BorntobeWild by Lynne Connolly

voice didn’t quaver. She thrust back, pressing her shoulders
against the mattress to force her lower body against his. This time he hit her
sweet spot with every stroke and her juices gushed, drenching his balls and his
upper thighs. He groaned her name, turned his lyric into sin rather than Cyn , a hackneyed comparison he’d avoided before. But now his mind was
melting and he fell on the obvious to keep going.
    She screamed, “Riku!”, wrapped her legs around his and
dragged him in. Then she put her hands on his butt and impelled him to push
deeper. Hard and fast, he worked her, gritted his teeth and hummed at the back
of his throat as she came to the precipice. She fell, her tones an echo in his
head as he tumbled after her into the blessed void.
    “Shit.”
    “Not the most romantic response I’ve ever had.” She gasped,
laughing. “What the fuck did we just do?”
    “Probably woke up the whole street,” he replied, grinning.
He rolled off her but went up on one elbow to hold her around her waist and
gaze down at her. “One of the most insane things I’ve ever done.” He dropped a
gentle kiss on the tip of her nose. “Also one of the best.”
    “Why did you make me sing?”
    “I’ve always loved your voice. I don’t care what anybody
else thinks. The world of song lost a great soprano in you.”
    She frowned at him. “What do you mean they lost it? I never
gave them a chance.”
    His turn to frown. “You didn’t?”
    “I thought you knew.” She touched his face. “I turned them
down, not the other way around.”

Chapter Six
     
    Cyn watched Riku’s bemusement. A shard of the shield she’d
formed around herself fell away from her heart. He hadn’t known? True, she’d
never told him but she assumed he’d asked his teachers.
    Her mood sinking, she realized he’d imagined her a failure.
Which she was but not in the way he’d thought. “I never failed my final
auditions. I walked away.”
    “But why?” Bewilderment clouded his eyes, an expression she
wasn’t used to seeing in Riku. Few people were, she guessed, because he always
seemed in control of himself and his life and knew which way he was going.
    She hadn’t. She’d sailed through the institute, loved her
work, never noticed until the very last where they were taking her. She blamed
herself for that. When the final day had come, the truth had hit her with the
impact of a sledgehammer. She couldn’t do this, shouldn’t. Mustn’t.
    He twined a strand of her hair around his fingers, playing
with it like a skein of silk, watching the figure-of-eight patterns he was
making. Not her face. “I always loved your voice. A tad powerful but true and
clear, even when you used the volume pedal to the max. You could wake up a
regiment. True, your coloratura wasn’t up to the standard of Vitoria de Los
Angeles but—”
    “They told me I was a Wagnerian soprano in the making.”
    Now he didn’t look bewildered. He looked amazed, his jaw
dropping, his eyes wide.
    Wagnerian or dramatic sopranos were as rare as hens’ teeth.
Great sopranos, the kind who could hold an opera together were rare but the
clear, decibel-shattering power of a Wagnerian soprano happened maybe once in a
generation. Women capable of singing for six hours or more, of outpacing their
tenor, baritone and bass male equivalents, of voicing their strength and
vulnerabilities powerfully enough to force tears from audiences of thousands.
    “What’s the catch?”
    She might have known he’d think of that. “No catch. They
offered me a scholarship to Bayreuth.”
    His fingers stilled but he kept her hair in his grasp. She
couldn’t move her head without hurting herself. “Cyn?” Now he sounded lost.
Much as she’d felt when they proposed the dream of a lifetime. Just not her
lifetime.
    “They named teachers eager to work with me. Names you’d
know. Apparently one was at my final audition and word got around.”
    “You walked out that day and never came back.” He