BorntobeWild (6 page)

“You never did that before.”

No, he never had. Not with anyone except her. He hadn’t felt
he could do that before, while other women appealed to him so strongly. This
time he only wanted her. “It’s different. We’re friends. We were exclusive
before, remember?”

“Nearly.” She tucked her chin down but he wouldn’t let her,
brought it back up again. “You enjoyed it, didn’t you?”

“Kind of.” A threesome with his roommate. He could hardly
recall what the guy looked like. He’d had plenty of ménages since but usually
with more females to males, since his tastes ran in that direction. But that
was his first. A limited success because while he usually relished watching a
woman enjoying herself, even one he was involved with, for some reason he’d
hated it with Cyn. His heart warmed at her words with a possessive streak that
half scared him, half fascinated him. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why ‘kind of’?”

She shook her head slightly. “I guess I’m a prude.”

He laughed, holding her tight. “Not a word I’d associate
with you. Ever. Admit it, Cyn. You didn’t enjoy sharing me.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“And I didn’t enjoy sharing you. So we won’t, okay?”

“Sure.”

A sense of lightness invaded his body. Another point fought
for and won. He didn’t want anybody near her while he was by. The intensity of
his feelings shocked him, sent a new feeling of rightness through him.

He kissed her and she kissed him right back, sweet now their
initial need had gone. They could fuck with the finesse and care he sometimes
brought to the act when the mood took him, as it did now.

He let his hair, currently cut in a straight bob to a breath
below his jaw, trail across her skin as he nuzzled down her throat. He touched
the cord at the base with his lips before gently suckling the hollow in front.
She made a sound he felt rather than heard, watched the vibrations before
moving on to her breasts. He loved her breasts. Not big, not small, just right.
Who said ‘anything bigger than a handful is a waste’? Whoever it was, Riku
tended to agree. He couldn’t quite hold them completely in his hands, giving
him a sense of luscious abundance. Firm but not rigid, he caressed them,
enjoying the softness and took his time before he kissed them, keeping his
movements gentle but determined.

“You’re a breast man?”

“And a leg man and a waist man and a navel man.” He went farther
down, dipping his tongue into the part in question then kissing the skin inside
her hipbones. She squirmed and he laughed, sheer delight infusing him.

“You remembered,” she said breathlessly.

“That you’re very sensitive there? Yeah.” He’d remembered
that part a lot. Her voice sounded more musical, almost singing, a husky tone
adding an edge to her vocals. “Have you practiced?”

“What?” She sounded startled, as if she thought he meant
something else.

“Singing. Do you still sing?”

A pause, a telling one. He didn’t know if she was wondering
if she should tell him the truth, or if she had to think about her answer. “I
do occasionally but not opera. Folk sometimes, English folk. And jazz. Classics
or whatever I’ve heard on the radio. Just because I gave up my career doesn’t
mean I have to give up the enjoyment I get when I sing.”

He detected a wistful note. He was always good at
interpreting the meaning behind words, because of his highly trained musical
ear, he guessed.

Enough. The scent of her wreathed him, maddening him into
taking hasty action. He reined back the urge to dive in and teased her instead,
kissing down the line between her navel and pubic bone. Taking his time,
reacquainting his mouth with her body. He licked her, allowing the tip of his
tongue to graze her clit. With a short “Ah!” she arched.

“Sing to me now,” he commanded. “If you do I’ll eat you out
until you’re screaming.” He looked forward to it. Immensely. Curiosity took
him. Did she still possess that glorious voice? Even if it hadn’t pleased her
teachers it had delighted him. It still baffled him that they hadn’t grabbed
her while they had her.

Their business but he wasn’t there for the aftermath. He was
here now.

She sang. At first her voice quavered but he heard when she
opened her throat and then the sound soared. She launched into an old tune,
something he vaguely recognized from their time before. She’d always enjoyed
folk music. A pretty, joyful melody, a song of celebration.

Entirely appropriate.

Enraptured he fell on her, took what he’d denied himself and
sucked her clit fully into his mouth. He imitated the regular rhythms of
lovemaking, sucking and releasing, working her until the little pearl stiffened
and jutted out. That gave him the liberty of increasing his fierce attack on
her until she caught her breath, the melody halting with a suddenness that left
it echoing around the small room.

Immediately he halted. “Keep going.”

She moaned his name, clutched his hair. He knew what he’d
done, stopped as she was about to come but he wanted this and he’d ensure she
did it. “Sing,” he commanded.

Again the sound rolled over his head, and he went back to
his task. This time she lost the words but kept the tune, the tune sending him
soaring with giddy delight. He pushed two fingers deep inside her pussy and
sucked her clit as she clenched his hair and came and came.

Never, ever had he felt anything like the joy of that
moment, her voice ringing in his ears, her body subservient to him. Whatever
happened next, he wouldn’t forget this. It would remain with him until the day
he died.

She was trembling when he disentangled himself and returned
to her. He didn’t care if he orgasmed or not. Could the mind climax? He thought
so.

The sight of a small package on the little shelf by the bed
took his interest. He grabbed the packet and gazed down at her, loving her
total openness. “I’m yours,” she murmured. “That was amazing.”

“Spectacular,” he agreed. “Is that enough?”

She shook her head, her hair clinging to the pillow in
golden threads. “No. Fuck me, Riku.”

He gave her a gentle kiss and kept his lips nuzzling hers as
he said, “I’ll make love to you if you want.” That was what he felt like. “But
you have to sing.”

He’d take the possible deafening, because her voice wasn’t a
paltry instrument. He wanted her singing more.

“Any requests?” She threaded her fingers through his hair,
smiling gently in post-climax euphoria. He shook his head and took his
attention away for the brief moment he needed to sheathe himself.

“Whatever you feel like.”

He entered her to the sound of her song. This time he didn’t
know the tune. It had the folk vibe but with something else added, a touch of
classical. It shouldn’t work but it did. The husky edge he’d noticed earlier
returned to frame the sounds. Without it, the song wouldn’t sound right. She
sang about sitting in a window seat with a book, waiting for the person who was
tormenting her thoughts, so much that she couldn’t concentrate on her story.
Bits and pieces interspersed her thoughts.

He slid deep inside, her body accepting him as always. This
time the music vibrated deep inside her, massaging his cock with little ripples
of sonic sensation.

After two verses he recognized the chorus and joined in. He
wasn’t the best singer in the world—hell, he wasn’t even the best singer in
Murder City Ravens—but he could hold a tune and did backing vocals
occasionally. He joined in, put in his deeper, masculine tones with hers but
didn’t harmonize or echo. Instead he threaded a different melody in, adding his
own version, dropping them into her lyrics to add a darker, more ambiguous
tone. It wouldn’t work anywhere but here. Nobody else would get it but she did,
smiling at him and then laughing at his increasingly audacious interruptions.
Her song became a careful dichotomy of opinions, bordering on the argumentative
while he fucked her senseless.

He gave her the force he’d so carefully held back in the
shower, slamming into her, trying to push her voice off-key. He succeeded but
not for long. Like a real professional, she discarded her failures and returned
to the true and when the song ended, she started again.

He didn’t have to tell her to continue. She’d gotten the
point and the rumbling truth their bodies shared. She came, a small twitch and
then a stronger tightening but she only stopped for a second, carrying on,
racing him to the finish.

The tune lost most of its artistry as he drove her harder.
Then it lost the words and then the glorious richness as she closed her mouth
and hummed her way through. He didn’t give up, timing his punctuation to his
thrusts so his voice didn’t quaver. She thrust back, pressing her shoulders
against the mattress to force her lower body against his. This time he hit her
sweet spot with every stroke and her juices gushed, drenching his balls and his
upper thighs. He groaned her name, turned his lyric into
sin
rather than
Cyn
, a hackneyed comparison he’d avoided before. But now his mind was
melting and he fell on the obvious to keep going.

She screamed, “Riku!”, wrapped her legs around his and
dragged him in. Then she put her hands on his butt and impelled him to push
deeper. Hard and fast, he worked her, gritted his teeth and hummed at the back
of his throat as she came to the precipice. She fell, her tones an echo in his
head as he tumbled after her into the blessed void.

“Shit.”

“Not the most romantic response I’ve ever had.” She gasped,
laughing. “What the fuck did we just do?”

“Probably woke up the whole street,” he replied, grinning.
He rolled off her but went up on one elbow to hold her around her waist and
gaze down at her. “One of the most insane things I’ve ever done.” He dropped a
gentle kiss on the tip of her nose. “Also one of the best.”

“Why did you make me sing?”

“I’ve always loved your voice. I don’t care what anybody
else thinks. The world of song lost a great soprano in you.”

She frowned at him. “What do you mean they lost it? I never
gave them a chance.”

His turn to frown. “You didn’t?”

“I thought you knew.” She touched his face. “I turned them
down, not the other way around.”

Cyn watched Riku’s bemusement. A shard of the shield she’d
formed around herself fell away from her heart. He hadn’t known? True, she’d
never told him but she assumed he’d asked his teachers.

Her mood sinking, she realized he’d imagined her a failure.
Which she was but not in the way he’d thought. “I never failed my final
auditions. I walked away.”

“But why?” Bewilderment clouded his eyes, an expression she
wasn’t used to seeing in Riku. Few people were, she guessed, because he always
seemed in control of himself and his life and knew which way he was going.

She hadn’t. She’d sailed through the institute, loved her
work, never noticed until the very last where they were taking her. She blamed
herself for that. When the final day had come, the truth had hit her with the
impact of a sledgehammer. She couldn’t do this, shouldn’t. Mustn’t.

He twined a strand of her hair around his fingers, playing
with it like a skein of silk, watching the figure-of-eight patterns he was
making. Not her face. “I always loved your voice. A tad powerful but true and
clear, even when you used the volume pedal to the max. You could wake up a
regiment. True, your coloratura wasn’t up to the standard of Vitoria de Los
Angeles but—”

“They told me I was a Wagnerian soprano in the making.”

Now he didn’t look bewildered. He looked amazed, his jaw
dropping, his eyes wide.

Wagnerian or dramatic sopranos were as rare as hens’ teeth.
Great sopranos, the kind who could hold an opera together were rare but the
clear, decibel-shattering power of a Wagnerian soprano happened maybe once in a
generation. Women capable of singing for six hours or more, of outpacing their
tenor, baritone and bass male equivalents, of voicing their strength and
vulnerabilities powerfully enough to force tears from audiences of thousands.

“What’s the catch?”

She might have known he’d think of that. “No catch. They
offered me a scholarship to Bayreuth.”

His fingers stilled but he kept her hair in his grasp. She
couldn’t move her head without hurting herself. “Cyn?” Now he sounded lost.
Much as she’d felt when they proposed the dream of a lifetime. Just not her
lifetime.

“They named teachers eager to work with me. Names you’d
know. Apparently one was at my final audition and word got around.”

“You walked out that day and never came back.” He stated
what everyone knew. They knew nothing else. “When you didn’t come to Paris I
asked and they told me you’d opted to leave the institute without graduating. I
thought you’d failed in some way.”

“I just left.” She swallowed. Time to tell someone the
secret she’d hugged to herself for so long. “If I’d let them pass me you know
what that would have meant. I couldn’t have refused, they’d have made me.” She
stopped, waited for him to tell her.

“Years of work. Hours of practice. World fame. More money
than you could count. Adoration.” He paused. “Ridicule, hatred and crazies.”

“Stalkers?” He nodded in confirmation. She realized what he
was saying. “All that happened to you?” He nodded again. “What makes it
worthwhile? For you, I mean?”

“The music.” He responded so quickly she knew he didn’t have
to think about his answer. “I get to create something I love with people I
admire and, yes, I love them too. I won’t say we’re like a family, because we
all have our relatives and we’re different. We relate to them in different
ways. Or we don’t.”

So Riku still had problems at home. Not that he’d ever
admitted it to her but his parents’ absence at the institute on concert days
told her.

“Anyhow, we are best friends, all of us. V joined at the
beginning of the tour and it’s as if we’ve known her forever. She slotted in,
found her place as if it was there waiting for her.” He released the lock of
hair only to select another to play with. “What the fuck made you turn your
back on everything you worked so hard for?”

“Don’t you remember what I wanted to do?”

He nodded. “To sing. You sang a lot of Mozart, some Bellini
and Puccini.”

“I wanted to be a coloratura.” The kind of soprano who led
operas, who became true divas. The people for whom the modern meaning of the
word was coined. Callas, Sutherland, Melba. The soprano who could perform vocal
acrobatics. She’d heard a recording of Callas singing
Vissi d’Arte
and
she’d fallen in love.

“You could do that. If you can sing Wagner you can do
anything.”

“Not true.” She swallowed again. This was harder than she’d
imagined, explaining the choice that had made her leave it all behind. Her career,
her ambitions, everything, all in one day. Gone. Worse, she’d done it of her
own volition. This man understood exactly what she’d thrown away. Would he
think her selfish? “They told me I’d be a good, respectable coloratura. Their
words. If I took the path ordained for me—by God, one examiner said—I’d be sure
of the best. They tried to guilt me out, blind me with the glories I could have
on and offstage, the wealth, the pampering but I still said no.”

“They were that certain? When you were twenty-one they could
tell?” He sounded scornful, skeptical even. “It takes years to create the best
soprano voices and many fall by the way. You might have been one of them. You
weren’t there yet. Your voice could’ve changed in training. Did you think of
that?” He stroked her waist, held her close.

“They did. And I did, deep inside. I could sing loud and
pour emotion into my voice. I could sing dramatic parts. In time I’d be the
Brünnhilde of my generation. They wouldn’t have allowed me to do anything else.
At every turn they’d drag me back to the dramatic parts.”

He snorted. “So you left.”

“Yes. My mother was deeply disappointed but she thought I
deserved a gap year. The institute didn’t but they arranged for me to have
lessons after I left.”

“Did you go?”

She hesitated then jerked a nod. “It kept my mother happy.
My father had just died and she needed something to cling to.” She paused
again. She’d never told him much about her home life. “I never got on with my
dad, not really. He didn’t like to let people close. But I used his death as an
excuse. They said, take a year off, rest, think about things. They were sure
I’d come back. But I didn’t and I didn’t intend to when I left.” She didn’t
want to talk about it anymore. Weariness swept over her in a great wave. It had
been some day. “I got into jewelry instead.”

He glanced around. “You could have a penthouse on the East
Side instead of this. I don’t mean to disparage your choices but Cyn…”

She laughed, glad to change the subject, or at least get it
off her singing. “I got this place when I took over the business. I rented the
store from a lady who was retiring. The two stores in Midtown. I leased the
small store by the park two years later. My Dad’s insurance money paid for it.
When it came through my mother said I needed the money more than she did. I
want to pay her back but she…” she broke off, unable to explain her complex
relationship with her surviving parent. “Just say it would have upset her more
if I’d said no, and she was torn up by my father’s death.”

“And you weren’t?”

Something she could tell him. She’d shied away from telling
anyone the details she’d told him now because they always tried to persuade her
and she’d made up her mind. “Not as much. Dad was never what you might call
open and loving with me. Maybe it was his army training but he never related to
people properly. Then he got cancer and died in a year and then the court case
proved he’d contracted it because of his time in the forces when he was
involved with nuclear weapons and then—” she stopped again. “Too much to tell
you in one go. I got the money and spent it on the business. I didn’t have any
left over at the time. This place wasn’t half so bad an area when I arrived.
But they’ve gentrified a lot of Queens and the people who lived here before
either moved on or squished into the remaining areas. This is a tiny pocket of
the old Queens.”

“So the gangs came in. You should leave, Cyn.” He dropped
the lock of hair and cupped her cheek. “Please think about it.”

“I’m already thinking. I need to start afresh and I can
afford to do it now. We’re doing well.” She beamed. “In fact we’re so busy I’ve
not had the time to arrange a new place.”

“I’ll help,” he said firmly. “In the meantime use my
apartment.”

“No.”

“Yes. I bought a great apartment I’ve hardly seen in a year.
You can live there. Pay me rent if you want to.”

He bent and kissed her. She curled her arm around his neck
and held him there. This was much better than talking. Already she’d let him
know more than she’d told anyone else. He delved his tongue lazily into her
mouth, tasted and explored her. She gave herself to the kiss, his cock
hardening against her thigh, heating her desire for him. But he drew away, put
a little distance between them and when she whimpered and moved toward him he shook
his head and lay down. He pulled her against him to rest on his shoulder. “Think
about it, is all. Maybe I’ll hear of somewhere near mine.”

“I’d like that. I could lease.”

“Okay, we’ll do that. I have people. I’ll ask them to help.”

“No.” She lifted her leg to tuck between his calves, as she
used to. So long since she’d done it but it came back as if they’d been
sleeping together for years. Eight and a half years to be precise.

“They won’t mind. Zazz has decided to invest in property and
they’re investigating places. He’s sick of hotels. I know what he means.” He
grunted, a sound that signified he was settling into sleep.

A pang of jealousy appeared out of nowhere and hit her right
in the heart. How many other women knew that little noise? How many had he
slept with?

She had no right to feel this way. She’d left him, abandoned
everything she knew and sent him a note. He was free to fuck whomever he
wanted, whenever and however. Two at a time sounded interesting to her but not
something she wanted now. Not that she had to because they’d promised each
other exclusivity. Riku always kept his promises.

In the morning she couldn’t get up without waking him but
she evaded his grasping hands and took her shower alone, refusing to let him
in. “I have to visit the uptown store today,” she said. “You can come with me
but I do need to go.”

“Are you free afterward?”

She considered. “Saturday’s usually a busy day for us but
Maddy and Janey can handle it. Janey manages the uptown store.” She groped for
the shampoo and washed her hair properly, remembering the conditioner this
time. She couldn’t have gone in to work looking like she had that morning, hair
tousled and all over the place, especially when she was meeting a client. “I’m
meeting with someone who could take my designs to London. He’s interested in
commissioning a line.”

He gave a low whistle. “Important, then. I’ll be good. Do
you want me there?”

She wanted to show him what she did these days. “Yes. You
might be an asset.”

He laughed. “First time anyone’s called me that. Except
maybe Chick.”

“Doesn’t the band say you’re an asset?” She turned off the
water, found her towel and wrapped her hair in it before she stepped into the
larger towel Riku was already holding for her. “I could get used to this.”

He kissed her. “Except for the tragic lack of morning sex,
so could I.”

An hour later they headed toward the Upper West Side. Her
smaller store was on Eighty-Xixth, close to the Metropolitan Museum, right on
the walk from the subway to the entrance. Prime position for people who wanted
a special reminder of the city. It cost a fortune but it was worth every penny,
generating as much revenue as either of the larger stores downtown and
frequently out-earning them. Riskier, because each item was higher value but so
far they’d been lucky and a day didn’t pass without making a sale. She put a
lot of that down to her manager and co-designer here, Ruth O’Brien. Janey, a
woman of fifty-plus, was the tiniest person, fashionably skinny and then some,
whose eccentric taste matched Cyn’s own. So did her sense of humor.

Riku wore his wide-legged orange silk pants and green tunic
top from his stage clothes. He’d washed what was left of his eagle off in the
shower but he still had purple hair, so he’d tucked it under his knitted cap.
He left his two kimonos at her apartment but he still looked outrageous. She
donned a black knee-length dress and a Chinese quilted velvet jacket, padded
against the chilly weather. Riku didn’t appear to notice the cold but since
they went from her place to a taxicab to the store, he didn’t have much chance.
They couldn’t risk the subway. A pity, she’d have loved to see people’s faces.
She’d worn black for a reason. It showed off the jewelry better.

When she arrived she wasted no time introducing Riku to Janey.
She eyed him suspiciously, her glasses glinting in the bright light of the
showcase behind her. “Are you the man she visited last night?”

Riku gazed down at her as Janey drew herself to her full
five feet in height. She rarely wore heels, claiming she didn’t understand why
she should torture herself to make other people feel better, so she didn’t have
much to draw. But as usual she made the most of every inch. Alsoas usual, she wore her refined version of hippy but her kaftan
was well-fitted and in hand-printed silk, her beads real semiprecious gems. The
customers here would tolerate, even enjoy eccentricity but not tawdriness. A
shame, because sometimes Cyn relished the tawdry aspects of life. Riku’s
privileged background had made him lazily indulgent but not understanding. She
wondered if he felt the same way.

He glanced at the case, then his attention grew fixed. He
blinked and stared down at the glass-topped counter that stood between him and Janey.
He studied the contents for a long time. “Wow,” he said, and then, “Shit.”