by BETH KERY
He ground her down on him and rotated his hips, grunting when she gyrated against him in return.
Arousal reared up, a beast about to pounce. The feeling was so powerful, it sobered him for a very brief moment. He’d long ago schooled himself against the charms of nubile flesh and inviting smiles. Lord knew he’d been offered more of that fare than a normal man.
Rill hadn’t been a normal man, though. He’d made a point of that.
He blinked and a dark pink nipple came into focus. It was a rose-tipped delicacy, glistening wetly atop soft curves of mouthwatering flesh. A snarl shaped his lips. A need to mate, hard and fast, swelled dangerously in his blood. He leaned down and latched onto the nipple. Distantly, he recalled her other sweet breast, and he couldn’t resist the temptation.
Her fingers clawed into his hair when he shoved aside her bra and sucked on her other nipple.
“You let your hair grow,” he heard her say through his haze of greedy lust.
He continued to feast on firm, responsive flesh. Did she know him? Was that how she knew that he’d shaved his head for the past couple years? He doubted it. As a film director—an ex-director—plenty of people had seen him on television and in entertainment magazines.
Besides, if he’d ever come face-to-face with a woman like this, he would have remembered. She was too sweet to be real. She melted on his tongue. He drowned in her scent and flavor. His balls pinched tight. He reluctantly withdrew his mouth from her breast.
The necessity for haste jolted through him like an electrical shock. He jerked up his hips and she fell off him, long hair spilling over her face.
“I’m sorry, baby,” he mumbled as he rolled on his hip and came up on his hands and knees. When he got there, he paused for a few seconds, willing his world to stop spinning.
“Rill . . . are you all right?”
“No worries,” he mumbled as he slowly, carefully stood, putting his hands out for a balance as though he were on a lurching ship. “I may be shit-faced as an Irish sailor on payday, but I’m in fine fucking form.”
“Charming,” he heard her say dryly when he grabbed his cock through his jeans and grimaced. He could tell by the tone of her voice that his angel thought he was being crude, but in reality, he’d been trying to alleviate the stab of lust that went through it when he noticed her shapely legs encased in tight denim and supple, calf-length leather boots.
His vision blurred as he held out his hand to her. She got up on her own, however, which indicated he’d hallucinated some brains along with all that firm, ripe beauty. Most likely, he would have stumbled and brought both of them down on the hard wood floor. She stood, her hair falling in a riot of waves and curls around her shoulders—a fucking glorious display. The tendrils reached her waist. He stretched his hand farther, longing to touch the burnished strands.
“Come on,” she said, grabbing his hand firmly in her own instead. “I’m taking you to bed.”
“Now you’re talking,” he agreed with drunken earnestness. He staggered after her down the hallway to his bedroom, his eyes glued to the beguiling curve that led from her waist to her hip. He couldn’t wait to peel those jeans off and expose the rest of that golden apricot-hued, juicy flesh.
In his drunken state, fantasy and reality melded. One second, he’d been in the hallway leching over his angel’s ass, and the next, he was in the bedroom pulling her back in his arms and nibbling at her neck, the fragrance of her hair and skin deepening his intoxication. He bent and pressed her ass against his erection. She squirmed.
“Rill Pierce, behave.”
Instead of stopping, his mouth grew hungrier on her neck. He felt the vibrations of her soft, helpless moan against his lips.
“You don’t want me to behave,” he growled against her ear before he pressed his mouth to her neck. She shivered in his arms. He could feel her pulse, throbbing quick and strong beneath his lips. “Your heart is racing.”
“That’s because I’m trying to throw a six-foot-three drunk Irishman off me,” she said acerbically. But he heard the tremor in her voice; he knew what it meant. And, no—it wasn’t drunken wishful thinking, either. She’d slowed her wriggling in his embrace. She molded against him like she couldn’t stop herself from feeling his shape.
He opened his hand at her lower belly, his third and fourth fingers spreading down to her mons. He liked how much of her compact body he could encompass with his hand. His actions didn’t strike him as forward or inappropriate, only right and natural—soft woman against hard man. He pulled her closer, holding her hips captive.
She went completely still in his arms.
“I may be drunk, but I’m not an idiot. Don’t tell me you don’t feel that,” he said gruffly, referring to the palpable heat that emanated from both of their groins, daring her to deny the obvious. His voice had gone hoarse with acute desire. Something about her scent and the feeling of her satiny, warm skin beneath his hand was turning him into a horny satyr. Sure, her body was a fine piece of equipment, but he’d thrived in a profession where breathtaking women abounded. It wasn’t her soft skin and lush curves that were making him crazy.
Or at least it wasn’t just that.
“I don’t think . . .”
“Stop thinking. Just feel,” he entreated in a whisper next to her ear. “That’s what I’m doing, and I haven’t let myself feel much of anything for two years now. Have pity, beautiful.”
If he didn’t feel her wet, sleek flesh surrounding his cock very soon, he suddenly doubted for his sanity. Not that doubting his sanity wasn’t a daily occurrence these days, but on this occasion, the possibility of losing his mind felt frighteningly close.
He placed one hand on her chin and pushed it gently, urging her to twist her face toward him. He plucked at her lips. Even though she didn’t kiss him back immediately, she didn’t turn away, either. He closed his eyes and nibbled at her. It was like trying to coax a flower to open for him. Rill loved the art of kissing—at least, he did when he wasn’t shit-faced with his cock ready to burst.
He reined in his lust, willing her to respond as he shaped their mouths together tenderly, and then with increasing fervor as the sensation of her pervaded his awareness. His brain may be taking a bath in alcohol, but he recognized her premium flavor nonetheless.
Something swooped up from his chest to his neck until it tightened like a clawed hand on his throat. It took him a second to recognize the sensation as blinding need.
“Open up, baby,” he growled. “I’ve waited for this for so damn long.”
When her lips parted, he swept down on her, drinking her nectar thirstily, letting her taste course through his blood and flesh, allowing it to drown out his memories by a means exponentially more effective than whiskey.
She made a sound in her throat that he couldn’t completely identify when he began to unfasten her jeans with fingers that had grown fleet from an onrush of distilled lust. Had it been surprise he’d heard in her tone? Arousal?
Or uncertainty?
He didn’t know, and he didn’t care.
He groaned gutturally as he kissed her—well, ravaged her mouth, in truth—while he shoved down her jeans and one hand rose to caress the smooth skin of her hip and ass. Lust raged in him at the evidence of all that sweet female flesh.
It’d been so long.
The way he felt, he might have been a sixteen-year-old boy first dribbling jeans off the girl of his wet dreams, not a thirty-six-year-old man who had known his share of fame and accolades, the touch and desire of many women, the love of a wife whom he’d failed, in the end . . .
. . . the black void of loss and self-doubt.
Rill was too familiar with all those things.
The flickering thought galvanized him. He shoved her panties down next to her clinging jeans, and then regretfully interrupted their kiss. She w
asn’t so hesitant in her response now; she’d been kissing him back with a fervor and heat that nearly equaled his own, tangling her tongue with his, twisting her face farther over her shoulder to get a better angle on his penetration. He ducked his knees and dragged her jeans and panties down to her shins.
She cried out in surprise—or possibly distress—at his clumsy seduction. He was back to reassure her in a second, biting gently at her lips and then penetrating the warm, wet well of her mouth again. He wanted to kiss her forever.
He knew fucking her would prevent him from doing that.
He needed to do both.
When he heard her moan, deep and aroused, as she pressed her bare ass against a cock that was fit to pop, Rill found he couldn’t take any more. If he didn’t get inside this tempting creature, he was going to take a trip to the asylum sooner rather than later.
He continued to kiss her, his hunger mounting uncontrollably, as he tore at his button fly. He impatiently shoved his jeans and then his boxer briefs down over his thighs. He fisted his cock and broke their greedy kiss with a hissing sound.
“I’m gonna come right in my hand. I can’t take any more of this.”
He had a fleeting image of her delicate profile through tendrils of curling hair. Her lips parted in surprise. He placed one hand on her hip, rubbing her in a soothing motion. Despite what he’d said—despite the need for overwhelming haste—he remained unmoving for a moment, his gaze glued to the sight of a compact, round white ass with just a hint of a peach-tinted glow. He tested that flesh with one hand. Her skin was as soft as a flower petal, the flesh firm and succulent.
“Don’t make me wait,” he whispered, leaning over and nipping at an earlobe. “I want you so bad I think it’s cutting at me from inside out.”
He felt her hesitate, and for a split second, he knew misery.
But then she brushed her ass against his erection in a beckoning gesture. She bent at the waist.
“That’s right. You are an angel. Put your hands on the bed,” he said thickly as he moved behind her.
***
Who in their right mind named a town Vulture’s Canyon? Katie Hughes wondered as she peered out her front windshield at the forlorn-looking buildings that comprised downtown Vulture’s Canyon, Illinois. She’d seen quaint-looking downtowns circa the 1930s, both in her road trips around California and on Hollywood movie sets. But Vulture’s Canyon’s storefronts appeared much older. She stared at the Dyer Creek Trading Company as she passed and wondered if she’d gone through a time warp back to the 1800s. A humid September evening and the soft, hazy lavender fall of twilight only added to the surreal feeling. The sensation of being lost in time was so complete that she gave a little sigh of relief when she saw the door of the Legion Diner open and a teenage boy step onto the sidewalk wearing a rock band T-shirt, jeans and tennis shoes.
The kid gawked at her as she approached. Katie gave him a wave, sympathetic toward a young man’s admiration of sex on wheels. It was embarrassing to admit, but she’d had a similar adolescent longing when she’d bought the shiny black Maserati. Maybe she’d always treasure the feeling of the open road and a fast ride surging through her veins, but at least she’d learned a measure of shame over her crush on sleek, mechanized power. She was a thirty-year-old woman, after all, not one of this kid’s classmates.
Something squirmed inside her belly when she recalled the look of incredulity and vague disgust on the manager’s face when Katie had whipped into the parking lot of the soup kitchen to volunteer for service a few months back.
Note to self: don’t show up for philanthropic service in an expensive car; it reeks of self-disgust and the need to fill the empty hole of a useless life.
Katie shoved the depressing thought aside and smiled when the teenager dazedly waved back at her. She hit the brakes and waited while the kid walked toward the curb with a stride that was all long, scissoring legs and arms. She recognized his awkwardness and felt a rush of warmth toward him. She lowered the passenger-side window.
“Hi,” she called. “I’m Katie.”
“Uh . . . hi,” he replied, his deep voice spiced with a slight twang. Southern Illinois was a whole different world from the northern part of the state. She saw him inspect her car, and then her, with brown eyes that looked curious, but also slightly alarmed, as though he thought she passed for normal, but hadn’t entirely discounted the possibility that an alien had just glided into Vulture’s Canyon in a Maserati.
“What’s your name?” Katie asked.
His Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed. “Derek Legion.”
“Hey, Derek. Could you tell me where I might find Eagle Perch Road?”
“Yeah. Just keep going straight through town, pass Dyer Creek and take the first right you come to.” He crouched slightly to get a better look at her. “You’re not going up to the Mitchell house, are you?”
“Yeah, I am. You know Rill Pierce?”
Katie thought she read a hint of belligerence in the kid’s expression, making him look older than he had just seconds before. “I know who he is. He manages to come down the hill a couple of times a week. Sees to the necessities,” he added, glancing pointedly across the street. Katie turned her head and saw where the boy was looking: the Last Stop Tavern.
She straightened in the car seat. She wasn’t surprised at the boy’s subtle judgment of Rill, but it still made her uncomfortable nonetheless.
Rill had practically been adopted by the Hughes family since he’d come to southern California from Ireland to attend UCLA. That had been almost twenty years ago. People usually gravitated toward Rill. Grandmas adored him and little boys begged him to rugby-tackle them. He could make a female of any age marvel at the wonder of her womanhood as she experienced the delicious contrast of her own sexuality and Rill’s easy charm and rugged good looks.
Things must be even worse than she’d thought if Rill’s behavior in the small town could cause this nice-seeming kid to glower so darkly.
She thanked Derek, assuring him that Rill was a longtime friend when he asked her if she was sure she should go up to the Mitchell place alone.
Twenty minutes later as she leaned over Rill’s mussed bed and stared blindly at the wall while his cock slowly carved into her flesh like a hot knife through melting butter, Katie distantly realized she should have heeded the boy’s warning.
***
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Beth Kery lives in Chicago where she juggles the demands of her career, her love of the city and the arts, and a busy family life. Her writing today reflects her passion for all of the above. She is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Because You Are Mine. Find out more about Beth and her books at BethKery.com or Facebook.com/Beth.Kery.
When I’m With You
PART I: WHEN WE TOUCH
PART II: WHEN YOU DEFY ME
PART III: WHEN YOU TEASE ME
Because You Are Mine
PART I: BECAUSE YOU TEMPT ME
PART II: BECAUSE I COULD NOT RESIST
PART III: BECAUSE YOU HAUNT ME
PART IV: BECAUSE YOU MUST LEARN
PART V: BECAUSE I SAID SO
PART VI: BECAUSE YOU TORMENT ME
PART VII: BECAUSE I NEED TO
PART VIII: BECAUSE I AM YOURS
Berkley Sensation titles by Beth Kery
WICKED BURN
DARING TIME
Berkley Heat titles by Beth Kery
SWEET RESTRAINT
PARADISE RULES
RELEASE
EXPLOSIVE
One Night of Passion series
ADDICTED TO YOU (WRITING AS BETHANY KANE)
EXPOSED TO YOU
One Night of Passion Specials
BOUND TO YOU
&nb
sp; CAPTURED BY YOU