Grip Trilogy Box Set - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,180

mine. You’re with me.” He squats a little to kiss me, his lips possessive and commanding. He presses me into him, splaying his hand across my lower back. Even though we’ve stepped to the side, I know there have to be people watching us, but I sense he needs this, so I tamp down my self-consciousness and surrender. His kiss slows, his tongue doing a languid sweep inside like he’s marking my mouth. He drops his forehead to mine.

“I know I’m overreacting.” He sighs, tipping his head back and studying the chandeliers dotting the high ceilings. “I just hate that anyone would even think he has a claim on you.”

“Hey, from their perspective, it was a blur.” I take both of his hands in mine. “All of this—you and Qwest, me and Parker—it’s all really tangled in their heads. They don’t know I’ve been in love with you for years.”

His eyes soften, like I knew they would, and he laughs, cupping my neck.

“You think you can charm your way out of that hard fuck you have coming tonight, don’t you?”

“When have I ever run from a hard fuck?” My voice comes out low and sultry, my smile slow and only for him. “I’m earning it.”

A hand on Grip’s shoulder pulls us out of each other.

“They’re going in,” Amir says, eyes discreetly lowered. “Just letting you know.”

“You ready for this?” Grip asks.

“You’re the one who has to speak. I just look pretty and eat rubbery five-thousand dollar chicken.”

Apparently I know my stuff, because that is all that is asked of me for the rest of the night. Our table is full of people much older than we are, community activists who probably couldn’t give a flying fig about what’s trending on Twitter. I doubt any of them know what a “thot” is either. And I’m so grateful.

Grip is extraordinary in this context. His background and child- hood mean that he is in touch with real need like many celebrities aren’t. It isn’t just something he shouldn’t forget. His mother still lives in the house where he grew up. His cousins and aunts and family are all still in that community. He talks about how he would have gone hungry at school if there hadn’t been a free lunch program, and about the years when he was younger and his mother was on welfare. He smiles when he tells us how proud she was when she no longer needed it.

I marvel again at how we found each other, at how natural it has felt with us from the beginning, considering how vastly different our lives have been. Like someone gave him the answers to a test, as if he had a Bristol cheat sheet that no one else received. I can’t take my eyes off him. He thought I watched him before. Now that he’s mine, now that we’re together, it’s even worse. He rivets me, and it doesn’t scare me anymore. Maybe I do love him too much and don’t have boundaries. I don’t care. This love is the stuff of magic, of fantasy, but so raw and real I can touch it. I can taste it. If for some reason I fall, how many can say they soared this high?

“You were excellent,” I whisper to Grip as we stand from the table to leave. Amir sat at a separate table designated for security and bodyguards, so we wait for him to make his way over to us.

“Thank you, baby.” Grip leans down to my ear, his voice dark and dirty. “Knowing you are naked under that dress has been driving me crazy all night. The napkin was barely big enough to hide my hard-on.”

There is some secret switch he planted in my body that responds to him instantly. Heat and wetness collect between my thighs. For a moment, I consider dragging him to the nearest bathroom stall and slaking my lust before we make it home, but a voice from behind me dumps ice all over the flame building inside me.

“Bristol,” my mother says. “Good evening.”

I turn to face her, braced for her censure. I may have ignored several of her calls when the footage of Grip and me leaked.

“Mother, hello. I didn’t know you were here.”

“Well, it’s a big crowd.” She glances around the ballroom. “Betsy’s here, too, somewhere.”

She shifts her eyes to Grip.

“That’s Parker’s mother, by the way.” She looks at my hand linked with Grip’s. “We’ve been best friends more than forty years.”

“It’s good to see you