by Rachel Kane
…but that wasn’t the part that was hard to swallow, was it? No. It was my actions. The fact that I’d slept with Cam.
The fact that I’d admitted it.
Suddenly the truth didn’t seem like such a great idea.
Micah was wrong about Cam, but he was right that I’d broken the rules. I had an excuse for it. Of course I did. My feelings for Cam were so new, so explosive, I wasn’t acting rationally. I should have stepped down first. Should have told Micah right away.
“I don’t want you to stop representing him,” I said. My voice was quiet but firm.
“You should have thought about that before jumping into the sack with him.”
“I’m serious, Micah. He needs you. I know I screwed things up. Believe me. I wish it could have gone differently. I like Cam. A lot. I should have been upfront with that, I know.”
“Yes, you should have,” he said, his tone of anger slightly relenting.
I rubbed my forehead, as though my thoughts were giving me a headache. “I didn’t see it coming. It happened so quickly. I wasn’t expecting to have feelings for him.”
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, Alex, I don’t want to fight with you, I don’t want you to blow up. But are you… Are you sure he’s not just manipulating you?”
I couldn’t answer.
If I were a normal person, I would’ve been furious at that. It would have pushed me completely over the edge.
But I wasn’t a normal person. I was someone who had been in the grips of a master manipulator, unable to fight my way out until the bitter end.
Cam is nothing like David Black.
I knew that. But deep in the hidden places of my heart, I worried. You are susceptible to being manipulated. And you might not even know it’s happening until it’s too late.
It was a shockingly plausible vision. Cam, in an effort to find a true defender, pulls me in close. Shares secrets with me—or, more importantly, gets me to share my secrets with him. Now I’m addicted, I’m too close, and all I want to do is protect him from this threat.
That’s not how it is. That’s not the way Cam thinks.
But that’s the problem with trauma. What I had been through was definitely traumatic. It had sent me into a tailspin, sent me into hiding. The problem with trauma is, it changes the way you think. Changes your perceptions of the world.
I shook my head. “That’s ridiculous. Cam is innocent. He’s not trying to pull one over on me.”
Micah took a moment, then nodded. “Okay. I’m going to have to trust you.”
“That’s a surprise.”
“Don’t get cocky. You’re still off the case. You can’t come near it, or you’ll destroy our ability to do anything to help Cam.”
I couldn’t argue. It was the price I had to pay. “All right.”
“I mean it. You don’t try to do anything yourself. You don’t research anything, you don’t approach anyone. Do whatever you want to with Cam, but hands off the case.”
What a strange thought. I was free. Jobless again.
Not tied down by anything.
It was how I’d felt when I first came back to Corinth. Strange and free and rootless.
The garden wasn’t even a metaphor, it was very specifically to give myself some roots, to help me feel bound to my new home, to give me a connection to the world around me. To rebuild.
Yet it hadn’t quite worked out like that. I’d avoided rebuilding my life. Aside from Micah, did I have any real friends in town? I’d sworn off social engagements, I’d turned down every opportunity to build connections with people. The little plot of land behind my house had been more important to me.
Isolation seemed to be my go-to strategy.
This was a difference between me and Cam. Cam had reached out for help. He had deep roots in the community, many friends to rally around him. He had built a life for himself here…and I was both envious, and a little grateful that I had found him, that this connection was blossoming between us.
I suddenly missed him badly. I wanted to call.
“So…where are we?” I asked Micah. “You’ll keep him as a client?”
Micah picked up the halves of the cease and desist letter. “For now. As long as nothing else goes wrong. I’ll get a copy of this over to Secret Reader. But you have to stay away, Alex. Promise me.”
“Okay. Okay, I promise. You won’t hear from me.”
I left him standing there, the two pieces of paper in his hand, feeling as though our friendship had been torn as well.
Maybe it could be taped together, patched back up.
Maybe. When all this was over.
19
Cam
“Oh god, I’m sorry,” I said, when Alex had told me about his conversation. I put my arms around him. “I didn’t mean to get you fired.”
He shook his head. “No. Trust me, it’s okay. It’s better this way.”
We were still just at my door, and I drew him into the room and made him sit down. “Can I get you a drink?”
“No, I… Actually, you know what, yes. I’m unemployed now, isn’t that what we bums do? I’ll take a double.”
I laughed and went to the kitchen to get the remains of that bottle of scotch from the other night. I was so glad he was here. His presence somehow soothed the atmosphere, and right now my atmosphere needed a lot of soothing. My conversation with Eli had left me rattled, left me questioning what I was doing with my life. Yet the moment Alex walked in, I was sure again. Sure that I had made the right choice.
Bottle and glasses in hand, I came back into the room. After pouring our drinks, I toasted him. “To unemployment!”
He laughed and touched his glass to mine. Clink. “I feel different,” he said. “Like a burden has been lifted off my shoulders. I don’t like having secrets from people.”
I’ll be honest, I was slightly worried about things, if he wasn’t going to be working with Micah. But then, he’d always been more an adviser, hadn’t he? A consultant? He would provide the advice, Micah would do the actual lawyering necessary. So maybe things were okay.
Maybe I was going to survive this after all.
“I have a secret,” I said. “I really hate scotch. Why does it have to burn?”
He downed his glass. “You’ll find, the more you drink, the more it becomes a warm glow. The embers, rather than the fire.”
I looked skeptically at the bottle. “Guess I’ll have to drink more.”
“He’s going to want to talk to you.”
“Who? Micah?”
“Yes. He’s got another step in mind. I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
“Then don’t,” I said. “I can wait to hear it from him.”
He smiled sadly. “Good. One less reason for him to hate me. I’m afraid I left things pretty tense between us today.”
“It’s my fault, isn’t it? I’m sorry. I should’ve—”
“No. Seriously. You didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t, either. It’s just the way the rules work.”
“But to lose a job because of one night.”
He touched the rim of his glass with his finger. “One night? Is that all?”
I pressed my lips together, uncertain of whether to smile or not. “I mean, it doesn’t have to be all. I didn’t go into it thinking it was a one-time thing.”
He got up from the chair, and moved over onto the couch with me. “Good,” he said. “I’m not interested in that. I don’t need something…something ephemeral.”
“Look at you with the big words.”
“Hush, you know what I mean.”
And I did. That’s what was making my heart beat so fast. I knew exactly what he meant. We were both looking for connection. Neither of us quite believed we deserved it.
Well, I didn’t deserve it, no.
Not in a million years did I deserve someone like Alex.
This was the trap I found myself in. I didn’t deserve him, because of my secrets. Because I was hiding my past.
The only way I could be worthy of love, was if I was willing to tell him. But our relationship was so new, if it even could be called a relationship yet, if it meant anything at all, if it wasn’t just a brief—an ephemeral—fling. I didn’t know yet whether I could trust him.
That’s ridiculous. He trusted you with his darkest secret.
I thought about the victims he’d described. David Black, hiring these guys, using them and then throwing them away. Alex had helped David send them packing. To him, guys like that were disposable. Less than human.
So uncomfortably close to my past.
Thinking about things wasn’t going to help. I couldn’t rationalize my way through this. I was just going to make myself feel worse.
Instead, I took the glass out of his hand and set it on the table, then entwined my fingers with his. “Last night was the most exciting sleepover I’ve had in a long, long time.”
“Yeah, you seemed to like it,” he said.
I squeezed his fingers harder. “Be honest, you liked it too.”
“I would’ve liked it better if I could’ve seen you.”
It was strange to think about that aspect of it. The way I had hidden myself from view. The way his wrists had strained against the bonds.
I had to make light of it. Rolling my eyes, I said, “It’s a control thing.”
“Like you’re the only one with control issues. What if I just pounced on you right now? What if I pushed you down on the couch, ripped your clothes off, and started sucking you off? Would that give you control issues?”
I was hard before he even finished talking. “Is that what you want to do? Take me, without my being able to fight back one bit?”
“Admit that you’d like it. Admit that you want it. You want to be in total control…but you also want to be totally out of control.”
“It takes a lot of trust…”
His hand was against my chest. “Do you trust me?”
He pressed me, and I fell onto the couch, flat on my back. My cock strained inside my clothes.
I nodded. “I do. I do trust you.”
He had my pants off fast, yanking them down, throwing them to the side. No slow, romantic reveals here. His hunger was too great.
It was frightening the way he lunged towards my cock. Yet it was also the hottest thing I had ever seen.
I was in his mouth. There were no preliminaries. No hesitant build-up. His mouth was burning hot, sliding down my shaft, sucking me down. I gasped and grabbed onto the back of the couch to steady myself. It was like being eaten alive by some fairy-tale monster. Except it felt so good.
My instincts were so confused. Half of me wanted to push him away, to crawl on top of him, to dominate him because that’s how I did things, I had to have control. But the other half of me just wanted to lay here and be his victim, to be brutalized by his violent mouth and tongue.
It was so fast. I hadn’t expected it at all, it was just that I’d been wanting him so much, and here he was, and he was sucking me down, and I couldn’t help it. I cried out and came, shooting into his mouth, feeling him swallow, hearing myself moan, feeling my body twist beneath him as my orgasm crashed through me.
He sat up and looked down at me. My cock still throbbed with the feeling of it.
“I… I didn’t realize it would happen that fast,” I said, “I’m sorry, I—”
“Shh,” he said to me. He was on top of me, kissing me. “Stop it,” he whispered. “Never apologize.”
“I just wanted to keep going—”
“Never apologize.”
He was between my legs. I could feel him pressing against me now. He would not be denied, nor did I have any power to deny him, any wish to.
I wanted to give him everything. That’s why I had come so quickly, I couldn’t hold back anything from him.
Almost anything.
Putting that thought out of my head, I wrapped my legs around him, ground against him, kissed him, let him know I wanted him, wanted his eager, ravenous energy.
He shed his clothes, but not before reading into his pocket and pulling out a package of condoms. He slapped them on the table.
I might have made a joke. I might have said, oh, I see what you had in mind. But no. Instead, I just felt that much more wanted, knowing his certainty that he would see me again, knowing that he had planned for this to happen.
When his sheathed cock touched me, I shuddered in mingled desire and fear.
Could I hide my eyes? Could I throw my arm over my face, shield my expression from him so that he couldn’t see me?
I tried, but he pulled my arm away.
“Look at me,” he said.
I put my hand up to his face. Held it over his eyes. But he pulled my hand away again.
“Look at me.”
So I did. I stared up at him, all fear and hesitation, but inside him there was no hesitation at all. He pressed forward, entering me. As my own eyes widened at the sensation, I watched his face, watched as desire turned to pleasure, the promise of the fulfillment of his hunger just in sight.
For all that he looked voracious—and for all that part of me wanted him to plunge deep into me—he was slow, careful, taking his time with me. Enjoying it, every inch of it. And this slowness allowed me to enjoy it, in a way I had never felt before, in a way I’d always understood was possible, but only for others, not for me.
It was like my first time, in a way. The kind of first time I always wished I had had. A gentle but passionate lover, someone to hold my hand as I walked so close to the precipice, that mingled sense of safety and danger that brought me to pure ecstasy.
Yet he would not allow me to lie back and be purely passive. I think he sensed I would do that, that I would get so wrapped up in my thoughts and feelings about this, that I would slip away from the moment, slip out of time, and he wanted me here, wanted my attention to be on the pleasures happening right now, not lost in thought.
Still inside me, he began to move back, pulling me up, until I was in his lap. His hands found my ass, and lifted me. The message was wordlessly communicated, wordlessly accepted. I put my arms around his shoulders and began to fuck him back, breathing heavily, feeling him go even deeper.
I kissed him then, pulling him close, as I sensed that the urgency was building inside him, the way he was pushing my hips down, thrusting, the tension in his shoulders. But when the kiss broke, I looked deep into his eyes. It was scary, that look he gave me, the depth of expression, but I forced myself not to look away, not to break the eye contact that joined our souls, forced myself to look at him with openness and honesty.
Then a shudder passed through him, and he groaned, and he forced my hips down, forced himself all the way up into me, his face tight with the ecstasy of his climax.
I held him as he strained against me, held him as I felt his cock swell inside me, and it felt so good that I couldn’t help it, I came again, I hadn’t even realized how hard I was while sitting in his lap, hadn’t realized how I’d been rubbing my cock against him while fucking him, but my body knew, and we shared this moment together, holding each other as our bodies were wracked with pleasure.
Neither of us said anything. I think we both sensed that the first person to speak would break the moment. And neither of us wanted that. To lie here atop him, to feel him still inside me, though softer, to feel the sweat cooling on our skin, that was communication enough.
I smiled at him and kissed his fluttering eyelids, his cheek, his throat, tasting the salt on his skin. What surprised me was his face.
I hadn’t realized that the lines on his brow were from tension, until they softened just now. Hadn’t realized that something I’d thought of as hardness in his eyes, had been from emotion, maybe worry, tension. But looking at him now, his features smoothed, his anxieties quelled, he looked like a different person. And I knew I had done that, I had given him that, a chance to feel safe, a chance to relax.
Usually I think of myself as the one who needs safety, but this is
what had attracted me to Alex in the first place, wasn’t it? It wasn’t just the muscles, or the stern looks, or the flecks of silver in his hair. It was that hardness in the eyes, that defensiveness that said he had been through great pain.
We were survivors, both of us. And if I could give him a little comfort, if I could relax him and make him feel safe, then it made things feel that much more special.
He wanted to say something. That was obvious. I could see him looking for the words. I allowed myself a brief moment of anticipation. What would he say? Would it be about us? Something about our future together?
Oh, I wanted to hear it, as much as I feared hearing it. I’m not good at commitment, not good at relationships, but in that moment, I think I would have promised him anything if we could just have stayed like this a little longer, in each other’s arms.
He didn’t get to say it, and I didn’t get to hear it. My phone began ringing.
I sighed. “You’re kidding.”
He glanced down at the pile of clothes on the floor. “Ignore it.”
“Okay,” I said, disappointed that the spell between us had been broken.
It kept ringing, and ringing, and ringing. It went to voicemail, and then started ringing again.
I groaned and pulled myself off of him, allowing myself one more burst of pleasure as his cock came out of me. He got up and went into the bathroom to dispose of his condom, while I dug my phone out of my pants pocket on the floor.
It was Jane.
All at once I was seized with anxiety.
Maybe I should ignore it. Just never answer it. Throw the phone away, move to another country. I felt such a foreboding, seeing her name on the phone’s screen, and felt so alone, even though Alex was just in the next room.
“Hello?” I said.
“Oh god, Cam. Cam, I’m so sorry.”
“Jane? What’s wrong?”
“Are you online? Tell me you’re seeing this.”
