by Bethany Kane
All he could consider was how close he was to paradise.
Well . . . then why can’t we? We’re both adults.
He clamped his eyelids shut as lust shot through him at the memory of her speaking the words. She was such a wild thing, such a gypsy child. She didn’t know what the hell she was doing, offering herself to him like that.
She’s not a child, a voice in his head reminded him, a greedy voice that he associated with his stiff cock. She’s a grown woman. She knows the consequences. It’s her choice to make.
He shut off the water but he didn’t get out of the tub immediately. He stood there with his hand on the handle and his head lowered.
She didn’t know the consequences, but he wasn’t so sure he did, either. Maybe that was what made him so wary about touching Katie Hughes.
None of it mattered. None of his self-recrimination; none of his self-doubts. He’d have her. Maybe he’d be able to control his hunger once he touched her, but nothing . . . nothing could keep him away from her at this point.
He didn’t bother to quiet his steps on the stairs. Best she knew he was coming. She might have heard him breathing it was so quiet in the old house, and his lungs were heaving choppily from acute anticipation.
The dormer bedroom was swathed in pitch blackness. There was a tiny green light next to the bed—probably a clock. Rill used it to navigate through the room. He heard the sheets rustle and knew she was awake before he reached for the bedside lamp. He stifled a curse with effort when the dim light came on.
She lay on the bed naked, her hair spread out around her torso like an opened cape. She looked serene but watchful as she inspected him.
For two seconds, he almost turned and walked away. This was much, much bigger than he’d expected, and he’d bargained on plenty.
“While I’m here with you, don’t plan on touching anyone else,” she whispered.
He swallowed thickly and nodded. He couldn’t have spoken if he tried. The realization that her naked beauty had nearly brought him to his knees made him glance away in order to save himself. His gaze landed on the scarf she’d worn twisted around her neck with artistic carelessness earlier. Her eyes moved, but her head remained immobile when he picked it up and stepped toward the head of the bed.
“Give me your wrists,” he said gruffly.
Uncertainty flickered across her beautiful face. Not fear, thank God, just confusion.
“You have to let me be in control of this, Katie. It’s the only way I can do this thing.”
Her facial features tightened when he said that . . . this thing. He couldn’t even bring himself to put into words what was happening between them. She slowly lifted her arms above her head, the motion making her back arch slightly. He ripped his gaze off the vision of her round, pink-tipped breasts rising in the air, tempting him. She didn’t say anything as he bound her wrists together firmly. He gently pulled her arms farther over her head and used the scarf to restrain them to the wrought-iron headboard. He stepped back.
It was a little hard to look at her, she was so beautiful at that moment. For a few seconds he just stood there, a mortal in the presence of unearthly beauty, a worshipper at a shrine of sex and voluptuous pleasure.
“Don’t,” she whispered when he reached for the lamp.
He ignored her and plunged the room into darkness.
“Spread your thighs,” he ordered through a throat that felt as if hands were wrapped around it, squeezing. He knelt between her opened legs. He reached, his hands encountering the satiny smooth, warm flesh of her hips. Her subtle scent reached his nostrils. His cock throbbed viciously next to his thigh. He hadn’t bothered to put on underwear after his shower, but had merely thrown on his jeans and partially buttoned them before he’d come up the stairs to do this deed. As a result, his cock was trapped down his left pant leg. It felt like a hot poker burning the skin of his thigh, stretching the fabric of his jeans tight.
He lowered his head, a bee drawn to honey. He placed his lips on soft pubic hair and inhaled her scent. She whimpered. She was aroused. The cream on her labia moistened his mouth before his tongue gathered it.
He went rigid with need, like he was an animal that had just caught the hint of prey in the wind. She stiffened, too. He used his hand to open her labia wider, exposing the sensitive kernel of flesh hidden within the folds.
She gasped his name when he plunged his tongue into that forbidden fruit. When her taste fully registered in his brain, he was lost. He closed his eyes and ate her with savage abandon. Some part of his brain was exquisitely attuned to the sounds she made, to every nuance of tension in her sleek body. He sucked gently and stabbed at her clit without mercy with his tongue, but when her cries became desperate, he softened to a caress, gliding his tongue over that swollen flesh until she quivered like a leaf held fast to a branch during a wild storm.
He ran his hands from hip to belly to ribs, relishing every shiver, coaxing more out of her. It was intoxicating. Not just the taste of her sweet juices running down his throat, the entire idea of possessing Katie, of evoking those sexy little cries from her throat, of creating the uncontrollable quaking in her muscles, of tempting her pussy to give him more of her addicting cream. He twisted his face slightly, stimulating her sensitive tissues, glorying in how wet she was.
He wanted to thrust his finger into her slit. She’d be tight and warm . . . all creamed up for him. The thought made his cock jerk in his jeans, demanding freedom, demanding its due. But he knew if he slid his finger into that welcoming little clasp, all control would be gone.
If it wasn’t already.
Katie was like a wildfire. She’d snatch him with her delicious heat, pull him in like a moth to the leaping flames. She was a thousand times more addictive than whiskey. It was the reason he’d insisted upon tying her up. This was an ordeal as it was, to give in at least partially to his raging lust. If he had to endure her hands all over him at this stage of the game, he’d forsake everything. He needed to set some ground rules. He needed to stick to those rules.
He was not a slave to lust. He may share his mother’s and his uncles’ and a whole shitload of other Pierce ancestors’ wastrel genes, but he was different.
Instead of allowing himself to experience the delicious core of her heat, he turned his face and sucked her clit between his lips and teeth. Gently, he bit, determined to show her that even though he’d been too weak to resist her potent allure, he would be master of this situation.
But when he felt her body go rigid, when she screamed as pleasure gushed through nerve and muscle . . . when he felt her warm juices surge from her slit against his chin, Rill doubted he’d mastered much of anything.
Her climax was delicious, not just the taste of her flooding his senses, her catchy, surprised gasps and whimpers, the delicate convulsions that wracked her taut body. He couldn’t stop himself. He lowered his face and plunged his tongue into her pussy again and again, drowning in that sweet font, anointing himself with the essence of Katie.
Her trembling muscles sagged into the mattress and her climactic cries segued to anguished groans. He realized he was still drinking from her thirstily, exploring the narrow confines of her drenched slit with avarice.
When he recognized his greediness, he lifted his head, panting heavily. His face was slick with her juices. He wanted to slide his cock into her and ride her into submission. A feral need to utterly possess her, to even make her hurt a little, to force her to share in some of his sharp anguish, overwhelmed him.
He stood clumsily next to the bed.
“Rill?” she asked between pants for air.
He opened his mouth, but he couldn’t think of what to say. So he yanked at the knot restraining her wrists, turned and walked out of the room. If she said his name again, and he heard the vulnerability and disorientation in her voice, he wouldn’t be able to control what he might do.
Downstairs, he rushed into the bathroom and shut the door. Without turning on the light, he put his
back to the door and fumbled with his jeans. His cock felt leaden. He jerked at it, his actions nearly as violent and desperate as Rill felt at that moment.
He’d held her hips in his hands and served her pussy to his marauding mouth. She’d jerked like a plucked harp string when he’d bitten her clit gently. Then she’d been shaking beneath him, helpless and beautiful.
He groaned in agony when he started to come. It hurt. All of it. It hurt that he’d crossed this line with a friend because of his innate degeneracy, but it hurt being alone in the world, too. Hurt like hell. He couldn’t decide what felt worse, the numbness or this sharp pain of need.
It hurt the most shooting his seed onto the cold tile floor instead of in Katie Hughes’s furthest reaches.
Nine
When Katie woke up the next morning the house was empty. Rill’s bedroom door was wide-open, a sure sign of his absence, since he religiously kept it closed when he was in there.
She wandered into the sun-dappled kitchen, feeling grouchy and exhausted after having slept a total of three hours. A bit difficult to sleep after the man of your dreams plays your flesh like a maestro and then turns around and walks out of the room.
What did it mean? Had he been unsatisfied with her?
Stupid question. He must have been. How else did his behavior make any sense? If she’d pleased him, he would have taken his own satisfaction. He would have wanted more of her, just like Katie thirsted for more of him . . . the feeling of his skin sliding beneath her palms, the sensation of his mouth moving over hers, the experience of holding him in her arms while he shuddered in pleasure.
He’d denied her all that, although he’d given her a pure, distilled blast of bliss.
Rill was trying to make it abundantly clear that the only thing he could give her was pleasure. He was highlighting the unnaturalness of them becoming sexually involved by walking away after sharing something so intimate.
If that was what he was trying to prove to her, he’d failed. Katie couldn’t imagine anything more total and natural than her body’s response to his touch.
She’d come downstairs last night for a while after he’d left her bedroom, determined to speak with him, to tear down the barrier he’d erected by tying her up to the bed and eating her until she hardly knew where or what she was except a quivering mass of pleasure completely at the mercy of Rill’s tongue. The house had been dark and his bedroom door closed by the time she’d finally worked up the nerve to descend. It couldn’t have been clearer that while he might exchange sex with her, he wasn’t willing to do something as intimate as sleep with her.
She’d gone back upstairs, undecided whether she was more heartsore or furious. The combination of her volatile emotions had been a key ingredient for a serious dose of insomnia.
While she was making coffee, she heard the sound of gravel popping beneath tires. Her heart leapt. Rill would have no choice but to face her in the full light of day. She smoothed her hair—hopeless cause—and tightened the sash of her short robe. She couldn’t resist racing to the front door when she heard the sound of a step on the front stairs.
Her heart sank in disappointment when she peered through the shut front door window and saw Miles Fordham approaching, wearing a pair of jeans, a button-down blue shirt and a well-cut blazer.
“Hi,” she said a little bemusedly when she opened the door before he had a chance to knock on it.
He looked surprised by her sudden appearance, and then pleased. A little too pleased, Katie thought as she tightened her robe yet again as Miles inspected her.
“Well, I’ll be,” he murmured appreciatively when his eyes finally found her face again. “The man who wakes up to see the vision of you every morning would be blessed indeed.”
“He’d have to be blessed to put up with me in the morning,” Katie replied with a frown. Miles gave her a helpless look and then grinned. She relented and smiled back. He really did have a charming smile.
“Are you looking for Rill?” Katie prompted.
“No. I came looking for you.”
“Me?” she asked in surprise. She motioned with her hand and he followed her into the house. She opened up a cabinet and held up a coffee cup with a questioning look. Miles nodded.
“I thought I’d stop by and see if you were interested in a drive. It’s going to get warm again in a day or two, but today is the perfect fall day—chilly, but nice in the sunshine. The foliage is gorgeous out at the club grounds.”
“Are you trying to court me, Miles?” she speculated casually as she poured both of them a cup of coffee.
He seemed a little taken aback. “Yeah, I guess I am. It’s not a crime, is it?”
She raised her eyebrows thoughtfully and handed him his coffee. “Not a crime, no. It’s not a very wise thing to undertake, though.”
“I see. Your affections are otherwise engaged, is that it? Who is he?” He glanced around the house. “Don’t tell me it’s Pierce.”
“What if it was?” Katie asked, scowling.
Miles shrugged. “He just doesn’t seem like ideal boyfriend material, that’s all.”
Katie gave him a wry glance and let her eyes move over the sexy wave in his light brown hair and his casually elegant attire. “And you’re what good boyfriend material is made of, I suppose.”
He laughed a little disbelievingly at her cheek. “Well, even if I was, I wouldn’t say so.”
“Why not?”
“Because modesty is just one of many traits of a good boyfriend.”
She laughed.
It was on the tip of her tongue to turn him down, but then she glanced out the window onto the brilliant day. It’d be depressing to sit in this empty house and wonder where Rill was. A horrible thought struck her. What if he didn’t come back? His car was missing from the driveway. He’d disappeared off the map eighteen months ago. No reason he couldn’t do it again if she’d pushed him too hard.
“Katie?”
“Hmmm?” She focused on Miles with effort. “Oh, right. Sure, a drive would be nice. Errol doesn’t have to be in physical therapy until next week, so my day is pretty free, although I should stop by later and make sure he’s keeping that leg elevated,” she muttered to herself as an afterthought.
“Excuse me?” asked Miles, looking politely confused.
“Oh, I ran Errol Banks over in my car,” Katie replied in a preoccupied manner. “Can you give me a few minutes to get ready?”
Miles laughed. “Take your time.”
Katie knew she was being ridiculous, but she couldn’t stop herself from sneaking into Rill’s bedroom before she got in the shower. It surprised her to see that he’d not only put clean sheets on his bed, but made it. Was that a possible sign that he’d abandoned her? She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw clothes in the closet along with a pair of tennis shoes and dark brown leather hiking boots.
Rill hadn’t left Vulture’s Canyon for good. Not yet anyway.
They sat at the best table in the Forest River Restaurant. From her seat, Katie had a spectacular view of the dining terrace, landscaped grounds and, in the distance, the wild beauty of the Ohio River Valley. The colors of the trees were so bright it hurt her eyes a little to look at them. The terrace was bathed in golden sunshine and nearly filled with golfers and other diners who didn’t mind the bite of autumn in the air.
“It’s beautiful,” she murmured before she took a sip of the cool, dry white wine Miles had ordered along with their lunch.
“You’re looking right where I plan to put the boat,” Miles said, nodding toward the sparkling river in the distance.
Katie glanced over at him and smiled. He’d been a pleasant enough companion for the past two hours. A little full of himself, but nice. The tour he’d given her of the surrounding countryside and then the lush grounds of the Forest River Country Club had been relaxing. Fortunately, Miles’s favorite topic of conversation was himself and his business ventures, which was just fine by Katie. She didn’t particularly want to ta
lk about herself.
Plus, it was kind of relaxing, not to be with someone who asked her a slew of questions either about her celebrity brother, Everett, or Rill, who was just as renowned in his own way.
“The gambling boat, you mean?” she asked idly, toying with the rim of her wineglass. “There isn’t a huge population around here, is there? Where will you get your customers?”
“St. Louis is only forty minutes away.” Miles tore his gaze off her circling finger on the glass and nodded toward the terrace. “Three-quarters of those men out there are from the St. Louis area. They drive up on Fridays and stay for a weekend of golf and relaxation. I hired a good portion of my employees from the St. Louis area, as well. The people around here are ignorant, for the most part. They don’t have the polish to work in this type of establishment. Once the gambling boat opens, people will come from miles away for an exciting vacation in Mother Nature’s embrace. Las Vegas can’t offer a man a view like that—”
Miles’s explanation was cut short when the waitress arrived with their food.
“Thanks, Debbie,” Miles said after she’d placed their lunch before them. He gifted Debbie with the kind of smile that had long ago lost voltage in Katie’s world, but apparently still had them buzzing in the vicinity of Vulture’s Canyon. Miles continued when Debbie walked away. “My lawyers should have the final approval from the Illinois Gaming Board for the boat by next spring, so I went ahead and started construction. See that over there?”
Katie turned in the direction where he pointed, seeing a portion of the large construction site that snaked out onto the grounds. She’d already noticed the building project next to the club when they arrived earlier. Miles had informed her it was the location of his new grand hotel.
“That’ll be where the walkway leads from the hotel directly out onto the boat. Customers won’t even know they passed from land to water,” Miles told her smugly.
