Michelle Smart - The Kalliakis Crown

‘You are making headway?’ It amused him to hear her discussing the score as if it were a living entity.

‘Something has clicked today. I’ve made a recording of the piano accompaniment—I am so grateful your grandmother wrote an accompaniment for the piano as well as for a full orchestra—and playing along to it is making all the pieces come together.’

‘Are you ready to play it for me?’

Her eyes rounded in horror. ‘Absolutely not .’

‘You’re going to have to play it for me soon,’ he reminded her. The countdown was on, the gala only three weeks and six days away.

‘Let me master the composition before we discuss that.’

He eyed her contemplatively. ‘You have until Friday.’

She’d accompanied him to his gym three nights in a row, her workouts intense and focused. Wanting her concentration to be used in figuring out the score, he’d deliberately steered any small talk between them away from the personal. Other than chauffeuring her to and from the gym, he’d left her to it.

A dart of panic shot from her eyes. ‘I won’t be ready by Friday.’

‘Friday will give us three weeks to get you performance-ready. I know nothing of music. It makes no difference to me if you make mistakes at this early stage; I won’t notice them. What concerns me is getting you used to playing solo in front of people again. We need to work on that as much as you need to work on the score itself.’

A mutinous expression flashed over her face before her features relaxed a touch and she nodded.

‘You can have tonight off, but tomorrow you go back to the gym.’

‘Has anyone ever told you that you’re a slave-driving ogre?’

‘No one has dared.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘I want to get on—you can leave now.’

‘And no one has ever dared tell me when I should leave before.’

‘You must be getting old, because your memory is failing—I’ve told you to leave before, at my home in Paris when you barged your way in.’

‘Ah, yes. I distinctly remember you tried using physical force to expel me.’

His loins tightened as memories of her soft, lithe body splayed on his lap while he controlled the flare of fire and passion that had exploded out of her assailed him anew. He cast a long, appreciative look up and down her body, taking in the short black skirt over sheer black tights and the short-sleeved viridian-green shirt unbuttoned to display a hint of cleavage...

‘Would you like to use force to expel me now?’

She cuddled her violin to her chest as if for protection and took a step back.

‘Imagine how fit all those workouts will make you,’ he purred in a deliberately sensual tone, enjoying the colour heightening her cheekbones. ‘Next time you choose to fight me with your body you might have a chance of overpowering me.’

‘We both know I could train twenty-four hours a day, every day for a decade, and still not be strong enough to overpower you.’

‘If you would like to put that theory into practice you only have to say.’ He dropped his voice and stared straight into her almond eyes. Theos , she was temptation itself. ‘I’m not averse to a beautiful woman trying to dominate me. Something tells me the results would be explosive.’

Other than the colour on her face, she showed no reaction. For the briefest of moments Talos wondered if his assumption that the attraction he felt for her was mutual was wrong—then he saw her swallow and swipe a lock of hair from her forehead.

‘Enjoy your music,’ he said, stepping out of the room with one last grin.

As he shut the cottage front door behind him he ruefully conceded that trying to get a rise out of the beautiful musician living in his guest house had served no purpose other than to fuel the chemistry swirling between them.

He would need an extra-long workout to expel the energy fizzing in his veins.

CHAPTER SIX

AMALIE DID SOMETHING SACRILEGIOUS. In a fit of temper, she threw the precious score onto the floor.

Immediately she felt wretched. It wasn’t the poor score’s fault that all the good feelings that had grown throughout the day had vanished. It was the composer’s rotten grandson who had caused that with his rotten innuendoes.

Focus, Amalie , she told herself sternly.

But it was hard to focus on the sheets of wonderful music before her when all she could think about was wrestling Talos’s clothes off him and seeing for herself if he was as divine naked as he was when clothed.

That body...

It would be hard. Every inch of it. But what would his skin feel like? Would it be hard too? Or would it be smooth? How would it feel against her own skin?

Focus!

It was none of her business what Talos Kalliakis’s skin felt like, or how hard his body was, or to discover if it was true that the size of a man’s feet was proportionate to the size of his...

Focus!

Talos had enormous feet. And enormous hands...

He also had a smile that churned her belly into soft butter.

‘Stop it!’ This time she shouted the words aloud and clenched her fists.

She’d woken that morning with a sense of dread that the gala was now less than four weeks away. If she didn’t master the composition, then it didn’t matter what tricks Talos had up his sleeve to get her performing onstage—she would be humiliated regardless. Right at that moment all that mattered was the composition.

Sitting herself on the floor, she hitched her skirt to the top of her thighs, crossed her legs and closed her eyes. There she sat for a few minutes, concentrating on nothing but her breathing—a technique taught to her by her father, who had confessed in a conspiratorial manner that it was the breathing technique her mother had learnt when she’d been in labour with Amalie. By all accounts her mother had ignored the midwife’s advice and demanded more drugs.

The thought brought a smile to her face and pulled her out of the trance-like state she’d slipped into.

The edginess that had consumed her since Talos’s brief visit had subsided a little, enough for her to put the sheets of music back onto her stand and press ‘play’ on the tape recorder.

As she waited for the backing music to begin she couldn’t help thinking she should have gone for a workout, which would have cleared her angst so much better than any meditation technique.

She nestled her violin under her chin and as the first notes of the accompaniment played out she counted the beats and began to play.

Soon she was immersed in the music, so much so that when a loud rap on the front door echoed through to the living room she had to physically pull herself out of it. A quick glance at her watch showed she’d been playing for two and a half hours.

She yanked the door open just as Talos raised his knuckles for another rap.

‘Have you never heard the word patience before?’ she scolded.

He grinned and held up a large cardboard box, the motion causing a warm waft of scent to emit from it. ‘I’m too hungry for patience, little songbird. I bring us food.’

Us?

The divine smell triggered something in her belly, making it rumble loudly. With a start she realised she’d forgotten to eat the tray of food a member of his villa’s staff had brought to the cottage for her earlier that evening.

Since their first trip to his gym, lunch and dinner had been brought to her on Talos’s orders. She knew it was only the fear that she would become anaemic or something, and faint from hunger onstage, that prompted him to do it, rather than any regard for her , but his concern touched her nonetheless.

The tray from earlier was still on the dining table, untouched. A warm, almost fluffy feeling trickled through her blood that he’d noticed.