A/N: It's been a while since I've been out of the Ghost Whisperer universe, so I'd thought I'd take a little break. Enjoy xx Mariah
Riley tried to clear her mind as she walked back into the kitchen, seeing Evan looking inside her fridge for something to drink. She didn't know what to say to him or how to say it, but the one thing she was sure of was that she was not comfortable with Evan dating Selena.
"I see you made your way back home," she said, walking past him.
"What was that all about? With you and Selena?" Evan asked, setting his jacket on the back of the chair.
She thought back to seeing Evan walking to The Rub today. How her blood ran hot. She never wanted anyone she knew to come there.
"Nothing," she said, moving to lean on the kitchen island. "You know what I want to know? Why did you bring the other night?" He twisted the cap off his beer as she asked him this. "If you'd let me know she was going to be there… I could've prepared myself."
He took a swig of beer. "I thought you two were friends," he said. "I thought you wouldn't mind."
"Well I do mind," she said, rolling her eyes. "And it's complicated, so don't ask why."
"She's nice," he reasoned, catching the glare of her eyes a second later. "Nice enough."
"Evan, you have never dated nice." She sighed.
"Questionable," he said, taking another sip. He was on a mission to get Riley to see from his point of view. He liked this girl, enough to bring her to dinner with Linnette and Riley. Why couldn't she see that? "You don't have to be around Selena for long to see she's a little rough around the edges."
"That's being nice," she muttered.
"But maybe that's what I like about her," he said, explaining himself. "I ran into her earlier and I needed to talk to her about something, so I came by the spa. I didn't think you'd mind. I wasn't tryin' to be a bother, Riley."
"Next time," she replied. "Take a cold shower. What were you doin' in Sugarland anyway?"
"I had a job," he retorted.
"What kind of job?" She asked, pushing off the counter and going to get plates from the cabinet behind her.
"Burkhalter has a construction site not too far from Mission Bend," he replied.
"Well, there you go." She said, turning around with six plates. "Maybe you should spend more time doing something that you're actually getting paid for." She knew that was harsh, even for her, and turned on her heel before Evan had a chance to react.
She brought the plates to the table and began to put them in their places, hearing Evan's footsteps as he walked toward her.
"What has got you all fired up?" He asked, going to grab the paper towel from the middle of the table and break off one piece napkins for everyone.
"Nothin'," she sighed. "It's none of my concern." She set the last plate on its spot and looked at him. "By the way, Travis was found "in a room" with Twinkle" She made sure to use her fingers when she said in a room and rolled her eyes. "Maybe Taylor is right. Maybe he does need a man around here to talk to." She didn't want to involve herself with Evan as much as she could.
Not after what happened. He didn't even know what happened, but she did.
"I could take him fishin' tomorrow," he suggested. "We haven't been to the lake in a while, and it will give him the chance to open up if he needs to."
She bit her tongue and nodded. "Would you?" She smiled. "Travis really needs someone."
"Riley, of course." He said, setting his beer down. "This is Travis we're talkin' about."
She nodded, leaning down to look at him. "Well, what are you gonna say?" She asked. "I'm just worried. He's my baby."
"I know," he held her hand, squeezing it. "Everything will be alright. I bet nothing happened."
She stared at his hand, the warmth it filled her with was unimaginable. She glanced up at him and smiled, nodding.
She didn't know how to feel about him. How was she supposed to feel about her husband's brother?
"Well, that's not much of a game plan." She sighed.
"It's different between guys," he explained, waving her off. "We don't talk face-to-face like this. We do it shoulder-to-shoulder when we're fishin' or workin' or driving a car." He took a swig of his beer then a smiled at her. "Men are simple. It'll be fine, Riley."
"Thank you," she smiled at him as the back door opened, her mother stepping in with two pizza boxes in hand. "Hey, mama."
"I've got pizza!" She called out to the kids, who came running in. "Hey, baby."
She smiled at her little family, glancing at Evan again and feeling her heart swell even more. Was that why she didn't like Selena being around him or was there more to it than that?
Hell if she knew. She could hardly piece her feelings about Kyle together, let alone Evan. But he stood there, staring. A smirk grew on his lips and she began to wonder if she'd succumbed to a spell, a curse of sorts. Because the longer he stared, the weaker her knees became.
After her client left, Riley sat on the massage table thinking of a time when she'd used something against Kyle to get what she wanted, just like her client's girlfriend was doing to him now.
It wasn't that long ago. Just before he'd left, maybe a month before. Their anniversary was coming up and she'd wanted to get a new dress, something nice. Something he'd like seeing her in.
So she'd dressed up as a maid. Kyle's favorite fantasy he'd told her about once.
"What's taking you so long?" Kyle had asked, turning the tv on from the bed. She heard him changing the channel as she applied a little more mascara. "I'm gonna start this movie without you, girl."
"Just hold your horses," she giggled. "I'll be out in a minute." She remembered tossing her hair around in the mirror, spritzing a little perfume around her one last time and checking her makeup before she went to the door. "You ready?"
"For what?" He asked, looking over at her.
She'd opened the door and looked over herself one last time before taking a step out. Kyle was going to love it. "Tada!" She said, holding up her feather duster with a smile. She pulled the bathroom door closed behind her as she did a spin. "You like?"
"What?" His eyes traveled up and down her body, his grin growing as he met her eyes. "Baby, where did all that come from?" He'd asked, smiling at her, but it quickly faded. "How much did it cost?"
She sighed, looking defeated. "Shoot, it's not sexy at all, is it?"
He'd immediately caught her eyes again then, smiling. "No," he said. "I love it."
"I was just tryin' to spice thing up," she began to brush her feather duster across the bed frame, placing her knee on the bed to lean forward onto the bed.
"So," he leaned back into the bed, placing the remote beside him. "Get to spicin'."
"Really?" She asked, placing her hands on her hips with a wide smile.
"Yeah," he'd chuckled, his grin growing wider. "C'mon girl, show me what you got."
She smiled, leaning on the bed completely. "Well, if I was to do this… would you buy me something really pretty to wear for our anniversary dinner?" Her lips touched his throat, just as he chuckled, feeling the reverberations.
"Everything is negotiable," he'd said, pulling her flush against him.
"Good to know," she'd claimed his lips then, just as she rose her knees, straddling him.
"Let me look at you," he groaned, feeling her thighs settle against him. "Good lord, you're beautiful."
"What do you think?" She asked, biting her lip.
"I think," he grinned, chuckling as he looked up at her, eyes struck with lust for her. "You can have anything you want."
She smiled, leaning in to kiss him again. "I'm gonna remember you said that," she whispered.
"Okay," he nodded, meeting her eagerly for a kiss.
Her body was beginning to buzz with anticipation, and she found herself teasing him, nipping at his neck. "Do you remember when you told me about your thing for maids?" She giggled.
He chuckled, leaning back to let her have the control over him. His pupils grew so large so quickly that if they'd been in any other situation, she would have thought he was having a heart attack, but he wasn't.
Kyle had tried to act smug, but she could see the edges of his cheeks turning pink. "I was respectful when I thought about you back then. You weren't just anyone. You were Riley Campbell." He leaned close to her ear and his voice was deep as he spoke. "I couldn't control the dreams, though. You were the sexiest girl I'd ever seen." The buzz that rumbled through her body began to grow louder as his breath tickled her neck. "They were pretty…" he'd paused, searching for the right term, "…libidinous." The word rolled off his tongue like honey.
She'd found herself beginning to tremble just the tiniest bit at the sound, even though she wasn't completely certain of its definition. "What does that mean?" she asked, even though she was pretty sure she had figured it out without his help.
As he'd responded, he gently worried her earlobe, and she remembered feeling it in her toes.
"Um… I don't know… I don't even remember where I learned it. I think it means lustful… primal…" He said, grinning at her.
She didn't reply, just tried to control her breathing as he grazed his lips down her neck to rest at the hollow of her throat.
"There was one that I'd have pretty much whenever I was on the road for football. You'd be the maid in my hotel room and something normal would happen like you'd drop the sheet or a shampoo tube, and then everyone thing in the room would just vanish. We'd be completely alone," his mouth moved from her throat to her collarbone, and he began gently biting the skin there as he spoke. "And then whatever you were grabbing would be gone too. And your clothes. You'd just be sitting on the top of the dresser, completely naked, smiling at me. Don't know how you got up there so quick, but when everything else had just disappeared I didn't question it."
She moaned as she ground against him. He'd never told her about this. Only the maid part. "You never said anything about any of this besides the maid," she remembered laughing, smiling at him.
"You wanted to know," he chuckled.
"I want you to show me," she whispered. "What would you do next?" Her heart was racing in her chest as he caught her eyes then. He was intrigued. She wasn't to live out his fantasy from back then.
With firm hands, he grasped her hips and rolled her onto her back. "I'll show you whatever you'd like," he groaned. He began to move the straps down on her lingerie. "I'd bring you to the bed and start here," he cupped her breasts lightly. "Before we were intimate, I remember dreaming about what your breasts looked like, but I can't imagine it could possibly have compared with reality." As he spoke, he rubbed his thumbs over her nipples in slow, light circles. "They felt perfect in my hands, though, which turned out to be accurate." As he touched her, she felt her feet involuntarily pushing down towards the bottom of the bed one after another, trying to somehow make him go faster without asking. His normally soft eyes were almost feral as he asked, "You like this?"
"Yes. I love it," she remembered her voice was breathless, that her eyes closed as she melted into Kyle's arms.
"You seemed to like it a lot in the dream too. I'd also kiss them," he did, and she'd squirmed uncontrollably at the soft touch of his full lips, lifting herself to meet him, but then he sat up suddenly, with that look on his face.
She remembered closing her eyes because she had a sneaking suspicion she knew exactly what he was going to do. She'd felt him pull down her shorts, hands pushing her thighs apart as he continued speaking in a conversational tone.
"Usually that's when I'd wake up, but sometimes, I'd get to do this," he whispered as his fingers were touching her, and it felt so good.
She could feel the way he was holding his weight on the mattress, and it was obvious that he was gazing at what he was doing, gazing at her, which, when she'd considered it, made shivers run down her spine.
She lifted her eyelids just a bit, to peek at him, and there he was staring intensely at his hand as he slowly moved his index finger in and out of her. Her husband's face had that same expression that he had when he's surveying a job that was halfway done. She'd clamped her eyes shut again because it was all just too much.
"You watched me in the dream, but it's okay," he chided her with amusement. "You don't have to watch now. Just listen." She clenched her stomach in anticipation and he'd noticed, chuckling to himself, "You think this isn't going to work, don't you?" She knew he was aware of how it can be difficult for her sometimes with j, but she didn't expect him to really bring it up, especially not in the heat of the moment. He leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially into my ear, "You're wrong, though."
Something about how confident he sounded made her heart begin to race. And then, as he started to speak again in a low, rumbling voice, it felt like it might actually burst out of her chest.
"You're so wet already, baby. So wet and hot and every second that I touch you you're getting wetter. I can feel it," he groaned. It was true, and thinking about it, thinking about what he was actually doing, instead of how she was reacting to it, made her whole body start to let go and relax. "I want you so bad it hurts," he continued, "I want to bury myself inside you and feel you so tight around me that I can't tell us apart. I want to feel you squeeze me so hard when you come that I see stars. And we're going to do that, but not yet…"
"Why not?" She gasped out, thrashing her head back and forth against the pillow as his fingers ever so slowly increased in speed.
"Because I'm going to make you come with my hands first. And then with my mouth. And then I'm going to take you the way I want. The way you seem to want too, I think." He smiled, pressing a kiss to her thigh.
She opened her eyes and looked at him in complete shock. He'd never, ever spoken to her like this before, and she could tell by the blush that covered his entire body that he hadn't expected to do it himself. His eyes gazed back at her, dark with lust, but also kind, as though he was waiting to see if she wanted him to stop. She realized that she really didn't, and fell back onto the pillow.
His fingers sped up, while he continued to tell her how much he wanted her, how gorgeous and sexy she was, how amazing she looked when she came. It felt like her blood was boiling as he moved his fingers faster and faster. Everything felt still and fast and out of control as her muscles began to lock in anticipation of what was about to happen.
"Do you know how good you taste?" he whispered and then thrust two more fingers inside her hard.
Her back arched all the way off the mattress as she cried out. "Oh, Kyle." She moaned. "I want you, god, Kyle, I need you."
He kept his promise. Hardly giving her a moment to recover, he spread her legs again and settled between them, using his tongue to bring her to absolute insanity. When she'd collapsed once more, this time into a screaming, shuddering heap, she was briefly worried that maybe she had snapped his neck with her thighs.
Until his lips were touching hers, and her hands were coming to meet his face.
His handsome face.
Her eyes opened as he pulled back, and she smiled at him dumbly as he leaned in to kiss her once more. He didn't give her much time to rest and lifted her legs to his shoulders when he finally entered her, hard as steel, and even larger than normal, probably because he had delayed his own gratification for so long, she wasn't surprised.
"Oh, baby," she whispered in his ear.
"I love you," he whispered, kissing her again.
She really had no concept of how long it took or much of anything other than the waves of ecstasy that rolled over her again and again until he shuddered inside her, and then collapsed on his side, a self-satisfied, if exhausted, grin on his flushed face.
"Ready to go make dinner and put the kids to sleep?" he asked smugly. "We can maybe have some fun after?"
"Maybe," she smiled at him, leaning in for another kiss.
The rest of the day was significantly less satisfying. They'd gotten into an argument, about their finances, when Evan came over to watch the game and drink some beers. The usual Sunday activity, but Riley had noticed some changed in their bank statement this month. They didn't have enough money for anything anymore.
"Kyle, can we talk about this?" She asked, showing him the monthly statements. "Can you please sit down look at these with me?"
"What?" Kyle took a sip of his beer, stepping away from the oven. "Are these the bank statements?"
"Yes. I've been lookin' at them. Our financials aren't adding up with our bills, Kyle." She explained, sighing and rubbing her forehead. "I don't know what we're gonna do."
"What do you mean?" He grabbed the papers from off the dining room table and read them. "This doesn't make any sense. The bank has to have it wrong."
She held the most recent statement, sighing. "No," she said. "You're the one who's has it wrong. Our savings is disappearing faster than its coming in. Now, will you just sit down with me and look at this?" She asked, handing him the most recent one.
"Can you stop putting this thing in my face" he yelled, yanking the papers from her hand as the front door closed.
"Dude, take it easy," Evan warned, coming in with a brown paper bag and a six pack of beer.
Riley turned to look at Evan as he walked in and then looked back at Kyle.
"You stay out of this, Evan," Kyle warned his brother, raising his voice.
"I don't even know what's goin' on!" Evan shouted back, setting the stuff down on the table. "I'm just sayin' I think you should calm the hell down, Kyle."
"What is it with you, anyway, always tryin' to be some hero," Kyle muttered, stalking toward him. He threw the papers on the floor and stepped up and close with his brother, standing a few inches taller than him. "I told you to stay out of it."
Riley wanted to step in, but her eyes darted between the two brothers, her heart racing. What was Kyle gonna do?
She bit her lip as she turned, waiting for Evan to answer Kyle's question.
"Nobody's tryin' to be a hero here, Kyle." Evan scoffed, sighing. "I just think you should calm down."
"Look, this is my family. My life," he explained. "I don't need you sticking your nose in my family's business, alright?"
She sighed heavily, her hands fidgeting nervously as she watched their altercation going on. She hated when Kyle got like this; when he took his anger out on everyone in the room.
"Look, I'm gonna go watch the game somewhere else," Evan said, shaking his head at his brother before he looked past him and directly at her. She was his friend first. "Riley, you good?"
She nodded, smiling at him in the split second before Kyle shoved him.
"Yeah, she's good. What's with you and her anyway? I know you loved her back in high school, but she's my wife." He muttered, throwing Evan back as far as he could. He didn't want him anywhere near Riley.
"Calm down," Evan shouted, shoving him back.
"Don't tell me to calm down," Kyle punched his brother this time and Evan stumbled back, touching his bloodied lip.
Riley's heart was racing and she stepped past Kyle, her eyes on Evan. "Evan!" She called out, worried from and staring at Kyle in disbelief. How could he do that to him? Evan wasn't doing anything wrong. "Are you okay?" She grasped his arm and touched his lip. "Why are you always so quick with your anger?"
"Why are you always lookin' out for him?" Kyle scoffed, turning to look at her.
She'd always looked after him. He was always like her brother.
"I just wanted to make sure he was okay. Are you okay?" She looked at Evan again, trying to keep her calm for the sake of her children in the next room.
"Yeah," he wiped the blood away. "I'm fine." His eyes told her something different, but she knew she would figure it you eventually. Whenever that was. "I'll see you." He walked back and to the door, slamming it behind him, leaving her with Kyle.
It had been a tense night from there on out, but they'd moved past it, or at least that's what she'd thought. It was not for the good, apparently.