"You, uh, you said you wanted to talk. Women don’t usually mean good things when they say that," he answered, taking her hands from his face, holding them together between their chests. Taking a deep breath, he flicked his tongue out to moisten his lips. Cameron's eyes dropped to the full curve of his lower lip, her own lips remembering the feel of him, her tongue remembering and craving the taste of him. She stepped closer, removing her hands from his and pressing them flat to his chest.
"I wanted to tell you that I'd checked out the party stuff, and all is well. Except for one thing. Tabitha told me the wrong color."
"The wrong color of what?"
"Drinks. I don't drink, Mac. Because of, well, you know. I was drinking then, and I --"
He glanced around, bringing his gaze back to settle on her face, his eyes flashing as understanding dawned on his face. "You drank the wrong drinks tonight. Alcohol. How are you not falling over then?" he asked.
"I don't know. Maybe because I ate here and there, maybe because of all the dancing. I don't know. And I didn't know what I was drinking until I saw Tabitha, and she told me."
He tilted his head. "But you had the same kind of drink when you came to me, just now," he said. "Why did you bring me down here, then? After what happened? We're very alone, Cameron."
"I know," she said. "I have been afraid of so much in the last few years, Mac. I've hardly dated, and when I did, I didn't let them pick me up. I didn't let them drive me home. And for the most part, I didn't let them touch me. I'd watch them get frustrated, and some were outright angry."
"And me?"
"I didn't let you pick me up for a while either, didn't tell you where I lived. Remember?"
He closed his eyes, sighing. Turning away, he leaned on the railing of the yacht, bracing himself on his forearms. He looked over his shoulder at her, watching her quietly as she stood there alone and insecure, her hands gripped together in front of her. "And what about now?" he asked.
"Now I'm tired of being afraid, Mac. I'm tired of being imprisoned by what happened to me." She stepped forward, approaching him cautiously. Her hands feathered up his back and down again, but he caught her as she went to circle his waist.
"Is this because you've been drinking, Cameron?" He turned in her arms, finally releasing her hands and allowing her to run her arms around him. Pulling her into his grasp, he guided her head to his chest, and the pounding of his heart sounded in her ear as he rested his chin in her hair.
"Not for the reason you think," she muttered into his chest. Bitterness was clawing at her; she'd spent the better part of her womanhood rejecting men who wanted her, who wanted to kiss her and hold her and touch her. Now, for the first time she was offering herself to a man, and he questioned her, doubted her.
And she loved him for it, for looking out for her, for caring enough about her as a woman to care whether or not she was intoxicated. "The only thing I'm intoxicated with these days, punch or not, is you, Mac. Maybe drinking gives me more courage than I usually have, but I know what I'm offering you. I know what I want, and I know that it has nothing to do with punch."
"What is it that you want, then?" he asked. "Here we are, alone. The deck is quiet and we're surrounded by emergency rowboats. What do you want from me, Cameron?"
Pulling back from his chest, Cameron lifted her eyes to his. "I want you," she answered. "I want to know what it's like to let go. The last man who touched me was the one who robbed me of my innocence, and I want to make new memories. I want to reach out of my little world and bring something new in. I want to feel your mouth on mine, your hands on my --"
"Shh, stop, just stop," he groaned, placing two fingertips gently on her lips, stopping her speech. "You've been drinking, Cam, and even if you did want me before, you didn't reach out before. You didn't tell me these things, you --"
"I did," she said, kissing his fingertips before moving her face away. "I didn't use words maybe, but that night we went to the carnival on your motorcycle? That was like, this big major turn-on for me, the whole time. Riding with you, wrapped around you, and then getting to relax and ride the rides and just, I felt safe with you. I feel safe with you. And when you dropped me off at my house that night? Mac, it was all I could do to turn around and walk away from you, and walk into the house without begging you to come in with me."
"You'd have been sorry."
"Maybe, maybe not. I won't ever know, because I didn't do it. I didn't ask you to come in, and touch me, and kiss me. I didn't ask you to hold me and lay with me, to strip --"
"Cameron," he rasped. "If that's all true, and you feel that way for me, you'll feel that way tomorrow, too, when the alcohol is gone, and --"
"Do you really think I'm so drunk I can't make decisions for myself?" she asked. The idea of convincing him to be with her was repulsive to her, cheapening what she'd thought would be beautiful and turning it into drunken sex. After all she'd told him, the things he knew about her life and her past, the way he'd grown to know who she was as a woman, she was offended to think that he'd believe she was that far gone.
Stepping back, Cameron placed some distance between them, curling her arms around herself to ward off the shame of offering herself to someone only to be rejected. Hurt soured the sound of her voice as she said, "You think I'm just out here with you looking for cheap thrills? The one man I'm not related to, that I thought I could trust to be alone with, that I believed I was safe with --"
"Cameron, don't do this," Mac said, reaching for her as she stepped away. "Don't make it something it isn't. I'm not turning you away, but I want to be sure that this is what you'll still want tomorrow. In the morning, when you wake up with my arms around you, and your bare skin pressed to mine, with your hair spilling over my chest and your thigh trapped between mine, I want to know that you won't be sorry."
Standing there, Cameron looked at Mac, the fog of alcohol lifting to make way for the blaze of fury, because if she didn't get mad right then, she'd fall in love and be lost, at his mercy forever. "Don't I have the right to make those choices?" she asked. "Don't I get to be the one to decide what I want? Come on, Mac, you're the therapist. Analyze me. Am I so injured still, so fragile, that I'm incapable of reading myself, or looking out for myself?"
"That's not what I said. But Cameron, if I take you at your word, and find a quiet place to lay you down, and I peel away that dress that's been killing me all night ... if I strip away whatever teasing thing you've got on underneath, and I put my lips to your body, and I run my hands over your soft places, and I trace my tongue over the lines of what makes you you, and then you wake up sorry tomorrow, I won't be able to stand up under it. I just won't. And that's not me doubting you; it's just me, knowing me."
***
"I won't be sorry Mac. I've thought about this for a while now, and it's what I want. I'm tired of running from the past. I’m tired of staying alone to protect myself. I've locked out everyone who had potential to hurt me over the years, and I didn't realize, until you came along, that when I locked the world out, I was locking myself in. In here," she said softly, knocking her fist against her heaving chest. "I'm not drunk; I've just had enough liquid courage to help me. And the last glass was on purpose. I knew what I was doing. And I have no intention of hurting you, not by being sorry, not by pulling the whole 'this was a mistake' thing, and not by backing off or pushing you away, either. I'm trying to let you in, Mac; I'm not trying to hurt you."
"I know, Cameron, I know you aren't that kind of person." He reached for her again, dragging her against his chest. She could feel the power humming in his arms, the strength of will that it took for him to hold himself back from taking what she offered, right there where they stood. Her heart raced, her eyes watered. She didn’t know it for what it was, but in that moment, she fell head over heels in love with him, in love with his integrity, in love with his strength, in love with how important his trustworthiness was to him.
"Mac," she whispered, opening his jacket to step inside, curling
her arms around his waist and burying her fingers in the folds of his shirt. She nuzzled his chest, feathering kisses along the line of buttons on his shirt, wondering what it would feel like to open them and spread her hands out on the bare hot skin of his chest. Did he have hair there, like her father and her brothers? Or would he have a bare chest; firm but smooth against the pads of her fingers? Would the muscles of his body flex and flicker under her touch? Would he gasp, would he whisper to her in the dark?
He gulped, his throat working against the top of her head. "Cameron, you're killing me. I'm trying to do the right thing here," he whispered. His will was weakening, though; he dropped his face as he spoke to kiss her forehead, tracing the curve along the side of her face, reaching her jaw and tracing back up to kiss the soft spot behind her ear.
"Me, too. I've spent so long running from anything that might have any potential, afraid to let any man get his hands on me again, afraid that trying to be with someone else, in that way, would just bring back all the things that happened before. For me, the right thing is to let go of the past and embrace the moment that I'm living in."
"Or maybe that's the alcohol speaking," he said, his voice coming out strangled as she slipped his unfastened tie from his neck and threw it around her own to keep from losing it.
"Maybe it's not, Mac, can't you see? Even in the worst scenario, alcohol alone isn't going to make me do something I don't want to do. It's only helping me to do something I've wanted to do for a while now. Unfortunately, it's not something I want to do by myself," she said, her fingers working the buttons of his shirt, opening them slowly.
Mac looked up, his eyes searching the cloudless sky, the column of his throat working as he fought for control. Was she really being honest with herself? Could she really let go with him and not be sorry? Because sitting beside her through the wedding had been sheer torture, the pleasant memories of his dead wife rising up, memories of their wedding so many years ago. And then beside him, Cameron, a woman his wife would have loved, a woman he was beginning to think his son could love. A woman he might already love, himself.
"Cameron, God please," he whispered, reaching out to still her hands before they could open the front of his shirt.
"Look at me," she commanded, stepping back and crossing her arms over her chest. He looked; her chest was heaving with the mixture of feelings flooding her face. Her cheeks were flushed, but he couldn't tell whether it was from the alcohol, the frustration of his arguments, or simple pent-up sexual energy.
"I'm looking," he said cautiously.
"You know, Mac," she said quietly, shaking her head stretching her arms out wide before folding them back again. "I thought all this time that you held back from me out of patience. Out of good intentions, maybe. Out of, hell I don't know what, but I loved it; I thought it was a good thing."
"Isn't it?" he asked, his dark brows lowering to meet over the blue of his eyes, now gone steely.
"I'm just not sure. Because here I am, basically throwing myself at you, and all you've done the entire time is beg me to stop." Her breath tripped, her voice hitching as she spoke, and she backed away a little more. Gathering his tie in her hands, she held it out, letting the slippery fabric flow through her fingers to pool on the deck between them. "I can see now that I was wrong. That you didn't hold back out of some good intentioned sense of chivalric patience. That really, you just didn't want me as much maybe, as you thought you might. Not as much as I thought you might."
She turned to walk away, and Mac knew without a doubt that he had to reach out, to stop her from turning her back. He knew that if she turned her back and wrapped her pride around herself, he'd never have the chance to see her face again. So he did the only thing his instincts would allow. He stepped forward, grabbed her elbow, and pulled her back to him.
"You think I don't want you?" he growled. "You think I've been wasting my time with a woman I didn't care for, that I don't desire? You think my refusing to take advantage of you means that I don't want you enough, because I'm not so desperate to have you that I'd jump on you the second the opportunity comes along?" He took her hand, pressing it against the hard ridge behind the fly of his slacks. "I have wanted you, damned woman, since the second I laid eyes on you. And I've been trying to protect you, from me, from yourself."
Pulling her hand from his, away from the hardness that proved his words, Cameron sighed. "I'm not that fragile, Mac. I know what I want, too, just like you do. And I'm of sound mind here, it's not like I'm high or something. I had a few drinks that did nothing more than slightly fog my vision and fill up my courage tank, which by the way, is fully depleted again. Thank you though, for filling me fresh up with humiliation."
"What?" he asked, shocked.
"You heard me," she muttered, turning away to lean against the railing of the yacht and look out over the river.
"Humiliation? Why?" he ran his hands through his hair, standing it on end, and took a ragged breath.
"Mac, I just made an utter fool of myself in front of a man that doesn't want to be with me. And yeah, I know you have, um, that," she stammered, waving vaguely toward his crotch, which caused what was hidden there to twitch in her direction. "But right this minute, I'm pressing up to you, and I'm taking your damn clothes off, for goodness' sake, and you don't want me." She sniffled, and she turned to watch a bird fly along the shore of the river, the moonlight caught the shimmer of a tear on her cheek.
He sighed, watching the light trace the path of the tear, watching her chest hitch as she struggled to control her breathing. "Cameron, that is not what is happening here. I was just trying to watch out for you." Reaching out, he took her arm again, gently this time, and turned her to face him. Swiping a knuckle under her eye, he dashed away the tear and slipped his hands into her hair.
"I want you," he whispered, kissing the tip of her nose. "I want you to finish whatever it was you were about to do earlier. I want to watch that dress pool around your ankles, and I want to free your body from whatever's under this dress." All this he said as he peppered kisses over her face, tilting her head this way and that as he went. Traveling down her jaw line and into the curve of her collarbone, he continued to whisper, things that blurred together as Cameron clutched his waist.
Her eyes fluttered closed, her face heating with pleasure, the heat traveling lazily down over the roundness of her breasts, leaving a lingering tingle that wandered down her stomach and into her panties. Desire pooled between her thighs as wonder flooded her senses.
"But it can't be here," he whispered, still raining kisses along her bare shoulders, slipping the thin straps of her gown out of his way as he went. "I don't want it to be like that, I don't want your first good memory to be like that, crazy and half-drunk on the deck of a public yacht. I want to hold you, privately, and look down at you, but I want to be the only one who sees. I want to lay my hands on you, and watch your hair tangle on the pillows. I want to crumble inside you, and then pull a blanket up over you, and hold you for as long as you'll let me."
"Well, the yacht is open to guests until tomorrow," Cameron whispered, her head tilted back in his hands as his lips made a daring line along the modest cleavage exposed by her gown. "Come with me."
"Cameron, are you sure about this?" Mac asked, lifting his head to meet her gaze. His breath was ragged, his eyes fiery in the moonlight.
"I am one hundred thousand percent sure," she whispered, pulling his lips to hers one last time before taking his hand and leading him to her cabin.
***
"They set up this huge cabin just for you?" Mac asked, incredulous. Looking around, he touched the collection of crystal ornaments displayed by the door. "Aren't these just pretty," he murmured, slipping his fingers around one of the ornaments as it dangled gently from a thin silver strand.
"That one's my favorite," Cameron said, coming close to stand beside him. She pointed to a Chinese symbol, swinging slowly from its own silver strand. "It's the symbol for strength."
"
You have it, you know," he said quietly, turning to grasp her hips and pull her close. "Strength. It oozes out of you, after all that you've been through. All that you've survived."
"I like to think so. That's why I like the symbol, I guess. Plus you know, Chinese writing is cool." Cameron flushed, her surroundings closing in to remind her of where they were and why they were there.
"Is this always your cabin?" he asked, his thumbs circling gently above her hipbones.
"It is when I'm on a wedding here. I always stay on board to keep track of things, you know, the cleanup and everything. Tabitha stays too, down the hall.
Glancing toward the door, Mac raised an eyebrow. "Should we expect company then?"
Heat rose to Cameron's cheeks, coloring her face as she grinned sheepishly. "No, I kind of knew I was going to go looking for you. She knew I'd had the wrong punch, so I told her I was coming to bed."
Mac laughed softly, his eyes going over her shoulders to the wide bed behind them. "Oh my. Look," he chuckled, walking forward, forcing Cameron's feet to take matching steps backward. "You're almost there."
Prescription For Love (The Kingsley Series) Page 17
