“I love you, Rill Pierce,” she whispered in a pressured hiss before she covered his mouth. His mind churned with questions. He patted her back in a bid for her attention but with increasing feebleness as his blood started to boil. Kissing Katie was pure delight, but having Katie kiss him was like being hit by a Mack truck of lust.
His arms closed around her and he submerged himself in her heat. He muttered a protest a moment later when she broke the kiss.
“I thought you’d laugh at me.”
It took him a second to process her meaning as he tried to make the difficult mental segue from horny beast to rational man.
“Why would I laugh? Do you want the job?”
“I really, really do,” she said.
“Well, that’s great, then. Congratulations for getting it.” Something occurred to him. “Does this relate at all to why you were tangling with the chinchilla lady this afternoon?”
She nodded. Her smile was infectious.
“And . . . and you’re not upset that I took a job? In general, I mean,” she added, giving him a meaningful look that took him a moment to interpret. His smile faded. He paused before answering, trying to quiet his bout of horniness, because this was important. He chose his words with care.
“I don’t have any claim on your life, Katie,” he said gruffly. When he saw her face fall, he cradled the side of her head. Her solemn expression tore at him. “Don’t misunderstand me. I’m just saying that the reasons I came to Vulture’s Canyon are a world away from the reasons you did.”
“I came here for you,” she whispered.
“In part you did. I know that, and I’m grateful. Have I told you that? Well, I am. But you came here for yourself, too. You hated your job. I’m beginning to think you disliked your whole life.” She sniffed, and Rill used his thumb to wipe away a tear from her cheek. “You came here to find yourself, Katie. Me? I came here to get away from myself.”
A spasm of emotion flickered in her face.
“So when I say I don’t have a claim on your life, I just mean I don’t have any say in how you plan your future. Because I think that’s what you’re doing here, Katie. You’re carving out a future for yourself, and it’s going to be great. How could it not be, when you have so much to offer the world?” He grimaced when she sobbed softly.
This wasn’t going how he planned at all.
“Aw, Katie,” he murmured regretfully when more tears spilled around his thumb. “I came to this old town and existed like a festering sore up on this hill. You came and lit up the place like a beacon. It’s not wise for you to worry about what I think of your plans, not when your future is so bright, not when you have so much to give.”
“You’re not a festering sore,” she snapped between sniffs.
Rill suppressed a sigh of relief. Having her pissed at him was a damn sight better than seeing her looking so sad and lost. He couldn’t stand that. He smiled and dried off the last of her tears with his fingers.
“Thanks to you, I’m not quite so bad. At least I don’t smell like a rancid wound anymore.”
She gave him a forbidding glance for his levity. “You smelled more like a distillery when I arrived. Festering wound, my butt; no variety of infection could have existed in the midst of all that alcohol. Just inhaling your breath was enough to make me tipsy,” she told him testily.
“Thank God,” he muttered under his breath. “I don’t know what to do if you’re not grouchy.”
She bit her lip and took a deep breath. His admiration for her grew as he saw her master her emotions. “Don’t worry,” she grumbled. “I’m not asking you to make a lifelong commitment to me just because I decided to take a job in this godforsaken place.”
He put his fingers beneath her chin and tilted up her face. “I can make you one promise. I will always care about you, Katie. Always.” He pressed his thumb to her plump lower lip when it trembled.
“There’s something else,” he admitted. “Now that you’re in my blood, I have a feeling I’m never going to be free of you.”
He leaned forward and kissed her. A powerful emotion rose in him as she softened beneath his mouth. He didn’t recognize it, and since the feeling coincided with the experience of his cock stiffening into a lead pipe, he assumed it was blinding lust. He’d grown used to having it happen constantly in Katie’s presence, although he had to admit, the feeling seemed to have grown exponentially tonight.
“You know what I’d like?” he asked Katie against her damp lips after a minute or two of slaking his monumental thirst on her mouth.
“Let me guess,” she whispered between soft pants. “You want to tie me up and have me go down on you one or a couple dozen times.”
He grinned. “You do come up with the good ideas.”
“That’s what I’m paid for,” she said, her arch look assuring him she was all for forgetting what he’d just said about not having any hold on her future.
“A couple dozen times?” he mused.