One Wicked Lick from the Drummer (The One Book 3) Page 13

  “I agree. No inflicting of bodily harm and I’m not going to tie you up.” She wrinkled her nose, looked out towards the sea. “Although.”

  He ran a toe up her shin. “Not on a first dirty weekend. I’m not that kind of boy.”

  She whipped her head around and laughed, mouth wide. How had he ever thought she was cold? He couldn’t see any traps here. “You have to answer every question I ask to my satisfaction before you get your mitts on me.”

  She frowned and filled her mouth with salmon. He amended that. “You can have one pass.”

  She held up two fingers.

  “I’m such a sucker. Okay, two.”

  There was a lick of tension to the rest of the meal. Neither of them pointedly asking any questions. Talking about the house, the sunset, the fact she’d planned to break it off with him but packed spare underwear and a toothbrush. Complex emotions, he dug that.

  He sped through a kitchen clean-up and they reconnected on the sectional, with the darkening sky outside and a single lamp inside making it intimate.

  He started easy. “Did you always want to be an investment advisor?” She sat apart from him. At least three whole other people-shaped spaces away. Strategy. Jeez, might’ve screwed himself agreeing to her rules.

  “No, I wanted a job where I earned good money. I never wanted to worry about not having enough for rent or being able to pay my bills. I wanted security. I wanted to have nice things.” She curled her legs up on the sofa and looked out at the stars. “I didn’t have that growing up. Only child of a single parent. Mum worked two jobs. In a café during the day and cleaning offices at night. She only works one job part-time now because she wants to, and lives in a lovely flat I pay the mortgage on in a nice neighborhood.” She brought her gaze back to him. It came with a knowing expression. “Is that a satisfactory answer?”

  It knocked him sideways. It made his brain frizz with a dozen new questions and smashed his initial impression of her. Mena didn’t grow up posh and polished. The sophistication she had was earned, made, not an accident of her birth. That made her more like him than he’d ever imagined.

  “Doesn’t explain why you wanted to work with money.”

  “Without much supervision, I ran a bit wild. Lots of reasons to skip school. Because of that I got a real-life case study in consequences. I thought I could sail through on a good memory, but I did badly in my exams, so my options were limited. I never forgot that lesson.”

  Mena running wild. That was something he needed to know more about. “What kind of wild?”

  “The forging notes for the principal, climbing out of windows, minor shoplifting, underaged drinking and lots of hooking up kind. I thought I knew everything, and I was a devious and determined little witch.”

  Devious and determined. He sat forward, clapping his hands to his thighs. That was the best. He didn’t care if Mena didn’t touch him, this was almost better. He made beckoning gesture. “More.”

  “I was big into experimenting with fashion, makeup, hair color.”

  He looked right at the nubs of her nipples, poking against the T-shirt. “Piercing.”

  She smiled. “My last rebellion.”

  “Having a hard time imagining you like that, but I love it. Does the consequences thing mean you don’t like working with numbers?”

  “Math was the only subject I did like. Patterns I could understand. Stability. I love what I’m doing. Once I got over feeling like I’d already messed up my future and settled down, I realized I liked the magic of working with numbers. They tell stories, but they don’t lie.” She got to her knees on the sofa. All the better to crawl across it to him. “They’re reliably sexy. They don’t run around on you or skip out. If you can work them, you can trust them.”

  “Okay, good.” He waited for her to move. He’d snuck in a bunch of question there and now it was time for Mena to keep her end of the bargain. When she didn’t, he pointed at his lips and puckered.

  “I never said I had to touch you.”

  “Oh fuck, that’s foul play.”

  She shifted closer but kept her devious little hands to herself.

  He groaned. “What happened about your dad?” If that was a sensitive subject she’d pass. Men were crap. Like on a generational continuum and that needed to change. Loads of his school friends had grown up with only Mum and at least half of the kids in his drum group were the same. Single mums were fucking heroes.

  “He was a random boyfriend of Mum’s. Long gone before she knew she was pregnant. Doesn’t know I exist.” Mena made a hand dusting gesture. “Never missed him.”

  Those devious little hands weren’t living up to their potential with the dusting, they were talented at handling his dick and it would be ace if they were showing off some skills about now. Come on, honey. Time to sex up the questions. “How old where you when you had your first kiss?”

  “I was ten. My best friend Vera. It was for practice. We’re still best friends but we never kissed again.”

  He slapped his thigh. “That’s so hot.”

  “I was in primary school. It’s about as hot as you being scared of spaghetti. “

  He palmed his face and laughed. “I was imagining you kissing a girl now.”

  Mena rolled her eyes. “Of course you were.”

  He needed a redeeming question, quick. “How old were you when you first had sex?” She unfolded, stood up and moved right to the other end of the sectional and sat as far from him as she could get. So yeah, that wasn’t it. “You can pass.”

  “I’m not going to pass. I was waiting for you to get to R-rated stuff. I was sixteen. Wild, remember.”

  Not wildly touching him, which was a stinker, but hang about, that was good. This was what he’d wanted, to learn about her outside of knowing her right breast was bigger than her left and she wasn’t vegetarian, and her success was hard earned.

  “How was it?”

  She scrunched her eyes together, and brought her legs up, curled to the side again. “It was terrible. It hurt. Neither of us knew what we were doing. But we kept at it, and you know what they say about practice.”

  Whatever expression he was wearing was enough to make her crawl across the sectional to him. “Are you unhappy because my first time hurt or because I was sex obsessed?”

  Not even touching him and he was aroused. “Did you stay sex obsessed? Is that a defining characteristic?”

  “You’re jealous.”

  He shook his head. “I. No.” Shouldn’t be, but yeah, that’s what it felt like, a hot shaft of resentment. “Shit. I’d like to have been that guy and made sure it didn’t hurt. I’m sorry it did. Might’ve turned you off for life.”

  She quirked her head to the side. “It didn’t.”

  He lifted both hands and jazzed his fingers. “Halleluiah.”

  “My first was a good guy. He didn’t do wrong by me. We were just woefully ignorant and stupidly horny.”

  They grinned at each other. “That was almost the name of our band. Tonight live, give it up for Woefully Ignorant and Stupidly Horny.”

  “I’d have worn that T-shirt. I was sex obsessed in my teens, my early twenties. And then I promised myself I wouldn’t end up with limited choices again and got busy building a career because having a good memory and being good at sex wasn’t going to buy me nice things or help Mum out.”

  Jesus fucking Christ I like you with clothes on, Mena Grady.

  “I was sex obsessed for most of my life, but I was using it like video games, to have fun, let off steam, fill in time. It’s a crappy way to be with other people even when they knew the score. Until the other night I hadn’t had sex in—” He had to think about it. “More than a year.”

  It wasn’t a question, but it got Mena to crawl to his side. It got him kissed. A kiss that was about comfort and understanding, a kiss that was the opposite of sex. He held Mena’s arms as she leaned over him and met the pressure of her lips with equal pressure of his own. He’d seen Jay and Evie kiss in a way
that felt like this. Evie’s best mate Teela and her actor fella, Haydn, too. It was a lover’s kiss. It wasn’t asking anything. It wasn’t starting anything. Its only agenda was connection and it spoke to the part of him that was looking for something more than physical release.

  The involuntary groan of longing was all his and it made Mena sit back away from him. He was breathing weirdly, as if he’d had a workout, as if he was fresh off stage, and his thoughts spun. He latched onto a prepared question.

  “What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?”

  “Caramel.”

  She put her hand on his knee. It was a backbeat in his chest. “Favorite food?”

  “All the Asian ones.” She trailed that hand up his thigh to rest on his hip and she shifted closer, placing a kiss on his shoulder.

  “Favorite color?”

  “Black.” She climbed across his lap, the T-shirt hitching so he got to see her thighs and a flash of the white silky stuff of her undies.

  “Do you have any pets?”

  She put both hands to his chest, thumbs rubbing across his nipples. “No. I work long hours. It wouldn’t be fair.”

  The moves she was putting on him now—more than fair. “If you didn’t, what would you have?”

  “A dog.” She bent forward and flickered her tongue over his right nipple. “A cat.” And his left one.

  He put his hand to the back of her head, tangled his fingers in her hair. It was getting harder to think because she was pressed against his dick and she was kissing her way up his chest and neck and along his jaw to his ear. A thousand sensitive places that sent out flares to the rest of his body that good things were going down.

  “Mena, honey.”

  She stilled. “That’s not a question.”

  “Did you have an imaginary friend growing up?” Shit, where did that come from? Desperation sure dug deep.

  She laughed and took his earlobe between her teeth. It hit him like an electric shock, making his whole body jerk, while he rocked her hips in a slow dry-hump.

  She stilled again, though she couldn’t stop her tremble. “I didn’t have an imaginary friend but I’m guessing you did.”

  “Yeah. Big Dave. He was cooler than me. Not afraid of food.” He urged her on with hands on her arse. “Please don’t stop, Mena, please don’t fucking stop.”

  “I need a question.” She rolled her hips, arched her back.

  More of her weight was directly on him and his knees widened, his hips lifted. “Ever been married?”

  “No.” She took the T-shirt off.

  He got his hands all over her skin and her bra undone. “Engaged?” The bra was gone and he palmed her breasts, thumbed her nipples.

  She pushed into his hands, rode his cock and groaned. “No.”

  “How long ago was your last serious relationship.”

  “Ages. It ended badly. He was a tool.”

  He pulled her forward and put his face between her breasts, breathed the pretty scent of her skin, remembered an earlier question he hadn’t asked in sequence like it was divine intervention. “If you weren’t an investment advisor, what would you be?”

  She pushed against him to separate and stand between his legs. “I don’t know.”

  She was flushed and tousled and so fucking hot and not touching him. “That’s not a satisfactory answer.”

  She leaned over and undid his pants. Fuck the question. She pulled him out and went to her knees and then stopped.

  “Christ.” Her hands weren’t anywhere on him. “When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?”

  “I read a lot about music and art. I wanted to be a muse. I thought that was a real job.”

  She pulled him out and wrapped her hand around him and his skull hit the back of the sofa. “It could be a real job.”

  “You can’t look up the salary range for muse and there’s no union.”

  He wanted to flex into her hand, he wanted her mouth. He was leaking over her fingers. She was his financial muse. She could easy be his sexual one. “What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done?”

  “Lied to someone who deserved the truth.” She put her lips around his Albert and tugged lightly while she rolled his balls in her hand.

  “Oh fuck.”

  Then she swallowed his cockhead. It was an enormously satisfactory answer, until she stopped and took her mouth away.

  “Have you ever been crazy about anyone?” Had he already asked that? Any question would do.

  “Yes.” She licked him, waggled the Albert, ran her open lips over his rigid shaft.

  “Who?”

  “Pass.”

  Didn’t expect that. Didn’t give a fuck, because he was close and she was sucking on him, her cheeks working, saliva making everything wetter, her pupils blown out, eyes up on his, her hand in her own pants.

  “You love giving head.” Not a question but she made a sound in agreement and it trickled all the way up his spine and over his head, a shower of sparkles and he lost control, jetting into the perfect soft warmth of her mouth, his hands in her hair and legs clamping around her kneeling form.

  He was the one who was crazy about someone.

  He used the T-shirt to clean them both up. Pouring her water from the pitcher on the coffee table and bringing her back to the sofa where she curled at his side.

  “I’d almost completely lost interest in sex for sex’s sake,” she said, “now I’m thinking it is a defining characteristic, because I am sex obsessed about you.”

  Maybe the most satisfactory answer of all. He kissed her slightly sweaty forehead as she laid it on his shoulder. In fairness the game was over, had reached an explosive conclusion but he still had questions. He might always have questions for her.

  “What made you kiss me like that?”

  There’d been hundreds of kisses she might not know what he meant, and he wasn’t sure he could explain it.

  “Because you’re important to me.” She traced the lines of the vines on his arm. “Because I’m glad I’m with you. Because when I came here this was meant to be goodbye. I wasn’t going to see you again after this weekend, but I took one look at you and knew I couldn’t do that. Because I wonder if we might be able to stick without our clothes on and because I don’t care anymore what Swire and Yallop think. You’re worth the risk. If it’s okay with you, I’ll tell them the truth. I’ll find a way around this because I want to keep seeing you.”

  “Fucking great answer.” His voice was end of a concert rough. He held Mena to his side a little tighter, as if holding her physically could bind her to him in other ways.

  It hadn’t occurred to him that she’d meant to both resign him as a client and as a person and never see him again. He felt like he’d narrowly missed being in a fatal accident. “We can talk to your boss together, if that works for you?”

  She reached for his other hand and squeezed it. “It’s enough that you offered.”

  “Have you ever been crazy enough about anyone to be in love?”

  “Once. A long time ago and I was very different then. He was someone I lusted after. I plotted to meet him. Put myself in his way so he couldn’t avoid me. It was only a temporary thing. But it was good in a way that shocked both of us. I found out much later that it meant something to him. Neither of us tried for more, but I still wonder what might’ve happened if we had.”

  Story reminded him of his week with Philly. “Man was an idiot to let you go.” It was difficult to imagine how Mena was still single.

  “We were on different paths.”

  “We’re on different paths. I’m a musical clown and you’re a mathematical witch. I kinda liked that monster truck and you hated it.”

  She poked his side. “It was super impractical.”

  “I was joking but I think you know what I mean. We’re not as different as I first thought but we’re not from the same worlds now. Does it worry you?” When she didn’t reply, he took a quick breath and went on. “It worrie
s me. I’m not touring right now, but I spend months on the road every year. It’s not an easy life for partners.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “I’m getting ahead of myself, right?”

  She brought his hand to her lips and kissed his palm. “I didn’t hate it.”

  He was so freaking hooked. She was extraordinary. He had one question left. The very first question he’d ever asked her. It was like being scared spaghetti was going to choke him all over again. It made no sense.

  “Mena, have we met before?”

  She lifted her head, her eyes wide and said, “Pass.”

  SEVENTEEN

  The word pass was out of her mouth, deadpan serious, before Mena could weigh its impact. She flat out panicked and tried to disguise it in acting like she’d intended to tease Grip. She’d been careful with all of her answers, not telling outright lies but keeping her secret, never mentioning being goth, or spending all of her time in pubs, clubs and concert venues, and everyone had that one-who-got-away story.

  She buried her head in Grip’s arm so he couldn’t see her face and didn’t take a breath until he laughed and hauled her across his lap and kissed her with an edge of ruthlessness. She deserved it.

  Lying to him was getting harder. She had to find a way to come clean that didn’t make him distrust everything she’d said and done. Instead she kept digging herself in further. That was one of the reasons why she’d wanted to control the touch element of the game. If Grip’s questions got too tricky, she’d intended to distract him with touch. They’d ended being all about touch anyway because he clearly loved being touched and she loved getting him excited.

  She couldn’t think about it anymore because he kissed the anxiety out of her, and she surrendered to the drug of his lips and hands. All that dopamine he injected into her with hungry kisses and possessive caresses was too much to combat. She gave in to the pleasure of making out, only anxious they’d run out of time to be like this together.

  Time was what she needed. Time to live this fantasy. Time to wonder if it could truly be more than that. Time to fall in love with him then fall out so her secret no longer mattered, and she never needed to betray him.