by Bethany Kane
Dangerous.
She backed away, stumbling when her hip hit the edge of the counter.
“I’m not leaving,” she whispered.
He glanced down pointedly to the bulging front of his briefs, his smile already a memory.
“Do you see that? If you stay here, you’re gonna end up under me. Is that what you want? Is that what you came here to do, Katie? Destroy our friendship?”
“No. That’s not what I set out to do. But if it comes down to a choice between our friendship or you? Like I said, I’m staying. Go ahead. Fuck me. Your friendship means shit to me if you’re dead, anyway.”
Out of the corner of her vision she saw his heavy erection lurch next to stretchy cotton. Her clit throbbed between her thighs in full sympathy, but her muscles remained as unrelenting and tense as his. He hissed under his breath, his accent too strong for her to catch the words. One thing was for sure: whatever he’d said, it’d been foul . . . and it’d been hurled at her.
She didn’t move when he stormed past her. He slammed his bedroom door so hard the wood floor rattled beneath her bare feet.
“Well, there you have it. The lines are drawn,” she said out loud to the empty kitchen.
Even though she’d sounded brave enough, it was a lie. She just stood there, waiting for her zapping nerves to quiet and the clamor of alarm and arousal to shut off in her brain. When the adrenaline of their confrontation faded, guilt started to seep into her consciousness—regret for pushing Rill when he seemed so vulnerable . . . guilt for having officially spoken the words out loud to her onetime best friend’s husband.
Go ahead. Fuck me. Your friendship means shit to me if you’re dead, anyway.
She closed her burning eyelids. I hope you can understand Eden. It’s true . . . I’m doing it for me. But I’m doing it for him, too. I can’t let him follow you. I won’t.
She waited, listening to the voices of her past, listening to her own conscience. Slowly, a sense of steadiness came over her, if not peace.
Somehow, she thought Eden would understand.
Six
Rill prowled around on the front porch, his gaze pinned to the road.
Where the hell had Katie gone?
It was going on suppertime, and he hadn’t seen her since he’d rolled out of bed at eleven this morning. He’d made a point of avoiding her since she’d arrived in Vulture’s Canyon, so it wasn’t really a surprise that she wasn’t here. Every time she’d run out for an errand in the past several days, though, she’d left him a little message on a pink sticky note: Ran down to check on Errol and pick us up some veggies or Off in search of some glass cleaner. This house would be so much brighter if there wasn’t an inch of grime on the windows.
He’d grown accustomed to those little notes when he’d reenter the house from one of his walks or when he’d venture out of his bedroom after hearing her car rev up in the front drive. He’d convinced himself that he couldn’t care less about where she was or what she was doing. The absence of a little pink note today told him differently, however.
What if his rude, surly behavior had successfully gotten rid of her?
The possibility wasn’t as gratifying as he’d imagined it would be.
He’d been so disturbed by the prospect of having finally chased her away that he’d hurried into the bathroom. He’d been relieved to see some of her toiletries arranged neatly on the counter. He’d inhaled the clean, fruity scent clinging in the air for reassurance.
The fragrance of Katie’s hair.
His brow had crinkled when he’d had that thought, because he couldn’t recall why he’d immediately recognized the scent. He hadn’t been close enough to her to breathe it as deeply as the memory that flashed at the edges of his memory. His nose had been surrounded in silken coils. . . .
He’d suddenly reverted back to wishing she’d left. She was ruining everything. He wanted his life—or lack of a life—back. Didn’t he?
Fact was, Rill couldn’t decide what it was he wanted.
He’d considered going down to the diner. Sherona would make him something tempting. Maybe if she gave him that warm, inviting smile, he wouldn’t refuse the offer this time.
Yeah . . . that was what he should do, he decided. He should drive down to the diner. This time he wouldn’t politely refuse Sherona’s overtures. Why should he? He’d let her take the edge off. There was a tight, uncomfortable pressure in his balls, a sensation that wasn’t being adequately assuaged with his own hand.
It wasn’t just his cock that was bugging him, though. He felt edgy, like he wasn’t at home in his own skin.
It was all Katie’s fault.
He wandered into the kitchen and made himself a sandwich, forgoing sex and home cooking without ever making a conscious decision to do so. Afterward, he took a long, strenuous walk. He rambled around a lot in the forest. His hikes distracted him. Navigating the sometimes-challenging paths cleared his head. The fragrance in the forest today had been rich and peaty.
When he returned, he went to the side of the house to the woodpile. A definite chill had entered the air. Fall had finally arrived. He only dimly recalled last autumn in Vulture’s Canyon. It’d been as though he’d been color-blind. Today, the vivid colors of the trees blazed against the clear, cornflower-blue sky, the vision scoring his consciousness.
He hauled a load of firewood into the house and stacked it near the fireplace. Last year, he’d rarely lit a fire. It was too difficult, and it wasn’t as if he’d been capable of enjoying lazing around by a cozy blaze.
Where the fuck was she?
He tired of pacing on the front porch, looking for her car in the drive. He entered the kitchen and pulled a pot out of the cabinet and filled it with water in preparation for making pasta.
He’d tried to call her three times over the course of the afternoon, but she apparently didn’t have her phone turned on. Either that or these hills obliterated the signal. Phone coverage around here could be spotty at times.
It would be getting dark soon. Katie may fancy herself a hotshot driver, but she’d grown up a city girl, used to wide, perfectly paved roads, multiple lanes and well-lit streets. The twists and turns on the narrow forest roads and the pitch-black hills reminded him of driving in Ireland, which could be downright perilous for those not accustomed to it.
She’d likely get herself killed playing speed racer on the forbidding, dark hills.
Thinking about car crashes made him think of Eden, of course. He thought of what Katie had said several nights ago about his wife hating Vulture’s Canyon if she ever saw it.
Katie’d been right. Eden would have hated Vulture’s Canyon. She would have been very polite to the residents, but privately found them ignorant and strange. Why in the world would they stay in a place like this? He recalled her saying something similar of the people of Malacnoic, the village where he’d been born. Her face had been shadowed with amusement, but also puzzlement. Eden couldn’t understand how people would choose to isolate themselves from culture and facilities of higher learning.
When it came to Malacnoic, Rill shared Eden’s opinion. Vulture’s Canyon wasn’t much better, but at this point in his life he’d learned to appreciate the value of a place where you could lose yourself. One couldn’t forget the past in a place like Los Angeles, where reminders and regrets were constantly leaping up to pummel you in the face.
The pasta was finished and drained. He tried to call Katie a fourth time as he paced around in the front yard. Maybe she was purposely ignoring him. Probably pissed at him for his frigid hospitality and rudeness.
Good.
He’d go inside, have a drink, eat his supper and then call Stanley and Meg Hughes. True, he didn’t particularly want to talk to Katie and Everett’s parents. He respected Stanley and Meg a lot, thought of them as family since they’d welcomed him into their home during his college years at UCLA. It’d be awkward, talking to the friendly couple after so many months of isolation.
But Stan a
nd Meg needed to know about their daughter’s latest flighty adventure. This was just another in a long series of impulsive decisions for Katie—like the time she’d threatened to drop out of college when she was a freshman to join the Peace Corps or the time she decided to completely redecorate her apartment in furniture rehabbed from trash in garbage dumps (Rill swore the glass coffee table retained a subtle odor of pickles).
Maybe he’d even drop a hint to the Hugheses that Katie wasn’t safe there with him.
That’d motivate them to call Katie and talk some sense into that stubborn brain of hers.
He built a fire and sipped at a glass of Jameson on the rocks. The drink didn’t mellow him, though, so he poured another once the logs caught flame. All the while, he had a sinking feeling the whiskey wouldn’t numb him like it had in the past.
Piss won’t do the job anymore, he thought bitterly.
It hadn’t since Katie had come to town.
He turned on the light in the pantry and just stood in there for a moment, staring at the mostly empty shelves. For a brief second, the image in front of his eyes struck him as surreal. Where the hell was he? What was he doing, standing in a musty pantry that looked as if it’d been built in the American Civil War?
It was as if some old, foreign film clip had been sutured into two sides of the movie that was his life. He stood there, his hand frozen in the motion of reaching for a jar of pasta sauce on the counter. Nausea suddenly rose in his belly; vertigo caused his vision to swim.
For a few seconds, he was terrified.
He abruptly put his hand on his cock, grimacing when he squeezed with his fingers. Perhaps it was a strange thing to do at such a disorienting, existential moment, but he was just a guy. If there was one thing a man knew was real, it was his cock. He grasped onto that thread of lust, that bright flare of the familiar.
He ripped at his button fly impatiently and struggled with his clothing. All the sharp arousal he’d experienced so unexpectedly yesterday at seeing Katie, all the need, roared through him in a potent flash. He slammed shut the pantry door and fisted his cock.
He’d thought of himself as a dead man walking. The sudden surge of sap flowing through his veins, fast and hot, both alarmed and confused him.
His head fell back and he groaned in mixed misery and pleasure as he stroked himself. He didn’t even bother to try to shove the illicit images and fantasies out of his brain this time. It was either fall into the dark abyss of meaninglessness or grab onto the one remnant of his humanity that remained intact in him.
He reveled in all that he shouldn’t, imagining what it would be like to bend Katie over at the waist and bare her ass, what it would be like to slide a finger into her warm, tight slit, to coat himself in her abundant juices . . . to push his cock into a pussy that’d squeeze every memory from his brain . . . every last drop of come from his boiling balls.
She could make him forget. He knew she could. If he got lost in Katie, the memory of how he’d disappointed Eden as a husband might fade, the sadness of losing her, even though he’d known deep down at that point their marriage was over.
Katie might be able to help ease the grief of knowing what died inside Eden’s womb along with her.
The fantasy was so realistic he felt himself cresting after only a couple dozen jerks on his supersensitive cock. He was panting and gritting his teeth, already at the vinegar strokes despite the fact that he’d practically just begun. In some distant part of his brain, he knew the explosion that was about to erupt out of his balls had been building since he’d seen Katie standing there so uncertainly in that hospital waiting room . . .
. . . maybe sooner.
He groaned gutturally as pleasure swelled in him.
“Rill? Is that you?”
His fist paused midstaff on a near-to-bursting cock. He opened his eyes and stared at the closed double Dutch door, breathing heavily.
“Rill?” he heard Katie ask, her voice closer to the pantry door now. He stood unmoving, every muscle in his body strung tight, his cock throbbing in his hand. Her voice had trembled slightly when she spoke his name. She must have heard him groaning.
She had to know what he was doing in there.
“Don’t open that door, Katie,” he warned.
He stood utterly still, his body straining, his mind hyperfocused, like a man with questionable balance who suddenly found himself poised on the high wire. His ears strained to make out Katie’s movements. The silence seemed to roar in his head.
His heart lurched in his chest when he saw the knob move on the lower half of the double Dutch door and the soft click of the latch slipping out of the catch.
“Don’t, Katie,” he demanded, but that wasn’t really what he meant. He wondered how she’d known that when the lower half of the Dutch door swung outward, the top half remaining closed.
He watched, his misery and sharp arousal rising, as Katie went to her knees.
He could see her full, shapely breasts pressed tight against an indigo tunic that she’d belted with a braid of leather. Her untamed mane of hair hung loose, curls and waves abounding. She’d said the color she’d put on it wasn’t permanent, and he was glad to see gold shining through the brown, the dye having faded further with her morning shower. He saw the lower half of her face—the delicate chin, the lush lips. She placed her hands on her thighs, the gesture striking him as prim . . . subservient for some stupid reason. Katie was hardly the submissive type.
Every ounce of his attention was focused on her mouth when it moved.
“Come here,” she said softly.
His cock lurched in his hand.
He staggered toward her, hating himself but recognizing the sheer impossibility of refusal. Besides, he was at the breaking point of arousal.
He came close, feet just an inch away from her knees. She didn’t move away, although she must be able to see him at this point. He placed one forearm against the top of the closed Dutch door, bracing himself. He leaned toward her.
Her lips parted.
He watched, spellbound, as he used his hand to brush the flaring tip of his cock against her lower lip. She remained immobile, allowing him to spread a thin coat of pre-come on her mouth.
His groan felt like it was ripped out of the depths of him.
Her tongue came out, pink and quick, wetting the head of his cock. An uncontrollable shiver of excitement rippled up his spine. Her lips enclosed the rim in a tight clamp while she licked eagerly, giving him the impression she wanted to press his taste deep into her, like she was doing a rubbing etching with her tongue to find patterns on his dick. Her carefulness, her obvious hunger—the sheer strength of her tongue—drove him nuts.
She sucked, and there was no other direction for him to go but forward in that volatile moment. The arm that braced him on the top of the double Dutch door bent at the elbow. He thrilled to the sensation of sliding against her wet tongue, of being surrounded by her sultry heat.
He’d been so primed before that it was almost too much for him to bear. He nearly shamed himself further and came on her tongue then and there. Only his greed for her, the desire to relish in the moment, helped him to hold back.
She pushed forward with her head. Several inches of his cock filled her mouth, but he knew the top part of the door stopped her from ducking forward too far. He stepped toward her, so that his feet bracketed her knees, and leaned into her, watching from above as his dick slid between pink lips. She moaned softly, and he clenched his eyes closed as the vibrations from her vocal cords buzzed into his flesh.
Friction—the need for it overwhelmed him. He pumped and grunted at the sublimity of it. Delicious jolts of pleasure shot up his spine. His ass tightened again and again as he thrust, but she kept up with him stroke for stroke, bobbing her head with as much range of motion that she could without hitting the barrier of the door with her forehead. Wet, sucking sounds intermingled with his grunts of pure pleasure.
He transformed into an animal in those precious
seconds, a creature that lived only to vanquish its hunger and survive another day.
The top of his head fell against the closed portion of the door. He wanted to keep his eyes shut, to keep up some semblance of a barrier between himself and Katie. The truth was, he was about to explode, and he hated that reality almost as much as the fact that he couldn’t control his need to surrender. The moment was too fraught with tension and sharp pleasure, too laden with emotions he wished he could strangle into silence.
But how could he quiet this need?
He opened his eyes slowly and watched through narrowed eyelids as his thick, veined flesh plunged into Katie’s mouth again and again. When her hands came up and lightly touched the backs of his naked thighs, he once again shut his eyes and bit his lower lip. Hard. Something about her gentle, tentative touch contrasting with his furious thrusts and her shockingly strong suction had nearly made him come once again.
Jaysus, if this had to happen, why couldn’t he have had the capacity to enjoy it more, at the very least? It didn’t matter what he wanted, though.
This was way beyond him.
He wanted to go deeper. He didn’t care in those volatile moments if it was sweet, beautiful Katie Hughes’s mouth he desecrated; he just wanted this fucking torture to end. The top part of the door restrained him somewhat, making it impossible to plunge as deeply as he desired.
He groaned desperately and pressed closer to both Katie and the door. When she twisted her head and tugged at his cock with her mouth, he knew she was trying to lower her head beneath the barrier of the door and take him deeper.
He reached down and grabbed at a handful of hair at her nape, holding her head immobile for his rampaging cock, but also prohibiting her from taking him into her throat. She pulled against his restraint, her mouth tugging on him even more strongly, and he tightened his fingers.
“Nah, Katie,” he growled, but he submitted to his hunger in his own way.
He pushed his chest against the upper part of the door and thrust madly, causing the catch to rattle. Only the first half of his cock pierced her mouth at its farthest point. He craved more but, at the same time, thanked God Almighty for the limit of the barrier between them.
