“What?”
“You get this look on your face when you’ve been properly fucked.”
Her brows lifted. “Properly?”
“All the way from quivering with anticipation to could not move if you were on fire.”
“The way you do it?”
He polished his knuckles on his chest. “Perfectionism has its uses.”
They both made cringe faces and she said, “And what is this look you’re talking about?”
“You glow. Like you’re totally comfortable in your skin and at peace with the absurdity of the world.” He kissed her forehead. “Like your happiness is a fortress and nothing can touch it.”
“Oh, Grip.” He heard something like awe in her voice. She pushed his shoulder, so he rolled to his back where she could prop up on his chest. “How is it that I forget you’re an artist. When you say things like that you take my breath away.”
That could be good, right? “I’m cool with that.” Super cool, if he could be the only one who got to make her glow, who made her boneless and breathless and got to do it as often as possible.
She put her teeth to his chest and scored him gently. “You’re like the bubbles in champagne, you go straight to my head and make me forget what time it is, what day, what my damn name is.”
“I’m cool with that too.”
“You’re a wild ride is what you are.”
He slapped a hand on her arse, more noise than impact. “I don’t hear you complaining.”
“I’m not. I tried to stay away. It’s why I ran out of my own house rather than wake you to say goodbye. It’s why I didn’t call. I shouldn’t be here now.”
“In case you had any doubts, I’m fucking glad you are.”
She kissed him. A dreamy, sweetly rich treat that wasn’t about being sorry she was here. He’d have drifted in that tenderness for a long time, but she broke away.
“I can’t sleep with you and be your advisor.”
He smoothed his hand over her hip. “Yeah, I figured that.” He couldn’t stop touching her. She didn’t show any signs of being annoyed by his big paws.
“I’ve let you down.”
“Not from where I’m at,” he ran a hand up her back to her neck and spanned it.
“That’s because you like sex and you almost put us both into a coma. You might feel different when your hormones have stopped partying.”
He rubbed his thumb along the column of her neck. “Hush your pretty mouth, honey. We party hard, my hormones and I, and we don’t stop till we drop.” Good thing she didn’t see him last night. He’d dropped in front of the TV with the controller still in his hand like some underaged alcohol-intolerant punk.
“I’m serious, Grip.”
“Me too. It’s not a problem. You’ll put someone else on the case and it’ll be fine.”
“But you’re virtually starting again and that’s not everything.” She pulled out of his hold, sat up, her back to him, her hands to her face. “This is complicated.”
He gave her a minute, kept his hands to himself, and when she didn’t go on, he sat too, drawing her into the vee of his legs, her back to his chest, and wrapping his arms around her.
“There are these pieces I play on the piano when I get in a mood.” He could feel the tension in her body, rigid muscles wrecking her glow state, but not resistant to his touch. “Frustrated or impatient, angry or excited. They’re complicated. To play them I need to let go of everything else and live in the music. If I think about my hands or anything else for a second, I mess up. Complicated isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes it’s the thing keeping us upright. The way our bodies work, the way the earth spins, the sun makes things grow, how pizza tastes awesome. That’s all complicated shit. People are complicated.
“Not me, so much. I’m like sheet music, it’s all there, you just have to know how to read it. You’re complicated. You’re this incredible professional woman whose built a good life for herself, and you’re also this passionate, insatiable fucking babe,” he buried his face in her neck as she relaxed into him.
“You’re the natural north pole to my sexual south. We click together physically. I don’t know if we’re enough not to pull apart when we’re not naked, but I know right fucking now that I want to stick some more and find out. And against all that, against the odds of finding someone I want to be with in a way that makes me edgy as fuck and happy like I could glow too, starting again with a spreadsheet and a bloody questionnaire is nothing worse than a cracked cymbal head. It’s not a big deal. You swap it out and move on. What I’m saying is, I’m here for complicated. I’m here for unpicking the patterns and learning the rhythms and trying not to screw up with you, so if it’s not about being my advisor anymore, tell me what you’re worried about and let’s see if we can fuck some sense into it.”
FIFTEEN
She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t a crier. It simply wasn’t the first thing Mena thought about doing when she was sad or angry, hurt or overwhelmed. She was more likely to throw something or buy new lingerie she didn’t need, but her throat was tight, and her eyes were wet, and there was an uneasy swirling in her chest that felt a lot like she was about to break the pattern of her adult lifetime and sob.
Grip was mayhem for her heart.
He couldn’t simply say things like that and expect her to deal.
She’d gone home from breakfast with Vera and gotten herself ready for a dirty weekend, excitement buzzing in her body, and then on
