day, he wanted a return to paradise. His dreams, no matter how arousing, held not a candle to the pleasure they echoed—the satisfaction he had found with Mathilda on that gratifying afternoon more than two weeks ago.

The blanket covering his body was damp with sweat and the sticky consequences of his tormenting dream. He sank, spent, into the softness of his bed, although his unconscious climax had done little to assuage the sad mental ache that battered him upon each daily return to wakefulness.

He yearned to remain in the realm of nighttime fantasies, a perfect place in which he did not have to watch—prostrate, from the floor—as Mathilda stood and fled. Only the hasty arrangement of her skirts and a brief struggle into her pelisse had slowed her frantic flight. Whereas Arie had wanted to snuggle into the relative comfort of his narrow bed, loving leisurely and happily through the night, she had run from the embrace of his satisfied body.

He blamed himself. After all, he had only wanted one kiss.

He had not thought to expect more. To do so would be to live as a prisoner of unceasing desires. But at the touch of her lips to his, bludgeoned by a turbulent hunger, he had understood that their kiss merely prefaced a greater search.

And his memories helped decipher none of it. The impatient exploration of a young man’s first kiss, the casual acceptance of a lover’s tongue, the forceful drumming of angry passion—all proved useless. Mathilda was his muse. Unlike his creative drive, an impulse he purged through bouts of dedicated struggle, his obsession with her refused to be satisfied. Even naked and limp, lying on the floor in the confused, embarrassing aftermath of their passion, he had known she would torture him as long as he drew breath.

And how had he behaved?

He had pleasured her, he knew, while his lust had still cooperated with his mind. Following her final, exultant groan, however, Arie had coveted that same obliterating sensation. He had transformed into a senseless animal, pushing her against the unyielding plank floor and rutting without thought to her comfort—except a casual hand to protect her skull from the thump of his assault.

But how he wanted her still. One harsh, sweet coupling only teased him with the beauty of their connection.

She had wanted him, too. Her desire had been obvious in every touch, every sound, until the moment she simply left.

Arie’s confusion became an eternal spiral. He moaned, protesting the uncomfortably familiar pattern of his mornings. The dreams. The messy conclusion. Upon waking, memories of the horrified expression on her sweat-dampened face. A bittersweet melody of loss. Then came questions, recriminations, and the inevitable need to have her again.

Wait—a melody?

He sat up and tossed aside his soiled blanket on the wings of another disgusted curse. Crossing the meager span of his rooms, he flashed a quill across the nearest spread of lined parchment. He shivered in his nightshirt and covered the paper with huge, scrawling splatters that he alone could understand. Only when the bare skeleton of his melody sat safely within its staff did he turn away from the table. With an efficiency borne of practice and fueled by impatience, he lit a fire, washed, dressed and brewed coffee.

Seven and a quarter hours later, his right hand ink-stained and cramping, Arie finished his symphony’s third movement.

He enjoyed thinking of Mathilda as his muse because he was a lonely man who found amusement in idealizing the technical aspects of his profession. Even after years of experience, he still had no notion as to how he composed. As such, he might as well embody inspiration in a pleasing female form. His adorable minx of a student had invaded the deepest realm of his fantasies. Sifting through recollections of pleasure and the disappointing confusion of Mathilda’s departure, his brain had been hard at work, writing the music to accompany their sad, comic, unexpected intimacy.

Opening the movement, he heard echoes of the heavy, trouncing scherzo they pounded into life on that same afternoon. A submerged, unforgettable current of playfulness—the teasing banter threading through even their most heated debates—outshined the darkness, dragging the melody into the light. The dreamed motif foretold passion and abandonment. The thundering rhythm of wild sexual fervor concluded with Arie’s renewed sense of isolation, feeling more alone than he had in those waning hours of
Fasnacht.

Upon scratching the final note into place, his foremost thought frustrated him, but it did not surprise him.
What will she make of it?
Would Mathilda hear the parallels to their brief hours together? He longed to know how his composition would sound emerging from her tender manipulation of a violin.

Frankly, he longed to know any blasted thing about her.

Social functions and random walks to the Alter Markt, the Old Market, at all hours produced not a single glimpse of her face. On Ash Wednesday, he had seen her not at all—not at any of the six churches he visited on that restless day of reflection and too much walking. He had since conducted and played organ at various houses of worship, assuming a few of the
Kapellmeister
’s many responsibilities in the hopes of seeing her somewhere among the faithful. He recalled the chance meetings peppering the initial weeks of their acquaintance. She must be working hard to avoid him.

But Arie would not believe their story had concluded, so suddenly and with countless questions darkening their fine time. Her wordless rejection twisted him in a coil of disappointment and useless frustration, bruising his ego. What kind of woman was she, truly, if she could inflict such torture?

Verdomme,
but he was tired of being caged, dwelling on a moment of pleasure made sour by the sordid finale. Even the encouraging surprise of finishing this, the third of his symphony’s four movements, taunted him with a hollow victory. Never had he worried less about success for the mere sake of success.

Arie was greedy for her nearness. He wanted to hear the melody of her voice, so different from the Dutch intonations of his youth. He wanted to spar with her, to watch her defensive temper rise and then to soothe it into nothingness. He wanted to learn her body rather than settle for the rough, primitive way he had taken her.

Most of all, Arie wanted time—time to create more than one glaring memory.

Doubt had stayed his hand for weeks. He deserved her scorn, he knew, even if her reasons remained opaque and his crime stayed concealed. But his declaration threatened to become reality.
I could fall in love or go mad from wanting you.

He tossed a pinch of drying powder across the wet ink and arranged the completed composition into a tidy stack. He scribbled a brief message on a sheet of writing paper and ventured into the fading light of a beautiful early spring evening. On his way to see Haydn, he posted the letter.