Guilty Needs

by Shiloh Walker

  He turned and shoved it into the dresser, unsure why he had to get it out of his sight. He lifted his gaze and stared into the mirror. I’ll be damned, he thought. Ghosts do cast reflections. And he could see hers rising from the bed and moving toward him. “And that matters…why? Weren’t you trying to convince me the other day that Bree has some secret hang-up on me? Why the hell would she help you pick out lingerie if she had something for me?”

  Alyssa shrugged. “Maybe because she was doing what friends do.”

  She stood beside him now, staring at her reflection with wide, curious eyes. “I haven’t been in here since it happened,” she whispered. Slowly, she turned and stared around, her gaze lingering on the bed, then moving to the window. “I remember…you lay down next to me, held me. I told you I loved you. You said it back. I wanted to go out to the garden…was going to tell you that after I woke up. But I never did, did I?”

  In a rusty, tight voice, he said, “No.”

  Turning back, she stared down at the jewelry on the tray, lifting a hand as though she’d pick something up, but all she did was let her fingers hover just above the chains. “I can’t do anything about you feeling guilty, Colby. I wish I could, but you’re the only one who can do something about that. There is nothing for you to feel guilty about. Nothing.”

  “How can you say that? I’m back here a month and all I can think about is her.”

  “That’s not really true.” Alyssa lowered her hand to her side and then faced him. “You’re too hung up on feeling guilty about Bree to be everything you think about, or you would have already at least slept with her.”

  “It shouldn’t be like this,” he gritted out. “You weren’t even gone six months when I started dreaming about her. That isn’t right.”

  Alyssa cocked a brow at him. “Says who?”

  And that wasn’t something he really had an answer for. She smiled at him, rose up on her toes. A chill caressed his lips as she pressed her mouth to his. He couldn’t feel her, not really, just the brush of something cold—there, then gone. “Stop beating yourself up, baby. It really is okay to let me go. And it really is okay to love her.”

  “I don’t…” He wanted to say he didn’t love Bree. There was no rhyme or reason to it. He’d known her for as long as he’d known Alyssa and up until a year ago, she’d been his wife’s best friend. His friend. Nothing else. Then he had started having bizarre dreams about her. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  She shrugged. “Love never does.” Slowly, she backed away and whispered, “You have to decide to let me go. Until you do that, until you really do it, you’re going to live with the guilt. And you’re going to live with wanting her and not having her. Wanting something you can’t have sucks, baby. You know that. So just let me go.”

  Let me go.

  Colby stood in the same spot three hours later.

  The same spot, but nothing in the room looked the same. Most of the walls were bare. He had boxed up all of Alyssa’s clothes, along with her shoes, her jewelry, her books.

  Everything.

  Empty boxes had been down in the garage, waiting for him.

  Now, there was only one thing left.

  Lowering his gaze, he stared at the ring on his finger. It didn’t come off easily. He still hadn’t put on the fifteen pounds he’d lost over the past year, but the ring didn’t want to come off. When it did, he started to add it to the boxes piled on the bed, but instead, laid it on the dresser.

  He was having the local DAV store pick up Alyssa’s clothes and stuff, but he couldn’t part with his ring so easily.

  With one last, lingering glance, he left the room and slipped outside.

  He hadn’t known exactly where he planned to go—at least not until he was pulling into her driveway.

  He should have though.

  He thought about her too often. He could hear her laugh in his sleep, smell the scent of her skin even when she wasn’t there and when she smiled, it hit him in the chest like a ton of bricks.

  Bree.

  Maybe he was falling in love with her…no, screw the maybe. He was pretty sure he already was. But could she love him back?

  He didn’t know. She was sitting on the front porch when he pulled up, almost as though she’d been waiting for him. With her head leaning back against the plush cushion of the porch swing, she watched him as he climbed out of his car, mounted the steps and crossed to stand before her.

  “I forgot to bring your bike back.” She shrugged. Her silken skin gleamed gold against the pale green tank-top she wore. Her eyes were carefully blank. “No big deal. I’ve got the truck. How did you get the car back?”

  He glanced over his shoulder and said, “Callie. She came by to clean and I asked her to drop me off.”

  She was quiet, saying nothing else, just staring at him, no expression on her face. His heart kept skipping beats, dancing around erratically while heat and need sizzled through him. Damn it, he wanted her.

  Needed.

  But she was so damn quiet, so reserved, and he didn’t know if she’d welcome him if he touched her again or jerk away.

  Voice ragged, he asked, “Are you mad at me?”

  Her lashes lowered briefly over her eyes. She was quiet for a second, long enough to have his stomach going into knots. “No, I’m not mad at you.”

  “Should I apologize?”

  She blinked. “Why?”

  “Because if it’s something I should be sorry for, then I won’t do it again. Should I be sorry?”

  Her tongue slid out, slicked across her lips. “No.” Her voice was all but soundless. “Nothing to be sorry for.”

  He crouched down in front of her and gingerly laid his hands on her thighs. She wore a denim skirt that was too damn short for his state of mind and the long, lean expanse of her legs bared all but had him drooling. He stroked down low. What he wanted to do was stroke up. Up under the skirt, to tug her panties down and strip them away. Then hold the skirt out of the way as he pressed his mouth to her and licked her pussy until she came.

  That was what he wanted.

  But instead of doing that, he murmured, “And what if I want to do it again? And more?”

  “Do you?” She stared at him from hooded eyes.

  In response, he shifted his left hand higher, pushing it under the hem of her skirt and brushing the tips of his fingers against her heated sex. “Yes,” he said, his voice harsh and guttural.

  “Why?”

  He touched her again, a firmer touch. He could feel the hot silk of her through her panties. “Because I’ve been thinking about doing it for six months now and it’s driving me crazy wondering.”

  She blinked, her lashes so low over her eyes that all he could see was a thin sliver of gray. Then she arched her hips up, oh-so slightly and rubbed against his fingers. “So is this for the sake of curiosity?”

  “No.” He hooked an arm around her hips and hauled her to the edge of the swing. “If it was just for the sake of curiosity, I could have fucked you that day before I left—you would have let me. I could see it in your eyes.” Then he slanted his mouth against hers and kissed her.

  At the same time, he hooked his thumb inside the leg of her panties and drew it away from her sex. As he pushed his tongue into her mouth, he slid two fingers inside her pussy. Hot, molten satin—she was tight, fiery and sweetly wet. He withdrew his fingers, and as he stroked back, he twisted his wrist, screwing his fingers in and out. She moaned into his mouth, her back arching.

  She went tight around him—too tight. Each successive touch made her burn hotter around him, had her silken sheath clenching tighter and tighter. Before Colby even realized how close she was, she came, muffling her cry against his mouth and rocking desperately against his hand.

  Dragging his mouth away from hers, he swore and shifted. She must have thought he was going to pull away because she cried out and caught his wrist, holding him as she worked herself against his hand.

  “Shh…it’s okay,” he mutter
ed against her trembling mouth. Then he disentangled them, reluctantly withdrawing his fingers. He pulled her off the swing, all too conscious of how exposed they were, but he couldn’t have found the strength to pull away if he had to, not even just to take her into the house.

  Instead, he settled on the wooden-plank floor, with his back against the high railing. The railing and the hedge between them and the street should—hopefully—block them from view.

  He sat with her between his thighs, her back pressed to his chest, her body still trembling, still tight with need.

  She whimpered as he stroked his hand down the center of her body. When he cupped her in his hand, she shuddered and a rush of wet heat met him as he parted her flesh and sank his fingers back inside her.

  A neat patch of black curls shielded her pussy and through the curls, he could see the swollen, erect bud of her clit. Resting his chin on her shoulder, he stared down at her body, watched the way his hands looked on her as he stroked her clit, as he sank his fingers deep inside her pussy.

  Like a fucking fantasy.

  That was how it looked.

  His mouth watered with the need to push her to the ground and lie between her thighs and lap at her dew-slicked pussy, suck on her clit until she erupted and then crawl up her body and bury his cock inside her.

  Instead, he stayed where he was, watching as he teased, stroked and caressed. She whimpered, mewled and moaned his name, rocking against his hand, reaching up and back, twining one arm around his neck.

  This time, when he felt the orgasm moving on her, he pressed his thumb to her clit and rubbed. Slow, careful strokes that quickly became frenzied as she bucked against him with some sort of desperate hunger.

  She climaxed with a harsh, broken moan before going limp in his arms.

  He felt it when the languor faded. Although he was still burning from his own needs, all he wanted to do was sit there and hold her. But she tore away from him, lurched to her feet and stumbled away. Her hands shook as she smoothed her skirt down and her pretty caramel-colored skin was a deep shade of dusky pink.

  She wouldn’t look at him.

  But for some reason, Colby didn’t need her to. He got to his feet and moved to stand behind her, wrapping his arms around her when she would have shrugged him away. Her body was tense in his arms, stiff and unyielding. In that moment, though, she could have surrounded herself with slobbering pit bulls and he wouldn’t have been fooled.

  She did want him.

  A hell of a lot.

  Him. Maybe even as intensely as he wanted her.

  “Have dinner with me.”

  She glanced up over her shoulder at him and then away. “Why?”

  “Because it seems like I ought to buy you a meal before I talk you out of your clothes?” he teased, trying to keep it light.

  “Why do you want to talk me out of anything?”

  He let go of her arms, but before she could slip away, he snagged her waist, working one arm around her and holding her steady as he rocked his cock against the soft, plump curve of her ass. “Because I can’t stop thinking about you. And because I want to see you smiling at me when I wake up in the morning.” He stroked his other hand up her side and cupped her breast. “Have dinner with me.”

  “And then what? A quick fuck and then we go back to being friends?”

  He whirled her around in his arms and caught her face in his hands. “It won’t be quick…well, maybe the first time. But not the second. Not the third. And you and I both know we’ve gone past being just friends. I don’t know how exactly that happened, but it has happened. The question is—where do we go from here?” He pressed his mouth to hers but didn’t kiss her. He whispered, “I spent the last year running. I’m tired of it. Aren’t you?”

  She sighed shakily. “Colby, you sure this is a good idea?”

  With a soft laugh, he murmured, “Hell if I know. I just know it feels right. So what’s your answer?”

  She licked her lips. He felt the brush of her tongue against his own mouth and growled, wanting to suck it in and bite down—just a little—until he felt her shudder against him. Instead, he lifted his head and stared down at her. “Well?”

  Her nod was hesitant. Her voice soft. “Dinner.”

  But her eyes were hotter than molten steel and Colby knew he could get lost in them—would get lost in them—if he wasn’t careful.

  Slowly, he let her go. Catching her hand, he lifted it to his lips and brushed a kiss to the back of it. “Eight o’clock.”

  “Eight.”

  He took another step back and then made himself turn around before he grabbed her again. He managed to get exactly five feet away before he turned back, took two long strides and reached for her, cupping her face in his hands and kissing her until she moaned into his mouth. He sucked gently, drawing her tongue to him and as she slid it along his lower lip, then inside his mouth. Colby bit—gently. Softly.

  Before he could do anything else, he let her go, turned on his heel and stalked away from her.

  The next three hours were going to take entirely too long.

  Chapter Seven

  She looked beautiful in the candlelight, Colby decided.

  Beautiful. Shy. Nervous. When she caught him looking at her, she’d bite her lip and look away as though she didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t something he was used to from her, but hell, he hadn’t exactly pictured the two of them in a date situation, or at least not for a good fifteen years. And a date situation for a fifteen-year-old boy was a hell of a lot different than a date situation for a thirty-year-old man.

  “I never told you that I had a crush on you in high school, did I?” he asked, out of the blue. The second it left his mouth, he wondered why the hell he’d brought that up but he couldn’t exactly regret it, either. Not once he caught sight of the look on her face.

  Her eyes went wide, her jaw dropped open and then she snapped it closed. “You did not.”

  Leaning back, he shrugged and said, “Yeah, I did. But you were more interested in basketball practice and doing whatever you used to do with Alyssa. You never noticed me.”

  Something odd moved through her eyes and she smiled sadly. “I noticed you. Alyssa just noticed you first.”

  He wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but then the waiter appeared. They ordered, both of them going for the New York strip. Bree ordered a rum and coke, but he stuck with ice water. Forcing a smile, he said, “I did a little too much drinking after I took off. Figure it’s better just to not go there again.”

  She glanced toward the waiter. “Maybe I…”

  “Don’t worry about it. Doesn’t bother me or anything. And I’m not exactly an alcoholic looking to fall off the wagon. I just hit it harder than I should have, and when I realized it, I made myself stop.” Okay, truth doctored a little there. He hadn’t realized it. That was when Alyssa had first starting talking to him, her voice whispering to him in the night, and he’d been convinced it was because he was so damn drunk he was imagining it, or because he losing his grip on reality.

  Neither appealed. If he was looking insanity straight the eye, he couldn’t do much about it but he could do something about the drinking. That was exactly what he had done—emptied out every last bit of alcohol he had stashed in the one-room efficiency apartment he rented by the week and he hadn’t had a drop since.

  The fucked-up dreams about Bree had started a few weeks before that and because of them, he’d been drinking even more than normal. Part of him had hoped that, when he quit the drinking, the dreams and the whisper of Alyssa’s voice would stop. Didn’t happen.

  “You look serious.”

  He glanced up, pulled out of his retrospection and found Bree eyeing him with carefully guarded eyes. “Just thinking.”

  He shrugged his brooding thoughts away, studying her from across the table. It was in that moment that he realized she almost always looked guarded—at least when he was around. If he happened upon her and caught her by surprise, it wasn
’t there. But as soon as she saw him, the walls went up. He drummed his fingers on his thigh under the table and decided he didn’t like it. The few times he hadn’t seen it had been the day of the funeral, the other day when he’d kissed her and today on her porch.

  Unable to stop it, a grin spread across his face, or it might have been more of a leer—hell if he knew. When she saw it, she flushed, her cheeks turning a dusky shade of pink as she squirmed in the seat. “What?” she asked defensively.

  “Just thinking—different sort of thoughts this time.” His gaze dropped, following the rosy blush down to her neckline where the deep vee of her blouse blocked his view. Her nipples were hard.

  Her blush deepened as she crossed her arms over her chest. “Would you stop?” she asked, exasperated.

  “I’m not doing anything,” he said, though he knew it wasn’t exactly true. He made her nervous.

  Bree. Of all the women he knew, she was the last one he would have expected to be nervous around him. Was it a new thing? Or just something she’d hidden?

  The waiter appeared once again, quiet and fast, placed a rum and coke in front of Bree, then disappeared as quietly as he’d arrived. She grabbed it, took one large gulp, then another. From under her lashes, she watched him.

  “What about you?”

  She frowned at him. “What do you mean, what about me?”

  He shrugged restlessly. “Who did you have some secret crush on in high school? Basketball player? Somebody on the football team?”

  She took another sip from her drink and then set it on the table before answering. “High school was fifteen years ago. I barely remember half the kids in my homeroom class.”

  “You telling me you don’t remember your biggest crush in high school?”

  Rolling her eyes, she said, “What does it matter? It was high school.”

  “Just making conversation. I don’t really remember ever seeing you hang out with a particular guy.” And he would have noticed, at least if it happened during their freshman year or even halfway through their sophomore year. Probably even beyond, because even though he stopped thinking about her like that, she had been his girl’s best friend. Most teens did double dates from time to time, but Bree hadn’t. Hell, come to think about it, he really couldn’t think of a single guy throughout high school that she’d really spoken to.