Addicted to You (17 page)

He was possessed. He couldn’t breathe.

A paroxysm of pleasure ripped through as he stroked his aching length, a convulsion of unbearable grief. His own hoarse shout cleaved through the thick cloak of his arousal.

Rill blinked open his eyes to the vision of his cock shooting an arc of semen onto the smooth harbor of Katie’s belly. It seemed to burn as it seethed out of his body. He’d needed to be rid of the scalding fluid. His body tightened and he ejected more . . . and more. He grunted each time he jerked his cock and more spilled onto the growing semen pool on Katie’s heaving belly.

In the last convulsions of climax, he shifted. He groaned in agony as he shot the final drops of his thunderous orgasm onto the dark gold pubic hair of Katie’s mons.

So close.

His body shuddered again, but his balls had been utterly emptied. He fell forward, catching himself with his hands next to Katie’s body, his eyes shut, struggling to regain his equilibrium. He felt a little like he’d been clocked in the head from an unsuspecting blow.

“Rill?”

Katie’s whisper penetrated his awareness. He slowly opened his eyes. He couldn’t describe the expression on her face as she looked up at him. Wary? Uncertain? Stunned?

She
must
be stunned. He’d been like a madman in those final moments, completely and utterly at the mercy of strangling lust.

He glanced down Katie’s naked body, pausing when he saw his semen wetting her abdomen and pooling in indention of her belly button. He moved quickly, hoisting his body off the bed and jerking up his underwear and pants. Even though the bathroom off the dormer wasn’t functional, there was a box of tissues on the sink counter. He returned to Katie and sat on the edge of the bed. He avoided her stare as he dried her belly and then untied her.

“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly as he released her wrists. Her arms were falling back to the bed, but they paused in midair.

“Are you?”

His gaze flickered over her face. Her springtime eyes, golden hair and vividly pink cheeks created a vibrant palette of color. He’d thought it before, and he thought it again a hundredfold seeing a postorgasmic Katie; he wished he could put her image on film.

All of it except the doubt on her face.

He placed his fingertips over his shut eyes, blocking out the image of Katie’s uncertainty. Or maybe that was his own wariness he saw reflected on her beautiful face.

“I don’t know why I want you so much,” he muttered brokenly.

In the seconds that followed, his eyes remained closed, but he sensed her rustling on the bed.

“You make it sound like a crime,” she said eventually. When he pried his eyes open, he saw that she’d pulled the comforter around her. He was glad she’d covered herself.

He hated that she had.

There was something so elementally right about Katie’s nudity. Now that he’d seen her full glory exposed, it struck him as almost a crime to hide it.

But of course he was thankful she had. She was more of a temptation than he was prepared for, broken as he was.

“It’s not a crime,” he muttered.

“It disappoints you that you want me,” she whispered. “Because I’m not Eden.”

His chin jerked around. “
No.
That’s not it.”

A prickly sort of uncomfortable silence fell between them. She’d pulled herself up into a sitting position, her legs crossed beneath the comforter. She held her blouse closed over her breasts. He realized she felt vulnerable in front of him. He wanted to comfort her, but he felt just as confused . . . just as exposed by his blind, naked need.

She inhaled shakily. Rill sensed her resolve to try to make sense of the situation, to put it into words.

“Has it been hard for you . . . when you get aroused by another woman since Eden died?”

Her matter-of-fact tone annoyed him. He didn’t want to sit here and analyze why he went crazy every time he touched her. He certainly didn’t want to discuss why he’d avoided relationships ever since Eden had died.

“No,” he replied edgily.

“Why is it so terrible to want
me
, then? Why am
I
so objectionable?”

He gave her a disbelieving glance. “How could you think I find you objectionable? You know what just happened.”

“You made love to me, and it seemed as if you liked it so much, you lost control a little bit. What’s so awful about that?”

“I wasn’t making love to you, Katie,” he snapped. He felt beleaguered and cornered. “I love you as a friend, but I wasn’t making love to you.
That’s
what’s wrong, if you’re so bent on knowing the truth of it.
Now
are you happy?”

Her face went rigid. Beneath the two spots of vivid color on her cheeks, she went pale.

“Get out of here,” she said in a low, dangerous tone.

Rill opened his mouth, wanting to take back his words. He felt as if he’d just reached across the bed and slapped her out of spite. Knowing he’d blown it, and that there was nothing else he could say or do at that moment to make Katie understand what he couldn’t comprehend himself, he stood and did precisely what she’d asked him to do.

Eleven

Katie just sat there in the bed for five minutes after Rill walked
down the stairs. She felt both overly aware of her body and distanced from it as well. It seemed that every nerve throbbed in a dull ache, as if Rill’s attack had come from pummeling fists over every square inch of skin and not from a dozen words.

Don’t be so dramatic,
she thought irritably as she tossed aside the blanket and scurried out of the bed.
He didn’t attack you.
He just . . . just . . .

Told the truth.

It was the truth that was making her feel like she’d just received a beating, but that pain was 100 percent in her head. Rill had made her scream in pleasure. If she experienced some residual psychic pain following what had happened, surely she had only herself to blame.

Rill had warned her beforehand.

She grabbed some clean clothes and opened the dormer bedroom door. She paused at the top of the stairs, straining to hear where Rill was in the house. It was quieter than a grave down there.

She quickly showered, dressed and combed her hair. Much to her relief, she didn’t catch a glimpse of Rill when she made a dash out the front door. What she needed was some speed to sort things out in her cluttered head.

The days were growing shorter, Katie realized as she pulled out of the long driveway and onto the rural route. The narrow, black road surrounded by somber, towering trees, their vibrant colors washed out by the thinning light of the sinking sun, the seamless cool-blue sky overhead—all of it suited her dark, desperate mood.

I love you as a friend, but I wasn’t making love to you.
That’s
what’s wrong

The nerve endings beneath her skin seemed to throb feverishly with a dull ache at the memory.

She switched to the “manumatic” and got the Maserati into sixth gear on the straightaway portion of the slope down the hill. She drove on the twisting country roads without conscious thought, searching for stretches of road where she could feel the engine roaring at full throttle beneath her, where she could fly, unhindered by her doubts and insecurities.

It was twilight by the time she pulled into the river road where Errol lived and then turned down the long drive that led to his shack. An older-model but well-tended Honda Civic sat in the driveway. Olive answered the door with a cheerful smile. The older woman’s kindness sent a glimmer of warmth through the numb chill that had come over Katie as she tried to evade her demons on the twisting, tree-lined roads.

She sipped chamomile tea and chatted with Olive as Errol watched an old episode of
Hogan’s Heroes
on the black-and-white television that sat on the kitchen counter. Slowly, her confidence started to seep back into her spirit.

“I was wondering,” she began slowly as Olive poured some more hot water over her tea bag, “where you and Monty live? There’s something I’d like to ask him.”

Olive’s pale blue eyes widened in mild surprise. “You want to speak to Monty?”

Katie nodded.

“Well, he’s here. He’s down on Errol’s dock, fishing,” Olive explained, waving toward the kitchen door. “He always says they bite best at nightfall.”

There was barely enough light left in the sky for Katie to locate the dock. She tiptoed on the weatherworn boards as she made her way to the still figure of the man sitting in a lawn chair at the end of the dock. She supposed the cantankerous Monty would have no problem scolding her for scaring all the fish clear to Kentucky with her city ways, so she was extra careful in her approach.

Much to her surprise, he didn’t even glance around when she eased down on the dock next to him. Katie whispered.

“I’m sorry for . . .”

“Shhhhh,” he warned softly.

Katie gave him a glance and then peered into the wide, flowing river, trying to see what Monty was studying so intently. After several seconds of silence, during which Katie was starting to get impatient, Monty finally spoke.

“He’s gone,” he growled as he began to reel in his line. “Little bastard probably nibbled away all my bait and never touched the hook.”

There was just enough light left filtering through the trees on the western horizon for Katie to see Monty had been right. His hook was bare. He cursed without heat, removed the hook and set his fishing pole aside.

“Sorry if I chased him off,” Katie mumbled.

“It’s not your fault. I know that devilfish. He’d been playing with me for fifteen minutes before you walked on the dock.”

It suddenly struck Katie that he probably didn’t know who she was. It was pretty dark out here, and he’d never fully looked at her. Besides, why would he expect
her
of all people to come sneaking up on him while he was fishing?

“It’s . . . er . . . me. Katie Hughes.”

He gave her a swift glance. “Thanks for informing me.”

“How’d you know it was me?” she asked, gleaning from the sarcastic edge to the older man’s voice he’d known who sat next to him the whole time.

“Heard that monstrosity of a car of yours roaring down the road from three miles away.”

Katie flushed. She really had been gunning it, and she was learning quickly that sound traveled eerily far through these silent hills.

“I came to see how Errol was doing.” She let her boots drop down over the side of the dock, figuring Monty wouldn’t mind since he was no longer fishing.

“What’d you come out
here
for?” Monty asked bluntly.

“To talk to you.” She hesitated. “Is Monty short for Montgomery?”

“You came out here to ask me that?” Monty growled.

“No, I just was wondering.”

“It’s short for my first, middle and last names,” he admitted brusquely after a pause. “Montrose Montague Montgomery.”

Katie glanced over at him in surprise, barely making out the outline of his prominent nose and overhanging brow in the darkness. “Your parents must have had a sense of humor.”

“My parents,” he replied briskly, “didn’t have a funny bone in either of their bodies.”

“Huh,” Katie mused.

A cricket began to squeak loudly. It sounded so close, it might have been just feet above Katie’s head. She glanced back. The thick forest of trees seemed to stare back at her like silent, dark sentinels. Katie shivered.

“I have three different men’s names—my dad’s, my grandfather’s and a great-uncle’s. My grandfather and great-uncle were decorated officers in the army,” Monty said after a pause.

“What about your dad? Was he in the army, too?”

“No.”

“Oh, I was just wondering.”

“Wondering
what
?” Monty asked. She heard puzzlement and a trace of irritation in his gruff voice, but he must have sensed there was something she wanted to ask him. Monty obviously wasn’t one for small talk.

“How someone like you ever became a social worker.”

“What do you mean,
someone like me
?”

“I don’t know,” Katie said, throwing up her hands in exasperation. “Just . . . how
did
you? What kind of a degree did you have to get?”

“I have a master’s degree in social work.”

“Oh,” Katie replied pleasantly.
Now she was getting somewhere.
She leaned back on the dock, trying to seem casual.

“What kind of schooling did
you
get?” Monty countered.

“I went to law school and then got my master’s in tax law. So . . . where’d you get your degree from?”

“What is this? The inquisition?”

“No. What’s so terrible about me asking where you got your education?”

“What are you sniffing around for?” Monty snapped.

Air popped out of her lungs. “I just asked a question. There’s no need to be rude.” When he didn’t speak for several seconds, and she sensed his frank suspicion, she sighed.

“I was thinking about going back to school. I’d like to do something where you can . . . you know. Help people.”

Then it came, the snort of derisive laughter she dreaded hearing. Well, she’d just have to get used to being ridiculed. One day, people wouldn’t laugh.