All or Nothing (bad boy romantic suspense) (3 page)

He looked down, as if he was gathering himself to find the right words. Then those steel-gray eyes flashed up, instantly trapping her in his look. “I don’t know,” he said. “I hadn’t got that far. I tend to improvise and work things out as I go along. That always used to frustrate the Hell out of Brady. So no, I didn’t know what I was going to do. And after I’d set eyes on you I didn’t care any more. That moment changed everything for me.”

He stopped, and they fell into silence again.

Cassie didn’t know if she believed him and his smooth talk, but at least he did the words nicely. And maybe, if she didn’t entirely believe him now she was somewhere on the way to doing so.

“I felt like a punchbag,” she said. “Knocked every which way.”

“I’m sorry.”

She nodded, took another sip of her coffee, looked out of the window.

“I really am sorry.”

There were more automobiles parked outside, and the place was starting to fill up now. Hikers down off the mountain and needing to warm up; others taking a break before they tackled the trails.

“What’s your plan?” she asked.

“You mean the plan where I stop Brady and his armed hoodlums from trying to track me down and convince him that he doesn’t have a beef with me, and then after that I start out all over?
That
plan?”

She nodded, fighting off the smile he seemed to so easily conjure up in her.

“Well, I’m not just doing nothing out in Portsmouth,” he said. “I’ve been talking to a few people, developing some ideas. I figure if I’ve built one multi-million dollar business up out of nothing and then trashed it I should be able to do something similar again, right?”

“And, you know, the armed hoodlums intent on tracking you down?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t quite worked that one out yet,” he said. “You said I should talk to Brady, but I’ve already tried that. He’s mad at me. He isn’t ready to listen to reason, just yet. I’ll deal with him, though. We go back a long time: you don’t just forget all that, even when you end up ten million dollars in debt and you blame each other.”

She nodded and raised her cup again, but the remains of the coffee had gone cold.

When she put the cup down, her hand brushed against his... her knuckles skimming briefly against the back of his hand.

That touch was like electricity surging through her.

All those nights alone, remembering and dreaming. Longing for that contact, for the effect his touch had on her. All of that, focused in one brief touch.

She sat back, heart racing, all concentration gone, and then he reached out and put that hand on hers.

His skin was warm, smooth, his touch light but just firm enough. Sometimes the lightest of touches can pin you in place so much more surely than a tight grip, and that’s how she felt then, with his hand on hers.

“What are we going to do?”

As soon as she spoke those words aloud she understood their significance.
What are we going to do?
She was back in that place where, without quite realizing how, she couldn’t see a future without him in it.

It was exciting. She’d never been in this kind of position before. More than anything, though, it scared her. The more she got to know Denny McGowan, the more she understood that, while he might well be good at heart, a dominant streak of his personality was roguish. He twisted the truth to suit his plans. He manipulated and misled people. He had an uncanny knack of alienating dangerous people and then vanishing. Under any kind of scrutiny at all, he was not a good catch.

But when did logic ever come into this kind of thing?

That hand on hers tightened just a little, for just a moment. A touch that was probably meant to be reassuring, but instead reminded her of his strength. Of that night at the cabin when he’d picked her up off the ground, carried her inside and thrown her onto the bed. When he’d stripped her, pinned her arms above her head, forced himself between her legs. Pinning her down with his body weight, he’d driven deep inside her, pulled back, thrust once and she was
there
...

There in that place where her whole body thrashed from side to side as orgasm took her, an explosion of heat and sensation and electricity and then... that thing, that strange thing where she briefly blacked out with the intensity of it all...

“You okay?”

All that, just from his touch, from that brief squeeze.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yes, I am.”

Almost idly, his thumb was caressing her, working that hollow between the base of her thumb and the side of her hand. She’d never known that was such a tender, sensitive spot, and all of a sudden his touch felt so intimate!

“What you thinking?”

That was another thing he did: ask stupid questions like that. He’d asked that question to her at least a couple of times before and he’d never had the answer he must have been hoping for. Didn’t he know it was dangerous to ask a woman what she was thinking? Especially a woman you’ve misled and double-crossed and somehow still made fall in love with you?

Right now, though... “I’m thinking of how I feel when you’re sliding inside me. When you take it real slow.”

“Yes?” That touch, just a little firmer as his thumb stroked that tender spot.

“Somehow you hit that point where I think that’s it, I can’t take any more, and then you just keep on pushing. It’s not so much a size thing... You’re fully in, but then you just
push
, and somehow you’re pressing deeper, and you’re grinding hard against me. I’d never felt anything quite like that before. That’s what I was thinking, just then when you asked. I was thinking about that feeling. About the combination of surprise and being so full and just... Oh. My. God. That.”

“That’s good,” he said. Smiling. Clearly flattered, and – by the way he shifted in his seat – clearly turned on, too.

“So what are
you
thinking?” His turn. She’d never dared ask him what was in his head before.

“I’m thinking about how my breath just stops when you get that look in your eye,” he said. “The light catching the blue of the iris so it looks like a glinting jewel. The smile in your eyes. The intensity in your look when you’re turned on. And I’m thinking about that moment when I press just a little bit harder–” and he pressed with his thumb “–and I see your mouth open in a perfect ‘O’, and your eyes widen, and I know you’re real close to the edge.”

She reached across with her free hand and trailed a red finger-nail along the back of his hand. She could see the hairs pricking up in response to her touch.

“Touching you just like that,” she said. “Just running my fingernail across your skin.”

He shifted again.

She moistened her lips and, when he was still watching, ran the tip of her tongue across her lips again.

“That thing with your stud,” he said.

She nodded. The tongue stud. The contrast between hard metal and the soft, fleshy wetness of her tongue. Running around his ear, down his neck; dragging along the underside of his shaft until it hit that sensitive spot just below the head – first the stud, then the tip of her tongue.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked.

“I hope so.”

“You think we should get out of here?”

“I do. Only I’m not sure how easy it’ll be to stand with any decency.”

“Will-power,” she said, and stood.

He had to stand, too, and the bulge in his pants was unmistakable. He should be thankful for tight jeans, keeping things more or less in place down there.

“Let’s go,” he grunted, and they headed across to pay.

O
utside, Cassie paused on the wooden deck. Steps led down to the parking lot, but now she touched Denny on the arm to slow him down.

Deep breath. The air had such a bite to it! She’d forgotten how it got here in the winter.

“This isn’t going to be easy,” she said, and now she had his full attention. “I know we’re right in the heat of the moment here and we’re going to maybe pull over in some trees or maybe get all the way back to Saco Cabins and it’ll be all about hungry, desperate
need
, but that’s just now, you understand? That’s just something we’ve got to do. But then, after that... it’s not going to be easy, Denny. You lied to me. You left me. And I don’t know how I’m ever going to trust you even half as much as I need you. You understand that?”

He nodded.

“You’ve got to win me all over again, Denny McGowan. You think you can do that?”

He took a single step closer, reached up, put a hand to her cheek – that soft, delicate touch again!

His lips were firm, pressing, but he was holding back, bottling up that animal need that was bubbling away inside them both.

“I do,” he said. “I don’t want anything else.”

§

She climbed into the station wagon and Denny into the Lexus. They backed out of their spaces and he tucked in behind her on the highway, synchronized like geese flying in formation.

She felt good. She felt excited. And God but she felt hot!

She glanced in the rearview mirror and he was still there. She couldn’t see where his eyes were fixed, but she liked the thought that they were fixed on the back of her head while his mind was probably fixed on some other part of her body entirely.

She squeezed her thighs together, flexing the muscles, enjoying that tightening.

How had he managed to turn her on so much over
coffee?

She glanced at the mirror again and the Lexus wasn’t there.

She slammed on the brakes and came to a halt in the roadside dirt. Twisting, she looked back along the highway and saw – some distance back – a blue sedan pulled over, the Lexus behind it.

Someone had forced him off the highway!

She hit reverse and accelerated, wheels spinning. A tug of the wheel and the station wagon slewed round one-eighty until she was facing back the way she’d come.

Two guys, at the Lexus driver’s door, reaching in, hauling Denny out.

Al and Luis. It must be Brady Lowe’s two henchmen.

Had they tapped Sally’s phone? Had they been watching Cassie, confident that she’d hook up with Denny again before long?

She hit the gas again, back on the highway.

As she came close, the two men looked up, and then they bundled Denny into the back of their car.

She hadn’t thought any further than this. She’d just acted on impulse, driven back to Denny’s rescue.

But now: the blue sedan loomed close, Luis pinning Denny down in the back while Al scurried round to the driver’s seat.

Hit it full-on and what would happen? Would Denny be okay? Would
she?

She swerved at the last moment and the tail of the station wagon clipped the front wing with a sickening crunch of metal. She lost grip on the steering wheel and lurched forward, and in that instant realized she hadn’t strapped herself in. The station wagon skidded sideways and then there was a loud bang and she was knocked back in her seat as the airbag inflated.

The wind knocked out of her, she sat there, frozen and stunned. It was as if she’d forgotten how to drag air back into her lungs, as if they’d just stopped working. Her vision darkened and she thought she was going to pass out, then she gasped, sucked, and air filled her lungs.

She started to cough, the air filled with powder and a smoky smell from the airbag. She pushed the door open, pushed at the airbag so she could wriggle sideways and then she tumbled out into the dirt.

Her breath sore and ragged, she could breathe now, and she gasped and sobbed until her breathing started to calm itself.

Her mind had blanked. Everything gone apart from that desperate need for air.

Now it all came back.

On her hands and knees she peered back across the highway and the black Lexus convertible was sitting there, driver’s door half-open, engine running, empty.

There was no sign of the blue sedan. No sign of Denny, or Al and Luis.

Gone.

§

She climbed to her feet, stabbing pains in her chest and a dull ache across her face. Had the airbag broken her ribs?

She couldn’t call Marshall, or anyone else. Her cell phone was back in the cabin in Maine. She still hadn’t been back to collect her things and it hadn’t been worth getting a new one if she was going to go back there for her stuff.

She took a deep breath and held it, fighting to calm herself.

She couldn’t phone. She couldn’t just wait here and flag down traffic. People would see there had been an accident. They’d see the abandoned Lexus and work out something strange was going on. And how would she explain all this to the cops?

She would have to drive back to Saco Cabins and get Marshall and Sally to help.

And she would have to work out what in Hell’s name she was going to do next.

She looked both ways, but there was no traffic, no sign of the blue sedan.

She looked at the station wagon, where it had spun off the road. The airbag had slumped now, mostly deflated. Could she free it up enough to drive? Could you even drive an automobile after the airbag has gone off?

She swung the door shut, and crossed the highway to the abandoned Lexus.

Why did it feel wrong to be taking Denny’s car?

She swung into the driver’s seat, pulled the door shut and put it into drive, her body hurting with every movement.

§

“The station wagon... I just left it there.” Why was she so hung up on the station wagon when they’d snatched Denny? Distracting herself with details so she didn’t have to
think
...

“Forget about that,” said Sally, leaning forward to hold Cassie’s hands across the big kitchen table. “Marshall will take care of that, okay? We need to get you looked at. You got some nasty bruises on your face and I can see how much your ribs are hurting every time you try to move.”

“I’m fine. Really, I am. But they took Denny...”

“If they’d wanted to kill him,” said Marshall, standing over in the doorway, “they could have killed him right there. Clean shot into the car and a quick getaway. An’ if they was worried someone might drive by and interrupt them killin’ him, then they’d have taken him someplace quiet to do it. I hate to be so blunt, Cass, but they’s plenty of quiet places here in the National Forest. They could have taken him some place quiet real quick, so if that was their plan then there isn’t going to be much hope for him now.”