by Pippa Grant
Alright, fine, it could be an addendum. Having that carved in stone over my cold, dead body for all of eternity would be pretty fucking cool.
But I also want to be remembered for changing the world. Outside of the bedroom. And elevator. And private suite at Yankee Stadium. And on a pile of hundred dollar bills at the top of the Empire State Building, which I haven’t done yet, but a man can dream.
I tug at my collar. Zeus is spot-on.
I have a problem.
“Are you imagining my sister naked?” he growls.
Now I am.
Okay, fine, yes. I was before too. “Why do you want to help me?”
“We help you, you help Ambrosia.”
“Bro doesn’t need help from anyone.”
“That what you think?”
“We are talking about the woman who once walked two miles in the woods, in the dark, in the rain, to plant fake spiders around our campsite just to hear you scream like a girl the next morning, aren’t we?”
Ares grins. “Last fall. Fun times.”
I choke on a laugh. “She did it again?”
Ares holds up four fingers while Zeus punches him in the shoulder. Glitter sparkles on both their T-shirts.
“Go on and laugh,” Zeus says. “But next time you see her, ask her about Vassar. Then tell me she doesn’t need anything.”
The Berger twins leave a glittery path of destruction on the way out of my office. The security guards are terrified, Zeus barely stops Ares from eating one of the potted plants—all for show, Ares hates vegetables—and I’ve just been tasked with fixing Bro’s life when I didn’t even know it was broken.
Three days ago, I wouldn’t have cared.
Mavis strolls in and refills my candy jar as though handling Viking candy jar murders is a standard part of her job description. “Your mother’s holding for you on line two,” she says. “If I were you, I’d buy a florist and a candy shop. Maybe a winery too. Sounds like she needs them.”
Might be time to resign from my personal life.
15
Ambrosia
Friday night, Parker, Eloise, Willow, and I have a gig booked at O’Farrell’s Irish Pub and I’m hoping they’re paying in straight tequila.
“How are the wedding plans?” I ask Willow as we get prepped in a storage closet behind the stage.
She huffs out a sigh. “Martin can’t decide which invitations he likes best, there’s a big to-do over whether or not the king’s stepdaughter should be allowed to get married in the abbey, not that anyone’s asked me if I want to get married in the abbey or if I’d prefer a nice quiet ceremony on a boat in the fjords, or, you know, to have it here in New York, and Martin’s great-aunt Greta sent me a box of vintage seventies lingerie that she expects me to model and send her pictures of. Oh, and I caught my landlord pawing through the box in the lobby. He says it was open and he was checking it for bombs.”
We all blink at her.
“You want me to take care of him?” Eloise offers.
“As soon as we’re married, I’ll move in with Martin, and all of this will be a distant memory.”
They’re waiting for marriage to move in together. It’s kinda sweet, except for the part where it took Martin seven years to propose. Among other things.
“Enough of the wedding.” She straightens a brass Buddha on the shelves. “Did work get better this week?”
As long as Chase Jett owns Crunchy, I’m fairly certain work there will never be better for me.
“I cold-called the Rangers today,” I announce. “They said, and I quote, Sia Berger? Riiiiiiiight. Good luck with your medication, honey.”
“Ridiculous,” Eloise says. “The Kiss Cam shut off before the show went X-rated. This is discrimination.”
“No, this is my brothers. Fifty bucks says Zeus told them a crazy woman pretending to be his sister would call and ask about a job.”
“Your brothers are so fucking cool.”
Parker scowls at me. She’s on a stool, and she gives one of her guitar’s tuning knobs a vicious crank. While I spent today getting shit for the Kiss Cam video—which, yes, went viral within five seconds and I’ve had to talk my mother off a ledge at least six times a day the last two days—Parker was getting promoted to head of marketing. A position she totally deserves and will completely rock at, but also a position I might’ve been considered for if, you know, Vassar. And no Grand Theft Bratwurst Wagon on my record.
“You are not quitting Crunchy,” she says. “First of all, you’re brilliant and we need you. Second, you’re being an excellent role model with all of the discretion you’ve shown in refusing to talk about Chase at work. If you exclude whatever’s going on with you and the snack bar lady, anyway. And third, if you leave, I’m going to drill holes in your apartment ceiling so you can hear Hogzilla’s mating call even louder.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Oh, I would.” Parker could’ve easily been my older sister. She’s strong, she’s devious, and while she’ll rip me to shreds when it’s just the two of us, she’ll defend me to the end against outside evil, and I’d do the same for her.
“I’d help her,” Willow says. “Chase has some really great ideas for Crunchy. My mom said he talked to my stepdad this morning. The king has some holdings in US agriculture, and he’s apparently considering some kind of partnership. Sia, I know it’s been a rough week, but you’ve always loved Crunchy. Don’t do anything rash, okay? I’d hate to see you miss out on an amazing opportunity at a company you adore just because of a man.”
I’m doing my best to ignore that my friends are calling him by name too. Something changed at the game Wednesday night, and not just the part where we’re suddenly gossip fodder on Page Six. Or the part where my mother’s taken up drinking.
Yes, yes, it’s watered-down wine coolers, but for Mom, that’s like doing vodka shots off an ice luge. She has the shoulders of Norwegian Vikings and the alcohol tolerance of a toddler. Some things, you just can’t explain.
Like this irrational wish I’m doing my best to ignore that Chase will show up tonight and watch us play.
So I can torture him what my talented fingers can do.
Yep.
It’s all about the torture.
Definitely not about wanting to show off. Wanting him to see me shine.
Wanting him to be impressed.
And, you know, turned on. Going primal, barging onto the stage, tossing the instruments out of his way, throwing me over his shoulder and taking me back to his place where we can bang each other’s brains out all night long.
Nope, definitely none of that going on here. That’s disgusting. I’ve seen quite enough of Chase Jett’s hard, flexible, sinful body to last a lifetime.
“Five minutes, ladies.”
My friends are staring at me.
“Did you invite him?” Eloise asks.
“What? Who? My brothers? No, they’d come galloping up on the stage and steal the show. They’re such spotlight hogs.”
I get a triple hit of Don’t play dumb, Sia.
“I’d have to like him to invite him,” I grumble.
“Oh, honey,” Willow sighs.
Eloise snorts. “Don’t lose your place in the set list,” she tells me. “I like this place. I’d play here again, but they have to ask us first.”
I sling an arm around her shoulder and squeeze. “I love you guys.”
I might be unemployed by Tuesday, but I’ll always have my band.
16
Chase
I’m sitting in the back of an Irish bar, drinking a scotch, and watching Bro’s all-girl band cover the best boy band songs of the last three decades.
Only in New York. This town fucking rocks.
I forgot she could sing. Her voice is chocolate silk, rich and decadent and wrapping around me like a lover’s caress. She could be singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider” for all I care. For this moment, when she doesn’t know I’m here, I can soak her up without having to pretend.
Her voice, I might’ve forgotten, but the piano lessons, I remember. After three years of ear torture, Ares put a fist through the instrument. Told his parents there was a spider and that he was protecting Zeus. Using small words and a few hand gestures, of course. Lots of legs. Bad bug. Scaredy Zeus. And then he’d shown everyone his biceps.
It worked. They bought Bro a keyboard with headphones instead, and everyone’s lives were vastly improved. Gotta hand it to her—her keyboard playing is drastically better.
Or all of this could be choreographed and lip-synced.
A week ago, I would’ve thought it with a superior sneer. Today, I’d be disappointed if she wasn’t real.
Not that I’ll admit it to her.
I have a half-drunk bottle of cheap white wine—she strikes me as the red type—a bouquet of flowers that I put on my chair and bounced on with my ass, and a box of coconut chocolates on the table. Ambrosia hates coconut like normal people hate expired milk or wasp stings. Probably because she’s allergic. If this doesn’t say I hate you, let’s go fuck in the back alley, I’ll have to accept the fact that I’ll spend the rest of my life at half-mast with no hope of satisfaction.
Which might be preferable to confessing to her that I may not hate her at all.
They’ve been playing for about forty-five minutes. I’m not sure how long their set goes, but I’m getting antsy. I’ve had a raging hard-on since I got Zeus’s text yesterday telling me about Bro’s band. Girl bands are fucking hot, period. Girl bands with Bro in them are don’t look too close or you’ll burn your retinas out.
And I actually do mean that in the complimentary way.
They finish up “Bye Bye Bye” and hit the opening chords of some classic New Kids on the Block, and suddenly two overgrown blond apes leap on the stage.
Are you fucking kidding me?
I can’t get in Bro’s pants with her brothers here. And those leggings she’s sporting are a fucking wet dream. They’re sparkly with a red and black swirly-pattern that highlights every curve and crevice. The short tank that lands just above her belly button isn’t bad either, though I’d rather that was my face on her chest than some boy band dude.
On stage, she rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. Willow’s shaking a tambourine in front of the mic with Parker rocking the guitar beside her, both of them laughing. They shift to the side to give the Berger twins more room, and the doofuses—doofusi?—break into boy band dance moves.
I hope Zeus thought to check the structural integrity of the stage before jumping up there.
Willow starts singing with Bro doing backup on “The Right Stuff,” and holy shit, the stage is literally shaking under the Berger twins.
Not that I care.
Because when Bro’s not singing, she’s laughing.
Head tipped back, long neck exposed, eyes dancing like pixies in the moonlight. I want to be her keyboard, those fingers tripping over me. I want to be her mic, that voice channeling through me. I want to be her chair.
Because duh. Damn fucking right I want her straddling me.
Cut me some slack here. Limited blood flow. Poetry only goes so far when it’s been three fucking days since I’ve been buried inside her tight little pussy.
I want that.
I want her to laugh at me. I want her to smile at me. I want her to come for me.
And I want it now.
I grab my gifts, flag down a waiter, and slip him a grand to get me backstage and end their set. Two minutes later, Bro and her band come tripping down the hall.
She freezes when she sees me. “Hello, dickhead,” she says hesitantly, like she isn’t sure the word tastes right.
I shove the gifts at her. Her lips start to curl as she takes in the crushed flowers, and her brows crash down at the obviously half-empty wine bottle. “The chocolates are filled with coconut,” I say. “Let’s fuck.”
She grabs me by the shirt and hauls me into a small room, kicks the door shut, and locks it. Her hands are down my pants before I can count to hallelujah. “You look like you slept in horseshit after the horse ate glitter,” she says.
I rip her tank off and grab her breasts. God, they’re bags of hot orgasmic honey wrapped in pink lace that I’m going to suck until she screams my name. “You sing like your vocal chords are made of the rotting corpses of rejected lab frogs.”
She’s stroking me and squeezing me and licking her lips while I pump in her hand and pray she still has those sharp fingernails and a hatred of my balls, because Christ, I need to feel everything—pain, pleasure, passion, everything. She pushes me backward, and a set of drums and cymbals clatter to the ground.
“Fucking klutz,” she says.
“I’m going to fucking bang you on those drums.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
“I’ll just bet you would.”
She drops my cock to grab my face and stick her tongue down my throat, and I squeeze her breasts. She jumps on me, wrapping her legs around my hips, and we stumble backward. My back connects with a wooden shelf. Something that feels like a half-full jug of milk grazes my temple. Bro has my bare cock nestled between her legs, rubbing and grinding and driving me to sweet torture, the fabric on her leggings adding an erotic friction.
Fuck, I’ve needed this.
I grip her ass and knead it while I yank her tighter against me, making her rock harder against my straining shaft. I’m so hard I’m about to split skin and my balls are so tight I can feel them under my ribs.
So. Fucking. Good.
She punches me in the shoulder. “Shut up, dickwad. We’re not good.”
I lift her ass and bite her nipple. Her head falls back and she cries out, but when I jerk my mouth away—I’m having twisted sex with a woman who hates me, but I’m not a total asshole—she shoves it back to her breast.
“You fucking animal,” she pants. “Try that again like you actually mean it.”
I nip again, and she squeezes her thighs so tight around my hips I wonder if it’s possible for her legs to crush bones. She’s rocking her pussy on just the tip of my dick, and Holy. Fucking. Vixen.
Her legs tighten more, and she’s still rocking her hot, wet center on my head while I nip and suck and pull on her nipples. She can probably crush beer cans between her thighs. She squeezes tighter, pumping like a fucking bunny teasing the top of my cock, and I start to lose feeling in my toes.
This woman. God almighty. I want to fuck her on her back, against the wall, in my shower, on my floor, on my kitchen table, on that beanbag chair in her office, facing her, taking her from behind, sixty-nine, on a set of fucking trapeze bars, and then I want to do it all over again.
She’s slick and wet, so fucking ready for me. I pull her perfect breasts out of the lace bra and lick a circle around one nipple, then the other, before clenching down again. She has a rock hard grip on my head, holding it there while I feast on the rosy buds.
Her tits taste like her name. Ambrosia. Nectar of the gods. Too potent for human consumption.
I’m going to fucking eat her anyway. I’d die of Ambrosia poisoning, and I wouldn’t have a single regret.
She’s mewling and crying and pumping against my stomach and my head, saying my name.
Chase, Chase, Chase in that hot chocolate wine voice.
And I’d thought she was playing music before.
I shove away from the shelf, trip over the drums, and catch us before I crush her. There. A desk. I lunge for it and drop her sweet ass on the edge. She leans back on her hands, lifting her ass, and I rip her leggings off. She spreads her long, creamy thighs and silently dares me to touch her. I run a finger under the edge of her pink lace panties. She shivers. She’s watching me with hooded eyes, breath coming fast, her fantastic tits rising and falling and distracting me from the promised land.
“Need a map again?” she says, and maybe it’s my imagination, but I can’t hear the disgust. Like she can’t fake it anymore either.
But I know Bro.
&
nbsp; If I say something nice, I’m not getting to lick her pussy. I stroke her smooth skin again, just beneath the edge of the teensy triangle, and my cock wants to know why we’re not plundering and pillaging already.
She shudders, moans, and drops her head back.
That’s why.
I want to see her pleasure. I want to see her lose herself.
I want to know I did it to her, and I want her to know it’s me.
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but it’s boring me,” she gasps.
“You probably taste like three-day-old roadkill.”
“Your tongue wouldn’t know the difference between roadkill and Kobe steak.”
I rip the bows on her thong. It falls away, and I bury my face at the apex between her thighs, in that sweet, pink pillow hiding her magic button. I lick her seam, taste her arousal, and plunge my tongue where no man will ever go again.
This is mine.
She rocks on my face, my hair fisted in her grip while I lick and suck and nip her clit just like I worshipped her tits. And if her tits were the nectar of the gods, her creamy center is the forbidden fruit. My balls are so tight dots are dancing in my vision. My dick is pulsing so hard it has its own heartbeat, chanting mine, mine, mine.
Her thighs clench around my ears. She cries out my name, and the heady taste of her orgasm coats my tongue. I lap it up, her body pulsing and writhing around my face while she yanks my hair out by the roots, coming and coming and coming.
Just when I think she’s done, I squeeze a finger into her pussy.
She clenches around me and her breath comes out on a wheezy cry.
I add another finger, then a third, thrusting, rubbing, searching. She pumps against my hand.
I nip her clit again, and god, wave after wave of spasms squeeze my fingers until they’re numb.
“Holy fuck,” she gasps.
I rise on shaky legs. My cock is so engorged I might’ve strained something vital in it. “Was that good for you?” I push at her entrance with my dick, watching my head slide along the seam of her bare pussy.
She shoves a strand of hair out of her face. “You’re still here?” she pants. “I barely noticed.”