“I’m not going to leave you.”
“Good. Then let’s talk about the business, because Devil’s Music is a part of us and that won’t change.” She shrugged in acceptance. “That probably makes us pathetic or at least screwed up in the head, but who the hell cares?”
“You want me to come back to the label.”
“It’s where you belong, Dante. I’m not scared of who the company will turn you into. So if you want to buy in, I’ll sell you half of my interest. Twelve percent. Yours and Delilah’s portions combined won’t be enough to give her controlling interest—I’m not a fucking idiot. But you get a slice of your legacy, you get my hymnbook, and you get me on your side.”
Coming back to the label meant coming back to this house to stay. Coming back to Devil’s Music meant coming home to hell. “All right.”
“Are you being agreeable because I was shot and you think I’m too delicate to handle some pushback?”
“No. In fact, I’m about a minute away from judging for myself how much you can take.” He started unbuttoning his shirt, and she slid her eyes up and down the front of him.
“Since you’re in the mood to tell me yes, there’s something else I want. The notebook with the songs you wrote about me. I want to acquire them, get you to finish writing them, and ask Lex Lazarus if she’s interested in making them hits. So let’s barter.”
He kissed her. He’d never touch another blueberry in his goddamn life if it guaranteed him tomorrow with this woman. “You remember how we do things. You get my songs and I get…” Gently he urged her to lower, and she sank willingly to her knees. She was strong, didn’t want to be handled with pity and delicacy.
“Mmm, but you’re a two-handed job and one of mine is out of commission,” Chelsea said on a teasing sigh. “Sling.”
Dante snapped his belt loose, the sound echoing throughout the ballroom. “That’s why God gave you a mouth.”
—
“Champagne cocktail. Louis XIII Black Pearl cognac, please,” Alexis said to the bartender, referencing the most expensive liquor on the shelf. The bar quivered with activity. Dim lights revealed people tucked in corners, tracing the perimeter of table games, lining a marble bar. Mixologists poured and entertained and made money.
She’d taken a bartending class once, out of curiosity more than real interest. Her girlfriend Melanie had tended bar and they’d talked about opening a place someday.
Someday didn’t anticipate Mel’s death, or Alexis moving to Atlanta to sin her way to the top.
Fuck someday and all its illusions.
The bartender handed her the cocktail, and when he eyed her meaningfully, she said, “I want you to keep these coming. I’ll settle up at the end of the night.”
Tonight no armed bodyguards had accompanied her and she was alone. In an outfit worth thousands, with gemstones in her hair and perfume on her wrists, she was ready for…
Anyone.
She sought a stool at the bar. Men cut their eyes at her, and she figured the shortness of her skirt and the way her top displayed her breasts told them she was good and ready to be fucked—but tonight she had no interest in sex.
The napkin in front of her was delicate. An ink pen appeared in her line of vision. She picked it up and doodled for a moment.
Then she wrote, Whose brake line did I bleed? Who did I kill?
She discreetly slid the napkin over and the person beside her took it and began a response with a different pen.
Alexis wanted to close her eyes, but if she did, she’d see video footage of a burning car. Someone had died in the crash that resulted from a compromised brake line. A skilled mechanic, Alexis had accessed the Hyundai, completed her job, and slipped away with no witnesses to expose her.
She hadn’t gotten caught, but neither had she gotten away with what she’d done.
She’d killed someone. She hadn’t intended to. God have mercy on her.
The napkin reappeared and she read the answer to her question.
Someone who couldn’t be trusted.
Alexis wrote so harshly that the napkin tore. But ever so calmly, she slid it over again. Was Moniqua Prenz the shooter?
If the right person was behind bars for murdering three men and almost murdering a woman, then Alexis could let this rest.
Weed was no longer enough. Fucking Joshua Drake wasn’t enough, either, though she hadn’t yet brought herself to deny him or herself the thrill. He was too sexy to turn down. Earlier this afternoon he’d come to her directly after fucking his wife. Unwashed, not giving a single damn, he drilled Alexis. And she couldn’t remember the last time she’d come so hard.
Right now she sat in her beautiful clothes with traces of Joshua Drake and Emma Toledo deep in her pussy, and she smiled.
Eventually she and Joshua would stop, and her raw connection to Emma would end. Eventually.
The napkin was in front of her with its new message: If she wasn’t the shooter, what will you do about it?
She replied. Was it you?
The response came quickly. You’re keeping too many secrets. Can I still trust you?
Alexis glanced beside her. She was keeping too many secrets. Behind a closed door, southern sweetheart Emma had revealed hers. As easily as Alexis had ended someone’s life by tampering with a brake line, she could lose her own.
Yes, she wrote. You can still trust me.
Then this conversation never happened.
Alexis looked again at the person next to her. Then, methodically, she tore the napkin and ate each strip, chasing the paper with her champagne cocktail.
For everyone who’s ever been told they’re a little bit twisted…
Acknowledgments
So many thanks to my agent, Sarah Younger, for her guidance and encouragement. Thanks also go to my amazing and dynamic editor, Junessa Viloria, who fell in love with every gloriously and darkly perverse element in this book. She gets me! I’d also like to share a special note of endless appreciation to Gina Wachtel for her wisdom, and to the talented Loveswept team who helped make the Devil’s Music series come to life.
BY LISA MARIE PERRY
Sin for Me
Burn with Me
LISA MARIE PERRY encounters difficult fictional men and women on a daily basis. She writes deep, sizzling fiction featuring flawed heroes brought to their knees by the love of complicated women. Perry lives in America’s heartland, drives a truck, enjoys indie rock, collects medieval literature, watches too many comedies, has a not-so-secret love for lace, and adores rugged men with a little bit of nerd.
Find Lisa on Goodreads.com
Read on for a sneak peek of the next steamy Devil’s Music book
Burn with Me
Available from Loveswept
Chapter 1
Emma
I asked him to kill me. Instead…he married me.
I’ve been married only an hour or so now, and already I want to twist the ring off my finger, find the minister with the kind eyes and gentle words who blessed my husband and me, and tell him this was all a mistake. A lie. A disaster.
Hysterical, my grandmother diagnosed me, when I cleared the bridal suite and told her I wanted to cancel the wedding. She stood there, as purely beautiful as a new Georgia morning, took the pin from the heirloom veil she was poised to attach to my tiara, and demanded my hand.
I knew she wouldn’t swat the back of it, as she and my parents did when I was a little girl and committed crimes against decorum and the pristine Toledo family name. Grammy Toledo’s brilliant blue eyes—I have her eyes and am damned to always see her when I look at my own reflection—scrutinized me standing unsure and desperate in my multimillion-dollar wedding gown. There was no hatred to be found on her face, but Grammy has dedicated part of the family’s centuries-old fortune toward refining her looks and schooling her features so that she appears beautiful and formidable with every breath she takes.
“Turn your hand over. Be quick about it.”
I didn�
�t want to. I have a reputation in my family of being a defiant little bitch—a disgrace—but rather than tell the matriarch of the Toledo family that, no, I most certainly would not turn over my hand, I kept my expression neutral and obeyed. With Toledos, you select your battles carefully.
Grammy made a tsk sound and stabbed my palm with the pin. The sharp point broke the skin and a crimson teardrop appeared, startling against the paleness of my hand and the virginal white of my gown.
I laughed at the irony of the dove’s wing gown. I haven’t slept with Joshua Drake yet, but, oh, I’ve been fucked before. My husband didn’t marry me because he thought he was getting an untouched blushing bride. He married me because he loves me in a way that doesn’t have shit to do with wedding vows and happily ever after. He married me because, although he’s tattooed and rough and lived in hell before hip-hop entertainment made him a billionaire, and I’m from a strong family name and am someone who’s known wealth my entire life, he’s a good person who wanted to save me.
He’s not saving me. He’s only dragging himself down with me.
Grammy didn’t take too kindly to my laughter, and she pushed the pin deeper into my palm. Then, the pain came.
My hand no longer hurts, though it’s time to change the bandage. The veil is balled up on the bridal suite floor at my feet. The pin my grandmother used to stab open my palm and then cleaned with a baby wipe as though she was polishing antique silver is somewhere buried in the webby lace. I can take that pin and poke myself right in my Imogene-Toledo-blue eyes, but I’m too afraid to cause myself physical pain. And poking out my eyes would be too Oedipal, I suppose.
What would the family say about me then? It’s been years since I put my good southern breeding to poor use and earned my own fortune in hip-hop music. The Devil’s Music label is churning out stars. I’m its chief executive officer, but does my family give a damn? I’m on top, and Joshua, the chief financial officer, stands beside me. Still, the Toledos don’t approve of my choice of industry—or husband, for that matter.
He’s a thug, my aunt insisted in front of a crowd of society ladies during my garden bridal shower. A bloody Mary later she took me aside and asked me what he looks like naked.
“Heaven,” I told her, selecting a sprig of imported-from-Napa grapes from a platter. “His cock is enormous. And it’s pierced.”
To this day I don’t know if what I told my aunt is truth or fiction. I haven’t seen Joshua undressed.
If I find the minister, unburden myself, and rescue Joshua from the mistake he’s made in the name of loving me, the size of his penis will remain a mystery to me. Part of me is curious. But a marriage can’t survive on curiosity alone. Or even duty.
I free myself of the plush pearlescent chair that cradled me when I escaped here after the ceremony. No one has searched for me here; everyone must be preoccupied with the fanfare of the grand reception. In a sea of thousands of guests to one of the most lavish weddings Atlanta has hosted, even a sad bride in white could easily become invisible.
The bottle of whiskey I pilfered from the portable beverage cart in the church’s corridor is empty now. I have to pee.
My maid of honor, Devil’s Music COO Chelsea Coin, must be at the reception by now. For most of my life I imagined someone else in that role. Delilah Bishop was my best friend from the time we were kids to the day I, along with Chelsea, Joshua, and most of the Devil’s Music board of directors, forced her out as CEO in a majority vote. The Bishop family had started the label generations ago, and once Delilah inherited the CEO seat, she enlisted her friends to help her take it to the top. We did, then we cut her out. Because she was reckless then, her ambition a psychosis. Now, she’s dangerous. Part of the blame rests on my shoulders, but I can’t think about Delilah now. I can’t let her get in the middle of my marriage to Joshua.
I can never allow her to get close to the truth.
As maid of honor, Chelsea is burdened with the responsibility of helping me manage my elaborate dress and keeping me calm. She voiced no protest until I instructed her to take off with the rest of the wedding party. Lying, I insisted that a separate car would escort me to the Toledo estate where the reception is being held.
Instantly I regretted deceiving her, but I wanted to be left alone to figure out how to undo this damage. I still don’t know how the fuck I’ll fix this—and now I’m a little drunk and in immediate need of a toilet.
Struggling to gather the bottom of my French couture gown, I shuffle across the bridal suite to a powder room. Despite resenting this damn day, I don’t want the dress to become soiled, and so I try to hold it up even higher. Trouble is, I’ve run out of hands to pull down my panties so I can tinkle out a bottle of whiskey and formulate a plan.
Weddings are supposed to be happy occasions. Brides are meant to be happy. That’s what I was taught all the years my grandmother and mother spent dreaming and designing my special day. It started the morning I was born with my mother’s golden blond hair and my father’s dimples, and everyone was so certain that my beauty would attract a man of class and riches and blessings.
Once my period came, my parents put me on birth control and began arranging dates. But by age twenty I was still unmarried. As I was by age twenty-five. And finally, just when the Toledo family had all but written me off as a beautiful twenty-eight-year-old disappointment, Joshua helped me give them what they wanted.
He’s not their top pick of a husband for me. He’s harsh and intense and has a criminal record. But he’s a billionaire who wants me, and somehow that seems to be enough for them.
Eventually he’s going to wish he killed me when I asked him to.
“Emma, you in here?”
Joshua’s footsteps are heavy as he strides through the bridal suite. I forgot to shut the powder room door and in a moment he frames the entryway and sees me wrestling with my gown.
“I have to pee,” I tell him.
“Have you been in here for the past hour trying to figure out how to pee?”
“This dress is big.”
He comes forward in a tuxedo as black as the sky outside the suite’s windows, and his gray eyes are difficult to read. Is he angry? Does he regret this marriage? Will he help me find a way to end this?
“I said I’d love you and keep you and all that. Guess that includes holding up your dress so you can take a piss.” He tries to gather up the layers of lace and silk and tulle, but I stop him.
“I’ve got a good handle on the dress, but could you actually…?” I clear my throat. Suddenly it feels as dry as it did that afternoon Grammy stuffed cotton into my mouth when the family found out I’d sold my parcel of land that had once been a cotton field. “Well, could you pull my underwear down so I can sit?”
“Yeah.” He says it without emotion and bends to grasp what he thinks might be a full pair of panties. His fingers brush my bare ass cheeks. “You’re wearing a thong, Emma?”
“I like thongs.”
“So that’s a yes.” His low laughter is unexpected, somehow comforting and more intimate than the act of him pulling my thong down my thighs. “Emma.”
“What?”
“This is the sluttiest thong I’ve ever seen.” He nudges me onto the toilet, takes the stilettos off my feet, lifts my legs, and I sit there in my stockings with my gown hiked up around my waist. He holds up the thong.
It’s black fishnet with lace trim.
“I like lace,” I say, peeing, because I can hold it no longer and because maybe I’m drunker than I think and might forget this even happened. “This is weird. I haven’t seen you nude. You’re standing there with my lingerie in your hand, watching me pee.”
“Just helping you out.”
“I’m sick and fucking tired of needing you, Joshua.” I feel my eyes round. I didn’t mean to scream at him. Contrite, I clean up, flush, and seek water and fragrant soap. “Sorry.”
“Listen, goddamn it,” he says, ignoring the apology. “I’m in this shit with you. All the way
in. That’s something to thank me for. Because I’m here in this motherfucking tuxedo with a motherfucking ring on my finger for you.”
“I said I was sorry for yelling.”
“Yell all you want. But don’t try to undo what can’t be undone.”
“It can be undone, though, Joshua. The ceremony happened, sure. But the marriage can be annulled. We—we were fucking crazy to do this! We’re not ready to be married. We’re business partners. Friends.”
“Husband and wife.” He moves beside me and holds out his hand. I hold out mine, too, and then he turns it, palm up. “You didn’t poke yourself, did you?”
“I told you I did.”
I’m not sure if he believes me now any more than he did when I joined him at the altar and he whispered, “What the hell happened to your hand?”
“We can get an annulment,” I say, representing the option. “The marriage hasn’t been consummated.”
“If we get an annulment, you’ll be unmarried again, you’ll still have your issues with your family, and you’ll do what, Emma?”
“I’ll…” I don’t know what I’ll do. I haven’t thought that far ahead.
“You’ll ask me to kill you again, thinking I love you enough to do that for you.” Joshua removes the bandage from my hand, rinses my skin with clear water, then pats it with a towel. “I don’t love you that much, Emma.”
“What? You love me enough to marry me, but not to kill me?”
“Yeah. This is all I can or will do for you.”
He won’t kill me. I can’t kill myself.
“What do you want?” he demands. “Your move.”
This marriage is my only escape.
“Fuck me, Joshua.”
His jaw is tight and his lips pressed together so damn firm. A cruelly long moment passes before he responds. “We’re late for the reception. Pictures. Dinner. All of that shit. Folks are going to send out a search team for us.”
“Those people aren’t there to celebrate you and me. The party and the publicity are the attraction.”
“Emma, no. I’m not fucking you in a church.”
Sin for Me Page 25
