SEVEN
Mena had never seen or heard anything like water music. She stood at the edge of the pool in her beach-unfriendly work suit with a small crowd in their wet swimwear and watched as the women sang in their own language and made the salt water into their instrument.
The sight and sound was almost enough to help her get over her “sex thing” gaffe. It was hard to imagine what Grip thought of that. She felt her face heat thinking about it. She knew exactly where that had come from and it was no place good for business. Her hand still tingled from touching his thigh. He made her brain splinter and her thoughts head to the bedroom even when that destination wasn’t on the map.
The vibration of the bike between her legs and the nearness of him, his muscled body right up against hers, his outer thighs against her inner ones, had been a peculiar type of torture. She’d wanted to wrap her arms around him and hang on tight and pretend she never had to let go. Instead she touched him only enough not to fall off like an amateur and become roadkill.
She hadn’t been on a bike for years and his was a glorious throbbing chrome monster. She hadn’t been to the beach in years. She was on edge around him, oddly nervous, prone to blurt out inappropriate things. She hadn’t ever been with another man who excited her like Grip did. That seemed like a terrible oversight. Vera would shout I told you so. Mena suddenly saw what Vera meant about becoming conservative. It was a grown-up word for boring.
But being boring had its merits. It had allowed her the space to build her career. And she genuinely loved her work. It engaged her mind and fed her ego. Plus there were considerable perks: financial security, her soon-to-be lovely terrace, her nice car, her annual trips to Europe.
It’d had been a long time since she’d missed her wild days, where excitement was getting useful information out of the guys manning the merch tent without having to put out, and security was enough money to hail a ride home.
Watching Grip’s reaction to the water drummers was making her reflect on the parts of Philly she’d left behind to become Mena. There was a lot of Philly that was her essential self: confidence, an aptitude for hard work, focus, an exceptionally good memory, and the ability to process information efficiently.
There were definitely parts of Philly she missed. Philly had never been boring. Philly didn’t observe life, she’d thrown herself in the deep end of it, and she’d had an amazing sex life.
Feet buried in the wet sand beside her, Grip could barely stand still, excitement sending a current through his body. His eyes were alight, his hands moving with the beat against his thighs. What was water music to him? It wasn’t clear to her how this wasn’t simply entertainment, not something he could invest in.
She had to puzzle what he wanted out quickly because the more time she spent with him, especially outside the polite constraints of the office, the more at risk she was of doing something worse than a grossly misplaced comment about his love life or sex acts. After all, she turned the staid old office into the backdrop for raunchy escapades with Grip. Watching him showing unbridled delight in the salty air as the sky turned pink was exactly the wrong stimulus for a professional relationship to develop under.
Not that there was anything she could do about it right now. There was another stop on this joyride. Grip wanted to show her one more thing that made him happy, another piece she needed to complete his puzzle.
There was enthusiastic cheering, whistles and quite a bit of splashing as applause when the water drummers finished. Mena resigned herself to the fact her suit would need a good dry cleaning and would probably never be quite the same. When the women invited children from the audience for a lesson, she was surprised at how chaotic water-play soon became real music as the kids drummed the water and their wet limbs alongside the women to the delight of their parents and everyone still watching and filming.
“Look at that,” Grip said. “It’s an unbelievably accessible form of teaching kids rhythm and percussion.”
She’d have replied with a question but as the kids exited the water, streaming past them, one of the performers signaled to Grip.
In the next second, he’d hauled his T-shirt off and Mena’s mouth went dry. Holy starlight, he was ripped. She was staring at him so shouldn’t have been surprised when he dropped his jeans.
He grinned at her. “I’m up.”
She almost lost her footing, trying to take a step back from him but forgetting she was ankle deep in wet sand. He shot his hand out and she grabbed hold to steady herself.
“Okay?” he asked.
The man was almost naked. Wearing a small, tight pair of black athletic briefs, which left almost nothing to her imagination and her imagination had been to a lot of X-rated places regarding Grip. There was nowhere appropriate to look, but with the mirrored shades on she looked everywhere. Pecs, abs, Adonis line, the soft fuzz of hair that led to the cock she knew was way more than adequate and pierced, thick quads, the surgery scar over his knee, and all the way back up again, highlight by highlight on the path to being completely light-headed.
No, she was not anything like okay. Okay was an odd shaped planet with a wobbly orbit in a distant galaxy where there was no air to breathe. He planned to get wet. Wet! She let go of his forearm as if it was molten lava. “You might’ve
