Bad Company (2 page)

He reached down now, and started to pull at her jeans, releasing the button and the zipper, then pulling at the waistband. She pushed up and he was able to yank them down and clear of her hips, but there wasn’t room to go any further.

He pulled away so that he was back in his own seat, and immediately she pulled her jeans down across her thighs and lower until she could kick her boots off and tug her jeans clear. As she did so, she watched him sitting there, twisted to face her. He’d pulled his pants lower, and the waistband of his shorts so that they were across his thighs.

His manhood was so long and hard! All the time he watched her, one hand gripped that shaft, pulling rhythmically up and down. Now, as she settled back in her reclined seat so she could hook her thumbs into the elastic and pull her panties down, she saw a bead of clear juice emerge and then spread itself over the swollen head of his dick.

Naked, save for that flimsy camisole, she ran a finger down the narrow strip of short hair at her crotch, savoring the scrape of her long, crimson fingernail. When she reached the soft hood of skin over her clit she pressed more firmly, sliding softness against that hard nub.

Pushing lower, pressing, her middle finger slipped into wetness and she slid it deep before withdrawing, reaching across and trailing that wetness along the underside of his shaft. When she reached the sensitive ridge of skin just below the head she started to flick, her touch lubricated by their mixed juices.

That look in his eye. The teasing glint.

Sometimes that look became something else.

Like now.

Eyes fixed on her, intense, possessing, he moved so that he was over her. His knees rested on the front edge of her seat, one of her legs jammed painfully against the door and the other raised, her foot on the dash. One hand at her hip, the other curled behind her, controlling her, he lowered himself further.

Peering down her body, she saw him poised: the dark fuzz of body hair, the ripple of his abs and – oh my God! – the length of his hard shaft hanging down, its head so close to her belly. Seen from this angle it was, quite simply, magnificent. She had never seen anything like it: the length and girth, yes, but more than that it had the perfect proportions, the way the skin stretched smoothly across it, that perfect bell-shaped head, the purple skin of the glans flawless and glistening with his juices...

Shifting position lower, that swollen head came to nuzzle against her softness, and when he pushed down, the hard shaft lay between her labia, pressing rigid against her.

Another slight shift, and the head was pushing at her opening and she felt that delicious sensation of pressure, of being opened up, and then an almost bursting sensation as he slid inside. Just the head at first, held there motionless so that she could feel its every twitch and pulse.

Then, so slowly, the weight of his body bore down and he started to slide deeper, and it was like a plow breaking that first, fresh furrow, parting her, splitting her, breaking her open, as if for the very first time.

She’d stopped breathing.

She had to start again. Had to suck in some air. Had to remember
how
to God-damned breathe!

At last, she managed to draw some air into her lungs and it was more of a groan than an inhalation, an animal thing.

How did he
do
that? How did he make her feel like a damned virgin again?

He kept pushing deeper until she thought she could take no more, that he really would split her, and then he pushed some more until finally his balls were pressed against her ass and the hardness of his pubic bone started to grind against her clit.

Those eyes: still so intense, fixing her in place.

She reached up, and curled her arms around his torso, drawing him in close. Her head tucked into the space between neck and shoulder, she breathed him in. Raw man scent filled her lungs.

It felt like a moment you could lose yourself in forever.

He gave a slight twist of the hips and the pressure of his pubic bone was magnified. She groaned again, the sound muffled by his skin. Adjusting her position, she wrapped both legs around his waist, holding him deep.

When he drew back he lifted her body clear of the seat, she was clinging to him so tight, and then, just as she started to slide free he slammed home, hard, driving her into the soft luxury of the seat. As he pulled back, she clung to him again and it was like she was a vine coiled around him, her honeysuckle grip so tight that she rose and fell with every thrust of his body.

The sensations were hard to separate, all running together. The muscled hardness of his torso. The male scent filling her lungs. The physical lifting and slamming back down and the sliding of his shaft deep inside her. It wasn’t long at all before those merged sensations crescendoed, building relentlessly into a climax that swept through her entire body, a surging of tightening muscles, nerves singing, rushing, and then... did she actually just black out there? A split-second darkening of the senses as everything hit overload, and then an easing, a sense of it all receding so that she clung to her lover even more tightly, drawing every last sensation from her climax.

And then: awareness that he wasn’t done, that he was still thrusting.

Now she didn’t cling so tight, and her body resisted his movement as he thrust and withdrew. Now all sensation centered on where their bodies joined: the squashing of her breasts against him, his arms wrapped around her and the driving entry and withdrawal of his hard shaft.

That shift in how they moved was all he needed and now he slammed deep and held and she felt wet heat exploding inside her as he threw his head back and cried out.

Another pulsing as, already, he started to soften, and then she was holding him deep once again, with her arms and her legs wrapped around him.

S
he lost track of how long they slumped like that in each other’s arms. The reverie was finally broken by the sudden roar of a passing logger’s truck and the blast of a horn.

Still atop her, Denny jumped and twisted, and she was reminded of the night before and how his confident charm could so easily be taken over by moments of alarm. It was only later that she’d discovered he had good reason to be wary...

He glanced back down, and that smile broke across his features. They laughed. The trucker, driving past... “Do you think he could see much?” she asked, and they laughed again.

Denny raised himself and pulled away and Cassie felt that sudden withdrawing sensation as his soft member slipped out of her. Back in the driver’s seat, she watched as he raised his hips and pulled his shorts and pants back up. “We’re going to have to find you some new clothes,” she said, as he fastened his belt. “There’s a time and a place for black tie, and I hate to break it to you, but driving a logger’s road through north Maine isn’t it.”

She found her jeans and started to wriggle into them but the space was too cramped. She opened her door and stepped out. Instantly the cold air bit, and all of a sudden it was as if reality had just slapped her hard.

They needed more than just a new pair of pants for Denny. Neither of them had anything. After the encounter with the two hitmen back at Pappy’s she and Denny had just taken the Lexus and fled. There had been no time to pack. They hadn’t even gone back to her cabin in case more surprises lay in wait for them there. Hell, they hadn’t even had time to check out this car they’d stolen. For all she knew there might be a body in the trunk.

She climbed back in. It was no good thinking like that...

“So what are we doing?” she asked. “What’s the plan?”

Back when they’d taken the car they’d just chosen their direction on the toss of a coin. At that point they hadn’t had time to let the enormity of their situation sink in. But now she was starting to think things through...

Denny was staring ahead, up the empty highway. She studied his square-jawed features and wondered what was happening to her. For all that she’d been mad he’d treated her as a one-night stand, in truth it hadn’t been anything more than that to her either. A natural part of a wild, stormy evening.

Hard to think Denny McGowan had only walked into her life the previous evening. So much had happened since then! A stormy night at Pappy’s Lobster Bar, the place half-deserted, and – out of nowhere – in walks a complete stranger in a tux soaked through from the rain. He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a fat roll of hundred dollar bills and asks if there’s anywhere round here a guy can get a drink.

A mad evening, an intense night... that he was gone the next morning had hardly been a surprise. That he’d come back at all was surely the real surprise of it all.

But now she needed to get her thoughts straight. They needed a plan. And the fact that she was thinking like this, more than anything, marked a transition. A plan implies something longer-term. It says that somewhere in her head or in her heart a part of her had already decided she would see this thing through, whatever it was. This thing between her and Denny MacGowan.

“I need to think,” he said, at last. “I need to work out what to do.”

“Might help if you at least told me what we’re running from.” They’d left the two gangsters tied up at the bar with the cops on their way. There probably wasn’t much the cops could do, except pin a bit of minor property damage on the two, but it bought some time, at least.

“I will,” said Denny. “I’ll tell you all about it once I’ve got it straight in my head, okay?”

She wasn’t sure it
was
okay. Sounded more than a bit like he didn’t trust her, like he was taking his time to work out just how much to share.

She studied him carefully, and finally he turned and she could see just how scared he was. Maybe she was being unfair. Maybe he was just out of his depth.

“We keep heading north,” she said, moving on. “We end up in Canada. Now I know we’re pretty desperate but...
Canada
?”

He shrugged, then said, “Turn east and we’ve got maybe two hundred miles before we hit the Bay of Fundy and it’s pretty much all trees and lakes until then. We could find somewhere to hole up and lose ourselves for a time.”

“You don’t strike me as a cabin in the woods kind of a guy. And winter’s closing in. Gonna be colder ’n a witch’s tit out that way. You really know what you’re suggesting?”

That lost look again. City boy out in the wilds. Just how desperate was he?

“Why are they after you, Denny?”

“Like I said. There was a girl, and my best friend. I got involved with some low-lifes and ended up owing them far too much money that I didn’t have any more. All in all I lost close to ten million dollars.”

Numbers like that... It was like he was talking about the incomes of small nations, not bad gambling or business debts.

“That’d have been bad enough, but then, just to complicate things a little further, it wasn’t exactly
my
money to lose...”

§

“My turn,” he said, as they resumed their drive, heading north, getting close to Bangor now. That would be where they needed to make some decisions, as the roads came together offering them the choice of east, west or carry on to the north. “You’ve been asking all the questions up to now, so I reckon it must be my turn.”

That was hardly fair. Yes, she’d been asking questions but how many had he actually answered? She let it pass, and waited.

“A guy. You said there was a guy involved, sometime back in your sad story of bad luck and worse decisions. See? I pay attention. So what happened?”

All that seemed a long time ago now. “Seems I have a weakness for the bad boy,” she said, and he at least had the decency to smile at that. “They say a girl’s always drawn to men like her father, and I guess there’s some truth in that. My pa was a bad lot, and now that you’re making me think about it, I can’t say there’s been a man in my life who’s been much better.”

“Until now?”

“I’m reserving judgment.”

“This guy?”

“He discovered I’m no pushover,” she told him. “He discovered I don’t take kindly to being lied to, or to a guy who tries to throw his weight around. When I met him he had a BMW with a beautiful paint job. When I left him, that beast wasn’t so pretty any more. Cheating bastard leaves a can of paint-stripper lying around, what does he expect? And by ‘lying around’ I mean in the store and I had to pay for it, but the principle’s the same. Time I moved on after that. I got tired of looking over my shoulder.”

“That how you ended up in Maine?”

She shrugged. “I moved around. Summer jobs and then scraping through the winter. There’s a whole series of bad luck stories you don’t want to hear. It even bores me, I tell you.”

“I’m captivated.”

His eyes were still fixed on the road ahead. There were buildings either side of the road now, on the approach to Bangor: warehouses and lumber yards.

She couldn’t work him out. Couldn’t decide if he really was besotted with her –
I’m captivated
– or if he was just playing her along with that smooth talk that came so easily to him.

Then... one of those turns of conversation, a sudden connection, that changed everything.

“Cassandra
Dane
...?” Now he turned to look at her. “Daughter of Billy Ray Dane? Hell, that makes some sense now. No wonder you’re out here in the middle of nowhere.”

“You recognized my name?”

He nodded.

“No wonder you’ve got so much fight in you.”

§

Billy Ray Dane had been all over the news eight years ago, his trial on the front pages for weeks on end, or so it had seemed at the time. Big shot Wall Street trader with a tendency to play fast and loose with the rules and then when things heated up he’d ended up involved with all kinds of bad money and worse company.

“I didn’t get my fight from Billy,” she said, her voice tight and controlled. She didn’t get
anything
from Billy, or at least nothing she’d want to keep. “I got it despite him.” All the coverage, the TV profiles of the corrupt financial wizard living the life of the super-rich in his Long Island mansion... it was another world.