What Maple Heard (Words Of Ruin #2)

Chapter 1

Maple

“She’s hot in bed. Nothing more than that.”

I stopped walking.

The back porch door was ajar behind me, the way it always was at these parties when the kitchen got too warm and someone propped it open with the ceramic owl Cade kept on the counter.

I had stepped outside for air, wine glass in hand, the Chestnut Ridge October dark laid out in front of me — leaves coming down in the garden below, the whole town smelling like cider and woodsmoke the way it did every fall.

I had not been expecting to hear my name. I had come out here because the party was loud and I was tired of smiling at Cade’s rich friends.

“She’s also a nice girl, Cade.”

That was Kyle.

I recognized his voice immediately. Kyle Griffin, Cade’s best friend, who had always been kind to me since the first night we met at a party at his place. He was always very warm, very welcoming, so it wasn’t a surprise he was vouching for me.

She’s also a nice girl.

Against my better judgment, I stayed where I was.

“Yeah,” Cade said. “She’s a great fuck— and she’s a great girl. Rare combo, I know.”

He laughed. Something in the laugh made me go very still, the way you go still when you step on something in the dark and aren’t sure yet what it is.

“But that isn’t enough.”

“Isn’t enough for what?” Kyle asked.

“To take her home to meet Mother.”

I looked down at my wine glass. It was very steady in my hand.

“So no wedding bells for you two? Kyle asked. “You both look so happy together. You look perfect, honestly.”

And Cade laughed again. This one was different. This one was drier.

“Come on, Kyle. You think I’d marry that kind of girl?”

That kind.

I kept looking at my wine glass.

“Girls like her don’t belong here. Mother would rip me apart. Dad would disown me. She’s good under the sheets and that’s where she belongs — until it’s time to pack up and move on.” A pause. “A Sonnenberg doesn’t marry a pole dancer.”

Both men laughed.

It was a very comfortable laugh. The laugh of two men who were not worried about being overheard. The laugh of two men for whom this was nothing — just a Friday night, just a party, just a conversation about a girl who didn’t belong there.

I waited for the laughter to stop.

“Does she know? That you’re just having fun with her?” Kyle asked.

“I don’t really care what she knows. If she’s decided in her head that we’re heading toward a proposal and a white picket fence — that’s her problem, not mine.

I’ve been nice to her. And yeah, okay, maybe a few times when she’s asked about the future I went along with whatever she wanted to hear, just so we could stop talking about it, because I hate serious conversations with her.

I hate serious conversations in general.

I just like having a good time.” Another pause.

Another easy, comfortable Cade Sonnenberg pause.

“She’s the young, sexy girlfriend every man in his late thirties fantasizes about. And I’m in my late thirties. So.”

So.

I turned around and walked back through the porch door and through the kitchen and through the living room with its seventeen types of apple cider and the caterers in their orange uniforms. I picked up my coat from the arm of Cade’s sofa where I always left it.

I found my purse, and I walked out the front door without saying goodbye to anyone.

My car was on the street. It was the only second hand 1998 model in the pool of Porches and convertibles, but it had served me well. I had driven myself tonight because River was home and I didn’t want to be stranded if he needed me. I started the car.

How stupid was I.

It was not even a question. It was just a thing I sat with on the ten-minute drive home, with the Chestnut Ridge dark outside my windows and the maple trees on either side of the road dropping their red and orange and gold into the headlights.

How genuinely, spectacularly stupid was I.

I had always stayed clear of men like Cade Sonnenberg.

I had a whole policy about it. Rich, handsome, used to getting what they wanted.

I shut myself completely to them because in my experience, men like that always wanted something, and what they wanted was usually something I had and was tired of doling out.

I had been very good at this policy for years.

And then Cade walked into my dance school on a Thursday afternoon three months ago with two left feet and a group of his friends who wanted salsa lessons as a bachelor party activity, and I stood at the front of the room and watched him try to follow the basic step and fail cheerfully and completely, and I had thought: he’s handsome.

And then I had thought: do not, Maple. No.

Except he kept coming back. Not with his friends.

Just him. Every Tuesday and Thursday, showing up for the beginner class, still failing cheerfully, starting to get better, bringing me coffee on the way in because he had noticed I always had an empty cup by the sound system by the time the second class started.

He walked me home across the covered bridge on Birch Street under the oak trees when the leaves were coming down, and then he walked all the way back to where he’d parked his car, which I found out later was a twenty-minute walk, because he didn’t want to tell me he’d parked down the block and have it seem like he’d planned to walk me home.

I had thought: no man does that to get something from you.

I had been so thoroughly, embarrassingly wrong.

I had thought I was Cinderella. I had actually thought that.

Me, Maple Brooks, who ran from her father’s house at seventeen years old with a four-year-old on her hip and sixty-two dollars in her pocket and nothing else, who danced in a Vegas stripclub for three years to keep the lights on, who saved every cent and moved them both to Chestnut Ridge and built something from scratch — I had looked at Cade Sonnenberg bringing me coffee and walking me home under the fall leaves and I had thought: finally. A prince.

Girls like her don’t belong here.

It must have taken Cade Sonnenberg a lot of effort to keep fooling me because honestly, he had genuinely made me feel like I belonged in his life.

Like when he completely ignored the obvious attention he was getting from a group of bachelorettes at the dance studio and kept his eyes focused on me, or the way he’d hold my hand tightly to ease off my nervousness at an opera he took me to a few weeks ago.

He made me feel belonged in all other ways too.

We were at his place one night to watch a movie. Cade had cooked a surprise dinner for me which he was checking on in the kitchen. I was leaning back against the pillows on his couch, with one leg on the ground and the other one stretched over the side, reading a book.

“You’re so fucking hot.” Cade was standing at the dinner table, wearing gloves which were shaped like crab claws, a casserole in his hands.

I didn’t know how long he had been standing there looking at me.

I smiled at him. “I have not been able to take my eyes off you, Maple.” he said.

“And I have not been able to stop thinking of all the things I want to do to you tonight. All the ways I want to pleasure you.”

“What kind of things?” I teased.

He kept the casserole on the dinner table, took off his ridiculous gloves, and came closer to me.

I could see the fire in his eyes as he approached me.

“Oh, Maple.” he groaned as he slipped close to me on the couch, pulling me in and tangling his hand in my hair, grabbing a handful.

A streak of pleasurable pain ran down my spine.

“I want you so badly.” he said. I felt the goosebumps on my skin hearing that.

His mouth fell to my throat and he ran his tongue up my jaw, nibbling at the ear teasingly.

He pushed the mid-length skirt I was wearing all the way up my thighs and spread them wider.

The thin fabric of the skirt was barely covering my panties, and I could feel his cock hard against my legs.

My chest was rising and falling, and my nipples were tightening against my spaghetti top.

He ran his hands slowly up and down my legs, while keeping his eyes locked on mine.

When his hands got on my thighs again, he flipped up my skirt all the way up.

He touched my panties and smiled when he felt how wet I was.

I wanted him so bad too.

“My sweet Maple. So wet and so aroused for me. Do you want me to suck you?”

I had the words in my mouth but all I could do was nod.

He bent down and pulled the thong with his tongue, twisted it around my clit and then yanked it aside.

The pleasure was getting unbearably strong, and I felt my panties get wetter.

He pulled me gently by my knees so my pussy was right in front of him.

Then he devoured me. He buried his face into my pussy, and I got wetter and more slick with each movement of his tongue.

Fuck, this man knew how to pleasure a woman.

He licked up and down my pussy lips and sucked on my skin.

My clit tightened over his tongue and my body shivered as he gently circled around my pussy with his mouth.

I grabbed his hair reflexively and moaned as he kept sucking on me, making me wetter with arousal.

His shoulders were spread wide under my thighs and the vision of him made me wanting to get fucked right then.

He must have sensed my arousal because he slowed down on the sucking, and as if on cue, gently pressed one finger into my pussy. I moaned loudly and gripped his hair tighter and started grinding down on his finger in desperate strokes. He added a second finger and gently stretched my pussy.

Oh hell.

His mouth was still fastened on my clit, and he sucked harder, and I wrapped both legs around his neck, inadvertently pushing his face deeper into my pussy.