Dirty Little Secret (Dirty #1) Read online

  “And why is that?” I threw as much defiance into my words as I could.

  “Because you’re having phone sex with a guy you barely know.”

  Why am I putting up with this? I wondered.

  Of course, I knew the answer. The dampness between my legs made it obvious enough. My face heated up, but without his blue eyes scrutinizing me, I recovered quickly.

  “I’ve never had phone sex before,” I said in a deliberately sultry voice. “Is it okay if I ask a question before we get started?”

  “Ask away, baby-doll.”

  “Is it always this boring?”

  “Ouch,” he laughed. “That hurt. Why don’t you start by tell me what you’re wearing.”

  “You’re kidding, right? That’s your line? Why don’t just breathe heavy and let me hear the sound of you touching your own –“

  He cut me off. “I can do better.”

  “Wouldn’t take much,” I muttered.

  “When I saw you standing on the side of the road, it was like no other girl had ever existed.”

  I burst out laughing.

  “Now who’s the liar?” I asked.

  “You’re a tough fucking crowd, all right?” I heard the grin in his voice.

  “Aaaaand. There’s the first curse word.”

  “Did I swear?” he replied innocently.

  “Yes.”

  “What did I say?”

  “Fucking.”

  “Say it again,” he commanded, rough and sure of obedience.

  I swallowed so hard I was sure he could hear it through the receiver. “No.”

  “Say it again, baby-doll, or I’m going to come over there and make you say it.”

  “You don’t know where I live.”

  “Oh, but I do,” he told me. “Your address was right there beside your number in the phone book.”

  “You wouldn’t dare show up here.”

  “Wouldn’t I?” His tone was teasing, and cocky, and full of things done in the dark, behind closed doors. “You wanna test out that assumption?”

  Keys rattled against the receiver.

  Did I want to test it out? Almost. But I wasn’t going to.

  “Fucking,” I finally whispered.

  “Is something I’m very good at,” he filled in, then purred. “Baby-doll?”

  “Yes?”

  “If I told you touch yourself, would you?”

  “No.”

  “If I threatened to come over there again, would it change your mind?”

  If he came here…I wouldn’t have to touch myself. He’d do it for me.

  I stifled a little moan, and glanced frantically toward my bedroom door. If he came to the apartment, demanding to come in, in that self-righteous way of his… I wouldn’t be able to control myself, and I knew it. Talking to Cutter was like drinking tequila. It lowered my morals and made me consider doing things I wouldn’t if I was sober. No, not just consider them. He made me want to do them.

  “You can’t come here.” My voice was raw.

  “If I asked you to touch yourself, Melissa…Would you do it then?”

  He didn’t wait for me to answer. Which was good, because my hand had settled just below my belly button, and it was twitching eagerly, waiting for him to follow through.

  “It’s all right, baby-doll,” he said instead. “I can be patient. I’ll call you again soon, all right?”

  His bored tone irritated me, and I had a sudden urge to shock him.

  “Cutter?”

  “Yeah, baby-doll?”

  “If I asked you to touch yourself, would you?”

  He was quiet for a moment, and then he growled. “You don’t even have to ask me, baby. This conversation has me so worked up that I won’t be able to help it.”

  When he hung up, the ache to speak to him again was palpable.

  The next twenty-four hours were plagued by errant, sex-driven thoughts that made me squirm uncomfortably every time I moved.

  When I was doing the laundry. I don’t just want him to dirty my clothes, I want him to dirty me.

  When I was sipping on orange juice at the breakfast table, and I had to lick up a drop that slid from my lips. Is his tongue as rough as his conversation? Would it stroke out a place in my body the way his words had in my mind?

  My only small bit of satisfaction came in my refusal to think his name, my refusal to put it in my mind. Until my alarm clock clicked over to 3:02 a.m. and my phone rang, and I automatically gasped it out in greeting.

  “Cutter?”

  Oh, that laugh. “Who else phones you in the middle of the night?”

  “No one.”

  “Good.” He sounded pleased.

  “It’s only because everyone else I know has more sense and respect for my time,” I replied.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What?” A sarcastic comment had already been halfway out of my mouth, and the apology startled me.

  “I’m sorry for covering you in mud, and I’m sorry for calling you in the middle of the night.”

  “You are?” I couldn’t keep the suspicion out of my question.

  “Yes. Especially the first part. The day we met, I was pissed off at someone else, and I took it out on you.”

  “Who were you pissed at?”

  “Myself, mostly,” he admitted.

  “You were mad at yourself for what? Being such a fuckwad?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I informed him, then smiled to myself. “Say it.”

  “Say it?” he replied.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “What’s your excuse for making me say things?” I asked.

  “Pure, unadulterated eroticism.”

  “Pure, unadulterated control,” I corrected.

  “Ahh,” he said slowly, dragging the sound out. “So now you want to be in control. That’s fine. We can pretend.”

  “Do you have to turn everything into fuel for your own, personal Cutter-fire?” I grumbled.

  He laughed, then said seriously, “Melissa, I was mad at myself for being a fuckwad.”

  “A controlling fuckwad.”

  “A controlling fuckwad,” he agreed, then added, “And I was a little mad at you, too, actually.”

  “What for? We didn’t even know each other!”

  “For wearing white pants. I hate white pants.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Well, I’m not wearing white pants now, so what’s your current excuse?”

  “Am I still being a fuckwad?”

  “Well, you’ve apologized for muddying me up, and disturbing me at an ungodly hour, but you’ve left out the part where you assaulted me in the bathroom at my parents’ country club,” I responded.

  “Oh, we’re calling that assault now?”

  I winced, recalling that I actually had told Shelby and Danny that Cutter assaulted me. I was glad he couldn’t see my face.

  “What do you call it?” I asked.

  “Foreplay.”

  I snorted. “Foreplay leads to sex. And I have no intention of having sex with you.”

  “I guess we’ll just be doing it accidentally then.”

  “I’m not even going to touch that one.”

  A loud crash from his end of the conversation cut off whatever further-damning comment I’d been about to make. There was a clatter as the phone dropped, followed by a somehow-manly yelp, and a string of curses. Then silence.

  “Cutter?” I said loudly, forgetting momentarily that I might wake up Shelby. “Cutter!”

  After a long moment, his groan, low and pain-filled, came through the speaker.

  “Melissa?”

  “Oh, my God! What happened? Are you okay?” I decided not to care if I sounded like a thirteen-year old girl, babbling and repeating myself. “Cutter? Are you still there? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I, uh, fell off a forklift. Knocked some shit off, banged my head pretty fucking good.”

  “A forklift? Where are you? I
’ll send an ambulance.”

  “No!”

  “Cutter, you could be seriously hurt.”

  “Please, Melissa. I said no.” He sighed, and in an almost sluggish voice that made me worry, added, “I don’t want a goddamned doctor. I’m at work, and I can’t just leave.”

  Shit.

  Even if I hated the guy – and I had to admit that my loathing had waned – I couldn’t very well just leave him somewhere, injured and alone.

  I took a breath. “Let me come there, then.”

  “Melissa – “

  I cut him off. “Either give me the address, or I’m calling the police, giving them this number, and letting them deal with you. And they’re neither as nice, nor as patient as I am.”

  He inhaled, then grumbled out the name of the lumber yard, and hung up the phone. In minutes, I was out the door and easing my two-door coupe down the driveway with the lights off. It wasn’t until I’d driven four blocks that I realized I’d left my engagement ring in the middle of my dresser.

  CUTTER

  I hung up the phone, grinned, and I told myself that really – truly - I had hooked her, and not the other way around.

  Even though the waiting and the teasing and the holding back had been killing me. The entire time, my balls were tight, and my cock was in a perpetual state of erection. I refused to take care of it myself. I’d decided Melissa was going to do it for me, and there was no fucking way I was backing down from that resolution.

  In fact, it had been almost too easy to manipulate her. If I’d been the kind of guy who felt bad about shit like that…Well, who knows? Maybe I would’ve. Fortunately for me, I was just enough of a jerk to not have a conscience.

  There were a few moments that gave me pause. Like when she breathed out the word sinks in that desperate voice, and all but admitted that she’d been thinking about me. Or when she’d asked me if I would touch myself. For her. In each of those seconds, I’d felt a spiraling, out-of-control sensation. The same one I’d had when we were in the bathroom and she’d called out my name like she meant it.

  And yet you were still willing to drag her here, alone, in the middle of the night?

  I pushed down the thought. I wouldn’t have to worry about self-control once she got there. She was probably going to be so pissed off she wouldn’t let me get near her with one of the fucking two-by-fours I hauled around all night. I just wanted to prove that I could make her do what I wanted her to do.

  My internal voice piped up again. Since when do you measure you manhood in terms of pretty girls?

  Their thoughts about me didn’t usually matter. I could take ‘em or leave ‘em. I was of the opinion that they liked their men strong, opinionated, and cocky as hell (ahem, me) or what they really wanted was another woman and were in denial about it. With Melissa, though…What the fuck was it?

  Angrily, I tossed another piece of wood onto the pallet that needed to be moved from inside the warehouse to the works yard outside. When I had a good-enough-sized pile on the stack, I hopped onto the forklift and stepped on the accelerator.

  What happened next was sheer stupidity on my part.

  I was driving too fast. I didn’t fasten my seatbelt. I wasn’t expecting her to get there so fucking fast. And I wasn’t expecting her to look like that.

  Holy fuck.

  There she was, standing in the middle of the goddamned warehouse, right in my path, dressed in nothing but a mouth-watering, two-piece, satin pajama set and fluffy slippers. My eyes travelled up her body. The tiny shorts hugged her thighs and hips, leaving little to the imagination. It was cool in the warehouse, and the outline of her nipples under the thin fabric held my gaze. I had to force my eyes up, and when I did, my desire didn’t lessen at all.

  It was the first time I’d seen her without the ponytail, and I immediately wondered why she ever wore one at all. The soft wisps of corn silk hair framed her make-up free face, softening her looks and making her seem unrestrained, and a little wanton. Did she have a wild side? I sure as hell hoped so, and I sure as hell hoped it involved those pajamas tossed over the top of the forklift and those lean legs wrapped around my waist.

  “You asshole!” she yelled.

  Her voice snapped me back to reality two seconds too late. I should’ve eased my foot off the pedal and let the forklift come to a stop naturally. For some unknown reason, I jammed on the brake and swerved. When I realized the machine was going to topple over, I should’ve held on and let myself fall with it. Instead, I let go, and went flying.

  As I sailed from the raised seat, I didn’t even have time to consider how fucking ridiculous of me it was to crash because I was looking at a girl. I didn’t have time to be embarrassed as the wood boards clattered around me. I didn’t have time to do anything because at the same second, my head hit the concrete floor, a two-by-four smacked me in the temple, and the world went black.

  The next thing I remembered was a cool hand on my forehead and the scent of flowers – distinctly out of place in a spot that always smells like raw wood – dragging me into consciousness. Which was unfortunate because my head fucking hurt.

  “Cutter?”

  Her voice was gentle and full of genuine concern. In my dizzy state, I felt kinda bad that my accident had knocked the sass out of her. I was also a little pleased that she cared.

  “How long was I out?” I asked weakly.

  “Thirty seconds, maybe less.”

  “Jesus. Felt like longer.”

  “This is karmic payback,” she told me.

  “If karma’s gonna pick a fight, I don’t think it’s gonna be with me. I’m too fucking tough for that.”

  “Too tough for karma?”

  “Yep.”

  She sighed like she didn’t believe it. “Do you think you could open your eyes?”

  “Nope. That would ruin my clever plan,” I joked weakly.

  “Clever plan?”

  “To get you alone in the dark.”

  “That’s a lame one, even for you,” she replied.

  “Give me a minute. I’ll come up with something,” I offered.

  She went quiet, and I tried think of something smart. Something dirty. Something devastatingly charming.

  Too bad you seem to have knocked the sass out yourself, too, I thought disagreeably.

  After a few seconds, I gave up thinking, and reached out and grabbed her ass. She squealed in surprise, and I managed a chuckle.

  “The second I’m sure you’re all right,” she snapped, “I’m going to smack you silly.”

  “Don’t get all girlie sensitive on me. I’m fine,” I replied. “Might have something to do with my thick skull.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you about that. But I’d really feel better if you opened your eyes.”

  I cracked them, just a little. Then they widened all on their own. Melissa knelt beside me, her loose hair pooled around shoulders. Her blue eyes, which I’d seen full of tears, full of fury, and even full of lust, were now full of tender worry. Which was fucking hypnotizing.

  “Stop that,” she said.

  I cracked a lopsided grin. “Stop what?”

  “Looking at me like you want to eat me.”

  “You’re the one who wanted me to open my eyes,” I reminded her. “And you’re a little underdressed. Makes it hard not to look.”

  She crossed her arms. It had the distracting effect of pushing her tits up even higher, and the irritated look on her face made me want to bite her lip. Not hard enough to draw blood, but maybe hard enough to make her squeal.

  Jesus fucking Christ.

  I needed to do something about it.

  And why not? I asked myself. Isn’t that why you brought her here?

  She was just a girl. If I stripped her down, she’d be like any other. Did it really matter if she was a rich bitch, country-club-going debutante? I dragged a heated gaze across her tight package of a body and answered myself.

  It doesn’t matter at all. Or at least not enough to s
top me from wanting her. And taking her.

  “Melissa?” I said softly.

  “Yes?”

  “I would like – very much – to fuck you. Right now.”

  Saying the words out loud heightened my desire. So did her sharp intake of breath.

  “That’s not very nice,” she stated, just above a whisper.

  “I’m not after something nice,” I replied. “I’m not nice.”

  She licked her lips, and her chest rose and fell a little quicker. “I think you hit your head even harder than I originally thought.”

  “You’re probably right. If I hadn’t, I’d already have torn off those pretty pajamas of yours. You’d already be beneath me, and I’d be enjoying a very…un-nice…ride. Since I’m a little under the weather, though, I’m thinking it’s going to be you doing most of the riding.”

  She leaned back, knees parting slightly, and I wished I had the strength to push them apart completely, then drag her to me.

  “Get on top,” I said, midway between an order and a suggestion.

  “Like hell,” she replied. “Even if you weren’t the crudest man I’ve ever met…You’re injured. And I’m in a relationship.”

  I noticed she hadn’t actually said no. In fact, there was a hungry look on her face, and her sky blue eyes were almost completely obscured by her dark, dilated pupils.

  Fuck being injured, and fuck her relationship.

  “What kind of nice girl shows up in the middle of the night in sexy-as-fuck pajamas to help a man like me if she’s satisfied by her boyfriend?”

  Her bottom lipped dropped a little. Even in the dim light, I saw her tongue slick to the edge of that lip, wet it slightly, and leave it glistening. I couldn’t keep away an image of her mouth, wrapped around my swollen cock, from popping to the forefront of my mind.

  “Do you want me to ask you nicely?” My voice was thick with anticipation.

  I sat up and reached for her, but as my hand closed on her satin-covered thigh, my head throbbed in protest to the movement. Melissa noticed my wince right away, and her desire-filled face became concerned again instead. She gasped then, but it wasn’t in the way I’d been imagining it.

  “Your neck is bleeding, Cutter!”

  I brought my hand up and found a jagged splinter of wood lodged just below my earlobe. I pulled it out and stared at it. Yep. Covered in sticky, rust-colored blood.