Overture - Skye Warren Page 0,7
every aspect of my body with an impersonal evergreen glance. This is the way he corrects my position—no slouching, no leaning. He treats violin practice like a drill, and I am his soldier. I must do it right, must do it again, do you want to give up? No, sir.
Mostly, mostly, I love this about him. Today I don’t.
What’s wrong? This crush on him. It’s wrong and taboo and completely unstoppable. “I don’t feel good,” I say, which isn’t entirely a lie. I don’t feel good, but I don’t feel bad either. Instead I feel… enervated. There hasn’t been room in my life for feelings before. Only music.
He studies me with the same impassive expression he would give a map. Around this corner and aha, there, through that mountain pass. Something he must traverse. “Since when?”
Since Kimberly Cox came to the house.
Since he kissed her in his office while I watched through a crack in the door. Though it would be more accurate to say she kissed him.
She stalked him through the house like a tiger over the plains.
And I followed her like a house cat, clumsy, copying.
She pressed her body against his. I heard his surprised inhale of breath, so quiet, so quiet. Heard the sound that came low in her throat. Her whole body moved in some purely feminine way, like water, so fluid. And he was a rock, solid and hard. Her hand reached between them, and he became somehow more still.
Until he grasped her wrist and pushed her away.
Something became warm inside me. Warm and new. Seventeen years old means I know what sex is about but I’ve never seen it, not that close, not with a man I looked up to like a father. Well, not exactly a father.
He may have legal custody of me, but I’ve never quite seen him as a father.
Something flashes through Liam’s dark eyes. Worry? “Is it the tour?”
“No, of course not. I’m ready for the tour.” Though ready isn’t exactly the word I would use to describe myself. Terrified and breathless, maybe. The interview also drove home how soon I’ll leave for the tour. Three months from now I’ll walk out these doors.
Three months from now everything will change.
Liam puts his hand on my forehead, the contact so sudden I make a squeak of surprise. “No fever,” he mutters, more to himself than to me. “Should I call Dr. Foster?”
“It’s probably nothing,” I say quickly, besieged by an image of the doctor making a house call. Wet, he would announce after an examination. And flushed. And clenching her thighs every time you look at her. It’s an acute case of lust, I’m afraid. Only one thing can cure it.
I can understand Liam’s surprise. When’s the last time I caught a cold?
Maybe never.
In this household bodies are treated like one of the well-oiled guns in his cabinet. Organic vegetables and grass-fed beef. We sleep on a schedule designed for optimum performance. There’s no entry in the procedure for Samantha has a crush on Liam North, the man who’s taken care of her for the last six years.
“Rest,” he says, nodding his head, decisive. “You’ll take the rest of the day off.”
“I’m sure I’ll feel better tomorrow.” Maybe once I’ve hidden under the covers, touching myself and pretending it’s him, making myself come about a thousand times.
His brows draw together. It’s a strange look on him. It takes me a minute to place it—uncertainty. He’s never looked uncertain before. “Maybe I should call the doctor.”
“God. No. Please.”
That only makes his expression more severe. “Samantha. Are you sure?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer. Two fingers tilt my chin up. His other hand holds my face up for his focus. His thumb brushes my eyebrow. My cheek. My jaw. All entirely ordinary places on a body, somehow lit by a thousand lights. There’s no reason a man can’t touch a young woman he considers his daughter, when he’s worried that she’s sick. It doesn’t mean he wants to have sex with her, never that.
Except he looks a little shaken when he’s done with his perusal, his eyes blinking as if surprised to find himself touching me, his throat working as he swallows. “You would tell me if something were wrong.”
Not a question. It’s a statement. “Yes.”
I manage not to add sir, but only barely.
When I first moved here, I called him sir like the young recruits he trained. Yes, sir. No, sir. He inspires that kind of respect. The people from his company