Read One Night with Sole Regret 05 Tie Me for Free Online

brighter, dampen it, or extinguish it completely? He predicted she’d ignite under his meticulous attention as he included her body in one of his creations—where bondage became art. And he doubted she’d be the only one to ignite if he played with that particular fire. He took a deep breath. He needed to find focus, which was entirely impossible with her looking all defiant and tense. He wanted to draw both the defiance and the tension from her body and teach her how to relax.
    “You have to know if you’re the best,” he completed her sentence.
    She used her spatula to eject a perfect piece of French toast from the skillet onto a plate and then added a raw slice to the pan. It sizzled and hissed. Kellen inhaled the scent of vanilla and warmed bread. His mouth watered.
    “I don’t need to be the best at everything,” she said, her attention on her task. “Just at what I’m most passionate about.”
    “Would that be composing or playing piano?”
    “Both,” she said.
    “And does it make you happy to pursue perfection?”
    Her gaze darted upward to find his.
    He hid a grin. Another of her buttons found and pressed.
    “That’s a very personal question,” she said, her voice a bit louder than necessary. “And how did we end up talking about me? I asked you about your band.”
    “We’re talking about you because you’re more interesting than I am,” he said.
    “I guarantee that I’m not.”
    “We’ll see.” He chuckled. “I started playing guitar when my grandfather caught me fooling around with the vintage Les Paul that he’d won in a bet. I snapped one of the strings and thought he was going to skin me alive, but instead he punished me by forcing me to take lessons from a friend of his who played in a local band. I was thirteen. That’s the same year I met Sole Regret’s bassist, Owen. He wasn’t into music much. He liked to follow me to my lessons and watch, but he didn’t want to learn to play himself. Not until a couple years later when the girls started hanging around me because I was cool . So Owen learned to play in an attempt to attract girls. He’s very shallow that way.” Kellen winked at her.
    “So you didn’t learn to play in order to attract girls?”
    “Music is my escape,” he said. “I quickly became addicted to producing sound. It’s like a drug I can’t get enough of.”
    He met her eyes and they gazed at each other. “I feel the same way about the piano,” she said. “I just would have called it a compulsion instead of an addiction.”
    Sara had never understood this part of him. She’d thought of music as something that took him away from her. She seemed to think she was competing against music for his affection, not that it helped make him the man she loved. It was nice to meet a woman who understood how vital music could be to a person.
    Dawn flipped a second piece of French toast onto a plate before adding a third to the pan. While it cooked, she set a tub of butter, a bottle of maple syrup, and his plate before him. He inhaled deeply.
    “This smells heavenly.”
    “My grandmother’s recipe.”
    Kellen’s first bite had his eyes rolling into the back of his head in delight. “This is amazing. What’s the secret?”
    “Vanilla,” she said. “And day-old, fresh-baked bread.”
    “Lucky I happened along the day after your trip to the bakery.”
    Her cheeks went pink, and she paid extra close attention to the toast sizzling in the pan.
    Had he discovered another button? He wasn’t sure where to push. “Is there a bakery nearby?”
    She shook her head. “I baked it,” she said. “Baking is a huge stress reliever for me.”
    “Lucky me,” he said. “What are you stressed out about?”
    She hesitated for a long moment and then let out a sigh. “Can you keep a secret?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I’m supposed to turn in a completed composition tomorrow,” she said. “I was commissioned for a piece to be used as the main theme in some feel-good summer