Page 15 of His UnBearable Touch

Natale trailed her fingertips from his shoulder to his heart. “I feel wonderful, but you, my love, need to listen a little closer.” She rose up on her toes and leaned closer to his ear. “I said that we need to get to bed.”

Salvatore ignored his mate’s protest as he swept her off of her feet and walked toward the door. “Give Allegra our love when you see her and let us know when she’s moving in.”

When the door closed behind them, Valerio let out a long breath and leaned his head back against the cold glass window. The room had lost much of its heat when they left, but the room didn’t feel empty.

He didn’t even feel the pangs of loneliness that he used to feel standing in his bedroom.

Allegra. His mate. He had found the one woman who called to both sides of his soul.

She was safely tucked away inside her apartment and he knew that he should follow Natale’s advice, get rest and see her in the morning. They had, he knew deep down inside, the rest of their lives to be together.

* * *

Dreams were a rare commodity for Allegra. Most days, she practiced until she was half asleep, leaning her head against the scroll, the pegs tangling in her hair. When she woke, clutching her precious Emiliani instrument to her heart, she would carefully lay the instrument down in its customary space and make her way along the wall to her bed.

By then, she was likely sound asleep, her head silent and still.

When she did dream, it was likely a nightmare. Flashes of memory, sights of anger and jagged glass replayed over and over in her head. At first, she’d had the benefit of pain killers. Later exhaustion had taken over when the pills no longer silenced her memories.

But the farther her pain receded in her memories, the easier it was to fall asleep. Recreating a life for herself was exhausting, but she welcomed the heavy sleep that rolled her under and kept her there until her alarm dragged her back into the real world.

Allegra knew that tonight was unique. Instead of practicing for hours on her concert pieces, she’d spent a good long time reliving the memories of that very day. The fear that she’d felt in the subway didn’t sting at her. Instead, she focused on the way Valerio had taken fear and changed it to relief. He’d taken danger and made it into salvation.

She’d fallen asleep to the sound of his voice in her head, not from her aching fingers.

The piano reached her ears first. A stately introduction, with a good moderate pace and then a soft rush of sound up and down the scales as if it couldn’t help but fall through the notes on gravity alone.

More piano… carrying the accompaniment forward, but where was the melody? Where was the song of the cello above the rush of fingers and pounding hammers?

The song, incomplete, begged for its other half. Chopin always did seem a little needy for her taste, so many notes. So many lines. More and more, its demand didn’t ease.

Allegra reached out for her bow and came up empty. She leaned her head to the side and felt nothing against her shoulder.

Shifting her body, she hoped to find the cool curve of wood against the inside of her thighs, cradling the instrument that she knew better than her own skin.

Nothing.

And then it came to her.

Startled she sat up and clutched her blankets to her chest as if it was a shield. As if it would protect her from him.

The music droned on, but she could swear that she was awake.

She could swear that the noise in her head was just another nightmare.

She was trapped somewhere unable to escape, locked in a memory that never happened.

Haunted by a piece of music that she had practiced but never performed.

Allegra covered her ears, squeezing her eyes shut, as if it made any difference. The sound came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time and she wondered if she was finally losing her mind.

It would be a supreme middle-finger salute to her after all of these years. To believe that she’d moved on from the attack, become independent, only to lose her sanity… was fate so cruel?

“Stop.”

She almost laughed.

Who was she talking to?

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