Guilty Needs (5 page)

“Please, Colby—damn it, I can’t stand it.”

He crawled up her body, cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, deep and hard. “You’ll stand it. You’ll take it. We need it…I need it,” he growled against her mouth as he pushed her thighs wide and settled between, with his weight braced on his hands.

Tucking the broad head of his cock against the mouth of her pussy, he waited until she reached for him before he took her, before he fucked her.

Before he loved her.

Over and over, harder and harder, until she wailed out his name and raked her nails over his shoulders. When her cries faded away to soft, exhausted mewls of pleasure, he slowed…braced his weight above and stared down into her flushed face.

Waiting.

For her eyes to clear, for her breathing to calm, for her heartbeat to slow. Then, hooking his arms under hers, he cradled her head in his hands, tangling his fingers in the short, gleaming strands of her hair and tugged until she lifted her mouth to his.

Slowly, he kissed her.

And slowly, he started to move.

Deep. Hard. Slow. Even when she started to rock under him, lifting her hips to his and trying to force him deeper, take him faster, he held steady. He nibbled on her lower lip, kissed his way down sweat-slicked flesh and caught one nipple in his mouth, sucking and licking, then shifting his attention to the other breast.

The ache in his heart, in his balls expanded, spreading through his entire body, until the hunger and the need threatened to consume him. The need to come was a vicious, twisting pain, but he wouldn’t do it.

Not yet.

He couldn’t let this end…not yet.

Because once it ended, he’d wake up…and he’d be alone again…

Alone again.

Colby came awake with the sheets twisted around his legs, his hand wrapped around his dick, pumping furiously, the orgasm just two seconds away from blowing the head of his cock off.

Gritting his teeth, he arched his back, closed his eyes and tried to grab the dream, tried to lose himself in it as he stroked his cock to orgasm.

Couldn’t think—not yet. Couldn’t remember—not yet.

His heavy length jerked in his hand and he groaned as semen started to spurt from the tip, coating his hand and belly. Breathing raggedly, he stroked himself through it, until he’d emptied himself.

Then, with guilt gnawing at his gut and loneliness burning through his heart, he opened his eyes and stared sightlessly up at the ceiling.

The first thing Colby noticed was that the property had been tended to.

The second thing he noticed was that the mailbox wasn’t full to overflowing—there wasn’t even a copy of the Sunday paper from yesterday. Of course, he hadn’t paid the bill in…twelve months. They’d probably stopped delivery months ago.

Shit, for all he knew, the house had been repossessed and sold, wasn’t even his anymore. This was what happened when you just disappeared and left everything behind.

Shoving a hand through his hair, he drove up to the house and parked on the semi-circle in front. At the end of the arc, it curved off to the right, disappearing behind the house where there was a three-car garage and a pool that would most likely need a massive overhaul before it could be
used. He climbed out, leaving his bag in the car for now. Weird, he’d expected the house to have that deserted, vacant feel to it but it didn’t.

So what if the damn place got sold?
he thought, unsure if he cared or not. Part of him didn’t want to care—this house wasn’t a home anymore.

But he also wasn’t entirely sure he’d be happy if it had been repossessed. Not that he’d have a leg to stand on. It wasn’t as if he’d been keeping up on the payments. He’d spent the past year roaming around the eastern half of the country, doing his damnedest to forget anything and everything about his life—at least for a while.

He’d come back to take care of this place, get it off his hands, so it was weird to discover that he
would
mind if the place had been sold.

He hadn’t written a word, hadn’t read a book, hadn’t spoken with anybody he knew, just gone from town to town, working odd jobs here and there. He’d taken a sizable chunk out of his savings account just before he left and lived on that money until it was gone, then he’d gotten by on what he could make with the odd jobs. He’d made his way through the Carolinas, down the coast to Florida, up to Alabama, with no particular destination in mind.

The past few months, he’d worked in Mobile, doing construction for a while, then waited tables when the economic slump had hit the construction industry. The days had passed in a surreal blur.

Endless nights passed slowly, haunted by dreams that left him aching and sick with guilt. Quite a few of those nights, he ended up relying on strong, hard liquor to quiet the dreams.

He’d been functioning just fine, taking one day at a time, one drink at a time.

Then the dreams got stronger. The need for a woman’s touch had threatened to drive him crazy. But he didn’t just want
any
woman’s touch. He wanted Bree’s touch. Craved it. Needed it.

That need fueled the guilt that he lived with and one drink just wasn’t enough at night. He started needing two. Three. But the more he drank, the worse things got…because he starting hearing voices.

No. Not voices. Voice. One voice. Alyssa’s.

Brought on by guilt, grief and loneliness, no doubt. And the alcohol probably didn’t help. So eventually he had hunted down every last drop of booze he had in his apartment and dumped it down the drain, hoping the imaginary voice of his wife would go quiet.

It didn’t happen.

Hoped that maybe the dreams would fade if he just worked himself into exhaustion.

That didn’t happen either.

Still, he kept away from the alcohol, made himself get through each day as it came.

Refused to think about anything beyond what he had to do to get through the days and nights.

But a day came when he found himself looking at a calendar and it hit him.

A year.

His wife had been gone almost a year. He’d walked away from his life almost a year ago. Though he didn’t much give a damn about his pathetic, empty life, it occurred to him that he did have some loose ends to wrap up. The house, for one.

Bree was another loose end, but not one he was all too anxious to deal with. All he needed to do was tell her goodbye, tell her thank you.

Hot, sweaty dreams aside, guilt aside, she’d been there for him, for Alyssa, and it would be nice if he could tell her thanks without falling apart in front of her.

But the house first. He’d face Bree in a day or two. Maybe. If he could get his head on straight.

If the place had been sold, he doubted he’d be able to get inside. But to his surprise, his key worked. He opened the door and the silence of the place hit him square in the chest.

Quiet. Way too quiet.

There’d always been music playing or the TV on. Alyssa talking on the phone with Bree—
Shit, don’t go down that road
.

But it was too late. His eyes closed as he thought of her and a stab of guilt hit him anew. Even a year later, he could recall how he’d almost done the unforgiveable. How close he’d been to kissing her, how close he’d been to reaching out and grabbing whatever comfort she might have been willing to give him.

But it wasn’t guilt alone. It came with desire and he swore, passed a hand over his eyes, and tried to pretend he wasn’t having a flashback to
puberty when his dick got hard out of the blue and stayed that way until he locked himself in the bathroom and jacked off.

This was worse than puberty though, and the damn dreams that haunted him at night didn’t help. He needed to stop this, stop thinking about Bree like that, stop thinking about her…period. It was messed up.

Why?

The whisper slid past him, a kiss of air against his ear.

If he let himself think about it, he just might admit his wife was haunting him.

Too many dreams plagued him and very few of them made sense. Well, the ones where he got his hands on Bree—those made sense. The dreams where he stripped her long, sexy body naked, dreams where she wrapped those strong, sleek thighs around his hips and took him inside. Those made plenty of sense.

There was something exotic about Bree, but there always had been, even back in school. He hadn’t ever told Alyssa, but there had been a couple of months in high school where quite a few of his wet dreams had been centered on her best friend.

Bree was built—1940s movie-starlet built—with round, ripe breasts, hips, a tight, sweetly curved ass and a mouth that always looked just a little bit swollen, as though some guy had just kissed her. The way Colby too often dreamed of doing. She had serious gray eyes that tilted up at the corners, glossy black hair—worn short and smooth—olive-toned skin, and long legs that would wrap around a man’s waist and ride until he begged for mercy.

Back in high school, he had quietly enjoyed those dreams without ever acting on them. Then, much like now, he was pretty much an introvert and the thought of asking Bree out would have been enough to have him stammering and tripping over his tongue. So he had dreamed about her, watched her, blushed when she looked his way, and that had been it.

But then Alyssa had started flirting with
him
, teasing
him
, and he’d been lost. The dreams about Bree faded and he’d been just fine and perfectly content to have Alyssa start taking the starring role.

The problem was that the dreams had started coming back and only hours after he’d buried his wife.

That was one serious problem.

Why is it such a problem?

A cold chill rushed over him and goose bumps broke out on his arms. Going crazy. He much preferred to think he was going crazy than being haunted.

Over the past month, it had steadily gotten worse. At first it was just early in the morning or late at night when he was exhausted, but now it happened almost around the clock and it didn’t matter if he was tired or not. He heard a voice and he didn’t need some shrink to explain why the voice sounded an awful lot like Alyssa’s. He missed her and he felt guilty because maybe he didn’t miss her enough—after all, he wasn’t dreaming about
her
at night.

Blocking the voice out, ignoring the questions, he moved through the quiet house. He frowned, finding the entire place spotless. There was no
dust, no stacks of mail, nothing. He hit the kitchen for a glass of water and automatically, he stopped in front of the refrigerator and opened it. It wasn’t exactly stocked. Most of what was in there were staples—a carton of eggs, soft drinks and bottled water, a half-empty gallon jug of water.

The sight of the jug had him frowning. It was the same kind of water that Bree took with her while she worked. He glanced out the window toward the gardens.

They were pristine. Perfect. They looked better now than they had the entire time he had lived here and that was what clued him in. One look at the blooming flowers and carefully cultivated shrubs and trees, and Colby knew why the house looked so damn good. Why there wasn’t any dust, why the house was clean, the grass was cut and the mail wasn’t piled up to the ceiling and back.

Bree had been taking care of everything.

Everything—well, maybe not everything. She couldn’t be paying the bills. But he realized, less than ten minutes later, that she had been doing that too.

Not just taking care of the house, the mail, the gardens. She’d taken up accounting too. Skimming his accounts, he saw that regular mortgage and utility payments had all been set up to automatic payments and his royalty checks were being deposited into his account. Bree was the only person who could be doing it. He couldn’t think of another soul who would take care of the landscaping, the house…and his bills. Not to mention that there were only two people who had a key to his house—Bree and Callie
Watkins, the lady who came in a couple of times a month to clean. And he couldn’t quite see Callie doing all of this.

Something heavy weighed on his chest. Shit. Yet another reason to talk with her. It was the last thing he wanted to do, but he couldn’t avoid it.