He's Come Undone: A Romance Anthology Read online

  Again and again, she hammered into the piece. And again and again, it felt wrong.

  If she played like this in ten days, it’d be a snuff film. She didn’t need to play decently: She needed to play astonishingly. Anything less would kill her career for good. Maybe that was what she needed. An utter disaster to end this charade once and for all. It might even come as a relief.

  Almost three hours later, she finished a run-through of the Schubert without an interruption. Lurching between too mild and too shrill, it hadn’t been good. But it had been complete.

  She fisted her hands in her lap, too enervated to puke or cry. She had poured out every bit of herself, and the ground around her remained bone dry. All she could do was hope the drought wasn’t permanent.

  Kristy clambered to her feet. Where had she left her bag? Here or—

  And that was when she spied Brennan sitting in the small bank of chairs, his expression carefully neutral. But while he might be able to set his jaw and smooth his brow, he couldn’t do anything about his eyes, which were brimming with concern.

  That at least smashed through her numbness. She wanted to tongue-lash the sympathy right out of him.

  “You’re late,” she said.

  He hadn’t been, he couldn’t know what time she’d planned to arrive, but she wanted to be every inch the witch everyone always accused her of being.

  “I’m sorry for that. What adjustments do you want me to make?”

  Had he heard her? The issue hadn’t been related to the instrument.

  “Don’t bother. You were right. I’m the problem.”

  “Kristy, no.” He put up his hands in apology, and somehow his contentiousness about her feelings made her feel worse. He had on a cozy-looking maroon sweater, and between the warmth of the color and the depth of his eyes, she wanted to fall into him—but he didn’t want that, and so she was doubly the fool.

  “Sorry, Quincy told me you were in here. I only meant to stick my head in, but your playing is so compelling that I had to stay.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to have disappointed you. That wasn’t my finest hour.” But it seemed to be all she was capable of these days.

  “Kristy—”

  She started toward the door. “I need to, to go.” She had to run, to explode, to purge her embarrassment somehow. If she could find the parts of herself that had rotted, she could carve them out of her. Get back, somehow, to good.

  “Stop. Please.”

  He set his hands on her shoulders, and that brought her up short. His touch was featherlight, but it still echoed through her, a hammer on an anvil. Everything she’d wanted last night, he could have provided. They had that kind of spark between them.

  Brennan wasn’t anchoring her, wasn’t forcing himself on her, wasn’t touching her as pruriently as she wanted—damn him. So for that reason, the second she drained a little of his warmth for herself, she was going break free from him.

  “Let’s talk about this,” he said.

  After her performance at the restaurant yesterday, she was done talking. “You heard that. It sort of spoke for itself.”

  “I heard a virtuoso performer have an off day.”

  There was a time when she would have been able to believe him. Back when she’d known she was a golden girl, one bad day or rehearsal could be explained. Once your confidence fell to the table like a house of cards, the illusion could only be seen for what it was: a goddamn lie.

  She’d never been a golden girl. She’d never earned or been owed success. All she’d had was luck, and now it had run out.

  She pulled away from him and rushed out into the hallway. Her bag must be in the green room, where at least she could slam a door in Brennan’s stupidly kind face.

  He dogged her steps. “I realize this must feel like a ‘one step forward, two steps back’ thing—”

  “It doesn’t feel like I’m making any progress at all.”

  “—but you were playing with so much energy. That alone is already such an improvement.”

  “Failing. I was failing with so much energy.”

  She opened a door and stepped through it into the darkness of the stage wings. At least she couldn’t see him any longer.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked. “You prepared the piano for me; your job is over. So what’s up with all the rest of it? Buying me wine, trying to get me to open up. Are you making a play for employee of the month here?”

  “This isn’t about work at all.”

  “Are you sure? Because I’ve already decided to fill out the positive comment card for you and everything.”

  She was being as deliberately insulting as she knew how to be, and it wasn’t working. The man wouldn’t take the hint.

  “How can I convince you?” he asked gently.

  “You can’t. You look at me, and you see one of your pianos. Something to be tuned and twisted and voiced. But I’m not an instrument.” At the moment, she couldn’t even play an instrument.

  “That’s not what I think when I look at you.”

  “Really?” She opened the door to her greenroom. Her purse and cup were there, though her coffee had probably gone lukewarm. Whatever, they made her feel more like herself. More in control.

  They gave her the confidence to twist in the doorway, face Brennan, and demand, “What do you see?”

  She was sincerely curious, although she didn’t trust him to tell her the truth. He pitied her, but he didn’t want her. How could he after what he’d just heard? He couldn’t respect her.

  “So?” she prompted again.

  For a few long minutes, she wasn’t certain if he was going to answer her at all. He stood in the half shadows of the hallway, his hands at his sides twitching slightly. He was probably weighing how much of the truth to tell her. What lie could he offer now to placate her without undermining her fragile confidence?

  There wasn’t one.

  The day before, for a single second, she’d thought maybe he could understand, maybe she could trust him with parts of herself she’d guarded jealously. But in the end, he was every bit as disappointing as everyone else.

  She hated how much that pissed her off.

  “I see someone with incredible talent,” he finally ground out.

  “Ha.” Maybe once but not any longer.

  “I see someone with stunning courage.”

  “More like stunning stupidity.” Because if she got up and played in ten days, there was little chance she’d achieve the comeback she needed. It wasn’t brave to fight a battle you knew you were going to lose. It was poor planning and heedlessness. She’d been rash in the past, but she’d also never taken this big a risk.

  “I see someone doing all of this by herself.”

  “I’m a soloist. I can’t depend on anyone else.” At the end of the day, she’d live or die in the spotlight—all by herself.

  He drew a deep breath, and, with his eyes closed, he said, “I see a beautiful woman.”

  Those words were soft, confessional, and she almost laughed at them.

  “I was literally one of People’s most beautiful people three years ago.”

  He wasn’t exactly revealing anything shocking and she wasn’t being vain; her good looks were carefully cultivated and just a fact.

  He gave his head a slight shake. “But when other people look at you, they see the façade. You…dazzle them.”

  “Damn right I do.” The façade was all she had left.

  “When I say you’re beautiful, I don’t mean the obvious things.”

  A long pause, in which her heart, her stupid heart, yearned.

  Then, “I mean the way you brazen through a music world that doesn’t know what to do with you, throwing it in the faces of those condescending assholes. You give them exactly what they want, but then you play ten times better then they expect and so they worship you. And I mean the plaintive twist you’ve made on the motif in the Schubert now—no, don’t argue with me.”

  She’d been about to, partial
ly because she needed to hide behind something, anything. She didn’t ever want him to stop talking, but she couldn’t stop from wringing her hands while he did it. It was too much. It was everything.

  “There are ways in which you play better today than you did two years ago,” he went on. “I can see the moments when your doubt flares back up, but in the last four days, I’ve seen you wrestle it down over and over again. You screwed up today, I get that. But the way you did it? So much grit. Nothing held back. It slayed me. You slay me. I wouldn’t blame you a bit if you wanted to walk away from this entire thing. You don’t have to do this. You could be anything. But your determination, it’s beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

  He opened his eyes then, and the truth of what he’d said was written there. He believed those words. He did see her, all of the broken bits of her, and he still thought she was beautiful.

  Fucking Paganini on a pogo stick.

  Maybe the problem with spending your career trying to convince other people you’re fabulous is that when you hoodwink them, you don’t trust the resulting adulation. Audiences were marks, and she’d fleeced them all.

  But with Brennan, she’d been too focused on her task to try to astonish him. Too low to even try. Which meant that this was real.

  A new kind of awareness shimmered in her body.

  As if he felt it too, he rubbed his fingers together. “My God, Kristy, say something.”

  “You really believe all that?” She’d already decided he did, but her brain was still churning like the sea before a hurricane.

  “How many times do you need to hear me say it?”

  “A few more.”

  They shared…not a smile. Something too secret, too complex for that. But the space around them tightened.

  “You’re beautiful,” he repeated.

  She shoved her hair out of her face, touched her mouth, shifted her weight. This was stupid. It was madness. Why was this making her squirm? How could she feel good after how she’d just played?

  But she did. He took all of that away.

  “You’re beautiful. So damn beautiful.”

  “You probably try that line on everyone.”

  “I try it on no one.”

  It was probably naïve of her, but she believed that too.

  Which was why she motioned to him with one finger. “Come here.”

  He stammered, “I shouldn’t, I—”

  “You really should.”

  After an elegant moment of hesitation, he curved into the room, closed and locked the door, and pinned her against the wall.

  Chapter 5

  Passionato

  Brennan couldn’t stop trembling. Even once his fists were pressed into the wall, his elbows too, and Kristy was watching him through those perceptive eyes of hers, he kept quaking inside. Little aftershocks from the seismic blow she’d delivered: In this moment, she needed him.

  Damn the rules. Burn them. Abolish them. They had no place in this greenroom.

  He’d wanted to be of service to her, and he’d wanted her. God, how he’d wanted her. For now, just for today, he could touch her. He could chase away the chill of her imperfect rehearsal. Banish her fears, at least for a few minutes. Make real what he saw in her.

  “I can kiss you? That is, you’re sure?” He had a trillion billion other questions for her—why? chief among them—but they could wait. As long as she wanted him, the rest didn’t matter. He was going to make her feel good, whatever the cost to himself.

  “Yes.”

  Kristy might struggle to have confidence in herself, but there was no hesitation in her assent. The word reverberated in him.

  Because this would never happen again, he didn’t rush. Slowly, slowly he dipped his forehead until it rested against hers. She shifted against him, and he shivered from the profound intimacy of belly brushing belly. Thigh snaking between thigh.

  When he trailed two fingers across one of her cheeks, he knew her skin wasn’t the softest thing he’d ever touched. When he came to her mouth and traced its bow, they weren’t the lushest lips on earth. When he fitted his hand into her hair, the strands weren’t pure silk. But somehow, he couldn’t believe any of that. She was the softest, the lushest, the most lovely.

  Her breathing was shallow, her exhales impatient. So he caught her lower lip in his mouth for the barest instant. Just one moment of contact, and he had to catch his breath. He was dizzy enough that his next kiss caught the corner of her mouth, where her almost smile originated.

  She giggled, quietly but with pleasure.

  “That’s what I want to hear,” he whispered.

  “I want more kissing.”

  Feeling foolish, he pressed his lips into her hair—he’d been wrong, it was the silkiest thing on earth—and then to the hinge of her jaw, and, at last, he fused his mouth to hers. This was temporary. It was discrete. But his hunger for her was so acute, that kissing her felt like taking. As if he could consume these sensations and possess them forever. He couldn’t be gentle when her tongue stroked his, or when he realized she tasted like coffee and mint. There wasn’t restraint when she made a noise like he’d only begun to satisfy her and her hips rocked into his. What was control when her fingernails were scoring his neck and back?

  The kiss was frantic, and growing more so by the minute. Now that the rules had been rescinded, all pretense had evaporated. They’d gone feral.

  He dragged his hands over her sides, cataloguing the places he wanted to linger later. Her breasts, which were small and firm and made him salivate. Her nipples, which were already reaching for him through her bra and dress. Her waist, and the swell of her stomach, and her ass, oh sweet Lord, her ass.

  He palmed it, feeling filthy, but when she shivered and rasped herself against him, against where his cock was aching for her—well, he did it again. Brought their hips level. Mimed what he wanted to do to her: against the wall, over that ratty couch, on top of the makeup table.

  Tonguing her neck, he groaned, “I wish I were the kind of man who carries condoms.”

  “We’ll be creative.”

  Where she was concerned, that wasn’t a problem. His desire for her was a mania, overwhelming even his own reticence. As long as she kept gasping for air every time their mouths broke apart, he wasn’t worried whether he was being too forward. Too hungry. Too needy.

  He didn’t feel self-conscious as he dropped open-mouthed kisses over her collarbone. As he bent and bit her breasts, actually bit them, through her dress. As he put a hand over her mouth to muffle her cries as he did it again. As he knelt and kissed down her stomach. As he rubbed his knuckles against her mons.

  Her back bowed and her chin instantly tipped up at that. “Oh God, please. Please, please, please.”

  He might be worshipping at her feet, but she’d given him the control. He stroked his hand against her again, finding the spot she needed and setting the pace. Anchoring her with the clenched fingers of his free hand and his face, the dimple of her belly button against his nose with only some cotton in between, as he worked her flesh. The intimacy of groping toward her pleasure like this bewildered him.

  When she came with one stunned whimper, it rang through him. Set all of his nerves alight. But he wasn’t satisfied. Not half so.

  When her breathing had leveled out, he dropped his hand to the floor, then yanked the hem of her dress up and began to rain kisses on her legs. Blunt, strong calves—that didn’t surprise him. Even the woman’s gosh darn knees were sexy. When he reached her waist and discovered that her panties were lacy, black, and damp, he had to take a minute to catch his breath at the sight. But then he began working them down her hips and over her Chuck Taylors.

  “Brennan, I…” Her fingers knitted in his hair, and she tugged gently, trying to get him to look up. “I don’t think I can again.”

  “You can.”

  He knew it the same way the taste of her arousal on her thighs, when he put his mouth there a moment later, was familiar. This might be the first
and only time for them, but it had the tang of rightness.

  He gently coaxed one of her legs over his shoulder, opening her up. Bringing his mouth precisely where he wanted it to be, and, based on the breathy noises she was making, where she wanted it too.

  Her hips jerked, and for an instant she ground herself against him. Then she recoiled, pushing her spine flat against the wall. That was not what he wanted. He wanted her to work out every single greedy, selfish impulse she had with him. He wanted to tick off every one of her boxes.

  He hummed against her, urged her on with his fingers on her hips, lured her with the stroke of his tongue. Come on, honey. Let loose with me.

  At last, tentatively, she rolled her body. He groaned. And then her next efforts weren’t shy in the least.

  This wasn’t him performing anything on her; this was a thing they did together. Her clit, his tongue, her rhythm, their desire. And in the end, he was right. She could come again.

  Finally, reluctantly, he sat back on his heels.

  She had her hands glued against the wall, as if the ridges on her fingers had found microscopic purchase. Her hair was tousled, her eyes closed, her lips twisted in a crooked smile—and there wasn’t a hint of tension in her body.

  When she turned her eyes to him, her expression was halfway between sleepy and drunk. “That was something.”

  “Do you believe me now? That I think you’re beautiful?”

  She shook her head, but the shape of her smile was a bit smug. “I think you’re far, far more wild than you let on, Brennan Connelly.” She pushed off of the wall. “Come ’ere.”

  Good things, delicious things, came after that prompt.

  He clambered to his feet, and she pulled him across the room and gently shoved him down onto the couch. She rucked her long dress up to her waist before straddling his lap.

  “That was amazing,” she said, setting one hand on his shoulders.