All or Nothing (bad boy romantic suspense)

by PJ Adams

  Now, a week on, she realized she was breathing normally again.

  Maybe it was the snow, the blank canvas it had created outside. The way it reinforced the sense of separation from events. They had supplies here; they had no need to go out and face the world for the longest time yet.

  Maybe it was the telephone conversation with her father last night.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she’d told him, again.

  “I do. You weren’t there, Cassandra. You were never there. It was just me and Brady. I went there because he owed me money. We argued. He shot me. I shot him. End of. The cops are arguing I went there looking for a fight, but my lawyers are arguing self-defense, and believe me, my lawyers are good.”

  Later, when she told Denny about the call, he’d taken her in his arms and said, “And it was, wasn’t it, babe? Self-defense.”

  She remembered that split-second. Looking up as Brady swung his gun towards her. She would never forget that moment. Never forget the recoil of the gun, and the sight of him lying there. You can’t undo things like that, you can’t undo the damage they do inside your head.

  But you can find ways to deal with it.

  “You going to come and see me?” Billy had asked. He was going to be in hospital a while yet. “I’d like that. I’d like to meet you properly, the woman you’ve become.”

  “We’ve got snow coming in tonight.”

  Silence.

  “But yes. Yes, I’ll come visit.”

  Now, she wrapped her arms around herself, shivering at the cold from the window, even as the fire roared back into life and warmed her side and back.

  She turned, and Denny was watching her, smiling.

  “Are we really going to do this thing?” she said.

  It had been Sally’s suggestion. “You know we’ve been struggling lately,” she’d said. “Things are tight and the work’s getting too much. We could use the help. And we’d like to put the place in safe hands.”

  Saco Cabins. Join up with Marshall and Sally for a few seasons to get the place back on its feet. Cassie knew the business inside out, but she had nothing to invest. Denny was no hotelier, but give him an office and an internet connection and he could concentrate on making his next fortune. He had plans, and there were people who wanted to work with him.

  It was all just starting to feel real to her now. Cassie was starting to get that buzz. There were things she could do with this place, there really were.

  “You having second thoughts?” asked Denny.

  “I never knew where I wanted to be,” she said, approaching the bed. She loved the way he watched her move. That hungry look all over his face. “I only ever knew where I didn’t want to be. Takes a bit of adjusting, I guess.”

  She kneeled on the end of the mattress, and let him feast his eyes some more.

  “You still aching?” she asked, eyebrows raised.

  She tugged at the blanket, pulling it down his body. The bruises on his chest had tinged to brown now.

  The blanket slid down across his belly, and then his erection sprang clear, coming to lie sideways, and then inch its way vertical against his abdomen.

  “You able to move yet, or are you just going to have to lie there like that?”

  She yanked the covers clear and then started to crawl up the bed, between his spread legs.

  One thigh was still badly bruised and so she skirted carefully around that area as she kissed one leg, and then the other. Soft. Delicate. A mere brush of the lips across his skin, the hairs prickling upwards at her touch.

  Up to his hip and then across to that tender spot at the side of his belly, where you only have to touch it and his whole body would spasm in response.

  Down again, her chin grinding through that coarse fuzz of hair until it came to press on his balls and now she was kissing the base of his shaft. Lips, tongue, teeth.

  She took him in her hand and he gasped. Ran a long sweep of the tongue from base to tip, soft wetness and hard stud against smooth skin. Back down, she wrapped her mouth around the base of his shaft and ground her face against him.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw his hands gripping the bedding, sheet balled up in his white-knuckled fists.

  She slid her tongue up his length until she reached the swollen head and then she wrapped her lips around him and drove her head down, hard, taking him deep and tight so that he cried out and bucked against her. Pulling up slowly, she paused when she had almost spat him out, and then she started to bob her head up and down, working his early morning hardness fast.

  He wasn’t going to be able to take much of this. She could feel the tension building in his body. She was tempted to keep going, to give him his release, but then she stopped, held him deep, allowed her throat to tighten and relax slowly around him – held him there, right at the edge.

  Slowly, his throbbing urgency eased and she pulled away, released him, started to kiss the tight ripples of his belly and work up across those bruised, battered ribs until she found the hard stub of a nipple and bit down. His shaft was lined up between her breasts now, and she arched her back and pressed so that he slid through her cleavage as she continued to work her way up his body.

  Straddling him, she held herself upright so that she could look down on him.

  So broken! But he was healing. And there was a powerful need in those eyes.

  She pressed down against him, his hardness against her, the swollen head pressing deliciously against her clit as she started to rock back and forward, working herself against him.

  He started to thrust and she put a finger to his lips. “Gentle,” she said. “Gentle.” And she rolled her hips and swept her wetness along his length until that swollen head was now pressing against her opening.

  And slowly, slowly, she bore down, felt that bursting sensation as he slipped inside, felt herself becoming impaled on him, being filled and then filled more and more as she slid back down his length.

  Holding him deep, she tipped her head back, let her hair fall, gave him something to look at, savored that deep, grinding sensation of utter fullness.

  Then his arms were around her, pulling her down, as if he’d forgotten all about his pain and injuries. Drawing her to him until their mouths met and his tongue drove deep. Those arms around her, holding her tight, one on her back and the other taking a tight hold of her ass, holding her hard against him.

  That sudden rush of sensations was more than she could take, and orgasm stole through her body like a storm, a whole body thing as every muscle tightened and intense bolts of pleasure stabbed through her. And then, just as the feelings started to ebb, everything tightened again, as another wave of climax took her.

  His body arched upwards then, both hands on her ass now, holding her tight, and now she felt a pulsing, throbbing sensation from his shaft and then wet heat exploded inside her.

  §

  She slumped, holding herself so that her weight wasn’t bearing down on his damaged ribs.

  And slowly, her breathing returned to normal and she started to become aware of their surroundings again. The room, the heat of the fire, that even light coming in from the window that you only ever get when everything outside is covered in white.

  She kissed him on the cheek, softly.

  “We really going to do this thing?” she asked.

  This thing. This life, this fresh start, all these plans. This everything.

  “We are,” he said. “We really are.”

  Afters

  Writing under other names, PJ Adams is a successful novelist, with several novels published by major publishing houses and optioned for movies. As PJ Adams, she writes in the genre closest to her heart, erotic romance – love stories with that added heat, including the international bestseller The Object of His Desire. Working as Polly J Adams, she writes best-selling erotica, relationship stories crammed full of explicit sex. Among Polly's most popular stories are the Girls’ Club series, and Wings of Desire, the story of a young woman's relat
ionship with the wealthy owner of a New England sex club.

  You can find out more about Polly and her writing on her website, on http://www.facebook.com/pollyjadamswriter and on Twitter as @PollyJAdams.

  Join the PJ Adams mailing list for all the latest news and offers.

  www.pollyjadams.com/about.php

  More from Polly J Adams

  The Object of His Desire

  When Trudy goes to her estranged brother's wedding, the last thing she expects is one of those moments: a handsome stranger, their eyes meeting across a crowded room... a tempting, but dangerous stranger. Determined to find out more, she discovers that dark secrets bind him to her brother; she also learns that he's the kind of man who gets what he wants, and what he wants right now is Trudy.

  Introducing her to the world of the super-wealthy, he showers her with designer clothes, shoes, and diamonds, whisking her off to dinner dates by private jet... what more could a girl want?

  But as she finds out more about him, Trudy begins to wonder if she can ever love a man she can never fully trust. A man involved in murder and blackmail, who may just be using her as an alibi. Should she run or let herself fall for him? And will he give her a choice?

  A passionate erotic romance, where scandals buried away in the past lead to murderous intrigue in the present, in the intensely steamy world of the super-wealthy and powerful.

  More information and purchasing links for The Object of His Desire are available from the author's website.

  Excerpt

  Even now, I’m unsure whether it was a genuine Jane Austen moment or the worst of clichés: eyes meeting across a crowded room, for heaven’s sake.

  What can I say?

  I was nervous, in a crowd of mostly strangers and distant acquaintances.

  I was feeling flustered after a difficult journey and finally arriving at this little chapel in the middle of nowhere later than I’d intended – I hate not being in control.

  I was unsettled by the rush of mixed emotions in my head. I was about to see my big brother again after far too long; despite following him across the Atlantic to England we’d drifted ever farther apart over the last couple of years.

  I was thrown by the realization that his best man was Charlie, the ex who could still wrap me around his posh little English finger after all this time.

  Under these circumstances a girl can surely be forgiven a lapse into cliché. No?

  §

  I’d driven for nearly four hours to reach this remote little Norfolk chapel. It had taken far too long to escape the tangle of London traffic, and even longer driving through the winding East Anglian lanes trying to find the place.

  Deep breath, Trudy. I was here. I’d made it on time.

  I stood outside the chapel and straightened my three-quarter length Anoushka G dress. Deep cornflower blue, with scooped neck-line and a lily fascinator pinned to my long auburn hair, even I’d admit that I felt good in my wedding outfit.

  I realized I was falling back on coping strategies I’d developed in my teens: a constant interior monologue of commentary and pep talks.

  You look good, Trude.

  That dress will make up for all sorts, and you can get away with those sucky-in Magic Knickers you bought in desperation, because you just know you’re the only one who’s ever going to see them.

  Nice shoes, by the way.

  Whatever it takes.

  I recognized a few of the faces of the guests milling around in the churchyard. They were Cambridge buddies of Ethan’s. When I’d first come over from New Haven, I’d hung out with him in his college halls for a few weeks before landing my temporary job at Ellison and Coles, a wonderfully quaint traditional publisher with offices just off Covent Garden, right in the heart of London.

  As we waited to enter the chapel, people smiled at me and nodded, but they were all in their own little groups and no one seemed particularly interested in me. I didn’t mind. I wasn’t in any mood for small talk, just yet. Instead, I checked my cell phone, only to find that there was no signal. I opened my mail just the same, and glanced through emails I’d already downloaded.

  “You’ve got signal? Or are you just bluffing so you look busy even though you’re here on your own and nobody’s talking to you?”

  I didn’t look round. I didn’t have to.

  “Bastard,” I said softly.

  “But a good-looking bastard, right? You always did say that I scrubbed up rather well.”

  I turned. Honey-blond hair, sharp blue eyes, and the way the tuxedo and neatly pressed pants hung on his lean body... I took a deep breath and tried not to find him attractive.

  Charlie didn’t look a day older than when I’d last seen him over a year before, ducking a flying ash tray as he backed out of the Islington apartment we’d shared back then.

  “Last time I saw you–”

  “You were a lousy shot. I only ducked to make you feel better about your aim. See? Even then I was looking out for you, babe.”

  “I only missed because I didn’t want blood on the carpet. It was deliberate.”

  “You preferred that dent in the door?” The ash tray had made a nasty gouge in the wood-panel door on impact. I’d never got round to fixing it: my little memento of the year with Charlie.

  “Okay, so I misjudged that one. I should have hit you with it.”

  “You look good, Trude.”

  “Too damned right I do. You think I’d come to my brother’s wedding and look like shit?”

  I was smiling by then. Our arguments went like that: they either got more and more intense or we’d end up laughing and wondering what we’d been fighting about.

  “It’s been a long time, Trude.”

  I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. He smelt of Issey Miyake and cigarettes.

  “Shouldn’t you be inside with Ethan? I assume he’s turned up?”

  “Fresh air break,” said Charlie, tapping the cigarette-box-shaped bulge in the breast pocket of his tuxedo. “You know how it is.”

  “Haven’t you given that stuff up yet?”

  “Everyone’s got their vices, Trudy. Even you.”

  I raised one eyebrow and fixed him with a hard stare until he was forced to look away. If the occasional vodka and tonic too many and a tendency to over-stretch my credit cards on Karen Millen and Jimmy Choo were vices, then yes, Charlie had a point, but he was pushing it.

  I looked around again. The chapel was set in a stand of pine trees, a short distance from a sprawling country house, all tall windows and mock classical columns. The landscape was so flat here: fields stretching away to another line of dark pine trees, and the sea beyond. I don’t think I’d ever seen a landscape so haunting, so weighted down with sadness.

  “I need a drink,” I muttered. I don’t know why I was so tense. There was no bad feeling between me and Ethan; we just hadn’t seen each other for a while. A bit of awkwardness, that was all.

  “Later, Trude. Later.”

  “So how did my brother end up getting married in a place like this? Does all this belong to her family? Is that it?”

  One further element of embarrassment was that I’d never actually met Ethan’s fiancée, Eleanor.

  I didn’t know much about her at all. Very English, was how Ethan had described her on the phone, way back when they’d just started to realize they were getting serious. An English rose, Trudy. Can you believe that? Me, with my very own English rose?

  I thought he was a bit scared then, feeling out of his depth with this girl and her landed family and their English ways.

  “Family with money,” said Charlie. “It’s all about who you know. Connections.”

  That was when it happened. My Jane Austen moment. My cliché.

  My attention was snagged by movement in the chapel doorway and I turned, thinking Ethan must be emerging and now was the time for me to go and hug him and sweep away the distance that had grown between us.

  Instead, it was a guy I’d never seen before.

/>   He was in a tux, this newcomer. He was about six foot, and his shoulders were square, almost as if he was wearing a quarterback’s shoulder pads. He was either an athlete or he spent far too much time looking after himself in the gym.

  So: first impression was okay, but nothing to write home about.

  And then... that Jane Austen moment.

  He peered around, as if lost, and then his eyes fell upon me. It was almost as if he recognized me, as if he’d been waiting all his life for me... but then realized he was mistaken, he didn’t know me at all – exactly that kind of double take.

  He looked away, and then glanced back.

  His eyes were dark, but when they settled on you it was as if you’d been fixed by a hawk. A raptor, eyeing his prey.

  I shook myself, made myself look away. I couldn’t believe I was actually blushing.

  Eyes meeting across a crowded gathering.

  It was a cliché. I was flustered by my late arrival and by the tense undercurrents of the occasion.

  That’s all it was.

  Nothing more.

  And yes, perhaps I protest too much.

  (continues...)

  More information and purchasing links for The Object of His Desire are available from the author's website.

  Four Temptations

  Four inter-locking story lines in one short novel: three women... one pivotal night... four temptations...

  1. The Tipping Point: Rebecca's husband has walked out, leaving his best friend Simon to pick up the pieces. Rebecca has never seen Simon as anything other than a friend until now; certainly not as a lover. But now the seed of possibility has been sown, should she? Shouldn't she? And can she even resist?

  2. Words of Love: Is Rebecca's friend Maggie really considering getting back together with her old flame two years after a vitriolic break-up? Does even a small part of her believe that they can make it work this time round?