Drilled by K.M. Neuhold
Chapter 6
APOLLO
I wish I could say we work in strained silence the whole morning, but Ridge would have to give up his one-man comedy routine for that to be the case. I try like hell to tune him out and focus on getting shit done. It’s going to be a feat to get everything finished in the time we have, even without letting Ridge distract me.
The morning eventually gives way to the heat of the day, the air getting heavy and humid and the bugs coming out in full force, attracted to the sweat trickling down our faces, necks, and backs.
While we work on replacing the rotting floorboards in Cabin Six, Ridge tugs his shirt over his head and uses it to mop the sweat off his face. My eyes snag on the cut muscles of his stomach, dusted with dark hair from his collarbones all the way down his belly. There’s a thicker strip from his belly button downward, a pronounced happy trail leading straight to his…
My cock swells, and I growl under my breath at myself. He drops the shirt and tears up the next rotten floorboard, his biceps bulging with the effort, his skin glistening in the sunlight. A flash of a fantasy darts through my mind: me pinning Ridge down and licking a trail along his salty skin, grinding our hard cocks together until he’s panting and writhing beneath me.
“Pol?” he says, snapping me out of my pornographic daydream. I grunt in acknowledgment, dropping my eyes down to my work and willing my achingly hard cock to fucking chill. Even after fucking everything, my body won’t let me forget the ridiculous crush I had on him for too many years. “Can you toss me that hammer? I need to get this rusty ass nail unstuck.”
I make another noise in the back of my throat and lob the nearest hammer at him, not bothering to look where it lands. He mutters something about my shitty aim, and I resist the urge to pick up the next nearest thing and whip it at his head to prove just how shitty my aim is.
We manage to make decent progress by the time the day starts to fade into dusk, forcing us to call it. We have the whole floor replaced as well as the broken windows. Tomorrow we’ll tackle the sagging roof, and it should be inhabitable again.
I get a fire lit, the logs I put on this morning still smoldering a bit, making it easy to get it stoked and going. Then I grab a couple of cans of chili out of the tub of food we brought along with us.
“I feel like a cowboy, cooking chili over the fire,” Ridge says and then starts to sing “Home on the Range”in an obnoxious, exaggerated accent.
“Were you always this fucking annoying?”
“Yeah, but I think you used to find it funny or something,” he says with a shrug, using a pair of cooking tongs to pull his can out of the fire.
I did use to find him funny. I always liked the way he balanced me out. He kept me from getting too mired in my own bullshit and helped me remember not to take myself too seriously. And if I’m totally honest, not that I would ever admit this to him, I kind of love that he’s still the same old Ridge after all these years.
I shake my head, pulling my own can out of the fire and setting it in the dirt to cool off so I’ll be able to eat it. “Why the fuck did you have to go and ruin everything?” The words spill from my mouth without any intention on my part, leaving me feeling lighter than I’ve felt in ages and all twisted up at the same time.
“Are you finally going to give me a chance to explain?” he asks, and that familiar feeling clamps down around my throat.
“No,” I answer roughly, getting to my feet and just narrowly missing kicking my dinner over. I need to take a walk and get the fuck away from him before I do something stupid like listen to his excuses and bullshit. I can’t handle it. Even after all these years, it’s too damn much. Hating him is easier.
Ridge jumps to his feet at the same time, stepping directly in my path the way he did yesterday when I tried to leave the cabin. He squares his shoulders, his jaw set with determination, the softness in his eyes contradicting the rest of his body language.
“Would you stop fucking running away from your problems for once in your life?”
“Fuck you,” I growl, taking a step forward, expecting him to move out of the way like he did before. He holds his ground, his eyes narrowing with irritation, maybe a bit of frustration. Or maybe he’s just finally fucking reached the end of his patience with me like the rest of the world did decades ago.
“Fuck you back,” he says without much venom, clenching his fists at his sides. “I’m not moving until you hear me out.”
I could easily step around him or turn and go the other way. So why don’t I? I feel like I’m glued to this spot, in Ridge’s space, our bodies so close I swear I can feel the tickle of his arm hair against mine, our chests just barely meeting with every deep breath we both draw in.
“Move,” I rumble, adding a menacing weight to my tone. But even that doesn’t budge him.
His nostrils flare and his jaw ticks, his breath fanning over my lips with each exhale. “No,” he responds stubbornly.
His eyes drop to my lips, and for one wild second, I’m almost sure I see a flair of lust. It’s insane, it’s impossible, it’s…
“Pol,” he says my name gently, in spite of the anger simmering in the air around us. Something about the look in his eyes, the soft use of my childhood nickname, his hand bumping against mine…makes the tight well of control I’ve held inside since the first inkling of this crush over two decades ago snaps, and I crash my lips into his.
Ridge stumbles back with the force of it, gasping against my mouth but not doing a damn thing to push me away. He grabs the front of my shirt, and I wrap my arms around him, the weight of his large body against me familiar and new at the same time, as if my body can’t believe we haven’t been doing this the whole time.
He returns the kiss with the same bruising force, the flavor of campfire smoke on his mouth, along with the salty tang of sweat. His teeth graze my lips, his tongue tangling roughly with mine, my muscles all tightly coiled. My cock is so hard that it’s making me dizzy. Or maybe I’m too busy devouring his mouth to remember to breathe.
I can’t put a name to most of the emotions rampaging through me, my heart hammering so hard I’m positive he can feel it against his chest. Ridge twists his fists around my T-shirt and groans into my mouth.
The reverberation of the sound against my tongue jerks me back into the moment.
What. The. Fuck?
RIDGE
Apollo stumbles back from the kiss as quickly and as unexpectedly as he started it, leaving me gasping and lightheaded, my lips throbbing and my cock harder than it’s been in my entire life.
He looks at me in utter shock, as if I was the one to start that rough, desperate, most epic kiss of all fucking time.
“Pol,” I say again, my voice ragged and shaky.
He doesn’t wait for me to move this time, stepping over the log I was sitting on and making a beeline straight into the dark woods looming only a few steps away.
It takes me a minute to clear the fog from my head, the kiss replaying over and over in my mind, the taste of him lingering on my lips, not to mention a dull sting from the violent nips that came between each fevered press of his mouth against mine.
“Holy fuck,” I mutter, fanning myself as I wait for my heart rate to return to normal. Every fantasy I’ve harbored in the last fifteen years was a joke compared to the reality of that kiss. Even if it was full of rage, the passion that lit us both up was undeniable.
I watch the spot where he disappeared into the trees, worry seizing around my chest once my head starts to settle and reseat itself in the moment. Did he really just stomp off into the woods, in the dark, all by himself?
Jesus, he must’ve been anxious to get away from me. My mind offers me another flash of the desperate way he dragged his tongue over mine, the hard press of his erection straining through his jeans. Maybe he was just eager to get away from the situation itself.
I frown, annoyance trickling through the lust haze.
God forbid he stay and face what just happened like the forty-year-old man he is. I have half a mind to go in after him just to tell him what a spoiled child he’s being.
He’s more than happy to blame me for our friendship being ruined, and believe me, I know I shoulder most of the blame, but if he would give me one goddamn second to explain myself, maybe we could fix things. At this point, doesn’t that make this mess just as much his fault as it is mine? Don’t I have a right to tell him “fuck you” and throw my own fucking temper tantrum?
With my lips tingling from the kiss, my rage mounts, burning up my throat and tightening my jaw. Fuck him. Seriously, what right does he have to kiss me like that and then just walk away without talking shit out?
Before I even make the conscious decision to do so, I find myself charging into the woods after him, the flashlight on my phone the only light I have to illuminate my path. I strain my ears for the sound of his footsteps. There’s a path, I think, but it’s so overgrown that it’s impossible to tell, and there’s no way to know if Apollo followed it.
Stray tree branches bite at my face and arms in the dark, the canopy too thick to even let the light of the half-full moon in. I hear the faint sound of branches snapping in the distance, and I pray like hell that it’s Apollo and not a black bear or a coyote as I go after it, grumbling under my breath the whole way.
I stumble over exposed roots and stray rocks, catching myself against trees when necessary. As I gain on the sound, it becomes more obvious that it is footsteps, so I speed up.
“Apollo,” I call into the dark, the hoot of an owl the only answer I get. “Apollo,” I shout again, letting my frustration seep into my tone.
The trees start to thin and silver moonlight makes it easier to see again. I careen out of the woods into a clearing that contains a still lake, Apollo standing a few feet from the bank of it with his back to me.
He doesn’t turn his head to look, even though I know he can hear me, which just makes me more annoyed.
Hot fury rages inside me as I stalk toward him with no plan other than to get his attention and make him finally hear me out, even if I have to hold him down to do it.
When I reach him, I shove his back hard enough to make him lurch, a grunt falling from his lips.
“Who the fuck do you think you are kissing me like that and then just walking away?”
“Who the fuck do you think you are kissing me back like that when you’re straight?” he challenges in return, spinning on me with heat simmering in his eyes.
“No,” I snap back. “I’m not.”
