Perfect Harmony (19 page)

Our lips together, our tongues exploring each other’s
mouths, I feel intoxicated with ecstasy.

I break the kiss and his lips linger, open and an inch from
my own.

In the moment of silence, I sensually drop to my knees in
front of him, my head resting between his muscular thighs.

“What are you doing?” he says.

I playfully caress his skin through his pants with the
lightest touch of my fingertips.  “You need to learn how to relax.”

My fingers unzip his pants, peeling his underpants down his
hips, and I take his length into my mouth.

His hands grip my head as his breath becomes thick and fast,
and I continue to pleasure him.  He leans back, and my hands descend beneath
his shirt and massage his muscular chest.

After a few minutes, I can feel his pleasure growing and
growing, every thought in his mind erased and every point in time non-existent
except the one in which we now live.

He pulls my mouth off him and lifts my chin with his finger
so I’m staring him in the eyes.

“Let’s finish this upstairs,” he says.

A wide grin fills my face.

He takes my hand and escorts me up, leading me towards the
door.

As I go to open it, he scoops me up into his arms and
carries me up the stairs to the master bedroom.

The villa is nothing but cool and quiet, empty of everything
but Chase and myself.  All I can feel is the hard muscles of his torso pressing
through his white T-shirt, so tight it’s stuck to his powerful frame like body
paint.

With each step, my pebbled nipples break through the fabric
of my bikini top and rub into his shoulder blades, and the rush and thrill and
need to be devoured fills me.

I burn for him.

The smell of his thick musk pervades the air, and mixes with
the scent of chlorine escaping from my skin.

He throws open the bedroom door with a kick and drops me on
the enormous bed.  I stretch out on the soft white duvet, and beckon him
towards me.

Chase looks at me, hunger in his face, his lips slightly
parted.

I untie my bikini and drop it at his feet.

Beyond the open doors to the verandah, seagulls cry and
ships honk in the distance, but all I can focus on is the hoarse intake of
breath from Chase as he bores into me with those dark piercing eyes.

The wind blows in from the sea causing the curtains to
flutter behind him, like a Greek God controlling all the elements of the world,
ready to take a fair maiden from below and make her his own.

“My wife,” he says.

The words are like beautiful music to my ears.

“My husband.”

His glaze fixed on my own, he peels off his t-shirt, finally
exposing his muscular tanned pecs, his washboard abs and broad stone carved
shoulders.

I watch him, my fingers gripping the duvet of our marriage
bed, the touch sensation filling my mind’s eyes with the endless pleasure and
ecstasy we’ve already given to each other on this bed.  And I know in my heart
of hearts that this is only the beginning.

He pulls off his jeans and then strips off his silk
underpants, dropping them to the carpet in a crumpled heap.

Completely naked, he climbs onto our bed and crawls over me,
taking my head and guiding me to his own.  We kiss and it’s so hard and
passionate, but somehow tender and protective.  He takes me in a gentle embrace
and softly bites my top lip.

I tremble, and tilt my head back, presenting my naked skin
to him, our hot breath mingling in the space between our perpetually wanting
bodies.

An unfathomable ache builds up inside me, rushing through my
body and filling me with the most pure emotion I’ve ever known.

His rough stubble rubs against my cheek and I take him
inside of me.  He’s so slow and tender, making every second last an eternity
with every kiss and caress and lick, worshipping my body like I’m the only
thing in the world, and he’s the only thing in my own - there’s nothing but the
two of us, interlocked and making love and together and complete and without
end, every emotion billowing until the cold hard truth screams in my mind:

I love him
.

And then he groans and a wave of ecstasy and bliss rushes
through me and I explode in pleasure as he explodes in harmony and fills me
with his seed.

We lay back and he holds me in his arms, my body shivering
from the aftershock of climax.

I expect my mind to be filled with riddles and confusion,
but now everything is so much clearer it’s blinding.

I love him.

I can’t deny the truth as much as I wish I could.  And it
fills me with such regret and anger that I cannot speak those words out loud to
him.  But I can’t be that brave or reckless - it would destroy everything and I
would lose the man I love.

He drifts off to sleep next to me and I sit still in the
calm and watch him.  A gentle smile is traced across his lips, so content and
happy.

I stand up and walk across to the open verandah, the trees
swishing and swaying in the peaceful breeze.  Light from the setting sun
sparkles in the distant depths of the azure waters, and fills me with a sense
of calm.

I turn back and look to Chase, and I feel reborn.

The truth is like an epiphany, and I cannot deny it any
longer.  I don’t want to.

I love him.

In fact, I think I’ve always loved him.  Even before we ever
met that life-changing day in his office so long ago.

It’s like my body has been in stasis, awaiting somebody to
take me and wake me up to the real world, like I’ve always been waiting for
him.

But the feeling of happiness soon gives way to one of
despair.

I love a man who cannot love me back.  He can give me
everything except his heart.

Everything feels so hopeless.

But then again, the only reason he cannot love me back is
because that is what he believes.  Maybe he’s so broken and jaded by life that
he’s given up on love, not that he’s not capable of it.

If I can find a way to win his love, maybe then he’ll wake
up and realise.  Maybe then we can be truly happy.

I must become the woman he can love - it’s the only way. 
I’ll let him dress me and buy me jewellery and tell me how to act and be and
I’ll prove to him I can fit into this world of his.

I will prove to him that I’m worthy of being his wife.

It will be hard, I have no doubt - I’ll have to give up on
my dream, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay for happiness.

I will be whoever he wants me to be, if that is the only way
he will allow himself to love me.

My feet shiver on the marble balcony, as I make my way back
inside and sit down on the bed next to Chase.  I nestle closer to him until our
bodies are as one, his warmth surrounding me in its embrace.  I close my eyes
and pull his arm around me.

This plan makes sense, I know it does.  I may have given him
my heart in a moment of recklessness, but if he can give me even a piece of his
own, that will be enough.

I can’t live my life without him.  I refuse to.

If it meant he would love me, I would do anything for him.

My mind is made up.

I will do whatever it takes to become his princess.

––––––––

––––––––

“D
amn it!  Just do something!  He can’t get away with this!”

I slam the telephone back down into its cradle.

“God fucking damn it!” I scream, picking up the telephone
and throwing it against the wall.  It smashes into a heap of wires and
microchips.

But I don’t give a shit.

It’s that bastard Duncan Callaghan’s fault.  How dare he
think he can get away with this?

It was heinous enough when he swooped in and wrestled a deal
for that Australian label before the ink was even dry on our distribution
contract.  He told the papers it was in the name of market progression, but
that was just a facade - he knew I wanted it and was after petty revenge after
I bought up the land around his precious vineyard in Sonoma County.

Even worse after he somehow poisoned the investors in my
Taiwan deal last month.

He’s nothing but a child trying to play with the men, yet
his senseless rivalry boils my blood.

I bet even now he sits atop his baby chair, laughing at my
humiliation in Taipei.  I bet he can smell it stinking up the toxic air.

And why wouldn’t he?  The whole thing was a disaster, from
the shareholders absent from the investors luncheon for
undisclosed reasons
,
to the rousing speech I’d given to the workers of the factory unaware they’d
been riled up beforehand with lies and idealistic nonsense about their freedom
and rights.  When they started to throw fruit and shout obscenities and destroy
expensive equipment, I knew who had pissed in that well.

It was only a day later that my chief financial officer
discovered that someone had leaked my intentions to Shang Tsung, and in fear of
protecting his employee’s jobs had sold the factory to Callaghan, tightening
his hold on the Asian market.

But this was just a piece of the puzzle.  This Taiwan deal
put Callaghan in the perfect bargaining position with a New York conglomerate
with hedge fund investments in various businesses in New York City and Los
Angeles.  Nothing suspicious in and of itself, until one takes into account the
owner of the Australian label sits on the committee for East Coast Commercial
Takeovers.  This, and the surreptitious headhunting of some of my most senior
staff lead to only one conclusion: Duncan Callaghan was planning a hostile
takeover of Harmony Records.

The whole world is falling down around me.  I must return to
New York and set things right, otherwise I risk losing my life’s work.

I hear a far off giggle and peer through the window blinds
towards the pool.  Melody is playing with a black and white kitten, as if there
is no care in the world.  She lifts her hands and the kitten jumps, then she
strokes him and scratches his ear.

She’s so caring and wonderful - she’ll be the perfect mother
to our child.  Over the last few days, I’ve felt a strange ambivalence towards
Melody.

I’ve never put a woman ahead of my business, ever.  And I
knew I needed to return to New York days ago, but I convinced myself to stay so
we could extend our honeymoon.

She’s my wife - she deserves at least that.

What is this hold she has over me?

She looks so free playing with the kitten - a sweet and
tender look dancing in her eyes.  She looked just the same two days ago in the
midst of the busy Florence market, when she helped a lost infant find his
mother in the bustling throng.

It is the same look she has every night in bed, after we
make love, when she speaks to me of our child.

And that is why it’s a shame that she’s in love with me. 
She tries to deny it, hiding behind her carefree smiles, but I catch those
downward glances, almost as if, for a moment, she forgets reality but then
suddenly remembers how broken I am.  My heart wrenches every time I see her
suffer like that, and I wish things could be different.  But they can’t.

I just hope that when our child is born, she is able to
channel her unrequited love for me into our baby.  Once she sets her eyes on
our child, her heart will melt and she’ll raise him or her with that motherly
tenderness than comes so natural to her.

And I will protect them both.

I have no other option.

Protection is what I promised Melody, and it is exactly what
she’ll get, even if that means I cannot return to New York quite yet to save my
business from that bastard Callaghan.  I hope desperately that things can wait
another few days - they have to - Melody is not ready yet to return as my wife.

After we eloped, I knew I had to give her time to complete
her transformation into the wife of someone like myself - someone who could be
seen on my arm, not because I want her to be that way (God knows I abhor to
change her from the sweet quiet girl that made my passion burn for her the
first time we ever met), but I know it must be so - she would not survive in my
world otherwise.  My
friends
will mock her and berate her, all because
of her humble beginnings.  The etiquette lessons, the dresses and the
jewellery, it’s the only way to make her strong enough to not be emotionally
crippled by those bastards.

No one else would have married their pregnant mistress. 
They would simply have paid her off, maybe even pressured her to resign and
move across the country.

God knows, I’m guilty of that too.

But not when I found out about our child.

I know the pain of growing up with a destructive and abusive
father, and I swear I will never become like that.  I refuse to make that my
fate.

My child will be loved.  He won’t be a piece of trash,
thrown away at the earliest opportunity, so daddy can go fuck another doe eyed
freshman and release another unloved bastard into the world, just because he
can.  Just because that’s what get’s him off.  And all because those idiot
girls knew no better.

Love is a cruel mistress, capable of ripping away all sense
and reason.

I will not fall into that trap again, not like I did with
Sylvia.

After my mother died and my father absconded with his newest
conquest, I met a beautiful girl at Harvard; smart and sharp, she ran rings
around me and I was instantly infatuated with her.  I was only a shy freshman
virgin, my days spent studying for a degree in business and economics, and my
nights filled with singing in the local karaoke bar.  God, how I loved to
sing.  I met Sylvia one night and I was entranced: she had a voice like an
angel.  We sang a duet, happy and laughing, which swiftly lead to drinks, and
then back to her dorm room.

She begged me to make love to her, and, like any kid my age,
I jumped at the chance.  But we were so caught up in the moment, I didn’t think
to wear a condom and she didn’t think to remind me.