Page 59 of Play Dirty (Brooklyn Dawn 1)

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.

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