So she turned away, looking up at the ceiling, and touched her chest with one hand, squeezing and rubbing her nipple, while she stroked across the front of her panties with her other hand. It felt so good that she sat half up and yanked off her tank top, dropping it to the floor so she could feel her skin, reach inside her bra and free her breasts, cupping with both hands. Maybe she was drunk, because it seemed perfectly natural, and she didn’t hesitate. It felt amazingly good, heady and voyeuristic, to know he was watching her, wanting her. Instead of being angry that he wouldn’t take, she felt the power of that tease, the heightened titillation of knowing that everything she did could both bring pleasure to herself and acute arousal to him.

She pulled her skirt up all the way to the waist and slipped her hand inside her panties. The warmth heated her skin and she lay still for a second, just feeling the anticipation, feeling the heat of Gabriel’s eyes on her, feeling the cool breeze from the air conditioner propped in the window a few feet away tickling over her bare stomach and thighs. Even though she knew nothing about music at all, particularly classical music, she could hear and feel what the piece Gabriel was playing was intended to convey. It was passionate, wild, no longer anger, but not melancholy either. It was a song of seduction, a challenge to continue, to ignore convention and propriety and embrace pleasure.

Closing her eyes, she stroked inside her panties, rushing along her clitoris and into the moistness of her body. The first touch tripped off intense need, and she moved more urgently, stroking in and out, her breathing turning into a low pant, her back arching, her heels digging into the couch cushion. She wanted to ask him to help her, to come over, to replace her finger with his, but she couldn’t speak, couldn’t make the words come out loud and be heard over the music. Couldn’t spoil the moment, the pleasure, the feeling that in a way, he was the one touching her. It was his finger, his music, his creation, the swirling rise of ecstasy in her body the result of him, all him.

And when she came, when her inner muscles convulsed around her finger, it was him she came for, and the image of his fingers deep inside her. That way, he could play, fill the room with the sound of his music, at the same time she could shatter in pleasure, her hips lifting up in the air, body tensing everywhere as she rode it out.