Trading Down (Winner Takes All, #1) Read online

  4

  Slumped together, Cassie became aware again of just how hard and cold that stripped-wood flooring was. Aware, too, of the sounds of the storm outside: the relentless drumming of rain on the metal roof, the creaking of the cabin, the drip-dripping of the various leaks into strategically-placed buckets, the rushing, swirling sound of the wind in the pine trees.

  She shifted slightly, uncomfortable now, her lover’s body like a dead weight on top of her.

  Had he fallen asleep already? Just how long had he been awake before now?

  He grunted in response to her movement, took his weight on hands and knees, and then there was that sudden emptiness as his limp penis flopped out of her, leaving a wet trail along one thigh.

  Extricating herself, she stood, adjusting her thong just as his juices started to escape.

  She needed to freshen up.

  She’d lost track of how many bourbons they’d shared back at Lou’s, particularly once the two families from Bangor had left. She remembered the dirty look from Lou when he’d looked out from the kitchen and it was only Cassie and Denny, talking and laughing over half-empty glasses and that empty bottle of Knob Creek.

  Denny had paid with another hundred dollar bill, more than enough to set Lou’s mind at rest, if only he’d been willing to concentrate on facts and figures, and not focus his efforts on the disapproving.

  Now, kettle coming to the boil, decaff Columbian in the pot, the wind still heaving at the rickety cabin, and he finally started to stir. Anyone who could sleep more than a minute or two on that cold, hard floor must be in serious need of some sleep.

  “Coffee?” she asked. “It’s decaff. Finest kind.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’d be grand,” he said. “Another first for me.”

  “‘Another’?”

  She leaned against a wall, arms folded, and looked down at him. Almost the whole cabin was a single, open-plan room, save for one corner walled off as a bedroom, and a corner of that walled off as a shower room.

  He rolled over to a sitting position, arms hugging his knees up to his chest.

  “Lots of first for me, these last few days,” he said. “Lost close to ten million dollars. Lost my girl, and my best friend. Got involved with all kind of low-lifes and ended up owing them far too much money that I didn’t have any more. I’m really not much of a catch, right now.”

  “Any other firsts?”

  She was fishing for compliments, but he missed his cue. Instead, he said, “Leave the place I’ve lived the past ten years. End up walking the highway in a wicked bad storm, walking into places I’ve never been before, drinking drinks I’ve never drunk. And then... decaff.”

  He paused and looked around the interior of the cabin. She’d done her best with it, these past two years, but there’s a limit to what you can do with a tumble-down logger’s cabin in the ass-end of Maine, short of knocking it down and building something nice.

  His look said it all. It said too much. It said–

  “A one-night stand with a cheap waitress? That another first for you and your big-shot ways?”

  For all the storm outside, there was a greater chill indoors all of a sudden.

  “I...”

  She just looked at him. She wasn’t sure if she’d been teasing or serious, not sure of just how close to the truth she’d scratched.

  “Gimme a break, would you?” That smile, that twinkle.

  That instant reaction of realizing you’ve forgiven him just about anything and then pausing to work out if you really have, just for a smile.

  She poured the coffee into two tin mugs and took them over to the sofa. “You going to get your skinny ass off that floor before you freeze to it?” Then a dig: “This is as good as it gets out here with us Maineiacs. You’d better get used to it.”

  §

  But much as she tried to pass it off with a joke, his comments were like barbs. He’d been unguarded, briefly. He’d shown just how low he’d sunk, from what he was used to, and he’d given away how he felt about that.

  He was trading down, and while he was clearly prepared to take what he could, he didn’t like it.

  And that brought home to Cassie just how low she had sunk, too. She remembered his eyes exploring her body as they drank and flirted in the bar, his fascination with the tats on her arm, the piercings. She was his trailer-trash, literally any port in a storm.

  Another first for him.

  She didn’t like how that made her feel.

  Worse, she didn’t like that she wanted more, even so. He was her port in a storm, too. A warm, hard body to cling onto in the depth of the night, as the storm that didn’t seem to want to ever end continued to batter the cabin and the trees all around.

  They sat on the sofa and struggled to make small talk, where before at the bar it had been so easy, so fun. Maybe it was that after-sex thing, the clarity when your senses aren’t smothered by need and desire and you have to communicate in a whole different language. Better that than the realization that this was just an awkward stopping off point for both of them.

  Eventually, it was time to call it a day. It had been late when they locked up at Pappy’s and now it was close to two in the morning and the storm was still blowing.

  “You going to stay?” she asked, and it came out a bit more abruptly than she’d intended.

  He nodded. “If that’s okay? I could...” he gestured towards the sofa, suddenly the gentleman.

  She put a hand on his, where it lay on his thigh, and said, “Honey, tonight’s no kind of a night for two warm bodies to be sleeping in separate rooms.”

  §

  Undressing before him was suddenly a different thing, a self-conscious thing. He’d ripped her clothes off, he’d buried himself in her, buried his face in her. But now, tugging free the long flannelette shirt she’d pulled on, and watching him watching as she undid each button, it was something new. Like a first time.

  And that reminded her of his unguarded comments about all the firsts, and the moment was broken. She snatched at the remaining buttons, tugging them free, and then the shirt was on the floor and she was all too aware of the chill in the air.

  He was stripped to his waist now, loosening his belt.

  Such a good body. He must be a sportsman, an athlete. You don’t get a body like that through good breeding alone.

  As he shucked his pants, she removed her skirt and started to roll one hold-up down her leg.

  When he pulled his shorts down his long dick sprang free, semi-hard, belying any hint of the gentleman about him.

  “I...” He looked down, away, awkward.

  She slid the second hold-up down and kicked it free, then slipped out of her thong and rushed under the bedspread.

  He got the light and then climbed in, leaving space between them.

  How had it ended up like this? Such a horny, intense evening...

  A fold of bedding separated them.

  “Get you anything?” she asked.

  Silence. For a moment she thought he was sleeping again, but then as her sight adjusted to the dark she saw the glint of his eyes as he watched her.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I am. It’s just... I’m out of my depth. I don’t know where to turn next. Can’t keep running for ever.”

  “There really some guys after you?”

  “Yeah. Bad debts with the kind of people you don’t want to be owing money. Things have been a bit up and down lately.”

  “That roll of hundreds? Couldn’t you pay them off with that?”

  “Down payment only,” he laughed. “Pound of flesh costs much more these days.”

  She reached out, fingers sliding under the bedding and finding flesh, the flat of his belly as he lay on his side, facing her.

  Stroking his abs with the back of her knuckles, savoring the feel of hard muscles, the rasp of belly hair, the way it thickened as she stroked downwards... the way sometimes when she let her stroke linger she came up against the hard
ening base of his dick.

  “There’s a way,” she said, as she took him in her hand and felt that hardness increase. “There’s always a way.”

  Tugging at him, feeling the skin glide over that hardness, she started to work his shaft in long, slow strokes, switching her grip so that his length was up against his belly now.

  “You think?” he said, and then fell silent as on the next upward stroke she slid her thumb across the wet head of his dick.

  He rolled onto his back, and she pushed the covers down with her feet, relishing the sudden bite of cool air, and the new freedom of movement.

  She took her hand away, spat on the palm and then put it back, flat of her hand against his shaft, stroking lightly along its length.

  If this was a first, his one night with a cheap waitress, then it was going to be one Hell of a memorable first.

  She curled her fingers around him and kept stroking, the lubrication coming from a mix of her spit and his juices now.

  She licked her fingers now, and then pushed lower, cupping his balls, pushing back behind them, fingernails scraping at that tender skin, finding the parting of his ass, the dark opening. Gliding her middle fingertip around that puckered hole, she teased him, and then she found the centre, pressed, felt that sudden give as he opened up to her and her finger slid home.

  Knuckle-deep, she crooked that finger just a little, seeking out the sensitive spot where she could press on his prostate, knowing she’d found it when his body jerked, he grunted softly, and his balls retracted against the flat of her wrist.

  Pulling back until she was almost free of him, she started to thrust her finger, hitting that spot again and again.

  Another first for him?

  She didn’t know. Didn’t care any more. It was all about what she was doing, about his responses, about the effect his responses had on her as that heat sparked in her belly once more.

  She needed more than this. She needed him inside her again.

  She slipped her finger free, and he groaned, and then she was on him, straddling him, the length of his shaft against the parting of her labia, his balls against her ass.

  His hands found her breasts as she hung over him. He started to squeeze and knead, finding her nipples and pinching so hard she gasped and wanted to stop him but didn’t, couldn’t, it was too delicious a pain.

  Swiveling and rolling her hips, she drew herself along his length, taking a sharp intake of breath as she hit that bulbous end and it slid against her clit, and then she was sliding down again, down to the base of his shaft, her labia enfolding him just as her mouth had earlier.

  She had wanted him inside her again... she’d needed so much to be filled. But then the moment took over and she was sliding faster against him, as urgent and needy as he had been before.

  She lowered her head and kissed him, driving her tongue deep and that was all it took to tip her over the edge. Almost immediately, her body tensed, her belly, her pussy, taken over by that abrupt tension, and she pushed down hard on him, throbbing hard as another orgasm took her. Then, as she pushed down against him, she felt a surging sensation in his shaft, a pulsing, a big thrust of his entire body, and then hot juices filled the space between them, pumping again and again until he was spent.

  5

  When she woke up, sun was angling in through the blinds, the storm was gone and so, too, was Denny McGowan.

  She sat up, and surveyed the room.

  Her clothes were on the floor where she’d left them, but his were gone. The small towel she’d used to clean his juices from her body last night was still screwed up in the corner where she’d tossed it away. Everything else was in its place. She looked at the little table by the bed, half-expecting to see one of those hundred-dollar bills there, but there was not.

  She checked the time. It was past ten, and she should be up in Bangor by now, laying in supplies for Pappy’s. She never over-slept, but then, last night she had not gotten much sleep. She listened for sounds of the kettle coming to the boil, a clanking of cups, but no. Nothing.

  She showered, threw on some jeans and a sweater and a big warm coat and headed outside.

  No sign of him. He really had just walked on out of here, just as he’d walked into her life last night.

  §

  When she had climbed into the little Nissan and eventually fired the ignition, she half-expected to pass him on the track down to the highway, or on the highway itself.

  But no. There was no sign of him. The place was deserted save for a couple of logging trucks on the highway.

  She came to Pappy’s Lobster Bar and almost drove on past, but she really should call in to check on supplies given how distracted she’d been last night.

  There was a moment before she saw anything out of place when she started to sense that something was wrong. A moment when maybe she should have thought back to some of the things Denny had said last night, back to her first impressions that he was Trouble and she shouldn’t have anything to do with him. Then she stepped up to the entrance, looked down, and it was too late to go back.

  The glass in the lower half of the front door was broken as if it had been kicked in, shards of glass lying just inside.

  A break-in.

  She should go out back, down to Lou’s trailer. That’s what she should do. Go for help; make sure that Lou himself was at least okay, then let him deal with it.

  Not tug tentatively at the door and then step inside, avoiding the worst of the broken glass, and step right into the middle of–

  §

  The tall, broad-set dude in jeans and a leather jacket and with what looked like a Glock handgun trained steadily on her chest was the first one she saw.

  “Hey,” he said with an Italian accent. “We got company. Hey, Al, we got company, an’ she sure is a pretty one.”

  Second dude was shorter, even broader but it was still all muscle. He had a balding head and intense, staring eyes, and a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Can’t you read the signs?” said Cassie. “No smoking. Will you just put it out?”

  “And she’s funny, too,” said the big guy. “You want I should ask her some questions?”

  Shorter guy – Al – was still staring at her. “She fits the description,” he said, almost to himself. Then, to Cassie, he said, “You the one? Your name Cassandra? You find yourself a bit of fresh Boston Irish last night, did you, huh?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Cassie. “And you’re still smoking that thing.”

  Al reached for his cigarette with a flourish, took one last deep draw on it, then tossed it to the floor and ground it out with his heel. “That better?” he said, and she wasn’t at all sure that it was, the way he looked, the way his eyes wandered slowly over her body.

  “You mind we ask you a few questions?” he said.

  “Ask away, but I don’t have long.”

  “Dennis McGowan. You know the guy? About so high, dark hair, puts on a stupid Irish accent and has a thing for low-life trash with the hooker look. You know the guy I mean?”

  She shrugged. She wasn’t going to let his words get to her; there was plenty else already to be scaring the bejeezus out of her, after all.

  Al was about her height when he came to stand up close. When he put his hand to the side of her face like a lover would. When he ran the backs of his knuckles down her jaw, her neck and then across the swell of her breasts, which were not protected well enough under that old, baggy sweatshirt.

  “You do that one more time and I’ll have your balls on a plate, you hear?”

  Her voice was low and even. She might have been reading a football report out loud for Lou while he cooked. It was a normal, everyday kind of a voice to be threatening some armed hoodlum’s manhood with.

  “She has fight,” said Al, turning towards his big buddy. “I like that in a broad. I like it when it takes a two of us to hold her down, to beat that fight out of her before we get what we want. Y
ou understand that, Miss Cassandra Dane? Or you want to do this the hard way?”

  She bit down on her lower lip. Her mouth had gotten her into trouble long before now.

  “Good, good. Now, Denny McGowan. He still back up at your place? That was going to be our next port of call in any case. You see we’ve done our homework. We know all about you two cozying up last night and let me tell you one thing, a piece of friendly advice: Denny McGowan is not the kind of guy you want in your life, you hear?”

  §

  “And tell me, why would that be?”

  They turned, Al and Cassie, as one.

  Where a moment before, the big dude had been standing to one side, watching them with his gun held steady on Cassie, now he had Denny McGowan behind him, an arm so tight around his neck that his head was twisted backwards and sideways, and the hand that held his gun was trapped in the vise-like grip Cassie knew only too well from the night before.

  And then, in a single flowing movement, Denny did something with a knee or a foot that made the big man’s legs buckle, and he went down on the floor, apparently unconscious – what had Denny done to him? Clearly more than just a foot to the back of the knee – leaving Denny standing back with the big guy’s gun, now trained on Al.

  “I do hope you weren’t giving my friend here some bad advice, now, were you?”

  Al ignored the question. Instead, he said, “Don’t be an asshole, McGowan. You can’t run forever.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to run forever. Maybe I’m just picking and choosing where I turn and fight.”

  “You want to dig yourself a lonely and a deep one, just go ahead. But don’t waste me and my buddy. We’re just part of a bigger picture, Denny. All you’d get would be two bodies to dispose of and the cops on your tail, too. Now where’s the sense in that?”

  “More sense than we let you go. You want to tell Cassie what you’re planning to do to the owner of this place and his good wife once we’ve gone?”

  “The thought had never crossed my mind.”