Caressa's Knees (14 page)

“Stop.”
He put his hand on her shoulder. “Please. I’m just trying to understand you. Why you feel this way.”

She turned to frown at him. “I don’t want you to understand me. I just want you to tell me what to do, and tell me I’m a good girl when I do it.”

The silence in the room was stifling. Still he stared at her, measuring, deciding where to go next. She looked away, and then dragged her gaze back to his and held it. After another moment, he made a small, negative sound.

“I don’t know, Caressa. This seems unhealthy to me. You should be living life. Dating, forming real relationships, not fucking around with a guy like me. Music shouldn’t be making you feel bad, to the point that you need a lover to keep it together.
A dominant.
Isn’t that what you want?”

“Isn’t that what you are?”

“I suppose. But I usually choose my partners based on sexual attraction, not psychological neediness.”

She looked crushed. “You’re not attracted to me?”

“If you really believe that, you’re more fucked up than I thought.”

“You just basically called me a needy psycho.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. Look, it’s clear to me that you need help. I’m willing to give it—although I promise right now, you won’t always be thrilled with what goes down. I’ll give you a wall to bang your head against, but if you get hurt, you’re not going to get cuddles and sympathy from me. It won’t be a game, Caressa.”

“I don’t want a game. I just want—I want more of what we did tonight. I…I really like the way it feels when you take control of me like that. I didn’t know how to tell you…”

“I think you tried a few times, in a ridiculously roundabout way. Come here.” He pulled her close, whispering kisses across her forehead, down to her cheeks.
“Caressa.
I want to help you. That’s what you hired me for.”

“My aunt hired you.”

“Because you needed me.
You knew it the minute I got into that limo with you the first day, didn’t you? And it scared you and you’ve been trying to push me away. Well, no more
roundabout
with us. No more dishonesty, no more tantrums.”

She swallowed, pressing her cheek against his. “It’s scary to need someone,” she whispered.

“I know it. But I won’t fail you. You don’t fail me.”

He thought she might cry. She almost cried. He enveloped her in a hug and she clung to him. He didn’t tell her about his trip down to the bar, about how he came so close to buying a drink.
Just one drink.
He didn’t tell her he actually needed her as much as she needed him.

Chapter Seven:

Infatuation

He held her hand most of the flight to New York. Not romantically, but possessively, because he wanted to, even though she kept pulling away. At one point, he closed his fingers around her wrist and smirked at her.
I have some equipment to pick up at my place
, he’d told her on the way to the airport. He’d refused to elaborate, preferring that Caressa spend the flight speculating on what type of equipment he was talking about. It was better than her worrying about the plane crashing, which was how she normally spent her time in the air.

For his part, he speculated on other things. How they would spend their time in New York, or more precisely, how much time she would want to spend with him. Last night’s re-connection had been arousing, but the next morning her signals confused him. She was distant, cool.
Insular.

If she wanted distance, she could easily find it during their time in New York. He had his own place in Hudson Square and she had hers with her Aunt Denise in
Soho
. But he was her employee, so he would have to stick around at least some of the time. She had seven performances at Lincoln Center, and a couple press events and interviews, to include a ritzy gala meet-and-greet to raise funds for the New York Philharmonic. Her New York appearances were a big deal. Perhaps that explained her prickly mood.

They arrived late in the day, merely because the time changed going eastward. As soon as they landed, Caressa called a man named Dominic
Fiorenzo
to see if she could come by his shop with her cello. The man was ostensibly a repairman of fine instruments, but Caressa spoke of him as nothing less than a god. A couple hours later, after dropping his bags at his apartment, Kyle came for Caressa in a rented car large enough to carry her cello. They drove out of the city to the Jersey suburbs, arriving at Signore
Fiorenzo’s
shop just at dusk.

“
Caressa
mia
!”
The old man hobbled from behind the counter as soon as they entered, pulling Caressa into a fatherly embrace. Kyle looked around the old shop while he took her cello out of its case. It was on a nice enough street but it was a real hole inside, cluttered and dusty. Kyle tried to subdue any overt expressions of horror, but the OCD side of him was affronted beyond repair. Caressa didn’t even seem to notice the mess, pushing aside a stack of mildewing books to sit down on a chair behind the counter. She played a few notes to show Dominic the problem, some tone or string problem, and sighed in relief when the repairman recognized it at once. She looked up at him anxiously.

“Fixable?”

“
Sì
, I fix. Play for me again, let me hear.”

She played a few notes. “I know it’s just a little off, but…”

“No, I hear it.”

“Will it take long to fix? I have a performance tomorrow.”

“
Sì
,
sì
, I fix. You play once more, Cara.”

She played and he listened carefully, making a subtle adjustment to the strings. Caressa played again and he nodded.

“Peg slipping. It is summer,
sì
? They slip and slide. No damage. I repair peg here for string
A
, this is all.”

“New pegs?”

“Perhaps.
No, not yet. You let me play with it? You wait, or you come back in two hours?”

“Okay, we’ll come back,” said Caressa. Dominic had already hopped up and started rooting through some bins behind the counter. Then he ducked into the back room, a glimpse of which made Kyle feel physically sick. Kyle followed Caressa out of the shop onto the quiet suburban New Jersey
street
.

“Hey Caressa, have you ever seen that TV show about hoarders?”

She
tsked
. “He’s messy but he’s good at what he does. So do you mind waiting around a couple hours? There’s a diner down the street.”

“Yeah, let’s eat.” Kyle could think of other things he’d like to do with her for two hours, but they’d require, at the very least, the use of a hotel room. They ordered coffee and sandwiches at a greasy spoon instead and sat to eat across a wobbly table from each other.

Caressa sighed. “You know, I’m so tired of hotel food. This actually looks good to me.”

Kyle eyed her sloppy
reuben
. “Yeah, traveling gets old fast. It’s nice to be home for a little.” He put ketchup and mayo on his burger, trying to think how long it had been since he’d dined in a small town dive like this. Not since Spur.
Strange to find this sleepy suburb just a few miles out of the city.

“So who is this guy, Caressa? You must really trust him, to leave your cello with him.”

“He’s the one who found it for me in the first place.”

“Really?”
He tried to reconcile the scruffy, disorganized man with the “priceless” value of
Caressa’s
beloved instrument.

“Dominic is a direct link to Sergio
Peresson
,” she explained. “Before
Peresson
died, he and Dominic were friends. They worked on instruments together. Dominic used to do work on du
Pré’s
cello.”

“What’s a du
Pré
?”

Caressa snorted. “Not what.
Who.
Jacqueline du
Pré
. She was a famous cellist.” She paused, stirring her coffee thoughtfully. “People sometimes compare me to her.”

“She was crazy too?”

Ah, nice eye roll. Caressa stared down into her cup and shrugged, her sandwich barely touched. “She was a lot like me, I guess. She started young. She was truly a genius, and yes, a little crazy. She was really…I don’t know. If you watch the old films of her playing, it’s so obvious that she…that she had a gift. That she was something completely singular.
One of a kind.”

Kyle took
Caressa’s
hand. “Then you are a lot like her.”

“No, I’m not,” she said, pulling away. “Anyway, Jacqueline du
Pré
got multiple sclerosis. She had to stop playing. Can you imagine?” Her voice faltered a little, and she took a deep breath. “She played her last concert when she was only twenty-eight.”

Kyle thought she might cry. “That’s tragic,” he said quietly. “Are you afraid that will happen to you?”

Caressa didn’t answer, just flipped her sandwich over and ate some of the corned beef. “I do like having a link to her. I like that she played a
Peresson
too. I wish I had her cello, but after she died, they loaned it to some friend of her husband’s. I would have loved to play it, just once.”

Kyle frowned, finishing off his burger. “Someday, some cellist is going to wish to play Caressa Gallo’s cello.” He immediately wished to take the words back, thinking them too morbid, but she surprised him and slid him a flirtatious look.

“Like you played it?”

He hid a smile, remembering “f-holes” and black lines on skin. “Well…”

Later, after they picked up
Caressa’s
cello, he took her back to Denise’s
Soho
townhouse. It seemed a home-y enough place—a lot warmer in character than his minimally-furnished walk-up. He didn’t see much of it, though, since Caressa dragged him past her aunt and right upstairs to her room.

Again he felt a strange flashback to his youth in Texas. He’d had to sneak upstairs with girls back then, to avoid the kind of looks Denise shot at him as he followed Caressa to the second floor. And the girls he’d snuck upstairs with in Spur had been a lot less…complicated than Caressa. He sprawled beside her on her twin size bed, still unsure of her mood. She had a way of flirting and then withdrawing, as if she scared herself. Maybe she did. He had to remind himself that she’d actually been a virgin a few short weeks ago. Her bedroom was a virgin’s bedroom, girly and frilly in a way that didn’t jibe with her serious persona.

“Hey, you didn’t practice today,” he said, remembering.

“I know. It feels strange to not play for a whole day.”

“Why don’t you play me something?”

“I will, if you go get my cello from downstairs.”

It was late, but they were still on West Coast time, and wide awake. He hoped the neighbors wouldn’t get too upset about a late night concert. “Okay,” he
said,
standing and stretching. “I’ll go get your cello on one condition. You need to be stark naked by the time I get back.” He pointed a finger at her. “Stark. Naked.”

She gave him a coy look, neither agreeing nor refusing. He went downstairs and got the cello case, and considered taking the cello out. But then he imagined tripping on the way up the stairs and landing at the bottom in a pile of splintered wood and metal, and decided to haul the whole hard-sided case upstairs. “Damn it, Caressa,” he gasped as he pushed her door open. “You better be naked after this—”

He looked up to find her standing beside her desk. The lines he’d drawn on her were still there, faded after a couple of showers. She was beautiful, like a Grecian statue. His palms itched to cup her breasts, to run over her hips. His whole body wanted to grind against her. He made himself stand still, made himself look at her. He never enjoyed her this way. He always just fell on her, unable to control his urges.
God, her breasts, her flat belly, her flawless skin.
She gave him an assessing look, as if she knew what he was thinking.
Yes, I’m having trouble controlling myself. You made me this way.

“Sit down,” he said firmly. “Open your legs.”

After a short pause she did as he asked, silently and deliberately, and hot liquid lust jolted his cock to life and resonated down to his balls. He busied himself opening the case and extricating her cello, trying to leash the desire that threatened to overwhelm him. God, jumping right in and barking orders at her, was he? The most exciting thing was that she’d obeyed. He carried her cello over, stopping in front of her to take in the delicious sight of her spread thighs, her pussy. She reached for her cello but he stopped her. “Wider.”

She swallowed, gazing ahead at the steadily increasing bulge in the front of his pants. “Wider,” he repeated. “Obey me.”
Do it,
do
it. Play along. I want this so badly.

With a faint, self-conscious smile, she complied, spreading her thighs so he could see the glistening center of her pussy.
My God.
My God.
He ran his fingertips over the top of one knee. “Good girl,” he said, wishing he could yank both her knees up, rip down his zipper, and impale her.
No, no, play with her first. She wants it. Look at the expression on her face.