Fourteen
Katie had nearly fallen asleep, feeling drowsy and content in the circle of Rill’s arms. She was roused after several sleepy minutes, though, when she felt him trying carefully to extricate himself from their embrace.
“You live here, Rill,” she murmured sleepily. “If you’re considering doing a fuck and dash, you’re out of luck. I’m in your bed.”
“I’m not trying to get away,” he said. “I just need to get rid of the condom.”
She opened her eyes into slits and glanced back at him while he got out of bed. Her gaze was snagged by the small, sexy smile that curved his lips. A pleasant rush of warmth settled in her lower belly and pussy when she recalled those delicious minutes she’d spent under the magic of Rill’s mouth.
“If you can manage to part with those boots, you could take a shower with me,” he suggested quietly.
She grinned. “I think I can manage that. I usually only sleep in my boots for special occasions like this one.”
His bark of laughter took her by surprise, but it was his hand swatting her ass that made her spring up like she’d been goosed. She rolled over on the bed and retaliated by doing the same to him, spanking a dense, hard buttock. She saw the flash in his eyes and started to back away immediately, laughing the whole time. The devil spark in his blue eyes, that naughty grin—those were things she associated all too much with the Rill she knew and loved. He caught her by the ankle when she tried to scoot off the bed. He yanked. She slid toward him along with the majority of the bedding.
“No, no . . .” she protested between jags of laughter. She squawked when he flung her over his shoulder. He smacked her butt again and headed toward the door.
“Quiet, woman. You’ll have all the wolves in a three-mile radius howling at the front door.”
Katie was laughing so hard she barely had air to protest her ignominious position. Despite his boisterous play, Rill set her down gently enough in the bathroom and even left her to her own devices as she pinned up her hair.
Once he’d started a steam going in the shower, he came up behind her where she stood at the bathroom sink. Katie met his eyes in the reflection of the mirror.
“How many of those damn things do you have to use to pin up that stuff?” he asked, his gaze following her actions with interest.
“I’d appreciate it if you stopped calling my hair ‘stuff,’” she managed around the large bobby pin she’d stuck in her mouth.
He caught a rebel tendril at her neck and ran it between his thumb and forefinger, watching in fascination when it coiled again as he released the tension.
“There’s even more of it than I thought . . . before having touched it, I mean,” he said gruffly.
Katie went still in the process of inserting a pin when she saw the expression on his face as he studied the errant curl. A second later, she thought she’d imagined it when he turned and pushed back the shower curtain.
“I’ve wanted to do this for more years than you probably care to know,” Katie told him a minute later.
Rill glanced up from where he’d been watching her work up a lather on his chest beneath searching, sensitive fingertips.
“Don’t tell me you wanted to get naked with me in the shower since you were fourteen years old,” he said, a smile in his voice. “That really is more information than I want to know.”
Katie laughed. “No, I did not want to take a naked shower with you at some innocent age.” She continued her discovery of his body, worshipping every nuance of bone and muscle. When she brushed a fingertip over a nipple, thrilling to the way the flat, dark brown disc beaded beneath her, her smile faded.
Rill, naked and wet with warm water, was no laughing matter, after all.
“But I’ve wanted to touch you for a while now,” she admitted huskily, her eyes still on his stiffening nipple. She inhaled slowly, searching for courage.
“In fact, I’ve wanted you for years.”
He placed both his hands on her shoulders. Katie continued to stroke him with a soap-lathered hand in the silence that followed, too intimidated to look up at him. Actually, too scared to breathe, given what she’d just admitted. When he didn’t respond for what seemed like an eternity, she glanced up. Her mouth fell open when she saw the stiffness of his facial muscles.
“Are you serious?” he asked.
“I . . . Yes,” Katie mumbled, confused by his intensity. “Does it really surprise you?”
He didn’t speak, just stared down at her, unmoving. The water hitting the tub floor started to sound like a loud crashing noise in her ears.
“You say this has been going on for years?” Rill clarified.
Katie glanced away from his penetrating stare. “Is that so terrible? I never acted on the attraction, obviously. Not while . . . Eden was alive.” She said the last hesitantly, not sure how Rill would take the mention of his dead wife while they stood together naked in a hot shower. “I know this isn’t easy for you to talk about, but it’s not easy for me, either.”