Page 72 of Protect Your Queen

“Then we’ll be sitting like this forever.”

Muscle by muscle, she relaxed, carving herself into me the way wax carves into a mold. Her tears subsided into low, quiet sniffles. And I waited. Holding her.

I held theentire world in my hands. She was beautiful, with a voice of an angel, and a pain I desperately wanted to heal. I wanted to make love to her, protect her, cherish her. I wanted to be everything that she needed. Hell, it was becoming clear that being what she needed was the only thing that ignited my soul. It was a fire that had been missing since the last time I played music with both hands.

She was my song.

She was mine. I couldn’t deny it anymore. I didn’t want to.

Especially if denying such a natural, instinctive thing would mean that I wasn’t there for her when she needed me. When she needed my embrace. And good God, she needed to be smothered in love and reassurance.

If I ever figured out who inflicted this wound on her - whoever the original source of her pain was - then I would kill him. I’d kill him slowly, and painfully, over the course of days, savoring his last moments. I’d rest my head on my pillow and go to sleep with a smile, knowing that there was one less scumbag that could come after her.

“Tell me what to do, Songbird. Tell me.” I needed to do something, but I had no idea what that could be.

“Will you play for me?” she said through her sad little sniffles. “Please?”

I held her tight, just for a second.

I remembered the song I stashed away. It was time to let her hear it. To see if she, and her golden voice, liked it. This was something the two of us could share in this moment, even if we were from vastly different worlds.

I carried her to the piano. Instead of placing her on the bench, I put her on the closed lid, her feet dangling off the side.

“This is not the way to treat a Baldwin,” she teased, as she wiped away the tears on her cheeks.

Then she leaned down to touch my face. She was examining me, running a finger over the beak of my nose, then the crease of my brow. What was she thinking? What was she seeing in those magical, dark eyes of hers?

She traced her finger along my lower lip, pulling it down to reveal my teeth. I playfully bit the pad of her thumb, and I was rewarded with a smile.

“I like your face,” she finally said.

“And I like your face,” I responded, my hand reaching up to her forehead. “I was afraid you’d hit your head when you fell.”

She blushed, her cheeks turning a cute cherry pink.

“I’m sorry about that.” Shame. She was embarrassed, and I hated that.

“Don’t be sorry, Songbird.” I leaned down to the piano bench, and pulled out the music, placing it on the stand. “I want you to sit right there. But stay very still, okay?”

“My, my… are you going to perform for me?” she teased. I didn’t mind if it was at my expense, because at least she was smiling. “I’m rarely ever in the audience anymore.”

“Shut up, or I won’t.”

“Will you get me a drink, first?”

“You don’t drink.”

“I don’t drink in public much,” she corrected, her feet swinging back and forth as she dangled from the lid. “I don’t want to risk someone tampering with my drink. I will when I’m home, though.”

“What do you want?”

She told me where to find the rum at the wet bar in the kitchen. I poured us both a glass with a single ice cube in each. I had no fucking clue if this was the right way to drink it. It was probably the first time I had drunk rum without Coke.

I handed it to her, letting the ice clink in the glass. True to her word, she sipped it. Her slender legs crossed, the damn dress bunching up above her knees. And God damn, it was all a bit too close to the images that had been in my head the day before.

I had to take a drink, then hold it in my mouth, letting the sting of alcohol stay in my tongue so that I could stay grounded in the moment. Grounded in reality. She was a person. I was thehelp.And this was just a song. It wasn’t the rest of our lives. It wasn’t Orpheus and Eurydice. It was just a piano in the middle of the night, in a Malibu beach house.

I sat on the bench and lifted the lid to show the ivory keys. I flexed my fingers, then balled them into a fist, then flexed them again. I didn’t need to look at the sheet. I knew what I was playing. I just hoped that I would get it right.

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