“Rationalizations?” I repeat.

He pulls out the other chair and sits, leaning back and stretching out his long legs. His toes tap each of my feet under the table.

“Yeah, I figure the sooner you get through all the reasons why you shouldn’t do this, the sooner I can start licking from the tips of your ears the whole way down to the tops of your feet. Planning on spending a lot of time about the middle. Just so you know.”

He winks and takes another sip of juice.

My laugh is a little manic, more of a guffaw. “You make this all sound so easy.”

“It is easy.”

I let an eyebrow wing up. Things are very complicated. This is the one thing I swore I wouldn’t even come close to doing. The one thing that could ruin everything I’ve been working so hard for.

The consequences for him aren’t nearly as high. There’s barely consequences at all. Like someone, fuck someone, move on when the like stops.

His career wasn’t on the line.

Though he seems to think I’ll be around for a concert in New York. I talked to Sparks earlier, and he isn’t recovering as well as hoped. The small chance I might be the replacement if Sparks can’t return sends a warm tendril of possibility through my system. Hope is a giddy thing. Fragile and sometimes an avoidance tactic, but giddy too.

Grady’s upped the footsy game, running the edge of his toe up the outside of my calf.

“C’mon, fire woman,” he cajoles. “Go a little native.”

“Sex, drugs, and rock and roll?”

He waggles his brows at me. “And blowing shit sky high.”

I lower my voice, let it get a little sexy. “I’m really good at that part.”

My sexy voice has nothing on his. “I’ve noticed.”

I try to remember the last time I did something reckless. I used to be good at it, taking chances, diving in. It’s how I got a summer job at a small fireworks company in high school. It’s how I got an obscure theater scholarship to help with college.

It’s how I got to know Sparks.

I stop with the rationalizations. There’s only one thing here that matters.

I want him. I can have him.

Even though he’s watching me closely, he isn’t expecting my foot against the edge of his chair, right between his legs. He looks down, then looks up at me from beneath his brow.

I push, moving him and the chair back a few inches. Just enough for me to fit.

His eyes darken as I stand, pupils dilate with each step I take around the table. I channel my inner stripper, moving slowly, deliberately. My hands fall to his shoulders, then I lift one foot and straddle his lap, doing a little grind as I sit.

As soon as my weight settles, his hands are on my hips, kneading into the muscle there.

Imitating what he does to me, I tilt up his chin, stroking my thumbs down the strong column of his throat. He didn’t shave today. Or yesterday. The rasp of it sends anticipation skittering over my skin.

“Hi,” I say, a little breathy, when I finally meet his eyes again.

“Hey.”

This is all the further I’d gotten in my plan as I walked around the table. Grady is a take charge kind of guy. Now he’s content just to sit there and let me have my way.

Shit.

I’d learned a few things over the past few weeks. I wasn’t about to start flashing bands at concerts, but I had no problem flashing this one in my kitchen.

I grasp the hem of my shirt, making a bit of a show of taking it off, letting my back arch as I lift it over my head, my breasts pushing toward his face.

When I drop the shirt to the floor and my arms back to his shoulders, he’s looking right at them. A beat later, his hands glide over my waist, up my ribs, straight to my nipples, which of course have been on alert practically since he walked in the door.

“I wasn’t imagining it. They do like me.”

“Damnit. You noticed.”

“No more than you noticed my back dimples.”

“Speaking of which.” I reach for his hem, but he’s faster, whipping it off and letting it fall to the floor with mine.

Then he pulls me closer and licks a long path across my breast with the flat of his tongue. The tug on my nipple echoes in my clit. Intensifies when he sucks the other into his mouth.

I want to trace all the lines inked into his skin, explore the dips of his abs.

It’ll have to wait. I can feel the hard ridge in the front of his jeans when he runs the very edge of his teeth across me.

His pants are just baggy enough I can slip a hand inside, the backs of my fingers gliding through the thin line of hair on his belly. No jumping from him, but his hips press up, just a bit, like he can’t help himself.

No surprise, he’s not wearing anything under his jeans, washed soft and faded, white patches along the fly, ready to fray into holes at any moment.

Brush of my palm down his shaft, just a quick tease, then a little harder. Sometimes the key to a great effect is alternating sensations. A sudden wall of fireballs, the sound amplified, after soft lights and a low intro track.

I drop my other hand to the front of his pants, making sure the zipper isn’t too close, and squeeze around him, moving my hand just enough to make him feel the grain of the fabric.

He looks down, watches my hands for a long moment as I work him. “Well, aren’t you just all kinds of deliciously dirty when the clothes come off.”

“Clothes aren’t all off yet.”

He raises his head. That look does not bode well for me. Too late to turn back — even if I wanted to, which hell no I don’t — I get the certain fucking knowledge that he is a hundred times dirtier than I could ever aspire to be. “Let’s remedy that right now.”

The muscles in his arms and thighs flex as he stands, picking me up. Only he doesn’t take me to the bed. Instead, he drops my ass to the kitchen table and pushes against my stomach until I’m on my back.

“Um…there’s a bed, like, six feet away.”

His nimble fingers pop the button on my shorts, wrench down the zipper. “Yeah. There is. We’ll get there in a minute.”

He yanks by the waistband, lifting my hips from the table, then drags the soft material off my legs, upward. Before I can lower my feet, he grabs my ankles, guiding one to his shoulder, the other so my foot is on the table.

It’s broad daylight, the sun barely filtered through the thin curtain across the kitchen window. His gaze makes me squirm a little as it follows the trail of his fingers. Down my neck, between my breasts, around my belly button, then lower, through the already wet folds of my sex.

His eyes meet mine. “You’re gorgeous, Evie.” This, as he uses his elbow to push my knee up, twisting his hand so he can use his thumb to part my labia. “Let’s see how pretty your skin flushes when you come.”

Kissing down my calf, he circles his thumb around my entrance, pushing just a little deeper on each pass. Caught in my own alternating sensation trap. Just as good as springing it.

“My fingers or my tongue. Which do you want to come all over first?”

To make the choice clear, he flicks his tongue over the crease at the back of my knee and pushes a finger into me, a shallow tease that still arches my back.

“No preference?” A push, then a lick. He doesn’t give me time to answer. Like he’s sitting down to dinner, he takes the chair. I try to move my leg off his shoulder, but he just hooks my knee over instead.

Then his breath fans over my heated skin, his finger pushing just a little deeper as his lips brush over my labia. It’s the last coherent sequence of events. For all the fuss about guitar players’ fingers, there should be temples built to singers’ tongues.

Again, then again, alternating his tongue and his fingers, around my clit, harder and harder, inside me, deeper and deeper, until I can’t tell what’s where anymore because it’s all pleasure.

I get one moment of clarity, a deep pull of his mouth as he buries two long fingers as far as they’ll go, and an orgasm clenches my pussy so tight it almost hurts, then races out until my fingers and toes tingle with it.

It takes a moment to uncurl my fingers from around the edge of the table.

There’s a soft brush against my shoulder, then I’m air born, up in Grady’s arms. “Not to give you a big head or anything,” he says, turning to get us through the doorway, “but if you’d like to scream my name like that every day, I won’t have to tour anymore.”

I screamed his name? I squeal it now as he tosses me to the mattress. I barely stop bouncing before a couple of condom packets bounce to a stop beside me.

“I was thinking of sucking your dick for a while, but if you’re in that much of a hurry.”

He shoves his jeans over his hips, the material falling easily. When he tries to step from the puddle of fabric, it catches on the flip flops he’s still wearing. He shakes his foot to free it, but his boy parts, perfect as they are, jiggle a bit and I have to cover my mouth to hold in the giggle.

He doesn’t bother. “So much for smooth, huh?” Reaching down, he yanks his legs free and crawls onto the end of my bed like he’s a stalking cat about to pounce.

“Anyway,” he says, moving over me. “You can suck my dick all you want. Later.” A rip of foil. “Right now, let’s do the fucking thing, yeah?”

I just had my hands on him, and he feels just as perfect pushing the broad head into me, careful, easy. A little deeper with a tilt of my hips.

Each rock stretches me a bit more, gets him a bit further, until finally, he drags out and thrusts back in with a smooth glide. “Fuck yeah,” he groans, dropping his forehead to mine. “Squeeze like that again, Evie.”

When he says my name like that, how can I not?

The rhythm he sets isn’t enough, even as little bursts of light start behind my eyelids. All those miles he runs really did give him a great ass. I can tell from firsthand experience, since I’m grabbing it right now to try to get him to give me more.

He wanted deliciously dirty, so I give it to him. “You said we were going to fuck. So fuck me already.”

The rhythm doesn’t change, but he presses a little deeper each time. “I’ll fuck you how you want. After you make yourself come around me.”

My gaze slides up his body to his face. His gorgeous face that never looks innocent, but I’ve never seen it look like this. A million dirty ideas are piled up behind that smug smirk.

“Lick your fingers and put them on your clit and make yourself come. Then I’ll fuck you as hard as you can take it.”

The words alone push me so close it only takes the barest touch to send me over the edge. He bites his lip as he rides it out, buried deep.

Then he opens his eyes and locks his gaze to mine.

“You may want to brace your hands on the wall.”

Before I can lift my arms, he grabs the back of my head, and fuck I have to learn to be careful what I ask for with him.

I come again, whimpering when he doesn’t take pity on me, just hooks an arm under my knee, pulling it higher, making the angle sharper.

Every time his cock drags out of me, it triggers another pulse of anticipation. How hard is he going to push back in?

I’m so wet and open, he’s got my thighs spread so wide, there’s no resistance. Every bump against my clit makes my whole body jerk.

“One more, Evie.” That voice, rough and needy. “Come all over my cock one more time and take me with you.”

Grady slams deep, then grinds his pelvis into mine, the pressure on my clit making my eyes roll back in my head. Then he goes and does it. He tightens his fist in my hair, pulling my head back, and bites the scar under my chin.

How am I supposed to survive this?

The orgasm hits hard, crushing the air from my legs and locking my limbs.

He grunts, slams into me again, and bites down harder as his hips buck.

Once I can string two words together, I’m going to have to update my definition of thoroughly fucked.

I twitch as he raises his head, even the brush of his hair against my neck too much. His eyes are soft, a little dazed, as he gently pushes my hair off my forehead and traces over my cheekbone.

This kiss isn’t like any kiss before it. So sweet, almost too sweet after all the filthy things he’s said with that mouth.

“You okay?” he asks, sliding a palm down my side.

My throat is dry, so I nod while working a swallow. “Okay is the new totally wrecked, right?”

I’m glad to see I’m not the only one shaking. There’s a noticeable quiver in his biceps as he lifts off me. The cool air is welcome as it sweeps across my fevered skin. I can’t help a small twitch as he pulls out.

He stills, raising an eyebrow at me. “Still okay?”

“Your dick should come with a fucking warning label.”

“So should your pussy.”

As far as compliments go…

After dealing with the condom, he falls to his back beside me, his breath evening out. “Damn. Give me an hour and let’s do that again.”

“Need an hour, huh?”

He scoffs. “For the basking. Maybe twenty for recovering.”

His stamina isn’t in question. Two-hour rock shows are a work out. And now every song about sex was going to remind me of this. Cue awkward babbling in… “We could have done this last night, you know.”

Warm fingers, a little slick, twine with mine. “Tipsy sex is pretty freaking awesome. With someone you’ve already had sex with a bunch of times. Or someone you’re never going to have sex with again. All slow and lazy or fast and fumbling.”

It’s so easy to picture. Another rush of heat spreads over my skin, even though my knees are still shaky.

“I’m going to clean up a bit.” My elbows are shaky too, and it takes two tries to push myself up.

“Don’t scandalize the poor pink flamingos,” he calls after me. “And don’t put any clothes on.”

“Fucking rock stars.”

I’m not sure he hears me, then his voice carries through the door.

“Yep. That’s a thing you do now.”