God, what was he going to do about Owen? Kellen had made a complete mess of their friendship and just when he thought he finally had their relationship back on its proper track, he did something completely stupid. Like tie Owen to a pommel and show a woman how to give him a proper hand job by demonstration. What in the fuck had he been thinking last night?

Dawn abruptly stopped playing. "You're not listening," she said. "Are you bored?"

"No. I just have a lot on my mind," he said. "Don't stop. This song is like a break in the clouds during a storm."

"The eye of your hurricane."

He chuckled. His life was definitely in a whirlwind. "Exactly."

"If you want to talk about her, I'll listen," she said, playing softly again.

"Do you want me to talk about her?"

Dawn shook her head. "Not particularly. I'm sure if you loved her, she was wonderful."

"Sometimes I hate her for what she's done to me." Kellen tensed. Had he really just admitted that aloud? He’d never even admitted that to himself. I didn’t mean it, Sara. I could never hate you.

"I can understand that," Dawn said.

He somehow doubted it.

“Have you ever been in love?” he asked.

Dawn hesitated, and then she nodded. “But he didn’t love me in return. He thought I was a silly little girl and in retrospect, I was. I was sixteen and he was in his thirties. He’d been my piano teacher for years before my hormones kicked into high gear and I made a complete idiot of myself by throwing myself at him.”

“I’m sure if you hadn’t been jailbait, he would have caught you. What was his name?”

“Pierre,” she said, releasing a dreamy sigh.

“Pierre?” Kellen chuckled. “You’re kidding, right?”

“He’s French,” she said stiffly.

“Vous êtes plus belle que les étoiles, mon amour,” he whispered close to her ear.

She swayed against him, and he wrapped an arm around her back to keep her from tumbling from the piano bench.

“You speak French?” she said.

“Just that one sentence,” he said. He didn’t even remember exactly what it meant. Something about the stars being beautiful.

“So if I said, je suis très excitée par vous, you wouldn’t know what I meant?”

“Sounds kinky,” he teased.

“It could be.”

She tilted her head to look up at him. There were mere inches between their lips. Would she taste as decadent as she looked? The green flecks in her eyes caught Kellen’s attention. So exotic. His heart thudded faster and faster as he leaned closer. He hadn’t kissed a woman since Sara. Hadn’t wanted to. He sure the fuck wanted to now.

Dawn pressed a fingertip against his lips. “Hold that thought,” she said and shifted away to pound on her keyboard with renewed vigor.

Kellen stifled a groan. He felt torn between his yearning to devour this woman’s sensual mouth and his desire to be a part of the soaring composition she was creating right beside him. Dawn played with her eyes closed, her fingers moving swiftly over the keys. The loose bodice of her dress fell open as she rocked forward to press the foot pedals, and Kellen caught a glimpse of the soft swell of one breast and an expanse of pale freckles decorating the smooth alabaster skin of her chest. Would he find freckles elsewhere? In places hidden from his view? On her belly? Her thighs? His cock twitched as he thought about kissing every freckle he discovered until she spread her legs for him. Would she allow him to sample her fluids with his tongue? Permit him to breathe the musk of her arousal while he treated her pussy to the same deep, plundering kisses he craved from her mouth? He wanted to hear his name gasped, moaned, screamed as she came over and over again at the insistence of his tongue, his lips, his teeth.

When he noticed the pair of thin boxer shorts she’d loaned him were tented with his obvious arousal, he was glad she had her eyes closed. He shifted so that his belly was against the piano and his erection was hidden from view. He tried not to imagine fucking Dawn on the lid of her grand piano, with her dress bunched up around her waist and her bare breasts spilling from her bodice. Tried but failed. He could almost feel her heels digging into his ass, her heat gripping him. He wiped at sweat that formed at the base of his throat.

This was what he got for denying his needs for so long. And it didn’t help that the song she was composing held the cadence of the sea—the repetition of surge and withdrawal, peak and valley—that was suddenly a lot more sexual to him than it should have been.

The storm raged outside, producing a clap of thunder so loud the windows rattled. Dawn jumped and pressed a hand to the center of her chest. “Oh,” she said, “that startled me. Sometimes I get lost in my music and forget there’s a world beyond my own sound.”

“I get the same way on stage sometimes,” he said.

She gnawed on her lips while she considered him closely. “You look a bit tense,” she said. “Is the song not working for you? You can be honest.”

The song was working for him in ways he was sure she hadn’t intended. He couldn’t very well tell her that it turned him on. Of course in his current state of sexual frustration, just about everything turned him on. He’d even gotten turned on while tying Owen last night.

He’d bound Owen so a woman could have her way with him, but seeing him like that… Kellen hadn’t been able to keep his hands off him and had ultimately fled the room with a stiff cock. How fucked up was that?

Habitual masturbation helped ease Kellen’s frustration, but it just wasn’t the same as touching another, as being touched by someone he loved and trusted. He’d touched Owen—and had once allowed Owen to touch him—because in whatever alternate universe his morals were now living, that was not cheating on Sara. Even though he’d convinced himself of that, how in the hell did he explain any of that shit to Owen? Owen who was down for anything as long as it felt good. Owen who loved everyone unconditionally. Kellen had taken advantage of Owen’s nature, and he felt terrible about it. Not terrible enough to have an honest conversation with him. Too awkward. What could he possibly say to make things right?

“Earth to Kellen,” Dawn said. “Are you feeling this song at all?”

“If I was honest about what this song does to me,” Kellen said, “you’d toss me back into the storm. Which actually might be for the best.”

“What does it do to you?” she asked.

He leaned back from the keyboard and glanced down at his lap. She followed his gaze and gasped at the very noticeable bulge in his shorts. “Oh!”

He rubbed at his eyebrow. She must think he only had one thing on his mind, which wasn’t far from the truth. “I’ll go.”

She grabbed his thigh before he could climb from the bench. “This song does similar things to me,” she whispered. “I can’t stop thinking about sex.” She stared at him, all beautiful and beguiling, and his cock jerked. “I can’t stop thinking about sex with you.”

His mouth went dry.

“I’ve never gotten aroused while composing a song,” she said, “so it must be the company.”

Her hand slipped up his thigh, and his belly clenched. If she touched him there, he was going to explode.

“Don’t leave. I need to see where this takes me and I’m afraid if you go, I’ll never finish.”

When she removed her hand and placed it over the keys, he groaned.

“I’m sorry to be selfish,” she said, “but I have to keep going. I’m consumed by the melody now and I don’t want to stop until I’m finished. I hope you understand.”

Kellen understood perfectly. He never stopped until his partner was finished. At least, when he’d actually allowed himself to have partners, it had been that way.

Her fingers flew across the keys, drawing so many positive emotions from Kellen that he could have kissed her in gratitude. The song was a celebration of sensuality, and it had been far too long since he’d celebrated. The enraptured expression on Dawn’s face as she worked through the composition over and over again made him want to drag her to the floor and claim her. Lose himself in her body. He’d already lost himself to her passion.