Page 205 of Play Dirty (Brooklyn Dawn 1)

“What?”

I didn’t take the time to explain. I just kicked the engine alive again and headed for the warehouse district.

He was on my rooftop.

Forty

“Wakey, wakey. You’ve been out for far too long, love.”

The voice was familiar and wrong and the same time.

I blinked against the lights above me. Not lights. Stars. In New York City? That wasn’t…

“Hey.”

Pain bloomed in my side. I rolled to my side, curling in on myself. The fog lifting with what had to be his boot to my damn ribs. Fuck.

“There you are. Sorry about that, duchess. I couldn’t watch you play sleeping beauty anymore.” He crouched down beside me and pushed my hair out of my eyes. “Though you are beautiful. I can see why he’s drawn to you.”

I batted his hand out of my face. “Who—God, Kyle?”

The night came roaring back. His scent—it was Alex’s, but not. Like he was wearing his cologne, but it wasn’t mixing with his skin chemistry the same way. It was cloying. Like he’d fucking dipped himself in it.

The overhead fairy lights of the pergola blurred in and out, warring with the endless black sky of Alex’s greenhouse rooftop. The stars felt so damn far away.

He grabbed me by my arm and hauled me to my feet, pushing me onto one of the couches. “There we go, princess. Oh, sorry, duchess, right? Somehow more than princess because you’re music royalty and,” he bowed, “Brooklyn royalty as well.” He smiled at me, his face so very wrong.

“What’s go

ing on? Where’s Alex?”

“We don’t need him, do we?”

I swallowed against the dryness in my throat. Terror denting the fringes of my numbness. “Did you do something to him?”

He shrugged. “Nothing much. I simply needed a little time to get you here so we could talk.”

“Why?”

“I’m taking what’s mine.”

“What?”

I tried to stand up, but my feet didn’t work right.

He pushed me back down. “You don’t have your coordination back. Probably won’t for a little bit. I think I gave you a little too much of my little cocktail. You’re deceptively tiny even with all those legs and tits. But the rest of you. Well, you’re quite thin.” He shrugged. “Tits and pussy are all that really matters to us anyway.”

I shrank into the couch. Us?

“Re-fucking-lax. I don’t force women. Besides, you may not find me such a monster when you find out just what kind of man you’re involved with—”

“In love with.”

“Oh, well, this should be extra enlightening then.”

“We don’t have secrets.”

“Oh, he’s told you all the things, has he?”

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