One Wicked Lick from the Drummer (The One 3)

She buried her head in Grip’s arm so he couldn’t see her face and didn’t take a breath until he laughed and hauled her across his lap and kissed her with an edge of ruthlessness. She deserved it.

Lying to him was getting harder. She had to find a way to come clean that didn’t make him distrust everything she’d said and done. Instead she kept digging herself in further. That was one of the reasons why she’d wanted to control the touch element of the game. If Grip’s questions got too tricky, she’d intended to distract him with touch. They’d ended being all about touch anyway because he clearly loved being touched and she loved getting him excited.

She couldn’t think about it anymore because he kissed the anxiety out of her, and she surrendered to the drug of his lips and hands. All that dopamine he injected into her with hungry kisses and possessive caresses was too much to combat. She gave in to the pleasure of making out, only anxious they’d run out of time to be like this together.

Time was what she needed. Time to live this fantasy. Time to wonder if it could truly be more than that. Time to fall in love with him then fall out so her secret no longer mattered, and she never needed to betray him.

Time to tell him he’d always been her one.

“It is faintly disgusting how into you I am,” he said, fingers tapping a beat between her breasts, down her sternum and onto her stomach. “Are you cool with that?”

“For a foul-mouthed rocker, you’ve got some good old-fashioned courtesy in your DNA. It’s faintly disgusting how turned on I am by that.”

“I’ll own the bad language. But you know I’m good at doing other things with my mouth.”

She traced the vibrant green feathers on his shoulder. “You talk a good story.”

He leaned over and sealed his lips over hers and her limbs lost contact with the crucial bits of muscle and cartilage that held them together as she softened into goop. He kissed like he was trained in it as an art form and had mastered shades of dark and light, could kiss storms and whimsy and switch between them with the most unexpectedly elegant strokes.

She was utterly undone by his ability to open his heart and humbled by his honesty. She was terrified of admitting her lie. She clung to him like the headstrong, know-it-all, too-smart-for-her-own-good teenager she’d been, assuming she could have everything she wanted without understanding the limits.

With his fingers sliding under the elastic of her pants, Grip said, “Want to see the music room?”

She’d go anywhere, see anything with him. “Yes, please.”

He brought his lips back to hers and spoke against them. “I want to show you what else I can do with my mouth and a piano.”

“Will you play something for me?”

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.