by CD Reiss
“I feel stupid,” he said. “It’s just a rock and dirt.”
“Yeah. It’s stupid.”
That was why we were together. We shared a cold, calculating cynicism. We were immune to sentiment.
“I like the musical note,” I said. “It’s cute.”
“I picked it. I drew it for his dad and faxed it over.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It’s…” He swallowed hard. “It’s F. The note.” He blinked. Smiled with his lips tight in a thin line. “It’s so dumb.” His voice cracked.
“I bet.”
He looked away from the grave and shut his eyes. “I picked F for…” He shook his head, shot a little laugh that was sticky with sadness. “Friend. I needed it to be F for friend. Like I was in kindergarten.”
I put my hand on his cheek, thumb under his eye, ready to catch the tears that I knew were coming. “I’m embarrassed for you.”
He opened his eyes. So blue. Bluer than the cloud-masked sky that day. He wasn’t the man I’d met so long ago. The musician on the edge of fame. So close to the dream. So close he could save the world with it.
But he was. That man was still in him. Sometimes I forgot about that twenty-year-old with the potential he had a lifetime to fulfill.
He laid the flowers down. I rubbed his guitar callouses as we walked back to the car.
“You should play music again,” I said.
“No.”
“You’re not doing him any favors.”
“It’s not about Strat.”
That was a lie, but I couldn’t prove it.
“You’re right. The world is better off without you making music.”
He laughed a little and wrapped his arm around my neck, pulling me close and kissing the top of my head.
“I mean it,” I said. “You’re sexy with a guitar. Chicks dig it.”
“You sure you could stand the competition?”
“Have you met me? I don’t have competition.” I walked backward in front of him, each of my hands in his. “You don’t have to be a rock star. Just write some songs. See how it sounds. You might like it.” I bit my lower lip. “I might like it. I could be your groupie all over again. I’ll let you fuck me if you play.”
He pulled me to him. “You’re going to let me fuck you whether I play or not.”
“I hear South Dakota has the easiest bar exam in the country.”
“I’m not moving to South Dakota.”
“Then you better get that guitar out, Indiana McCaffrey.”
“You’re threatening me,” he growled with a smile. “You know what that does to me.”
“What?” I reached between his legs, and we laughed.
I ran back to the car, and he chased me, pinning me to the driver’s side door with his kiss. I pushed my fingers through his hair, pulling him closer. I wanted to crawl inside him and live there forever.
He ripped his face away from mine long enough to speak. “I love you, Cinnamon. You’re too precocious. Too smart. Too much of a pain in the ass, and I love you.”
“Even in South Dakota?”
“I’ll play again!” He laughed. “I’ll play if you love me.”
“You bet your ass I love you.”
“Case closed.” He kissed me again, pushing me hard against the car with the force of his erection pressed against me.
I groaned into his mouth.
“There was a hotel behind that florist.” He spoke in gasps. “Wanna go make the bed squeak?”
“Yes.”
We kissed again with an urgency that defied logic, as it should.
The freight train finally lumbered away, the bell on the last car dinging in victory. On the other side of the tracks, the rolling hills dissolved into infinity, and we drove right into it.
The End
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Read the story of Jonathan that starts in BEG - attached to the end of this ebook as a special bonus or just GET IT!
My next release is MARRIAGE GAMES.
THIRTY DAYS
That’s all Adam Steinbeck demands of his wife.
Thirty days in a remote cottage, doing everything he demands. After that, he’ll sign her divorce papers and give her complete ownership of their company.
Thirty days to rediscover the man he once was. The Dominant Master he hid when he fell in love with Diana five years ago.
She wants the business they built badly enough to go to the cottage for a month. Cut off ties to the world and do his bidding. She can submit to him with her body, but her heart will never yield.
She thinks this is his pathetic attempt to repair their marriage.
She’s wrong.
GET MARRIAGE GAMES.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’m going to keep this short because Beg is after this and I want you to get to it.
Lawyers are strange birds. The strangest of them is Jean Siska, who put Drew at the proper end of the table for his station, corrected my lingo, and made sure Margie was studying the right cases for the right exam, at the right time.
Erik, as always, found more typos than the most diligent proofreader and then formatted this book like a boss (he didn't format the acknowledgements so if they're messed up it's my fault).
I was pretty terrified to have this beta’d, since the secret, while pretty shocking to most readers, would knock fans of The Submission Series right over. I didn’t want it to get out. So thank you to the Camorra for their tight lips.
At one point, I doubted myself. The carefully constructed out-of-orderness of this story seemed like a conceit rather than a necessity. Laurelin Paige and Jenn Watson read a sequential version, assessed it as a bore, and set my doubts straight. Thank you.
Thank you Lauren, Laura, and Kristy for looking at the cover 100 times, and the girls in FYW for the same. Indie publishing really isn’t all that indie, and that’s a good thing.
My Goodreads group, CD Canaries, has a theory thread with spoilers and story possibilities for all things Drazen, especially Daddy/Declan Drazen. I hear it’s razor sharp.
All the authors who blurbed, thank you. The author community is shaken up regularly, and I’m thankful to the women and gentlemen who keep it about what’s on the page. Thank you for reading.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact [email protected]
You can join my fan groups on FACEBOOK and GOODREADS
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also by CD Reiss
Do you want to know more about Jonathan's story?
Want to know more about Jonathan's story?
Jonathan Drazen. Gorgeous. Charming. Smart. Rich.
All the ingredients for a few nights of mind-blowing pleasure are right there. He’s made it perfectly clear he can’t love me, and I’m not out to fall in love either.
But I can’t stay away from him. He’s got this bossy way about him in bed. The word “Sir,” falls from my lips, and when he tells me to get on my knees…well, my knees have a mind of their own.
I got this. I can be his slave for a few nights and walk away unscathed.
We get in. Get it on. Get the hell out. Done. He knows the line between love and lust. It’s right between my legs.
Now, let’s see if that line blurs for me.
1) Beg Tease Submit
2) Control Burn Resist
3) Sing Coda Dominance
* * *
If you love hot Mafia men, check out my Corruption Series. Spin, Ruin, and Rule are full length and the series is complete. Or get COMPLETE CORRUPTION and save!
Theresa Drazen can have plenty of guys, but the one she can't keep away from....the one she's just about addicted to, is more than forbidden. With felony-black eyes and a mouth built for lies, loving him is one step away from illegal.
But her body keeps overriding her brain. Maybe it's time to stop playing by the rules.
-------
/> Antonio is obsessed. Theresa's the last woman he should touch. She's going to get him killed. She's dangerous. Poison. The wrong woman.
Except...she's perfect.
And they both figure...one more time. Just one more time.
One more time and they won't get caught.
One more time and they won't get killed.
One. More. Time.......
**MATURE AUDIENCES--Rough sex. Dirty talk. Criminal activity. Cursing. Fisticuffs. Closed course. Professional driver. Do not try this at home.**
Spin, Ruin, and Rule are full length and the series is complete. Or get COMPLETE CORRUPTION and save!
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Fiona Drazen's life as a celebutante and submissive slave is told in Forbidden.
Everything about Fiona is forbidden.
She’s a party girl with dark desires. She’s beautiful, irresponsible, irresistible.
She’s my patient.
I’m her therapist.
I’m past wanting her. Past possessing her. Past bedding her or protecting her.
I’m willing to be self-destructive, negligent, brave, audacious, and stronger than I ever believed possible.
She’s blunt force trauma to the heart.
And she calls another man Master.
Get FORBIDDEN!
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HardBall - the sexiest, dirtiest sports romance of 2016 is available.
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If you like swoony heroes and Hollywood love stories, check out the USA Today Bestselling Shuttergirl.
I never forgot her. Not for one minute. Not from the last time I saw her, at seventeen, to today. I measured all women against her and all women came up short. But being with her was unfeasible in high school, and it's taboo now. I see her sometimes, but I've never spoken to her. She runs, or I run. We're in the same town, on the same block, in the same building, and the gulf between us is just too wide to cross.
Until tonight.
***
He was my high school crush, back when I lived in a world that didn't want me. He was the perfect boy, and I was the outcast kid from the other side of town. And when he held my hand I thought I could fit in, just a little. I thought I could be his and he could be mine. Then he left, and my life fell apart. Now we are the king and queen of opposite sides of Hollywood. And we haven't spoken a word to each other.
Until tonight.
Buy Shuttergirl here.
beg.
Songs of Submission - Episode One
CD Reiss
one
At the height of singing the last note, when my lungs were still full and I was switching from pure physical power to emotional thrust, I was blindsided by last night’s dream. Like most dreams, it hadn’t had a story. I was on top of a grand piano on the rooftop bar of Hotel K. The fact that the real hotel didn’t have a piano on the roof notwithstanding, I was on it and naked from the waist down, propped on my elbows. My knees were spread further apart than physically possible. Customers drank their thirty-dollar drinks and watched as I sang. The song didn’t have words, but I knew them well, and as the strange man with his head between my legs licked me, I sang harder and harder until I woke up with an arched back and soaked sheets, hanging on to a middle C for dear life.
Same as the last note of our last song, and I held it like a stranger was pleasuring me on a nonexistent piano. I drew that last note out for everything it was worth, pulling from deep inside my diaphragm, feeling the song rattle the bones of my rib cage, sweat pouring down my face. It was my note. The dream told me so. Even after Harry stopped strumming and Gabby’s keyboard softened to silence, I croaked out the last tearful strain as if gripping the edge of a precipice.
When I opened my eyes in the dark club, I knew I had them; every one of them stared at me as if I had just ripped out their souls, put them in envelopes, and sent them back to their mothers, COD. Even in the few silent seconds after I stopped, when most singers would worry that they’d lost the audience, I knew I hadn’t; they just needed permission to applaud. When I smiled, permission was granted, and they clapped all right.
Our band, Spoken Not Stirred, had brought down the Thelonius Room. A year of writing and rehearsing the songs and a month getting bodies in the door had paid off right here, right now.
The crowd. That was what it was all about. That was why I busted my ass. That was why I had shut out everything in my life but putting a roof over my head and food in my mouth. I didn’t want anything from them but that ovation.
I bowed and went off stage, followed by the band. Harry bolted to the bathroom to throw up, as always. I could still hear the applause and banging feet. The room held a hundred people, and the audience sounded like a thousand. I wanted to take the moment to bathe in something other than the disappointment and failure that accompanied a career in music, but I heard Gabrielle next to me, tapping her right thumb and middle finger. Her gaze was blank, settled in a corner, her eyes as big as teacups. I followed that gaze to exactly nothing. The corner was empty, but she stared as if a mirror into herself stood there, and she didn’t like what she saw.
I glanced at Darren, our drummer. He stared back at me, then at his sister, who had tapped those fingers since puberty.
“Gabby,” I said.
She didn’t answer.
Darren poked her bicep. “Gabs? Shit together?”
“Fuck off, Darren,” Gabby said flatly, not looking away from the empty corner.
Darren and I looked at each other. We were each other’s first loves, back in L.A. Performing Arts High, and even after the soft, simple breakup, we had deepened our friendship to the point we didn’t need to talk with words.
We said to each other, with our expressions, that Gabby was in trouble again.
“We rule!” Harry gave a fist pump as he exited the bathroom, still buttoning up his pants. “You were awesome.” He punched me in the arm, oblivious to what was going on with Gabby. “My heart broke a little at ‘Split Me.’”
“Thanks,” I said without emotion. I did feel gratitude, but we had other concerns at the moment. “Where’s Vinny?”
Our manager, Vinny Mardigian, appeared as if summoned, all glad-handing and smiles. Such a dick. I really couldn’t stand him, but he’d seemed confident and competent when we met.
“You happy?” I said. “We sold all our tickets at full price. Now maybe next time we won’t have to pay to play?”
“Hello, Monica Sexybitch.” That was his pet name for me. The guy had the personality of a landfill and the drive of a shark in bloody waters. “Nice to see you too. I got Performer’s Agency on the line. Their guy’s right outside.”
Great. I needed representation from the The Rinkydink Agency like I needed a hole in the head. But I was an artist, and I was supposed to take whatever the industry handed me with a smile and spread legs.
Vinny, of course, couldn’t shut up worth a damn. He was high on Performer’s Agency and the worldwide fame he thought they would get us. He didn’t realize half a step forward was just as good as a full step back. “You got a crowd out there asking for an encore. Everybody here does their job, then everybody’s happy.”
I listened, and sure enough, they were still clapping, and Gabby was still staring into the corner.
two
Darren took Gabby home after the encore, which she played like the crazy prodigy she was, then she blanked out again. Her depression was ameliorated by music and brought on by just about anything, even if she was taking her meds.
She’d attempted suicide two years before after a few weeks of corner-staring and complaining of not being able to feel anything about anything. I’d been the one to find her in the kitchen, bleeding into the sink. That had been terrific for everyone. She took my second bedroom, and Darren moved from a roommate-infested guest house in West Hollywood to a studio a block away. We played music together because music was what we did, and because it kept Gabby sane, Darren close, and me from screwing up. But it didn’t even keep us in hot do
gs. We all worked, and until I got my current gig at the rooftop bar at Hotel K, I had to give up Starbucks because I couldn’t rub two nickels together to make heat.
Because Spoken Not Stirred had drawn more people than the cost of our guaranteed tickets, we’d made three hundred dollars that night. Fifteen percent went to Vinny Landfillian. Sixty-eight dollars paid for Harry’s parking ticket because he figured if he was loading his bass and amp, he could park in a loading zone on the Sunset Strip before six o’clock. We split the rest four ways.
Hotel K was a spanking new modernist, thirty-story diamond in a one-story stucco shitpile of a neighborhood. The rooftop bar thing in L.A. had gotten out of hand. You couldn’t swing a dead talent agent without hitting some new construction with a barside pool on the roof and thumping music day and night. The upside of the epidemic was that waitress service was the norm, and tall, skinny girls who could slip between name-dropping drunks while holding heavy trays over their heads without clocking anyone were an absolute necessity. The downside for someone tall and skinny like myself was my replaceability. You couldn’t swing a tall, skinny girl in L.A. without hitting another one.
Darren and I had taken too long discussing who would watch Gabby. He convinced her to stay at his place for the night, though “convinced” might not be the word to use when talking about someone who didn’t care about where she slept, or anything, one way or the other.
I ran from the elevator to the hotel locker room, the fifty bucks I’d made for holding a hundred people in my palm light in my pocket. I peeled off my jacket and stuffed it in my locker, then pulled my shirt off. I didn’t have a second to spare before Yvonne, who I was relieving, started chewing me out for stranding her on the floor. I yanked a low-cut dress that showed more leg than modesty out of my bag and wrestled into it.