by Dee Ellis
By
Dee Ellis
Burn It Down by Dee Ellis
© 2016 by Dee Ellis. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without written permission of the publisher or author. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in the critical articles or reviews and pages where permission is specifically granted by the publisher or author.
Cover Design: Dee Ellis.
Interior Design: Indies Ink
Publisher: Dee Ellis
ISBN 13: 978-1539768555 & ISBN 10: 1539768554
1. Romance 2. New Adult 3. Erotica
First Edition
Printed in The U.S.A.
Prologue
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EPILOGUE
Acknowledgements
Prologue
I knew that night would happen. Of course, I knew. It was inevitable, as was the upending of my world that followed. The night had felt like the many nights we had spent before. Two months of sneaking around and lying to the one person we knew would hate this. Would hate us.
I knew him well enough to know he would forgive us both. We were both important people to him. Her more than me. Of course, her more than me, which is why tonight was never going to happen any other way. When your best friend catches you banging his little sister, who he warned you to stay away from, it’s never going to end any way but bad.
“Please tell me you are fucking kidding me?” Cage Cooper roared seconds after bursting into my apartment to find his sister, Gigi there. At 2:30 am. In my t-shirt and nothing else. The place reeking of sex because, well, we had finished round six moments before.
I wondered later if I felt the end coming. Coming home that night, Gigi waiting in panties and nothing else, I was insatiable. I mean I almost always was for her, but that night felt different. I fucked her all over the apartment, the dinner she made forgotten as I bent her over the table. Gigi just took it, just let me take what I needed and I wondered if she felt it too. Like it might be the last time I got to be inside her. Because it was.
Literally moments after washing her perfect body off in my shower, Cage was pounding at the door. Before she opened it, I knew it was him. I could have answered instead of her; maybe made her hide like I had once or twice before. I was done hiding by then. Gigi didn’t deserve me fucking her like an animal then shoving her into my closet.
Instead, I let her answer the door and both of us faced down a raging but heartbroken Cage. Charli Dixon, the girl who had him so twisted he missed our relationship happening right in front of him, had left him. Run back home after finding out some truths. Truths that I insisted he lie about. For her own good, I thought.
Apparently, neither Gigi or Charli agreed her good was what we were thinking about. Cage filled her in on some of my own truths. About what a whore I was before her, which she already knew. Without the gory details. The truth ripped her away from me and I knew it had been inevitable. Gigi tore away from me when I reached out for her and broke my heart. Piece. By. Piece.
“Don’t you touch me!” Gigi snarled before storming from my apartment and my life.
Cage was gone. Gigi was gone. The two most important people in my life were gone because I was nothing but a fucking liar.
1
Three Weeks Later....
I am a man of few morals. Wasn’t raised with many. I do follow a loose code, though. Kind of make it up as I go, really. I don’t believe in a lot of rules but some are just non-negotiable. Do not sleep with co-workers. Do not double dip. That’s disgusting.
Don’t bang your buddie's girl, or ex-girl, or even once-in-awhile girl. Do not let the cute and super busty cocktail waitress at your favorite pub suck your cock. No matter how hot her mouth is and how often she offers. Certainly never, ever, fall for your best friend’s little sister.
Never mind that said little sister is without a doubt the most beautiful woman you’ve ever laid eyes on. Or that the way she uses her mouth, like putting you in place the first time you broke one of your own codes, gets you harder than steel. Ignore how hot she gets when she’s mouthing off to you; her cheeks flushed and those dual colored eyes full of desire.
Doesn’t matter that she’s the only girl whose face you see when you’re banging faceless, nameless broads. Based on code alone, I knew to keep my distance. And yet, I didn’t. Now I’m paying the price because it blew up in my fucking face.
It’s been nearly a month since Cage, my best friend for more than half my life, caught me with his little sister. I knew it would happen eventually. I'd even prepared a few speeches for it. Then when it mattered, I didn’t say shit.
I didn’t tell him I never wanted to fuck up our friendship. Or that I didn’t mean to help fuck up his relationship. Didn’t even tell him that I was absolutely fucking crazy about his sister. Shit I didn’t even tell her that.
Gigi knew who I was, had known about my proclivity to bang randoms on nightly basis. Sometimes more than one. What she didn’t know was the depth of my depravity because I had never brought that shit home. I always ran the risk of Gigi being there and realizing what a piece of shit I truly was. That would kill me.
Cage knew though. Of course, he knew. For as long as I can remember it had been the two of us. We met in junior high when our shared last name, but lack of actual relation, thrust us together.
We were inseparable from just about the day we met. Cage had become the only constant in my life. My life was made up of two very different but parallel before and afters.
The first being the shit show of a life I had before I met Cage. I barely remember much about my parents. Although I’d recognize them from the back. I had four older siblings who swear at one time we were like the fucking Tanners. I don’t remember that.
When I think real hard, I can remember a nice meal once, maybe around the holidays. When it clears up, I don’t see my brothers, Abel and Brant, nor my sisters, Chelsea and Dulcie. I certainly don’t see my parents. I see Gwen and Deacon Cooper, Cage’s parents; I see Regan and Tegan, and sometimes, Gigi. They became my after.
Cage was always there. The night I found out Abel and Brant were busted for trafficking drugs. Cage was there, taking me home to his parents when I had nowhere else to go.
The night I came home from my first day of football practice to find my sisters fucking half the team. Cage was there to keep me from going to jail too.
When I had no one to spend the holidays with, nowhere to go after school, no one to talk to, Cage was always there. So was his family.
His two older sisters Regan and Tegan were just a year apart and super close. They were also very close to Cage, the both of us just freshman when they were juniors and seniors. They let us hang out with their hot friends, which is how I bagged my first chick. One of their friends had a thing for younger dudes. I always benefited from hanging out with the Coopers.
Gigi was always there too. In the background with her mouth and her giggles, and I was always more drawn to her than I should have been. Not like that; I’m not a sick fuck. No, I just thought she was brilliant, and she always made me laugh.
Both Regan and Tegan were brilliant too; they had careers carved out before they even graduated. Cage always knew he’d join the fire department just like his Pop. I had no fucking c
lue what I would do with my life. Something I knew Gigi struggled with too.
At her graduation party, I could see the world looming over her and it scared the shit out of her. I felt somehow...kindred or connected or some such bullshit.
“Why are you out here, Red,” Gigi’s lovely porcelain skin both burned in the summer and did nothing to hide her embarrassment, hence the name, “when your future is inside waiting for you?” I had found her sitting out on the deck that led out onto the water at her parents' place.
There had been a huge party for her--the Coopers didn’t know strangers--and she had been out there most the night. By then, Cage and I had joined the department, because I had shit else going for me. I turned out to be a damn good firefighter and I loved it but then, I was clueless.
Usually where Cage went, I did too. He was most definitely the brains of our operation. I was both the brawn and the beauty. Gigi had seemed lost that night and for some reason, I just wanted her to be okay. Really, I wanted to be the one to make her okay. I wanted to be the one to tell her it didn’t matter if she didn’t know what the hell she was doing.
“Why would I want to miss that, right?” Gigi had looked lovely in a short dress that had a keyhole back and I reached out to touch her.
My hand pressed to the small of her back, looking to comfort her. Instead, I felt something burn through me unlike anything I had ever felt. Through my fingers at her petal soft skin, straight to my chest. Then right to my dick.
So, like a fucking idiot, I kept touching her. Smoothing my hand over her skin, feeling her shudder a little. Back then, I'd noticed the way she looked at me.
Oh, she had always looked at the two of us boys like we were fucking heroes. I never understood how she could watch us fuck up and still look at us like that.
The way she looked at me changed, though. I don’t know when but I was aware of it. Gigi was different than the other Coopers. I never could figure it out, at least not then, but I knew. What fucked me up? Gigi knew I understood just how different she was.
That night, we sat at the dock together, my hand touching her as she kicked her bare feet in the warm lake. We laughed and she talked about not missing school and not looking forward to college in the fall. I told her how terrified I was to be like my before family of Coopers. Fuck ups, the lot of them.
Gigi touched me when I said that, her tiny hand pressing to my jaw as she looked up at me. When she argued that was an impossibility, looking up at me in the moonlight, I believed her.
Things were never the same between us after that. Not good or bad, just different. Then, one night a few months ago changed them forever, and that was the second before of my life.
My second before and after consisted of one thing; my life before and after Gigi Cooper.
“Yeah. Charli comes home next week. I’m just going to stay at the cottage. Think you might want to help me move my shit?” Cage asked as we played Xbox and I pretended to be okay. I had gotten pretty good at it the past few weeks. I think Cage knew better, though.
“Absolutely, bro. So, moving in, huh? Like all the way moving in?” I already knew the answer, but I was cautious about what I said to him now.
The night after Cage caught Gigi at my place, he followed Charli home to Iowa. They worked things out, and she was coming home soon. This was great for us both because for one, he was a miserable fuck without his woman.
For two, I was a miserable fuck without my woman, but I felt guilty as shit too. If they hadn’t worked things out, I would have felt responsible. Shortly after they met, one of the badge bunnies who he had fucked a few times started angling for another chance.
Ariel.
Days after they first hooked up, almost two years before, she had gone a round with me. Lack of morals, I said. Really though, I knew what she was and Cage didn’t see it.
Ariel knew about nothing but quick pleasure; that’s all she was good for because it was all she was willing to give. Cage deserved better; I on the other hand didn’t. Not really. When he asked me what to do, I went with my go to answer.
Lie. Lie, lie. Lie.
So, for weeks, when she showed up at his place, at the fire station, called and texted filthy shit, he lied to Charli. They were just starting, and Charli wasn’t sold on the life of the woman of a firefighter. I didn’t know if it was the danger it posed or the lifestyle. Women just like Ariel, who we called Badge Bunnies, being a constant temptation.
Both of us had lost ourselves in them plenty. We had been eighteen-year-old kids thinking we were studs that they were so ready to drop their panties. I learned long before Cage did that there was nothing but orgasms down that road. Plenty of them, sure. Still, empty fucking with chicks whose names you can’t remember and faces you hardly see gets old. Faster for Cage than for me, though.
“Yeah, moving in. I actually, uh.... I wanted to talk to you about that, man.” Cage paused the game; right away, I felt pain tear through my chest.
“You might let Gigi take your apartment.” I knew Gigi loved the city and crashed at his place all the time. No one else but me knew that she wasn’t thrilled with college life.
“Yeah, bro. Look,” he let out a sigh and sat forward, running his hands through his hair, “I love you like a brother. I do. I never...I don’t know what was between you two. I just know I don’t want her hurt. Maybe....this time, keep your fucking word and stay away from her.” I looked away as his words cut me deep, ashamed to feel stinging in my eyes.
“Gigi hates me now. I fucked up. Cage...man I love your fucking family more than my own. You’re the only family I have. I never....it just...it just happened.”
This was not entirely true. Things were different after that night on her parents’ deck. Not different enough for anyone but the two of us to notice. Gigi was always around and then, for a while, she wasn’t. I was fucking everything that moved and still, I always thought about her.
Then one day she was there. As if she had never been gone. Right after the mess with Ariel, Gigi let me have it. Got right in my face in the hall separating our two apartments. Told me just what she thought of my pathetic act of fucking Cage’s sloppy seconds.
Besides her filthy mouth, that did nothing but get me fucking hard, I was speechless. Gigi was fucking stunning and not at all like I remembered her. All her soft edges were gone, and she was sexy as fuck.
“Hope you like the taste of Cage’s dick in your mouth. Pretty sure it’s what that whore tasted like.” Of course, she was right to give me shit. I deserved it. I didn’t care about that.
What I cared about was how Gigi was looking at me. With those dual colored eyes, fiery and passionate. I loved her eyes; one was mossy green, the other blue and hazel. Beautiful. Pressing her full tits against my chest and filling my lungs with her fresh cherry scent. Fuck, I wanted to pin her to the wall and sink inside her right then.
What made me hotter was Gigi knew it. Her beautiful eyes dropped to my mouth, her tongue came out, and I groaned as it drug slowly over her full pink lips. Then she smirked. Fucking smirked right at me.
Afterwards, she carried her sexy ass across the hall and away from me. It was the beginning of everything and we both fucking knew it. Gigi taunted me for ages after that. I still plowed my way through most of East Side Chicago, but I wanted her. I knew I couldn’t fucking have her.
For more than two years, she watched me bring home random after random. Almost all of them with dark hair, but none of them with eyes like hers. Gigi started rating both Cage and my conquests; she based it on a rating scale she made up using her literary heroines.
For a while, after I kicked out whoever I brought home, Gigi would poke her head out of Cage’s door and smirk at me. Then she’d give me shit, rate them, and make me feel like shit. Which I deserved.
One night, I realized the ratings were changing. Because my conquests were hurting her. I knew what I was doing; didn’t matter if I wanted her, which I did. I not only couldn’t have her, I shouldn’t. What I felt
for her was irrelevant. I was no good for her.
“Finn, I don’t mean stay away for good,” Finally, I really looked at him because I was startled by this, “Look, I don’t like it because it’s Red. That’s my baby sister, man. You're...you. But, I mean...Gigi knew what she was getting into. Red’s a smart kid, smarter than both of us. I just...I know you didn’t do it to do it, you know? Because I forbid it. I also know Gigi likely pursued you. Gigi gets what Gigi wants; she’s just like Gwen.” At that, we both laughed.
Gwen Cooper was beloved by all who knew her so her getting what she wanted came easy. Gwen never asked for anything really, she just did what she thought needed done. Made things happen. Deacon never complained because he would give her anything.
Gigi was most like her, and Cage was right, she got what she wanted. Just months ago, it seemed what she wanted was me. After so long of rating the women I fucked and forgot, she changed things.
Gigi teased me, flirted with me, and laughed up at me with those big pretty eyes and that sexy laugh. After giving me her rating, we talked and laughed, and fuck, I was falling for her faster than I knew what to do with.
Gigi would linger in the hall and the air would grow thick. Fuck, I wanted to touch her. Then, one night, I did. Slid my hand into the thick hair at her nape, cupping her neck. I wanted to taste her mouth; shut her up and show her I wanted her.
Before I did, I heard Cage behind her and I shoved away from her. The next night, I brought two chicks home. I didn’t fuck them, just watched them. When I sent them on their way, Gigi changed my fucking life. Before I knew what was happening, Gigi had shoved us into my place, my door slammed and she was on me.
Fuck, she tasted like cherries and vodka, but we were both stone cold sober. It was like those trashy novels I always gave her shit for reading. I had her pinned against my door, both of us tearing clothes off as she kissed me like she was angry for having to wait for so long. I was too. Then I was inside her and nothing was ever the same.
