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

  “Give me a percentage.”

  He’d kissed her for a while then, as if he needed thinking time, and then replied. “Eighty, twenty.”

  “You love it eighty percent of the time?”

  He’d nodded. She’d opened her legs to him and when he was seated inside her she’d said, “The Pareto principle rules. Suck it up, sugar.”

  He’d given her orgasm number four then and before they slept, he’d said, “Whatever you choose to do, Philly, you’ll always be extraordinary.”

  Seven mornings later she’d woken alone with a hangover, to find Grip had drawn the word extraordinary on her hip as if it was a nightclub stamp, the kind you got on your hand when you paid your entry fee. Bold capital letters shot through with shooting stars. She’d realized later it was the visual style used for their next album cover of the same name, the one that helped them break out.

  She’d had a guy autograph her boob once, this was different. Making it permanent was like a tribute to her old life and a prayer for her new one.

  Now it felt like a liability. As if Grip could see through her clothing and have a sudden epiphany of how they’d met which would lead to her being suddenly no longer partner material.

  Vera nudged her. “You’re thinking about him, aren’t you? All the lewd details.”

  “I’m thinking I really can’t see him again.”

  “You’ve gotten so conservative, Mena. It’s like I don’t know you anymore.”

  “That’s not fair. I wanted something better, I wanted security and I went after it. You were always going to remain a rebel.” And they were always going to be friends, regardless of occasional disputes like this.

  “It’s not about that. It’s that you’re ready to jeopardize a partnership that you’ve worked toward since you tumbled out of Grip’s bed over nothing. Even if he remembered Philly, you’re not her anymore. And like you said you don’t really know him. What did he say in the car?”

  “It was a truck with monster tires with the number plate Wanker and he said he was looking forward to working with me, because he thought I had the right stuff to help him become a better person.”

  Vera laughed. “He wants you for his muse.”

  “Oh Goddamn it.” Mena hung her head. Once she’d have given anything, everything for that status with a talented musician. “Don’t say that.”

  Puffing on an imaginary cigar, Vera said, “I’ve only got one more question. Can you be his financial muse without wanting to be between his legs again because if you can’t keep your hands to yourself, maybe you’re right about resigning him. A sex scandal with a client is something you don’t need.” She groaned. “I can’t believe I just said that, but here I am respecting your most ardent desire for being boring.”

  “I’ve long since grown out of wanting men who hit things for a living.”

  Had the cigar been real, Vera would’ve blown smoke in Mena’s face. “Pants on fire.”

  “I’m not lying. Did you hear me say he drove a monster truck? I can admit he’s still sexy and he does it for me, but I don’t want a musician in my life. Imagine the baggage. It would be like regressing. Besides, I’m building something with Stu.” That was the idea at least.

  “As long as that thing you’re building with Stu isn’t a nest.” It was no secret Vera thought Stuart Mazar and his legal tax practice were dull. Vera thought most people were dull.

  Mena only needed to work with Grip for three months. Make an assessment of his assets and income, his financial obligations, needs and wants, and recommend an investment plan. She didn’t even need to be in the same room as him to do most of that and nothing they’d done together fifteen years ago would change the quality of the advice she’d give him now.

  Also, Vera had a point, Mena wasn’t that girl with the rad body, black hair and cat’s-eye makeup anymore and apart from a tattoo he’d never see, Grip had no way of proving she was.

  “Looks like I have a new client.” She clinked her still full glass against Vera’s empty one. “Partnership, here I come.”

  FOUR

  Grip adjusted his body armor and put distance between himself and Abel, Isaac and Oscar who were arguing about how much a point-blank hit hurt. No one was going to ask for his opinion. Since he’d decided to go to S&Y instead of staying with the advisors the Tice family used, no one had said much of anything to him.

  He was included but on the outer. It was awkward but that was exactly the reason he’d made that decision. It was bad enough they all argued about band stuff, forcing him to either act like Switzerland or broker a peace. He didn’t want to have to continually argue about money as well, and as the only non-family member he’d always be voted off stage.

  On stage, it was a whole different matter. They played for shit without him to control the beat, the speed and the power of their music and he could make that point clear anytime by simply folding his arms, stilling his feet and listening to it all fall apart.

  Until they got back into the studio, they’d have to make do with taking out their frustration with each other through paintball. And the first person to try point-blanking him—he pointed two fingers at his eyes and then at Oscar—would find they had four flat tires on their new Maserati.

  The death staring was interrupted by Evie. “How’s my favorite traitor?” she said, swinging her helmet so it bumped his thigh.

  And that answered who was on his team today. His favorite Tice.

  “Whose puppy did you kick to be stuck with me?” he said, surprised to see her. “When did you fly in?” Figures no one bothered to tell him Evie was home. “Is Jay with you?”

  “All the questions and none of the answers. Poor Grip. Everyone hates you. I got in last night and Jay is signing someone’s shirt in the car park.”

  He pulled Evie into a hug. He’d missed her while she was traveling with Jay and his band, World’s End. Lost Property didn’t get along as well without her influence. “How long are you staying?”

  “Long enough to make sure you guys don’t implode. My brothers are dimwits. Now that you’re big-timing it, you absolutely need your own separate financial advice.”

  He could be honest with Evie. “Why do I feel like dipshit about it?”

  Evie patted his armor-plated chest. “Because for once you’re the disruptor, not the pacifier.”

  Ah, that’d be it then. He raised his arms over his head and bellowed. “I am the disruptor.”

  Evie laughed, and Oscar shouted. “You are dead meat, Grippen,” and hit him in the back with a green paintball before they’d even fucking started playing.

  It was on. Two against three until Jay joined the team and they worked out a strategy, which was essentially about letting Abel, Isaac and Oscar exhaust themselves, get frustrated and take useless risks. Which was some kind of metaphor dressed up in paint splotches because that’s what Grip feared they all might do with too much money.

  “Mum put you on to Caroline Swire, right?” Jay said, shifting from behind the bunker they were wedged tight in to lob a shot directly at Abel’s thigh, taking him out and making him chuck an epic tantrum.

  “She’s just had a bub so I’m working with Mena Grady.”

  “And?” Evie ducked an incoming.

  “She’s a stone-cold bitch,” who blushed the prettiest shade of pink, “with a great laugh. Won’t let me get away with any nonsense. Just what I was looking for.”

  They could no longer hear Isaac or Oscar. Jay took a risk by standing to look around and a paintball whizzed past, almost nailing him. “Stone-cold bitches generally don’t have great laughs.” he said, crashing down beside Evie.

  “More ice princess. White blonde, a bit stiff, focused.” When she wasn’t being embarrassed by him. “Probably thinks I’m a,” he searched for a word and landed on, “wanker,” for ease. “She’s a professional and it doesn’t matter what she thinks about me personally.”

  “Makes it easier not to want to sleep with her,” Evie said.

 
Grip peered out from behind the rough log arrangement that formed the side of their bunker. “I think she’d break my hand if I made a pass at her, which would be, you know.” He saw a flash of movement and fired, hitting a tree, “inconvenient. And I’ve stopped doing that. The one-night thing, the quick hook-up.”

  “You what?” Evie said, leaning around him to see his eyes inside his goggles.

  He pushed her back and down as a volley of shots came at her bringing that unique paintball smell, fish oil and stale banana. “It was great for a long time, no strings, nothing serious, but something changed. Success, the money. Now it just makes me feel lonely.”

  “Oh baby,” she said. “How long have you been in this sad state?”

  He turned to Jay. “She’s fucking nosy. How do you put up with her full-time?”

  Evie answered. “He thinks he’s the luckiest man alive.”

  “I always was into being examined forensically,” Jay said. “It’s so hot.”

  “Well?” Evie prodded Grip’s arm.

  “Bugger off.”

  “I’m worried about you.”

  “It’s not like I don’t have options. I’m choosing not to exercise them.”

  “I’m still worried. Abstinence is not you.”

  He stood and fired off a series of shots at the place he thought Isaac was hiding. This game was going to go on forever and he was hungry. “You’ve been gone a while.”

  Evie squeaked. “This isn’t new?”

  Nope. He’d watched Evie and Jay reconnect, three years ago, almost not make it and then decide they were it for each other. He wanted that. So much feeling for another person you were made greater for it. And he wasn’t going to find something like that the way he’d been living.

  In all the years of having fun with random people who were up for it, there were none who were still in his life and few he remembered. And of those there was only one who remained in his memory from when he was too young and full of doubt to know what he’d found and let go so cavalierly.

  He could still picture her waist-length ink-dark hair, so black it was almost blue, her exaggerated makeup and lithe little body. She was smart and fun and addictively sexy. What he remembered most was that she’d gotten him talking, gotten him thinking.

  That was the night he realized he was doing what he loved and was fucking lucky for it. He quit being half in and gave everything he had to the band, sucking it up when Jay left, when the Tices were hard to take. Philly had been right, you don’t quit when you’re doing what you love, you find a way to make the twenty percent that sucked work. Like Jay and Evie.

  Yeah, he probably romanticized some of that, all of it, rose-colored glasses and all. It was a long time ago and they were both drinking, partying hard, but in his head, Philly was extraordinary.

  And he’d grown out of ordinary.

  “So date, like normal people do,” Evie said.

  He’d tried that. Didn’t stick. “Ask Jay how hard it was to date when he was touring.” When he was one of the most famous rockers in the world and single.

  “He didn’t date because he was pining for me.”

  Grip leaned around Evie to look at Jay. “How, mate? How do you put up with her?”

  “Love is a sickness, and it got me fatal,” Jay said, and then he swore as a pink splatter smashed across his chest and he really was dead, and it was two on two.

  “Good lyric,” Evie said, getting to her feet. “We need to end this.”

  Five minutes later, on the run, she shot Isaac, then Oscar shot her while she was doing a victory dance. And then there were two.

  “Come out and face the music, you traitor separatist,” Oscar taunted.

  “Don’t worry, Oz, this way I’ll be good for a loan when all your investments in Snuggie futures go bust.”

  “Fuck you, and the farty nag you rode in on that always comes last.”

  Oi, that was low. Grip stepped on a branch and in the heartbeat after it cracked, a paintball landed to his right. He dove left and then hoofed it in a wide circle, making a shitload of a noise and aware Oscar was giving chase, thrashing through the bush behind him.

  This was a last-stand kind of play and he needed a diversion. He ducked behind a rock formation that looked like a big scoop of rainbow ice-cream and then lobbed a handful of loose stones to Oscar’s right. It made him turn, put his back to Grip and mouth off, which was good cover for sneaking up behind him.

  He’d be an arsehole if he shot Oscar point-blank, but then he was tired of being disrespected for his choices and that was one way to settle an argument.

  He hit Oscar from too close.

  And they all learned something. Being shot point-blank in your armor-plated back hurt like love.

  FIVE

  The serious expression on Grip’s face made Mena want to reach across the small meeting room table, smooth her hand across his forehead and tell him everything was going to be okay.

  And then she really wouldn’t be able to wash her hand.

  If he’d consent to accepting other forms of comfort—my quarterly bonus for a hug—her year would be made.

  She’d been half consumed with worry about this meeting. Not the content, but the lie of it. Meanwhile, her less ethical half had been looking forward to the frisson of excitement from being in the same room with Grip.

  Over the last week, she’d made a naughty fantasy out of their first meeting where what they’d done under the table wasn’t innocent and what they did on the table was fuel for a good dozen self-directed orgasms.

  In the fantasy, he called her Philly, even though she looked like she does now, not frumpy, thank you very much, Vera, but classy and competent. He looked like he does now too, but shirtless and barefoot, hair a finger-combed artful mess, wearing jeans that were ripped at the knees and low on his hips. His skin was gleaming and taut and the tattoo that wove up his torso from his hip, across his shoulder and all the way down his arm was dangerous.

  She stalked into the room and he undressed her with his eyes: slowly, deliberately, with heat. She ignored him. He told her he’d been looking for her all his life and he was coming apart, desperate for her. That no one else could do it for him. She stopped ignoring him then, her hips rolling, her back flexing on her bed, no longer able to pretend to be aloof even in her head.

  Fantasy Grip tore her shirt open, popping buttons, her skirt miraculously gone. He paused briefly to admire her underwear, eyes narrow and intense, before peeling it from her body carefully. The man knew it was expensive.

  He had magic hands, long fingers, wide knuckles, and they strummed over her body. He was full of dirty talk. Voice gravelly and low. It spilled from his imaginary mouth and made her tighten her hold on her vibrator.

  “I can’t wait to get inside you,” he said. “Feel how good you squeeze my cock. Waited for you a long time and now I’m going take that good, good girl and show you what you’ve been missing all these years. Make you dirty again. Make you so wicked filthy, you’ll do anything for me.”

  In her head, she was on her knees, showing him how filthy she still was, unzipping him, taking hold of his rigid dick, veiny and velvety. He had that delicious frenum piercing, right under his cockhead. She felt it against her tongue as she licked him, she imagined it against her clit as she sucked him. She made him moan and stroke her hair.

  And that was enough to make her come.

  She had it so bad.

  There were other versions of the fantasy. They always took place in the boardroom. She always started off dressed as she would for work. He always started off dressed as if he’d come off stage and was high on adrenaline. There was music, there was the smell of warm leather and cigarette smoke and dark spirits.

  Sometimes he spread her out on the table. Sometimes he had her against the floor-to-ceiling glass where anyone from the street or another office tower could see.

  Every time she made herself come.

  Feeling a little guilty for Stu, one time she tried to i
magine it was him in the boardroom, waiting for her, tearing her clothes, talking dirty, face buried between her legs while she dripped onto the polished surface of the boardroom table like she did with Grip.

  It didn’t work. It felt all kinds of wrong. She could barely imagine Stu without his suit on. She called him and broke it off. They weren’t building anything together if she couldn’t build a fantasy around him.

  And now, back in the real world, she had to find a way to quarantine her imagination and treat Grip with the detached professionalism and attention to detail he deserved.

  She’d examined his accounts and investment portfolio. Had met with his accountant and broker and understood his assets, sources of income, fixed and variable, and holdings, losses and—mostly losses. Now it was about building his profile as an investor, so she could restructure his portfolio to deliver to his expectations.

  To do that she had to understand what he wanted from his money.

  To do that well, she had to understand him.

  And not in a fantasy, do-me-over-the-boardroom-table kind of way.

  She’d chosen a smaller meeting room, so it was less intimidating, and not the scene of her self-directed orgasms. He’d shown up early looking more like an off-duty rocker in a tour T-shirt, black denim, and biker boots. He had a plaited cuff on one wrist and his hair was attractively every which way, as if he’d had someone’s fingers in it. There was a bike helmet on the empty chair beside him, which explained the hair, a leather jacket draped over the chair back.

  In front of him he had his tablet, a stylus and a folder of papers. He looked at her warily, as if he expected her to set an exam he knew he’d fail. He was never wary in her sex play. It was sobering.

  She managed to walk into the room without stumbling, dropping anything or losing her sense of self. They exchanged greetings like two competent adults who had never lusted after each other in her dream state.

  She’d dressed carefully this morning. A dove-gray suit, pants and jacket, which she kept buttoned over a plain white silk tank. Her hair was in a neat twist and she ditched her usual heels for a shorter stack, conservative, lace up, the kind she wore when she expected to do a lot of walking.