Close Harmony Read online

  A Total-E-Bound Publication

  www.total-e-bound.com

  Close Harmony

  ISBN # 978-1-78184-297-3

  ©Copyright Justine Elyot 2013

  Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright April 2013

  Edited by Sue Meadows

  Total-E-Bound Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Total-E-Bound Publishing.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Total-E-Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2013 by Total-E-Bound Publishing, Think Tank, Ruston Way, Lincoln, LN6 7FL, United Kingdom.

  Warning:

  This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a heat rating of Total-e-melting and a sexometer of 3.

  This story contains 169 pages, additionally there is also a free excerpt at the end of the book containing 10 pages.

  Food of Love

  CLOSE HARMONY

  Justine Elyot

  Book three in the Food of Love series

  How do you choose between two perfect men? It’s like choosing your favourite music—certain pieces suit certain moods. Which mood is Lydia feeling the most?

  The autumn season of the Westminster Symphony Orchestra finds Lydia unable to choose between passionate Milan and dominant Karl-Heinz—so she decides to give them both a chance. She hops from one bed to the other, trying to weigh up her options. Milan has a hold on her heart, but has never been reliable. Karl-Heinz is a good man, but what is the secret behind his strange repression? Old rivalries and new jealousies are kindled while Lydia works hard at having the time of her sex life.

  No trio has ever practised quite as hard as this… But there is trouble in paradise for Ben and Vanessa, too, as a face from Vanessa’s past makes an unwelcome appearance and all seems impossible to resolve.

  Amid turbulent emotions and orchestra rehearsals, the musicians work hard to negotiate a path to happiness. Will music prove to be the food of love, or a poison, infecting the future?

  Dedication

  To Amy and Sue, for all that you do

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  The Joker: DC Comics

  CNN: Time Warner Communications

  Daffy Duck: Warner Bros Entertainment, Inc.

  La Bohème: Giacomo Puccini

  Pride and Prejudice (DVD): British Broadcasting Corporation

  YouTube: Google, Inc.

  Pizza Express: Cinven

  EastEnders: British Broadcasting Corporation

  Prada: Prada S.p.A

  Primark: Associated British Food

  Jigsaw: Robinson Webster (Holdings) Ltd.

  The Lanesborough: Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Inc.

  Hermès: Hermès International, S.A.

  Mandarin Oriental: Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group

  Chanel: Chanel S.A.

  Chapter One

  “I’m going to fall through the gap,” said Ben.

  “I’m sure the brochure said there was a double bed.”

  “Yeah, well, the brochure lied…oh Christ. That’s it.”

  Vanessa squealed with laughter as her lover’s body forced the two jammed-together single beds apart and fell between them, with her on top.

  “Shit!” she whispered, hearing him groan. “Are you okay? No bones broken?”

  He lay motionless for a heart-stopping few seconds.

  “Ness,” he said weakly. “Oh God, Ness, I can’t move.”

  “Oh God.”

  She knelt up and looked wildly around her, as if expecting to find emergency medical equipment instead of whitewashed walls and shuttered windows.

  “Don’t panic, darling. I can speak a little Spanish. What’s Spanish for 999?”

  “I think it’s nueve, nueve, nueve,” he said, just as weakly.

  She frowned down at him.

  “You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?”

  “Would I? About a thing like this?”

  Already his hands were wrapped around her waist, bringing her down onto his chest, against which she beat outraged fists.

  “I don’t know why I ever believe you.” She tried to pull herself aloft, but he held her in a tight bear-hug and growled into her ear.

  “Get back on that bed, woman. We have unfinished business.”

  Vanessa Robertson, still delighted and enthralled to be taking a summer holiday with her twenty-seven-year-old lover, pretended to slap his face before throwing herself back on to one of the beds. Ben rose from the gap like a foppish sea monster, all floppy hair and loose linen shirt, ready to pounce.

  “What was it you had in mind again?” he asked, rolling smoothly beside her after shoving the beds back together. “Oh yeah.” He looked down at the hem of his shirt, underneath which the outline of a cock in full erection was clearly visible. “I had some dessert for you.”

  “I don’t know if you deserve it now,” grumbled Vanessa.

  “No, I have some dessert for you. You get cream. I just get the pleasure of giving. It is more blessed to give than to receive, after all. Don’t feel bad.”

  Vanessa snorted. “You’ve got a bloody cheek. Trying to make me feel guilty about giving you a blow job. That’s spin-doctoring on a grand scale.”

  “I’m sorry you feel guilty, Ness. Perhaps you can make it up to me afterwards.”

  “Shut up or these lips are sealed.” She drew an imaginary zip across her scarlet-lipsticked mouth.

  He put one of his fingers to his own lips and nodded, then he knelt up and took off his shirt, revealing a tanned torso with a bit more definition than it had had when Vanessa had first met him.

  His cock, though, was no different and just as mouthwatering as ever.

  Vanessa had worn a bikini and sarong for supper, but now only the bikini remained, a red and white polka-dotted number that showed off her trim curves to perfection.

  Kneeling opposite Ben, smiling wickedly, she reached behind to unclip the pair of triangles that constituted her top.

  “Ooh,” he said, when her breasts bounced out. “Want to touch.”

  “No. No touching. Just kneel up where you are and let me work you.”

  She bent her spine and let her breasts dangle either side of his upright shaft, then she pushed them together and gripped him tight. Slowly she rubbed him up and down in that generous cleft, sometimes bobbing to kiss and lick his uncovered tip.

  “Fuck, that looks hot,” he breathed. He reached a hand underneath to cup his balls and give them a squeeze. “I’m so tight. I’m going to burst.”

  “Impatient,” she said, flicking her glance up at his pained face. “There’s lots and lots of things I want to do to you first. If you come before I’m ready, I’ll have to do even dirtier things to you.”

  “Like what?”

  His urgent whisper drifted over her head and she increased her pace.

  “Never you mind. I’m not going to encourage you. You’ve a filt
hy enough mind as it is.”

  “It’s your fault. I used to be such a nice boy. You’ve made me this way.”

  She laughed throatily, then released him from the breast-clamp, batted his hand off his balls and took a firm hold of the base of his shaft.

  “Ready to go deep?” she asked. “And remember—don’t be too hasty.”

  “I’ll do my best but I’m not making any promises.”

  She held up an admonitory finger then she crouched low, circling the tip of her tongue down his cock as an introductory move before she sucked him all the way inside her mouth, from the swollen head to the rigid base, inch by inch.

  “Oh, you’re good,” he whispered. “So good.”

  She held his balls and squeezed them as if telling him to be quiet.

  He was more than content to moan his way through the rest of the performance.

  It was funny how much she loved the feel of him in her mouth, given that she’d never been drawn to brass or woodwind—the instruments that required oral input. This nice fat hard girth was better than a reed, though, and this warm salty flavour beat any metal mouthpiece. It was like holding his heart in her hand, a pulsing, elemental part of him, entirely at her mercy.

  She kept it up until her cheekbones threatened to collapse, then she gave him the signal, reaching around his buttocks and parting them wide, which had become their code for ‘you can come now’ when her mouth was full.

  Immediately he began to buck and jerk with abandon. She loved to feel his gluteal muscles shifting and rippling under her hands while his cock thrust. She gagged a little but she didn’t mind, eagerly focused on what was to come.

  Ah, there it was, the pay-off, the reward. The little salty hit on the roof of her mouth, dripping down her throat. His fingers in her hair. Those sweet, pathetic little noises he made.

  She swallowed determinedly and released him, after sliding her tongue all the way up his inner shaft on the way out.

  “Mmm, good dessert,” she said.

  “Get on your back, Robertson.” There might have been a twinkle in Ben’s eye, but she knew better than to defy him.

  She lay down, smiling up at him, feeling every inch the seductress. Her turn now.

  The bikini bottoms were off in a jiffy and Ben’s face appeared between her thighs, grinning like the Joker until she had to slap the top of his head and urge him to get on with it.

  He didn’t need telling twice. He had a long and flexible tongue and he knew how to use it, probing its tip into every fold and crevice before lapping over the swollen pearl of her clit. He scooped up great mouthfuls of her juices, licking his lips, sighing in appreciation.

  When she came, he held her bottom cheeks and squeezed them, as if wanting to coax a stronger orgasm from her by any means available.

  She wriggled and jammed her pussy right into his face until the tremors wore off and she was left, sweetly exhausted and at peace, her legs lacking the capacity to move. Ben lay beside her, pressed tight into her side to avoid the gap, and kissed her scented dew back into her mouth.

  “Good dessert,” he said, nuzzling her with his nose. “Better than that ice cream.”

  “I don’t think that was ice cream, Ben.”

  “No? What was it then?”

  “Crema catalana. But I don’t think it was meant to be like that. I think it was put in the freezer by accident.”

  “Oh, I didn’t realise. It tasted nice, though. Not as nice as you but…sweet.”

  They lay back and listened to the sounds of the evening on the Majorcan coast. Crashing waves, voices from the beach, distant music from a restaurant a few yards down the lane.

  Vanessa had almost drifted to sleep when the loud blare of a television from the room next door jolted her back to full consciousness. The volume was turned down a second later, but she could still hear a stream of rapid Spanish, then the sound of channels being surfed through music, drama and news stations.

  Ben groaned through his hand.

  “Do you think she’s okay?”

  At Vanessa’s serious tone, Ben turned his head towards her.

  “Of course she’s okay. She’s on a summer holiday in a gorgeous villa in Majorca with her best friend and her best friend’s sexy motherfucker of a boyfriend.”

  “Shut up, you idiot,” said Vanessa with an involuntary giggle. “I mean—is she okay? You know. Really okay? Not just okay for this fortnight.”

  “Apart from having a little bit too much male attention, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with our Lydia. At least she’s finally turned things inside out so that they have to please her, instead of the other way around.”

  “Do you think she’s been easy prey?”

  “Well, it was easy enough for von Ritter to home in on her, wasn’t it? She rebounded an inch and he took a mile.”

  “I don’t think he realised how intense the situation with Milan was.”

  “Oh, come on. He knows Milan. Any and every situation involving Milan is record-breaking in its intensity level.”

  “Yeah.” She chuckled briefly. “You’re not wrong. So, who’s going to win her hand?”

  “I don’t think it’s her hand they’re interested in.”

  “Ben!”

  “Sorry. Well, here’s my twopenn’orth. I wouldn’t put money on von Ritter’s chances.”

  “You think Milan?”

  “If it has to be one of them. She’s in love with him, isn’t she? And she isn’t in love with von Ritter. But on the other hand, I hope she does choose von Ritter because the last thing I can deal with in the new season is a foul-tempered conductor.”

  “Good thinking. Perhaps we should steer her in his direction?”

  “Yeah, maybe. He’s a decent guy, after all, without Milan’s issues.”

  “He might have a whole busload of baggage of his own, though,” said Vanessa, considering this.

  “He deserves a chance, all the same.” Ben yawned, then added, “And so do we. A chance to get to sleep. Especially if we’re going to do sunrise on the beach.”

  “Sunrise on the beach? Since when?”

  “Since I noticed a handy little private cove about two minutes’ walk from here.”

  “Tell you what, love, don’t bother with sunrise on the beach, but you can show me your morning glory any time. Night night, darling.”

  * * * *

  Lydia had switched her phone off.

  The plan was that it stayed off for the whole two weeks in Alcudia, but already, on the first night, she was taking it out of her bag and fiddling with the on-off switch.

  Not good, Lydia. Put it away.

  She put it away and picked up the TV remote.

  All the channels were in Spanish or German, except CNN, which she didn’t find appealing.

  She pulled her eReader from her bag and tried to concentrate on her book, but every five minutes she stood up and pulled the curtain across the French doors and looked out over the patio to the sea beyond. Then she fell into deep thought and, before she knew it, she was getting her phone out again.

  And putting it away again.

  “Screw this,” she muttered to herself.

  Taking her bag and the key to the villa, she decided on a sunset walk along the path that led to the sea. The resort was buzzing and lively, at its August peak, and plenty of couples roamed hand-in-hand along the strand, making her feel her own lack of a partner.

  The heavy scent of pink and purple bougainvillea followed her along the track, leading her down to the siren sea. The air was cooler than when they had arrived, but still heavily laden with the remnants of that heat, warm and fragrant.

  Perhaps she should have brought her violin, she thought, arriving on the white sands. A little bit of busking might be popular—sentimental tunes for strolling lovers. Before she could check herself, she was in a daydream.

  Her hand was in Milan’s and they were walking along the beach. He wore pale linen and a tan, she had a flowing dress in bright sunny colours—not t
he dull but practical shorts and vest top she wore currently. They walked to that secluded little cove around the outcrop and fell immediately into a kiss. He told her he loved her and he meant it this time and somehow she was able to believe it without the usual doubts and fears and caveats.

  But would she ever be able to believe it? Was Milan truly capable of putting another human being first?

  Her shoulders slumped and the daydream melted away, long before it got to the good bit, with them shagging up against a rock.

  Stupid Milan. He had tried to stop her taking this break with Vanessa and Ben. He had told her he had booked a cabana at a starry private resort in the Maldives and she was free to join him. What a thing to have to turn down! But she’d done it, and been proud of herself for sticking to her resolution.

  Then along had come von Ritter, inviting her on a tour of the western US, where he’d agreed to play a series of guest engagements with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Yet again, she had had to wrestle with her natural inclination to bite his hand off, and had said no.

  Oh, von Ritter. What a peculiar and yet attractive man he was. Such a puzzle, with his attitude to sex, and yet through him she had lived out some of her most private fantasies. She had wanted to get closer to him…what did she want now?

  Without knowing she was doing it, she reached into her bag and pulled out her phone. By the time she realised her mistake, the screen glowed and a tirade of message tones filled the summer evening air, competing with the wash of the tide on the shore.

  “Lydia,” she scolded herself, but now the genie was out of the lamp she couldn’t force it back in.

  She was going to have to check her messages.

  There were none from Milan—him and his foolish pride—but dozens from von Ritter.

  ‘I miss you’ said the first one. Most of the others were tiny news bulletins about his weekend trip to San Francisco. It sounded dreamy and she rather regretted that she couldn’t have been with him down at Fisherman’s Wharf tucking into the finest lobster, or riding the trams up and down the picturesque hilly streets. He would make a good travelling companion, capable, knowledgeable and thoughtful of her comfort. Milan, on the other hand, was always a complete wild card. But, oh, the passion…