Play Dirty (2 page)

“I’m not the same man, Fiona.” Matthew’s heart picked up speed. This was it, barreling towards their passionate ending. One glance at Lynn told him she was excited, too. He had to rein himself back in to finish the scene, keep his pants lax and his mind focused.

“Why can’t you just listen to me?”

Matthew stood behind her. “I listen to you every time that gorgeous mouth opens.” He grabbed her by the waist and held her close. “You’re just too headstrong and stubborn to notice.”

She slammed a fist against his chest. “I am not headstrong. You’re impossible.”

Blood ran hot through his veins. “Fiona, I love you. I love every inch of this perfect skin. I love every hair on your head. When my heart beats, it beats to your name. I swear on my life, lain out before you, that I am clean and innocent.” He dropped to his knees and took her free hand with his. “My old life is gone, locked behind a key and drowning at sea. I can’t take back the past, but I can fix our future. Just believe in me.”

Lynn’s beautiful blue eyes filled with tears. “Vance, please let me go.”

“Tell me you don’t love me anymore, and I will walk out this door. I’ll walk out of this town and never steal sight of you again, Fiona.” He rose and took her by the shoulders. Under the bright stage lights, she looked like an angel. “Say it. Tell me you don’t fucking love me anymore.”

“I don’t fucking love you anymore!” Lynn grabbed the collar of his shirt and pressed her sweet mouth to his. Matthew lifted her up to his waist, holding her tight and letting her devour him. This surpassed a stage kiss, this was magic wrapped around the tongue of a gorgeous girl. He lost himself in her, forgetting the stage and Vance and Fiona.

Lynn rocketed him to a place where it was just the two of them, where the floors spun and an erection was begging to burst from the prison within his jeans.

He could do this every day. Oh God, could he do this every goddamn day.

She finally broke it off, leaving Matthew slightly shocked from the absence of her. He helped her slide down him, taking care to lift her off of him and set her down gently before she could get too close to the bulge in his jeans.

They stood side by side and bowed their heads slightly, completely in sync with one another.

“Thank you.” The headless voice floated out from the seats.

They exited on the opposite side of the stage and were funneled into section with the others who went before them. Man-bun high-fived him as he took a seat. Somehow during their crabwalk across the tight aisles, he lost her. Matthew looked around but Lynn was gone.

He tried to push down the disappointment chewing up his chest. This was just an audition, their time together was finished. Expecting her to stick with him was silly and he had always parted ways with his scene partners in the past.

But this time, he couldn’t shake his attachment to the brunette whose kiss made him pitch a tent in the middle of a crowded theater with his potential employer.

Matthew stretched out in the chair and tried instead to focus on his competition. He had missed several auditions while running lines with Lynn in the hall, but there were plenty of others to whittle down. He knew for certain he was better than a solid seventy-five percent of the males auditioning for Vance.

He didn’t just perform the role, he
was
the role. So many of these guys were choppy and robotic or bland; they lacked the soul needed for a man as complicated as Vance Gray.

How would the blond in skinny jeans handle the role when he went spiraling down the drug trip? He didn’t look like he could dominate a woman the way he dominated Fiona in that scene.

Just like that, his mind shifted from sizing up performances to undressing Lynn and throwing her onto his bed, exploring every inch of that nubile girl, owning her with his lips and tongue. She was like snake venom, tearing up his system and shutting everything else down. A girl hadn’t been able to take ownership of his mind like this in years.

Not since Nadia.

Not since his last show.

He gritted his teeth and pulled his focus back to the stage. In some ways, Nadia was a lifetime ago, but she had taught him an invaluable lesson: don’t let love interfere with your craft. What started off as the best sex of his life turned into a nightmare rapidly spinning out of control. She slept with directors, stagehands, his fellow actors, anyone she could to further her career in New York City. She’d just neglected to share this information with him while sharing his bed.

Matthew became a goddamn laughing stock and had to leave his last company. His career went down the shitter because of a girl with fake tits and faker commitment. As innocent as Lynn looked, he hadn’t expected Nadia to screw him over, either.

“Never trust a starving actress.” That was what his old mentor told him during his MFA program. Words he needed to heed this time and forever, even if he could be missing out on the best pair of tits he’d seen in a long time.

This was his career on the line. His dick could mind its own business until after callbacks.

Finally, the last pair left the stage. Vivian, the stage manager—Matthew made a mental note to remember her name this time—took their place.

“On behalf of Director Lewis and Greg Ficcus, thank you again for your time and hard work. We’re on a tight deadline with this show and I hope you are all flexible and ready to get to it. We’ll begin calling callbacks within the next few hours, so don’t venture too far into the city. Once you get a call, you’ll have approximately 15 minutes to arrive back at the theater or your absence will constitute a pass on the role. Everyone get something to eat and we’ll see some of you again shortly.”

Everyone got up and shuffled around, collecting their belongings. With just his portfolio in hand, he joined the stream of hopefuls to say goodbye and thank the director for his time.

One last chance to make an impression and secure a spot on that callback list.

Matthew kept an eye out for his Fiona, but Lynn was lost in the crowd. There were so many brunettes it was impossible to tell them apart.

Disappointed, but keeping to the words of his mentor, he continued with the flow down to the local bars, ready to calm his nerves with a stiff drink and a plate of onion rings.

Definitely not with his gorgeous scene partner.

“This is it, Matthew.” He muttered to himself, quietly, so he didn’t freak out those around him. “No girls. Just the stage.”

Famous last words.

PART ONE

Matthew cupped his hands around his drink and tried not to stare too hard at his phone. Waiting was the worst part of the whole gig, sitting back and rehashing your audition to death while praying they liked you enough to see you one more time.

This was not his high-dive moment.

This was the hit-the-bottom-of-the-pool-and-momentarily-feel-like-you’re-drowning moment.

Maybe he should take up swimming again. It could help with his audition jitters.

The elaborate clock on the wall sliced through seconds at a depressingly slow pace. Two hours had passed since the audition and he was on bourbon number four. Getting drunk before a callback was a death knell, but waiting for this callback was harder than all the others.

Greg Ficcus was a god among playwrights.
Heaven Under Fire
on Matthew’s resume would jettison him to the next tier of NYC stages. No more off-off-off Broadway venues tucked behind strip clubs or in the shadier parts of town—this was the real deal.

No more bartending. No more judgmental questions from his friends and family. No more pretending everything was going exactly to plan on Facebook or around other actors during cattle calls. Life as he knew it would be radically different, a thing of beauty, repayment for all the years he had slaved away in shitty jobs for the passion boiling away under his skin.

And his goddamn phone was silent.

Half the pub tables around him were full of other actors from the audition, nervously chatting over waters and plates of celery sticks. A few celebratory squeals had sounded through the room about thirty minutes prior, but the place had gone quiet since then.

Happy hour was rapidly approaching, along with the promise of too many people in suits and heels to drown out the sound of his ringtone.

Matthew scratched his hands across the top of his head and tried to settle his nerves. It wasn’t just that this could be his breakout role; this was his last real chance to finally make it. Bartending at twenty-nine was so goddamn clichéd.

He wasn’t a public servant, he was an actor. Every student loan payment reminded him of the path he took, the soul-crushing amount of money and time put into a degree that now did nothing more than sit on the floor, too painful a reminder to hang up just yet.

Living in the city wasn’t cheap and his savings were looking more pathetic than the wilted salad at the next table.

Maybe Lynn really was too much of a distraction. He had tried his damnedest to keep focused, to let the scene unfurl in his mind and breathe life into it, but she was a thorn in his performance.

Jesus, he got an erection in the middle of the scene.

The mere thought of the kiss made his balls draw up tight and he had to carefully adjust himself on the seat to keep from rubbing across the seams of his pants. That kiss was going to haunt him for the next week.

They didn’t just kiss, they had made out during a professional audition. It was blatantly disrespectful and he’d been sabotaged by his own goddamn dick.

But fuck. He would do it again in a second.

College-aged girls were so exciting, so full of life, in comparison to the hardened, older actresses. They’d been ridden hard and spit out by the theater community for so long, it was like riding a unicycle, falling over sloppily every way you turned.

Fresh faces were so rare these days, but how he loved them. Matthew wanted to take her unburdened spirit and bathe in it.

Maybe even fuck her, loudly, in it.

Lynn was a taste of the fountain of youth and she was sinfully delicious. Except that she cost him his last goddamn audition of the summer, maybe of his life—if he was feeling particularly melodramatic. Call it a side effect of living the artist’s life.

Then again, maybe their chemistry helped convey something more powerful than the others. They were Vance and Fiona, fighting for their relationship, up on that stage.

Or at least he was.

Matthew Flint was a professional actor and he gave a professional and outstanding audition.

Maybe he shouldn’t have been so angry. Maybe a more subtle approach would have been Vance’s style, and he mucked it all up. All these ‘maybes’ were going to send him spiraling down another glass of bourbon.

He checked his phone again. Nothing. At this rate, he was going to kill the damn battery before he could get a call anyway. He stretched and tried to distract himself with the art pieces on the wall for the fiftieth time.

He was halfway through them when he spotted some new decor: a very nervous, very beautiful Lynn.

She looked more of a wreck than he did, checking her phone every five seconds and chewing on her nails. From across the room, she looked way too young to be in the pub. That youthful glow did her a disservice around bottles of booze, but sent happy hour pricks circling her like gnats around a fruit bush.

His fruit bush.

Matthew shook his head slightly to unwind the territorial fingers wrapping around his brain. She wasn’t his anything. In all likelihood, she was his career undoing. Best case, she was so goddamn distracting, he had botched his final audition of the season. Unfortunately, she was so goddamn pretty, he almost didn’t mind.

Almost.

Roles before Hoes
aside, he could at least keep her company and fight off the clearly unwanted company while they waited. Waiting alone was going to bring on an aneurysm. He grabbed his lukewarm bourbon and stepped between the tables.

“Mind if I sit?”

Lynn jumped, like he had pulled her out of a total daze. She smiled, too nervous for those beautiful dimples to show themselves. Matthew took this as a good sign and took an empty chair on the other side of the table.

“Hey pal.” Some twenty-something in a blue blazer with a checkered button down protested, clutching his glass of soda-and-something. He looked like the kind of guy who couldn’t drink liquor straight. “I was talking to her first.”

“Didn’t look like she was actually talking to you.” Matthew raised his glass in a mock toast. With his superior liquor choice. “So why don’t you respect her wishes and get the fuck out of here?”

“That’s a pretty ballsy assumption, my friend.”

Matthew stood to face down the guy. Maybe Matthew wasn’t the tallest guy, barely clocking in at five-foot eleven, but what he lacked in height, he made up for in stature. Chubby kids in school may get made fun of through adolescence, but a lot of them end up kicking ass in the gym later.

Matthew was no exception. Krav Maga was his friend these days. He held his glass so his arms bulked up substantially.

“Is it now,
friend
? Or are dickless men like you too clueless to read body language?”

Blazer Guy’s face screwed up, like he wasn’t accustomed to insults, but he should have been. The guy wore a cheap-looking blazer and had shitty highlights in his hair. This wasn’t the late nineties and that shit shouldn’t be allowed anywhere.

The guy took one final look at Lynn, who shrugged, and another at Matthew, before he stalked off.

Matthew should have been wearing a cape at that moment, it was so goddamn heroic.

“I really should remember to start bringing my phone charger to auditions.” He gestured to his phone. “I’ve checked it so many times, it’s on life support.”

“This is going to give me a heart attack. I’ve already texted my mom with my last will and testament.” Lynn bit her lip. It was perfect and pink. Matthew found himself wanting to bite it, too.

“I hope she likes cats.”

“Do I look like a cat person?” Lynn feigned shock. “Oh my God. No wonder no one wants me. Luckily, though, Mr. Mittens is going in the casket with me. We’re for life.”