by Carter Blake
Let me drown in your desperation, Cam.
Let me find solace in the sins we share.
“Oh,” I whimper as his hand slips under my shirt. He cups my breast in his large hand, rolling my nipple between his fingers until I gasp. “Take me.”
He’s pushing me against the wall, grinding his hips against me as he tugs my shirt up farther, and I lift my arms to let him pull it over my head.
“Fuck, you’re beautiful, Elise.” The words come out like gravel, and he leans forward to lower his mouth to mine.
I turn my head, pushing him back just slightly. “No…” I whisper coarsely.
Cam stills for a moment, a hint of questioning in his smoldering eyes.
I reach up and put a finger to his lips, purposely rolling my hips against him to distract him. “Let it go,” I whisper. “Just let it all go.”
I’m saying it as much for my own benefit as I am his.
Before he has a chance to protest, I undo another button on his shirt, then another, and I run my hands up his chest just before leaning forward to suck hard on one of his nipples. Cam’s breath hitches again, and I graze my teeth over it, making a fevered moan come from his throat.
“Jesus, Elise.”
I can feel his hardness against me now, and I rip the last button of his shirt free in order to get it out of the way and work on undoing his pants. The way his lips and his tongue are kissing and sucking at my neck and collar bone, I’m having a hard time focusing.
“Tell me what you want.”
I can’t see his face, but the words he says are laced with so much assertiveness, so much sudden authority, that I stop fumbling with his zipper in order to get my bearings. “I…I wa—”
Cam’s face is suddenly so close to mine that our panting breaths become one, a mixture of damp heat and desire. “I said, tell me what you want, Elise.”
My eyes are wide, locked with his as though in a trance. I can’t look away. In the flash of an instant, I’m no longer the dominant one, no longer pushing him, no longer using him.
Now, I can see it in the deepest depths of his darkened eyes. He’s using me, too.
For what, I don’t have a clue. But there is one thing I do know.
I want him to.
“You,” I pant, unable to breathe. “I want you, Cam.”
And the truth of my words shakes me to the core, leaving me trembling in his hands.
Chapter 4
CAM
She’s intoxicating.
Sexy.
Perfect.
And until she ripped my shirt to get to me, I didn’t know what it was like to want someone with such reckless abandon.
Now, I’m going to make her mine, in every way I possibly can.
“I want you, too,” I say through labored breaths, reaching down to hitch her skirt up. “So fucking bad.”
When it’s up around her hips, I use one hand to steady her chin, making her look at me while my other hand pushes her panties to the side. I can feel the heat emanating from her, and if I wasn’t already rock hard for her then, the hot, wet desire I feel as I dip one finger into her has me groaning and begging to be inside her within seconds.
“Fuck, Elise, you do want me, don’t you?”
“Oh God, please…” She leans her head back against the wall I’ve pinned her to. She can’t escape me, and I can feel her weight lull against me as her knees weaken with the crippling need that plagues her.
“Please what, baby?” I moan. I want to hear her say it. I’ve never had anyone beg for my touch the way she is, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get enough of it.
“Fuck me, Cam,” she says on a sigh, panting desperately as my finger rubs agonizingly slow against her most sensitive parts.
“Say it again.”
Her eyes widen as she raises her head from the wall, meeting my eyes. “I want you inside me. Please.”
It takes all the strength I have in me to remove my hand from between her legs, knowing damn well I could make her come within seconds if I keep going. Instead, I unzip my pants and lower them, along with my boxers, down my hips. The evidence of my primal need for her springs free.
In a dizzying few moments, I manage to pull a condom from my wallet and roll it on, barely taking my eyes off Elise, as her chest heaves and her hands linger on my hips.
I reach behind her, scooping my hand under her rear and lifting her as though she’s weightless. A surprised yelp escapes her mouth, but she never protests.
“Wrap your legs around my hips, Elise.”
She does so without ever taking her eyes off me, and I can see the flood of anticipation within her.
I brace myself with one arm against the wall by her head. With the other, I position myself against her entrance.
Elise bites down on her lip when I purposely hesitate.
“Please,” she begs again.
Her plea has me pushing myself inside her without another thought, eliciting low, desperate moans from us both.
She’s so hot, so tight, and so wet, I can’t think of anything else but burying myself deeper into her.
“Oh, God…” Elise’s thighs grip my hips as I move within her. Her hips rock to meet mine, and the diploma hanging on the wall rattles each time I push into her, pressing her against the wall again.
“Fuck…” I hiss. I’m beyond all reason now. Only my most animalistic urges remain, and I thrust into her harder and faster than I mean to.
The need to feel her clench and shudder around me consumes me.
Elise’s arms are around my neck, clutching to me like a lifeline. Her hands scrape my shoulder blades, and her whimpers begin to escalate into cries of wild passion as I slam into her relentlessly.
The framed diploma shatters to the floor only a few feet from us, but I don’t let up.
I can’t.
“C’mon, Elise. Come for me, baby,” I groan, lowering my mouth to nip harshly at her collarbone.
I want to kiss her so badly, to crush my mouth over hers and claim her. But I hang on to just enough reason not to try again, because if she forces me to stop this wild moment of raw passion, I’ll surely die from the unquenched aching within me.
She’s panting as her body begs me to give her the release she needs. “Oh, God…Cam…”
The sensation of her muscles clenching around me as I drive myself inside her does something to me.
Gone is Cam Nichols, the man who always does what’s right.
“Let it go,” I demand, feeling the sensual build of my own orgasm reaching its peak.
I pull my head back and she’s staring at me, looking so desperate, so lost, and so absolutely fucking gorgeous that I lose all control just as her body shatters around me in an explosion of violent shudders and tremors.
“Oh my God, Cam!”
“Jesus Christ…Elise!” Her name is a plea falling from my lips. For release. For salvation. For the freedom I feel with her skin against mine.
I hold her to me, listening intently as her breathing steadies, riding out each trembling aftershock with her as our pulses ease to a calmer rate. With my forehead pressed firmly against hers, I realize her eyes are closed, and I wait for her to open them before I give her a small grin. “You okay?”
She sighs. “Yeah.”
“You’re amazing, Elise.”
She locks her gaze with mine, and I watch as her eyes search mine again. Not for the first time, I wonder what it is she’s thinking she’ll find. Or what she’s hoping she’ll find. “You’re not so bad yourself.” She smiles crookedly.
But something’s changed.
As she disentangles herself from me and lowers her feet to the ground, there’s a distance between us. It’s more than awkwardness following a heat-of-the-moment act. It’s a desire to separate herself from the situation, or from what she felt during it.
Because there’s no way she could deny it. She felt something with me. I’m sure of it.
And I know it, because I felt it, too.
“Elise, are you okay?” I ask again, tugging my pants back up and buttoning them after discarding the condom in the trash bin beside the desk. “Did I hurt you?”
“What? No…no,” she mutters, smoothing her skirt back down and pulling her top over her head. “I just…”
I step closer to her, and she flinches, which startles me. After what we just did, she doesn’t want me to touch her? “Hey…tell me what’s going on.”
She looks back toward the door that leads to the hallway. “My…I have a friend downstairs. She’s probably wondering where I am.”
I arch a brow. “I didn’t see you with anyone.”
Elise swallows. “No woman in her right mind comes to a place like this without a companion, Cam. You never know what kind of men might be lurking about.”
I’m not sure whether that’s supposed to be an insult towards me, or if she’s just explaining the facts of nightclub life as a single woman in her twenties. Either way, I nod.
“You can text her and let her know you’re okay?” I offer, which is odd because I’m the one standing here wondering if she’s okay.
“My phone’s dead.” She pulls her purse from the floor where she’d dropped it, her eyes on the door again.
She resembles a caged wild animal, I think to myself. “Give me a second, and I’ll come with you to find her.” I pull my shirt from the floor, fumbling with the buttons.
“No, stay here,” she says in rushed, hoarse voice. “I’ll go tell her I’m fine, and I’ll come back up here. How does that sound?”
She closes the gap between us, leaning into my chest. She nuzzles her face into my neck affectionately, then wraps her arms around me, hugging me to her. “Pour us a few shots of that Jack Daniels over there, and I’ll be right back, okay?”
An overwhelming desire not to let her out of my sight overcomes me, but I nod, mostly because I can’t think straight when she’s so close.
“Hurry back,” I growl, giving up on the buttons of my shirt to place my hands on the small of her back.
I hear her take a deep breath in, and she sighs as she pulls away. “I will.”
She gives me a soft smile, then turns and walks out the door.
It takes me two full minutes to get my godforsaken shirt done up properly after the door clicks shut.
Another three or four to get the drinks she requested made up.
And another twenty-three to scour the nightclub from top to bottom before realizing that she’s gone.
Chapter 5
ELISE
The cubicle I work in at Horizons Telemarketing has never felt smaller and more suffocating than it has in the last week since my romp with Cam at Magenta. My job as a telemarketer is menial at best; I hate it, and I honestly believe it hates me just as much.
I get the crappiest incoming calls, and the customers I deal with hate me the moment they hear my voice on the other end of the line. I know that their disgruntlement and displeasure regarding whatever item they bought from whatever client I happen to be representing that day isn’t aimed toward me personally, but they seem to forget that.
I’ve been yelled at, swore at, and threatened—and that’s on a good day.
Yes, I definitely despise my job. Between my hatred for it, and the disdain I have for my own personal life, I don’t really have much going for me. And, believe me, there are days when I wish I had a job that would be a decent distraction from the sad existence I go home to every night.
But, I don’t.
And judging by the look on my supervisor’s face, this sorry excuse for a job isn’t going to help me bide away the hours much longer.
“We’ve had a few complaints, Elise,” Alice, my shift supervisor admits in a soft, sympathetic tone.
Good God, cut the crap and quit acting like you aren’t enjoying this.
Alice has had it out for me since her creepy fiancé, Jeff, showed up at our office during the evening shift a month ago and blatantly put the moves on me. I shut the asshole down with the gentleness of a fucking Mac truck, and he didn’t much appreciate the names I called him. I’d known full well he was Alice’s man, even though he failed to mention it. Trying to do the right thing, I closed the door to her office the next day, just before she was about to head home, and I told her what happened.
Big mistake.
She called me a lying whore. Said I had my eye on every man that walked into this place. Said she’d heard the stories about my sexual extracurriculars—her words, not mine, but it kind of makes it sound like something that should be on a resumé, I think—and that I needed a fucking life.
Not once did I disagree or question her. I stood there and took the abuse like the lying whore that I am.
Two weeks later, Jeff left Alice for a busty blonde waitress from Tony’s Diner. He’d been secretly dating her for months.
Somehow, now, because I tried to warn her—because I was right—it’s all my fault.
Which is why I know damn well that she’s relishing in this moment. And it’s also why I doubt that the complaints she’s referring to are even real.
“It’s a call center, Alice. We get complaints. It’s what we do.”
I know, I know. Sarcasm probably isn’t the smartest tactic when my job hangs in the balance, but to hell with it. I can tell by the glint in her eye that she’s about to fire me.
“We can’t have our clients unhappy with the services we provide.”
“My clients are never dissatisfied with my…services.” I grin at her. It’s a low blow, but considering what this is really about, I can’t help getting one last remark in.
Alice’s jaw clenches, and I can tell she’s fighting to stay calm. But she looks ready to spontaneously combust, and that gives me enough fulfillment to make it through her next words.
“Effective immediately, Elise, you’re no longer employed with Horizons.”
I’m surprised she’s able to hold back the “So there!” that’s obviously on the tip of her tongue.
“Please pack up your belongings. Denise will have your final paycheck for you at HR on your way out.”
A hollow chuckle is emitted from my throat as I stand, shaking my head.
This is ridiculous.
But I head out the door of her office, anyway. Be goddamned if I’ll beg for the job I hate so much. And I’d rather die than have to beg Alice, of all people, for it.
I stop at the doorway, and turn back toward her. “Just tell me one thing, Alice. He wronged you, not me. So, do you really think you’re going to get as much enjoyment out of firing my ass as you think you are?”
Alice looks taken aback by the blunt question, and her smug expression falters.
After a moment’s hesitation, she nods.
“Absolutely,” she says in a low voice.
But her eyes give her away. She knows what she’s doing is wrong. But if she can’t get revenge on Jeff, she’ll get it on someone else. Lucky me.
I shake my head again. No words are needed, and they won’t do any good anyway.
After a forty-minute bus ride, I make it home.
Home, what a crock.
When home is a shitty basement bachelor apartment with practically no windows to let the sunlight in, worn linoleum floors, and faded walls that might have once been white but were now a murky shade of light gray, was it really home at all?
But I’ve busted my ass to have a place of my own, and this drab-looking dump had been all I could afford when I took the Horizons job a year ago.
Now, there’s a good chance I can’t even afford it.
I can’t afford the crappiest apartment in the city.
If that doesn’t send me into a deep, self-loathing pity party, I don’t know what will.
Fuck it. I dial Domino’s Pizza and order a small pizza for delivery. In a matter of weeks, I might be rationing cans of tuna and boxed macaroni and cheese. If the last frivolous thing I buy is a pizza, so be it.
But I have savings.
Oka
y, I have minimal savings.
Okay, my bank account will be in the negative within two weeks. But that’s after I pay next month’s rent, which is due next week, so I’m still ahead of the game.
Christ, who am I kidding?
No job, no social life, no significant oth—
Cam.
Why do my thoughts always go back to him? Even in my desolate state of affairs, I’m thinking about a guy I fucked and ran from.
He probably hates me. Hell, he probably has my picture hanging up at Magenta, banning me from the premises.
I hadn’t had the guts to go back since I took off on him last week. He owns the place, for God sake. When he admitted that, I should’ve gotten the fuck out of dodge.
But no, instead I told myself he was just like all the other guys I fooled around with and walked away from.
But I knew better.
Right from the get-go, I could tell Cam was different.
It weighed on me then, and it weighs on me now.
And, as he’d buried himself so deeply inside me, the gentleness he’d exuded had vanished, leaving behind an assertiveness that I don’t think he even knew he possessed until that moment.
An authority. A quiet possessiveness.
And a connection.
That’s why I was still thinking about him. Because I hadn’t just screwed him for the physical release I’d needed. It might have started out that way, but it became more than that.
I didn’t just need him.
I wanted him.
I still want him. And wanting is a choice.
Something within me has chosen Cam.
And to hell if I know what that even means.
Chapter 6
CAM
I can’t get Elise out of my head.
I’ve done everything I can think of—working longer hours, trying to go to sleep earlier, staying up later, and even going to the club during nighttime hours, with Danny as a wingman, and without.
