Crosstown Crush Read online

  Since she began writing in 2008, Cara McKenna has published more than thirty romances and erotic novels with a variety of publishers, sometimes under the pen name Meg Maguire. Her stories have been acclaimed for their smart, modern voice and defiance of convention. She was a 2010 Golden Heart Award finalist and a 2011 and 2013 Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award nominee. She lives with her husband, with their feet in New England but their hearts in the Pacific Northwest. Cara loves hearing from readers! Email her at [email protected].

  Visit Cara McKenna online:

  www.caramckenna.com

  www.twitter.com/caramckenna

  Also by Cara McKenna

  THE DESERT DOGS SERIES

  Lay It Down

  Give It All

  Drive It Deep

  OTHER NOVELS

  After Hours

  Unbound

  Hard Time

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Piatkus

  978-0-3494-0622-0

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Cara McKenna, 2015

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  PIATKUS

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DZ

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Crosstown Crush

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Also by Cara McKenna

  COPYRIGHT

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Downtown Devil

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  With thanks to Laura, who helped me sneak into the party.

  And to Christina and Claire, who keep on refilling my glass.

  CHAPTER ONE

  W

  ith the tab settled, Samira hugged her best girlfriend good night outside the bar, exchanging promises to meet up again soon.

  She checked her phone’s clock. Just enough time. On legs the tiniest bit languorous from the cocktail, she crossed Walnut Street and headed for Sephora, making a beeline for the fragrance wall. She held sample bottles of the various men’s colognes to her nose until she found one she liked – a fresh, citrusy smell. Samira misted the cologne into the air and walked through it. She replaced the tester, pleased not to have earned herself any odd looks, as she had from the makeup counter ladies at Macy’s.

  Back in the open air, she had only a quarter mile’s walk home. It had rained that afternoon, and the cool early-April air felt electric, charged with life and possibility. She breathed in spring, along with the cologne, imagining what man might have left that scent clinging to her hair and clothes.

  She’d tried a different drink that night, a greyhound – vodka and grapefruit juice. Who was this mystery man, she wondered, who’d ordered her that cocktail?

  Her husband would want to know.

  He was tall, she decided as she crossed the street. Tall and built, with clear blue eyes and lean muscles, a soft, deep voice, and slow hands.

  He was hung.

  That was a given. That was what Mike would want to hear above all else. Sam named her imaginary lover Nick, and decided he was a rower. He rowed every weekend morning on the Allegheny, so he had big, cut arms, and during the day he was… an EMT. Nice.

  What a dreamboat her imaginary piece on the side was.

  Their apartment made up one half of an old brick Victorian, and as she drew close, she auditioned the faces of her favorite actors until she hit one that fit the bill. Sam felt giddy as she mounted the stone steps and dug out her keys, as though she really had just met this handsome, athletic, altruistic Nick for a drink and a fuck. No matter that she’d spoken to no men at the Elbow Room aside from the one who’d mixed her cocktails. Ooh, bartender. Her next fake fling would be with a bartender, she decided, pushing in the door. Not that Mike cared about their occupations.

  She smiled to find no mail waiting on the floor before the slot. That meant he’d gotten out of work on time and had hopefully been home for a while, winding himself up with his own fantasies about where she was, what she was doing, and to whom she was doing it. The notion had a smile tugging at her lips.

  Such a contradiction was Mike Heyer. Outside these walls, he was a badass – a lead narcotics detective with the Pittsburgh police, maker of snap decisions, with a body to match his demeanor. Rough and ready. Beyond these walls he was always on, always acutely aware of his rank and others’ perceptions. Confident and sure. He could be the same in bed, and often was. But once or twice a month, within the bounds of these games, he let the burden of authority drop from his shoulders and embraced what Sam suspected to be his deepest, most defining fears.

  You’re weak, this game told him. You’re outmanned, and you can’t measure up. You’re failing. Sam smirked as she locked up behind her, smug to know she was the sole keeper of his secret desires, the only one who got to see him reduced to such a happy mess. The only one who got to do the reducing.

  There had been a time when she’d wanted nothing to do with those secret desires.

  When he’d first confessed them to her, Sam had reeled from the blow they dealt to her confidence in both herself and the relationship she’d once felt so sure about. She hadn’t known what had been going on with her then-fiancé; she’d known only that she’d begun feeling like a criminal in his eyes and that the sharper edges of their sex, which she’d enjoyed so much, had become too sharp, too coarse. Where he’d once been possessive, he’d become, at times, mean and accusing.

  She’d dumped other lovers for less than that, but Mike had been different, right from the start. From the night they’d met. She had never felt so free with a guy before – so free it was like meeting herself for the first time, discovering how goofy she could be when she was relaxed around a man and how much better the sex was when it felt like an adventure instead of like a performance. But it had become painfully clear that there was something else at work that he wasn’t telling her. So she’d threatened to leave, and meant it – the most painful decision of her life – if he didn’t tell her what was going on. And he had. Since then, their motto had been: Truth only. Always.

  She’d been intimidated at first, and even repelled. But the truth had told her, It’s nothing you’ve done wrong. It’s what he secretly wishes you’d done wrong.

  In time, Sam’s feelings about it had morphed from shock, to skepticism, to acceptance, and eventually all the way to curiosity. It had taken her close to a year to get to the poi
nt where she was on board with his needs, and over the course of those months, Mike had changed as well. She came to realize that confession had been a ten-ton weight hovering above him, and with that crushing pressure gone, all those old red flags ceased to wave. No more accusations, no more confusing signals, no more too-edgy sex. The Mike she’d fallen in love with had returned, just with a kink openly in tow. And once she trusted that it wasn’t her enemy, she decided to make it her friend. Her partner in driving her husband insane in the ways he craved most.

  When they’d first started exploring Mike’s kink, Sam did as she had this evening – stayed out past dinnertime and came home smelling of alien maleness. Back then she’d simply worked late, then swung by the drugstore and rubbed samples from the men’s style magazines on her wrists. But having seen in the past couple of years what their games did to her husband, she’d learned to revel in it herself. The same kink that had once belittled her now turned her into a powerful, wicked devil-goddess. A sexual supervillain.

  And goddamn, it was fun having these powers.

  Once or twice a month, Sam would meet friends for drinks, secretly scouting the bar for men to imagine she’d gone there to meet. She’d try new cocktails, pretending they’d been sent to her, and browse those cologne samples with relish – all part of the casting process. Now, nearly three years after the ultimatum, it was hard to remember the time when Mike’s kink had repelled her; now she couldn’t imagine their marriage without it. It would’ve been like having a favorite spice taken away, their meals still nourishing but missing that exotic kick.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, baby,” Mike called back from upstairs.

  His office was up there, and he must have brought the day’s paperwork with him. He preferred to finish that stuff up at the station and leave his job where it belonged, but Sam knew that doing this at home was all part of the game. Waiting up, imagining her out somewhere, getting nailed on some strange man’s bed.

  Her pulse quickened as she hung her jacket on the rack, spiked as she slid off her wedding band and stowed it in a pocket. She smelled the cologne on her, breathed in that citrus zing, tasted the lingering bite of grapefruit on her tongue, and conjured the imagined man she’d just fucked behind Mike’s back. This was great, Nick, but I have to get home or my husband will suspect…

  She went upstairs to their bathroom, slicking herself with a measure of lube from the bottle in the cabinet. One, two buttons to free on her blouse, low enough that someone standing close could see she was wearing a lacy mint green bra. She gave her hair a mussing and decided she looked as if she’d been thoroughly, recently, convincingly ravaged.

  Down the hall, Mike’s office door was open. He swiveled in his chair when she knocked on the frame, looking her up and down with a tight smile. Game on.

  “How was your day?” she asked innocently.

  “Busy, and still not over. Guess I’m not the only one, huh? You’re awful late. I had to heat up leftovers.”

  “Sorry. I had this conference call that just would – not – end.”

  “You’re dressed up.” He took in her skirt, her heels, her cleavage.

  “Some of the donors were visiting,” she lied, averting her gaze.

  Mike got to his feet. He had changed out of his work clothes and into jeans and a T-shirt, the latter snug, which let bad guys know his morning rituals involved weights, not doughnuts, and that there was no softness to be found in Mike Heyer’s body or justice. But as much as his physical capability excited her, Sam wouldn’t acknowledge it that night – not while they were playing. When they played, he was a weak man, incapable of keeping his cheating wife out of the arms of stronger, more handsome, more virile men. Sam hadn’t so much as kissed another man on the lips since her first date with her husband five years before, but according to the parameters of this charade, she’d fucked half of Pittsburgh.

  “You smell… different,” he said, coming closer. “What is that?”

  “Gosh, I’m not sure. I don’t smell anything.”

  “Smells like…” He brought his face to her temple and breathed her in. “Like men’s cologne.”

  She shivered from his deep, smooth voice – a contradiction to his rough native accent. Tamping the sensation down, she slid into her role, shrugging. “That’s weird. Maybe it’s that new detergent.”

  “And your breath smells like liquor.”

  “I used some mouthwash before I left the office.”

  His blue eyes narrowed, calculating. He clasped her wrist, holding up her bare hand. “Where’s your ring?”

  “Oh. I must have taken it off before I went to wash out my mug at work.” She felt around in the little pocket of her skirt and produced the band. “See?”

  He watched her slip it back on, frowning. “Who was it?”

  She finger-combed his soft, sandy brown hair, not meeting his eyes. She wanted to run those same fingers down his throat, over his chest and abdomen, and cup her palm between his legs to see how hard he might be, but her role was that of an ambivalent, dissatisfied wife just now, and his cock was beneath her interest. She’d found a better one, his fantasy dictated. She couldn’t say she was turned on by these dynamics, herself, but knowing what it did to him… Nothing had ever made her feel so fiercely desired.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she bluffed. “Who was who?”

  “Don’t play games with me, Sam.”

  Oh, but I will. She huffed an unconvincing little laugh. “I’m not. I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You were out with some guy again. Who was he?”

  Sam sighed, pretending to feel weary – not guilty – over being busted. Bored. She crossed her arms and leaned against the door frame. “Does it really matter?”

  “Yeah, it does. You’re my wife.” He took her by the arm, leading her out of the room and flipping off the lights behind them, just the city’s glow from the window at the end of the hall showing the way to their bedroom. An old floorboard on the landing before the door creaked. So many times she’d been awakened by that creak – that wonderful noise that told her Mike had come home from a late night, from a bust or investigation or stakeout, safe and sound… So many nights it was her cue to relax, though at moments like this it spiked her pulse, setting heat humming low in her belly.

  He coaxed her into their room with a bossy hand on her lower back – a lingering glimmer of his domineering side, soon to be shed alongside his shirt and jeans. It had no place in this room with them tonight.

  Sam switched on one of the bedside lamps. “It’s Friday, Mike. We’re both exhausted. Let’s deal with this tomorrow.”

  “No, we’re going to deal with it now. You’re going to tell me what happened.”

  She sat on the bed, pulling off her shoes. Her throat was dry, as though she were thirsty for him.

  He stood before her, hands on his hips. “Who was he?”

  “Just some guy named Nick.”

  “What’d you do, find him at a bar?”

  She nodded. “We only had a drink. Nothing happened.”

  “If nothing happened, how come you smell like him?”

  She ignored the question, getting up and unclasping her necklace. “I’m tired, honey. Let’s not get into this tonight.” The heavy beads rattled as she set them on the dresser, and her fingers moved to her buttons. She could feel Mike getting close before he even touched her, his fingertips easing the top from her shoulders.

  His voice heated her neck and the sternness had left him. “Tell me about him.”

  “I just met him at the bar, when Lisa stood me up for a girl’s date. He bought me a drink, that’s all.” A greyhound. She pictured her imaginary fling, his warm, wicked gaze as he slid her glass across the wood, his cruel smirk as his eyes darted to her wedding band. Her imaginary flings were always colossal dicks, whatever that said about her.

  “That’s all, huh?”

  “Sure.”

  Considering the size o
f his hands, Mike had deft fingers. They slipped free the clasp of her skirt and lowered the tiny zipper, thumbs sliding under the band of her tights before the skirt even hit the floor.

  “Tell me about him,” Mike said again, and his voice had gone gruff. The time for play denials was over. His kink was loose, pacing the room, and it wanted feeding.

  “He’s tall,” she said. “Tall and handsome and built. With this smile… I wanted to tell him no, but I just couldn’t, not the way he smiled at me.” A couple of years ago this performance would’ve made Sam feel silly and self-conscious, but practice made perfect. She could teach a class on improvisational dirty talk now. It was all about commitment – better to say something cheesy and over-the-top and to own it than to clam up or hold back, afraid of sounding dumb.