Bad Company

PJ Adams

James Grieve Press

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Also from PJ Adams:

Trading Down (Winner Takes All 1)

When a guy in a tux walks into a bar in the middle of nowhere, dripping wet from the storm, and pulls out a sodden roll of hundred dollar bills, you just know he's going to be trouble.

Denny McGowan has lost his girl, his best friend and millions of dollars. All he has are the clothes on his back, the money in his pocket and an easy, wise-cracking charm that could melt the hardest of hearts. And two gangsters on his tail and out for revenge.

Cassandra Dane is a waitress in an out-of-town bar. Down on her luck, and on the run from a father fresh out of jail, she's probably the last girl you'd expect to hook up with someone as hot and exciting as Denny - and she knows it. But things are not always what they seem and sometimes you're just on the tail-end of a string of bad luck and worse decisions.

Trading Down
: a night of intense seduction and passion on the dangerous journey from riches to rags and maybe back again - the steamy new bad boy romance from the author of bestselling romantic thriller
The Object of His Desire
.

More information and purchasing links for
Trading Down (Winner Takes All 1)
are available from
the author's website
.

Bad Company

Afters: about the author, and hot samples from other books

R
iding the highway north in a stolen Lexus convertible being driven by a guy in a tux with Trouble written all over his gorgeous face, Cassie finally had time to catch her breath and think.

Last night, when they were still at the point where they hadn’t gone much beyond flirting and idle chat, she’d told Denny McGowan her life story in a single sentence. She told him she’d ended up as a waitress in a bar in the ass-end of Nowhere, Maine, because of a string of bad luck and worse choices. Give or take a few complications, that wasn’t really so far from the truth.

Now, she studied Denny’s features as he drove and wondered if, perhaps, she’d suddenly taken that bad luck and worse choices thing to a whole new level.

Lifting his right hand from the wheel and stretching his arm over so it draped across Cassie’s shoulders, Denny said now, “So what’re you thinking?”

She narrowed her eyes, considering her answer. Back at Pappy’s Lobster Bar this morning, it had seemed so right to jump in the car with him and head off in a direction selected by the toss of a quarter, but now... “You sure you want to know?”

He glanced across at her. He really shouldn’t be surprised at the edge in her voice. Surely he was smart enough to know that?

“I’m just beginning to wonder if I do,” he said. He tried that smile on her, as if he could make anything into a joke – the smile that cracked his face and put a sparkle in his eye.

She let him try it. She was never going to argue that Denny McGowan wasn’t easy on the eye, after all.

Then, when the smile finally faltered and he returned both hands to the wheel, she said, “Last night. This morning. Whatever... Were you really just going to walk out like that? A one-night stand with a cheap little waitress and then you just sneak away again as soon as you get the chance?” She smiled. “
That’s
what’s on my mind. You at all sorry you asked yet?”

Eyes back on the road, stretching out long and straight ahead, he stayed silent for a time. Cassie couldn’t work out if he was thinking or if she really did mean so little to him after all. It wasn’t a cheering thought, particularly when she’d thrown her life away to be here with Denny McGowan right now.

The sunlight had that flat Maine quality about it, washing color from the landscape as if it was finishing the job of last night’s storm in tearing the Fall colors from the trees. Somewhere off to the right the silvered surface of the Penobscot River appeared every so often through the trees.

Why did she feel so flat, all of a sudden? Last night with Denny... it had been maybe the best thing to happen to her in the last two years. Certainly the most breathtaking and exciting. So much had happened since then, though, not least the two gangsters who’d held Cassie at gunpoint at Pappy’s earlier this morning...

Was it delayed shock she was feeling? A sudden deflation from that rush of action and danger?

“Yeah, that’s about it,” Denny said, and for a moment Cassie forgot that she’d asked a question. “Yes, I did just walk out like that. Last night – we talked lots, but we never did cover the ground of just how much of a selfish shit I can be.”

She bristled at the glibness of his answer. That was the danger of a charm like Denny’s: a slight misjudgment and that kind of easy charm can so easily tip over into dismissiveness, as if everything could be deflected with a casual joke.

“So that’s it? I was just some kind of disposable pleasure? Single use only.”

“Maybe you were, at first,” he said carefully. “It was a wild night and I had nothing apart from the clothes I stood up in. I was on the run from bad debts and two guys with restless trigger fingers. I was a real catch, right?”

That smile, that sudden flash of promise in his eyes. He used it without thinking. Must have done so all his life, using it to charm the kindergarten teachers long before he’d ever used it to charm the girls. It really could trigger an instant response, and Cassie caught herself flashing back to the night before, to the sight of him stripped to the waist in the back-room at Pappy’s as he toweled himself down.

“So I see the lights through the storm, I get closer and can see that it’s a bar. Shelter from the storm
and
a good stiff drink? I was sold already. And then I open the door and I see
you
.”

“And you think ‘Easy one-night stand’?” She smiled and from the look on his face her quick joke was like twisting a knife in his gut. Had she misjudged him? Suddenly she was aware that he seemed to be dragging the words out of somewhere deep.

He looked down, then back up to the road ahead. “Maybe,” he said. “At first. This is the point where we get to cover that ground about what a shallow shit I can be. But can you blame me for thinking like that? It could be my last night, so I might as well spend it in Heaven.”

“Oh you’re good,” said Cassie. “And I like it. Go on.” She pushed back into her seat. It was years since she’d been in a car like this. Even longer since she’d spent time with a guy who could drag her up out of the slough of self-doubt and tell her things like spending time with her was like time in Heaven. Cheesy as that was, she could easily take some more of that, right now.

“Just for a few hours... for a night... it really was as if none of the rest of it existed, you know?” The Irish in his accent was coming through more strongly now. Was that a sign of sincerity, of the real him breaking through? Or was it all just a part of that easy charm? “I was bewitched. Beguiled. It was so easy to lose myself in you and, really, why would I not?”

She twisted in her seat so that she was facing him, watching that square jaw work as he spoke. Last night’s stubble was noticeably thicker now, and when he spoke his whole face came alive: he didn’t just speak with his mouth, he spoke with his eyes, the rise and fall of his brow, the tug and shift of the muscles in his neck, his shoulders, hands that wanted to gesture but mostly managed to stay on the wheel. Had she ever known someone as expressive as this?

“And then you came to your senses and walked out? Is that how it went?” She was teasing, but it was a tease with a barb as she dug deeper for the truth. “If it was that good, why did you walk out on me, Denny McGowan?”

A shift of his head and those steel-gray eyes fixed on her before flitting away again. “It was
because
it was that good.” He paused, then added, “I was scared.”

“Of what?”

“Of dragging you into all this. Of you ending up on the road with me in a car we’ve taken from two guys after my head. Of all that and...”

“‘And’?”

“And scared of how you made me feel from the first moment I set eyes on you.” The car was slowing now, pulling over onto the rough strip at the side of the highway, coming to a halt... and he turned his body so that he faced her now. “Scared of how that feeling just got stronger and stronger the more time I spent with you. I’d never known anything like it, and I don’t think I’m ever likely to again. It was intoxicating. It was as if I was possessed. You’re a danger to mankind, Cassandra Dane. You should be licensed, cordoned off, prohibited. Yes, I walked out, Cassie. I tried to walk away. But I couldn’t. I came back. I came back for you.”

“So is this your way of telling me this thing has become something more than just a one-night stand with a cheap waitress from a bar in the ass-end of Nowhere, Maine?”

§

Those eyes... close up, she could see flecks of sapphire and charcoal in the gray. That glint in his eye: he could switch from playful tease to breathtaking intensity in an instant. It was like a salmon fisherman playing his catch – ease you out, then draw you back in just a little bit closer every time.

That thick stubble scraped on her face, leaving a rawness that invigorated her skin. His lips were hard and his tongue relentless, exploring, pressing; teasing at the softness of her lips and then slipping through, dancing across her teeth, finding her tongue and playing that tentative courtship dance before driving deep.

He found her tongue-stud and probed at it; each time he pressed, the metal shifted, sending stabs of pleasure through her body. A stud inserted badly can deaden the nerves of the tongue but get it just right and it’s like a secret button for the senses.

It’s a thing that gives as well as receives, too.

Dragging her tongue through that stubble, up along the line of his jaw, the stud traced a hard line ahead of the softer, fleshy tip. When she reached the lobe of his ear she flicked at it, playing it with hard metal and soft, wet flesh. Flicking, stroking, teasing with the softest of touches; tracing the contours of his ear; probing and pressing... and then it was his turn to take control, his moves more assertive, more controlling.

He moved a hand to the back of her head, burying his fingers in her honey blonde hair, cupping her skull and then tugging that fistful of hair down so that her head tipped back to expose her throat. He had no metal studs, but the hardness of his teeth and his lips – now so soft in their touch! – gave him a similar medley of touch. He dragged his teeth down her neck with an almost electric scraping sensation which was only intensified by the rasp of his stubble on her sensitized skin. Tugging her hair harder, he half-pulled her back into her seat as he bore down on her.

He was so in control!

She was powerless to resist, if the thought of resistance had even entered her mind.

A leg came across, slipping between her thighs. Abruptly, the seat gave – he’d reached down and released the lever so it lurched backwards under their combined weight. That hand came up almost immediately, slipping inside her baggy old sweater so that only the flimsy cotton of her camisole was in the way.

The space was cramped, not built for two bodies like this. When was the last time she’d made out in an automobile? When she was sixteen or seventeen?

Now... that leg ground between her thighs, pressing the seam of her jeans up against her clit with a lucky precision that could not have been more exact if he’d tried. All she had to do was arch her back, push... and her whole body was alive to that delicious pressure on the most sensitive of places.

He tugged at her sweater, pulling it up so she could wriggle free. He pushed her cotton top up and then his face was buried at her cleavage, each breast cupped in a hand. A thumb started to circle her left nipple just as he pinched the right and started to roll it between thumb and forefinger.

Now her whole being was alive to his touch, to the grinding of his body against hers. She knew it would not last long if he carried on like this.

She reached down between them and put a hand flat on his belly, then started to press with a slight rolling of the wrist, knowing that this movement also tugged at his pants, pulling them tight just where there was little room to be pulled any tighter.

Using both hands now, she found the buckle of his belt and released it, then the button of his pants and the zipper where it was stretched so tight. He pulled away a little to allow her access, and she slipped her hand downwards. So hard! The fabric of his shorts was stretched tight, and she worked at the hardness within, freeing his shaft so that it came to stand upright against his belly. Now, her palm pressed against that shaft and her bare wrist was against the wet head where it emerged from his shorts.

She started to roll and press her hand, sliding her inner forearm against his wetness, and he tipped his head back and groaned.