GABRIEL
Hearing Catherine's name on Riley's lips when we're about to fuck is like being doused with a bucket of ice.
I pause for a second so I can collect my thoughts. As a younger man, this kind of question would've made me angry, possibly sent me into a rage. But I've matured, and I like Riley.
A lot.
She's younger than me by about ten years — twenty three to my thirty three — and I suspect her question was asked out of jealousy. Not out of actual malice.
But it does remind me that she's a journalist, someone who could complicate my life immensely.
I stroke her cheek with my thumb. "Are you jealous?"
She rears back and makes a little snorting noise. "Pfft. Hardly. I have no claim on you."
"Then why are you asking? And how do you know her name?" Part of me wants to hear her say that she is jealous, that she wants to monopolize my time and my mind.
Riley licks her bottom lip. "Because I want to know about her. About why she disappeared."
I slowly pull my hand from her face. "How the fuck do you know her name? I never mentioned her."
Riley's eyes widen, probably because my tone is more of an angry growl than my usual, amused and measured cadence.
"I read an old newspaper article about her. About her disappearance. Your name was in it, and it said you were her friend and the last person who saw her."
"Goddammit." I move so I'm sitting with my back to the headboard.
Riley wraps the robe tight around her body. "You thought that a journalist wouldn't put two and two together and do some research?"
"But how did you know to look for Catherine?"
"You'd told me Donnie's last name. Then someone at the paper mentioned Catherine, a person who's been here her whole life and knows all the gossip. It was easy to look in the paper's archives with that information."
I blow out a breath, allowing my cheeks to puff out. "Well, congratulations. You're the first woman to ask about Catherine."
Riley scrunches her nose. "Look, there's no need to be sarcastic. You should be glad I asked about her, and didn't just jump to conclusions and think you unalived her or something."
"Unalived?"
"Another word for killed."
"You kids."
She snort-laughs. "Like you're so much older than me. Jeez."
Hearing her laugh melts a little of the ice that's formed around my heart, and I grab her forearm and gently pull her toward me. She acquiesces and leans against my torso, and I sling an arm around her while I ponder how much I should explain.
It's not that I don't want to talk about my friendship with Catherine — I'm fine with doing that. But answering questions about her disappearance unearths more baggage than the belly of a 747.
"You know what I do." This isn't a question, but a statement.
"Yes. I mean, sort of. I don't know everything."
"Obviously."
She turns to face me, staring at me like she's expecting me to go on. Her eyes are wide and trusting. Which scares the hell out of me, because I want to trust her. But I don't say anything.
"Look," she says, leaning toward me. "Since we started to, uh, get intimate, I've tried to ignore your business interests. That's difficult enough, but when I saw the article about Catherine, I couldn't get it out of my mind."
"Whatever you think happened, didn't."
We stare at each other, challenging ourselves. One of us has to break and say something.
"What happened?"
"Riley, how much do you want to know about me? Really, truly know. Because the longer we're together, the more this crazy thing between us ignites, you're going to get to know me well. Possibly better than anyone has in a long time. Do you want that? Think about it. Think hard."
"I know a lot about you already." Her gaze is defiant.
"You know virtually nothing."
"I want to."
The fingers on my right hand dig into my palm. I want her to, as well.
"Catherine and I grew up together. Our parents were business associates. Our grandparents were friends. We attended the same schools, were a year apart, and when I graduated, I went to college at USF and she went to UT across town. We didn't live together, but we studied together, partied together, and saw each other almost every day."
Riley's staring at me with something like anguish written on her face. Maybe it's because I'm speaking in a low, robotic tone.
"One day I showed up at her apartment with coffee and she was still in bed. I had let myself in, because we had keys to each other's places. But her being in bed, that was unusual, because she was an early morning person. I thought she was sick, but instead, she was practically catatonic."
"What happened?" Riley asks..
Now all the old anger is flowing back. My fist is clutching the duvet cover so hard that my fingers ache. Probably best if I recount only the bare-bones details. This isn't my story to tell, after all. "She'd been raped by someone who worked for her father."
"Oh, no," Riley whispers.
"Yeah. And then some other things happened, really I shouldn't be talking about this at all, and then she decided to leave school. She was upset at her father, understandably. But she made me promise not to tell him where she was, only that she was safe. By then someone in her school had filed a missing person report, so it made the news, and it was a big fucking mess."
"Wow. I'm...sorry."
"Yeah, it made life really complicated for a long time. I missed her as a friend. But I still had to work with her father, you know?" This is as much as I'm going to tell Riley. Nothing about how I killed the man who raped Catherine.
"Sorry, back up. So Donnie, who was your grandfather's age, was Catherine's father? Just trying to get this straight."
I nod. "Donnie was much older when she was born. Which led to its own complications when he found out what happened to her."
Riley winces, but for once, she has the good sense not to ask more. "I'm sorry for bringing this all up. I shouldn't have."
"It was the worst time of my life. But if you want to know whether Catherine and I were a couple, we weren't."
Riley starts to scoot away from me, like she's getting out of bed. "Where are you going?"
At the edge of the mattress, she looks over her shoulder. "Home."
"Why?"
She shrugs. "I don't think you want me here."
"Riley," I say sharply. "I will always tell you what I want. And I don't want you to leave. I probably should, but I don't. I want you to stay. With me, in this bed."
Her eyes narrow. "Okay. But I need to know one last thing. Why did you say earlier that it 'got real weird, real fast' when she showed up?"
I rub the tense muscles of my neck. If I was given one wish right now, I'd want this conversation to be over. "Oh, that's easy. Because she hadn't talked with her father for more than a decade, since she left. So I didn't think she'd come to his funeral. And..."
Hell, am I going to tell Riley?
"And what?"
"And Catherine also told me that she loves me." I dip my head, cringing at the memory.
Riley arches an eyebrow, a shit-eating smile on her face. She's taking that news surprisingly well. "So maybe my teeny, tiny bit of jealousy was justified? Is that what you're saying?"
"Well, I wouldn't see it that way."
Riley crawls to me and cups my face in her hands. "Oh no? You don't believe in women's intuition?"
Now it's my turn to laugh. "Okay, valid point."
"And what did you say to her?" There's no teasing in Riley's tone, and she takes her hands off my face.
"That I have someone."
Her lips part, and after a beat, she says, "You did not."
"I did."
"It's too soon for all of this." She gestures with her finger, back and forth from me to her.
"It is. I'm aware. But I only told Catherine the truth."
"Which is?"
"That I'm exploring something serious with someone."
She nods. I nod. It's almost businesslike, maybe a touch angry for some unknown reason.
Then she flings the duvet from her body and crawls onto my lap, kissing me.
"Let me fuck you, Riley." I whisper against her lips. "Let me fuck you and make this okay, okay?"
My words are like a plea. I need to feel myself inside her, need to feel her willing body under mine.
She holds my face in her hands, pulling me toward her mouth and kissing me hard. I groan and slide my hand between her legs. She's dripping wet.
"Yes. God, yes." She moans, her eyes fluttering shut.
"Again. Say it again." I kiss her mouth, wanting to hear her beg.
"Fuck me, Gabriel. Fuck me and make it okay, okay?" She smiles, biting her lip and I groan.
It doesn't take long for me to roll on a condom and position Riley on her back so I can plunge into her.
Fuck. She feels incredible. Wet and slick and perfect. She's got her hands on my shoulders, her legs wrapping around my waist and pushing me deeper with every push. I increase my pace, fucking her with force, desperate to make this okay for her.
"Yes. Like that. Like that." She whispers again and again, meeting me thrust for thrust
"Take it all," I demand.
"Gabriel, I was jealous. Am jealous. I want to be the only one." Her voice is a whisper in my ear, and I swear to Christ, her words make my dick even harder.
I squeeze her wrists in my hands, pistoning into her with my cock.
"Riley, baby, you can be the only one, if you're a good girl. You know this."
She squeezes her eyes shut, and I can tell she's trying not to orgasm yet. She shakes her head.
"Be a good girl and come all over my cock while I'm fucking you. Do it. Now."
"Gabriel." She almost sounds like she's wounded, and I'm a millisecond from stopping. But she digs her nails into my triceps and says, "Please, please?"
"Please what? Orgasm? Give it to me. I'm ordering you."
She opens her mouth in a silent scream and I can feel her muscles contract and pulse around my cock. This sends me over the edge and my breath explodes out of my lungs. I collapse on top of her, releasing her wrists and burying my face into the warm skin of her neck.
Her body's like rubber, boneless and limp. We're both sticky and sweaty, still panting. Then her breath hitches once, twice, three times, and I realize she's crying.
I roll off her and sweep her blonde hair off her face.
"Riley?"
She nestles into the crook of my arm, sniffling. "I'm sorry."
"What's wrong?"
She shakes her head. "It's intense with you. Maybe too intense. I don't know. I don't understand what's happening. Do you?"
I kiss her forehead, overcome by a bittersweet feeling of hope and longing, of carnal lust and something I can't admit to, because it seems way too fucking soon and probably too complicated, as well.
"No, baby, I don't."
But I do. I want to tell her, but can't put it into words just yet.