Page 68 of Play Dirty (Brooklyn Dawn 1)

A burn in the blood I couldn’t sate.

He’d been addicted to drugs and drink. And me? I was addicted to him.

His gaze dropped from my face to my hands, clasped in my lap. I couldn’t keep that part of myself separate either.

Touching my fingertips to the keys was an almost physical jolt. I didn’t think about playing with him so much as I let my fingers show the bravery my heart couldn’t. Muscle memory simply took over. That side of me never faltered. Never looked for an invitation.

I took my seat at the table because I belonged.

I’d slept with Nash because we had a connection. Twice now. If he couldn’t handle that, if he was so caught up in the past that he couldn’t see his future, then I just had to accept it. I didn’t have all the answers. Maybe not even all the questions. But I had this moment, this song.

This duet.

He didn’t change my words. Didn’t stop to notate things in the margins. Just kept playing, fumbling here and there as we did a crossover or when we reached the bridge, but always figuring the way up and through together. Our voices by turns battling and harmonizing, sometimes somehow both at once.

When we finished the song, we started over again. And again. My fingertips sizzled and my heart raced and my skin hummed as if I’d plugged directly into a current.

And I had. He was right beside me, lighting me up the same way I was doing for him.

After half a dozen repeats, I stopped to guzzle water. I finished that bottle and went back for more, returning with one for Nash as well. He uncapped the bottle and held my gaze as he tipped back the water and drank. Somehow even the movement of his throat was sensuous.

Between the marathon singing and the ever-present tension between us, if I’d had any panties left, they would’ve been soaked. But they were shredded on the floor with my reservations.

He wasn’t an open book. I’d once thought I was. Now it seemed as if parts of me were changing. I didn’t know him.

Just like he didn’t know me.

“I apologize.”

I blinked. “Huh?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I made insinuations about you and Lo. For that, I apologize.”

The shock ebbed enough for me to speak. “Oh, you did more than insinuate, buddy. You flat out accused. I’ve never been so insulted—”

“Yeah, yeah, okay, I get it. Aye, I’m sorry, all right? I saw that tabloid picture all those years ago and how easy you two are together, and I assumed.”

“Picture?” It took me a moment to remember the photo of the brief as hell kiss between Logan and I at the festival. One I’d instigated. And had promptly forgotten, because our chemistry when it came to locking lips was less than zero.

That was what Nash had made into such a big deal?

Nash glared at me as I started to laugh. “Must you?”

“Yes, I must, Alexander, because you’re a giant fucking idiot if you think I ever shared even one tenth of the chemistry with him as I do with you.”

We stared at each other for a long moment, words unsaid vibrating between us. It was as if this stage was alive with remembered music. Ours. Logan’s. All the voices that had soared and tangled and broken in this very space.

I licked a stray droplet of water off my lower lip. “Guessing we don’t have much time left.”

“Probably not.”

“The button on your fly is undone.” I’d only caught my focus drifting there fifty times or so.

“Bothering you, duchess?”

“Only part bothering me is that you have them on at all.”

Slowly, so slowly, he stood from the bench. He loomed over me, and I wasn’t small. Looking up at him didn’t feel like submission, but acknowledgement.

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