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 cara@caramckenna.com.
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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
With 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.