Play Dirty: Brooklyn Dawn Book 1 Read online

  He swore as I gripped his length, my thumb stroking lightly under the flared head of his cock.

  He wrapped his ruined fingers under the lace at my hip.

  “Off,” I said against his mouth. “Tear it.”

  His eyes went molten, but for once, he took fucking direction and ripped the fragile strings. Before the tattered black lace was all the way off, I crowded into him. I dragged my pussy down his shaft, coating him with the proof of just how hot I became the moment we touched.

  “Fuck.” His voice was a raw growl.

  His heart raced in his chest. I could hear it like a kick drum.

  Like an endless beat I could chase.

  One more way to match him.

  He shifted me off him long enough to shed his boots, jeans, and boxers. Then I straddled him again, gripping his shoulders as I rose enough to take him inside. His jaw tightened as he tunneled inside of me. No matter how ready I was for him, it had been a long time since I’d had sex.

  The last time we’d been together had been just as crazed.

  And like that night, there was nothing between us. No barriers, no condom. He fisted my hair, his eyes blazing into mine. Both then and now, the deed was done.

  No sense. No protection. So unlike me.

  Part of me knew it was the same for him. Even if he would never admit it.

  Would never admit to so much.

  I took all of him again and again. He didn’t look away, didn’t blink.

  Each stroke was glorious and wrenching at the same time. He invaded every corner of me until my pussy knew only him. Instead of easing the way for him, I clenched down each time and accepted the invasion for what it was.

  A first.

  The only one who mattered.

  There had been very few men before Nash. Far fewer than anyone would probably believe. Being goal-orientated and focused on my career had left me little desire for entanglements. And I wasn’t the kind of woman who fucked for the sake of it.

  But Nash wasn’t a simple fuck. Even when I’d wished he was.

  His strokes increased, both in tempo and depth. He was breaking me open.

  Fuck that.

  It felt amazing, but I wanted to bend him to me, to force him to accept me. Accept us. His resistance was in the stiffness of his shoulders, in the way he held me.

  As always, he fought me every step.

  Even though it went against every instinct I had, I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and covered his mouth with mine. I let myself go. Opened myself to the flood of endorphins and pleasure I’d been damming up in fear.

  How could I think he’d let go, if I wouldn’t?

  It was like the one time I’d sky-dived with Jamie. The freefall was the goal. The experience.

  Nash was my freefall. I just hoped I didn’t crash.

  I flowed like water around him, undulating my hips, rubbing myself along his chest, accepting the harsh kiss until it spun out into something gentle.

  Until he moaned into my mouth and we became one fluid motion. Not so much two people at war, but caught in a wild current that demolished everything it touched.

  He rolled me back on the piano cover on the floor, coming down over me. The weight of him was everything. His heat submerged me, enveloped me. Even as I burned up, it wasn’t enough. I angled closer to keep our bodies touching. To clasp my arms and legs around him again while he burrowed deep inside me.

  Each thrust of his hips was like a blow, but instead of fighting back, I attacked him with softness. I curled around him until he cursed my name.

  My real name.

  Not duchess.

  Even though I hated the nickname, I longed for it. Loved it at the same time.

  But the shuddering Irish-tinged string of syllables that was my given name was more. It was poetry and fire, darkness and lyric. He was my song.

  The one I’d been searching for all my life.

  Tears stung behind my lids as I tucked my chin along his neck and shoulder to hide my face.

  He reached under me to lift me tighter against him, to get deeper. I arched my back and the beams above me blurred as the friction between us detonated the fear with a drowning ecstasy.

  My nails raced down his back to dig into his ass, holding him tighter as I squeezed around him and felt the pulsing echo of his cock deep inside me. Then there was the sweet discord of his rough voice breaking over my name as he came inside of me.

  I raced after him, riding the warmth and the fullness I’d never known before.

  When I came back to myself, and my lung function finally matched my brainwaves, I found myself pinned to the floor. My body was one throbbing bruise. We’d torn at each other to get closer—or maybe to find some end.

  Too bad I was fairly sure this was just the beginning.

  At least for one of us.

  Thirteen

  In the shadows, I turned away.

  Even with my back turned, I could still hear those soft, dirty noises people made after sex. It had been a lifetime for me, yet I still remembered.

  Next, they would laugh and whisper and make promises. Alex wasn’t that kind of man now, if he’d ever been, but this woman brought something new out of him. She was worthy of repeats.

  The way he’d touched her so tenderly, as if she was his beloved Martin guitar. Cradling, caressing. Then he’d opened her up and feasted. And she’d let him, because his face was still so pretty, and his scars were on the inside.

  Like his cold, black heart.

  I reached down and popped open the old-fashioned cassette boom box. There were so many treasures back here, ones covered in dust and forgotten by time.

  Just like me.

  It had been easy to slip into the barn, and it would be even easier to slip out. But these were an unexpected gift.

  I pocketed one of the two tapes, the one I’d used to document Alex’s betrayal. The other, labeled Logan demo, I pulled out of the machine, then ripped out the spool and watched it unwind.

  And while Alex and his tramp cuddled, I shredded it to pieces on the fucking floor.

  Fourteen

  Beneath me, she yawned. Like a content little kitten. If not for the wash of moisture in her eyes before she cupped her mouth, I might’ve believed she was simply tired.

  I wished she was.

  That I was.

  Instead, I was far too wary. My ears tuned to any sound, my eyes alert.

  There had been the faintest scrape while I’d been catching my breath. Barely a hint of sound, but I’d noticed it.

  Like a chair being dragged over a floor.

  Like metal moving against metal…

  I shook my head to clear it. No. I’d probably just imagined it. No one was here with us.

  We were alone, not counting the ghosts filling this barn. Now they were even moving furniture.

  Fuck, I needed to get a grip.

  I yearned for the blessed blank moments that followed a release. For once, I deserved them. And yet I’d been denied again.

  Pulling out of her took inhuman strength. Especially when she made a strangled noise, caught between pain and enjoyment. I understood the sentiment far too well.

  She hadn’t made it easy on me. Not this time nor the first. She’d given back as much as she’d taken and made me want to be more. To be worth her offering. But I wasn’t, and wishes didn’t make it so.

  My biggest gift to her was to push her away.

  She didn’t fight me. Didn’t ask questions as women were wont to do after sex. Or so I’d heard. It had been so long since I’d been inside one other than Lindsey that I barely remembered. No other woman compared to her reality. She’d crowded out every other in my brain.

  And I’d best be locking down such thoughts right now before her shrewd eyes narrowed and she figured me out. As if all my tells weren’t explanation enough.

  I rose and closed my eyes for a moment as I turned away to gather my shirt. My legs were as shaky as a calf’s. She didn’t need to know tha
t either.

  “I wonder if there’s something to drink in here. Logan must’ve forgotten that we would need to properly hydrate.” She sat up and stretched, drawing her arms far above her head so her distracting breasts bounced.

  Witch.

  “Probably wasn’t thinking we’d have fluid loss. Then again…”

  “Then again, he’s a smart dude. In school, people make up after a fight. Once you’re grown, it takes a different kind of combat to clear the air.”

  I wanted to argue. I didn’t particularly like the idea of Logan knowing what we’d done. Not that I was shamed by it. Far from it. I also didn’t have any problem with staking my claim.

  Just as my lips and teeth had on her neck. Fuck.

  “Don’t suppose you own any turtlenecks?”

  She frowned and rubbed her throat as I pulled my shirt back on. Her gaze drifted lower past the hem of the cotton, making the part of me in question preen.

  And she caught the tip of her tongue between her teeth.

  “Here.” I tossed her the clingy white shirt and the hair band T-shirt she’d shed along the way. “Put some clothes on before you catch a chill.”

  “Such sweetness. All concerned about the drafty barn.” She rolled onto her knees and shook back her hair, still holding the shirt in her lap. Clearly, she was in no hurry to end my torment. “Funny, you don’t seem affected by the cold. Isn’t it supposed to cause shrinkage?”

  I obliged her enough to look down. “No shrinkage here, love.”

  After rising, she tossed both her shirts over her shoulder and padded barefoot across the stage. Naked as a jaybird, proud as a peacock. Every bird metaphor applied.

  She stopped beside an old trunk, pushing it aside to pull forward one of those small portable refrigerators. “Lo and behold. He thought ahead.”

  “Before he trapped us in here?”

  She tossed me an arch look. “We made good use of the time.”

  I nearly smiled. Hard to argue there.

  She pulled out a water bottle, then uncapped it and took a long swig. She didn’t offer me some. Instead, she capped the bottle and rubbed it over her throat, causing little droplets of condensation to slip down her bare breasts.

  “Thirsty?”

  I didn’t acknowledge her as I pulled on my boxers and jeans. I sat to put on my boots, undoing the laces and tightening them again while she sipped and watched me.

  The weight of her stare was like a spotlight, and I was already sweating.

  “Broken sidewalk, fragile bloom. Crushed underfoot. Growing again. Stubborn. Fighting through the cracks, searching for the light. Straining, straining.”

  “What the fuck is that?”

  But she paid me no mind as she came over to the piano bench. “Get up.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Up.” She set down her water bottle on the piano and gave me a hard shove. I’d probably have a bruise. I didn’t mind it. She could mark me anytime she chose.

  Hell, she already had, in places that didn’t show.

  I moved out of her way, curious what she was up to now. She yanked up the lid of the bench and let out a triumphant laugh. “I remembered this.” She dug out a couple of notebooks and a stubby pencil and a pen with some poufy thing on the end. “Can’t believe it’s still here.” She tossed me a notebook and leaned over to hand me a writing implement.

  The one with the pink mop of hair.

  “I’m not writing with this.”

  “Fine, don’t.” She closed the bench and sat down, drawing up her legs without even the slightest thought to her nudity. The shirts slipped off her shoulder and she didn’t notice that either. She was too engrossed in opening the notebook and scanning the first page. “Oh, you’ve gotta be shitting me. Seriously?”

  “What?” I was still looking at the damn pen. Where had it come from? It couldn’t be Logan’s. There was a smiley face in the midst of all that crazy hair.

  “I was working on ‘Detour’ when I was here for the festival. Jamie had recorded some of it when we were screwing around at home, but we couldn’t quite get it right. So, I came here late one night and played what we had and wrote in one of these old notebooks I found.” She unfolded some paper from the back of the notebook and laughed delightedly. “This is the original melody. We tweaked it some once I got back, but what I figured out here helped lay the foundation.” Without looking up at me, she patted the bench beside her. “Let’s see if the magic still holds, huh?”

  I had no desire to see that. At all. Us and pianos were a very bad mixture. And not just because we’d gotten naked on them now twice now.

  For Christ’s sake, she was already writing. Scribbling so fast with that stub of a pencil that I imagined the page smoking.

  When I couldn’t stand watching her a second longer, I stuck out my hand. “Give me your notebook.”

  “No.” She held it to her chest and eyed me peculiarly. “You can’t copy my homework.”

  I didn’t expect to laugh. Or for her to join in, as if it made sense we were in this place again, with the smell of sex around us and her incredible body on full display. Her hair wild from my hands and her eyes bright with the spark inside her even I couldn’t dim. I wanted to warm my hands by that fire. Let it consume me as easily as she could.

  As she already had.

  “What are you writing? That flower blather?”

  The open expression on her face vanished, and I wanted to saw out my tongue. This was why I wasn’t fit for human consumption.

  It’s better if she hates you, remember?

  Since she wasn’t inclined to share, I sat down on the bench—at the other end—and opened my own notebook. A sheaf of staff paper covered with scattered words and notes fell at my feet. I picked it up and sorted through the pages, recognizing Logan’s handwriting and the lyrics to one of All The King’s Men’s bigger hits. On a page beneath that was another song, barely just begun.

  Light in the night, I see you shine.

  Swallowing hard, I flipped the stupid pink topped pen between my fingers before I started to write.

  Cracked sidewalk, petals left to ruin

  No sunshine down that far

  Careless footsteps

  Drowning all I see

  Killing every part of me

  Light in the night, I see you shine

  Coming through the cracks

  Hold onto me

  Oh, hold onto me

  Like I’ve clung to you

  “Fuck.” I tossed the ridiculous pen and the notebook and the pile of papers, scattering them across the stage like a child having a fit. One landed face up on Lindsey’s boots.

  Saying nothing, she set aside her own notebook and rose, still comfortably naked, and gripped the shirts over her shoulder as she bent to retrieve the items I’d flung.

  She read what I’d written before setting the notebook and pen back down on the bench. “The hope in this feels false.”

  “Thank you for your insight.”

  “You’re trying too hard.” She shifted on her bare feet—bare everything—and peered at me through the tangle of hair falling into her face. “You can’t write about hope if you don’t have any.”

  My face heated as if she’d doused me in gasoline. “You can’t begin to know what I have.”

  She moved toward me with a purpose that both unnerved and aroused me. I swallowed as she flicked open the button on my jeans and tugged me out of my boxers, her grip tight enough to make me curse.

  “What about now,” she murmured, lowering her focus to my eager cock. “Tell me you don’t have hope inside you that I’ll wrap my mouth around you and suck until you come down my throat.”

  I laced my fingers through her hair and drew her head down with just enough force to cause her pupils to widen. “What are you hoping for, duchess? That I won’t force you…or that I will?”

  She didn’t rear back. Didn’t react at all except to move her jaw in a way that let me know she wasn’t scared of m
e or my threats. If I wanted to be rough, she’d dish it right back out.

  My hand relaxed in her hair, and I threw back my head to haul oxygen into my starved lungs.

  Damn her, she was right. I still knew how to hope. Hope for a blow job from a silk-throated angel was still fucking hope.

  Just not the kind I could put into a Christmas song.

  Happy dick suck day, fa-la-la.

  She tucked me back into my jeans, zipping up as best she could considering the sudden tightness of the denim. Silently, she finally pulled on her tight top and layered the hair band one over it before yanking on her pants. She left her boots for last.

  Locks on a trunk snapping shut.

  Regret stole through me, so profound that I almost missed her sitting down again and sliding her notebook across the slick wood.

  I’d get no more of her unforgettable pussy, but she would give me this.

  Cold comfort.

  I picked up her pad and read what she’d written.

  Facade that hides what we see

  Broken mystery

  Lost inside me

  I can’t seem to find

  Catch the fragment

  Lost again

  Until a touch sets off a memory

  I crush it underfoot

  Watch it die

  Don’t want to be her anymore

  Don’t want to feel that way again

  Not again

  I clutched the notebook until my knuckles went white. “You made me think you were writing about hope.”

  Instead, she was writing about how I’d poisoned her with my touch.

  Maybe. I didn’t even fucking know.

  She wasn’t supposed to be this hard to read. I’d thought I had her pegged, and here she had all these goddamn layers, each one thicker and harder to permeate than the last.

  Not my job. She wasn’t a riddle for me to decipher.

  She wasn’t anything for me.

  So, why couldn’t I remember that?

  “No, you thought what you believed about me. You think I’m the good time girl who only sees sunshine and rainbows. Who can’t understand anything else because I’m fortunate enough not to have been broken in the same ways you have.”