“The night I got here, right? You’ve been sober going on two weeks now. So you know what that tells me, Rill? For this moment in time of my life, this is exactly where I belong.” She jabbed her finger down at the chipped linoleum floor. Incredulity flickered over his rugged features.
“That’s your plan? To drive me so nuts that I can’t even find any peace in a whiskey bottle?”
“Peace,” she repeated sarcastically. “The only reason you were so calm is you were too drunk to feel anything else.”
“You’re not my type, Katie,” he bellowed abruptly, startling her. It took a second for the sting from his words to fully settle, but when it did, Katie was galvanized.
“You think you’re telling me something I don’t know? What precisely is it that you find unappealing about me? Come on, don’t be a coward. Just say it!” She stepped toward him in a challenging gesture.
“You want me to say it?” he shouted.
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
He glanced down over her, burning her with his gaze. “You’re too obvious, with your short skirts and tight jeans . . . all that hair. Everyone has got to drop what they’re doing when Katie Hughes blows into a room like a sexed-up whirlwind. What are you trying to prove, tempting a man until he goes and does something he’s bound to regret? Why can’t you just give it a rest, Katie?” He made an angry slashing motion with his hand. “I can’t frickin’ think straight when you’re around.”
His words seemed to hang in the air like the vibrations of a struck gong, making her ears ring.
“Oh, I see,” she said, her voice trembling. “I’m too much of a slut for you, is that it, Rill? I’m not ladylike enough. I’m not soft-spoken. I’m not Eden; isn’t that right?” She spun around, suddenly compelled. She started flinging open drawer after drawer, rattling utensils and tableware.
“I don’t think you’re a slut, for fuck’s sake. . . . What are you doing?” Rill asked from behind her, sounding pissed off and bewildered.
“You think I’m too flagrant, is that it? Well, fine,” she spat viciously. Her hands settled on the handles of an aged pair of gardening sheers. She grabbed a handful of curls above her shoulder and opened the scissors.
“Jaysus fucking Christ.”
He grabbed the hand holding the sheers in an iron grip. Katie just moved the hunk of hair over to where the scissors were. Rill cursed lividly and held the wrist gripping her hair, as well. His grip tightened uncomfortably on the hand holding the scissors.
“Let go of them, Katie, or I swear I’m going to turn you over my knee,” he warned in a low, vibrating, thickly accented voice.
She jerked extra hard the wrist of the hand holding her hair and broke free.
“You little . . .” He closed his arms round her, forcing both of her hands down to her sides. She had to let go of her hair, but the scissors were still clutched in her hand a few inches away from her thigh.
“Drop those fucking scissors,” Rill demanded.
“No.” She struggled in his hold, but he held her fast, her elbows pinned to her sides. “God, I hate y
ou, Rill Pierce.”
But it was a lie. The realization that it was she—Katie—she loathed at that moment made her growl in pure frustration. She dropped the scissors to the floor and let her leg muscles go slack. Rill let out a stream of curses as they both toppled off balance. He was so large, and she was so small, however, that he almost immediately righted himself. He swung her into the air and began to walk to the living room with a long-legged stride, Katie’s back pressed to his front and her booted feet flaying the air in front of her.
“Put me down,” she shouted, but Rill’s anger seemed to even exceed her own. She caught a glimpse of his rigid features and fiery eyes when he hoisted her upper body with his arms and draped her thighs in the crook of his elbow. He sat down on the couch, holding her struggling, squirming body in his lap, one forearm holding her down like a steel bar at her middle back.
“I don’t believe you,” he grated out furiously as he pushed her skirt up. Cool air tickled her naked thighs. He smacked the bottom curve of a buttock when she tried to slide off the end of his knees onto the floor, and then hauled her back up onto his lap. Her heart beat wildly in her ears in rising anticipation, and sure enough, his palm came down again, smacking her other buttock.
“Stop it! How dare you,” she squealed when he spanked her again. Her muscles were pulled so tight as she struggled that the smack of skin against skin sounded like gunfire going off in the still room.
“How dare I? You were going to cut off your fucking hair!” Rill boomed above her. He sounded personally affronted. He made a sound of impatience. Katie went still for a moment when he grabbed both sides of the bikini briefs she was wearing and shoved them into the crack of her ass, exposing her buttocks.
“No!” she cried out when he held her firmly and raised his left hand. Her entire body tightened as he began to smack her bottom repeatedly. The blows weren’t hard, but they stung. She wiggled beneath his hand at her back, trying to avoid the steady reign of spanks by making her ass a moving target. But Rill didn’t seem to mind; in fact, her desperate squirming seemed to amplify the rate of his spankings.
“Stop it!” she screamed finally between pants.
When he did, indeed, cease for a moment, Katie came up on her elbows and spit her hair out of her face. Tears wet her cheeks; not tears of pain, but tears of anger and humiliation.
Her mind kept going back to those blistering moments in the kitchen when Rill had been pointing out her imperfections. Her bottom smarted from his spankings.
The bastard. Katie could only imagine how pink her ass was.