Page 144 of Play Dirty (Brooklyn Dawn 1)

Fun.

Easy.

Forgettable.

Alex was anything but forgettable.

Eve

n if he ripped me apart, I’d never forget my time with him. I wouldn’t want to, I knew that now. The possible pain was worth the price. Worth the chance at everything.

I went onto my toes and kissed him lightly. I snaked my hand up under his shirt where his scars lay. The places he tried to get me to avoid, I hunted them down. The uneven skin, the roughness, the so-called ugly parts of him he hated.

His cock grew between us, pushing at me insistently even as he tried to back away from me. I would not be deterred. I pushed at his shirt until it landed on the floor.

His inky hair was a disheveled mess from the misty evening and my hands. I trailed my fingers over the smoothness of his chest, touching the dark hair that grew around the mottled skin.

Then I stepped around him, pressing gentle kisses to his shoulder before coasting around to the other side of him. To his shoulder blades and the broad expanse of his back. Then to the rougher skin. The scars and silvery flesh, eternally discolored. He probably could have had plastic surgery to ease some of it, but I knew part of him wore it as his armor.

He shivered as I kissed each and every inch, my tongue coming out to flick and dance along the burned edges of him.

Accepting all the things about him he refused to share.

I could be patient.

The only thing I had to get through his stony skull was that I wasn’t going anywhere, no matter how much he growled.

He was it for me.

I paused at the skin along his arm as I made a complete circle around him.

I loved him.

I couldn’t deny it anymore. Not if I wanted him to own up to this thing growing between us. And not just the sex. The way he pushed me, made me laugh, made me scream.

He was made for me.

The same as I was made for him.

His blue eyes were stark with emotion when I finally stood in front of him again. “I’m not afraid of us, Alex. I’m not afraid of the demons you carry. And if you’ll let me, you won’t have to carry them alone anymore.”

He swallowed. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I do.” I cupped his face and he turned into my touch. I could see the disbelief swirling with the hope.

Maybe, just maybe, we had a shot.

I took his hand and led him toward the stairs. Luckily, the wide open space left little to the imagination. There was an upper level built in with an open half wall that looked over the main living space.

I caught a glimpse of his bed and thought we would end up there. Instead, he pulled me deeper into the hallway beside his bathroom. There was another door with a palm plate.

Glass and sky and moonlight greeted me.

We climbed a sturdy wrought iron winding staircase. More greenery dripped and twined around the metal and wood as we got to the top. The air was steamy instead of cold. As if a greenhouse had been combined with the ultimate luxury oasis.

A star-strewn sky greeted us. Somehow it even existed in the middle of the city.

In the distance, Manhattan’s lights and life seemed set apart from this place. The whole area around Nash’s home was bleak and gray, but then there was this.

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