by Bethany Kane
She was a little horrified when a thought struck her and laughter popped out of her throat. Rill glanced over at her sharply.
“What?”
“I was just thinking . . . she would have hated this place. Eden. Remember how you were filming in that pitiful little town outside of Dublin and she and I flew over to visit? She took one look at the accommodations and insisted we stay in the city and drive to the town every day.”
Rill’s clamped jaw made Katie sure she’d gone too far once again, but the pressure in her chest wouldn’t allow her to stop. She was compelled . . . or hysterical, one of the two.
“I’m not saying she was a snob,” she added nervously. She screwed up her face and tried to hold Eden’s image in her mind’s eye, the glossy brown hair, the kind gray eyes, her elegant, expressive hands. They’d been roommates in college for two years, and Katie had always been envious of Eden’s hands and her long, graceful limbs.
“She actually wasn’t snobbish at all,” she continued, “but I always pictured Eden in refined places, like libraries or conservatories or art galleries. The first time I visited her at her job at the Hammer, I thought . . . perfect. She belongs here,” Katie recalled, referring to Eden’s position as a collector at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art. “She was like a piece of fine china. I could never really picture her in the country.”
“She was a lady.”
Katie started at the abruptness of Rill’s gruff voice.
“Yeah,” she whispered. Both of them sat for a moment in silence. “What was the name of that godforsaken town where you filmed in Ireland?”
“Malacnoic. She really didn’t belong there. She was right to want to stay in Dublin.”
“I sort of liked it.”
She chuckled when he glanced over at her. The dim light from the kitchen allowed her to see his wry expression.
“I did. It had its charm.”
“Malacnoic is about as charming as a clatty old whore. I should know. I was born there.”
“What?” Katie asked, sure she’d misunderstood him.
“You heard me,” he said evenly, his face once again turned in profile.
“But . . . you never mentioned it to us. Did you ever tell Eden? Or Everett?”
“Everett knew. Couldn’t keep it from him. Most of the crew and cast ended up at the pub with me after we were done filming for the day. I paid most everyone in Malacnoic—including five-yearolds—a small fortune to keep it quiet that I grew up in that town. Didn’t want the press to get ahold of it. What?” he asked when she made a miffed sound.
“You might have told Eden and me. It would have made the visit more interesting. Don’t even tell me your family was nearby that whole time.”
“My mother lives in the country, or at least she did at the time. My uncles were in prison while I was filming. They’re usually on a one-year-in, three-month-out cycle,” he said darkly.
Katie frowned. She’d never before heard him make mention of his uncles, and he was always closed-mouthed about his mother. He had once told her he’d never known his father. “Still . . . you’d think you’d have taken your wife to meet your mom.”
He shrugged. “Like you said, Eden was like a piece of fine china. I didn’t want to dirty her by exposing her to my ma.”
Katie just stared at his large shadow for a moment, her mouth hanging open. There was so much she didn’t know about Rill Pierce, so much nobody knew. Sometimes it seemed he’d just sprung into existence when he’d arrived in Los Angeles. His brilliance as a writer and director was widely acclaimed, his intelligence nearly palpable when one looked into his incising gaze. Before Eden had died, he’d always been the first to laugh, the quickest to get off a witty barb aimed at one of his friends. He’d been the epitome of insouciant male charm, a bad boy with a heart of gold, a lighthearted jester always ready to use his films to poke fun at people who took themselves too seriously.
And all along, this darkness, this turmoil, had existed at his core. Of course it had. Katie had known it all along, this hidden side of Rill. Deep inside, she’d sensed it, even if it hadn’t become completely obvious to her until that moment. It wasn’t just Eden’s death that had turned him into this tortured soul. Sadness and fury had been a shadow on Rill’s face since the first time she’d set eyes on him.
It was the contrast of that shadow with his heart-stopping smile that made Rill so attractive. The sparkle in his blue eyes was so magnetic because she’d sensed a different gaze, a dark, lost one just beneath it.
She sighed heavily. For some reason, the pressure in her chest eased some. She joined Rill in studying the thick blackness of night.
“How’s Everett?” he asked after a moment.
“He’s fine. He’s furious you’re allowing Kevin Battershea to direct Ellen Drake.”
“I didn’t pick Battershea. The studio did.”
“The only reason they were looking for another director was because you refused to direct your own screenplay. You and Everett can’t stand Kevin Battershea. You always say his films are like shite dipped in syrup,” Katie said, imitating Rill’s accent.
“I told Everett I wouldn’t be offended if he took the part. He shouldn’t have turned it down. He loved that part,” Rill said, his flat tone nearly silencing his lyrical accent.
“He doesn’t want to work with Kevin Battershea. He doesn’t want to be there seeing him butcher your film firsthand,” Katie exclaimed heatedly. It irked her—alarmed her—to see Rill so disengaged from a topic that used to consume him.
“I’m staying,” she said suddenly.
“I don’t want you here, Katie.”
“You don’t want sobriety, either. You want to throw a brilliant career to the dogs. You want to chuck your whole damn life away. Call me an idiot, but I’ll trust my judgment over yours at the moment.”
It gave her a strange sort of satisfaction when she saw his expression tighten with anger. Anything was better than that eerie, flat detachment.
“And I suppose you’re the goddess of wisdom, leaving your job and driving across the country to save a drunkard. No offense, Katie, but I’d hardly cast you as a Florence Nightingale.”
She rolled her eyes. “As if you’d do a film about Florence Nightingale.”
“T’at isn’t the point,” he spat. “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. I’m not the man you used to know. I’ll toss you out on your ass if you try and stay.”
“I’ll come back.”
“That’d be when the real trouble starts, then.”
She started at the impact of his low growl in the darkness, then immediately hoped he hadn’t seen her trepidation. She stood and straightened her backbone.
“I’ll take my chances. No one has ever said I was made of fine china.” In the corner of her vision, she saw his head whip around at her words.
Katie walked into the house, leaving Rill to stew in his darkness.
Five
He wanted to bring himself off in the shower. The images that kept rising in his mind in graphic detail, however, were the same images that he’d forbidden himself to associate with his aching cock.
It was three o’clock in the morning three nights after Katie had arrived. Rill hadn’t touched whiskey in nearly seventy-two hours, a rare occurrence. His temporary abstinence had nothing to do with Katie Hughes sleeping upstairs.
Or maybe it did. He was too restless, too grouchy and bitter to settle down and get comfortable in the numbness of a good shit-facing.
His hand seemed to have a mind of its own, joining in a conspiracy with his prick against his brain. He found himself standing in the spray of warm water and running his hand along the engorged shaft, rubbing his thumb over the sweet spot on the underside just below the head with increasing speed. When he closed his eyes, the image popped up as clear and close as if he sat in his private viewing room in Los Angeles: the wet, translucent material of cotton sticking to Katie’s skin, the round globes of her breasts heaving u
p and down as she gasped for air . . . the expression in her wide green eyes.
She’d been as aroused as he’d been. The knowledge had shot through him like a plunging lance as he’d stood by the side of Ka-tie’s bed. But there’d been a hint of anxiety there, too.
And damn it if his reprobate genes weren’t finally expressing themselves full blast, but that combination of raw heat spiced with a tad of wariness had been haunting him . . . plaguing him.
He could perfectly picture himself yanking off those tight little shorts and burying his face between Katie’s thighs. The level of tension in her body was such that she’d vibrate like a tautly drawn string beneath his strumming tongue. She’d taste like honey and musk, like sex distilled. He’d coat his tongue and throat in her essence and let the wild riot take over his brain and body.
When he held her down and worked his cock into that tight little pussy, it’d be like diving into a vast orgy of need. Katie wasn’t the type of woman you could take in half measure. One taste of her, and he’d have to consume her completely. Frequently. He’d make her ache, but he’d take her again and again anyway, his cock demanding he find surcease in her body . . . anywhere.
Anyhow.
His rapidly moving arm slowed. He opened his heavy eyelids and water droplets shot into his eyes. The realization that he’d been picturing sticking his cock into Katie’s ass—Katie Hughes—made him let go of his erection as though it’d burned him. The heavy head dropped, the shaft extending at a downward angle. His balls pinched, needing to be emptied.
Requiring it.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered under his breath, cowed by shame. His affinity for sexual fantasy hadn’t been this vivid since adolescence.
He viciously twisted the shower knob.
The cold water succeeded in diminishing his erection minimally, but damn it all if it wasn’t a monster again by the time he pulled on a pair of clean boxer briefs. He avoided looking at his reflection in the mirror. Katie had cleaned it, just like she’d cleaned everything else in this bloody house.
Rill had much preferred not being able to see himself so clearly.
Fuck, he thought as an almost untenable wave of frustration and self-hatred rose up in him. It stunned him to know that his sexual needs hadn’t really been snuffed out by grief and whiskey. Apparently the only thing that had spared him was his selfenforced isolation from females. Sure, he’d occasionally run into an attractive woman in the past year and a half. He’d more than half considered taking up Sherona Legion on the subtle invitations she made with her soft, inviting touches and promising glances.
But Rill had always kept a distance from Sherona, even though he was probably closer to her than any other citizen in Vulture’s Canyon. She was undemanding, warm . . . a good listener. Not that Rill ever said much. He’d spent his share of nights down at the diner, the only other occupant besides Sherona. She didn’t seem to mind his morose silence, just kept the hot coffee coming.
Now, in hindsight, he wondered if he’d been a fool not to let off some steam with Sherona. If he had, he might not have become so ludicrously horny at the sight of an old friend.
It was frickin’ pitiful.
His hand had sufficed for his sexual urges for the last year and a half. No . . . Longer than that, he reminded himself grimly. Depression and a raging libido didn’t tend to go hand in hand.
He’d bought two bottles of Jameson earlier. They were still in the trunk of his car, sorely tempting his pornographic brain and temper-tantrum-throwing cock. For a split second, the image of filling up the bathroom sink with whiskey and sticking his prick straight into it flashed in Rill’s mind’s eye.
He laughed under his breath. Made sense, in a bizarre way. He wanted his damn cock to shut up and give him some rest. But there was no way around it.
He’d have to knock out the monster by swallowing the poison.
Jaysus, he thought grimly as he stalked out of the bathroom. And Katie had crowed that she’d come there to save him.
Katie woke up in the middle of the night, freezing. She rose from bed and turned off the air-conditioning unit. The temperature must have dropped during the night. Technically, it was autumn, but summer just didn’t want to abdicate her throne this year. Maybe autumn had finally ousted her tonight, Katie thought sleepily as she felt around at the end of her bed for her robe. Her throat was dry. The water in the dormer bathroom appeared to be completely shut off. Maybe she’d hire someone from Vulture’s Canyon to come up here and make it functional again. It was going to be a pain to stumble downstairs every time she had to pee or get a drink—
“Rill? Where are you going?” she called out a few seconds later when she stepped over the threshold of the kitchen and saw him walking out of the house. He’d been so elusive for the past few days, catching sight of him suddenly took her by surprise. If he kept it up, she’d be more likely to see Sasquatch in these woods than Rill.
He paused in the process of opening the screen door. Katie’s eyes widened when she fully registered the image of him. He was wearing only a pair of boxer briefs. Smooth, naked skin gleamed with moisture. His wet hair stuck up in odd angles all around his head. His long legs were dusted with dark, crinkly hair. His skin wasn’t tanned, but Rill was black Irish, to be sure. His complexion carried the olive tone of some distant Roman or Spanish ancestor who had settled in Ireland.
Her gaze caught and remained glued on his crotch. He was turned in profile. His cock and balls were a heavy package barely constrained by white, stretchy cotton.
He just stood there, apparently as frozen to the spot as she was. It took her stunned brain several seconds to realize she’d been staring . . . and that he’d never replied. She pried her eyes off the compelling vision of his cock. His muscular abdomen was beyond flat; it was slightly concave below his ribs and powerful chest and shoulders.
“You haven’t been eating properly. . . . You’ve been starving yourself. I bought groceries today. I wish you’d let me cook for you,” she mumbled through a dry throat. She couldn’t think of what else to say, standing there in the presence of his flagrant male beauty.
Her skin prickled as he continued to pin her with his gaze, still not moving. He studied her with such intensity that Katie nervously glanced down at herself. She pulled her robe closed when she saw how exposed she was in her typical sleepwear—cotton boy short briefs and a tank top. Her nipples pinched even tighter beneath the weight of the extra layer of fabric. Perhaps her slight grimace at the sensation roused him, because he stirred.
“What I do and what I don’t do are none of your business,” he said harshly before he walked out and the screen door slammed behind him. She rushed after him.
“What . . . ? Are you truly crazy, walking out there in the middle of the night, wet and mostly naked?” she shouted through the screen. He must have gone over the edge, she thought. The temperature really had dropped overnight. Where was he going? She heard a rattle of keys and burst onto the porch.
“Rill? You’re not driving anywhere. Have you been drinking?”
“No. But I’m planning on it,” he replied, a dangerous edge to his tone.
She stuck her hand out, trying to find the stair railing. In the distance, she heard a popping sound and a noise like a rustling paper bag. She jumped when the trunk of his car slammed shut, shattering the silence of the night.
“Rill?” she asked when she saw a large shadow moving in the blackness. He came toward her—fast. She backed up the stairs anxiously, bumping into the screen door. She turned around and opened it.
“I’ll make a deal with you, Katie,” he said when he caught the closing door and followed her into the house. She noticed he carried what looked like two bottles of liquor in a paper bag in one hand. Figured.
“What?” she asked, edging backward toward the lit kitchen.
“You stay the hell out of my way and keep your mouth shut.”
She came to an abrupt stop next to the stove and eyed him disdainfully.
Well, it began that way, until she once again noticed his heavy cock straining against white cotton and followed the thin strip of dark hair that rose from beneath the low waistband of his briefs and kissed his taut belly button. The beguiling trail disappeared, but it teased Katie’s gaze upward to a powerful chest, where dark hairs were again in evidence, albeit not thickly, just above Rill’s nipple line. Katie had formerly had a preference for a hairless chest, but she decided then and there that the sight of a real man—such a flagrantly male specimen—had completely reformed her.
Well, Rill had.
She wanted to touch, to run her fingers through that crinkly hair, to make a tactile feast out of the smooth skin and hard muscle just beneath it.
When she realized she’d completely forgotten to be defiant in the midst of her drooling, she straightened and crossed her forearms beneath her breasts.
“That doesn’t sound like a ‘deal’ to me. It sounds like a proclamation. What do I get out of it?” she challenged.
He took another step toward her . . . close enough for her to see the gleam in his eyes. She didn’t look down, but she was highly aware of his cock straining between them. It was a little like trying to stand on the beach and ignore a tsunami roaring toward the shore. She resisted an almost overwhelming urge to retreat when he leaned down and his face came less than a foot from her own.
“What do you get out of it? You stay out of my fucking way, and I won’t turn you over my knee and spank your ass fierce hard.”
Her clit twanged. Air burned in her lungs until she finally released it. The roots of her hair prickled in rising fury.
“I’d just like to see you try it,” she muttered darkly.
He smiled. It hadn’t been what she’d expected him to do, but suddenly that grin was there: slashing, compelling . . .
