Page 57 of Play Dirty (Brooklyn Dawn 1)

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.

---