Addicted to You

  ADDICTED

  to you

  Colina Brennan

  Copyright © 2013 by Colina Brennan. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any methods, photocopying, scanning, electronic or otherwise, except as permitted by notation in the volume or under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Smashwords Edition

  For my sisters, whose love for romance in books ignited my own.

  Chapter One

  Leah hated Thursdays. Specifically, she hated what she was forced to do on Thursdays—a program called ‘Heal the Heart, Save the Body,’ which was a convoluted way of saying ‘therapy for sex addicts.’

  Despite her roommate’s insistence, Leah did not have a ‘sex problem.’ So she liked the occasional one night stand. So what? She was twenty-one and single. There was nothing wrong with wanting to make the most of it.

  Yet here she was, preparing for another session where she’d have to listen to some old guy attempt to teach a room full of so-called sexual deviants the skills to function in a civilized world.

  Because left to their own devices, they wouldn’t be able to resist the primal urge to hump everything that moved. Obviously.

  Who decided sex was an addiction anyway? Or that someone should need therapy to “fix” it? Sex was good for you. It was a de-stresser. If it wasn’t, then you were doing it wrong.

  She made a face at the platter of cookies set on an uneven seat a few feet away. She had tried one of them a few meetings ago, and it had nearly broken her tooth. They were sturdy enough to survive a nuclear apocalypse. They were cockroach cookies.

  Maybe that was the key to these therapy sessions—to knock everyone out with stale confections so they were incapable of having sex.

  She sighed and sank lower into her chair. It was like the chairs from high school, the ones with that infuriating lip at the base that made it impossible to find a comfortable position.

  But she was used to it by now as she crossed her arms and watched the other members arrived. For some reason, they always showed up in the same order.

  First came that middle-aged guy with his dirty green and yellow Packers cap and shoes crusted with dirt. He was probably either a manual laborer or a gardener. Maybe that was where he had his excessive amounts of sex.

  Ew.

  Packers Cap shuffled across the spotted linoleum tiles and took a seat opposite Leah. He gave her a nod and a toothy smile that made even her toenails cringe. Close behind him was an older lady with a frayed, wide-brimmed straw sun hat tilted forward to cover the majority of her face. Leah had yet to glimpse more than a pointy chin, thin lips, and the flash of a long nose even though she had been attending these meetings for months.

  The old lady stumbled into the chair with the cookies. Before she could pitch over, Leah’s hands shot out to steady her. The chair skidded a few inches but stopped before the cookies could make a dive for the floor. Bumping into stationary objects seemed to be a habit of the old lady’s. Leah figured it was either because her vision was going or because she really couldn’t see beneath that ridiculous hat.

  “Thanks,” Old Lady mumbled. She shuffled past Leah to the next open chair. Leah kept her hands outstretched, prepared to catch her again in case she missed the seat when she sat. The first time that happened, the old lady had sighed awkwardly from where she lay sprawled on the ground while the creeper in the Packers cap stared. Then Leah had scowled at him and helped the lady back to her feet.

  There was only one other member, always the last to arrive aside from the counselor, and she appeared shortly after the old lady made it safely into her chair. She breezed into the room, her stilettos clacking loudly as she nearly coasted past her chair. With the orange skin tone of someone who should be banned from a tanning bed and breasts that could beat out the cookies for nuclear-apocalypse-resistant, she was the only one who looked like she belonged in this meeting.

  Leah sighed again. Including today’s session, she only had two more before she fulfilled her end of the bargain and never had to come back. The only reason she was even here was because Helena, her roommate, had demanded it.

  “Twenty sessions.” Helena had fixed her with a fierce look and kept it there until Leah folded.

  “Fine,” Leah had snapped. “But it’s pointless. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  Helena’s mouth tightened and an ominous shadow fell over her eyes. “Right, just like how there’s nothing wrong with our empty apartment.”

  Leah had stopped complaining at that point. Mainly because she didn’t want to be homeless. She didn’t have the money to live on her own, and Helena was the only person she could stand.

  And yes, okay, Helena was also the only person who could stand Leah. There weren’t many people who could forgive a friend after said friend got them burglarized by a stranger who should have been nothing more than a quickly forgotten one night stand.

  The counselor finally arrived in the third most awful sweater in America and settled himself, and his beard, into a chair. The rectangle of fluorescent light just above him began to flicker, giving his already disheveled hair a sort of manic look. Leah glanced around the circle and resisted the urge to pull up her collar and bury her face in her shirt. For a while now, she’d had a strong feeling that she was the only person here who hadn’t been sent via court order.

  Just one more session after this one, she reminded herself.

  “Good evening, everyone,” the counselor began in that incessantly kind, well-meaning ‘I love the world and all its sinners and all its fluffy kittens, would you like a cockroach cookie?’ voice. “Let’s begin by discussing what sort of temptations you faced this week, and how you dealt with them.”

  Everyone shifted in their chairs with the sort of agitation that suggested either guilt or gassiness.

  The counselor gave an encouraging nod at Packers Cap to begin.

  It was a trick question. The counselor had instructed them since the beginning to stay away from places that were triggers for their sexual impulses. As sex addicts, Leah wondered if that included just about everywhere.

  Packers Cap adjusted his shirt and hunched his shoulders so that the lip of his cap hid the upper half of his face. He scratched at the side of his jeans where a long tear exposed the bottom edge of rocket-patterned boxers and declared, “The redhead cashier at Woody’s Grocer. Hot. But I went through a different aisle.”

  “Hey, I know the one!” Stilettos said, leaning forward so that the bust of her striped corset was severely compromised. Was she even wearing a bra? Judging by the way Packers Cap leaned eagerly forward as well, probably not. “She likes it when you bite her—”

  The counselor gave a harsh and sudden cough. Stilettos snickered.

  “Um,” the counselor said, flapping his hand at the old lady. Old Lady didn’t register a reaction. Maybe she’d fallen asleep.

  Leah dropped her head back and stared up at the block of fluorescent light overhead. She had homework to do tonight. Her poetry professor wanted a two-page explanation of a three-paragraph poem. She ran the first stanza through her head as the others dealt with the conundrum of certain fruits and vegetables, which some cultures believed to be aphrodisiacs. Stilettos helpfully added that she’d be glad to stick to a ‘meat only’ diet.

  Leah could practically hear the air quotes on that one.

  She was zoning out again. It was probably just as well that there was no one here who was remotely attractive.

  But then, because the Universe hated Leah, there was a brief tap at the door before in walked the hottest thing on two legs in all of North America. She nearly fe
ll off her chair (and she doubted anyone would help her back up).

  For long seconds, she did nothing but stare, taking in the sight of him. The stunning blue eyes framed in thick, dark blond lashes. The playful tilt to his gorgeously sculpted mouth. The straight nose and a jaw that could have been cut from granite. Topped off with the perfect body in perfectly fitted jeans and a blaze of golden hair just long enough to fall across his brow. He had the sort of straight-backed, confident stride that always drew her attention. She surreptitiously checked her chin for drool as she watched him approach the circle.

  “Welcome!” the counselor said to Blue Eyes, who responded with a smile so charming that the Inquisition would have burned him on sight as the devil’s work. “New companions are always welcome on our journey toward self-discovery.”

  I’d like to discover him, she thought, almost violently. I’d like to discover the inside of his jeans. Her gaze followed the line of tanned, nicely muscled forearms up to where the rest of his arms disappeared beneath the rolled-up sleeves of a simple gray tee. Gray, which she usually associated with the color of dust, had never looked so sexy.

  She cast a quick glance around the room and realized that every one of the sexual deviants present was also watching Blue Eyes like a pride of starving lions closing in on a lonely zebra. She saw herself reflected in them, and she didn’t like it. Self-disgust traced a path up her throat, and she had to swallow it down.

  Maybe for once she should pay attention to the counselor.

  Chapter Two

  The counselor didn’t ask for Blue Eyes’ name, since the program emphasized anonymity, but he did ask him to explain why he’d chosen to attend the meeting.

  Leah could probably answer that one. Just look at him. The guy probably couldn’t walk a block without having panties thrown at his head.

  “Hi,” Blue Eyes said, looking around the room with that gorgeous smile. It faltered, only briefly, probably due to the hungry looks he was getting from everyone else. “I’m here because I, uh, love sex.”

  Dear God, he was Scottish.

  Her fingers tightened around the edge of her seat. Not only did he look like he’d just stepped out of a magazine, but his voice was like the auditory lovechild of Ewan McGregor and James McAvoy.

  “Probably too much,” Blue Eyes continued, oblivious to the visions of shirtless Scotsmen running around in Leah’s head. “I’m not selective about with whom. Or where. Or when.”

  It occurred to her then that Blue Eyes sounded weirdly cheerful about what was sounding more like a confession than an introduction.

  “I’ve made my rounds through the internet chat rooms, the ones that allow you virtual one-offs with strangers,” he said, in that accent that needed to be bottled and sold to desperate girls everywhere. “My weekends are usually spent with multiple strangers. Also, I have two closets full of porn at home, organized by hardcore level and/or fetish, and I go through three tubes of lubricant a week. I think I might have a problem.”

  Silence.

  Everyone was staring at him with looks that ranged from awe (Packers Cap) to horror (the counselor) to outright lust (Stilettos) to confusion (Leah). Old Lady was the only one whose expression Leah couldn’t read on account of the fact that she still couldn’t see her face.

  To date, newcomers had never introduced themselves with quite that level of … delight for their addiction. There had been shame, denial, resentment, and even some pride. But from what Leah could tell, Blue Eyes was simply and cheerfully matter-of-fact.

  At the way everyone stared, Blue Eyes rubbed the back of his neck and gave them a sheepish smile that she refused to call adorable. That kind of smile looked out of place here. Leers and smirks, Leah was used to, but this was different. Weird if only because it was so normal compared to the rest of them.

  “Um,” he said into the awkward stretch of their silence. “What now?”

  “Don’t stop talking,” Stilettos whispered, breathing heavily.

  “Okay then … well. All right,” the counselor managed, recovering from his stunned silence. “I’m glad you’re staying positive despite your many, and clearly severe, problems. Tell me, why do you think you have too much sex?”

  “It’s like an obsession,” Blue Eyes answered promptly. He gave the others a glance before sinking lower into his chair. He seemed to finally realize the effect he was having on the room at large. The other members were leaning forward, as if straining against invisible ropes. They looked ready to launch themselves into his personal space.

  His discomfort seemed more a result of Leah’s fellow addicts than because he was in therapy for sex addiction. In fact, the way he’d introduced himself made it seem as if he was perfectly glad to be here. Who in their right mind would actually want to attend these sessions?

  Not that her body was complaining about his presence. She concentrated as hard as she could on the counselor. It was probably the first time she had even made eye contact with the guy, but anything was better than the way she felt when she looked at Blue Eyes. Not because it was unpleasant to feel turned on, to have that excited burn in her belly, but because she knew what it would lead to if she pursued it—empty, meaningless sex.

  Of course, she was banned from sex until Helena was satisfied, but doing anything with Blue Eyes meant she’d also have to worry about possibly seeing him again at the next meeting. In the past, she’d preferred it when the guy either left before she woke or without her having to ask. Kicking him out could sometimes be awkward, especially when he got it into his head that she might want a second date.

  Yet, somehow, she just couldn’t endure the thought of watching this particular boy walk away.

  And judging by Blue Eyes’ extraordinary speech, he was every bit as much a slut as she was.

  She had no problem, however, with allowing her imagination to run wild, picturing him writhing on a bed with his multiple naked partners … She sucked in her breath and held it as she stopped mid-thought. Apparently, she did have a problem with it. She’d expected to react to the daydream with arousal, but instead she felt … vaguely pissed off.

  She mentally sneered at herself. It was ridiculous to feel even a hint of jealousy over someone she hadn’t known existed until five minutes ago. He could have as many orgies as he wanted.

  She spent the rest of the meeting staring a new hole into the puckered floor tiles.

  Twenty minutes before the end of the meeting, the counselor left them for what he liked to refer to as ‘group time.’ He seemed to think they would talk more freely if he was gone. She always felt like telling him the only thing that happened when he left was a sigh of relief all around and some stilted small talk.

  This week, however, Blue Eyes seemed to have livened everyone up.

  “Is it me,” he said, “or is it a bit naïve to put a bunch of sex addicts together in one room? Surely that’s just a pick-up service under the guise of therapy.”

  Maybe if her fellow addicts were all male belly dancers, Leah thought. Unfortunately, reality was always more disappointing.

  “I know, right?” Stilettos said. “This should totally be like a free-for-all night. Now that’d be therapy.”

  “There’s no one here I want,” Old Lady chirped from under her hat.

  “Until now.” Stilettos grinned at Blue Eyes. Leah decided she wanted to tie Stilettos to her chair and lock her in the closet.

  But that would be crazy, and Leah hated proving Helena right.

  “I don’t believe that.” Blue Eyes’ mouth took on a wickedly sexy slant. “What about her?” He gestured at Leah, whose heart set off at a sprint in the direction of her panties.

  He thought she was hot. He just implied he would sleep with her.

  Then again, coming from a guy with a sex problem, it probably didn’t mean much.

  But Leah smothered a smile anyway.

  “Oh, her.” Stilettos sniffed. “She’s hot, but her personality is so abrasive that it just completely puts you off.”
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br />   “You’re not my type, I assure you,” Leah said, stiffening at the insult. She didn’t actually care what any of them thought about her. She wasn’t here to make friends. Just one more session, and then she’d never have to see any of these people again.

  Packers Cap laughed. He sounded like a perverted seal pup. “Sleeping with you would probably freeze my penis off.”

  “Sorry, no charity cases today,” Leah said airily. The last thing she needed was the mental image of his frozen dick. “But feel free to find a freezer.”

  “Maybe we can ask the counselor to make it an alternate solution,” Stilettos said. “Weekly meetings with him or a night with the Ice Queen.”

  “That’s a bit rich coming from you lot.” Blue Eyes’ voice was unamused, and everyone looked startled.

  Well, everyone except Leah who hid her surprise behind a frown.

  She knew how she came across to people, and she was used to the names. ‘Ice Queen’ was really on the nicer end of the spectrum. However, she wasn’t used to anyone besides Helena standing up for her. It made her feel restless. Agitated. This guy didn’t know the first thing about her, so what did he care?

  “I don’t need you to defend me,” she said evenly. “The way you talked about your ‘problems’—you sounded more like you were here to brag instead of looking for help. It’s disgusting.”

  Blue Eyes looked a little taken aback and, by the way his brows drew together, a little annoyed too. The agitation in her stomach immediately shifted into guilt.

  She hadn’t meant to sound like such a bitch. Strangers were only nice to her when they wanted something, so she’d reacted the way she always did by being defensive and snapping at him. She felt stupid and awkward as she pushed her hair behind her ear and tried to ignore his probing glances.

  After that, no one would answer any questions no matter how charmingly Blue Eyes put them. Leah had, as per usual, reduced the room to one giant, mutual sulk.