by Lissa Bilyk
Or maybe he’d like it, my head fought back. If he really likes you the way you are, maybe he likes some meat on a girl’s bones. That way they don’t break when he handles them. He’s big and strong…
I forced my eyes up from his black shorts, away from the area I was so curious about. I looked into his expectant face, and the alcohol took over. I sat up and whipped my woollen dress over my head, shimmied out of my leggings before I could let my doubt take hold of me again. This is his last chance, I told myself. If he still wants you after this, then it’s a go. Screw cellulite.
My heart pounding, I looked up at him again. He smiled at me, that great, slow smile that took over his whole face. He sank to his knees on the bed and crawled over to me. I was glad I’d decided to match my baby blue underwear in the hopes of feeling sexier this morning. He crawled towards me on all fours, his eyes drinking me in the way I’d stared at him moments ago. He reached out and ran a hand over my belly, then dipped his head and kissed me.
When we parted, I said, “If we’re not going to have sex then you better stop doing that.”
“Not tonight, anyway,” he said with a devilish grin. His face lost none of its awe, but he pulled the duvet down and I snuggled under it. He pulled it over us once again and I felt his bare leg touch mine as he reached to snap off the light. A thrill of desire pulsed through me, and excitement, and nerves. I was sleeping with Cameron Campbell – not sleeping, sleeping, but sleeping companionably. And in the morning, if all went well, then we’d… maybe. Hopefully.
“You’re not drunk, are you?” he said in the darkness.
“No,” I replied. “Not really. Just a little less uptight.”
“Are you okay to wait?”
The truth was, I was glad the pressure had been removed. I’d scared the hell out of myself, and the thought of spending the night in his bed – no pressure – eased off a lot of my anxiety. “Only if you promise me that the sight of my near-naked body doesn’t make you want to vomit.”
I felt the mattress shift as he lay on his side, his chest against my arm and one of his legs laying over mine. “Did mine?”
I made a rude noise. “You know you’re gorgeous.”
“And you have no idea how beautiful you are, Tori.” I felt his finger touch my face. “So beautiful.”
Daring, holding my breath, I reached out a hand and touched his chest, ran my fingers through his sparse hair, dipped lower to feel the power of his abdominals. They’d popped in the light, and he worked hard for his body, so why shouldn’t I appreciate it?
He caught my fingers in his and kissed them. “Go to sleep, gorgeous girl. I’ll be here to protect you.”
I rolled over so my back was to him. After a few moments I felt the mattress shift as he lay down, too. I listened in the darkness for his breathing to deepen, indicating he’d fallen asleep. After a few minutes I felt his fingers tentatively on my waist. When I remained rigid, the mattress shifted once more as he moved his body closer to mine, aligning his chest against my back and his thighs along mine. His arm snaked down my front to grasp at my hands, and only then, embraced by his warm comfort, did I allow myself to relax and sink into sleep.
Chapter Ten
I woke with a start, feeling way too hot, trapped. Cameron’s arms were around me, his chest pressed up against my back, his strong thighs pressed against mine. Utter bliss. I felt a wave of relief and happiness flow over me, and for a few moments I just lay there, enveloped in him.
My throat was parched, and I needed a glass of water. I tried to disengage from Cameron so as not to wake him. I’d not had any practice doing it before, and as soon as I lifted his arm off me he snuffled and pulled me tighter.
While half of my heart melted because this was it, this is what I wanted, to wake up in Cameron’s arms and for him to not want to let me go, the other half panicked. I couldn’t stand being held down. I couldn’t cope. My heart rate rose in my anxiety and in panic I pushed at his heavy, muscled arm. Out. I needed out!
I scrambled to the edge of the bed and sat, trying to stop my hands from shaking.
“Tori?”
His deep raspy morning voice nearly sent me back into his arms. I turned to look at him. The sheet covered his bottom half, but his torso was naked, and the black tribal tattoos on his biceps and across his chest gleamed like they’d been oiled. He had morning stubble and half closed eyes, a dreamy look on his face.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” I replied, trying to comb out my hair with my fingers. He looked great first thing in the morning. I looked a mess.
“You stayed the night,” he observed.
I nodded. “Um... you wouldn’t let me go.”
He shifted to lie on his back rather than his side, and the arm closest to me crept out, fingers searching for mine. “And if I had let you go, would you?”
I couldn’t answer, because I wanted to say no but was afraid of what it meant. Morning, and the bliss of a peaceful sleep was quickly replaced with the thought of…
Sex. With Cameron. Pinned underneath his sexy body. The thought of him penetrating…
After a few moments, he shifted to sit up. I averted my eyes, preserving his modesty in case he’d stripped naked during the night.
“Listen, Tori,” he said as he got to his feet. “This is your last chance. I likes you. A lot. Hell, I might even love you. I’m going to have a shower. If you’re still here when I get back, I am going to show you how much I care for you. I am going to make love to you, and you’ll realise that old me isn’t around anymore. I’ve changed, Tori, and although it wasn’t for you, it’s because of you. Because I want someone I have a connection to, someone I have feelings for. I don’t want to just fuck anymore - I’ve done that, and now I want something meaningful. I think you’re that girl, but if you still don’t trust me, then by the time I get out of the shower I’d like you to be gone. I’d like to nurse my broken heart in peace.”
I didn’t turn around until I heard the spurting stream of steady water start. Then I brushed away my tears and steeled my resolve.
Cameron hadn’t touched me while I was passed out. He’d defended my honour in the pub, and when I thought I was ready last night he refused, to prove how much he cared. He’d spent the night holding me. I’d woken the happiest I’d been in a long time.
It didn’t take a genius to make my decision.
After I remade the bed I went to the kitchen for a glass of water. Last night’s drinking took its toll. I thought about removing the last of my clothing before he joined me again – I could wait for him in his bed, maybe, like a sultry siren. But I didn’t want to wait. I had waited what seemed like a lifetime for this moment - for us to be ready for each other, no more games, no more rejection. Just him and me.
The water still ran in the shower. I was deathly curious. I didn’t have the guts to strip off and join him - maybe that would come later - but I did want some kind of a warning. I’d never voluntarily been intimate with a man before, and I still wasn’t quite sure what to expect when it was consensual between two lovers.
I tiptoed to the bathroom door and cracked it open. Steam billowed out and I peeked inside. Cameron stood with his back to me under a central shower head rubbing soap over his body, and there weren’t any curtains to stop my peep show. It was a wet room, not a bathroom. It had a massive spa bath in one corner and a toilet in another, but all the water ran towards a central drain. Cameron stood over the drain, his tanned muscular frame flexing as he reached to rub the suds over his body.
All of a sudden he thrust his head under the water stream and half-turned, so that I caught sight of his cock peeking out from behind his thick thigh. Holy crap. If that was how big he was soft, he’d be monstrous erect. I wondered if I could even take him.
I jerked backwards but remembered at the last second to close the door softly. My heart thundering, I tottered towards the biggest window in the bedroom and pressed my hot face against the cold glass. Outside it was snowing,
soft flakes like coconut twirling through unseen fingers. The morning light of London was unable to pierce the snow-heavy clouds, and the entire city was bathed in a muted, respectful light.
The water stopped. I heard humming and kept my forehead pressed against the glass. I can do this, I thought to myself. He’s shown he’s ready for a commitment. It’s Cameron - you like him, remember? He’s gentle and kind and sweet and fierce.
You’re just freaking out because it’s your first time. Your first real time.
He’s gentle. You like him. You trust him.
In the reflection of the window I saw the bathroom door swing open, saw Cameron step through with only a towel wrapped around his hips, saw him smile, lovely and huge and genuine. I watched as he made his way to me around the bed and stop by my side, unaware of how to approach this trembling, skittish girl. He came to stand behind me, and slid his arms around my waist to rest on my belly.
“Tell me what you see,” he said, his chiselled chin resting on my shoulder, looking into the reflection alongside me.
I surveyed my body in the window. The generous un-perky cleavage, the thick legs that had to annoy me by being long as well, the stomach that refused to be flat. “I see a fat girl.” I looked into his reflection’s eyes. “Someone unworthy of you.”
“Yes, princess, you’re fat. But you’re not lazy or unattractive or anything else that people associate with fatness. You’re so convinced that being fat is ugly that you don’t see beyond your own fat to what I see. I see sparkling wit in your eyes, the crease between your eyebrows when you’re being serious, the way your mouth curves when you’re laughing. Your gorgeous curves, the weight of you – you don’t see it how I see it. I love it. It’s fucking sexy.”
It sounded so strange coming from him – he of the rock-hard six pack, the bulging biceps, the thighs that no matter how fat I got, mine would never be bigger. He, who owed his career to his good looks and was paid to keep his body in optimum condition. He had two personal trainers and a nutritionist. And he was lecturing me on body image?
Maybe he was right. Big could be beautiful. However, I’d seen no evidence from any of his past conquests that he’d even find a fat girl attractive.
“I see beauty. I see strength. I see wisdom.” His fingers stroked my skin. “What about yourself do you like?”
I paused, scrutinising closer. “I like my eyes.”
“They’re gorgeous. Go on.”
“I like my hair.” It was easier to manage now that it was shorter and the dark colour set off my pale skin and eyes.
His fingers ran through my hair and it fell like in a shampoo commercial. “I approve. Anything else.”
“I like my neck,” I confessed.
His head dipped and his lips caressed my neck. “I like your neck, too. Now, look again, and tell me what else you see. What is underneath the body you so despise, the one you can’t accept? What is the real you?”
I took a minute, but in the end I found something. “I see… depth.” I had looked past Cameron’s amazing body and had fallen for his personality as well.
He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “What else?”
“I see strength.” It had taken immense courage to move to the other side of the world with no one. It had taken as much courage to open myself to him.
“There’s so much strength in you, Tori. What else?”
“I see the ability to give, and be kind to others, and to love.”
“So show me all this. Show me you can love. Tell me you love me.”
My heart jumped. “What?” Did my crush, an overwhelming attraction, a surge of affection and respect translate into love?
“At least try to say it.” His lips pressed against my hair.
The words stuck in my throat and I swallowed, trying not to cry. I didn’t want to let him down, but at the same time I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t put myself out there, strip myself bare for this beautiful man. It was one thing to bare my flesh, entirely another to bare my soul.
“I can’t,” I said with a sob.
He squeezed me. “Do you know why it’s so hard?”
“No.”
“I’m guessing it’s been so long since someone said it to you.” His head dipped down beside mine, his eyes mesmerising in the reflection. “Am I right?”
Tears pricked my eyes. How did this man see into my soul? “Yes,” I whispered.
“Not since your parents.”
“No.”
“And it’s hard to accept a love when you’ve never received it, and don’t think you deserve it.”
I nodded, mournful. He looked at me in the reflection, his bright blue eyes next to my green ones. How could he see me, so whole, so stripped, so raw?
I squeezed his hand. “You go first.”
The man who lied for a living pressed his lips against my cheek, lingering. “I love you, Victoria.” His breath was warm on my face.
I took a deep breath. My heart pounded, stuck in my throat. I felt dizzy, like I stood at the top of a tall cliff, about to jump off, and I was glad he supported me. His love made me fearless. I took another breath and leapt over the precipice.
“I love you, Cameron.”
His arms tightened around me, generous, loving. “Say it again.”
My breath hitched. “I love you.”
“Now,” he said, pointing to the mirror, to our entwined reflections. “Look at yourself when you say it. Look yourself right in the eyes, and tell yourself you love you. All of you. Even the parts you’d rather change. Even the parts of you that you think aren’t worth it.”
I stared into my own eyes. The parts I’d rather change? Like not losing my parents? Not had a horrible shadow hanging over me from my childhood? Could I love my body, curves and all, built as it was to defend me from something like this?
I shook my head. “I can’t.”
“You can. You told me you loved me. Don’t you deserve the same? Look at yourself - look past all the shit you’ve buried yourself in, all those walls you’ve built up because you don’t think you’re worthy. Don’t reject yourself, Tori. If I can love you, if you can love me, don’t you deserve to love yourself?”
I steeled myself, and looked again. At the wobbly bits on my arms, the thick, strong legs that would never be slim, the generous bust and the pudgy stomach. I looked at the body I’d built to turn suitors away before they got close, to protect myself from pain and heartache. It hadn’t helped. I looked past that to see the girl starved for love, dying of loneliness, haunted by survivor’s guilt. I glanced at the man beside me, felt his love and admiration rolling off him in waves.
I looked into my eyes. And I felt it, at long last, like a flower blossoming open in springtime.
“I love you, Victoria.”
Chapter Eleven
He put his hand on my shoulder and the warmth of his skin shot goose bumps down my back. Another hand stroked my hair. I concentrated hard on just breathing and not knocking my knees together as he dropped a kiss on my bare shoulder. I turned my head towards him, and he put a finger under my chin and tilted my head back - not forcing me, but guiding me. His lips landed on mine. I stifled a groan but couldn’t stop the instinctive urge to turn to him, to press my body against his, to feel him against me with all the right parts in all the right places. His arms went around my waist, one pressing into the small of my back, one higher up, and his mouth claiming mine now, no longer polite but demanding.
I kissed him back with equal passion, and when he pulled me tighter against him I felt the bruising pressure of his erect cock against my thigh. Something deep inside me clenched deliciously, and my hands went around his neck, stroking his short hair.
With a guttural growl he snapped the clasps on my bra and ripped it off me, his mouth tearing breathlessly from mine to clamp to my throat, my collarbone, my clavicle. I gasped and dug my fingernails into his back as he nipped and licked at the sensitive skin, but his arms held me too tight against him to step back a
s was my first instinct. My bare nipples brushed against his chest hair and tightened in an unfamiliar sensation as my head lolled back, exposing my throat. Cameron didn’t miss a beat and claimed the skin of my throat. My knees buckled and I clung to him, relishing in the muscles of his smooth, broad shoulders, following the leaner lines of his back down to the cleft of his tight buttocks.
The towel fell from his waist. He snuck a hand between our pulsating bodies to grasp at my breast as he kissed his way back up to my mouth. His other hand slid down my back and underneath the flimsy material of my panties to grasp at my butt.
The familiar sensation stopped me dead cold and I shoved him away from me. Caught off guard, he stepped back. His instinct was to stop as soon as I wanted him to. Mortified, I covered my face. I didn’t want him to stop. I wanted him to make love to me like he’d promised - but my stupid neurosis had panicked at the feeling of those grasping hands. The unbidden memory rose, the one memory I had tried all my life to stuff away and forget, eradicate its very existence.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean...”
“Do you want me to stop?” he said quietly.
“No,” I said, unable to look at him. He slid his hand around my waist and I lay my head against his shoulder.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his thumbs stroking my skin.
I couldn’t hold back a sob. “I’m not a virgin. I was raped.”
His arms tightened. “When?”
“When I was ten years old.”
He took my face in hand big, warm hands and lifted it to look at him. Those piercing blue eyes swam in front of me as I blinked away tears.
“Who hurt you, Tori?”
“A friend of the family. Someone my parents trusted, they never suspected. He’s dead now,” I added. I rested my hands along his back. Would he still want me now that he knew why I was so damaged? Why I was skittish around men, around him, frightened in general by the male sex? “But I just could never… I couldn’t…”
