A delicious chill danced over her skin. "Then you'd better do something other than kiss me or we'll break that unspoken promise to your mother."
He made a low, frustrated noise in his throat and leaned away, but not so far he let her go. "I have never known torture equal to being in the same house with you, and not making love to you."
Kipling let her eyes flutter and she tipped back her head, groaning in frustration. "Please distract me, Grayson," she both begged and teased. "I desperately need a distraction or I'll never go to sleep again, and no one likes a haggard-looking bride."
He laughed and lowered his hands, shifted to face the piano again. So she could watch him play, she pivoted around the end of the bench to face the keys as he first played a single note with his right hand, then a short series with his left. It sounded close to what he'd been playing when she found him, but not exactly.
"You never said why you were up in the middle of the night playing piano," she said, glancing quickly at him before returning to her study of his hands.
"Distraction," he answered simply.
Kipling chuckled and leaned her cheek on his arm, swaying with him a moment before righting herself to watch him play. After what seemed to be test or warm-up strokes of the keys, he slid with an apparent effortless ease into the same melody she'd heard from the top of the stairs. It was delicate, and soothing, and made her think of a gentle breeze or a ballet dancer. If watching him play didn't have her so entranced, she would have closed her eyes and swayed with it. He finished the piece, and the final notes eased away as he dropped his hands into his lap again.
"It's beautiful. What's it called?"
Grayson shrugged and cleared his throat, a thoroughly un-Grayson-like move. "I don't know."
"Who's the composer?" He didn't answer, giving her a sidelong look, his fingers laced in his lap with his thumbs rolling slowly over and around each other. He didn't answer but arched a single eyebrow. Kipling squinted, a niggling realization skimming up the back of her neck. "Grayson, did you compose this?"
"Yes," he said, then cleared his throat and shifted on the bench, tapping on a single key, the note resonating within the antique body of the piano. "It's rough, I suppose. Needs work."
"How long have you been working on it?"
He sighed and bobbed his head back and forth, wrinkling his nose as if considering some extensive timeline. "An hour and a half."
Kipling gasped, staring at him with her jaw hanging open. "An hour and a half? Grayson, that's amazing. When did you begin composing music?"
He chuckled; a deep, low rumble in his chest that seemed louder in the stillness of the cottage. "An hour and a half ago."
Kipling couldn't form a response, only able to stare at Grayson with her hand pressed to her chest. Just when she thought perhaps she had a good understanding of the complexities of this man he shocked her with another aspect of himself.
He plucked the note again, holding down the ivory key to stroke it from hinge to edge. The note slowly faded. "I came down seeking a way to distract myself from your absence, and even in your absence, you inspired me."
"Grayson," she managed to whisper, her throat tightening with a surge of intense emotion that threatened to leave her completely mute. She swallowed and grabbed his hand. "I love you."
He smiled slow and warm and leaned toward her to press a kiss to her brow. "You are my world."