Dirty Like Us Read online

  Praise for the Dirty Series

  “It hooked me from the very first chapter … a charming, entertaining, sexy and fun read. I’m definitely on board for the next book.” — A Dear Author Recommended Read

  * * *

  “Diamond (DEEP) crafts a spicy, sassy, sexy romance with likable characters who share intense chemistry, and populates it with a memorable, entertaining supporting cast.” — Publishers Weekly

  * * *

  “… blends humor and horniness into one hell of a wild ride. I absolutely could not put this book down and I cannot wait to see what’s next in the Dirty series.” — Hines & Bigham’s Literary Tryst

  * * *

  “Maggie and Zane have delicious push-pull … I want more Zaggie and I want them now!” — Smexy Books

  * * *

  “Hands Down – A 5 STAR Book. … a fantastically fun page turner” — Liz Ellyn Reviews

  * * *

  “The banter between Zane and Maggs have propelled them to my Top Couples List. Ms Diamond I do hope you write really fast.” — Kathy, Goodreads review

  * * *

  “Jaine Diamond is new to me and I believe she will be taking the romance world by storm. Her writing gives you all the feels and pulls you in.” — Jo & Isa Love Books

  * * *

  “A fun sexy whirlwind of a rocker romance book…” — Read Between The Lines

  * * *

  “If rockstar romances are your thing then you’ll definitely need to add this series to your TBR pile!” — Wicked Reads

  * * *

  “Be prepared for a bad boy who will turn your life inside out!” — iScream Books

  * * *

  “… a first rate rock romance that gives you everything you would want; super-hot rocker who does not do girlfriends, a ‘normal’ girl with a chance of a lifetime, a connection between these two that everyone around them sees, and sexual chemistry that is off the charts. …this one hit for me and I am an avid rock romance fan.” — The Book Enthusiast

  * * *

  “Jessa and Brody are complicated characters with red hot chemistry. … his love for her jumps off the page.” — Badass Bloggettes

  * * *

  “… heat and angst in spades!” — Liz Ellyn Reviews

  * * *

  “… so damn well written, the story just sucks you right in and doesn’t loosen its grip until you read the last word.” — Bookgasms

  Dirty Like Us

  A Dirty Rockstar Romance Novella (Dirty #0.5)

  Jaine Diamond

  Copyright © 2016 Jaine Diamond

  * * *

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, uploaded or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in reviews.

  * * *

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  * * *

  The publisher and author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark ownership of all trademarks, service marks, and word marks mentioned in this book.

  * * *

  Published By DreamWarp Books

  * * *

  First edition: December 2016

  * * *

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-9949843-2-6

  * * *

  V_6

  * * *

  Cover design: DreamWarp Books

  * * *

  Jaine Diamond Online

  www.jainediamond.com

  For my man;

  you’re more of a romantic than you think.

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  Books by Jaine Diamond

  Enjoy This Book?

  Playlist

  Acknowledgments

  Sneak Peek: Dirty Like Me

  Sneak Peek: Dirty Like Brody

  Sneak Peek: A Dirty Wedding Night

  Sneak Peek: Dirty Like Seth

  Coming Soon: Dirty Like Dylan

  Sneak Peek: DEEP

  Sneak Peek: DEEPER

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  This book, Dirty Like Us (Dirty #0.5), is a prequel novella for the Dirty series—a rockstar romance series about the members of the rock band Dirty, and the women and men who love them.

  * * *

  As a prequel, this is a cliffhanger book—Dirty Like Us is Zane and Maggie’s story, but it’s only a slice of their story. These two have a complicated relationship, and there is so much more to their story than could possibly fit into a novella. This is not an easy love, and it’s bound to go so very wrong before it goes right… All of which means that Zane and Maggie’s story won’t be continued and resolved until later in the series, when they get their own full-length novel.

  * * *

  In the meantime, Dirty Like Us gives us a taste of what’s going on between these two.

  * * *

  About the reading order of the series:

  * * *

  Each novel in the Dirty series focuses on the love story of a different couple in the larger world of the series. I consider the books in the series interconnected standalones, meaning you could pick and choose which ones you read, in any order, but you will definitely get the most out of the series, the individual books and the relationships within if you read the books consecutively.

  * * *

  This book, however, is an exception to the above. Because it’s a prequel novella, the events in this book happen in time before the events of Dirty Like Me (Dirty #1), but it features different lead characters, and you do not need to read it first.

  * * *

  If I had to choose, I would actually recommend starting with Dirty Like Me (Dirty #1). It is probably the best entry point to the series, as it gives a broader introduction to the world of the series and the various characters.

  * * *

  Whichever book you choose to read first, I hope you’ll continue on with the rest of the books in the Dirty series as they are released. Along the way, it will be a hot, wild and sometimes crazy ride brimming with passion, angst and humor as we dig into the love lives of the characters who rock the Dirty universe. I hope you’ll stick with us until the breathtaking end.

  * * *

  From beautiful Vancouver,

  Jaine

  Prologue

  Maggie

  The red carpet was worn beneath our feet. The altar was a single step, also carpeted in red, on which we stood, along with the officiant.

  The officiant wore a black leather motorcycle jacket, a faded Steppenwolf T-shirt, ratty jeans and biker boots. A black leather bible decorated with silver studs lay open on his hands.

  I wore a pink dress.

  The room was small, and there were no windows. The ceiling was arched and the walls were black, strewn with neon beer signs and replica platinum albums.

  There was a row of eight gunmetal chairs, four to the right of the aisle and four to the left, two of which were occupied. A woman I didn’t know stood at the back of the room with a polite smile on her face. A man with a gun stood guard at the door.

  Outside, traffic rumbled by, occasionally vibrating the kitschy junk on the walls.

  In the next room, an awful song played faintly on repeat. A cheesy, sleazy rock song about a scho
olgirl.

  Near me, someone was talking.

  But all I could hear was that old Steppenwolf song, “Magic Carpet Ride,” playing in my head. I heard it the way Zane once sang it, as we sat around a campfire drinking Jäger from a bottle someone passed around, his voice so raw and smoky and beautiful it gave me goosebumps. I heard it the way my mom used to play it, loud, on her wonky old turntable, as she danced in the kitchen in one of her flowy blouses and a pair of cut-offs.

  I could see her now, dancing in her bare feet, and looking so, so young.

  And I wished she was here.

  I was holding hands with him, and my knees were quivering. I could feel his heartbeat in his fingers wrapped tight around mine. His thumb smoothed back and forth across my knuckles, over the new ring on my finger, as I breathed, shallow and slow.

  He was looking at me. I knew he was. I could feel the heat of his gaze moving over my face.

  “Maggie.”

  I took a breath and felt his heartbeat, once… twice… Then I looked up into that gorgeous face. His arctic blue eyes held mine. He squeezed my hands slightly.

  Zane.

  Me.

  Holding hands at the altar.

  Holy shit.

  “That’s your cue, babe,” Zane said, and I realized the man in the leather jacket had been the one speaking. To me. Everyone was looking at me and waiting.

  And I just stared at Zane.

  The corners of his eyes twitched. He smiled slightly and I couldn’t stop myself. I never could, when it came to him.

  I smiled back.

  “Yeah,” I said, in response to the man’s question, but the word cracked and came out a whisper. I cleared my throat and found my voice. “I do.”

  Chapter One

  Maggie

  Two hours earlier…

  I stood in the middle of the massive, glittering bathroom, trying not to imagine how much this hotel suite would’ve cost if we had to pay for it. And trying not to think about why we didn’t.

  I’d told Coop to go ahead and help himself to the complimentary champagne, because no way I was drinking it. Instead I grabbed one of the little glasses by the sink and fixed myself a vodka cran, pouring from the bottle of Stoli I’d paid for myself. Then I lay my travel case open on the floor and took a breath.

  The last hour of my life had been a total gong show, the conversation with my father pretty much the furthest thing from an aphrodisiac. I just needed a few minutes to get my head together and switch gears.

  I took a swig of my drink and assessed myself in the mirrored wall. I was still wearing the jeans and midriff-baring jacket I’d worn to dinner with the crew, but I’d already decided the occasion called for something a lot sexier.

  I dug through my stuff, unearthing the new lingerie and snapping off the tags. Then I went over my mental checklist as I got undressed.

  The band was all settled into the hotel, finished with the promotional interviews I’d set up for them earlier in the day, and they were officially set loose for the night. In Las Vegas. The last I’d seen of each of them, they were off in various directions in search of sex (Zane), booze (Dylan), and/or solitude (Jesse and Elle). Tomorrow night was the final show of the tour and everyone was jacked up on a hazardous cocktail of anticipation, adrenaline and hormones. Not the kind of hazard I could do much about, other than stay out of the way and be on hand for cleanup later. My boss, Brody, and I were band management, which meant we booked gigs, made sure everyone got paid, and generally kept the money flowing in. But it also meant we took it upon ourselves to make sure everyone stayed relatively sane, so the reality was, if anything fell apart between now and tomorrow’s show, my phone was gonna blow up like the Freemont Street light show, and not like I could ignore it.

  Story of my life, but at least everything was as it should be on that front.

  Security, crew, and gear were all accounted for and everything was set for Dirty, hottest rock band on the planet and my kickass employers—fuck, yeah—to rock the hell out of the new arena on the Vegas Strip. And while I was excited about tomorrow’s show in that bittersweet way that marked the end of each tour, I was really looking forward to a momentary diversion from the madness.

  A diversion of the sexual variety. Because the Penny Pushers were also in town for the show, and that meant I was hooking up.

  I slipped into the skimpy lace babydoll and matching thong, both a vibrant lime-green that looked amazing against my complexion. Thanks to my mom, I had flawless light-brown skin, which I’d always considered my best feature. Admittedly, because it made me look less like my dad.

  Usually when people found out who he was, they assumed I’d want to be associated with him. He was rich and famous, after all.

  But those were the people who’d never met him.

  I took a couple more swigs of my drink, hiked up my cleavage with the stiff demi cups of the babydoll, and touched up my makeup, letting the liquor and the bizarre, hyper-reality of this moment soak in.

  I, Maggie Omura, was about to fuck a rock star.

  What would you think of that one, Mom?

  She’d laugh, I figured. Hard. Since this went completely against The Rule.

  I’d made up The Rule myself when I first came to work for Dirty six years ago. Actually, I’d made up many rules. What the hell did I know? I was a nerdy, idealistic nineteen-year-old with stars in my eyes. But as I’d discovered, in the total shit storm of rock ’n’ roll chaos that soon became my life, there was only one rule that warranted keeping.

  No Screwing The Talent.

  When I first met Dirty, their debut album had just incinerated the charts and they were coming off their first world tour. I was naive and inexperienced, but I had a head for business and all I’d ever wanted to do was work in the music industry. I managed to get an incredibly tenuous foot in the door merely because of a lucky-horseshoe-up-the-ass situation—I happened to have a class with Dirty guitarist Jesse Mayes’s sister in college, and she and I had become friends. I also had the hugest, stupidest puppy-love crush on Zane Traynor, blond bad boy and lunatic lead singer… and when he set his ice-blue eyes on me, I knew the only way I wouldn’t fuck everything up was by eating, sleeping and breathing The Rule.

  Over the years, The Rule had kept me out of trouble. A lot of trouble. However. Sometimes rules became outdated. Needed a little revising. Or strategic bending.

  And since I wasn’t about to screw a member of the band I worked for, it didn’t totally count, right?

  “Maggie?” Coop tapped on the frosted-glass bathroom door, amusement and a touch of concern in his voice. “You ever coming out?” He also sounded horny, his voice low and a little huskier than usual.

  Perfect.

  I stood back to check my work and felt ridiculously sexy for about five seconds, knowing he was gonna love it… until it really dawned on me that I’d bought the lingerie for that reason. Because Andy Cooper had mentioned, months ago, that I looked hot in this color. Which meant… yeah. I was putting way too much effort into this.

  Kinda like I did with every-fucking-thing.

  But this was weird, right? Crossing a line?

  Coop was just a hookup, and no sane woman bought hot, expensive lingerie just for some guy she was hooking up with unless she was looking to turn that hookup sex into hang-out-afterward-and-do-it-again sex, followed by wake-up-together-the-next-morning-and-do-it-yet-again sex.

  And I definitely wasn’t looking for that.

  Was I?

  I smoothed my long, dark hair and chewed my lip at my reflection. Hot. But yeah, weird.

  “Maggie?” Coop knocked again.

  I pounded back the rest of my drink. “Coming.”

  Lingerie or no? I could take it off, walk out there naked.

  Veto.

  Put the jeans back on?

  I made an executive decision to go with the lingerie, took a deep breath, and opened the door. Despite the fact that I didn’t feel quite as special about Coop as the lingeri
e implied, my night had just gone to hell and I really needed this distraction.

  I just hoped he had time to help me blow off all this steam; it could take a while.

  Coop stood back, his eyebrows raising as he drank me in. He wore a vintage Sex Pistols T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, showing off his incredibly decent arms, with gray jeans and a studded belt. His blond hair was tousled to shit, like it always was, and an impish smile broke out on his face. “Whoa. Maggie… shit.” He scrubbed his hand through his hair. “I feel kinda underdressed.”

  “Then let’s get you undressed,” I said, letting my inner slut take over as I grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him over to the giant bed. I’d claimed the smaller of the two bedrooms in the penthouse suite, yet the bed was king size, which made me wonder what was in the master bedroom. Harem size?