Summary: Some compositions have the power to expose even the most promising talents as merely promising; every last note will be judged. One dare not even begin an attempt unless one's heart is overflowing with love. The prelude to a concerto. B/E, AH.

Cut and paste into your browser to hear this concerto (remove the spaces). http : /youtu . be/df-eLzao63I

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Concerto no. 21 in C Major

Edward set down his spoon and turned his head, subtly following my glance to a table across the room. I'd noticed this couple somewhere between the cheese course and gelato. They weren't altogether different from the rest of the pre-symphony dinner crowd: well-dressed in impeccably tailored clothes, somewhere in that indeterminate age bracket that comes with having the means to take fastidious care of one's health. But there was something about them that interested me.

As they stood and moved across the room, his fingers grazed the skin of her middle back. A yoga back. Her ring caught the light—exquisite quality, without being obnoxiously large.

Edward turned back to me. "She has beautiful posture."

"Yes, she does." I realized what it was I noticed: her body was totally attuned to his. As subdued as they both were, she seemed enthralled with his every movement. "I think she's his sub."

A glimmer of surprise swept across Edward's features. He turned his head again to watch them walk out. The woman held her head high, her long neck displaying a plain velvet ribbon choker. "You know, you might be right. I suppose it's possible."

"They're strangers, right? It's fun to imagine stories for people sometimes."

"Is that something that interests you?" He set his napkin down beside his plate. One knee crossed over the other, he draped an arm over the back of his chair. At ease. Never not at ease.

"Mmm. I've thought about it, sure. Pain is a no for me—intentionally inflicted pain."

He nodded. He knew this.

"I do like the idea of relinquishing control, though. Once in a while." I watched his face for the smirk I knew was coming. "I believe there are ways to do that without breaking out the whips."

"I believe there are, yes."

"But in the end, it seems sort of…too complicated. All the equipment and costumes. If it started to feel like pretending, I'd lose interest."

"You don't want to pretend with me?" His eyes were dancing. My Edward.

"I could try to pretend, I guess. I prefer when it's you and me. Not a 'role'. "

He regarded me with a gleam in his eye. He caught the attention of a waiter. Signed an account statement. Checked his watch. Leaned his head close to mine, his attention entirely on me. He stopped with his lips a fraction of an inch from my ear.

"I want to try something. Come with me."

He stood and offered me a hand to help me up from the table. We walked out, nodding goodbye to acquaintances in the room. After so many years in this town, we always seemed to run into people we knew. By and large, they were gracious enough to give us our space on a performance night. And tonight's preview was sold out. Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 21. Only Edward knew how this piece affected me, and why.

He led me out of the restaurant, down an ancient wooden staircase. We rounded the corner on our way to the front entrance, shoes clicking on the high-polish floors, and he gestured for me to follow him into a luxuriously furnished lounge.

I stopped short of the threshold. "Edward—you know this is the Ladies' Lounge, don't you?"

He chuckled, eyes crinkling. "Do I know? Of course I know. This place is legendary…one of Seattle's jewels."

He held me by the hand, and we walked in together. The room's ornately woven carpet silenced our footsteps. He let his gaze wander around the space as he narrated its features to me. "Three rooms, virtually unchanged from the late 19th century. A comfortable 1,500 square feet: reading parlor with seating for twelve; mirror-and-marble powder room; and then the private commodes. Not to mention the coat check."

It was one of the more unique features of this old private dinner club, a throwback to the days when ladies and gentlemen were prone to sequester themselves by gender.

Music we'd heard in the restaurant upstairs was being piped in unobtrusively. The day's newspapers were arranged tidily on the parlor's low tables—the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times. It pleased me to think that the financial news was deemed suitable for the ladies lounge. That wouldn't have been the case the late 19th century.

The only other concession to modernity wasn't a concession at all, really. A letterpress card posted next to the low, antique parlor chairs offered a gentle reminder: Guests will kindly limit cellular telephone calls to the soundproof booths in the lobby.

We were quite alone—with the exception of a prim attendant perched behind the half-door of the coat check closet, her salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a tight bun.

Edward turned confidently to the attendant, handing her both of our overcoats. He spoke to her in some unfamiliar language—Portuguese?—and she murmured something in response. He turned his back on her and led me onward, across the parlor and through the swinging oak door into the powder room. I didn't hesitate.

As powder rooms go, there wasn't much to it—if you were Marie Antoinette. A long marble vanity counter stretched along one wall, dotted with five deep basin sinks, a few silver trays of toiletries, and neat stacks of folded linen hand towels. Velvet upholstered chairs were tucked beneath the counter. The heels of my shoes sunk into the deep pile carpeting. And we were surrounded by mirrors. Wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling antique mirrors.

"Impressive." I had to confess, seeing Edward multiplied ad infinitum in this sandwich of reflective surfaces shifted the energy in the room. He was as handsome as he had ever been; his confidence had grown stronger and quieter over the years. He was a masculine anomaly in this oasis of luxe grand-mère chic.

His face was unmistakable. Dark, slightly narrowed eyes. Lips pursed slightly, curled up with just a hint of arrogance: he was keeping a secret. And…wait for it…the sideways slide of his lower jaw. A decision.

I gasped. "Here? Now?"

"Oh, we've already begun." He leaned against the stone counter, arms folded across his chest. "Trust, Bella."

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Not fear. Excitement.

"It starts with the way you trust me. You don't know what I've said to that woman out there—whether she's assured me of privacy or why she would do such a thing. I'm putting you in a position to trust me—to trust that I've taken care of it. Do you?"

I swallowed, feeling my heart racing. "I do."

"You were thinking of trust when you walked though this door. I know you were."

"You're right."

He nodded, his eyes drifting across my face, then lower, latching onto the creep of scarlet rising up my neck.

He played with a switch on the wall, dimming and then brightening the lights ringing the five vanity stations. He shook his head, smiling. "This should be impossible, and yet—the brighter the light is, the more beautiful you look."

I'd given up demurring on this point years ago. He believed it, and I loved that he believed it.

He looked around. "This room. How does it make you feel?"

I swallowed and cleared my throat. I closed my eyes, centering myself. When I opened them again, I took in the luxurious textiles, the cool marble, the light. "Indulgent. A bit…remote from the world. And…it makes me feel like I'm being watched. By you."

He allowed his mouth to curve up into a half-smile. "Yes. Only by me."

He walked across the room to me, pacing a half-circle around me. I had a hard time choosing which reflection of his to focus on, which mirror, which view. He was watching me watch him.

Suddenly he was distracted by the silver tray of toiletries, rummaging and lifting various bottles.

He held a glass stopper to his nose and then waved it in the air in front of me. Jasmine. Something woodsy. He knew I would like this.

"Here." He reached his free hand out to clear the wisps of hair away from behind my ear. Never once did his fingers touch my skin.

"You know I like it best when you don't wear perfume. But this…this is a souvenir. You'll think of this night every time you smell this perfume. We both will."

He stroked the glass stopper against my skin. I groaned at his just-out-of-reach touch and at the new sensation of this heady scent already mingling in the air, blossoming with my body heat.

He replaced the stopper in the decanter and pushed himself away from the counter.

"There's also…this element of control, isn't there? I'm not controlling you, Bella, but I'm controlling the environment in a way that influences how you feel. How we both feel. Does it feel like pretending?"

I shook my head, tracking him as he paced across the carpet. His polished shoes left diamond-shaped impressions on the deep pile. "No. It feels out of the ordinary…but still us."

"Yes. I feel it, too." He raked his eyes up and down my body in a way he only did when we were alone, relying on me to take it for what it was. Craving. Thirst. His imagination was firing now. His perfect recall of how my body looked and felt in a thousand instances. "All right. Turn and face the countertop."

The color rising in my cheeks, I did it, moving slowly. I dizzied myself by taking in dozens of reflections as I turned. I watched him in the vanity mirror now, a few feet away, over my shoulder. We'd had bathroom counter sex plenty of times at home. And yet…this felt different. I was hyperaware of the air in the room, how I was moving, the way I might look to him.

"Very interesting." He moved closer and hovered over my shoulder. His breath tickled the side of my neck. He still hadn't touched me—not since we crossed the threshold into the lounge. "Do you see where you put your hands?"

My fingers were splayed out on the marble countertop. My posture was pitched slightly forward, my ass jutting out. The strand of pearls he'd given me on our fourth Christmas dangled, swinging back and forth between my cleavage and the mirror. He met my eyes in the reflection.

"It feels good, doesn't it? Cool against your skin? Sturdy? Go on, put your weight on it." When I pressed my palms against the hard, cold surface, leaning onto my hands, I felt a counterbalance of heat surging through the rest of me. In the mirror, my face was a portrait of aching lust. He was the only one I could allow to see me like this. My eyes drifted closed.

He leaned closer to me, and I turned my head toward his. He took my earlobe between his teeth gently, making me whimper, then let go with a hot exhale. His voice was barely audible a centimeter away. "I like that you aren't talking. You can if you want to, but I like it. In this situation."

He brought his arms up around my upper body, grazing his knuckles against my silk blouse. He watched the mirror and sighed with satisfaction as my nipples hardened. Without a word, he unbuttoned a single translucent button. Then another one. And a third. He grazed a single fingernail down the edge of the fabric where it gaped. He hooked a finger in my necklace tugged it to and fro, his eyes following the path of the pearls across the swell of my breasts. A field of goose bumps cropped up in their wake. He dropped his hand.

"Don't move." He sank to one knee by my side and put his hands on the hem of my pencil skirt. I closed my eyes, feeling triumphant when his fingertips brushed the backs of my knees. As if I had willed him to do it. He pushed the fabric up without hesitating, easing it past my hips where it was tightest, just short of wrenching it. He left it bunched around my waist and I felt the skin of my thighs flush pink, exposed.

"Uh huh." He slipped one finger under the band of my underwear and dragged it down a few inches. He pressed a warm thumb against the faint impression left on my skin by the snug fabric. He always protested the way seams marked my body. His touch soothed me, just as it sent a surge of arousal through me. I wondered if he could detect it.

"Yes." His breath washed over my hip. "I know what you're thinking, and yes. You smell like sex."

Holy Christ. I felt his lips brush against that same spot on my hip, a feather-light whisper, then softly insistent. I felt the wetness of his tongue and the hard ridge of his teeth pass across my hip and trace down my hip bone just enough to pull a groan out of me.

Edward rose to his feet again. I caught his eye in the mirror, incredulous. My underwear were halfway off, perched just below precipice of my ass. I felt awkward. Flustered. A little bit wrong.

"Wiggle out of them. No hands. I want to see you wiggle."

Oh my God. Make that a lot wrong. I was sweating now. I shook and squirmed until I felt the lace drop down to my knees, then to my ankles. I stepped out of my underwear gingerly, one stiletto heel after the other. And I watched him watching me the entire time.

"Very nice." He turned and leaned against the counter, looking at my reflection in the long wall of mirrors behind me. My bare ass. I could see the back of his head in the vanity in front of me, but also his expression reflected back from the opposite wall. I watched his features cloud as I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. His eyes narrowed and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down. "Right."

He removed his suit jacket, taking care to fold it across a nearby chair, out of the way. He rolled his shirt sleeves up, dropping his cufflinks onto the counter with a dull clink.

He paced in a line to the far end of the room and back again, three fingers pressed to his mouth. He stopped behind me and finally, finally, gripped my bare hips with both hands. How many times in our life together had he held me like this? These hands of his—his tenderness, his strength. He tightened his grip, slipping his thumbs under the waistband of the skirt hiked around my waist.

I strained to press against him, but he held me still.

"Wait. This won't do." He leaned back, arms straightening, and I watched his gaze travel down to my feet.

"Your heels are sinking into the carpet—it's taking two inches off these legs of yours, and…this angle…is not what I want." He held my hips firmly, tilting them back and forth, arching my spine. He leaned forward again and breathed into my ear. "You're not used to me objectifying you, are you? It sets you on edge."

I closed my eyes slowly, taking a moment to regroup. I was on fire, every nerve ending lit up like so many sparking embers all over my body. I was ready to beg him to fuck me. And he knew it. He held my gaze in the mirror, watching the storm of emotions washing over my face.

He gave my hips a gentle squeeze, then let go, casting his eyes around the room, looking for something. "Ah…"

Edward began removing the toiletries from the silver tray nearest me, transferring the lotions and sprays and blue jar of combs onto the counter. He lifted the empty tray and flipped it back and forth in his hands. The shiny metal reflected light around the room. I could see him straining to bend it. It was about the size of a cake pan.

Realization dawned on me, and I suppressed a whimper.

He was going to have me stand on that.

Was it worth it to be raised up a whole two inches? I'd be slipping and wobbling, and the tray would slide, and—oh. That was the point. He met my gaze, his eyes blazing.

He placed the tray on the ground and steadied me as I stepped up onto it. My heels scraped on the high-shine surface. I tensed my legs instinctively, my balance precarious.

"Oh, I like that." He planted both hands on my ass and rocked the angle of my hips again, sighing roughly. He looked down. "Christ. Yet another mirror."

"One last thing. Then we're perfect." He whispered. "Restraint."

He snapped my leather clutch open and—was he hoping to find handcuffs in there? Or maybe a hair tie?

"You'll see. We don't need any fancy equipment." He pulled out my silver tube of lipstick. My eyebrows raised.

He pressed a hand between my shoulder blades until my chest was resting on the countertop, pearls pooling under my chin. He watched my cleavage crush together against the chilly stone, then took both of my hands and placed them flat, my arms spread wide.

"Stay." He uncapped the lipstick and drew a thin outline around each hand. The heat and sweat rising off of my palms fogged the polished surface. "You'll keep them there—because you know I want you to."

He made me wait like that a few more moments—pitched forward with my ass in the air, naked from the waist down, bathed in the bright light and smelling like warm skin and unfamiliar perfume. And trembling.

He positioned himself behind me. My ears pricked to the sound of his zipper. He placed his hands on the counter, framing my waist, his forearms toned and tense. He'd been right about the angle: this was perfect. He locked eyes with me in the mirror as he pressed the tip of his cock against me. His composure slipped ever so slightly when he met with the physical evidence of my desire. A flinch, a gasp. Then the determined set of his jaw. I stood still—waiting and listening. Expecting more of his instructions. Hearing none.

He didn't say a word as he entered me, consuming me and sealing me up—answering the overwhelming need he'd been building in me all evening. All my life. I cried out, surprising myself at the throaty rumble of my voice. He had ways of slowing my orgasm, of teasing me and drawing my desire to a breaking point. But not this time. He brought me to release almost immediately—suddenly, without warning, letting me be overwhelmed by this onslaught of sensation, all pleasure, all pure, ecstatic joy. My knees buckled under me, and I found his strong arm around my waist righting me, securing me.

As soon as my quivering body slackened, he slowed, bending at the waist to drape his torso over mine, bringing his hands up and cupping my tits desperately, his steely resolve loosening. His fingers tangled in my pearls. Without a word, he told me I wasn't finished here. His measured, deliberate thrusts had just the slightest edge of wildness to them, a hint of all he was holding back. I struggled in vain to grind against him, finding no traction on my slippery perch atop the tray, my hands flat and stationary within their lipstick boundaries. He caught my eye and shook his head, smirking, reminding me that he was in charge. Only when he saw me relax into the rhythm he set did he bring one hand down between my legs, stroking me with agonizing slowness, cursing at how wet I was, how slick.

And then I knew. Like I knew my own name, I knew: I could let go of all of it. No straining, no hoping, no yearning for him to gratify me, to make me feel inhumanly, incandescently good. Because he would. Every time, for the rest of this life we shared. In any and every possible way.

The instant I let go, he saw it. As I gave myself over to him completely, he responded with a grunt, a growl drenched with triumph and pure urge. He was all over me and all around me, his chest and limbs and neck and cock all moving and shuddering and possessing me. Letting go meant losing track, and losing track meant simply feeling, and being, and going senseless with an orgasm that started in the arches of my feet and ended I had no idea where. He followed closely behind me, driving into me with a muffled groan, teeth gritted, his blinking eyes finding mine in the mirror through a woozy haze.

With a shudder and a sigh, he tilted my chin to join my lips with his. "Thank you. My lovely, lovely Muse." He planted kisses on my shoulders and helped me to clean up, to adjust my disheveled clothing, to make myself presentable again.

I rolled my head back to let him kiss my pulse point, and he breathed in deeply. Fastening the memory to his consciousness. He turned to me face him, catching both my hands in his.

"You'll be thinking of this tonight?" He kissed me softly on the lips. "During the second movement? I know I will."

I nodded. Keeping one of my hands in his, he replaced the tray and toiletries where they belonged. He pocketed the perfume bottle with a wink.

"Let's go." He put a hand to my lower back, making sure I had my legs again. "We still have just enough time."

We walked up the hill to Benaroya Symphony Hall and went our separate ways, as we always did. Wardrobe changes and final preparations always left us each alone with our thoughts for a half hour or so. I listened to the sound of chattering voices from the audience mixing with the pleasant cacophony of the orchestra's ninety artists warming up their instruments.

Instead of jiggling my limbs anxiously as I often did, I basked in a warm cloud of well-being. I thought back to an earlier performance of this concerto on a cool September night twelve years ago—to a certain bronze-haired pianist and the feeling of being changed forever.

In no time at all, the oboe's lonely A sounded out, cued by the first violin chair, and the full orchestra tuned to that resonant note. I locked eyes with Edward again across a few yards of space. His eyes glittered. He stroked the pad of his index finger along the surface of a single ivory piano key—a private, silent signal. An introduction, the audience's thundering welcome, a wash of floodlights across the stage. Then it was time.

I turned my attention to the orchestra, listening for the last of the shuffling and rustling to cease. Silence. And then I raised my baton.

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Hope you enjoyed this! I'm extra thankful for help from my lovely, lovely, darling beta (happymelt) and prereaders (midsouthmama and faireyfan)! They rock on a daily basis.