One Wicked Lick from the Drummer (The One 3)

“I was in primary school. It’s about as hot as you being scared of spaghetti. “

He palmed his face and laughed. “I was imagining you kissing a girl now.”

Mena rolled her eyes. “Of course you were.”

He needed a redeeming question, quick. “How old were you when you first had sex?” She unfolded, stood up and moved right to the other end of the sectional and sat as far from him as she could get. So yeah, that wasn’t it. “You can pass.”

“I’m not going to pass. I was waiting for you to get to R-rated stuff. I was sixteen. Wild, remember.”

Not wildly touching him, which was a stinker, but hang about, that was good. This was what he’d wanted, to learn about her outside of knowing her right breast was bigger than her left and she wasn’t vegetarian, and her success was hard earned.

“How was it?”

She scrunched her eyes together, and brought her legs up, curled to the side again. “It was terrible. It hurt. Neither of us knew what we were doing. But we kept at it, and you know what they say about practice.”

Whatever expression he was wearing was enough to make her crawl across the sectional to him. “Are you unhappy because my first time hurt or because I was sex obsessed?”

Not even touching him and he was aroused. “Did you stay sex obsessed? Is that a defining characteristic?”

“You’re jealous.”

He shook his head. “I. No.” Shouldn’t be, but yeah, that’s what it felt like, a hot shaft of resentment. “Shit. I’d like to have been that guy and made sure it didn’t hurt. I’m sorry it did. Might’ve turned you off for life.”

She quirked her head to the side. “It didn’t.”

He lifted both hands and jazzed his fingers. “Halleluiah.”

“My first was a good guy. He didn’t do wrong by me. We were just woefully ignorant and stupidly horny.”

They grinned at each other. “That was almost the name of our band. Tonight live, give it up for Woefully Ignorant and Stupidly Horny.”

“I’d have worn that T-shirt. I was sex obsessed in my teens, my early twenties. And then I promised myself I wouldn’t end up with limited choices again and got busy building a career because having a good memory and being good at sex wasn’t going to buy me nice things or help Mum out.”

Jesus fucking Christ I like you with clothes on, Mena Grady.

“I was sex obsessed for most of my life, but I was using it like video games, to have fun, let off steam, fill in time. It’s a crappy way to be with other people even when they knew the score. Until the other night I hadn’t had sex in—” He had to think about it. “More than a year.”

It wasn’t a question, but it got Mena to crawl to his side. It got him kissed. A kiss that was about comfort and understanding, a kiss that was the opposite of sex. He held Mena’s arms as she leaned over him and met the pressure of her lips with equal pressure of his own. He’d seen Jay and Evie kiss in a way

that felt like this. Evie’s best mate Teela and her actor fella, Haydn, too. It was a lover’s kiss. It wasn’t asking anything. It wasn’t starting anything. Its only agenda was connection and it spoke to the part of him that was looking for something more than physical release.

The involuntary groan of longing was all his and it made Mena sit back away from him. He was breathing weirdly, as if he’d had a workout, as if he was fresh off stage, and his thoughts spun. He latched onto a prepared question.

“What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?”

“Caramel.”

She put her hand on his knee. It was a backbeat in his chest. “Favorite food?”

“All the Asian ones.” She trailed that hand up his thigh to rest on his hip and she shifted closer, placing a kiss on his shoulder.

“Favorite color?”

“Black.” She climbed across his lap, the T-shirt hitching so he got to see her thighs and a flash of the white silky stuff of her undies.

“Do you have any pets?”

She put both hands to his chest, thumbs rubbing across his nipples. “No. I work long hours. It wouldn’t be fair.”