She was no longer frowning. I played her “Larm and His Alepot.” I played her “Blacksmith’s Daughters.” I played her a ridiculous song about a priest chasing a cow that I’d written when I was ten and never even named. I struck an experimental chord and carefully tuned it again. Her legs around me. At worst someone would, and then there would be more of them. I threw myself against the bars of an intangible cage made of moonlight and desire. Her eyes were like four lines of music, clearly penned. Her throat was smooth and delicate, trembling with her rapid pulse. I wouldn’t have been alive had I not been aroused. Even so, I only held it with my barest fingertips. “Kid,” he hissed urgently. Detachedly, I gathered up the pieces of my mind and fit them all together.
