Addicted to You (32 page)

“Take me, Katie,” he whispered.

He lips fell open and she gasped as the shaft of his cock slid into her. His hands transferred to the sides of the seat of the swing. He began to rock her back and forth an inch in either direction on the swing, working his cock into her pussy. She moaned. His nostrils flared as he watched her face.

“I like having you at my mercy,” he said.

She whimpered as he slid another inch deeper and her pussy clamped around the steely pillar of warm flesh. She was at his mercy, all right, with her thighs spread wide and Rill in complete control of her movements as she perched on the swing. She craved full possession, but she was unable to push her hips without risking falling off the seat. She had no choice but to be patient and accept Rill’s pace.

“Look at my cock in you, Katie.”

She glanced down. For a taut, sensual moment, they both watched as Rill pulled and pushed on the swing and his cock burrowed its way into her body. When he moved the swing back several inches and his cock was exposed to the sunlight, she saw how the thin condom glistened with her juices.

“Your pussy is pulling on me,” Rill grated out through a tight jaw. “I swear, Katie, you always try me.”

She opened her mouth to tell him she didn’t mean to, but he tightened his hold on the seat and flexed his arms. She swung forward. His pelvis smacked against her spread thighs with a brisk
whap
. Katie cried out sharply at the sensation of suddenly being filled by a hard, teeming cock. Rill growled in his throat, deep and low. He moved the swing in a tiny, subtle circling motion, grounding her pussy against his balls.

“Oh,
yeah
,” he muttered gutturally. “This is going to be so good.”

He spread his legs slightly, planting his feet. He eased the muscle tension in his arms and the swing swung back. Her pussy slid along his cock. He pulled on the swing and Katie flew forward, swallowing him into her body and smacking against Rill’s pelvis and thighs.

The swing made the whole process almost mechanized in its efficiency. He stood unmoving, his ass and thigh muscles clenched tight, his gaze glued to the image of his cock pounding into her body in short, forceful thrusts. He fucked her hard. His shoulder, pectoral and abdomen muscles looked rigid with strain. His biceps swelled as he used them to control their mating.

The precision and intensity of the whole process, the obvious relish he took from watching his cock plunging in and out of her, should have embarrassed her. He was completely using her body for his pleasure, utterly focused on finding bliss in her flesh.

Instead, it aroused her to see Rill so lost in the moment, so infused with need that he became the essence of pure, driving desire.

A low, desperate whine began to vibrate her throat. The friction was almost brutal, it was so precise. His arms quickened the pace. Loud, staccato slapping noises of skin against skin blended with Rill’s grunts of pleasure and the paradoxical sounds of peaceful birdsong from the trees.

His breath came in jagged puffs. A sheen of perspiration shone on his chest and flat abdomen. Katie wanted to touch him so bad. She ached, wanting to ease him in his crisis of anguished ecstasy.

She strained to find her own release from this blissful torment.

“Harder,”
she whispered between pants.

Her eyes popped wide when he growled menacingly and complied. She hadn’t really thought he could be any more forceful in his possession, but she’d been wrong. She had a fleeting image of Rill’s snarl as his pleasure crested, and then her right cheek was pressed against a pectoral muscle that had grown hard as stone as he held her against his body. His roar of release vibrated up from his chest to her face. His cock swelled, then lurched inside her body, the sensation so intense it made her grimace in a mixture of pain and pleasure.

She felt him twitching deep inside her as he ejaculated. She clamped her eyes shut, overwhelmed with the intensity of the moment . . . slain by the feeling of harboring the man she loved deep within her while he surrendered himself to her.

Her fear of how fleeting, how impermanent the feeling was made her relish it . . . cling to it with a wild desperation.

After several moments, his rigid hold on the swing slackened. She cried out when she swung away from him and their physical connection was broken.

He stepped forward and caught her as she swung back toward him. He brought her against him with one arm around her waist.

“Shhhh,” he murmured, his lips against her neck. His hand moved between her thighs. Sunlight warmed her forehead and her body sang beneath his touch. He kissed her parted lips when she shuddered in climax a moment later, swallowing her sharp cries of pleasure.

“You make me crazy, Katie,” he said as they clung together and her muscles turned to soft, heated mush.

She ran her sensitive lips against his whiskered jaw and spoke next to his neck.

“And you make me sane.”

Twenty-one

A week and a half later Katie pulled into the drive in front of
the Mitchell place, only to see that Rill’s car was gone, but another sat in its place. She heaved a sigh of disappointment. She’d been looking forward to seeing Rill after a long day of running Errol to rehab and meeting with the director of the county community center. She’d been offered the job Monty had mentioned. While Katie was still flush from her success, Jane Sacks, the director, had surprised her by immediately sending her on her first assignment.

And
what
an assignment. She’d gotten lost in the wooded hills searching for a woman most of the locals knew merely as the chinchilla lady. The chinchilla lady, whose real name was Lila Raschamack, lived all alone on a chinchilla farm, which she’d inherited from her husband.

The chinchilla lady had welcomed Katie to her ramshackle farm with a soggy cigar hanging from her mouth and a loaded shotgun in her hands.

Fortunately, Katie was used to dealing with crazy old coots; she’d had her share of them in visiting Hollywood mansions. Movie stars were nearly as idiosyncratic and loony as the people of Vulture’s Canyon.

She’d eventually been able to convince the gun-toting Lila that she’d been sent by the county to help her with the compliance audit the federal government had sent her for the sale of some of her chinchillas last year to a furrier. After some investigation of the circumstances, Katie thought she could make a good case to the IRS given the costs associated with raising the livestock. Lila had been so pleased with the news, she’d offered Katie one of her cigars and took her out into her backyard to show her the spectacular vista of the sun setting in the deep canyon.

Katie had turned down the cigar, but she’d been strangely pleased by the offer. That and the blessed fresh air she’d been able to inhale after leaving the revolting-smelling barn where Lila kept the chinchillas.

Miles Fordham got out of his car and started across the parking space toward her Maserati.
What is he doing here?
Katie thought sourly. She wasn’t in the mood for another tour of Miles’s dynasty. She thought she could still smell the sickening, intense musk exuded by the squirrel-like little creatures emanating from her sweater. She couldn’t get into the shower fast enough to wash her hair.

Before Miles could reach her car, she snatched up the bag from the passenger seat and stuffed it into her purse. She’d had to make a special run to the pharmacy this morning while Errol was doing his rehab.

“Where’ve you been hiding yourself?” Miles asked when she got out of her car and slammed the door.

“Just now? Oh, I was dodging bullets at a rodent farm. What are you up to?”

He laughed as though she’d just told a joke. He had a harried, distracted air about him, despite his mirth. Katie also noticed the usually perfect wave in his hair looked disheveled.

“Something wrong, Miles?” Katie asked as she started to walk toward the front steps.

“It’s the damn terrorists living in these woods.”

Katie came to a halt, scattering gravel beneath her boots. “Terrorists?”

“May as well be,” Miles commented, throwing her a dark look. “They took a couple shots through my living room window and vandalized the hotel and riverboat construction site last night. Set back our schedule by weeks. It’s nothing I can’t work past, though. These stupid hill people aren’t going to stop me or the opening of the riverboat.” He seemed to recover from his bout of bitterness. “It’s a nice evening. Thought you might like to join me at the club for dinner?”

“Sorry, no,” Katie said in a friendly manner. She flung her bag over her shoulder and started for the house. “I’ve got a scalding shower in my future and then I’m going to make some salmon linguini.”

“Sounds delicious.”

“I’m making it for Rill,” Katie said point-blank as she paused on the stairs.

Miles’s eyebrows went up in understanding. “Oh, I see. That’s the way of it, is it?”

“Yeah. It is.”

Miles’s scowl transformed into a smile. He shrugged good-naturedly. “Kind of hard to be a sore loser when you look so happy, Katie. You be sure to come find me if Pierce treats you badly, now.”

Katie laughed despite the glimmer of anxiety that went through her at Miles’s words.

Rill had been nothing but wonderful toward her for the past eleven days. He smiled so regularly Katie had almost forgotten his depressive gloom. He’d become so active in sprucing up the Mitchell place, Katie hardly recognized the old house.

He spent at least six hours every day in front of his computer, writing. Sometimes she’d wake up in the middle of the night and see him at his desk, his fingers moving rapidly over the keyboard. She liked to watch him as he worked, but eventually she’d call his name. He’d turn and give her a smile, his air adorably distracted at first. Then his eyes would narrow as he focused on her and he’d rise and join her in bed.

They didn’t seem capable of keeping their hands off each other. They teased each other and talked of inane, lover-like things. They ate excellent, healthy meals. Kate was inspired by all the good food offered at the co-op.

Rill refused to let her read his screenplay, saying she could look at it when he’d made the final decision of whether—in his words, accent included—it was
shite
or not.

He never spoke of Eden, and Katie was so ecstatic in their newfound relationship, reveling in the experience of being with the man with whom she’d fallen so deeply in love, she kept quiet on that topic as well. They’d joined in a silent pact not to bring up anything associated with Eden, and the knowledge of her own collusion in that little conspiracy rankled at Katie . . . especially when she considered what she’d just shoved inside her bag. She’d come to terms with her relationship with Rill with regard to Eden. She sensed that Eden would have wanted what was best for Rill, that she’d want him to get on with the business of living, and that included loving. Her collusion in the silence wasn’t because
she
was uncomfortable. She was just worried
Rill
thought the topic of Eden was too inflammatory to broach.

“Rill isn’t going to treat me badly,” Katie told Miles with more confidence than she felt.

“You know how these Hollywood types are.”

“I know better than most people,” she countered swiftly.

“Well, I can’t argue with that,” Miles said with a shrug that signified it was her own grave she was digging. “If you won’t come out on a date with me, can I at least ask a favor as a friend?”

“What?” Katie asked. She didn’t consider herself a friend of Miles. In fact, her dislike of him had grown regularly as she’d completed Joe Jones’s tax return last week. Still, she couldn’t help but be curious about what he’d ask her.

“Would you mind looking over a few things for me, businesswise? I have some questions I need answered, and the gaming commission is running my lawyers in circles up in Springfield. A representative from the gaming commission is going to be here soon to make a site visit, and I need to make sure all my ducks are in a row.”

Katie started to make a polite refusal when something occurred to her. Going over Joe Jones’s bank statements—and inadvertenly, some of his daughter Amber’s—had pricked Katie’s curiosity in regard to Miles and some potentially shady dealings at the Forest River Country Club. It would probably be a mistake—her curiosity had certainly gotten her into trouble in the past—but the thought of Joe Jones with nearly nothing to his name but that disintegrating old mobile home got the better of her.

“Sure, Miles. I’ll give you a couple hours, if you think it’ll help.”

“You’re a godsend, Katie.”

They agreed on a time and a place to meet the following morning. Katie was in a hot shower, scouring all traces of chinchillamusk residue from her skin and hair within two minutes of Miles walking away.

She thought of telling Rill tonight about taking the job at the community center as she showered. Nervousness flickered in her belly at the prospect. He wouldn’t mind, would he?

Would he be insulted? Would he patronize her?