The water was level with her nipples, her breasts so buoyant he almost forgot what he intended to say next. “The real reason I gave up playing is that I kept freezing on stage.”
She put her hand to his face and he leaned a little into it. He never talked about this. He’d let it beat him and there was a part of him that was ashamed about that.
“I could play anything in the practice room but once I was out there in a monkey suit with an orchestra and an audience, I was a big meatbag of terror. It was like everything I knew, all the muscle memory was wiped out.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“I’d shake so bad, my hands didn’t function properly.”
She wrapped her arms around him, pressed her forehead to his.
“Jay used to get sick, technicolor yawn before every show. Sometimes after as well. This was different. I could barely talk, barely walk. I made mistake after mistake until the only thing I could do to make it better was stop. Afterwards I wanted to rip holes in the world I was so angry with myself.”
“That must’ve been frightening.” She kissed his cheek, gentle, forgiving.
“That first time, I thought, we all thought, I could overcome it. I tried, I really tried and so did my teachers. We changed up what we could, ditched the formal suit, let me be more me, programmed shorter, easier pieces. But it happened over and over again. I saw a therapist for a while, but even when I could get through a piece it was like I was playing with my toes.”
“Oh sweetheart, was it really that bad?”
“While they were still in my kicks.”
Mena rubbed the back of her knuckles against his cheek and he took a full breath. This was no picnic. He was skin on skin in a spa with a woman whose body he craved, and he was ripping his psyche apart for her instead of ploughing into her to their mutual satisfaction.
“I’m surprised you even own a piano now.”
“Took me time to work out I didn’t hate the instrument or playing it. I hated the performance. I didn’t want to be a soloist, the star, up front. I didn’t belong there.”
“But you’re a hell of a performer.”
“My drum kit is up the back and I get to run the show, the whole band from there. I don’t need to be in the spotlight. I don’t need people to remember my name.”
Mena rubbed her finger along the column of his neck. “You have lots of personal fans.”
“Yeah, but a way smaller number and they don’t make my life weird. Not like Jay. Abel had a stalker last year, it wasn’t good.”
“I remember the head nod at the beach.”
“That’s right. My fans are cool, laid-back. They’re no hassle.” He eased Mena closer and she curled into him, her arms draped over his shoulders. “I like my life this way. My music this way.” And if it sometimes felt too easy, he only had to remember the blinding fear he experienced on stage at the piano or Jay on his knees chucking at the side of the stage to know he’d made the right call.
“Thank you for telling me.” She kissed him; a soft kiss full of comfort. No judgment, no trying to tell him he was wrong, talk him out of it, or make him try again.
The next breath he took felt cleaner, sharper. “Wanted you to know the truth.”
“I need to te—”
He cut her off because he needed to kiss her thoroughly, deeply, over and over again, with her glasses on and then, when they got in the way, with them off. With her body pressed close, with his hands on her hips and his heart open so wide, it was dumb luck it didn’t fill with water and drown him.
He kissed her until he felt her shiver and then he got them out of the spa and rubbed her down with a thick towel. It was another excuse to touch her all over and it took some time. She kept getting wet from touching him. He kept encouraging her. She said they needed to talk more. He said they needed to talk less. They were both thoroughly dry and steamed up by the time the mosquitos discovered them and it was time to move the party horizontal.
He found her glasses and with her hand tucked in his, they went upstairs to bed where with the moonlight streaming into the room it got a whole lot more deep and meaningful and no one needed to see anything up close or far away, no one needed to say anything, no confessions, no questions, just to breathe into each other’s skin and feel the soak of pleasure.
Every kiss added meaning, layer over layer of it. Joyous, lazily seductive, sharply addictive, hungry. Every touch brought understanding: what she liked, what she needed, what made her shudder and want, sigh and cry out.
He was deep inside her when he came. She was deeply, happily sleepy after she did.
Great night. Ten out of ten. Would do again. And Again. And Again.
Next stop, sex-satisfied coma.
It was the sun that woke him, way too early, bouncing into the room with an entitled attitude like it had an official backstage pass. He fumbled for the remote to close the curtains before it woke Mena too, taking the time to drink in her sleeping form, only half-covered by the sheet. That’s when he noticed the mark on her exposed hip. Mottled, circular. Shit, he’d bruised her. Was that what she’d been going to tell him, when he’d cut her off, not to handle her so roughly? He looked closer, wanting to touch the spot, soothe where he’d hurt, horrified he’d not taken enough care.
He made out shapes in the dark stain. He peered closer and made out letters, a shooting star. Not a bruise.
E. X. T.
He knew the style of those letters, as if they’d been tattooed on his own skin.
Head full of discordant notes, he didn’t need to see any more. He hit the button to close the curtains and got out of bed. Snagged some cut-off sweats to wear and got out of there.
He played Florence till his fingers cramped and then moved to the drum kit and played till his knees ached and his back pained, and his arms burned, and the confusion became disappointment and dripped off his skin. It should’ve been enough.
That’s where she found him. She came into the room wearing his T-shirt and a come-back-to-bed expression. “I missed you.”
It wasn’t enough.
Was this some kind of sport for her? A fucking nasty game of entrapment. For his money? That had to be it. All that fake indecision for professional reasons just a play to lure him in.
He stared at her, sex hair, tousled and tossed, her glasses in her hand, those long wonderous legs that she’d wrapped over his arse. She was naked under the shirt, the points of her nipples showing, the curve of one hip.
So physically different from when they’d first met, he’d not seen it clearly.
Then she’d been sharp, angular, dark hair, pale skin. Now she was a fucking beautiful deceit.
Maybe there was an explanation, maybe she’d set things straight.
“Was I too rough?”
“No.” A smile, but he saw the caution in it. “You were just right. Except you’re out of bed already.”
He touched his own hip. “I didn’t mark you?”
She’d tell him. She’d explain and it would make sense.
“You?” She shook her head. “No.” Her face was stripped of color, but for the darkness of her eyes.
Disappointment curdled into anger.
He hated her.
He still wanted her.
“Come here.” He shifted back on the throne, made room for her to sit on the saddle peak between his knees. When she leaned in to kiss him, he turned his face, making her blink in confusion and put her glasses on.
“Have you ever hit a drum?”
She shook her head, stepped around his knee and eased to sit, soft and warm against his sweaty hardness, trusting and misleading. Fuck, she must have been laughing at him since the beginning. It explained her stumbling into the S&Y boardroom, it was uncharacteristic clumsiness. She hadn’t known it would be him. But she remembered, and she’d decided while he was flirting with her under the table that she’d string him along, make a fool of him.
“Put your hands on mine. Don’t let go.”
Her weight settling against him and she slid her hands over his. He struck the ride cymbal and she started with a shocked exclamation.
“Put your feet on mine.”
“I’m going to feel you play.”
Bare feet on top of his, she was going to feel it all. The shock, the sadness, the humiliation, the rage, the cold, cold air that filled his lungs and formed icicles to stab at the taut drumskin of his heart.
He started slow, a tentative introduction to the bass, the snare and the high hat. Her hands and feet stayed put over his. He brought in the crash cymbal and the floor tom and she had to work a little harder not to lose her hold on him, she had to balance when she didn’t know what move he was going to make next. Justice. He’d been off-balance since he’d met her.
He should’ve been wearing ear plugs. He should’ve given her a set. He was about to get loud. He was about to make her work to keep up. It wasn’t easy to reach the middle and high tom around her body, his arms squeezing against her ribs. He played faster, the intro drum solo to “Extraordinary.” The title track of the album. She should know it. She’d seen it live a dozen times before she’d caught his eye, her goth glamour, her edgy little body, nothing like the lushness she had now. But underneath the changes to her body, she was still the girl with the flashing intelligence, the incredible memory, all those liner notes she’d memorized and could perform on command.
Fifteen years ago, she’d used those weapons to make him believe in himself, to win a permanent corner of his soul. Now she’d used them to make him doubt everything.
Her feet slipped from his. “I can’t keep up.”
In her voice an edge of anxiety. He felt no shame about putting it there. “You know this. I know you do.”
She took her hands away. He’d hit the second drum solo part of the song and he didn’t relent. He gave it everything he had left, stopping only when Mena slid to the floor between his knees.
She looked up at him, eyes wide. “Grip, what’s happening?”
“Why, Mena?” Maybe there was a reason she hadn’t told him. Fucking better be good.
He dropped the sticks and reached for the hem of his shirt, dragging it up over her hip. The mark was gone. The drum throne clattered on the floor as he stood and kicked it away, hands to his head to contain his temper. “You used makeup to cover it.”
He heard guilt in her gasp. “I should have told you.”
She’d told him all about herself, neglected to tell him the one thing that mattered most.
He didn’t give her a chance to gaslight him again. The spa, the rubbing down, the sex that followed, revealed her true self. “Extraordinary.” Her research wasn’t desk, it was primary, up close and fucking personal. “I drew that on your hip, Philly.”
Philly, Mena, whoever she was, scrambled to her feet. She didn’t deny it. She didn’t explain it.
The shock of her deception was a line of nerve pain that ran from the top of his head to his balls and back again, slamming into his stomach and making his head buzz.
“You don’t get a cent of my money.”
“I don’t. It’s not like that. I wanted to tell you. I should’ve tried . . .”
Nerves of Antarctic tundra, he waited for her to say something, anything to help him make sense of this. He got nothing.
This was a test all right and he’d passed it.
“It would’ve hurt less if you’d kicked me in the nuts.” He couldn’t look at her. “You should go.”
He didn’t hear her leave. He righted the throne. He went back to Florence and played the forty-minute-long concert piece that had been his lifelong nemesis. It didn’t matter how badly he played, because the anger, sadness and jangle of depression in Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” couldn’t hurt him anymore.
Nothing would hurt this badly ever again.
NINETEEN
Selfish groupies gave good groupies a bad name. They took and took and took, crossed every line to invade their idol’s space, their lives. They were fame vampires, sucking on the high, appropriating proximity to celebrity for their own use. They were the ones who became stalkers, competitive with each other, unhinged from reality, dishonest, devious, entitled and dangerous.
Mena managed about three hours sleep on Sunday night. Alternating between wanting to cry and wanting to smash every lovely item in her apartment. She’d become the very thing she’d abhorred, a selfish groupie. She’d lied and grasped and manipulated, invaded Grip’s headspace and home and been deliberately deceitful.
Those grasping groupies got ostracized by friends, banned by management, sicced on by security. Arrested, charged, fined. They lost the person who’d been most valuable to them by abusing them.
Exactly like Mena had done and now she had to pay.
Her head was full of the way Grip played the piano as she’d fled, as if he wasn’t muscle and bone but fury, confusion and sadness.
She’d wanted to tell him, she’d tried to, but not near hard enough. She’d let him distract her. Too busy falling in love to consider that every moment spent in each other’s arms expanded her lie until it was a monstrous enough beast to crush them both.
She was meant to learn he’d changed, become hardened, jaded, find signs he wasn’t such a good guy anymore, that success had made him careless and cavalier. She was meant to learn she didn’t feel the same about him fifteen years later and that he’d drawn on the hips of hundreds of women, had a string of broken marriages and kids in therapy and only wanted what she’d wanted, to be wild again for a night or two before moving on.
This was not the time to learn that some people’s goodness was baked so hard into their being, a whole helix of their DNA, that they remained constant while everything around them changed.
That Grip thought she’d exploited their attraction to take advantage of his financial position was the nightmare she’d known all along could play out and she’d lust-walked her way into the very thick of it, only to be exposed by her greed for him.
The acid in her stomach threatened to burn through her organs. The day smelled of ash. She’d earned Grip’s dismissal, his uncomprehending disappointment. And she had no defense, no excuse. She’d been arrogant, careless, so carried away with the pull of her feelings for him, she’d lost all sense of perspective, more worried about preserving what she had than a future she could build.
Thought you were so clever. Thought you had it under control. Thought you could break the rules and still come out on top. When did that ever work for you?
The only thing she could do to retain even a shred of dignity now was to resign. Caroline would pick up the pieces, ensure Grip’s investment advice was sound and apologize in the only way that would matter to him, by letting him know Mena had been punished for abusing his trust.
Three hours sleep wasn’t enough to face having lost her chance with Grip and her job; being thrust into a less certain future, but there was no amount of sleep that was a good prescription for that.
She emailed Caroline her letter of resignation. She paced about her office, avoiding the other employees, and packed her personal items so she’d be ready to go when her email had been acknowledged: a cardigan, a spare pair of shoes, a coat, a favorite keep cup.
She drafted and deleted, rinsed and repeated an apology to Grip, knowing there was nothing she could say now that she couldn’t have said when he’d exposed her lie, nothing that he’d want to hear. As struck dumb now as she had been in his music room.
The last thing she expected was Caroline to appear in the doorway of her office, dressed casually, with the new baby, Amelia.
“What’s going on, Mena?” Caroline put Amelia’s carrier down and sat across from Mena, waving for her to sit as well. “We knew there was a chance you’d jump ship to another firm if we didn’t promote you fast enough, but that’s not why
you’re resigning, is it?”
Mena’s letter had been brief. One sentence tendering her resignation based on a lapse of professional judgement.
Caroline frowned. “What did you do? And before you answer that, if we discover embezzlement, we will prosecute you with everything we’ve got to save the reputation of the firm.”
Mena looked away from Caroline to Amelia’s little soft round sleeping face squished into the sheepskin of the carrier, bow lips pursed, one sock-clad foot twitching as if she was already learning how to dance through life.
“She’s wonderful when she’s sleeping,” Caroline said. “I’d like to get through this without waking her.”
Mena would like to get through this without waking too, that’d mean the fuzzy buzzing in her head, the twisting of her gut, the ache behind her gritty eyes was all part of a nightmare. “It’s nothing financial. It affects only one client. I made an error of judgement in my personal relationship with him.”
“We’re talking Mark Grippen.”
Mena nodded. She had to stop talking like she was a lawyer and tell the truth, she owed Caroline, who had always been a great boss and a friend, but Caroline saved her the trouble.
“You slept with Grip.”
“Yes.” Mena’s face burned. Embarrassing as it was, it was a relief to have it said.
“Affairs with clients are not something we can treat lightly. It’s not like you didn’t know this. It’s in our policy documents. You signed off on that condition as part of your contract.”
“I understand.”
“I’m so disappointed in you.”
Mena looked at the baby again, willing her to wake, anything to break the tension.
“But if that’s it, I’m not accepting your resignation. Is that it? You had copious, I’m hoping, glorious, myth-shattering consensual sex with our rock star client.”
Mena pushed into her chair back in surprise, trying to read Caroline’s expression. Was she being sarcastic? “I—ah.”
“Well, did you?”
Nothing for it but the truth. “Yes.”
Caroline crossed her leg, her slip-on mule dangling off her toes. “Oh, you’ve obviously messed up your promotion. That’s not happening. You’re suspended immediately and your bonus, you can forget about that. You can’t have any further professional contact with Mr. Grippen.” Caroline’s shoe fell off as she leant forward. “But, oh my God, girl. You go get it.”
One Wicked Lick from the Drummer (The One Book 3) Page 15
