One Wicked Lick from the Drummer (The One Book 3)

by Ainslie Paton

  “You’re just like athleisure, Mena. Pretending to be workout sweats while being street clothes. You wanted to be with this man enough to risk your promotion, your job and your career, but you’re going to ignore him all weekend because you’ve forgotten that just because you dress like a bore doesn’t mean you don’t have the ambition to be happy?”

  The ambition to be happy. Sounded like a movie title, not her life. “I don’t—”

  “You don’t whatever you were going to say.” Vera tossed her ristretto back in one gulp. “Go find out what you’re risking everything for.”

  Like that made sense. “I can’t just show up at his house and ask for sex.”

  Vera shrugged. “Why not? That’s how you met him the first time.”

  Mena almost choked on her long black. “Oh, my heavens. I’d call first.”

  “Text darling, you don’t want to look too desperate.”

  Mena felt her body unclench for the first time since she left Grip asleep in her bed, looking disgustingly sexy. Once upon a time, she’d been daring. She’d had nothing to lose and nothing had stopped her getting what she wanted. Now she commitments, plans. That changed everything.

  Vera went to pay for breakfast, and she stared at her phone screen open to a text. What she wanted was to spend the rest of the weekend with Grip. It wasn’t what she should want.

  She typed Hi. Sorry I dropped off the face of the earth. Do you have time to talk today? And hit send before she could think herself out of it.

  That’s all they do—talk. They owed each other that.

  And by talk she hoped Grip knew she meant kiss, touch, strip, suck on each other’s piercings and screw each other senseless.

  FOURTEEN

  Grip eyeballed the text from Mena. She wanted to talk. He wanted to bend her over several surfaces, including his piano, and do depraved things to her. His eyes felt sunk in his head and he needed a shower and a shave and a bacon and egg roll to cure his hangover—and a kick up the bum for having the hangover in the first place.

  And since when had he been willfully self-destructive about a woman?

  Only one other time, a bender that had lasted a week when he realized Philly wasn’t going to show up at another gig again and he’d lost his chance with her.

  He stared at the word talk in case it was secretly another word altogether. It had the same number of letters as fuck. Maybe it was an autocorrect and what Mena really meant to say was, do you have time to fuck today? Because yes, he had so very much time for that.

  He hit the shower, cleaned himself up. Put on his lucky jeans, which had once belonged to Jay, in a desperate attempt to convince himself Mena wasn’t about to tell him they were one and done.

  He needed to see Mena like he needed never to drink alone again, and if all she wanted to do was talk, he’d do what he could to talk her into wanting to do more, in some way that didn’t make her feel pressured—that he might’ve been able to come up with if his head wasn’t so sore.

  Unless she’d accepted his invitation to come over simply to make him choose. Financial advisor or lover. There was probably a third option in there, something like both, but his head hurt to think about it.

  By the time Mena buzzed his intercom in the early afternoon, he’d eaten, gulped down a disgusting hangover cure, taken some headache tablets as backup and was feeling less like the scummy gaffer tape stuck to the bottom of his shoe after a show.

  If she only wanted to talk about the weather, he could do that. He could find out what season she liked best, if she chased the sun on holidays or got frightened by lightning storms. So far all he really knew about her was that she was a good listener, nerdy with numbers, owned a fabulous renovator’s delight terrace house, hated spiders, smelled complicated like the ground floor of David Jones where all the perfumes were, wore lingerie like a pinup girl, dressed like she meant business, liked his tattoo and did a good job of adoring his dick.

  There were other things he knew, like how soft her skin was, how sensitive her perky nipples were, how she had dimples in her thighs and that her hips were the right size for his hands. But if he focused on those things, on the fact that this incredibly smart, ambitious, beautiful woman made perfect ham and cheese toasties, and loved being on her knees for him, he’d make a mistake with her and what they had was already a fragile thing that maybe relied too much on the idea of it being forbidden.

  It wasn’t nothing. It was a whole lot more than he’d known about a lot of women he’d slept with, but it wasn’t anywhere near enough.

  For all that, he had an inkling Mena could see him through the noise that was being Mark Grippen, financial fuck-up, larrikin drummer of Lost Property, and if he was right about that, he was going to do his best to make her think he was transparent like glass.

  The last vestiges of his thickheadedness had gone off to play in the traffic when Mena rang his doorbell.

  Too late, he only realized he hadn’t put on a shirt when he opened the door to her, and she made a little squeaking sound.

  “Mena. Hi. Sorry. I’ll. Shit. Shirt,” he heel-bumped his forehead. Smooth, dickhead. “Come in.”

  She laughed, a great gust of it. She looked different, looser, more touchable. More sunshine. Wearing a dress with flowers on it, big roses in soft colors, the fabric light and summery, slides on her feet and a bag that wasn’t for work over her shoulder. Her hair was tied back in a simple ponytail and though he couldn’t see her eyes through her sunnies as she moved past him to come inside, he got the impression she was laughing there as well.

  His chest got tight. There were a million ways he could screw this up.

  “I’ll go put a shirt on.” He closed the door and took a steadying breath before he turned to face her. She’d pushed her glasses to the top of her head and her eyes weren’t exactly laughing.

  “You don’t need to put a shirt on.”

  They were . . . hungry? “Okay.” He’d grab one anyway. They weren’t at the wander around half dressed before sex stage of anything together. “I’ll give you the tour.”

  She stepped out of her slides and now they were both barefoot. “You don’t need to give me a tour.”

  He stared at her, trying to work out what exactly was going down here while his senses ran riot. She was hungry. She wasn’t here to rip him a new one or swear him to secrecy or take the premises tour. She was here to jump his bones. Screw the shirt. He bloody liked this woman more than was healthy and he was going to kiss her forgetful when he got something off his naked chest.

  “Radio silence, what was that about? I thought we were good and then I thought I’d done something to fuck up, and I couldn’t work out what it was.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong. But this is—”

  She was going to say they were wrong. “This is whatever we want it to be.” She nodded. He blew out a breath. “Your call, Mena.”

  “I am out of my mind. You don’t need pants either,” she said, and she was on him before he had time to be impressed, stepping into him, hands to his chest, lips to his collarbone.

  He got a handful of that dress and lifted it up her body and then over her head, taking her sunglasses with it, then there was skin and more of that sexy lingerie, only this time, no hosiery and more Mena between the bottom edge of a bra that lifted her breasts high, and the silky stuff of her undies.

  He tossed the dress and her glasses on a side table. They hadn’t made it out of his entrance way. “Any rules I need to know about here?”

  She unbuttoned his lucky jeans, toyed with the zipper and he lost the capacity to hear over the thudding of his heart. All his sensory powers went to his dick, which was rigid to the touch of her palm through the denim, hard enough to split the zip.

  She was going to get that tour in a minute, a lightning fast one to the nearest flat surface, because he needed to feel the weight of Mena’s body over his to wipe out the fear that he’d lost a very good thing before he had a chance to make it his, like a long time
ago.

  “Later, we’re going to talk about the weather and ice-cream flavors and who you like to listen to, what you like to watch.”

  Bad move that, she took her hand away from the scene of the crime and cupped his cheek. “Later, we can do whatever you like.”

  He drew a few musical notes over the tops of her breasts with his fingertip. “I missed you.” He was ridiculously pleased she was here. Felt it all the way to his toes.

  “It’s only been a day.”

  It might’ve been years; his radar was all squiffy around Mena, like a whale driven to beach itself. He was heartbeats off lying on the floor at her feet. She didn’t sound surprised. She sounded smug, like she’d guessed it. He drew the band out of her hair and took a handful of it. “Didn’t know there was an acceptable time limit for missing someone.”

  She pulled on his neck, so they were mouth to mouth. “You are impossibly sweet.”

  “That’s a fucking lie.” He used the other hand to grab her lovely arse. “I want to do rude things to you.”

  “I want you to do rude things to me. I want to do them right back.”

  Rules established. That’s what they were doing here then. He backed her into the next room towards the big sectional sofa and then changed his mind and took her hand and led her upstairs to his bedroom. Mindless lust was fun, and he’d had a lot of that in his life and intended to again, but there was something new and thrilling about being with Mena that made him want the luxury of comfort too.

  No sharp edges or rough fabrics, no awkward angles or bruising contact, nothing too cold or hot or sticky, or inclined to make you move away from each other too soon. No distractions, just Mena and the things he could do to make her feel good.

  For right now at least. Because he did intend to take her draped over the hard, cold lid of his piano, and mess around with her wet and steamy in the hot tub.

  They made it to the bed in a stumbling arrangement of entwined limbs, kisses and laughter. And then it got serious. That zipper came down. Mena’s bra came off to show her glittering nipples. She did very nice things with her hand on his cock and she looked gorgeous doing them. When he couldn’t take her teasing anymore, he flipped her to her back and got those silky knickers off her. They were damp. Fucking excellent. He tucked them in his back pocket. They were his now. She had no further need for them.

  He got her to moan and gasp with his fingers. He made her come with tongue and his lips and then finally his jeans and his briefs came off and the paradise of Mena’s vagina opened to him, hot and soft and slick and close.

  She was all the fires of the revolution and all the bumblebees in the hive and he played her body into a thrashing frenzy of pleasure edging on the threshold of pain, and when she fell apart beneath him, he dissolved in her, made of little but sinew and sweat.

  The rest of him, those remaining brain cells still flickering, were flashing out distress signals while his heart thudded with hope. This was a big deal.

  All the confusion and doubt of the last twenty-four hours lifted away, and in its place, settled a certainty that felt strong. He’d learn Mena. He’d figure out how to make her happy, naked and clothed, and keep doing that for as long as she’d tolerate him.

  This could be his life.

  Later.

  Now he cuddled her while their breathing settled, and their bones reformed, and he watched for the glow of all of this to show in her face.

  He traced a finger down her cheek. “There it is.”

  “What?”

  “You get this look on your face when you’ve been properly fucked.”

  Her brows lifted. “Properly?”

  “All the way from quivering with anticipation to could not move if you were on fire.”

  “The way you do it?”

  He polished his knuckles on his chest. “Perfectionism has its uses.”

  They both made cringe faces and she said, “And what is this look you’re talking about?”

  “You glow. Like you’re totally comfortable in your skin and at peace with the absurdity of the world.” He kissed her forehead. “Like your happiness is a fortress and nothing can touch it.”

  “Oh, Grip.” He heard something like awe in her voice. She pushed his shoulder, so he rolled to his back where she could prop up on his chest. “How is it that I forget you’re an artist. When you say things like that you take my breath away.”

  That could be good, right? “I’m cool with that.” Super cool, if he could be the only one who got to make her glow, who made her boneless and breathless and got to do it as often as possible.

  She put her teeth to his chest and scored him gently. “You’re like the bubbles in champagne, you go straight to my head and make me forget what time it is, what day, what my damn name is.”

  “I’m cool with that too.”

  “You’re a wild ride is what you are.”

  He slapped a hand on her arse, more noise than impact. “I don’t hear you complaining.”

  “I’m not. I tried to stay away. It’s why I ran out of my own house rather than wake you to say goodbye. It’s why I didn’t call. I shouldn’t be here now.”

  “In case you had any doubts, I’m fucking glad you are.”

  She kissed him. A dreamy, sweetly rich treat that wasn’t about being sorry she was here. He’d have drifted in that tenderness for a long time, but she broke away.

  “I can’t sleep with you and be your advisor.”

  He smoothed his hand over her hip. “Yeah, I figured that.” He couldn’t stop touching her. She didn’t show any signs of being annoyed by his big paws.

  “I’ve let you down.”

  “Not from where I’m at,” he ran a hand up her back to her neck and spanned it.

  “That’s because you like sex and you almost put us both into a coma. You might feel different when your hormones have stopped partying.”

  He rubbed his thumb along the column of her neck. “Hush your pretty mouth, honey. We party hard, my hormones and I, and we don’t stop till we drop.” Good thing she didn’t see him last night. He’d dropped in front of the TV with the controller still in his hand like some underaged alcohol-intolerant punk.

  “I’m serious, Grip.”

  “Me too. It’s not a problem. You’ll put someone else on the case and it’ll be fine.”

  “But you’re virtually starting again and that’s not everything.” She pulled out of his hold, sat up, her back to him, her hands to her face. “This is complicated.”

  He gave her a minute, kept his hands to himself, and when she didn’t go on, he sat too, drawing her into the vee of his legs, her back to his chest, and wrapping his arms around her.

  “There are these pieces I play on the piano when I get in a mood.” He could feel the tension in her body, rigid muscles wrecking her glow state, but not resistant to his touch. “Frustrated or impatient, angry or excited. They’re complicated. To play them I need to let go of everything else and live in the music. If I think about my hands or anything else for a second, I mess up. Complicated isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes it’s the thing keeping us upright. The way our bodies work, the way the earth spins, the sun makes things grow, how pizza tastes awesome. That’s all complicated shit. People are complicated.

  “Not me, so much. I’m like sheet music, it’s all there, you just have to know how to read it. You’re complicated. You’re this incredible professional woman whose built a good life for herself, and you’re also this passionate, insatiable fucking babe,” he buried his face in her neck as she relaxed into him.

  “You’re the natural north pole to my sexual south. We click together physically. I don’t know if we’re enough not to pull apart when we’re not naked, but I know right fucking now that I want to stick some more and find out. And against all that, against the odds of finding someone I want to be with in a way that makes me edgy as fuck and happy like I could glow too, starting again with a spreadsheet and a bloody questionnaire is nothing worse than a cracke
d cymbal head. It’s not a big deal. You swap it out and move on. What I’m saying is, I’m here for complicated. I’m here for unpicking the patterns and learning the rhythms and trying not to screw up with you, so if it’s not about being my advisor anymore, tell me what you’re worried about and let’s see if we can fuck some sense into it.”

  FIFTEEN

  She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t a crier. It simply wasn’t the first thing Mena thought about doing when she was sad or angry, hurt or overwhelmed. She was more likely to throw something or buy new lingerie she didn’t need, but her throat was tight, and her eyes were wet, and there was an uneasy swirling in her chest that felt a lot like she was about to break the pattern of her adult lifetime and sob.

  Grip was mayhem for her heart.

  He couldn’t simply say things like that and expect her to deal.

  She’d gone home from breakfast with Vera and gotten herself ready for a dirty weekend, excitement buzzing in her body, and then on the drive over, talked herself into ending things between them before it got any more compromising. She’d rehearsed the words. It was the smart, rational thing to do. He’d understand. He wasn’t a spoilt child. He must’ve already been thinking they were done. The knots inside her stomach had untied.

  And then he opened the door to his stunning home on a cliff by the sea with absolutely no clue what seeing him shirtless did to her.

  It took her good intentions and bear-hugged them out, and her shaky resolve and demolished it.

  And it wasn’t entirely about the shirtlessness, or the way he bounced on bare feet at the sight of her, although that was the icing on a very desirable confection. It was what being in the same room with Grip made her feel.

  Young, alive.

  Whole in a way she hadn’t recognized she needed.

  And now he’d opened every door and window in her house of deception and was waiting for her to walk on through with a smile on her duplicitous face.

  Why did he have to care so hard so quickly, because they were never going to work out. Heels and sneakers. Hitting things and studying them.