Play Mine: Rockstar Romantic Suspense (Brooklyn Dawn Book 3)

by Cari Quinn

  I always wanted more.

  She moaned into my mouth, and her fingers twisted into my T-shirt. As always, the swift change to hot, drugging pleasure came quickly. I dragged her closer, my fingers digging into her firm ass. Then I went lower, finding the edges of her ridiculously distracting shorts.

  The console blocked me from getting any closer or deeper. The heat of her and the sun streaming through the car ratcheted up the need to get inside her. Ever since that first night—God, was it just last night?—I never wanted to be anywhere else.

  Her fingers fisted my hair, and that little bite of pain unleashed all the pent-up aggravation of the day. The danger around Zane, what could have happened to her, the knowledge that someone actually wanted to hurt the people in my life—all of it needed a release.

  I hauled her over the console and hit the lever on my seat until I was stretched out and she was straddled over me.

  “We can’t,” she whispered against my mouth, but she still went back for more. Her teeth scraped down my jaw to my neck. “I have neighbors.” She groaned. “Cole.”

  “Don’t fucking sigh some other dude’s name into my skin.”

  She lifted her head, a smirk growing. “So possessive.” She nipped my lower lip. “I shouldn’t like it and yet.” She laughed into the kiss as she ground against my zipper. “It makes me crazy.”

  I groaned and lifted my hips to get her closer. “I like you crazy.” I caught the back of her neck and with my other hand, the small of her back. “Can you come like this? Ride me?”

  Her bluebell eyes weren’t tear-filled now. They were bright with challenge. “What about you? Think you can spend the next few hours with blue balls?”

  I shook my head no. “Yes.”

  She laughed and tried to climb off.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To go deal with my house.”

  I nosed my way over the well worn Foo Fighters shirt that she’d cinched at her hip. My shirt. I couldn’t even be mad at the boob prints she’d made because that shirt would always be hers now. It was perfectly tight against her seriously magnificent breasts.

  I tugged at her distended nipple with my teeth, careful not to make a wet spot on the dark green. “Come for me first.” I lifted the hem of her shirt and ground her against me. “I like those breathy sounds you make just before you go over.”

  “God, Cooper.”

  “Like that.” I smiled and ducked my head to get to her belly. So smooth and soft.

  She arched up and I reached her ribs.

  “More.” I scraped my chin over her pale freckles, leaving a stripe of pink. I slid my hand down from her neck, over her breast to the shirt to push it up farther and dumped her full breast out of her bra into my waiting mouth. Heated silk. I stared up at her as I gently pulled and palmed her ass to ground her down on my cock. “Use me,” I said against her flesh.

  “No, I—”

  I sucked harder, and she cried out. Our breath steamed up the car as her hips finally moved. She was so small and seemed so fragile, but the reality was so different. Now she was strong and sure as she took from me. As she accepted all the pleasure as if it was her due now that I’d demanded it.

  I moved to her other breast, flicking the cup of her cotton bra out of my way to feast on her. I’d do this daily if she let me. And if I had my way, it would be daily. For life. Every minute of every day, I’d make sure she knew how much I wanted her.

  The friction was starting to burn, but I didn’t care. She could rub off my skin at this point. I wanted to hear that little hiccuping moan. The one that came before my name.

  I tugged on her nipple, knowing she needed a little more. My mouth went to the fluttering pulse at her neck, already dotted with sweat. “What do you need, babe?”

  “I… God, I’m so close.”

  “I know.” I went for her mouth, slipping inside to tangle with her tongue. Rubbing against it like I wished I could inside her sweet pussy.

  I’d had my mouth all over her last night. I was still learning her, and I’d make it my master class to find out every way to make her come.

  I slid my hand from her lower back to the slick heat at the edges of her shorts. “So wet for me. I could make you climb on my face right now. Ride over my tongue so I could suck on your clit.”

  “Cooper.”

  The angle wasn’t great, and my fingers were cramping, but she was going over, goddammit.

  I pushed aside denim and lace and found her swollen. I managed to get my middle finger inside of her and tipped her forward enough to…there.

  My name came out on a shattered sigh.

  She threw her head back, and I laughed into her throat. “There you are. Drenching my cock through all this denim.”

  She slumped down against me and wheezed out a breath. “God, dear God.”

  “Cooper, dear Cooper.”

  She giggled and kissed her way up my neck to my mouth. “You have the dirtiest mouth sometimes.”

  “You like it.”

  She bit my chin then grinned against my lips. “I love it.” She paused, and her eyes changed a little before she pulled back.

  “Teagan?”

  “What?” She crawled off my lap into the passenger seat and rearranged her clothes to cover up what I’d marked.

  “Where did you go?”

  “Nowhere. Just… It was intense.” She pushed her hair out of her face and twisted it up. She dug into her pocket for some magical girl hairband, and the curls were all contained with a flick of her wrist.

  I shifted my abused cock and sat up. “We’re always intense.”

  “I know. It’s…”

  “Intense?” I offered.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Don’t joke. How can it be this big all the time? God, I want to just devour you.”

  “And that’s a bad thing?”

  “Nothing can be this overwhelming forever. What if we use it all up?”

  “First of all, that’s not gonna happen. Secondly, we were friends first. You know me better than anyone. Now you just know me naked too.”

  She rolled her eyes, but her mouth tipped up into a smile. “Yeah, I guess so.” She glanced down at my strangled dick. “Sure you don’t want me to take care of that?”

  I glanced over her shoulder at the twitch of curtains in the house we were parked near. “As much as I’d love that, I think we’ve given your neighbors enough of a show.”

  As she looked over her shoulder, a flush zoomed up her neck. “See, this is what I’m talking about. I would never have done this before.”

  “Like you never made out in a car.”

  “Oh, plenty.”

  My eyebrows lowered.

  She laughed. “But not like this.” She leaned into me. “I’ve never come with any man like I do with you.”

  “Any man?”

  “That is what you focus on?”

  I shrugged. “Answer the question.”

  “I’ve been single for a while.” She gave me a peck on the mouth, and then opened the door. “Come on, let’s get this done.”

  Fourteen

  “Dammit.”

  She was halfway down the sidewalk by the time I got my zipper surgically removed from my straining hard-on. Watching her heart-shaped ass sway in front of me didn’t help my situation as I caught up with her. I slid my hand into hers, and she looked up at me in surprise, but she quickly laced her fingers with mine.

  Cole got out of the black car I’d spotted when we first arrived. He slid aviators onto his face and met us at the taped up door. “I was about to check the car if you two didn’t come out in the next five minutes.”

  Teagan blushed. “We were talking.”

  Cole gave us a bland look. “Have you checked out if we’re allowed on the premises?”

  “The arson chief said we could go in today.” I tightened my hold on Teagan’s hand when she tried to slip away.

  “Good enough.” Cole climbed the stairs and flicked off the tape
. “Let me do a walk-through and make sure it’s safe.”

  Teagan gnawed on her lower lip and craned her neck after him. “What does he think he’s going to find in there?”

  “Think he’s more worried about who.”

  “Oh.” Deflated, she slid her fingers of her other hand around my wrist.

  Cole stuck his head out and waved us inside.

  We followed him in, walking side by side. Just before she crossed the threshold, she hesitated. I wrapped my other arm around her then pulled her back into me for a moment. I lowered my lips to her ear. “Whatever it looks like, I’m here, okay?”

  She nodded and took a deep breath then walked ahead of me, her hand still clamped in mine.

  She gasped as she entered the foyer. Eighty percent of the room was a sickly dark gray ash soaked in water. It smelled like someone had drowned an ashtray full of cigarette butts. Her living room was a complete loss. The succulent plants that had been tucked into every spare corner were singed, and some had even split from the heat of the flames. The aloe plant she’d always taken such meticulous care of along the kitchen window was a pile of green spiky goo.

  My gaze tracked the trampled wreckage from the firemen and the investigators. Her couch was upended, cushions singed, melted, and waterlogged. The posters and tapestries that usually covered her walls were curled up from fire damage, save for one rope-looking thing. Macramé? Looked like something my mother had in her craft room. The piece was still heavy with water and soot, but it was remarkably undamaged compared to the rest of the room.

  There seemed to be a strange semi-circle of charred areas, as if gasoline had been splashed wide and lit without a care. The air smelled of some sort of accelerant. I’d been in enough fire-bombed places all over the world with the Rangers that I knew the smell.

  Arson, for sure. And by the looks of it, a sloppy job. Whomever had done it hadn’t even bothered trying to make it look like an accident.

  Teagan quietly picked through a few things in the far corner. Her fingers shook as she picked up a framed photo and held it close to her chest.

  I wasn’t sure if I should go to her or give her a minute with her obvious grief. I hated feeling helpless. I wanted to rip the fucker’s face off who had done this to her.

  Thank God she hadn’t been home.

  Ice slid down my spine. Here with all the proof of the fire, it was even more ominous. Had they set the fire because she wasn’t home? Or would they have done it regardless?

  Cole peeled back a bit of waterlogged shelf liner on a shelving unit in the kitchen with a pocketknife. He pulled off his sunglasses and stuffed them in his pocket and gave me the high sign with a nod.

  I checked on Teagan one more time. She was crouched in front of a bookcase, pulling out boxes. I didn’t want to leave her, but I followed him down the hallway toward the door.

  “What’s up?”

  “I spoke with Noah before I came over. The arson investigator asked about cigarettes.”

  My eyebrows rose. So, that was where Noah had come up with that particular question. “Yeah, he asked her if she smoked, and she said no. He wouldn’t tell us much.”

  “Still an ongoing investigation. Insurance will be held up until they rule out that she did it.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “She wasn’t here and that isn’t great.”

  “Why would she do something like that?”

  Cole’s face was expressionless. “One way to get the remodeling done.”

  “She loves this house. Remodeling because she’s making more money now is far different than just torching it to get a quick buck. Besides the fact that it was sloppy as fucking shit.”

  Cole stayed quiet.

  “How could anyone think she’d do this? She doesn’t even have it in her to fight with the crazy people in our band. She’d never do something like this.” I pointed to the room. “Do you see her in there?”

  “Could be a good actress.”

  I took a step toward him, my hands fisted at my sides. “She isn’t that kind of person. She’d rather go hungry than commit insurance fraud. And believe me, she doesn’t have any need to. We do damn well for ourselves.”

  “I agree.”

  “What?” The tight rubber bands strung between my shoulder blades were officially going to snap. Then I was going to strangle this dude.

  Cole folded his arms and gave a half-shrug. “Devil’s advocate.”

  “I’m going to beat you unconscious.”

  Cole’s mouth twitched. “I’d like to see you try.” He held up a hand. “Look, I’m not going to insult you because I know you’ve seen some shit, same as me.”

  I gritted my teeth, but I nodded.

  “I’ve worked more than a few arson cases, and this feels more like a statement than personal. The sloppy angle could be used against her too. Maybe she hired an idiot to light it up.”

  When I opened my mouth, he shook his head.

  “I don’t believe it either. Neither does Noah or Lila. But there’s a smug-like setup to all of this. The way I see it, if they’d wanted to make it personal, they would have lit her bookcase. That’s where you hurt a person. In the memories and the sentimental things.”

  I nodded. “Agreed.”

  “Instead, they just haphazardly did it this way, like they couldn’t be bothered to do it right. And yet it’s not the kind of thing a firebug would do. Not enough flames.”

  “You’ve thought a lot about this.”

  Cole gave a curt nod. “I’m a bit more than just hired muscle.”

  I frowned. “Is that right?”

  He ignored that question. “Lila’s people are going to take care of gathering up her things and putting them in storage for her while you guys are on the road. Teagan can get with Lila about what they want to do with all the insurance stuff. Once the arson investigator has the report I’m working up for Noah, I think things will work out in Teagan’s favor. But I really don’t think it’ll be quick.”

  “Great.”

  “Now the last bit.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “More?”

  “I noticed a few of the structural beams were burned.”

  “Shit. I didn’t catch that.”

  Cole gave a slight shrug. “You’re too worried about her. That’s why you have me. But I’d be more comfortable with us getting out of here sooner rather than later.”

  My shoulders stiffened. He was right and I hated it. I should have noticed. I should have been looking for the trouble spots, not watching her.

  “Hey. She’s where your focus should be.”

  I jammed my hands into my pockets. “Yeah. I’ll go check on her.”

  “I’ll be in the kitchen making some calls.”

  I went back into the living room, but she was gone. I headed for the hallway to the bedrooms. I found her in what had to be her room. We’d been friends for a damn long time, but her private sanctuary had been too much for me to invade.

  We were more of the movie and game nights kind of deal when I did hang at her place. I could only take so much, and knowing where she slept would have killed me. That would have led to questions like does she sleep naked? Is she a cotton or lace girl?

  Losing sleep over Teagan had been my favorite pastime. I hadn’t needed help with ideas about her in bed. Besides, it paled in comparison to the reality of her in my bed, anyway.

  The space was pretty much what I expected. A girly bed covered in pillows soaked through from the fire hoses. In the center of the room were two plastic tubs full of notebooks, clothes, and other girl items of unknown origin.

  The room was surprisingly untouched from a fire standpoint, but there was no denying the smoke damage. The awful smell still lingered in the air, along with an ashy wetness that coated the back of my throat.

  “Teagan?”

  A thump in the closet made me move all the way into the room.

  “Here.” A shirt sailed through the air and landed in the bin. Another lacy bit o
f a thing hit me in the face.

  I picked it up. “I didn’t take you for a red lace girl.”

  She sniffed and wouldn’t look at me. “Yeah, well, I’m saving what I can. That was in a zipped plastic bag so it doesn’t smell like my Aunt Cathy’s house in January.” A small mountain of shoes poured out of her closet, and she kicked at one of them. “Dammit.”

  I didn’t know Aunt Cathy, but I’d just bet she was a two-pack-a-day kind of lady.

  “Hey.” I tossed the bit of lingerie into the bin. “Lila’s people are going to take care of most of this.”

  She picked up a boot and slammed it into the closet. “It’s not their job. It’s my stuff.” She swiped at her cheek. Tears tracked through the soot on her face, and her eyes were bright red.

  “Oh, babe.” I went to her, and she pointed at me.

  “No. Don’t. If you hug me, I’m just going to burst into tears and probably never stop.” She picked up a jacket and wiped her cheek with the back of her other hand, making even more of a mess. “It’s just stuff.”

  “It’s not just stuff. It’s your stuff.” I went to her and pulled the jacket out of her hand and tossed it on the tote. “And you’re upset. I don’t care if you cry. I have a sister and a mom. I’m good with tears.”

  Lies. I hated tears. They made me feel helpless, but if that was what she needed, I’d hold her and let her have a good cry.

  Even if it gutted me.

  “I don’t want to cry.” As they streamed, anyway.

  I pulled her into my chest and wrapped my arms around her already shaking shoulders.

  “Everything smells like hellfire.” Her voice was a miserable whisper.

  I rested my cheek on top of her head. “Such a poet.”

  She looped her arms around my waist and pinched me. “Shut up. I don’t want to laugh.”

  “Let me get this straight. You don’t want to cry, and you don’t want to laugh?”

  “No.” Her voice was muffled, but I could hear her smile.

  “At least the fire wasn’t in here.”

  “What does it matter? I don’t know how I’m going to save anything. The smoke is baked into everything.” She pulled back, her red eyes searching the room before finding mine. “Ugh. My head hurts.”