Dirty Little Secret (Dirty #1) Read online

  I met his gaze. His eyes were sincere, and passionate, and mildly amused, and everything about them made me want to squeeze him as tightly as I could.

  “What if I stay this way?” I asked uncertainly.

  “Stay what way?”

  “Imperfect.”

  He traced the tiny bruise under my eye. “I sure as hell hope you do. You’re fierce. And smart. You’re a terrible drunk and sexy in ugly clothes. You’re not a hypocrite. You’re human.”

  This time when our eyes met, I did wrap my arms around his neck. He was solid. Reassuring. Terribly, wonderfully unsafe. And utterly human, too.

  “Are you trying to take advantage of my vulnerable state?” he murmured into my hair.

  I shook my head. “Ten minutes ago, I would’ve said you didn’t even have a vulnerable side. Now I’m wondering…”

  “Wondering what?”

  “Who the real you is,” I teased.

  He growled and jumped up, placing me firmly on the floor in front of him. My eyes widened at the wicked gleam in his gaze. I tried to take a step back. But he was quick. He reached around my knees, hoisted me up, and tossed me over his shoulder.

  This should piss me off, a small voice needled, and I shoved it aside.

  I liked having Cutter’s arms around me. I liked the view of his ass. And I really liked his display of proprietary behaviour.

  He took the stairs, two at a time, like I weighed nothing, and carted me down to the main floor. He tossed me onto the bed, pulling off the shirt I was wearing as he did, then jumped on top of me, and propped himself up with his elbows.

  “I think there’s another important pre-fucking step we missed,” he announced.

  His words lit me up. His sex-God voice sent tingles, fast and hot, from my head to my toes, and I could barely form a stuttering response.

  “What’s that?” I whispered.

  “A first kiss.”

  Shit.

  He was right. With all we had done, we hadn’t kissed. Not properly

  “Do you want that?” he murmured, and all I could manage was a nod. “Then hold still and let the real me do it my way.”

  He dug his fingers into my hair and pulled. My head went back, sinking into his pillow and exposing my neck. He trailed kisses along the tender flesh there, up and down, up and down, until I felt like I was on fire. On the third pass up, his lips found my chin and my cheek. I had to grip the sheet beneath me to keep from writhing. In a painfully slow movement, he brought his mouth overtop of mine. And paused.

  “May I kiss you, Melissa Joan Portia Hanover?”

  He said it right against my lips, making them vibrate.

  “Please,” I begged.

  “If you insist,” he teased. “But don’t move, or I might have to stop.”

  He tugged on the bottom lip first, sucking and nibbling, and brushing it with his tongue. He moved to the top one next, doing the same. Then he parted them, and plunged his tongue into my mouth, exploring it, tasting it, making it his own.

  It was all I could take.

  I released my hold on the sheet and dug my hands into Cutter’s back. He left my lips to concentrate on my throat again. My legs fell apart all on their own, and I gasped as he drove his rough jeans against my flimsy bathing suit.

  He pulled away again, and winked at me.

  “Hold that thought,” he teased, and pulled one of the skinny little paintbrushes from his back pocket. “I know how much you liked this.”

  He flipped me to my stomach. And so gently it almost felt like a dream, he dragged the soft bristles down one side of my body and up the other. He flipped me around, did it again, pausing on each breast, and making tiny, sure movements on each of my thighs. My heart raced, like it was trying to keep up with his ministrations on every bit of exposed skin.

  He stopped abruptly, and shot me cocky smile. “Done.”

  “Done?” I gasped. “Done what?”

  “Writing my name on all the places that I’ve claimed as mine.”

  I tried to still the rush of my pulse at his words, and couldn’t do it.

  His.

  But there was a few small pieces of me the paintbrush hadn’t touched.

  “You may have missed a spot,” I said huskily.

  “Oh, I’ll be making that mine, too,” he assured me. “But I thought we’d keep the kink to a minimum for now.”

  He tossed the paintbrush aside and began a hot, slow, exploration with his mouth. When he found one of my nipples and drew it between his lips, I moaned his name.

  “Cutter.”

  “Yes, baby-doll?”

  “Don’t stop.”

  “Then don’t talk to me,” he teased.

  “Cutter, please. I need you.”

  “When I do make love to you, Melissa…” He paused to blow a warm breath over my already tortured breast, then squeezed gently. “I want it to be because you to need me there.” He moved his hand down between my legs, cupped me and added, “And because you need me here.”

  Then he slipped down the bed, pressed my knees apart, and gave each of my thighs a little bite before travelling up.

  “Baby-doll.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’d like to give you something I’ve never given you before.”

  “What?”

  “An orgasm.”

  I laughed softly. “You’ve given me several.”

  “Uh uh,” he argued. “I’ve taken a couple from you. I’ve helped you give yourself one.”

  “How is it different?”

  “Like this.”

  His mouth found the soft flesh on my innermost thigh.

  Tongue against my skin, tongue against my skin again.

  And then.

  Tongue against my clit.

  I tried to keep still, afraid of disrupting the most agonizing pleasure I’d ever experience. But after just a few moments, a heat built deep within my core. I grabbed his head because I had to, and brought my hips up to meet each stroke of his tongue. Every nerve-ending in my body was on fire with longing. Every pore wanted more, wanted it to go on forever. As he sucked and licked, the coil in my body wound tighter and tighter, until I thought it was going to break me. Then Cutter made one, final, deep lunge with his tongue, and everything sprung loose and turned me into a shaking mess.

  He stretched out beside me with a catlike grin on his face.

  And so he should, I thought. He fucking earned it.

  “Melissa?”

  “Mmmhmm?”

  “One other thing.”

  “Anything.”

  “When I make love to you for the first time…” He hesitated, took a breath, and placed his hand over my heart. “I also want it to be because you need me here.”

  CUTTER

  It was hands-down the lamest, cheesiest, most honest thing I’d ever said.

  The satisfied, wonder-filled, adoring expression on Melissa’s face made it worth it. It also made me…Proud.

  That was it. That was the look she deserved to have every day.

  I did that. I made that beautiful, sexy, amazing girl look like that, and I didn’t ask for anything in return.

  It took me over the fucking edge.

  My heart ballooned in my chest, and a thousand thoughts tumbled through my brain. I’d kept myself closed off for so long, I knew it could’ve gone the other way. The sudden explosion of emotion should’ve scared the shit out of me. Instead, it made me ready to tell her everything, and I was sure she would accept me anyway.

  I needed to start with my arrest, and my jail time, and the fact that I couldn’t leave the house without permission.

  Only for five more months, I reminded myself.

  “Baby-doll,” I started, then paused, trying to figure out not if I was going to say it, but how. “Things are never going to be easy between us.”

  “I don’t want easy,” she replied fiercely, then more quietly added, “I’ve had enough easy. I want hard, and crazy, and worth it.”

  �
��Melissa, nothing has ever been more worth it than you.”

  “Than us,” she corrected.

  “That might just be the oral sex talking,” I teased.

  She didn’t even blush. “Hmm. I guess we’ll have to try it out again, and test your theory.”

  I chuckled and traced a lazy pattern up her stomach, cupped her breast possessively, then slid my hand around to her back and pulled her close. I kissed each of her eyelids and each of her cheeks. My lips sought and found hers, and I marvelled at their softness, their firmness…the perfect taste of them. Her tongue met mine. I poured everything that I could manage into the kiss before pulling away.

  “When we fight, or when we have hard times, or when we discover things about each that we don’t like, promise me you won’t give up,” I said, not caring in the least that I sounded a bit like a clingy woman.

  Melissa brought her hand to my face and held it tenderly.

  “As long as you stop trying to chase me away, I promise,” she said with a too-sweet smile.

  “Be good, and I won’t have to,” I replied with a raised eyebrow.

  “How good?” she asked. “Just so that when I feel like being bad…I know where the line is.”

  Her hand crept to the button on my jeans, and I swatted it away, then gave her another thorough kiss.

  I took a deep breath, and opened my mouth to say something about my past, but what came out was this.

  “Baby-doll, I think I love you.”

  She went very still, like she expected me to take it back.

  Instead, I tried it out again, this time more firmly.

  “I love you.”

  Her jaw hung open, and I grinned.

  “You don’t have to say it back,” I told her. “Yet. But I’m probably going to be saying it a lot. So prepare yourself.”

  “It’s not that. It’s –“

  The smash of splintering wood cut her off. I jumped to my feet.

  “What the fuck!” I hollered.

  As navy-clad figures swarmed the room, weapons raised, Melissa cowered against the bed. It took me about a fifth of a second to figure out that they were cops, but I still automatically stepped between her and them.

  “Hands up, Prescott!” one of the men yelled.

  He was the biggest of the bunch and had an in-charge-at-the-moment vibe. Still, I didn’t move.

  “Prescott! Now!”

  “It’s Lane, actually,” I corrected.

  “Hands. In. The. Air.”

  I raised my hands slowly.

  “Cutter?” Melissa’s voice was small.

  “It’s all right, Miss Hanover,” said the pseudo-giant, and I immediately knew it was anything but. “But I’m going to need you to come out from behind Mr. Prescott.”

  “Cutter?” Melissa repeated, this time sounding confused, and a little desperate.

  I turned toward her, and the brute with the gun smacked me in the back with his weapon.

  “I didn’t tell you to move. I told her to.”

  My cop-tolerance is shaky at best of times, and this guy was pissing me off.

  “She’s naked, you asshat. Have some common-fucking-decency,” I snarled. “Let me give her a goddamned shirt.”

  He gave me a short nod, and I grabbed a t-shirt from the floor. I was careful to keep my hands visible, and my eyes on the gun as I held the top out to Melissa. Her fingers brushed mine briefly, sending a worry-filled spark straight through me.

  Carefully, I raised my hands again. “What’s this about?”

  A female – presumably a detective of some kind – in plain clothes shouldered her way past the group of men. She virtually ignored me in favor of Melissa. She handed over an emergency blanket and cast a disparaging look around my apartment.

  “On your knees, Prescott,” she commanded. “Hands on your head.”

  I obeyed because she was far fucking scarier than the man with the gun. She flicked her hair over her shoulder, snapped a pair of old-fashioned cuffs – not the more recently preferred plastic straps – from her belt, and slapped them onto my wrists.

  “Take him,” she said. “Maybe once this testosterone party clears out, Miss Hanover will feel a little more comfortable.”

  I hung my head as one of the other cops yanked me to my feet, unwilling – or maybe unable – to meet Melissa’s eyes.

  I didn’t know yet what this was about, but my experience taught me to keep my questions to myself.

  I kept my mouth shut all the way out to the cop car, and all the way to the station.

  In fact, I didn’t open it again until Galini – complete with frazzled hair and bloodshot eyes - was sitting on one side of me, and my state-appointed lawyer – who was wearing a non-awe-inspiringly threadbare suit – was seated on the other, and the female detective was leaning across from me, giving me a cold stare.

  Oh, and my hands were appropriately chained to the table, of course.

  “I think you know why you’re here, Prescott,” she announced.

  Maybe it wasn’t in my best interest to antagonize her. But I couldn’t fucking help it. The way she was looking at me. The way she’d looked at Melissa proprietarily when we were at my house. She pissed me off.

  I bent toward my lawyer. “Tell her that my name is Cutter Lane.”

  “I can hear you,” the detective snapped.

  I gave the lawyer a little nod. “Tell her.”

  He cleared his throat, and with a green-around-the-gills look, said, “Uh, Detective Blythe? Cutter’s legal name is Lane.”

  The woman shot me another frosty glare. “What difference does it make?”

  “Are you serious?” I demanded. “It’s about respect.”

  “Well, Mr. P – Lane, I get the feeling that respect isn’t your strong suit, so it surprises me that it matters to you at all.”

  “Let’s cut the bullshit,” I snapped. “Why the hell am I here? I hardly think missing my curfew by ten minutes warrants having my ass hauled into jail.”

  Detective Blythe smiled. It didn’t touch her eyes.

  “Curfew? Hardly. How about sexual assault? Or kidnapping? Or both?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  The lawyer put a nervous hand on my upper arm. “I’m advising you not to speak.”

  “I think he should give a written statement,” Galini piped up.

  I ignored both of them and kept my eyes trained on the detective. “I have no clue what you mean.”

  “Melissa Hanover has filed a complaint.”

  I barked out a laugh. “You’re kidding, right? She and I are…” I floundered for a word. Not-fucking? “Dating.”

  “Her roommate and her fiancé say differently. And I’m afraid I’m inclined to agree. You stalked Miss Hanover, you assaulted her several times, and when that stopped being enough, you then took her back to you apartment against her will.”

  “Ex-fiancé,” I corrected. “And none of the rest of that is true, either.”

  “Hmm,” the detective said, the reached for a briefcase, opened it, and yanked out a pile of photos. “So none of these is you? Or your truck?”

  I flipped through as best I could with my hands still in the cuffs.

  My truck, parked haphazardly in front of Melissa’s house, looking glaringly out of place.

  Me, standing on her lawn, staring up.

  Another of me, slumped over at the hotel bar with a ragged, dangerous expression on my face. They were not grainy, not pixelated at all, and I knew immediately that they were professional shots.

  Judge fucking Stover, doing her homework.

  It was the most likely explanation, and it made my lip curl. I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of knowing I’d figured out her game.

  “The first two are out of context. And the third has nothing to do with Melissa,” I stated confidently.

  Detective Blythe’s face became almost gleeful as she snapped down a final picture. Well as gleeful as a cold-hearted bitch could be, I guess.


  “Is this out of context?” she asked.

  Melissa, thrown over my shoulder. The angle was just right to show that her eyes were closed, and that my face was a mask of fury.

  “I was rescuing her,” I muttered, aware that it sounded ridiculous.

  “Interesting,” replied the detective. “Did she know you were ‘rescuing’ her?”

  “She was a willing fucking participant the whole way through.”

  Blythe raised an eyebrow. “The whole way? Because I have witnesses from a party last night who say she was begging you to leave her alone.”

  I ran a hand through my hair angrily. “The only begging she was doing was when she was begging me to -”

  “Cutter!” The lawyer cut me off.

  Detective Blythe’s smile widened. “I’ll be sure to tell Miss Hanover you said so.”

  Then she stood and walked out.

  MELISSA

  I tapped my foot on the floor nervously.

  In spite of the fact that the detective had reassured me - no less than three times – that it was not an interrogation room, I wasn’t convinced.

  It was cold, and lifeless. A long table, framed by four wooden chairs, split the room in two. As I paced the width of it, a draft cut through the room, up under Cutter’s t-shirt and across my legs. I shivered.

  Where is he? What had he done to be dragged in here like that? And why do I feel like it’s my fault?

  When the door swung open, I jumped. A uniformed, female officer with a pair of folded, prison-blue pants in her arms came into the room. I disliked her immediately.

  “Sorry,” she said with a smile. “Didn’t mean to startle you. I should’ve knocked.”

  “Knocked? I’ve been stuck in this room for God knows how long, and you think you should’ve knocked?” I hollered.

  Her eyes widened. What had she been expecting? A warm greeting and a cup of tea?

  “Where’s Cutter?” I demanded.

  “Cutter?”

  I rolled me eyes. “The ridiculously hot beefcake whose house the other cops dragged me away from.”