by Ashley Black
Contents
Title Page
Synopsis
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Ninteen
Twenty
Twenty One
Twenty Two
Twenty Three
Twenty Four
Twenty Five
Book Previews
Bound for Pleasure
Dream Eater
Who is Ashley Black
Come say Hi
Copyright
Thank you
TEASE ME
Book 1 in the Teased and Broken Series
Written by Ashley Black
WARNING
This book series contains sexually explicit content and is suitable for adult readers only.
About TEASE ME
Synopsis
Elena Wallis is a tease. An outrageous flirt. Playful, charming, and an epic breaker of hearts.
Sometimes a good tease can get someone hurt.
Sometimes very hurt.
Even killed.
Elena is getting her lady balls busted by her publisher to write the final book in an erotic vampire biker series. But she is painfully inert.
Creativity finds her repellent; her muse has kicked her ass to the curb.
Surfing Facebook one night, she connects with one of her favorite rock stars. Far from a mad groupie, Elena is an admirer of fine things, and bad ass death metal rocker Thornton Darko, or Thorn from Cellrager, is incredibly FINE, a little insane, and a rumored Satanist, but that is all cool with Elena; she’s bored, and her interactions with Thorn have fired up her creativity again.
Quite simply, he blows her mind and knocks her senseless. Elena is having so much fun, she is smashing out that book now with the on-tap inspiration that is Thorn.
She meets him in the delicious flesh, and is quickly addicted to his brand of mayhem after a blistering hot night.
But she can’t lose her head or her heart here, for her heart is another’s - her gorgeous artist fiancé’s Brett Argosy.
She resolves to ensure the boundaries are clear about communications between Thorn and her, moving forward.
But the impossible has happened. Thorn seeks something more with Elena.
He has fallen in love.
He is very serious. And when Thorn wants something this badly, things tend to get fucked up. He will not be denied.
When Brett’s life is threatened, Elena starts seeing the devastating result of what at first had seen as just a harmless tease.
Thorn’s pursuit turns deadly as he becomes more and more obsessed with securing Elena, until she fears for her life and her gorgeous fiancé’s.
What do you do when a powerful rocks star will do almost anything to possess you?
Even kill?
That is some scary shit Elena is not going to be able to tease herself out of.
One
Pleased to make your acquaintance.
That is how the connection started with Thornton Darko, the blistering hot lead of the Death Metal rock band Cellrager.
That is it.
That is all.
I expected more. But then again, I hadn’t expected any response at all on that delicious tequila-soaked night, after I posted on Cellrager’s timeline. The post was in response to a short film of him prowling the streets in that infamous white mask with the dramatic black lines that ran straight from the narrowed hollowed eye holes, from which his mesmerizing emerald gaze incinerated, to the black leering mouth in ‘eternal death tears’ the genius himself called them. Thornton had just ended up in a bar called Depreche Mode in Mexico, and seemed quite excited about it as well. So as I toasted him with my glass, I posted:
Hey Cellrager! I am there with YOU in spirits. Always.
Another night of excruciating soul-crunching nothing. No words would come to finish the damn book for the vampire biker series for my publisher. I was a failure. A fraud. Why couldn’t I be professional about this shit? I always started well, and procrastinated over finishing the thing.
But I was numb, and couldn’t give a fuck.
Then, impossibly, he responded, and sent me a video.
For you xxx
In the video, he pulled off his mask, and blew at his longish dark hair that fell into his angular perfect face, swiping it quickly behind his ears, and positioning the camera so he was glowering straight into my face, his generous mouth quirking in a half smile, a hint of blinding white teeth. There was a ring embedded in his chin just below his mouth and it winked at me as his lips lifted.
I had never understood why he covered that beautiful face of his with a mask. But he said his stupid fat head distracted everyone from his art, and so he created a mask that ended up being even more distracting than his face had ever been.
He was gorgeous.
I appreciated fine things, and he was damn fine. I had every album. Every DVD. He was my heavy metal and fantasy guilty pleasure.
His tongue and I were well acquainted in my dreams.
Now he was running that tongue over his lips, as he stared at me with those eyes that were red-rimmed as if he had been crying, or more likely tired, or even more likely still, from doing drugs.
I shivered a little.
“I have never met one who has more than one spirit,” he drawled, eyes flashing. “Do tell me Elena, how do you manage it?”
I snorted a laugh, took a quick photo of my almost empty glass of tequila on ice, and was about to send it, and then reconsidered, my heart beating with excitement as my drunk mind quietly flipped out.
My idol. My dream. My fantasy had used my name!
I took a photo of me with the glass instead, I tugged my glossy honey brown hair out of the bun atop my head, pouting and widening my ice blue eyes in my characteristic crazy-eyed look that I had perfected for all my book promotional shots, and sent him a photo with the caption:
I manage my spirits just fine … you, however …
I found myself biting my lip in anticipation for his response. Meanwhile, I had downloaded his video to my ridiculous 70-inch flat screen in the film room, and set his video of him stripping off his mask, and talking to me, on repeat.
Yes. I was insane and alone. I could indulge in the magnificence that was Thornton Darko bestowing me with a personal video no less!
I frowned, feeling a pang; my fiancé Brett and I had been fighting, and he was asleep in his little studio at the corner of the wood that surrounded our sprawling property. At midnight, I saw the little light he created his art by at night go out, and he did not emerge. I sighed. Another night alone.
You are beautiful. Thank you for the pic - I shall do unspeakable things with it later. Tell me… how would you ‘manage’ me? If I let you? * Laughing right now*
I laughed, my fingers flying across the keyboard. Well we should warm up first. Managing sounds so cold and professional after all. Jacuzzi first. You should come to Ashby – it’s a small town, but so beautiful. I have a huge Jacuzzi in an insane field and forest as the backdrop positioned on a platform upon a cliff with the endless ocean as our view. A well stocked bar. The heater is fucked at the moment, but somehow I don’t think that would be a problem …
I smirked, and poured myself some more tequila and necked it. At that point, I considered this the end of the discussion. I clicked on his recent al
bum, enjoying his deep throaty rumble that quickly turned into a delicious primal roar of yearning.
But how very wrong I had been!
I would like that very much Elena. You are a beautiful woman and soul. And you write! I love myself a writer. It is a date then? Yes? You, and your spirits, and your broken Jacuzzi that you are expecting me to singlehandedly heat.
I had agreed with a laugh. YES! But I don’t expect you to HEAT it alone.
His response left me breathless.
You are such a TEASE.
I like it.
I want more of it.
Inspired, I suggested: Thornton how about I tease you every day of December then? Let me know how I go at the end? What do you say?
Ten minutes later just as I was calling it a night, but now buzzing with enough ideas to fill the entirety of my book I got a message.
I say I would like that more than you could ever know. Tease me. But don’t call me Cellrager. Don’t call me Thornton. Call me Thorn. I know it is a dick name. But I am Thorn. But watch yourself. I am a bit of a prick xxx
I sent him a smiley face in response.
As I collapsed into bed with a stupid grin on my face, and his voice playing softly in the darkness of my room, my imagination and pussy stirred. I thought that would be the end of it. I really did. A stupid drunken conversation with a rock star. No more.
And perhaps it would have been, if I hadn’t continued to tease him. Because I liked the idea of teasing Thornton Darko on a daily basis. I was curious to see how he would respond to it. If he responded at all, of course.
I reasoned it would be great research for an upcoming book.
Thorn’s mind was a dark and delicious thing. A rumored Satanist, I knew he had grown up in a family of devil worshippers, and had not drunk the poison in the communal suicide they had conducted – a young boy, confused, not wanting to drink the ‘sick drink’ as he had called it. In one documentary, he’d grimly shown the footage from the incident, him a messy black-haired boy, with those bright, intelligent, dark green eyes shining with tears as he stared, unable to say anything but that one phrase - ‘I didn’t want to drink the sick drink.’ In that insane incident, he had lost his entire family. The rest of his childhood had fared no better; passed from one foster family to another, he was deemed a ‘demonic little freak,’ until an elderly dude he simply called ‘Bob’ had taken pity on him, and had taken him in. Unlike Thornton, Bob seemed gloriously normal. A well-financed retiree with a love for fishing and it seemed, the unlovable child. Thornton Darko.
I had a hopeless weakness for monsters and freaks.
Little did I know how very deadly that weakness was going to turn out to be.
Two
“Guess who I spoke to last night!” I smiled brightly at Brett as he yawned, stretching. Dressed in just a low hanging pair of gray sweats, his lean muscular build glistening from sweat, he had just returned from a run in the woods. He moved quietly around our kitchen fixing himself some breakfast. Just a mineral water with some lemon in it, and a hardboiled egg in a delicate light blue cup. He ate like a freaking bird, but there was a method to this madness since he insisted that he did his best art hungry. As soon as the morning session was out of the way, he would return for a heartier brunch.
His brown eyes flashed their disapproval as he settled across from me, and pulled his golden wavy shoulder-length hair into its characteristic pony tail at the nape of his neck. “I thought you were meant to be writing,” he grumbled. “You can’t blow this deadline, El.”
“I did write,” I reported excitedly. “This morning. I’ve been up since five. I only stopped because my hunger got too distracting.” I flipped around my laptop so he could see that seven chapters had been completed for the last book in the series.
One dark eyebrow rose. “Impressive. What brought this on?”
“Who I spoke to last night,” I took a grateful sip of my espresso.
“Yeah?” Brett slow-blinked me. A sure sign I was boring the fuck out of him, which I suspected I did often. The cracks in my heart, which he had put there with his carelessness, threatened to gape still more for his derision.
We loved and hated each other. Familiarity, had bred the contempt I feared so much. It had slowly, but surely, crept up on us.
We were so bored.
It hadn’t always been this way.
I remembered when we cared.
The sex was amazing.
He always ignited a slow burn. He was as passionate in the bedroom as he was with his art.
I loved him so much. But we were in trouble. There was no denying it.
He did not look at me now as he delicately spooned egg into his mouth from the cup.
“I spoke with Thornton Darko from Cellrager.”
“It was probably just his social media person,” Brett dismissed.
I shook my head and flicked the remote so Thornton’s deep throaty rumble filled the room.
Brett straightened sharply, looking annoyed, then he whirled around in his seat to stare at Thornton’s beautiful face filling the screen. “What a ridiculously good looking man,” he muttered.
I smiled a little at that.
“He called me a tease,” I went on carefully, a little turned on by the jealousy that was clouding my beautiful Brett’s face now. Other than derision, it was the first real emotion I had seen from him.
“That’s because you are a tease, Elena,” Bret laughed harshly. “And one day, it’s going to get you into trouble.”
“He wants me to tease him every day of December.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Brett set his spoon down, and considered me with his fingers pressed together, his chin resting atop in thoughtful repose.
I shrugged. “I don’t expect he was serious.”
“Did they find his last wife?” Brett smirked at me.
I shivered involuntarily. The sunlight was bathing me in warmth, and yet my fiancé’s words may as well have stuffed ice in my veins.
“No, but Thorn had nothing to do with that.” Shit. My voice wobbled a little - I sounded anything but convinced. Rumor was that he had sacrificed her to the devil.
“Well he is still under suspicion. Besides, isn’t he into some heavy shit? Satanic worship?”
“Everyone has hobbies,” I smiled.
“Well, his are pretty fucked up.” His lips turned down into a pout.“You called him ‘Thorn.’ You on a first name basis with Cellrager now?
“Are you jealous?” I teased, delighted.
He sighed, reaching across the table for my hands. He took them in his, and squeezed them gently. “I love you, El,” he began.
Uh oh. Shit. No! I didn’t like the look in his eyes, the sorrow in his beautiful face.
“But I need to go away for a while,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“I need some perspective. It’s hard to get it here.” I felt my mouth open and close. My eyes were starting to fill with tears.
His hands shook on mine.
“I’m sorry. I just need … some space from us for a while. I can’t create. You suffocate me, El. What we’ve regressed to is fucking killing me right now.”
“Are you seriously calling off our engagement right now?” I freaked out.
Brett’s gaze dropped. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice hollow. “No.” He let out a sigh, and released my hands, as his own sped into his hair. “I want to marry the fuck out of you.”
Brett was really leaving me. I was struck speechless for a moment. The world was ending. There were no words.
I simply stared at him, my bottom lip wobbling.
He was staring at it.
I came around to his side of the table, pulling him to his feet, and embracing him fiercely. “We can fix this, Brett. I love you. You are my only,” I breathed.
“We both know that’s not true for either of us,” he groaned against my hair. Disturbingly, his muscular arms remained at his sides and made no mo
ve to touch me.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked as he backed away from me. I wasn’t letting him go so easily without reminding him of what we shared. I sidled up to him, and pressed my body flush against his, wrapping my hands around his warm neck and pulling his face roughly down to mine. I rubbed gently up and down his body as I did this, and claimed his trembling mouth. He did not respond at first, and then he was moaning and kissing me back.
I slid my hand between his legs, and ran it up and down over the bulge in his sweats while deepening the kiss. But then I dared to peek at him through my lashes, and saw his brown eyes were wide open and staring into nothing.
My heart went cold.
He was just reacting.
He was numb.
This was so humiliating. I felt helpless. Powerless. I had not felt this way around Brett for a while.
“You should stop, El,” his voice was pleading. “Before we both do something we might regret.”
“Like this!” I whirled around, and rubbed my ass over his shaft, pulling his head down over my shoulder to my lips.
He didn’t struggle and we kissed each other long and hard.
Then was a flash of energy and movement as he slammed me against the table where we had been seated moments before, and he bent me over it. “Yes,” he breathed. “That.”
His hand ran up alongside the inside of my thigh, his long artistic fingers pulling my panties aside and rubbing lightly all over my ass. “You are so beautiful, El,” he sighed regretfully. “The finest ass.” He cupped my right cheek and squeezed, his erection pressing against my left.
My heart was pounding. What would he do? Had I convinced him to stay?
“Just a moment,” he whispered against my neck, and I felt myself stiffen.
Then the heat and press of his body left mine, and I heard a door open, and as my heart and pussy fell to the floor in dejection, I heard the thrum of his stupid Jeep.