“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.