Bad Company Page 5

  She tasted blood in her mouth as their lips and teeth mashed together, and there was pain in her spine from the way she’d been thrown against the wall.

  His other hand took her wrist, pulled her arm in, found her hand and the key it was holding. Fumbling to their side, Denny somehow managed to get the key into the lock and turn it. He yanked at the door to open it and then they tumbled inside, almost losing their balance altogether and ending up in a heap on the ground.

  He caught her, the hand that had unlocked the door snaking down around her waist. Briefly, he was holding her in that classic romantic pose: tipped back onto her heels, her weight almost entirely on his arm around her waist, the hand on the small of her back, and the other hand, cupping her head.

  Then – romance be damned, this was something different – he swept her into his arms and carried her roughly across the living space of the cabin, and through an open door into the bedroom where he dropped her onto a bare mattress and started to tear at her clothes.

  Briefly, he straightened, and like the quiet before the storm there was a pause as she lay there looking up at him. Such need in his eyes! Such hunger and passion.

  Then he stepped forward, freed the button and zipper of her jeans and yanked them down. Two tugs and they were bunched around her sneakers. He started to untie her laces but she just kicked the sneakers free, toe to heel, so that he could pull her jeans away completely.

  As he reached for her panties she pushed herself up, took her jumper and pulled it over her head. Her tee-shirt followed, and she managed to undo her bra but had no time to pull it clear before he was on her.

  If there had been a moment of quiet then the storm had well and truly hit now.

  He took her by the wrists, pinning her arms up above her head. The weight of his body trapped her as his head dropped to her breasts and he nuzzled the loose bra aside. Stubble and teeth dragged across that tender flesh, finding a nipple and clamping hard so sharply that she cried out aloud once more.

  Again, it was a pain that transformed into something else. Each time he bit at her nipple a stabbing sensation went through her body, then the bite became sucking, became a swirling licking, and the sensation shifted into the kind of heat that was growing relentlessly in her belly.

  The coarse denim of his jeans was rough against her and she wrapped her legs around his waist, trying to slow him, but she was powerless in the face of his onslaught. Each thrust left her rough and battered and feeling like she was about to explode.

  He reached down with one hand, then, and undid the buttons of his jeans, then yanked his shorts down a little so that his manhood sprang out like a ravenous animal.

  With no preamble he was inside her and pushing deep in that way of his: filling her and sliding in further until she thought she could take no more and then just keeping going until, at last, she was impaled on his full length and the rough rasp of his pubic fuzz was pressing against her.

  He drew back his full length until he had almost pulled clear and then slid fully home again in a long, fast stroke of his body.

  That was all it took.

  Two hours in the car, playing and talking and bringing herself close to the edge only for him to stop her, or for her to stop herself. Two hours touching him and touching herself, telling him what it felt like for him to do this, how it felt when he filled her and they were joined and she lost all sense of anything but the growing tight heat in her belly...

  He drove deep and his pubic bone came to press hard on her clit. She pushed up to meet him, clamped her legs around his waist to hold him deep inside her, and then her whole body thrashed from side to side as orgasm took her. A tightening in her belly, a blossoming of heat and sensation and electricity. Waves of muscle-tightening coursed through her body, all focused deep in her belly – in her cunt – as it tightened and pulsed around his long hard shaft.

  It started to ebb, started to ease, and it was like that first time: had she really, briefly, blacked out just then? Her senses seeped back. The rhythmic grunting he made, the squeaking of the mattress and the iron bed-frame; the musky, sweaty, salty combined smell of them; the metal taste of blood in her mouth...

  She put a hand to the back of his head then, slowing him, pressing her lips to his cheek and then working across his rough jaw to the side of his neck. His earlobe, soft and pliable; tracing the cartilage ridges of his ear with her tongue; pressing and probing and flicking.

  Almost imperceptibly at first, he started to slow, to draw out those long thrusts until everything had transformed and now it was all about the sensations, about slowness not speed, about moving so slowly that every little gliding, sliding movement was magnified and intensified.

  When he was deep, she held him there, clamping him around the waist with her legs. She squeezed and he gasped. She clenched again and it was as if those deep muscles were milking his shaft, drawing him even deeper.

  He pulled back. First his head and then at the waist until he had almost withdrawn.

  Eye contact. So intimate! So intense!

  Those steel-gray eyes with flecks of blue and charcoal.

  The connection they made through that eye contact was unlike anything she’d ever known, a summing up of all the unspoken things that lay between them: the magnetic attraction, the empathy, the teasing humor, the sense of kindred spirits. It was a bond that felt years-old, generations-old, rather than a mere 24 hours.

  She started to swivel her hips, with only the head of his dick inside her, massaging it with her soft wetness.

  And slowly, slowly, he filled her again, that incredibly drawn-out thrust as he slid, glacier-slow, inside her, filling her. He came to press hard, his pubic bone against her clit so that every microscopic movement, every throb and pulse, resonated through that hard, deep contact.

  She squeezed those deep muscles around him, made them ripple around his shaft.

  His eyes widened. His jaw sagged just a little, his lips parting.

  She pushed up to kiss him, tongues meeting in a tender dance, and that first throb came. She squeezed again and felt a pulse deep in her belly, a wet heat, a sense of rushing, filling...

  His whole body jerked in that first pulse of orgasm, driving him against her, into her, and then he spasmed again and she felt more pulsing, throbbing deep inside her.

  Again, and it was gentler, an aftershock, and she felt that marble rod starting to soften. There was something about that change of sensation, that sudden yielding, that took her by surprise, bringing her right back to the edge again.

  Another pulse, a shift, a further softening, and she pushed against him, rolling her hips so that she ground against hard pubic bone. In response to this new sensation she felt a sudden tightening in her belly, a muscular convulsion and climax took her once again. Where her first orgasm had stolen over her entire body, this time it was focused on their wet joining, wave after wave of tightenings as she worked against him until, finally, they were both spent, clinging to each other like the survivors of a shipwreck.

  Breathing fast.

  Heart pounding.

  Unwilling to let go. Unable to let go.

  Eventually, she slumped back and he pulled away, out of her, and then rolled over to lie at her side on the bare mattress.

  “There’s bedding,” she gasped a short time later, as goose bumps started to pucker her skin. “That cupboard. Over by the door.”

  He stood, and came back moments later with a quilt to cover them as he lay back down. For some time they just lay there, tangled, their bodies fitting like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

  She thought back to that moment: the shift from wild animal passion to tender and gentle; the eye contact; the sudden sense of the bond between them.

  “How did you do that?” she said.

  He looked, an eyebrow raised.

  “That thing. That thing where suddenly you’re in my head and it’s like you always have been. Or like there’s always been a place in my head just waiting for you to fill it.
That thing.”

  “I could ask you the same thing.”

  “I don’t even know you. Except that you like soccer and old man music.”

  She didn’t know him and yet... yet she couldn’t see a future without him in it. Sure, they were all scary futures, but how was it that Denny McGowan was waiting on every single path that lay ahead of her?

  I think I’m falling.

  She didn’t say those words out loud, of course.

  Instead, she leaned over and kissed him. On the cheek. On the eyelids, forcing him to close those beautiful eyes. On the lips: tenderly, briefly, almost chastely.

  She lay back, heart pounding again.

  I think I’ve fallen.

  7

  “Marshall and Sally are an interesting couple.”

  Cassie and Denny had dozed, and woken, and in the meantime darkness had fallen. She’d take him outside soon, to share the stars. The night sky you could see from the White Mountains and coastal Maine on a clear night had been a revelation to Cassie when she’d come away from the city a few years back. The way you could see that blanket of pinpricks and then, as your eyes adjusted, there would be more, layer upon layer of them as if icing sugar had been sprinkled across the sky.

  “They were good to me.” Marshall and Sally had been like parents, truth be told. They’d been there for her from the start, no questions asked. After years of shit and worse, Marshall and Sally had been a turning point for Cassie, a sign that things could get better, could be good.

  “I don’t think they liked me.”

  “Think of it as senior prom night. They’re just being protective. Like Marshall said: you hurt me he’ll break your back, and then some.”

  “I got that.”

  “Good.”

  The bare mattress was rough on Cassie’s skin, but were they really going to move and get sheets?

  “Tell me,” said Denny. “What’s the tat?”

  He was studying her bare shoulder in the dim light that came in from the window. The tattoo covered that shoulder with bold, dark blue brushstroke script.

  “‘Don’t fuck with me’,” she said. “In Chinese. Had it done when I was fifteen. It’s what got me through. Not the tat: the words.”

  “Your mantra.”

  Was he teasing? No. He was serious, and right.

  “Sometimes you need something to keep you strong,” she said. “Like when your father’s put in jail and it just confirms what you’ve known about him all along. When your mom’s too sick to even get out of her bed and you’re the only person there for her. When you’re homeless and kicked out of school and it’s hard to imagine sinking any lower.”

  He kissed her shoulder, her tattoo.

  “It’s who you are,” he said. “I get it.”

  He kissed the tattoo again and then she turned, in his arms, and they kissed mouth to mouth.

  “We need to talk,” she said. “We’re holed up in a cabin with nowhere to go and only a roll of cash that’s getting slimmer by the hour. We’ve got the bad guys on our tail and I don’t know how we get ourselves out of this mess of yours. We need to talk, Denny, and we need a plan of action.”

  Those futures she saw lying ahead of her and Denny. She need to find at least one of them that didn’t end in violence.

  §

  He climbed from the bed and stood, a dark silhouette against the window. “This place have supplies?” he asked. “How about you rustle up some coffee while I get our things in, and then we can talk all you like. Hell, we can talk right through the night if that’s what you need.”

  She grunted agreement and watched through slit eyes while he pulled his jeans back on, then reached down to the floor for his shirt. He moved like a cat, she thought. That mix of almost overly fastidious and a smooth, sleek athleticism. Strong and precise. And God but she was wanting him again! What had he done to her to make her feel this way?

  She twisted, pulling the quilt close around her to keep out the chill air.

  Half a minute more and she’d stir, make coffee. Hell they were getting domestic in their old age!

  The cabin door opened and thunked shut, and moments later she heard one of the Lexus doors open and close.

  The cabin door opened again almost immediately. That was speedy!

  Chill evening air cut through the main part of the cabin and in through the open bedroom door. Had he really left the place open so he could go back and forth from the auto?

  She opened her eyes and he was standing in the bedroom doorway, watching her.

  He...

  She opened her eyes wider and stared.

  It wasn’t Denny!

  “Who–?”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said the stranger.

  She couldn’t make out much in the gloom. A guy. About six foot. Dark thigh-length coat hanging open over a white shirt, dark pants. A glint of glasses when he moved his head.

  “You must be Cassandra Dane,” he said, moving into the room. He walked as if he owned the place. As if he had rights over everything within.

  Just then she heard a shout from outside. Voices of at least two men. A thud. The bang of an automobile door... engine revs and the tearing sound of tires spinning in dirt and stones.

  More shouting. A gunshot.

  Cassie jumped at the sound and sat upright, clutching the quilt around herself.

  Her eyes darted between the window and the stranger and it felt as if her heart was going to explode out of her rib-cage.

  Another roar of engine revs and wheels in dirt and then nothing.

  Moments later the cabin door banged against the wall, then slammed shut. Two men walked in. She’d seen them before. The tall guy, Luis: she’d last seen him over the barrel of the Glock handgun he’d been aiming somewhere between her eyes. And the other, shorter and balder and built like a barrel of muscle, was Al, the one who’d taken the lead the last time they’d held her up. Now he came into the bedroom while his partner hung back in the doorway. He muttered something into the stranger’s ear, then backed away.

  And now the new guy, who was clearly in charge, took a few steps further into the room, so that he was standing right by the bed. He smiled at Cassie, his hands spread, looking something like a priest saying farewell to his congregation. “That was your boyfriend, Denny,” he said. His voice was cultured, almost without accent. “He’s gone. And judging by his recent record of departing the scene, I don’t think you’ll be seeing him again very soon at all.”

  That spread of the hands again. “I’m sorry,” he went on. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Brady Lowe, and I hope you’ll forgive my anger but Denny McGowan swindled me out of nearly ten million dollars recently.”

  §

  He backed away and prodded at Cassie’s discarded clothes with a toe. “You might like to get dressed before we continue this discussion,” he said.

  “Not with you watching,” she told him.

  He shrugged. “I’m sorry, but you have no choice. It would be sloppy of us to give you the privacy to find another way out, or maybe to find that handgun Denny stole from Luis this morning.” With that he stepped across and ushered Al and Luis out of the room before closing the door and leaning against it.

  Cassie stared him out, but he wasn’t going to give any ground.

  She let the quilt fall and stood, still meeting Brady’s gaze.

  The night air had a bite to it, now. Sally clearly hadn’t been heating the unoccupied cabins.

  Cassie stooped and gathered her clothes, and when she straightened Brady’s gaze was roaming all over her, like an auctioneer assessing livestock.

  “Denny always did get the girls,” said Brady. “But it was never long before they saw through him. He was like that at college and he’s like that now.”

  Cassie remembered what Denny had said about his break-up with Brady: it had been about the money, but there had been a girl, too. Was Brady hoping something similar would happen here, too? Was he hoping to win her?

/>   Or worse...

  Out here, he didn’t have to win her at all.

  Out here he could do what the Hell he wanted.

  8

  “How did you find us?”

  The question just spilled out. It was a way for her to be taking the initiative, rather than letting Brady Lowe take the lead. He’d opened the bedroom door again now and Al had joined them, a handgun hanging casually from one hand at his side.

  She took a long blink and visualized the tattoo on her shoulder.

  Don’t fuck with me.

  Eye contact again. Brady seemed amused, if anything. He seemed to be enjoying this, as if it were some kind of power kick for him.

  He reached into the pocket of his coat just then, and produced a handgun of his own, checked it, then slid it back into his pocket. All show.

  “It wasn’t hard,” said Brady, finally. “For all the bravado and bull, Denny’s an amateur. I’ve been protecting him all his adult life. I’m always the one picking up the pieces, digging him out of his latest scrape. In better times we were like brothers. In worse times... well, these are the worst times, don’t you think? So yes, Denny: he’s an amateur who doesn’t have a clue what to do when he gets in deep. And you? Cassandra Dane, only child of Billy Ray Dane. Where would you run to when the pressure was on? It wasn’t hard to work out. I’d say it would be a choice between running back to Brooklyn or holing up in the woods where you have some friends, wouldn’t you?

  “When Al and Luis followed you out of Bangor on the interstate you could have been heading back down all the way to Brooklyn, or maybe Boston to catch a flight. But when you took Route 2 you were always going to be headed here, weren’t you? You didn’t make it hard for us.”

  Cassie knew these cabins well. She’d cleaned every surface of them for two seasons, after all.

  Al and Luis had the bedroom door covered. Behind her, as she stood by the bed facing Brady, another doorway led into the small shower room. There was a window in the shower room, but only the small top panel opened: she’d have to smash the glass to escape through there. Above the shower a hatch led up into the cramped loft-space under the cabin’s sloping roof, but that was the only access – no other way out of that space once you were up there.