Page 47 of Play Dirty (Brooklyn Dawn 1)

“I don’t want to fucking go out,” I said with a growl. My throat was so fucking dry.

I stalked back into the kitchen and downed a huge glass of water, then another. Nothing alleviated the rawness.

Goddammit.

“Where are we going?” Lindsey’s confused tone drifted down to me. Puzzled, but not angry.

No, that was just for me, evidently.

My fingernails were white from the pressure of my hold on the glass. He was up there with her. Fuck, was she even dressed? Was he so familiar with her that he could actually go to her door and speak to her?

I bowed my head and seethed. I had to get my shit together, or I had to leave. One or the other. I could work remotely. I could let them work without me.

Hell, maybe I could even manage to FaceTime them in the studio if I didn’t have her clobbering my fucking senses while we worked.

The distinct clomp of heels dragged me out of my dangerous spiral. But it was her scent that slammed into me first. Always her damn scent. Midnight. She smelled of a heavy night with heat and texture.

A scent shouldn’t be full of all of that, but hers was.

Nothing about her was two-dimensional. She had layers upon layers. Sweetness and light with hints of passion and need that matched my own. The way she’d reacted to my touch told me she wasn’t used to a man like me. Not to my muddied emotions and disdainful thoughts.

I’d wanted to break her. To make her not matter anymore.

It had backfired. Endlessly.

I forced myself to look at her. Her hair was down. Her usually styled locks were now in loose waves from her braid, but they were messy as if she’d just barely gotten a hand through the strands before Logan had herded her downstairs.

Her face was practically makeup free. Or else it was an illusion of fresh-faced magic that only women seemed to know how to do. Her eyes were a darker blue today. Turbulent and confused with a side of wary.

Due to me. From the emotions I couldn’t keep in check around her.

Instead of the chic feminine clothes she’d worn upon arrival, now she was in tight black pants that molded to every fucking curve. And knee-high boots climbed her legs to put her almost even with me height-wise. But the kicker was the Bon Jovi shirt stretched across her cleavage. It hugged her everywhere yet somehow was loose at the same time.

She was wearing another shirt layered underneath it and a short leather jacket pushed up at the sleeves.

She looked like she was twenty-fucking-years-old.

And I wanted to bend her over the damn kitchen island and rip at those clothes. Take away that purity and innocence.

I was the broken older man who shouldn’t be looking at her, let alone thinking about all the ways I wanted to debauch her.

Jesus.

We weren’t that far apart in age—eight years—but there were leagues of experience between us. I’d made every wrong turn and wrong choice a person could and still be alive to tell the tale. While she’d ridden in the back of a limousine to every destination with rose petals in her wake.

Logan’s heavy boots came down behind her. He touched her lower back to push her farther into the room.

I was afraid I was going to break the granite counter

top under my hands.

Instead, I pushed off and stalked for the door. Maybe I should just get into my car and start driving. I could get home in a few hours and then I could breathe again.

Hell, I’d happily drive to the edge of the damn world to get away from her right now. I didn’t have the mental fortitude for the chaos she brought.

One thing was for certain—I couldn’t be in the car with them. If I saw another photo op with me in the backseat, a witness to God knows what, I’d probably lose the remaining marbles I had left.

“I’ll follow you.” I gripped my keys in my pocket and went outside to get into my wildly impractical Jeep.

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