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“I vote for naked, but since you’re cooking you can keep the jeans.”
He came around the counter and yanked his shirt over his head and handed it to Mena. She put it on. It hung off her shoulders; the sleeves falling to her elbows, flowed over her body, the hem hitting her mid-thigh. The scales fell from his eyes. She looked incredible. He curled and uncurled his hands. She looked like she was his.
“Grip?”
“Yeah.”
“Is everything okay?”
“It will be.” Spreading his legs to reduce the height difference between them, he reached for her, hoisted her in close and kissed her toothpaste-fresh mouth, one hand to the back of her head, one to her delectable arse. “I like you in my clothes.”
“Not as much as you like me undressed.”
“Not true. I like you in your fancy underwear.” She bit his bottom lip. “Okay, I like you naked a whole lot. But we’re going to work on that.”
“Didn’t we just do that? I’ve got the orgasms to prove it.”
“I mean we’re going to work on the not being naked bit.” He had a brainwave. Twenty questions with a twist. “It’ll be like a game.”
She had her hands around his neck, looking at him with an expression that he’d call game for anything. She had so many layers he wanted to climb inside each of them and wrap them around himself like blankets.
When she’d klutzed it into the boardroom at S&Y, she’d been nervous and annoyed with herself for it. When they’d made eye contact under the table, he’d made her blush. He’d had that strange déjà vu like feeling they’d met before, something about her eyes, the shape of her lovely face, the melody of her. She showed her steel spine soon after and he’d thought her cold, judgmental, and inflexible, until that moment on the beach where she’d touched him with heat and he’d not known how to process that. Since then he’d met her spider-jumpy self, her ethical do-the-right-thing self and her hot sex goddess self
. And still he needed to know more.
He squeezed her butt. “I have this problem. Can’t keep my hands off you. It’s an impediment.”
“To what?”
“To learning about you.”
“It’s not like I’m a complete stranger.”
“I didn’t know if you ate meat or fish. I don’t know if you like to dance. I don’t know what kind of music you listen to, or if you play an instrument. I don’t know if your parents are alive or you have siblings.”
“You want to know those kinds of things?”
“You know all this detailed stuff about me. Your research.” It was freaky, like she was one of those superfans, but pro level. “I’ve got nothing on you that’s real outside of your work, that you’re scared of spiders, own gorgeous underwear and what a sensational fuck you are. And that isn’t anywhere near good enough.”
She unhooked her hands from his neck and pressed her palms to his chest. “There isn’t much to say about me. The critical thing is the spiders, also not that keen on insects. You’re the one with the big life.”
“I’m not buying that, Mena Grady.” Would she recognize her own words turned against her?
That yank—ow—on his chest hair said yes.
He let her go long enough to plate up and set the table on the deck. The sunset over the sea was going to be a top backdrop.
“How is this game of yours going to work?” she asked, sitting opposite him, backlit by a pinking sky.
“For everything I learn about you I earn a touch.”
She served them both salad. “Hmm. That just gives you what you want twice over. Information and sensation control. I think it should work the other way around. For every piece of information I give you, I earn a touch. I’m the one putting out here, I should get something in return.”
He could say that made him the winner twice over, but why complain when you were on a good thing? “Too easy.”
“I can touch you wherever I want, how I want, for as long as I want.”
He forked a piece of chicken. He ought to put up some sort of defense. “No stabbing, burning, disabling or maiming.” Not that she would. Shiver up his spine. Wait, would she?
