He was a showman, performing for a crowd, and she was an analyst who worked quietly alone. He’d owned a monster truck and she leased a BMW. How could they possibly fit together with their clothes on?
He was a fantasy, the very best kind, revisited at a time when she’d needed a pick-me-up. If they spent too long together, she’d bore him, he’d irritate her, they had nothing at all in common. It was enough he was prepared to accept her resigning his account for some spurious reason. It was too much he drummed his fingers on her heart.
“Mena, honey, you okay?”
“So many bubbles, Grip.” She took his hand in hers and kissed each of his big knocked-about knuckles, “You make me dizzy,” each of his broad fingertips. He might not like what she had to say next and she was shocked to realize she loathed the idea of disappointing him.
“We have to come up with a reason for me stepping aside and it can’t be that we’re having sex.” She broke from his one-armed hug and the frame of his legs and put some distance between them, sitting on her shins to face him. “I could lose my job over this.”
“No chance. You tell them I was a total loser dickhead. Tell them I harassed you.”
She’d rather lose everything first. She closed that space between them. “I am not saying that. I am not wrecking your reputation to save mine.” All of this complexity was about not losing her job and not hurting Grip, and keeping her secret so she didn’t hurt him further with her lie. He could never know.
“I don’t have a reputation to be wrecked. No one expects anything great of me.”
He held up a big hand, and she placed hers against it. His palm engulfed hers. “Do you really believe that?”
“Drummer in a rock band.” He shrugged, folding her hand into his.
“One of the most successful in the world.”
“Everyone expects me to be smashing up hotel rooms, doing every drug available and breaking hearts all over, destined to be in and out of rehab, married multiple times, name my kids after fruit, voted most likely to blow it all and end up homeless.”
She shook their joined hands. “No, no.” He’d painted a terrible picture, one he simply did not fit in.
“It’s the baggage that comes with lifestyle, the money and fame. Doesn’t matter if it’s not true. It’s what people think anyway.”
Oh, it mattered, more being sued for bad investment advice. “Not you. No. You are not that man. You never were. You were always the one bailing the Tice boys out. That band would’ve imploded fifteen years ago and a half a dozen times since without you. It would never have survived Jay quitting. You keep them together on stage and off and there’s not a single scandal stuck to you. If you have kids, I can’t see you saddling them with names like Melon or, I don’t know, Lychee. You are rock’s Mr. Nice guy and you have to know that.”
He shook his head; his cheeks had colored. “Nah, that’s Jay. He’s Mr. Nice Guy. Dude doesn’t even have a tatt. I’m just a big clown. I like to keep it light. The band stayed together because none of us knew what else we wanted to do more, and we got lucky. Sure, I crack heads when I have to, but it only works because I’m not family.”
“It works because you know how to read people, how to manage them. You wouldn’t have a legion of fans, water drummers welcoming you to perform with them and kids with issues idolizing you otherwise.” She moved closer to kneel over his outstretched legs. “You think you’re not complicated.” She pushed a hand through his hair. “You are the essence of it. The drummer who could’ve been a concert pianist. Your own band doesn’t even know that, do they?”
He took hold of her arms, his eyes wide, his shoulders tensing. “That’s not. I’m not. How do you know that?”
“Research. Remember we’re careful about who we take on as clients, precisely because we don’t need the drama.” It was shameful how easily that lie came from her lips, but she’d lie a million times to protect Grip from hurt. “There is no circumstance in which I will allow you to take the fall for me. I knew what I was doing when I kissed you. I knew I wanted this to happen. And I came here because I wanted it to happen again.” As much as she tried to tell herself that wasn’t true. “It’s enough that you have to start over. It’s more than I deserve that you’re willing to swallow a,” she stumbled on the word, “lie about why I can’t be your advisor.”
He rubbed her arms as if she was the one who was chilled. “I’m not that good on the piano. I’m a better percussionist.”
She channeled Vera’s style of incredulity. “Is that so?”
“Jesus, Mena, why couldn’t you just say nice things about my dick.”
She leaned toward him, so their foreheads came together. Had no one truly ever loved this man, made him understand his value, not in terms of fame or dollars, but in the everlasting currency of truth and honesty and loyalty? “You are a talented musician, an amazing performer, vital to the success of Lost Property. An intelligent study of people. A generous friend. A perfect lover. Your choice of motor vehicles could do with some work, but you are not going to end up in rehab or homeless, Grip.” They were both breathing hard. “I won’t let that happen.”
He was quiet, his hands unusually still. Had she gone too far, not far enough? She wrapped her arms around him and eased her body closer. She burned with the need to make him understand his own true, enduring worth.
“Do you realize how hard it is to be a successful clown? In history, jesters and fools were the quickest witted, most savvy members of the royal court. In literature, they’re symbolic of common sense and honesty. In tarot, an upright fool means new beginnings, originality, adventure, and a fool reversed means fearlessness, taking risks.”
He shook his head to interrupt, and she put her finger across his mouth. “Clowns are the most versatile members of a circus, the bravest athletes in a rodeo, the most beloved of doctors.” She took her finger away. “You can try to sell yourself short to others, but I’m not buying your act, Mark Grippen.”
His arms tightened around her, and he made a low sound, part lament, part growl, in her ear. “I’m going to have to fuck you now, Mena, because that stuff coming out of your mouth is so hot. That okay?”
“Make me glow, Grip.”
Kissing down her neck, he made it impossible to view her place in the world as anywhere but joined to him, because she loved him for his monster truck and his old Honda and his kids’ program and his electricity on stage and his modesty and humility and oh holy mother of galaxies, what he could do with his big wide hands strumming her body and his talented dick, making her see stars.
If she hadn’t sensed the need in him to say with his body what he couldn’t with his words, the snap of rubber was her warning. He tackled her orgasms as if he owed his life to them, feeding them to her one, two, in close succession, making her tremble and gasp, braced over her, one hand tipping her pelvis, the other working her over possessively in a rhythm that was designed to slay her.
“Too much, honey?” He palmed her breast, squeezed with just the right pressure.
“Never.”
He settled at her side on his stomach. “You’re the best hangover cure I know.”
“Flatterer.”
“Can’t have you thinking I’m soft.”
She lifted her head to peak at him, squinting. “Well, right now.”
He bounced his hips on the bed. “I don’t need a hard cock to make you come.”
“I don’t think I can do that again. You worked me over very properly. I’m not sure how either of us are still awake.”
He leaned over her and they kissed, a feast of each other’s lips. “If I can make you come again will you stay the night? Spend Sunday with me?”
She would do that for one of his smiles. She would do it to be near him because he lit a little flame in her chest and that was why she glowed.
“You don’t have to do that.”
He said, okay and then kissed her neck, used his tongue and teeth to make the contact change temperature
from sugary to salacious and back again. She could not predict his mood, the beat he’d play, and he changed it up to keep her guessing. She was already panting when he got to her nipple and a combination of tongue flicks, slow licks and sucks made her dig her fingers into his thick hair to hold him to the task. He riffed; a flick, suck, tug on her piercing with a cool stream of breath laid on her throbbing nipple. It made her press her heels into the bed and arch to his touch.
When he pulled away, she whimpered in frustration only to be delighted when he vaulted across her body to work on her other side. This time he added his fingers to the mix, gentle strokes of even pressure where he was taunting with his mouth.
“I can’t. I really can’t.”
“Bullshit,” he mumbled against her skin and then stopped cold, lifting his face to look at her.
“Nooooooooo.”
He gave her a mock confused expression for all of two heartbeats before his grin killed the pretense. “You want this?” He ducked his head and licked her like an ice cream.
“Yes.”
“You want this?” He circled her clit and made her hips jerk, but just the once and she needed more.
“Yes, you absolute knob. Yes.”
“You’ll stay?”
She stopped trying to get herself off on his still hand because she heard the insecurity of that request. It was real and raw and reminded her that the weekend would end and she needed a plan to deal with the fact that she could not leave him.
With her palm to his face, she nodded. “I’ll stay.”
“Yeah?” Still doubting.
“I want to see if we can stick with our clothes on too.”
He took his hand away and she howled in disbelief.
“You said clothes on, so I thought . . .” he shrugged as if he’d been for a single second confused, instead of the world’s most enormous clit tease.
She whacked his arm. Mosquito to a brown bear. “Yes, later. Not right now, you freaking great hulk.”
He laughed. He was a demon and she was in terrible danger of falling in love with his brand of fun, if she’d ever truly fallen out of it.
He delivered what he’d promised and made her insides hum and spark and her brain free-write a future where they could keep doing this, worshipping each other’s bodies, where neither of them would feel constrained and she never needed to hurt him with the truth.
When she could open her eyes again, feel the weight of the day again, he was resting up on one elbow watching her, on hand splayed on her hip.
“Am I glowing?”
“I was scared of the dark when I was a little tyke and I had this nightlight shaped like a rabbit.” He booped her nose. “You’re glowing like that.”
“I very much regret suggesting you were poetic. I also can’t imagine you being scared of the dark.”
“I was in pre-school, Mena,” he said with gravity. “I was scared of the lawn mower, monsters in the wardrobe, and spaghetti too.”
“Spaghetti?”
“I didn’t say it made sense.” He bounded upright. “Are you hungry?”
“Are you going to demonstrate your fearlessness by cooking spaghetti?”
She didn’t get a snappy comeback. She got the slow drag of his index finger over her nose and lips and chin, along her neck and down her chest, between her breasts to her belly where he flattened his hand. Both of them got lost in that caress, in the deliberateness of it.
“I can’t stop touching you,” he said.
“Is it because I look like a rabbit?”
“It’s because you’re luminous.”
Her heart rabbit-kicked in her chest. If only he knew she was the monster in the wardrobe.
SIXTEEN
They’d fucked through the afternoon and into early evening and Grip was starving. He took a shower and left Mena to do the same and went downstairs to raid the fridge. Got as far as staring into it, not seeing anything because his head was so full of the woman in his bed with swollen lips and tangled hair that all he could see was what it might be like to have her there always.
Had to be the hunger talking.
He told Alexa to fire up his lazy afternoon playlist, nothing of his own, nothing he was tempted to drum along with, made a Greek salad and grilled chicken tenders and pieces of salmon. He hoped she liked either, both. Mena could be vegetarian for all he knew. Shit. He added slices of eggplant, tomato and haloumi cheese to the grill.
It was all very well to know what Mena’s breathing sounded like when she was close to coming but if he wanted to keep her, he had to know how to feed her, care for her in all the other ways that counted.
“Not that you’re getting ahead of yourself much, dimwit.”
He was hopelessly out of tempo with Mena, and it should’ve scared him witless. He stopped, tongs in hand, to check in with that thought and nope, there was none of that itch that hit him when he was in something he wanted out of. Awesome.
He was ready to serve their meal when Mena appeared in her underwear. His chin must’ve been close to dragging on the ground because she laughed.
“I don’t know what happened to my dress, or my other undies.” She approached the kitchen counter. “You cooked for us.”
“You eat animals?”
“I’m a horrible person, I do.”
“Since you have fresh undies, I’m keeping that other pair.”
“Keeping them?”
“In case something bad should happen to them.”
She shook her head with a grin, but she didn’t protest. “I’ll go get your dress.”
“Or you could give me your T-shirt.”
What new Insta aesthetic was this? He looked down. He’d grabbed the tee on top of the clean pile. It was vintage AC/DC. Gray, red lettering, faded and soft from long years of washing.
“You just want to see me shirtless again.” He’d lost a lot of great shirts this way. Women thought they looked cute in oversized men’s tees for some reason that’d always mystified him. Women looked good in clothes that fit or nothing at all.
“I vote for naked, but since you’re cooking you can keep the jeans.”
He came around the counter and yanked his shirt over his head and handed it to Mena. She put it on. It hung off her shoulders; the sleeves falling to her elbows, flowed over her body, the hem hitting her mid-thigh. The scales fell from his eyes. She looked incredible. He curled and uncurled his hands. She looked like she was his.
“Grip?”
“Yeah.”
“Is everything okay?”
“It will be.” Spreading his legs to reduce the height difference between them, he reached for her, hoisted her in close and kissed her toothpaste-fresh mouth, one hand to the back of her head, one to her delectable arse. “I like you in my clothes.”
“Not as much as you like me undressed.”
“Not true. I like you in your fancy underwear.” She bit his bottom lip. “Okay, I like you naked a whole lot. But we’re going to work on that.”
“Didn’t we just do that? I’ve got the orgasms to prove it.”
“I mean we’re going to work on the not being naked bit.” He had a brainwave. Twenty questions with a twist. “It’ll be like a game.”
She had her hands around his neck, looking at him with an expression that he’d call game for anything. She had so many layers he wanted to climb inside each of them and wrap them around himself like blankets.
When she’d klutzed it into the boardroom at S&Y, she’d been nervous and annoyed with herself for it. When they’d made eye contact under the table, he’d made her blush. He’d had that strange déjà vu like feeling they’d met before, something about her eyes, the shape of her lovely face, the melody of her. She showed her steel spine soon after and he’d thought her cold, judgmental, and inflexible, until that moment on the beach where she’d touched him with heat and he’d not known how to process that. Since then he’d met her spider-jumpy self, her ethical do-the-right-thing self and her hot sex goddess self
. And still he needed to know more.
He squeezed her butt. “I have this problem. Can’t keep my hands off you. It’s an impediment.”
“To what?”
“To learning about you.”
“It’s not like I’m a complete stranger.”
“I didn’t know if you ate meat or fish. I don’t know if you like to dance. I don’t know what kind of music you listen to, or if you play an instrument. I don’t know if your parents are alive or you have siblings.”
“You want to know those kinds of things?”
“You know all this detailed stuff about me. Your research.” It was freaky, like she was one of those superfans, but pro level. “I’ve got nothing on you that’s real outside of your work, that you’re scared of spiders, own gorgeous underwear and what a sensational fuck you are. And that isn’t anywhere near good enough.”
She unhooked her hands from his neck and pressed her palms to his chest. “There isn’t much to say about me. The critical thing is the spiders, also not that keen on insects. You’re the one with the big life.”
“I’m not buying that, Mena Grady.” Would she recognize her own words turned against her?
That yank—ow—on his chest hair said yes.
He let her go long enough to plate up and set the table on the deck. The sunset over the sea was going to be a top backdrop.
“How is this game of yours going to work?” she asked, sitting opposite him, backlit by a pinking sky.
“For everything I learn about you I earn a touch.”
She served them both salad. “Hmm. That just gives you what you want twice over. Information and sensation control. I think it should work the other way around. For every piece of information I give you, I earn a touch. I’m the one putting out here, I should get something in return.”
He could say that made him the winner twice over, but why complain when you were on a good thing? “Too easy.”
“I can touch you wherever I want, how I want, for as long as I want.”
He forked a piece of chicken. He ought to put up some sort of defense. “No stabbing, burning, disabling or maiming.” Not that she would. Shiver up his spine. Wait, would she?
One Wicked Lick from the Drummer (The One Book 3) Page 12
