Page 95 of Once an Angel
only too well the feel of him beneath her fingers. With his long legs stretched out before him and his
eyes glittering beneath the ebony silk of his lashes, he didn't look the sort of gentleman to seduce his ward. He looked the sort to ravish her.
Emily experimented by striking an off-key chord. A muscle in his jaw twitched dangerously. She hid her smile behind a frown of concentration. As she finished the minuet, his shoulders slumped and he tossed back the rest of the Scotch in a relieved swig. Shooting him a sly glance, she hooked her fingers and started at the beginning again.
Justin choked. He shot out of the chair, his face darkened with emotion. "For God's sake, woman!
You're not some wind-up monkey beating a drum. Must you play like one? "
Emily froze, her fingers poised over the keys.
His sisters gaped at him in open-mouthed shock. They had seen their brother frustrated, morose,
angry, elated, and white-faced with shame beneath his father's taunts, but they'd never seen him show deliberate cruelty to anyone.
His breath seared the back of her neck as he folded his hands over hers, forcing them out of their rigid stance.
"Loosen your fingers," he commanded. "Stop clawing the keys like a bloody cat. "
He massaged each of her knuckles until her hands went limp in his rough embrace. "There. Can you
feel the difference?"
"Yes," she murmured. "I can feel it."
She could feel other things as well. The press of his muscled thigh against her back. The whisper of his breath against her cheek, its Scotch-warmed fragrance as intoxicating as fresh sin. She gazed down at their linked hands. His knuckles had yet to lose their island tan.
She could also feel his fingers on top of hers, stroking them toward the waiting keys. A shimmering
chord vibrated on the air.
"That's it," he said, his voice softening to husky velvet. "Don't attack the keys. Stroke them. Possess them. Make them your own."
He reversed their positions, slipping his hands beneath hers until they rested lightly in the cup of her palms. Her hands looked pale and delicate against the swarthiness of his own. He began the piece, not merely playing the keys but seducing them with his touch. She could feel the music reverberating through his powerful tendons. She turned her head to watch his face, captivated by the play of emotions over his handsome features.
"Music isn't like sewing, Emily. It's feeling and not skill that separates mastery from mechanics. Listen to this piece. It's deceptively simple. But hear it as Mozart did. See the dancers twirling around the ballroom. See two lovers meet and touch hands."
The final note chimed with the crystalline purity of a bell. Their gazes locked in its echo.
Justin felt his breath quicken. Emily smelled like burnt vanilla and her ringlets made her look like a forlorn cocker spaniel, but all he wanted to do was graze his lips against the creamy flesh of her throat and sink his teeth into the inviting fullness of her lower lip.
She gazed up at him, her eyes wide and guileless. "Like this?"
She slipped her hands beneath his and played the piece with the flawless accuracy of any schoolgirl accustomed to a music teacher rapping her knuckles for each error.
Justin straightened. His voice sounded tight, as if something were caught in his throat. "Yes. That will
do very nicely."
As he spun on his heel and marched out of the room, Olivia Connor buried her face in her embroidery, her plump ringlets dancing with amusement.
* * *
The next day Emily ducked into the kitchen, seeking an escape from Lily. Justin's sister had devised
some gruesome new coiffure for that night's dinner party, and had been trailing her for hours,
brandishing an iron and some alarming tongs that looked better suited for shoeing horses. She doubted
