Addicted to You

by Bethany Kane

  “Katie.” She turned from the sink and looked at him. He was leaning against the counter, his arms crossed beneath his chest, looking rugged and handsome in jeans, hiking boots and a cobaltblue long-sleeved cotton shirt that set off the color of his eyes. She had to admit, these woods agreed with him. As long as he wasn’t drinking himself to death in them, anyway.

  “I think you should go with Everett.”

  She turned around and started putting the plates away in the cupboard, rattling them together loudly to stop the ringing of Rill’s words in her ears. She paused and turned around in surprise when she felt Rill’s hand on her arm. He stood close. She could take a lot of crap from Rill, but she couldn’t stand the expression of compassion in his eyes at that moment.

  She jerked her arm out of his hold.

  “Are you kicking me out?”

  “No,” he said. “But Everett reminded me of something yesterday. I care about you, Katie. I’ve told you what I’m capable of right now.” His blue eyes flickered down over her. “I’ve showed you. I want to be able to offer you more. I just don’t think I can right now.”

  Katie glanced down so he wouldn’t see her hurt. “I’m a grown woman. There are no guarantees when it comes to relationships,” she whispered. She swallowed thickly when she felt one hand on her shoulder and the other cupped her cheek, urging her to look at him. She tilted her chin up in desperate determination. “And don’t even think about telling me that we don’t have a relationship, Rill Pierce, or I swear, I’ll clobber you.”

  He closed his eyes and inhaled through his nose, as though trying to gather his patience. Everett came into the kitchen carrying his suitcase, and Katie broke away from Rill’s touch.

  They escorted Everett onto the front porch to bid him good-bye. Despite her frazzled state, after what Rill had just said, she smiled when the two men shook hands and then hugged.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” Everett mumbled before he clapped Rill on the back and withdrew.

  “Little late for that advice.” Rill attempted a smile, but Katie saw the tension in his whiskered jaw.

  “Tell Mom and Dad that I’m fine,” Katie instructed when Everett squeezed her in a bear hug. “Tell them I’ve been eating fantastic and breathing smog-free air and that you’ve never seen me so healthy.”

  “I’ll tell them you’re where you want to be,” Everett said as he leaned back and studied her face. “That’s the truth, right?”

  “Yes,” Katie whispered.

  Everett nodded. “Well, that’ll have to satisfy us, then.”

  “Call me when you get home,” Katie said.

  Everett tipped his newsboy hat and grinned as he went down the stairs. “Don’t be a stranger,” he told Rill.

  “Yeah. I’ll try,” Rill replied, and Katie had the impression he really meant it. After Everett had gotten in his rental car and driven down the hill, Katie gave him a sideways glance.

  “So . . . what happened between you two yesterday?”

  “What do you mean?” Rill asked as he touched her shoulder, urging her into the house in front of him.

  “You and Everett must have had it out over something. You don’t look like you want to tackle him anymore.”

  “Yeah . . . well, we had a talk.”

  “Did you tell him why you were mad at him?”

  “Yeah, I did. And he told me why he was pissed at me. And then we got over it.”

  His swift smile caused a swooping sensation in her belly. Katie examined him in the sunlit kitchen. Clearly, he wasn’t going to tell her the details of what’d happened between Everett and him.

  “Hmmm, funny how men can do that,” she murmured. It struck her that they were all alone in the old, silent house. She thought Rill would try to resume the conversation they were having before Everett left, but the way he was staring at her mouth didn’t seem to fit with that topic. In fact, it called vividly to mind what had happened in the woods yesterday.

  “Yeah. Funny,” Rill said, but Katie couldn’t recall to what he was agreeing.

  “Rill . . .” she began, taking a step toward him, but he stepped back, his trance seemingly broken.

  “I found some tools out in the shed. I’m going to fix some of those busted posts on the porch railing.”

  “Okay,” Katie said dubiously, watching him walk away. She closed her eyes at the sound of the front porch door slamming shut.

  “We are not going back to playing that old game, Rill Pierce,” she muttered under her breath.

  But if she wanted that to be true, she was going to have to be a lot more active about seducing Rill to the obvious.

  Nineteen

  Rill felt good and tired by the time he reentered the house later that afternoon. After he’d fixed the posts on the porch, he’d found half a dozen things to do around the property. He must have been in a deep depression, never to have felt the urge to pick up a hammer or a pair of pliers. Rill had always liked doing manual labor, sometimes even pitching in on carpentry on movie sets when an extra pair of hands was needed and they were on a tight filming schedule. His uncles had taught him how to be handy with tools. Ray and William Pierce—Rill was named after a combination of his uncles’ names—had learned how to be fine carpenters in prison. Too bad learning a decent trade had never dissuaded his uncles from gambling, womanizing, stealing and scamming.

  Never kept them out of jail, either.

  Rill set his newfound toolbox on the front porch and hesitated before entering the house. He knew what was going to happen when he went in there . . . what he’d been avoiding ever since Everett had accused him of possibly having twisted reasons for having sex with Katie.

  After twenty-four hours of thinking about the matter, Rill came to the definite conclusion he didn’t possess any twisted reasons for lusting after Katie. Not unless one considered feral horniness as a twisted motivation, which it may very well be, to the degree he was taking it.

  Everett’s accusation may have made him think twice about what he was doing, but his spurt of morality was already wearing thin as he worked around the house and thought of Katie in there, alone.

  In the distance, he heard music and the sound of bells tinkling. Katie walked into the kitchen wearing some kind of flowy magenta skirt that rode low on her hips and fell to her calves. She was barefoot and Rill could see ten perfect toes tipped in pink polish. Around her right ankle, she wore a gold anklet adorned with what looked like tiny bells. She wore a top—of sorts—that tied between her breasts and fell in loose sleeves around her wrists. Her belly and curving hips were left bare. She’d pulled her long, waving hair back in the front, but the back of it fell around her shoulders. There was a slight sheen of perspiration on her face and in the valley of her breasts.

  His already translucent moral conscience vanished into a puff of vapor. She looked like something that ought to be illegal.

  His cock agreed wholeheartedly.

  He glanced up from where he’d been gawking at the luscious curves of her breasts in the little bra-like top she wore when he heard a clear, precise ringing sound. Katie stared at him with a friendly smile and one arched eyebrow. He realized dazedly that the sound he’d heard had been Katie attempting to draw his attention off her breasts by tapping the little metal cymbals she wore on two of her fingers.

  “Hi,” she greeted him. “I was just working out.”

  “In that?” Rill asked in a choked voice, nodding at the sexy little gypsy costume she was almost wearing.

  “Yeah. I have lots of belly-dancing costumes. It makes the workouts more fun.”

  “Don’t tell me you go out in public like that,” Rill muttered. Yeah, he was a guy, and yeah, he definitely had his uncles’ genes, because his gaze had returned to her body. He realized that the eight-inch-wide panel of her skirt that encircled her hips and crotch was made of magenta see-through mesh. He could see a minuscule pair of black panties beneath it.

  “Sure, I wear this one at dance class. I do have one number
that I’ve never worn to class, though. Never worn period.” She walked toward him. More like sashayed. Why hadn’t he ever noticed before what a sexy walk Katie possessed? Her hips moved in a fluid, tight roll. Rill blinked when he heard the ring of the bells on her ankle and glanced up curving hips gloved in pale gold skin. When he finally got to her face, he saw her light green eyes shining with merriment and mischief.

  “Would you like it if I put it on?”

  “What?” Rill asked stupidly.

  “The costume I mentioned. The one I don’t wear in public. I could show you the routine I learned in my last class. It’ll only take me a minute to change.”

  “Katie—”

  She took another step, close enough that Rill became hyperaware of the short distance between the tips of her breasts covered in the scanty little top and his rib cage.

  “Do you want to know something, Rill?” she asked quietly. “You are far, far too uptight about sex. I have to admit, I’m stunned about it. Could this be the same man who had Citizens for Morality picketing his last film in five states?”

  His nostrils flared and he caught her scent: flowers and sweet sweat and just a hint of something Rill immediately identified with sex. Or his cock did.

  “I’m not uptight. I’m trying to rein myself in. There’s a difference.”

  A curious expression crossed her beautiful, flushed face. “So if I were someone else, someone different from your friend, you wouldn’t be so uptight?”

  “If you were someone else, I wouldn’t feel the need to be.”

  She blinked, and he realized too late how harsh he’d sounded. She licked her lower lip in an anxious gesture. He resisted an urge to pick her up and ravish her on top of the kitchen counter.

  “But you like sex . . . right?” she asked.

  “Sometimes, I think, too much.”

  Her brow crinkled. “But you never seemed to have a . . . a . . . problem with it. You were never a typical Hollywood player, screwing around and getting caught and blaming everything on a sex addiction. You were always so faithful to Eden.” Her cheeks flushed a shade deeper of pink, and Rill wondered what she was thinking. “That’s what it’s about, isn’t it, Rill? You’re fighting against wanting to have sex with me because you were so happy with Eden?”

  He couldn’t stand to see that flash of uncertainty in her eyes. If there was one person on this planet who never should doubt herself, it was Katie Hughes. “This hasn’t got anything to do with Eden,” he said firmly. “It’s got everything to do with you. And me.”

  For a few seconds, she didn’t speak, just looked up at him with pink lips parted. Her springtime eyes became lambent. “So let me dance for you, then. There’s no one here but us. And you told me we couldn’t stop it, now that it’s started.”

  “You do like to play with fire, Katie.”

  Her radiant smile made something lurch in his chest. She grabbed his hand and pulled him into the living room, the bells on her ankle tinkling rapidly. She pushed him down on the sofa and turned up the music.

  “I’ll be right back,” she told him, sounding like she was barely repressing her excitement.

  “Katie,” he called before she could scurry out of the room. She froze and glanced back.

  “Hurry up,” he said quietly. She smiled.

  He sat there alone listening to Middle Eastern music and getting more aroused by the second. In order to try to bring himself under control, he detailed in his mind all the work he’d done around the house that day: fixing and varnishing the seat for the tree swing in the backyard, cutting back an overgrown bush that was obscuring a window, reattaching fallen gutters, mending the porch posts—

  Where the hell was Katie?

  He got up and stoked the failing fire in the hearth. That didn’t help distract him, either. He kept pausing, tilting his ear, hyperalert for the sound of Katie’s footfalls on the stairs. He finally returned to his seat on the couch.

  Had he ever been this anticipatory for a woman? It’d turned him on more than he’d expected to see her in that skimpy costume. He smiled. Damn little gypsy, turning him inside out every chance she got.

  What was she doing up in that bedroom, sewing a damn costume from scratch?

  She came down the stairs so quietly that he wasn’t aware she was close until he heard the muted ring of the tiny bells. He glanced over toward the entryway, expecting her to charge into the room in her typical fashion. Instead, he saw an extended leg through sheer, light green fabric. His gaze ran greedily over a taut calf and a shapely thigh. He craned his head, looking for the rest of her around the entryway. When she didn’t spring into the room, he called her name.

  She pirouetted into the room, a vision of graceful long limbs, green veils and shining gold. She knelt before him, her eyes downcast. He stared at her, stunned by her beauty and her very un-Katie-like pose.

  She glanced up timidly, and he caught the glint of humor and heat in her gaze. She’d lined her eyes artfully in black kohl and the lids shimmered with a golden-green shade. The effect was striking. She wore a gold collar, and some kind of ornament had been woven through her hair. It looked like golden coins. They shimmered next to the equally shiny tendrils of her hair. Beneath layers of wispy green veils, he saw the teasing hint of more gold.

  “If it would please you, then your slave-girl will dance for you, Master,” she whispered breathily.

  He chuckled softly. This, he liked. “Oh, it would please me.”

  She smiled before she assumed her sober, slave-girl act.

  And what an act, Rill thought in growing wonder as she rose and began to move in a subtle dance to the music. She was typically such a whirlwind; it mesmerized him to the core to watch her move with such fluid control. At first, he could only glimpse her limbs and rolling hips through the veils. It surprised him how arousing it was, to catch only a hint of a shapely calf and dainty, pointed foot or the tight, circular motions of round hips. She seduced him with her eyes as much as her gliding body, watching him with shining orbs of light green over the edge of a sheer veil. Rill had never been made love to by a woman’s eyes before that moment.

  The tempo of the music increased. The beat throbbed in his ears and blood pounded into his cock, and he couldn’t move . . . he couldn’t blink, he was so greedy for the vision that spun and danced before him.

  The veil she twirled around her torso artfully slithered to the floor and somehow the one draped around her upper body was in her hands. He sat up straighter when he caught a glimpse of her smooth belly. The curves of her hips made his palms itch to touch her, and the way she moved them . . . sometimes slow and beguiling, like she was drawing some kind of invisible circles with her pussy, and increasingly as the music grew more frantic, with tight, precise little gyrations that had Rill sweating uncontrollably.

  The second veil she flung away with a wilder, hedonistic gesture, and she danced before him with her torso nearly naked with the exception of a tiny, metallic gold bikini top with little chains that hung in a swaying fringe at the bottom. Her control continued to amaze him as she moved supplely to the music, faster now, beginning to look precisely like the whirlwind he accused her of being, albeit a tightly coiled, controlled one. The metal fringe beneath her full, plump breasts shimmied and shivered as she moved. The bells on her ankle tinkled in rhythm with the music . . .

  . . . and if he couldn’t put his hands on her luscious, gyrating hips or bury his face in the erotic expanse of her belly very, very soon, he was going to go mad.

  The music built to a crescendo. Perhaps she saw the manic gleam in his eyes because she pulled on a fastener as she spun and the skirt she wore fell around her ankles. Beneath it she wore a tiny gold metallic thong. She spun, her arms outstretched, her long hair flying around her hips. Rill was the one who grew dizzy, though . . . dazed with lust and need.

  He called her name sharply.

  The pulchritudinous whirlwind before him suddenly halted as the last note of music sounded. She fell befo
re him on her knees, her head bent. For a moment he just stared at the erotic image she made, her long hair falling before her, leaving her nearly naked back bare, her ribs expanding and contracting as she tried to catch her breath.

  “Katie,” he said.

  She didn’t move from her subservient pose, but she looked up slowly.

  “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  Her eyebrows went up quickly in an amused expression, but she didn’t smile. “I’m glad that I pleased you,” she said soberly. “How may I please you next? Your wish is my command.”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her to stop her foolishness. She really was playing with fire. He didn’t want to demean the gift she gave him, though—such a priceless gift. His cock throbbed uncomfortably in his jeans, though, refusing to be silenced. He lowered his hand to his crotch and saw Katie follow his action with her eyes.

  “It seems this is the master of me, at the moment,” he spoke quietly. “So I suppose it’s the master of both of us.”

  She glanced up at his face, her eyes shining with excitement. Her head bent once again. “Would you like me to remove your boots?”

  “Yes,” he replied. He watched her as she unlaced his hiking boots and pulled them off. Afterward, she removed his socks. He shivered at the sensation of her lightly touching his heels with her fingertips.

  “Stand up, Katie,” he said when she’d finished.

  He knew she was playing a part when she came to her feet gracefully and her head remained lowered, but she was still playing him perfectly. It would have never occurred to him that she’d take to the role of a submissive so perfectly.

  “Turn around,” he said gruffly. “Stand still, so I can look at you.”

  She followed his command without pause. Her hair was still mostly in front of her shoulders, but a few curling tendrils were falling down back and tickled the tops of her buttocks. Her ass was a sweet, plump, edible confection. Her legs were long for her height and perfectly proportioned. He stood behind her and removed his jeans and underwear, then, pausing to remove a condom from his wallet, sat back down on the couch.