Strung Out (8 page)

“Talia?”

“I don’t remember my mom, and I never knew my dad.”

Erik stilled in the darkness.

“I lived with my mom until I was five and the state came and took me away. I never saw her again after that, and I don’t remember much from before. It doesn’t matter anyway.”

His grip on her tightened, his body tightly strung beside her.

“My foster family couldn’t have cared less if I played an instrument or not.”

“How did you do it?”

“Nobody missed me at home. There were too many kids for them to keep track of. So I started going to school early and sneaking into the orchestra room to watch them practice. Then I spent lunchtime in the music room while Miss Mathers was eating, teaching myself to play on the violin she had there.”

“Talia.” His voice cracked over her name.

He didn’t have to say the words for her to know the story horrified him. It
was
horrifying from an outsider’s perspective. Yet it wasn’t. She wanted him to understand how it was back then. How her life had been one boring day bleeding into another until the music had come and made things interesting.

“Don’t, Erik,” she whispered. “Don’t pity me. I can’t take that.”

He sighed, rolling to his back and taking her with him. His voice was rough when he finally spoke. “What happened?”

“Miss Mathers caught me.”

“Was she angry?”

“At first she was, but I was so afraid she’d tell me I could never play again that the whole story spilled out. I think she understood then.”

“Understood what?”

“That the music was the only beautiful thing in my life.”

“Is that what it is now?”

Talia considered the question for several moments before answering. “It’s been the only constant. Music isn’t like people. No matter what, it makes sense. The melodies weave and build and change, but they never deliberately hurt you or leave you alone.”

“And people do?”

You will.

The words were on her lips, but Talia kept them inside. She found the softness of his lips in the darkness and brushed them with her own. A rumble began in his chest, vibrating until it built into a growl of desire that thrilled Talia down to her traitorous toes.

“I could spend a lifetime making love to you and never get enough.” Erik pulled back to see her expression.

She didn’t respond, pulling his face back toward hers. Kissing was better than talking, better than the truth.

* * *

Hours passed and melted inky darkness into the pale light of dawn. Talia didn’t sleep. She was afraid to close her eyes, afraid to let go of the moment and the man who didn’t belong to her and never would.

His body was long and lean and warm beside hers, his breathing steady and deep. Talia watched him—the elegant arch of his brows, the aristocratic line of his nose, his mouth losing the cynical half smile in the relaxation of sleep. She wondered idly if he ever completely dropped his guard when awake and suspected he did not. Erik Aasen couldn’t afford vulnerability. Not in the boardroom and not in his personal life. He was a man who would do the right thing for all the wrong reasons and the wrong thing for all the right ones. An enigma, a puzzle—Erik was a walking contradiction.

He stirred, stretching his long legs and reaching out for Talia. She lifted her hand, their fingers lacing smoothly together as if they woke up in the same bed every morning.

“Did you sleep?” he murmured.

“No.”

Talia watched the pale light reveal Erik’s strong features as he came awake.

“Did I keep you up?”

“No.”

He rolled to his side, propping himself up on one elbow and lifting one dark brow in question. “Don’t you have anything else to say this morning?”

“If your job is boring, why do you do it?”

Both brows lifted in surprise. Talia watched the expressions flit over his features as he tried to decide what to say in response to such an odd question.

“It’s my job, Talia. It’s what I do.”

She considered his answer. There was some truth to it, of course. A job was just that. It was a place you went and a thing you did in order to finance the things in life that meant something.

Weak rays of sunlight peeked around the edges of Talia’s blinds, illuminating Erik’s troubled expression. Though they lay only inches away from each other, the distance seemed a vast chasm given their circumstances.

“It might be what you do, Erik, but if you marry Courteney, you’re letting it become who you are.”

Anger gathered like storm clouds on his face. His green eyes snapped with electricity. “I have a responsibility to see this merger through to the end.”

“To whom?” Talia challenged. “Your shareholders? Your employees? Or how about to Courteney? Would she really want this relationship if she knew how you felt about it? How is this fair to her, let alone yourself?”

Erik remembered Courteney’s ruthless determination to become an Aasen. She hardly deserved Talia’s consideration. “It’s not for you to say. This is my life, my decision, and my choice.”

His voice was loud in the small studio apartment. Talia rose abruptly before the paper-thin walls had absorbed the sound. Grabbing a quilt from the foot of the bed, she pulled it around her naked body.

It was cool in front of the windows. A shiver danced down her spine, and she drew the worn quilt closer. The ancient bedsprings groaned behind her. She braced for the sound of Erik’s bare feet on the floor. No doubt he’d pull on his clothes and leave. After all, he was right. It was his choice to make.

Talia was nothing but a one-night stand who had overstayed her welcome in his life.

“I don’t want to fight.”

The murmured words drifted over her right shoulder. An odd sense of relief settled in when she realized he had no intention of leaving. She should’ve wanted him to go. But a part of her was determined to make him see the wrongness in pursuing the ridiculous merger marriage. And so far that meant showing him what would be missing in a life spent with the wrong woman.

She turned, drinking in his intoxicating scent. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Some parts of me more than others.”

Her eyes drifted down his lean, athletic body before coming to rest on his firm cock. “You don’t look cold.”

He pushed his hands beneath the quilt, exposing the front side of her body to the frigid air inside the apartment. “You do.” Cool hands reached up and palmed her breasts. “But I think I know the perfect way to warm you up.”

The line would’ve been a cliché coming from anybody else. But when Erik lowered his mouth and curled his warm tongue around her stiff nipple, Talia couldn’t remember why clichés were lame to begin with. Instead she was lost in the sensation of his damp tongue rasping across the surface of her sensitive nipple. First one and then the other, until her whole body was flushed with heat and a melting sensation grew between her legs.

His mouth left her breasts and traveled lower, skimming across her belly, leaving a fiery trail of kisses to her navel as he knelt on the floor before her. Her knees turned wobbly, and one hand shot out, gripping the windowsill to keep from falling. Her fingers brushed against the icy windowpane, her other hand knotted in the quilt still draped around her back.

Erik’s palm pressed against the sensitive skin behind her knee, lifting her right foot and resting it against his thigh. Still kneeling before her, the position gave him full access to her body. Her breath came fast as she looked down at the sight of him kissing her inner thigh. She couldn’t rip her gaze away, the anticipation building until she thought she might come just from the rising tension sparking in the air between them.

“Erik.” Her throat was raw and thick with need.

He looked up, holding her with his gaze while he used his hands to spread her outer labia and gave her clit a swipe with the flat of his tongue.

Her knees would have given way but for her hand on the sill. She lost her hold on the quilt, and it fell to the floor. Cold air chilled her skin, but the heat in her pussy trumped the cool sensation until nothing existed but the man lapping insistently at her clit.

Two long fingers probed her damp entrance, pushing gently inside as her muscles clenched against his onslaught. He spread her wider until her swollen clit was burning with pressure that twisted to a point just below pain.

“Erik!”

She chanted his name like a mantra, only half realizing she was doing so. His face left her pussy, and he rose gracefully, his cock bobbing against his stomach as he stood.

Her hands reached greedily toward his hard length, longing to touch the incredibly soft skin. But he wordlessly pushed her away. Instead, he turned her around to face the window. Her hands found purchase on either side of the sill only a moment before he bent her at the waist and impaled her pussy with his rigid cock.

The sudden invasion tore a low moan from her throat. She was ready, her creamy juices slick around him as he backed out and penetrated her again. Her breasts bounced in the cool air, her nipples hardening into tiny points. Every stroke was agony and ecstasy wrapped into one endless sensation.

Heavy balls bounced against her, punctuating each thrust. His hands gripped her hips, pulling her into his body and claiming her as his.

“Come for me, Talia.”

Her body responded to the naked, masculine authority in his husky voice. Her pussy tingled, and she arched her back. Suddenly each long stroke of his shaft skated directly across the swollen tip of her clit. Her body shuddered into orgasm, muscles lost to intense spasms that left her gasping for air as Erik increased his rhythm.

A wet slapping noise filled the apartment as he pounded her body with each thrust of his cock. The whole world seemed to pause, and then he slammed home one last time, pushing hard as his cock pulsed into the depths of her body.

“Are you all right?”

The concern in his voice touched her in places that should have been too strong and independent to care. Her throat swelled closed with emotion, and Talia could do nothing but nod.

“Come and lie down.” Erik gathered her into his arms and deposited her back onto the bed. Nestling in beside her, he pulled the sheet and blanket up over their bodies. “I’m sorry if I was rough. I’m not usually like that.”

Had she ever felt so cherished? It was bizarre, really, that this near stranger could evoke such powerful feelings. Why oh why did he have to be determined to sell himself to someone else?

“Talia, say something.”

She cleared her throat. “We totally had sex in front of a window with the blinds open.”

His chuckle shook the mattress and sent zingers straight to her heart. “If anybody is forced to be awake at this ungodly hour on a Sunday morning, they deserve a show like that.”

“So you don’t care at all that the whole city might’ve seen you naked?”

“No.”

She twisted her head around to see the unapologetic and frankly devilish grin on his face. She couldn’t help but smile back. After all, if she looked as incredible in the buff as Erik did, she’d be shameless too. “You’re so bad.”

His face sobered. “Did I hurt you?”

“I’m not some porcelain doll that’s going to crack if you take me out of the box, Erik.”

The thought of porcelain led to other thoughts about blonde ice princesses. How could she lie here and giggle and joke when she’d just had sex with the man Courteney Colton intended to marry? Again. In fact, she couldn’t seem to
stop
having sex with Erik.

“I recognize that look.” He brushed his lips across hers. “C’mon, get up. I have the perfect remedy to all that thinking you’re doing.”

She was intrigued. “What’s that?”

“Breakfast.”

Chapter Eight

Erik had once claimed that the phrase “money can’t buy everything” was a crock of shit.

Now he wasn’t so certain. In his whole life, he had yet to find a situation he could not manipulate in some way to his advantage. It was one of the things that made him so lethal in a boardroom.

But sometimes what worked in corporate life was woefully inadequate to handle the dilemmas in his personal life. Or at least that was what he was discovering.

“What kind of car is this?”

He glanced at the passenger seat and tried to suppress the enormous smile that kept threatening to overtake his face. Talia was giving the interior of his sports car a very thorough going-over.

She poked at the headliner. “Is that suede on the ceiling?”

“Yeah. The entire interior is leather. Pretty standard on a Porsche.”

“What a pain in the ass to clean.”

Erik whistled. “Man, you’re just chopping away at my ego. First my job, now my car.”

A pretty blush colored her cheeks, and she ducked her head. “I’m sorry. That was rude. I’ve just always wanted a car. So I tend to obsess over details when I get in one.”

The idea that she’d never in her life owned a car rendered him speechless. But why would she have owned a car? The Massachusetts public transit system was well developed. Why deal with the expense of owning the car, let alone trying to find a place to park the damn thing while you weren’t driving it. If his place in Beacon Hill didn’t come complete with parking, he would leave his cars in Brookline.

Talia was still mulling over the car topic. “I think I’d rather have something bigger though.”

“Why?”

“Do you have any idea how large a cello case is? If you got it in this car, you’d never get it out.”

He shrugged. “Put the top down.”

“I swear. Men have solutions for everything.”

Not everything.

Erik pulled up to the curb at his favorite Sunday morning brunch spot. Before he’d exited the vehicle, a young man appeared at the curb. Instead of a typical valet’s uniform, he looked like a dishwasher. Which he was.

“Morning, Mr. Erik.”

“Hey, Sam, good to see you.” Erik handed the kid a fifty. Valet wasn’t really on the menu, but he and Sam had a long-standing arrangement that ended with his Porsche parked in the tiny employee lot out back.

Erik looked around at the sparse Sunday morning traffic around the square. It was the first real cold snap of the season, and people had obviously decided to stay in bed. The damp, frosty air promised another of Boston’s frigid winters lay just around the corner.