Dark & Dirty: A Dark Erotic Fantasy Anthology

by Lea Bronsen

  DARK & DIRTY

  A Dark Erotic Fantasy Anthology

  by

  D.C. Stone

  Kastil Eavenshade

  Lea Bronsen

  R. Brennan

  Table of Contents

  Copyrights

  Introduction by Jenika Snow

  Not One Night by D.C. Stone

  Redeemer by Kastil Eavenshade

  Slick by Lea Bronsen

  Addictions by R. Brennan

  About the authors

  Copyrights

  Published by Writers in Crime

  First Edition

  Not One Night: Copyright © 2016 D.C. Stone

  Redeemer: Copyright © 2016 Kastil Eavenshade

  Slick: Copyright © 2016 Lea Bronsen

  Addictions: Copyright © 2016 R. Brennan

  ASIN: B01MCYQ7BR

  ISBN-10: 1537569880

  ISBN-13: 978-1537569888

  Editors: D.C. Stone, Lea Bronsen

  Layout and cover art: Lea Bronsen

  All Rights Reserved

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Adult reading material.

  Introduction

  I loved her, not for the way she danced with my angels but for the way the sound of her name could silence my demons.

  -Christopher Pointdexter

  When I was asked to do the introduction to this anthology, I didn’t hesitate to accept the invitation. To be asked to do this for a group of talented women writing about something that might be considered pushing the limits, was such an honor. Dark and erotic might not be for everyone, but like with all new things, you have to try it to see if you’ll enjoy it. The darkest recesses of our hearts can hide the most beautiful emotions, the most frightening desires. Every day we go through life hiding something from the ones around us, from even ourselves. It might be a desire, a thought … the very make-up of our DNA. Some hide what they want for fear of what others might think, or decide to be someone else because fear holds them back. We need to learn to allow ourselves to be who we are, to love what we want, and experience what might not be considered normal. It is only within ourselves that we can accept who we are, and what we want. It is only then that we can be free and true to ourselves. So, go into this anthology with an open mind and heart. Don’t let preconceived notions hinder what you could enjoy. We are our own judge, jury, and executioner. Let go and live the way you want, without thinking of what someone might think. Be free and experience. Enjoy and never look back.

  Jenika Snow

  NOT ONE NIGHT

  by

  D.C. Stone

  Dedication

  When I was approached to do this anthology, I had a mixture of fear and excitement. Fear, being that this type of story was so outside of my comfort zone that I didn’t know if I could do it. Excitement, being that I would be doing yet another lovely book with fantastic, talented authors.

  The concept of Not One Night came to me with the characters being in opposite lights, with Johanna originally being the protector, and Brady a shady criminal. Even though I know it’s possible, I couldn’t get through the story in keeping to that theme, so I had to adjust a few things. The adjustments I made really got me curious and I have a big feeling these two will be showing up in other stories/series to come, perhaps even with the Empire Blue series, which is set just down the street from NYC.

  I wanted Johanna to fight for something near and dear to my heart, something I’ve been a child-victim to, and something that doesn’t get enough attention. Domestic violence is a silent and hopeless crime many struggle to get out of. There is more than just one victim in every case, especially if children are involved. If you find yourself a victim of domestic violence, please seek help. Not just for you, but for all of us who love you and want to see your light shine again. For more information on domestic violence, please visit www.thehotline.org.

  I’d like to dedicate this story to those who stand in the shadows trying to help others.

  Deserie

  “You know, one of these days, someone is going to fuck some sense into you.”

  Johanna King scowled and cut a glare at Brady McBride that had him chuckling. He shook his head, both impressed and annoyed that after thirteen years of friendship, she still reacted to the shit that came out of his mouth. Then again, after what she laid on him last week, and the request made to him, he figured that astonishment could go both ways.

  Humbled at that thought, he rubbed a palm across his noggin, the short hair still a shock to his senses, despite having shaved it off over nine months ago. Needing a change, but not wanting to flip his life completely out of whack, he’d taken to clippers on a whim one night, slicing off the shoulder length strands. The result: a ton of weight had been taken from his shoulders, rather than the small pile that probably wouldn’t register on a scale. His partner had taken it better than Johanna, and he still had the bruise on his thigh as proof.

  “Seriously,” Johanna said, “I shouldn’t be surprised, I mean really, look at where you work. They say sailors have some mouths on them, but the colorful language I’ve heard coming out of the precinct is enough to make my Uncle Bob blush, and he’s more perverted than any other I know.”

  “And that’s saying something,” he added, grinning at her repeated scowl.

  “But,” she continued, rising her voice in a deliberate show of talking over him, “each time I think I have you figured out, you go and do something to smash through those perceptions.”

  Brady lifted the corner of his mouth, let out a short chuckle, and faced her. “I don’t know why. There’s not much about me that says I follow any rules.”

  She lifted her brows.

  “What?” he asked.

  Her gaze went up, and he fought the urge to rub his shorn hair again. Instead, he shrugged and leaned back in the seat, taking a glance outside the town car, but didn’t focus on anything.

  “Not by the rules, huh?” she asked, her voice unusually gentle. Yet another thing that had changed, something he put a finger on. Why things seemed to be shifting since the question. He hated that despite not giving her an answer yet, their friendship may have changed. He didn’t want that. Didn’t know how to get it back to before. But apparently, the decision was out of his hands.

  He rolled his head on the leather seat and looked at her. “Do you have a point you want to make?”

  One sleek brow arched. How had he never noticed the classical features of her face? The soft curve of her jaw, the high angle of her cheek bone. The bow shape of her lips. He forced his gaze away.

  “You’re a detective, Brady. And not just any detective, the new face of the homicide squad.” She snorted. “If there’s any job outside being a soldier that follows rules, um, honey, I think that’s it.”

  “Jesus,” he muttered.

  “Whaaaaaat?” she asked, and the attitude that always lurked behind her tone hinted its appearance.

  He resisted grinning. Barely. Instead, he spoke to the window. “You have no idea what kinds of rules I play by. There’s the rules that are accepted by society, and rules that I operate on my own… However,” he said, drawing out the
word, “after your question last week, I figured you’d want to jump all over that answer.” He met her gaze. “Literally.”

  Pink rose in her freckle-covered cheeks. He wanted to shout in success. Instead, he smiled. He could spew all the bullshit he wanted right now, when it was still just Brady and Johanna. Soon enough, too soon, things would change between them, and call him a sadist, he just wanted to draw this banter out a little longer. Wanted to remember the time when he still had his friend. Because later…well, there was a completely different agenda for the night.

  She’d been waiting all week for him to answer her question. And while most men would have jumped at taking her up on her offer, he’d hesitated.

  “I want a lover, Brady. But I can’t take one on at my age with the lack of experience I have. I need you to take one for the team here. Teach me. One night. Show me everything you can about sex.”

  Jesus. That moment she’d smacked him with that question still wrung his stomach in knots and butterflies. How he could both have the hardest boner and want to shrink inside of himself at the same time was a feat he had to give to Johanna.

  As a lead detective for New York City’s Homicide Squad, he had faced some of the most violent offenders, gruesome murder scenes, and horrible endings to life. After all, when you stuffed close to nine million people on an island thirteen miles long, things were bound to get interesting.

  But after hearing Johanna ask that one thing, he’d almost fallen to his knees. Had to reach out to palm the wall, if his memory served him correctly. Embarrassing for a man his age. Deadly for someone in his profession to be caught off guard by a slip of a girl.

  But rather than push it off and ignore the question altogether, he’d arranged for them to go out, somewhere their regular crew wouldn’t be, which was usually scattered across bars in the city. A place where they could focus on each other, and he could give her an answer to the question without any of their friends picking up on weird vibes.

  He was fooling himself, though. Was such an asshole for what he planned to do tonight. He had his damn answer already, but didn’t know if he could step over that line of their friendship. He was curious, sure, and once she’d opened that line of thinking, the thought of falling between her sweet milky thighs and teaching her all the naughty things he wanted to do…wouldn’t leave his head.

  Beams of lights flashed through the tinted windows of their town car. Yet another extravagance Brady wouldn’t have voted on, but Johanna insisted. Taxis would cost an arm and a leg anyway, so it was just as well. Although, at the rate they were going, they’d get across town by dawn. He checked his watch. Ten o’clock.

  “So where are we heading tonight?” she asked, nervous energy thrumming off her through her fidgeting. She gave him a pained look. “Maybe hanging inside tonight would be better? I feel like a fool.”

  A fool? He completed a slow perusal of her. A bite of something fruity filled his lungs, sweet, tasty, reminding him of a peach. She looked good, he’d give her that. But Johanna had always been athletic, someone who kept her body in top shape and could take probably half the guys in his squad. He didn’t like why she did it, the late nights, the fights, the reputation she’d gathered doing her version of a vigilante, but with her childhood and everything she’d witnessed from her father beating on her mom, Brady didn’t expect anything else.

  And as much as he hated it, the public’s perception of her was a big deal, especially since she’d become the face of domestic violence. He’d tried for years, over and over again, to get her to stop her night time gig, had used threats, anger, and silence treatment. He’d even mock-arrested her a few times, but she wouldn’t stop. Then trying to get her to stop turned into keeping her name out of the public, the media, news outlets. In the end, it took one picture, then everything went downhill. And since she was this little woman, all of five foot three inches, beating on men sometimes twice her size and over a hundred pounds heavier doting out her own brand of justice, no one had told her to officially stop.

  Beside him.

  But then again, she had never listened.

  The red dress tonight had been a shock. All she wore lately was drab clothing, yet another topic of their arguments. Those clothes made her look like some dark, bitter woman, someone others would be scared to approach. But he saw them for what they were: armor. A way to keep everyone at a distance, to not stick out in a crowd. But that was the problem. There was no way to mute her presence. A hum of energy always surrounded her. And her glow, despite the dark clothing, stood out from others.

  But that dress. It was nothing like what he’d seen her in before. Hell, he couldn’t remember her wearing a dress when they were kids.

  The top fit to her body, snuggled and pushed up generous breasts. It cut wide so a lot of cleavage was on display before wrapping around her neck in a halter hold. At her waist, the cloth fell over the curve of her hips in what looked like strips cut precisely to give the outfit a jagged appearance. When he’d mentioned as much, she stated something along the lines of a handkerchief dress.

  Whatever it was, the look of it, of her, did things to his body she had never done before. And combined with her long, black hair tumbling down to her waist in thick curls, her makeup a subtle smoky, and her several inch-high stilettos, he fought between panting, admiring, and cursing her.

  “Because,” he said in response to her earlier question, “then there wouldn’t have been a reason to wear that dress. And, sweetheart, that’s one hell of a dress. A fool is the last thing you look like in it.”

  She crossed her arms. The movement pushed her breasts up more, the material of the dress straining to keep her contained. He bit his tongue and looked outside, not really seeing the pedestrians still lining the sidewalks despite the hour, but knowing they were there.

  Johanna was his closest friend, for Christ’s sake. He wouldn’t be able to offer anything outside sex. Hot sex, but still just sex. And even though that was all she asked for, the thought that their friendship could be cut off because of sex had him double guessing his decision.

  Even the assessment had him fidgeting. And he never fidgeted. He’d faced down knife wielding combatants without batting a lash. But it’d been like this since he decided to go through with her proposition. To introduce her to what he liked. He swallowed hard. Knowing she’d only had one other man made him nervous as ever.

  He wasn’t built like most men, and despite who he was, what he craved, he worried she wouldn’t accept him after she learned the truth. A truth he planned on setting out in the open tonight. And after that, what would that mean for their friendship?

  But, goddammit, he took another glance at her cleavage. He could only be pushed so far. And that dress…

  “Besides,” he said once he could speak without desire clogging his throat, “you already agreed to come out. You’re here. We’re almost to the club. Your nightly vigilante duties are going to have to wait. There’s no reason for you to go home, so stop bitching, let your hair down for once, and try to have some fun, yeah?”

  Silence.

  Shit. He rubbed the area between his eyes. They used to be able to rib each other, after all, their relationship was formed on the building blocks of laughter. But for the past few months, there’d been no smiles, no laughter, no joking, no nothing. Just a shell of a woman who used to live such a bright and blinding life. Especially to a dark soul such as him. And that’s how he saw them, with the ugly he witnessed day in and out, versus what she’d broken out of to become. She was a bright light in his otherwise fucked up world.

  And despite everyone warning him that a man and a woman couldn’t remain just friends, he hadn’t wanted to put them in the same box as countless other horror stories. The ones where two friends let a night of drunken sex ruin years of friendship. But here he was, sitting next to sin in silk, running her question over and over, and anticipating the night to come.

  Don’t get him started on the come-hither looks he could swear he’d seen
from her. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure, as one minute she’d look like she was about to jump him, the next, like she wanted him out of her life for good. Shit was hot and cold with her lately.

  “My hair is down in case you haven’t noticed, jerk.”

  He snapped his head up. With one long leg crossed over the other and a sly eyebrow arched, she looked every bit as prim, proper, and strong as she let everyone see. But there was a gleam in her chocolate eyes. One that gave him hope, and one that made him want to mess her up.

  He curved his lips. “Believe me, I noticed. I’d be hard-pressed not to.”

  A wink of the street light showed narrowing eyes. “Stop that.”

  “Stop what? What am I doing?”

  “That,” she said and uncrossed her legs to lean forward. Her knee touched his. Contact. Damn if he didn’t like the touch, no matter how innocent. The low flip of his stomach surprised him. Contact between them never crossed to anything sexual, nor did he think she intended the brush of her knee to be erotic. But the pressure ran a straight invisible line right up to his cock. Perhaps he was starved for her touch. Perhaps he knew somewhere in the back of his mind, after tonight, that touch would go away forever. “Flirting,” she finally answered. “Being charming. Acting like you do with all your little fuck buddies.”

  He laughed, the sound coming from his gut and filling the car. “You’re hilarious. One, you’d know if I was flirting, trust me. You’ve never had the full impact of it. Two,” he said and fingered one of her curls that dropped over her bare shoulder. The tendril was softer than it looked, and the damn thing looked like silk. “You’d never be one of my fuck buddies.”