Guilty Needs (12 page)

He scowled at her. She was right. She hadn’t ever been the rational type. Not too many people, besides her, could draw a connection between her transparent form and the existence of a cryptid. “I believe he
could
exist. I don’t necessarily think he
does
exist.”

She gave him a brilliant smile. “Then you could at least give me the benefit of the doubt and believe I could exist.”

She glanced down and Colby followed the line of her gaze until he realized she was looking at the blue chemise he still held clutched in his hand. “I went shopping with Bree the day I bought that.”

“So what? You went shopping with Bree all the time.”

“She picked it out.”

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 muttered 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?”