by Bethany-Kris
“I hate you,” she hissed.
“No you don’t.”
He looked so damn smug.
His grin was enough to melt her panties off.
“Trying really hard to keep hating you right now, Tom, but mostly I just want to fuck you.”
“We could probably make it back to the car in like …” He glanced down at his watch. “Ten minutes or—”
Camilla was already darting behind him, and back the way they had come. He chased after her with a laugh.
Camilla was still stretched full with nine inches of Tommaso Rossi. She could taste her own cum from when he’d kissed her after having his head between her thighs, and she wasn’t through the aftershocks of her third orgasm. He had two of his fingers buried deep in her ass, while his fingers grabbed hard enough to her hip to leave bruises.
She loved it.
Being well into September, it sure as hell wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t really warm, either. The car was still hot enough from their fucking that she didn’t even care about the cool air starting to whisper along her skin.
His teeth dug into her jaw as he yanked her down harder onto his cock. It ached in the best possible way. So deep, and right to her very bones. She’d already rode him to her second and third release, but he was working her body now. Pulling her onto his cock, and letting her work her clit with the tips of her fingers all the while.
When his lips grazed hers again, she could taste the salt from her skin on his tongue. She liked the way she tasted on him.
She could come again.
If he just kept fucking her like he was, it would happen.
“Christ, Cam, you’re so goddamn wet.”
Yes.
“And hot, babe.”
All over.
She was thanking car manufactures for dark tinted windows, New York weather for the blast of rain that sent people scattering from the lot to find shelter, and this man under her because she was about to come again.
“I want that cunt of yours to give me what’s mine, Cam. Don’t you want to come on my cock again?”
In her ear, his voice was husky. Gravelly, and thick. Her name crossed his lips, and she was a goner.
So blissed.
So high.
Camilla barely got through her next release—with her cries high and broken—when he pulled her down on his cock twice more. Progressively harder until he held her there, and she felt his muscles tense.
“Fuck, yeah,” he grunted.
Her laughter filled the car.
Breathless.
Spun.
“You’re making me break my rules,” she told him.
Tommaso chuckled, and leaned back to rest his head on the window. “What are those?”
“Mostly, you’re making me like you—I keep coming back.”
He grinned.
She almost hated how the sight of it made her want to get them going for another ride.
“Well, you won’t have to worry about that for much longer, Cam.”
“What, why?”
“New York is a break, remember? I have to head back to Chicago in a couple of weeks.”
An icy cold draft slipped down her spine.
Just like that, Camilla’s high was gone.
“I blame you.”
Cross hesitated at the front door of Camilla’s apartment. He hadn’t even gotten the chance to close the door before she hissed at him. His gaze darted between his sister on the couch, and August reading a book in the living room nook.
“What the fuck did I do now?”
“Now, right,” Camilla tossed him, “because you’re always doing something.”
“Well, I get blamed for a lot of shit, sure.”
She pointed at him, unfazed. “You know what you did.”
“Not really,” Cross said.
Camilla glowered at her brother.
August sighed in the nook. “Just ignore her. She’s in a mood today.”
“I’m not in a—”
“Been in a mood since Wednesday, actually. I’ve been regretting my choice to come over today ever since I got here.”
“Is that why you didn’t go to church yesterday?” Cross asked.
Camilla ignored him.
August answered instead. “That’s exactly why.”
“First, I had a big test today, a class discussion on the impact of workplace accidents, and a lab due. I needed to get the lab done, and I wanted to make sure it was perfect,” Camilla said. “And you know, everything else, too.”
“Liar,” August said under her breath.
“Okay, well, I brought you Chinese food like you demanded when you sent me a text this afternoon. But hey, if you’re going to bark at me about shit I don’t even understand, then I’ll just drop it and go.”
Camilla eyed Cross from the side. “Close the fucking door. I give my neighbors enough of a show as it is.”
August snorted. “Right, I bet.”
“Shut up.”
“You said it!”
“Nobody else gets to, though,” Camilla replied.
August glared.
Camilla looked away.
So maybe she was in a mood.
Maybe she had been in a mood for a while.
She neither wanted to talk about it, or admit why it was still lingering in the back of her mind like a sickness she couldn’t kick. This was stupid. This was not what she did—it was not her deal.
Camilla Emma Donati did not get heartsick over a fucking guy.
Wordlessly, her brother crossed the room, and took a seat beside her on the couch. He passed over the bag of Chinese. She dug through it to find what she wanted, and then handed the bag over to her friend for August to do the same.
Camilla was half way through the rice and chicken before she spoke again. “He’s leaving in two weeks.”
Cross glanced over at her. “Tommaso, you mean?”
“Yep.”
“You didn’t know that, or what? He was only here to visit, Cam.”
“I ignored it.”
“I don’t get—”
“He made me like him, Cross.”
Her brother sighed. “Huh.”
“And now he’s leaving.”
“That makes you …”
“Pissed off, Cross. It pisses me off!”
“Saying it lightly,” August put in.
Cross ignored the other girl, and Camilla knew she had all of his attention. Her brother was good like that. Her second best friend—her very first best friend.
“Not sure what the problem is, Cam.”
“The problem is that now I might like to see Tom again. Not see him like a relationship, but he’s going. So I can’t do that at all.”
“Liar,” August mumbled through a mouth full of noodles and beef. “You treat boys like toys, Cam, and you know it. You could have another Tom tonight if you wanted.”
Cross pointed at August, saying, “Truth.”
“I blame you,” Camilla repeated.
Her brother only leaned back on the couch.
“Want me to kill him?”
Kind of.
Not really.
She loved her brother more for asking.
“I’m sad,” Camilla admitted.
“Maybe you’ll figure it out,” Cross said. “Or maybe it won’t matter by the time he heads out of the city. Who knows?”
“You’re really not helping.”
“I brought you food. It’s the best I can do. Look at it this way, Cam. Once he’s out of this state, you won’t have to worry about icky feelings crawling into your heart, and you’ll be good to go again.”
Maybe.
“I still blame you.”
“I didn’t bring him here.”
“Keep thinking that, brother.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“WHY IS your sister ignoring me?”
Cross groaned as he fell back on the couch. He used a gray throw pillow to hold over his face for longer than Tom thou
ght was probably healthy. Then, his friend mumbled something Tom couldn’t understand.
“What was that?”
Cross whipped the pillow to the side, and glared. The pillow crashed against the flat screen television—making it sway dangerously—and then fell to the floor.
“I said,” Cross grumbled, “why can’t this pillow just fucking kill me? That’d be awesome.”
“You’re dramatic.”
“I told you not to get into it with Camilla, Tom.”
Fair enough.
“So this is her deal, now? She just drops somebody with no warning and that’s it?”
Cross sighed, and stared at the ceiling as though he wished it would swallow him whole. “Usually, yeah, that’s exactly what she does. Mostly after a first date, though. So, maybe feel special because you got two.”
Then, his friend’s gaze darted to him. “It was twice, right?”
“Fuck off, Cross.”
Cross shrugged. “Listen, I don’t like to get into my sister’s personal business. As a rule, I let her do whatever the fuck she wants. She brings me into her shit enough as it is, and I don’t like that, but I deal with it.”
“Does that mean you know why she won’t answer a text from me?”
“You’re making it really difficult to like you, Tom.”
“I like Cam, Cross.”
“Well, that was your mistake to make. Camilla’s feeling-phobic. She’s got some kind of commitment issues burrowed so deep, nobody’s digging them out. A guy looks at her too long, and she bolts as fast as she can before the feelings catch and spread. Get it?”
“I think you’re being—”
“I’m really not overstating it,” Cross interjected. “She’s never had a boyfriend, Tom. Not once. Not in school. She took her best friend to prom. She’s never taken someone home to meet our parents. The girl just doesn’t do relationships. I told you that from the start—this is on you, really.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Still not news, Tom.” Cross waved at the comfortable reclining chair beside the couch. “Take a seat, man.”
He fell into the chair, but the tension in his muscles didn’t relax. He felt like a bag of fucking rocks. Hard and uncomfortable. Painful.
Cross was right.
Tom had been warned.
It still kind of fucking stung that Camilla wouldn’t even tell him to screw off somewhere. At least that was closure to everything. This was … something else entirely.
He didn’t like it at all.
Cross sat up straight on the couch, and used the coffee table to hook his Doc Marten boots one over the other at the ankles. The two friends had a staring contest with the blank screen of the television before Cross spoke up first.
“What is it, man, lovesick or pussy whipped?”
Tom rolled his eyes upward. “It has to be one of those two? It can’t be something else entirely?”
“Is it?”
“I don’t really know her, Cross. I know enough to know I would like to know more.”
“That’s a lot of knows in one sentence, man.”
He ignored Cross’s joke, and considered his own words.
“Maybe it’s a mixture of everything,” he said after a stretch of silence.
Tom didn’t even know himself, and he felt like a foolish fucker for even admitting it silently. Damn, though, there was something about Camilla that just got under his skin in the best way—the right way to make him take notice.
Females were females. Tom had never found one interesting enough to really make him want to get to know her beyond a physical or shallow relationship.
Camilla did that.
She did it with demure eyes, sex on her tongue, and a killer smile. She sealed it with quick wit, a filthy mind, and one of her winks.
She barely had to try.
This wasn’t fucking fair.
“So you think you’re love sick, pussy whipped, and confused?” Cross asked. “Because that mess makes me confused.”
“I’m about to sound like a fool.”
Cross cocked a brow. “Do I get the option of leaving before you do? I’ve never met a guy who went a round or two with my sister, and then suddenly grew a fucking vagina. Really not interested in meeting one now.”
“No, you can’t leave. I need advice. Who better than her brother?”
“You haven’t met August, have you? I can introduce you two. It is August’s only mission to get Camilla in a relationship. My sister just doesn’t know it, yet.”
“You said Camilla’s got a thing for girls, too. Is August someone she—”
“No,” Cross interrupted firmly.
All right.
Tom moved on. “You gonna let me talk this out, or not?”
“You have heard the whole saying about it being better to keep your mouth closed, and let people think you’re a fool, than to open it and prove it, right?”
“Do you think you can love a person just by meeting them? Maybe it gets dirtied by distractions or whatever. It’s just … fuck, like you could love them if you had the chance. That’s lovesick for you.”
“Yeah, I do think that’s possible.”
Cross said nothing else.
Tom looked over at him. “Why?”
“Just know it is, man. For some people, that’s how it happens. You meet her, and there she is. No one else is ever going to be that girl for you. Some people meet theirs at fourteen years old, and fuck the rest of their life for anything that might come close after she’s gone. So yeah, it’s possible.”
The tone Cross offered allowed no room for questioning. His friend was so private where women and relationships were concerned, that Tom knew better than to press for something more. Cross wouldn’t answer, anyway. Just who he was.
“Cam likes you,” Cross said.
“Likes something about me—usually without clothes on.”
A disgusted grunt echoed from the couch.
“No, I mean, my sister likes you, Tom.”
“How do you know that?”
“Here’s the thing, man. I’m never going to betray my sister by talking about the things she tells me. Me and Cam … you have to understand, someday, we might be all we have left. That’s the nature of being who we are, with a family like ours. She’s never felt like she couldn’t come to me—there is nothing she couldn’t feel safe to bring to me, and I won’t ruin that for her. Everybody needs somebody they can fall back on, and I’m one of those people for Cam.”
Tom cleared his throat. “Yeah, I get that.”
“I like you, though, and you’re my friend. So, I’ll let you in on something else where my sister is concerned. If you were any other stupid fucker with a hard nut for Cam, I’d laugh while my sister broke your heart all over New York. Actually, I’d probably help her get you out of the state.”
“You’re kind of horrible.”
Cross shrugged, but agreed. “But hey, she does like you, and I think you have to understand Camilla, that’s all.”
“Understand her how?” Tom asked.
“Her, Tom. Just her. How she is, you know? Respect the walls she’s put up, and how she chooses to do her thing. She’s got enough people who keep trying to put their wants and opinions on her life, instead of letting her figure it out on her own.”
Tom kind of understood what Cross was trying to tell him, but he wasn’t sure where that left him with Camilla.
She didn’t do relationships. She didn’t do anything that might suggest a relationship. The littlest thing might send her bolting fast enough away from him that he wouldn’t ever be able to catch her.
Tom didn’t want to risk that happening. Not when something as wonderful as Camilla was the prize.
“So … I go home, then,” Tom said.
Cross looked over at him. “You kind of have to anyway, don’t you?”
“No, I mean … I go home because there, I’m not here. I’m not forcing her to keep a distance, or making her overthin
k. I’m not pushing anything on her there, or asking her for more than she is giving. We’re not playing some cat and mouse game. She’s got the idea of space, and I’ve got—”
“Not a whole hell of a lot.”
A damn chance.
“A new friend,” Tom said, grinning.
Cross chuckled. “Keep working that reverse psychology, man.”
“Not working anything, but if that’s what she wants, you know?”
“Always give them what they want, yeah.”
Exactly.
“Tommaso.”
“Hey, Ma.”
“Pretty sure your plane was supposed to land this morning.”
Tom kept half of his concentration on his mother, and the other half on the paperwork he was signing. “Something came up. I’ll be home in a few days.”
“In time for supper?”
“Depends on what you’re cooking.”
“I think I could pull out some pork chops for your spoiled self.”
“You know me too well, Ma.”
Abriella laughed. “You’ve been gone three weeks, Tommaso. I was looking forward to having you home again.”
“I’m on my way, Ma. I promise.”
“Better be.” Then, his mother moved the phone away with a sigh. “Fine, Tommas. Take my only phone call with my son away.”
“I’m not—”
“Oh, here.”
Tom’s father came on the line with a chuckle. “She’s pissed at me, now.”
“I bet.”
“You should have called her more while you were away. She frets, and then I’m left dealing with it.”
“I’m a grown man; I can handle myself, Dad.”
“Mmhmm,” Tommas hummed.
He didn’t sound like he meant it at all.
Tom handed the paperwork for a rented Bugatti supercar over to the dealer. He had just shelled out far more money than he wanted to admit just to have the car for the day he would be leaving the city. They didn’t have the car on hand at the moment, and would need to get it out of safe storage. That was going to take a couple of days.
It was worth it.
She’ll like it.
Fast cars were a thing for Camilla, apparently. Tom had not forgotten what her father told him.
“Are you still there, son?”
“Yeah, just finishing up some business here.” The final paperwork was handed over with a nod from the man behind the desk. “Thanks.”
