His answer was to slip his middle finger into her vulva. “I’ve got one particular thing in mind.”
A well-placed finger and he robbed her of her wits. She’d have howled at the injustice of losing the contact if she didn’t think he had something else incredible planned.
He didn’t give her time to find her bra or put the T-shirt on “You won’t need it,” he said. “The plan is music room, then hot tub, sex till you’re too sore for more, then bed.”
Not in her most detailed sex fantasies had a dream lover said anything as delectable as that, after he’d cooked her dinner and given her orgasms all afternoon.
The music room was on the lower floor. It had the same wide-windowed view of the sea but no balcony. The walls that weren’t thick tempered glass were padded with soundproofing, as was the ceiling. There were two drum kits, one looking more beaten up than the other, and a grand piano. It was hot pink with dramatic swirls of yellow painted across it.
“That’s Florence,” he said.
“You named your piano.”
“After the woman who custom made her for me.”
“Aren’t they usually black?”
“Mine are usually third- or fourth-hand shabby uprights with dinky sound and stuck peddles. This is my dream piano. Elton John’s Rocket Man meets 70s Surf Princess. She rocks.”
“I would love to hear you play.”
He pulled her into his arms. “I never play for an audience. I was surprised you knew I played at all.”
He’d played for an audience once. She’d been there. Early in her obsession with him, lurking in the shadows of a near-empty pub, nursing the one drink she could afford at happy hour prices. A shabby piano like he’d described. He’d played it before helping the stagehand move it away to make room for his drum kit, standing over it and massaging something so achingly sweet from it that she’d spent hours online trying to identify it. Debussy’s “Prelude from Suite Bergamasque.”
Not what you expected to hear from a member of a rock band.
It was the stagehand who told her Grip could’ve been a concert pianist. He’d been amazed the old piano could make sounds like that and had asked in wonder and been sworn to secrecy, but not the kind of secrecy that a boob flash from a willing goth girl couldn’t break.
Once she identified the Debussy, she went searching for other evidence and found it buried in the archives of his music school’s website. As a Conservatorium scholarship student, he’d won prize after prize and appeared destined for the concert hall, not sweaty pubs.
At some point he’d swapped his passion from keyboard to drumsticks, which must’ve pissed a lot of people off. That was when his position at the top of her list of talented drummers to sleep with had been cemented. Her little drummer boy was deep, and this was the first chance she’d had to explore his decisions.
“It’s in your school music academy records.” It was still there, just buried a little further now if anyone else cared to hunt for it.
“Hah,” he said. “You did dig. It’s no secret I play, but other than my family, you might be the only person around who knows I play well.”
“What made you give it up?”
He spun her around so she faced Florence. “I didn’t give it up. I just never saw myself wearing a tux and playing in an orchestra for the over-fifties crowd for the rest of my life. You will break my heart if you say something about it being a waste, Mena.”
The frustration in his voice told her he’d heard that sentiment a lot. “Your parents?”
“Nope. They only wanted me to be happy and I wasn’t back then. I didn’t fit in with the serious music crowd.” He spun her again to face the drum kits. “That’s my fun time. I get juiced playing for stadium crowds same as I did for pub crowds. I get shitty with people who think I threw a respectable career away to hit things.”
She’d imagined all kinds of catastrophes from injury to a secret tragic love story that left him incapable of playing again.
“Did you ever think about being a new Elton John? You have the stage presence.”
He rested his chin on the top of her head, arms banding her close. “Not a good enough vocalist to pull that off.”
That might be a fair assessment. She didn’t have the skill to judge that. “Never wanted to add a keyboard to Lost Property’s sound?” Which was a more obvious direction.
“Comes up once every decade. It’d be up to me to push for it.”
“And you’re not tempted?”
“Playing the piano is a head thing for me. I play it to peace out. I play drums from the heart and that’s my jam and what makes for a great performance.”
He did everything from the heart. She turned to face him. Why didn’t he know that? “If I’m very good would you play Florence for me?”
He grabbed her and dipped her over his arm. She hung suspended, her breasts pressed to his chest, her toes tipping the floor. “I’m way more interested in playing with you.”
“That’s a dodge.”
He dipped her lower, making her yelp and clutch him harder as her feet came off the ground. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Offer myself up to whichever of your many talents you want to put your heart into.”
His grin did a number on her ability to breathe. “You can be my muse,” he said, before wrapping her closer and bringing her upright. “It’s an unpaid position but the benefits are good.”
Her goth-self melted. Her grownup-self wasn’t far behind being mush.
Being Grip’s muse meant lying on the top of Florence’s cool closed lid with her feet on the keyboard while he
