Mena was deft with the condom. She was outrageously sexy lowering herself onto him, and she short-circuited his brain riding him, palms braced on his chest, boobs bouncing, pelvis rolling and bucking, meeting his thrusts with a rhythm that made him feel a violent need to come and take her with him and then do it again and again till they both had nothing left to give.
In between sets, he wanted to hold her tenderly, kiss her gently and find out about all the things that make her feel good, all the things she worried about, got excited about, hoped for.
As far as song lists go, it was the best one he’d come up with in forever.
ELEVEN
Sex with Grip wasn’t like Mena remembered it, despite that familiar fun piercing.
It was a revelation.
Everything he was; confident, energetic, giving, easy, fun, made Mena more able to be her whole self, as if they were tuned into each other’s rhythm and melody.
With Grip she wasn’t too greedy or too demanding. She wasn’t too eager or too inventive. Things other partners had alluded to on their way out the door. With Grip, she could ask for what she wanted and know he’d go there with her. She could test his capacity for generosity and never reach its limits.
It was as if they vibrated on the same frequency, hellbent on chasing sensation and wringing the pleasure out till it twisted into a sweet agony of release.
She’d never known anything like it with anyone else and never appreciated what she’d walked away from until now.
And she’d never thought a man discarding a condom could be so sexy.
She sat in the wrecked bed with the sheet tangled around her crossed legs and watched him walk into her en suite bathroom for the second time. He was all bounce-a-quarter-off-it muscle, his body so solid, finding he still had sensitive spots, along his ribs, his neck, the crest of his hip bones was a delight.
He’d been muscle fifteen years ago too, but much leaner. He wore a man’s body now in the same way she wore a woman’s, no longer the skinny stick with boobs she’d been. He did seem very into the fact she wasn’t all elbows and knees and ribs that were visible now.
He was ticklish too. That she’d remembered correctly, taking care to moderate her touch so he felt it as her need to get closer to him and not an irritant. It wasn’t difficult. She did need to be close to him. As if her bones called to his, her blood was bonded with his.
Starlight, she was being fanciful. It’s what great sex after a long drought could do.
What great sex with a man you once idolized and who does a very credible performance of idolizing you could do.
He stood in the doorway of the bathroom grinning at her. “What?”
“Nothing.” So many thoughts crowding her head. None fit to share. A considerable number of them dedicated to praising Prince Albert and the man who wielded him like a divine scepter of sexual pleasure.
Two strides he was back on the bed with a leap to his knees. “That was not a nothing look.”
She should be exhausted. It was late, and they’d worked each other over with a kind of intensity that was leveling, but she felt alive in a way that was foreign and intoxicating. “What kind of a look was it?”
He lay back, arms folded behind his head; the length of him stretched out on top of the strewn-aside covers like a banquet labeled all you can eat.
“Can’t decide if it’s a make me a snack look or a can you do that thing you do with your fingers and make me come look.”
“Can’t it be both?”
She should’ve been ready for him to pounce. He was known for his explosive energy on stage and that’s how the bed got wrecked. He didn’t just move, he dived and rolled and bucked and bounced and pushed and dragged and loved her so well her body hummed with the pleasure of it.
Still, she was under him before she had a chance to choose snack as a first preference. They’d not eaten dinner and she’s heard his stomach growl.
He did the thing where he hooked his fingers inside her and sucked on her swollen clit till she came again, almost sobbing from the joy of it. And then she dragged him downstairs and made ham and cheese toasted sandwiches, avoiding looking at the clock, or thinking about anything but this bubble of sex and forever they’d created.
Because forever with Grip wasn’t a bankable commodity.
She took time to use the downstairs bathroom to check on her makeup while the grill did its job. God and all the groupies in the world, thank Vera for her gift of tattoo-covering stage makeup. Vera’s timing was exquisite. She’d likely meant it as a joke, encouragement to get a life, but there it was on the doorstep, right when Mena had needed it most. Right when she’d said to hell with the consequences and forgotten the one stamped on her hip.
It was only when she glanced in the bag she’d remembered. She’d been so hooked on the inevitability of being with Grip again, every hesitancy had vanished.
They were there now, those consequences, ethereal, draped around the back of her brain where she’d shoved them like clothing pushed to the back of the wardrobe because it was too good to throw out but no longer fit.
The tattoo camo, with a protective spray shield to stop
