Breakdown Read online

  “Then fix this, Ezra. Get me back in as CEO. I heard about the lawsuit—”

  “What the fuck? That’s not public.”

  “I have eyes and ears all over America. There are still people who see the benefit in keeping me informed. That’s beside the point. I’m Imogen Creed and I can conquer this world without chipping a motherfucking nail. I can control the lawsuit. I’ll do everything—anything—to keep Perversion on top.”

  “The board would piss on the suggestion.”

  “Fuck the board. Think about me. Y’all fucked me in the ass, voting me out. Heezy Floyd will do the same to the label with this lawsuit. Cut a deal with me.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  The words don’t provoke an answer, so I grab his hand and start to pull off his wedding band. “Need your wife’s permission first? Is that it?”

  “Don’t fucking touch me.” His jaw is reddened where I struck him and still he hasn’t retaliated.

  “Do something!” I tug the band off his finger. Glancing at the windows, I can see myself opening them and throwing it into the night.

  Ezra intercepts, prying it from me and setting it on Merritt’s desk. “Stop, Imogen.”

  “You took my gun and I’m going to take from you. I won’t leave here until I do.”

  He utters an obscenity that should offend me all the way through, but there’s no impact as it reverberates in my ears. I feel nothing until his hands mold to my neck and he forces me backward to the window.

  He doesn’t put me through the glass, but instead against it.

  “Want to take from me? Take, then. Take this.” His tongue sweeps across my lips before his mouth opens me.

  Thoughts shatter and reality tilts. His hands remain fastened to my neck, pressing, constricting—yet he coaxes me to draw air from his mouth. Pressure fills my temples, compromises my carotids.

  The drugs are speed-racing, twirling, feeding off each other inside me. Now oxygen is scarce and my body is beginning to spiral into a panic.

  I should be concerned, at least a little, that he’s moments from choking me out, but I can’t focus on that.

  The night’s so warm, tight with heat, yet his lips are cool against mine. And then his tongue is hot, wet, insistent inside my mouth, and I shiver.

  He responds with a groan that spears me.

  I have it now, ammunition to draw Ezra and Merritt apart. I’ll tell her about this night, this kiss, and it’ll cause a ripple, the same as a skipping pebble disturbs calm water.

  Except…he has to know I’ll use this information, that it’ll get back to his wife. Why is he kissing me if he knows I’ll tell?

  Is it because the same man who bought me a drum set when I was a teenager intends to leave me flat in a courtyard haloed in my own blood and framed by fragments of glass?

  It’s not that I’m especially attached to the mortal world. I traveled places and loved people and accomplished things for twenty years. No, I don’t have heirs to carry on my legacy, but I have no legacy to carry on anyway. The taste of success has faded and all I know now is the flavor of Ezra del Toro’s unfiltered lust.

  I want more of this. Of him.

  I’ve unfinished business here: in the land of the living, in the hip-hop world, in Atlanta, in the home of Perversion Records…with Ezra.

  I peer past the mist in my eyes to him. He’s taken his mouth from mine and is breathing raggedly as he debates where he might put his hands next if he were to remove them from my neck.

  Splitting the difference, he keeps one vised around me and uses the other to pull down my zipper. Not just a few inches to call attention to my self-inflicted wound. Lower, until my dress is nothing but two flaps of useless silk.

  I’m naked underneath.

  I can knock Ezra’s hand away or high-kick his testicles up to his throat to free myself, but I don’t. I roll my shoulders, shrugging out of the dress. The glass is cold against my bare back.

  “Now you,” I whisper. It’s all I can manage. Even after he releases me to strip off his Armani, I can hardly breathe. I want to cough and gulp in air, to dig my nails into my flesh to reach some impenetrable itch, but I’m almost afraid to move.

  He’s unpredictable in a way I didn’t fathom. So am I.

  His friendship with my brother was our barrier. I never asked for Ezra’s kiss or wrapped my hand around his cock, but now that the friendship has been executed as callously as he can finish me with a hard shove through a window, we see each other for who we are.

  He’s only a man.

  I’m only a woman.

  And, suddenly, we’re both naked and what’s going to happen here is plain and unavoidable.

  Ezra’s muscles leap under the work of art that is his skin. Ink dresses him from shoulder to hip on one side. The other is bare tanned skin. I start there, stroking with my fingertips before fastening my lips to his nipple. I let my hands slide until they find the root of his hard cock.

  Working him, I try to remember…

  He’s only a man. A man who stole my company. A man who’s married to my best friend. A man who might shove me to my death the moment he decides he’s done with my body.

  I get to my knees and kiss the tip of his cock. My lips leave behind a pale blush color and I kiss him again, softly, experiencing a euphoric darkness richer than anything I’ve encountered before.

  He captures my chin, forces me to look up into his eyes. “I’m going to shut you up, Imogen.”

  Opening my mouth, I let him.

  He grips my hair, dragging me forward and backward as he fucks my throat. The corners of my mouth split and blood stains his skin before saliva dilutes it. I’m certain he notices, even more certain that he doesn’t care. He’s ruthless in everything he does, so this shouldn’t stagger me.

  But it does. When I gag, he ventures deeper. When I resist him to ask for gentleness, he thrusts with harsher force. And when he withdraws, his cock so stiff and now slick with my spit, I thank him by sucking his sac into my mouth and extracting his pleasured groan.

  He doesn’t know it, but the sound of his gratification is the most precious gift he’s given me. Fuck the drum set if I can have his voice, his primal satisfaction, flooding me like music.

  Another broken groan, this one carrying my name, and my pussy clenches in response.

  Then he pulls me up, presses me to the window again, and I wonder if anyone outside is watching. What do they see? My tangled hair. My nudity. Self-made billionaire Ezra del Toro using me because he knows he can.

  He slides a pair of fingers into me and tries to introduce a third—but my muscles resist.

  “Want to tell your beautiful little cunt to stop teasing me?” he says, taking me to the sofa and spreading my thighs. With a firm bite to the inside of each, he punishes my body’s insubordination.

  Moaning, wondering if his teeth pierced skin and muscle and artery, I strike back. “The problem isn’t my cunt. It’s that you’re trying to ram through a barricade when you should be summoning a genie.”

  The critique earns me a glare and—oh, God—the briefest flash of a grin before he nips my bare mound. I criticized an ex-convict’s sexual technique and he smiled?

  Truthfully, it isn’t about teasing. It’s about tension. From head to tiptoes I’m painfully tense. My nipples are stiff; my slit is glazed with arousal. But every muscle feels alarmingly taut.

  “You on something?” he asks as an afterthought, and he barely acknowledges my nod as he parts my labia with his tongue.

  The drugs and Ezra compete for control of my body.

  Manipulating my clit with his mouth and fingers, he flings me into a vicious, kaleidoscope, color-burst orgasm. My heartbeats feel unnaturally sharp, my skin hot enough to singe the upholstery. I think he might break me. I know he won’t give a damn if I fall to pi
eces in front of him.

  But I still exist after he stretches me to his liking, after he makes me come against his mouth, after he rage-fucks me into the cushions of the sofa.

  This is more than a kiss. It’s sex. I tell him so.

  “We can keep tonight between us, Ezra. No one has to know what happened. Just give this office back to me. Merritt’s a producer. I’m CEO. That’s what we agreed to.”

  “Before you fucked with the wrong people.”

  “Poaching’s part of the business.”

  “Fire your therapist, Imogen. It’s been a year and you’re still out of your fucking mind.”

  What Ezra doesn’t consider is that my therapist and I have an understanding. I let Doc masturbate during our sessions and he keeps me well stocked with opiates. “My guy’s prescription pad is well worth the five hundred an hour, Ezra. Thanks for the concern, though.”

  “Christ.”

  “Don’t judge me while I’m lying here with your come inside me.”

  “Then we’ll talk about the shit you tried with Concrete Entertainment. That wasn’t poaching. It was a declaration of war.”

  A declaration Concrete answered with an assembly of shooters ordered to pin our entire board. No bloodshed came of it—thanks to a warehouse meeting, a gift of coveted sniper rifles to Concrete’s side-hustle inventory, and some good old-fashioned prayer—but I guess no one forgets the feeling of looking mortality in the eye.

  Dazed, I feel his fingers swipe across my slit. Catching his semen as it trickles from inside me, he thinks he’s rescued his wife’s furniture from our come. Only, my sweat has already seeped into the fibers of the sofa and my aria is embedded in the walls.

  “I’m not going to ask Merritt and Sophie to let you back in,” he decides. “I don’t want you here. Not in this company, and for damn sure not in this office.”

  “You weren’t saying that when you had your cock in me.”

  He inserts his fingers into my mouth, shutting me up again. His essence is so warm, from his body and mine.

  We created this.

  I suck the digits clean and he offers his cock for the same treatment. Then he leans down over me, and with a final flick of his tongue to each of my breasts, he’s done with me.

  He puts on his clothes in silence, gathers my dress and purse and drops them onto my belly. “Get out. Come here again and I’ll enforce the goddamn restraining order. Perversion isn’t yours anymore.”

  “I’ll tell Merritt you banged me in this office. Her office. Swear to God.”

  Ezra smiles and I decide I hate his smile more than I detest the man he’s become. “That’s your leverage? It’s weak.”

  How is infidelity weak leverage? What kind of marriage is unaffected by cheating?

  I’m unnerved and he knows it. He watches me dress. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. Part of me is afraid to try.

  “I want my gun back,” I tell him.

  He kisses me, slow and deep, biting my bottom lip before he lets go. “We’ll negotiate that some other time. Maybe when I’m ready for another taste of your pretty pink pussy.”

  I hazard a trip to the desk and grab his wedding band. Since he’s got my gun, I should have this. But he puts out his hand, daring me to disobey the unspoken command. Fear floods me—Ezra del Toro is different, fundamentally so.

  I slip the ring onto his finger, and when his hand forms a fist, I press a soft kiss to each of his knuckles.

  I brace for a threat, for the strike of his fist even, but neither comes. Nothing happens. The nothingness pries open my bravado, and tears fall because my chemical composition is a fucking disaster and my emotions are in a blender.

  “Go home, Imogen.”

  I am home…aren’t I? But no. He means the Creed estate, and I guess he’s right. I need to retreat there to remedy the mess he’s made of me. Restricted trachea. Strained vocal cords. Crushed defenses. Love is war, and I am battle bruised.

  I need to think. I stare through my tears into his eyes until I find what I’m searching for. Regret.

  Let him drown in it. He and his wife have been married exactly one year. Tonight of all nights, he should be with her, not balls-deep inside me. Tapping his gold band, I set my sights on the door. “Enjoy your party, jackass. Oh, and tell Merritt I said happy anniversary.”

  I get lost trying to find my way downstairs. I snap at the people who question my disheveled appearance and the contusions on my neck.

  My thoughts spin.

  They’re jealous of me…

  They want to hurt me…

  They’re fucking following me!

  I start bawling at the base of the stairs, clinging to the baluster, kicking out as guests walk by and forgetting that I’m wearing nothing under my dress.

  I’m not okay. I’m sweaty and fucked and high.

  “Enough of this shit. C’mon,” someone snaps. Arms curl around me, lifting me against a wall of muscle.

  I scream, curse, flail, and then I start trembling.

  “I’m taking you to a hospital,” the man announces once we’re outside. “You a motherfuckin’ fool, you know that?”

  I squint, swallow past nausea, and whisper, “Jordi?”

  “You didn’t think I was going to leave your ratchet little ass, did you?”

  “Ezra del Toro stole my gun.”

  “Yeah, and you let him fuck you anyway.”

  I smack his shoulder, yank the diamond-studded baseball cap off his head to put it on my own. “How do you know about that, pervert?”

  “The only reason you’re still alive to let dudes shoot drugs into you and ride you like you’re the last good pussy on earth is because I’m always watching over you.”

  “I messed up.”

  “I know. That shit’s lethal. It ain’t nothing to play with, straight up. Do the names Belushi and Hoffman mean anything to you?”

  “No lectures. Please. I messed up with Ezra. How can I stay in this city after we…”

  “Hooked up?”

  I press my face to his neck but he knows I’m crying again. “It’s not just a hookup.”

  Jordi turns his face skyward. “Lord, the girl thinks she found unicorn dick. Help her.”

  “Are you making fun of me in a time of real crisis?”

  “I’m telling you—again—that you need Jesus. Or I do, ’cause I’m still putting up with you. Here.” He sets me on my feet and forces a business card into my hand.

  Gash Lyrics. No point of contact. Just the name of Los Angeles’s fastest-growing underground rap label—and Perversion’s closest threat—printed on an otherwise blank business card.

  “What about it?”

  “Remember this number. If you’re serious about fixin’ your life, you’ll remember.” Jordi recites digits in my ear and I lock the sequence in. “Call. If you’re for real about this, I got a dude who can get you on a jet to LA next week.”

  “First class? Candy dish too?”

  “Complimentary. Snickers, Tootsie Rolls, Skittles—”

  “That’s not the kind of candy I want in my dish.”

  “I know good and fucking well the kind you want, and I’m not connecting you with Gash so you can pop pills on their plane and then burn down their building. If you’re going to LA, it’s for a business conversation. The City of Angels has got plenty of demons. Leave yours in Atlanta.” He leans close, searching my eyes, giving me a lungful of gin and cigarette smoke. “Now let’s roll the fuck out of here before one of these bitches finds that security guard’s body and calls twelve.”

  My brain is sluggish, but when his words settle, I gasp. He killed a man tonight. For me. “Jordi…”

  “What?”

  I hop up to kiss his cheek. “Thank you.”

  He scrubs off the kiss with his T-shirt. “Straight up, though.
Touch me again with dick-sucking lips and there’s gonna be some serious fuckin’ consequences.”

  I laugh, and I don’t stop laughing or trembling until Jordi ushers me into an urgent care managed by someone he knows. No publicity. No third degree.

  A tox screen, an IV, and hours of drooling sleep later, I find nothing funny.

  Gash Lyrics wants to talk, but Perversion is on my mind.

  Instinct, sharp as ever, insists Ezra and Merritt’s marriage is their vulnerability. Still, I have to be certain before I make my next move.

  What I am certain of is Sophie’s weakness—a man who’s my own flesh and blood. A phone call would bring the prodigal brother home. I can’t handle him carelessly. When you summon Atticus Creed back to hell, prepare to end up singed.

  This is a dangerous game. I know it.

  Ask me if I give a fuck.

  CHAPTER 1

  Present day...

  Sophie

  The first call came while the stranger was still inside me, but I answered my phone anyway.

  Personal time didn’t exist for hip-hop record label COOs, at least it didn’t for me.

  “Screw the pleasantries,” Merritt Monaghan declared before I could finish saying hello. She was the living embodiment of a girl boss—and also of a bitch, but the bitchy girl boss was my friend. “We’re meeting at the office, you, Ezra, and me.”

  Prepared to sacrifice another orgasm to roll free and hustle to headquarters, I asked, “Urgently?”

  “Tomorrow, eight sharp. I just had a Lunesta-tini.”

  “So, noon, then?”

  “Ha ha. You’re hilarious.” Merritt’s bedtime cocktail of sleep aids and rosé—or whatever über-expensive alcohol she had within reach—was a coping mechanism, one she resorted to when she wanted to withdraw from everything and everyone.

  Straddling a man I didn’t know or trust, I didn’t pressure her for details. For now, we would each self-destruct in the dark, Merritt with sedatives and I with sex.

  The man strategically gripped my hips as he drove himself upward.

  “Fuck, yes,” I cried out.

  “Soph, is that a yes, you’re coming to the meeting?”