If Mena was in any way feeling suffocated, she’d have climbed over Grip to get to the door, but the air flow was good and there was nowhere else in the world she wanted to be, needed to be, but in Grip’s strong arms with the rationalization to enjoy it.
“The torch is somewhere under all the towels. We could go,” he said, voice low, making her nerve endings jangle. “Promise I didn’t engineer this.”
In this bubble of wickedness, she believed him. “If you want to.” If he moved his hands from her body, the disappointment might leave a gaping hole in her emotional competence.
His knee bumped hers as he realigned their bodies closer. “We’re just economizing on space. I don’t feel the need to be anywhere else right now.”
“Me either.” She brushed her knuckles across his cheekbone. He had to be able to hear the drum solo her heart was playing. “Happy to see this through.”
He captured her hand and held it to his chest, right over the drum solo his heart was playing. “What are we going to do while they fix things?”
They were locked away from the world in a very small dark space, suspended from real life and all its consequences. “I might’ve had a crush on a drummer once.”
“Knew it,” he said, the laugh in his voice so warm it sent flames licking over her skin.
“It was a long time ago.”
Grip brought his hand to the back of her neck, palm and fingers warm, holding her gently. “I want to kiss you, Mena, but I don’t want to fuck things up for you.”
If he didn’t recognize that he had the power here, that the risk was hers, she’d never have put herself in this position. She’d learned that from her groupie days. “I want to kiss you, Grip, but I don’t want to fuck things up either.”
“Shit, do you want out?”
No. She wanted to remember what it was like to be kissed by someone who once thrilled her, who still did, to be reckless and desired. She lifted her chin, their noses bumped.
“Fuck, Mena,” he said, and she kissed him. A soft press of her lips to his followed by a shocked exhale from both of them, and then he said in a near growl that covered her in goosebumps, “Ah, come on, honey. You said you wanted to see this through. You want to be bad, you gotta try a little harder than that.”
“You think taunting me is going to get you kissed harder?”
He grunted and shifted his hips so she could feel how engorged his cock was. “Fucking hope so.”
It was as if all of her fantasies downloaded into her brain stem in one rush. System overload. She fastened her lips on his and he groaned, slamming his hands on her butt and opening his mouth to her, tongue right there to taste hers, lips firm and insistent and not letting her up for breath, as if he was worried she’d back out.
There was no going back, only more and more; a wildness for Grip that made her shake, a response from him that made all of that urgency necessary.
Grip ravished her mouth, soft slow kisses, mixed with hard biting ones where their teeth clashed, as if he had trouble working out a rhythm. She was no help with that. No kiss was enough satisfaction. She gasped when he left her mouth and kissed across her jaw to her neck and licked over her ear.
“You are driving me mad, Mena. You’re so fucking brainy and gorgeous.”
She would’ve climbed his body, wrapped her leg around his hip, but her dress wouldn’t allow it. She got the words, “I want,” out and Grip instinctively knew what she needed. He found a rhythm, and he melted her with hands that tamed the fire in her body and lips that were tender devastation.
When the lights came on, he tucked her face into his neck to shelter her from the glare. His breathing as unsteady as hers was. She clung to him, not willing to give him up, even though the fantasy was over and the only things waiting for her outside of this space and time was remorse.
“You are pretty fucking spectacular,” he said, in a voice gone thready with lust, another loop-the-loop in the thrill ride.
She wasn’t ready to go back to Mena’s controlled and calculated life. She lifted her face to kiss Grip, gratified he followed her lead, though he held her less tightly as they stood at the edge of a new uncertain reality.
The light was harsh on her eyes, but it was inevitable, forcing her to clear her head. “If I was seventeen again, I’d be crushing you so hard.” She saw the moment the regret of that registered in his eyes.
He kissed her forehead. “If you say this is not a good investment, I’m going to follow your lead.” He was giving her a way out. “You call all the shots, Mena.”
There was only one shot she could call and hold her life, her career together. “We need to finish this.”
He didn’t misunderstand her this time either. He gestured at the half-door that had opened up. “Investment witches first.”
She wanted to kiss him again for that. He was going to make this as easy as possible. As if it never happened. The thought made a shot of nausea flash through her as she ducked through the small doorway, which opened into another dimly lit bedroom. It was what had to happen, but it felt like the loss of something precious and rare.
Grip followed, and when she froze as a person sat up in the bed, saying, “Helen, is that you?” he grabbed her hand and led them around the bed and out another door into the original corridor near where they’d started from.