I was tired. Neither Roxie nor I had been sleeping well, and I secretly missed Cam. It seemed silly because spending just two nights in his arms was enough to make me reach for him in the middle of night.
As I trudged through the heat toward the parking lot, someone grabbed me from behind and I stiffened, a shriek clawing its way out of my throat as I prepared to scream and kick.
“Harlow, it’s me,” Cam said, releasing me and stepping back. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I called out your name.”
I spun around and launched myself at him, hugging him hard around the waist. “I’m sorry, I must not have heard you.”
“You okay?” he asked, looking down. “Are you still upset about the other night?” He brushed a finger beneath my eye where they were no doubt shadowed with dark circles.
I shrugged.
“Talk to me.”
“I didn’t know you were coming to see me today,” I said, changing the subject.
“I finished up the board I was working on this afternoon and figured I’d come see my girl.”
I knew it was just an expression, but every time he called me his girl, or sweetheart, something inside me melted just a little bit more. “I’m glad you came.”
He leaned down and kissed me. His kiss was like a really good book or movie. It completely transported me to another place. It took me out of my own head, and I did nothing but get lost in him.
“I needed that,” I murmured when he lifted his head.
“You need ice cream too.”
“I do?”
He nodded and draped an arm across my shoulders, fitting me alongside his body and steering me toward Ben and Jerry’s. He ordered a massive serving of Phish Food (chocolate ice cream swirled with gooey marshmallow and caramel with fudge fish) swimming inside a giant waffle bowl. I had no idea where he was going to put it all, but it was definitely going to be interesting to watch. I ordered a scoop of chocolate mint crunch in a regular-sized cone and then we sat in the corner of the scoop shop at a tiny round table.
“Seriously, how are you going to eat that?” I mused, watching him shovel a huge bite of the sweet treat into his mouth.
“It’s Phish Food,” he declared like that somehow explained everything. Then he scooped up a fudge fish and held the spoon to my lips.
I opened my mouth and he slid the spoon between my teeth and then pulled it back, my lips dragging across the cold plastic as he pulled. His eyes darkened as he watched my mouth move.
When the spoon was gone, I pulled up my cone and started licking across the top and around the edges.
“Are you trying to kill me?” he asked, leaning over the table, his eyes still on my mouth.
“Definitely not.” I held the cone out to him and he licked up the side of it slowly. After he swallowed, he lowered his voice and leaned even closer. “You taste better.”
I wagged my eyebrows at him and he chuckled.
He looked so good today with a navy-blue baseball hat turned backward covering up his blond hair, rocking the beachy tan that never went away, and wearing a white T-shirt with a pair of navy-blue board shorts with a wide gray stripe down each side.
“Have you gotten any sleep the last couple days?”
I nodded. “Some.”
“Have you heard from the cops?”
“No,” I said, frowning. “I really thought they would have said something to Roxie by now.”
“What else is bothering you?” he asked, studying me.
“How do you know there’s something else?”
“I can see it in your eyes. You’ve been kind of quiet since the other night. What’s bothering you?”
Someone bumped into our table and I jumped back.
Cam frowned. “Come on, let’s go somewhere else to talk.”
We went to the beach, both of us discarding our shoes to the back seat of my car and taking our ice cream to walk onto the sand and wander along the water’s edge. The heat was more bearable here because of the strong wind that came off the waves.
“This is going to sound crazy,” I said as we walked. “But I’m starting to worry that it wasn’t Craig the other night.”
“Who do you think it was?”
“I don’t know. But I have this bad feeling they were after me.”
His hand found mine and linked us together. “Explain.”
“You know the barrette I lost, the one someone took off the cart the other day?”
He nodded.
“It was in my bedroom.”
His steps faltered. “So you just misplaced it?”
“No. I had it at work that day. It’s the only barrette I have like that. Someone took it… and then it turned up in my bedroom.”
He stopped walking altogether and pulled me around so we were standing in the waves, facing each other.
“You think the person in your apartment the other night broke in to leave something there?”
“I know it sounds crazy.”
His fingers tightened around mine. “I believe you.”
“You do?”
“I’m on your side. I’ll always believe you.”
I don’t know why, but tears pricked the backs of my eyes. I blinked furiously, trying to make them go away. Cam took my melting ice cream cone and put it inside his half-eaten waffle bowl, setting them both in the sand.
He pulled me into his arms, wrapping them both around me, holding me close and resting his chin atop my head. “Why didn’t you say something sooner, sweetheart?”
“At first I thought I was just being irrational. But the more I think about it…”
“There’s more?”
I nodded. He sighed and bent to pick up the now waterlogged ice cream and jogged over to throw it in a nearby trash can. Then we sat on the sand.
“Roxie took my car that night,” I began. “She and I have similar looks… Both of us have long dark hair. We’re both curvy…”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying what if someone was watching the house that night, waiting for me to come home? She pulled up in my car. From a distance and in the dark, someone could mistake her for me.”
“Okay, I could see that,” he said slowly. Tension began to radiate from his body and that’s when I knew for sure I wasn’t just being paranoid. This was a real possibility.
“But there’s still that jerk Craig. He isn’t exactly a boy scout.” Cam continued.
“Roxie all but admitted that he was violent with her in the past.”
“There is a possibility it was actually Craig, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.” I said it softly and the wind took my words and carried them away.
“But you’re scared.” His arm went around my waist, his fingers splaying out across my belly. He slid my body into his side and I leaned my head on his chest.
I sighed. I could sit like this—curled into his side—all day. “Maybe a little.”
“It’s okay to be scared,” he told me. “It doesn’t make you weak. It makes you smart.”
“How does being scared make me smart?”
“Because it’s your body and mind’s way of protecting itself. Your brain is telling you something’s wrong. Ignoring that feeling will only put you in danger and possibly cause you to miss things that could potentially save your life.”
I tipped back my head. “You’re a smart guy, Cam.”
“I know.”
I grinned. “So modest too.”
“That’s me, babe. Modest and smart and extremely good-looking.”
“Did I say you were extremely good-looking?”
“You didn’t have to. Your eyes say it all.”
“You’re okay I guess,” I said playfully.
He let go of my waist and began feeling around my head.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking to see if that bump is still there. I think it damaged your mind when you fell.”
“Ha. Ha.”
He pressed a kiss t
o my forehead. “Want me to stay at your place tonight?”
I did. I knew I would feel better if he were there. “You don’t have to do that. I’ll be okay.”
“I know I don’t have to. I want to. Sleeping with you is a lot more exciting than sleeping alone.”
“Do you sleep alone often?” I asked before I could cut off the urge to speak. “That’s not really any of my business,” I amended.
“I sleep alone every night I’m not with you.”
It made me wonder who he slept with before we met, but thankfully I was able to contain that little gem of thought before I said it out loud.
We sat in silence for a long minute and I rested against his side, staring out over the endless blue ocean. “I’ve slept with other women before,” he said softly. “I’ve dated a couple along the way.”
I held my breath, wondering where this was going.
“Adam might not have been too far off when he said I was a player.”
My stomach plummeted and I felt my body tense.
“But I swear I haven’t thought about… I haven’t even looked at another woman since you walked into the Mad Hatter and sat down in that freaking sexy sundress.”
It certainly wasn’t a declaration of love, but it was more than enough to make my heart skip a beat. “I’d really like if you stayed tonight. I would sleep better.”
“You mean we have to sleep?” he purred, his hand moving up and covering my breast, giving it a gentle squeeze.
“That depends.” I ran my hand up his arm still resting on my chest.
“On?”
“First one to the water gets to make the rules.”
“We’re not wearing bathing suits.”
“Awww, Cam doesn’t want to get his fancy board shorts wet.” I braced myself, ready to run.
His eyes narrowed. I laughed and leapt up off the sand and raced toward the water.
Here’s the thing: challenging an athletic guy who has legs almost two times longer than yours is stupid.
Unless of course you wanted to lose.
I didn’t, however, mean to trip over my own feet and fall. Cam caught me around the waist and lifted me off my feet, carrying me into the water as I shrieked.
“I win. Now you have to do whatever I say.”
“Darn,” I said with mock disappointment.
“You played me.”
“Like a fiddle,” I sang.
He kept walking until he was waist deep in the ocean and past the point where the waves crested and then broke, rolling up to the shore. I was already wet when he placed my feet in the water and faced me.
“My turn to play you,” he said.
“Bring it on, surfer dude,” I teased, snagging the hat off his head and putting it on mine. Then I ran my hands through his blond hair, making it stand up all over.
He leaned down so the water lapped against his chest and reached for me, covering my mouth with his. He tasted sharp and salty like the water and his tongue was rough as it delved into my mouth. My fingers flexed against his T-shirt, which was plastered to his body, and my nails scraped across his back as his kiss deepened. My legs automatically wrapped around his waist, my core coming into direct contact with the bulge beneath his shorts.
A wave bounced us slightly, rocking us even closer, and we both groaned, kissing with a passionate fervor that literally stole my breath. When my lungs began to burn, I wrenched my mouth away and sucked in a lungful of blissful oxygen as we floated in the concealment of the sea.
He lifted his hips again, thrusting against me, and in response my hips bore down, rocking, as a little shudder ran up my spine. “We’re in public,” I moaned, leaning forward and sinking my teeth into his shoulder. One of my hands found its way between us and I gripped him, giving his hardness a squeeze and then rocking myself against him once more.
It was absolutely amazing to me how I could lose thought of everything when he touched me. All he had to do was kiss me and the floodgates of desire opened and I was swamped with the kind of need that was so powerful that I was actually in the center of the ocean, on a public beach, wishing there were no clothes between us and that he would slip himself inside me and rock me like the waves.
“No one can see what we’re doing.”
I groaned when he reached inside my shorts and flicked a finger over my clitoris. “I—” But my words fell away as an orgasm threatened to take over my body.
“Oh no you don’t,” he murmured, pulling his hand away.
I whimpered.
He unwound my legs and pulled me back, reaching between us and unfastening my shorts. I kicked up my legs, treading water as he slid them off and they floated up to the surface between us. The ocean water caressed my skin and heightened my arousal even more.
Then he did the same thing with my panties, except he wound them around his wrist like some kind of bracelet.
I was beyond thinking about what kind of fashion statement that was. I reached for his shorts, sliding them down his thighs and freeing his sex. My hand went to it, stroking it, the water making my hand glide over its thickness with impossible ease.
“Damn, baby.”
“Have you ever done it in the ocean, Cam?” I purred, feeling emboldened by the desire written plainly across his face.
“No.”
“Do you want to?”
He grabbed my face between his palms and yanked me forward kissing me senseless. I gripped onto his throbbing manhood and stroked it until the muscles in his stomach quivered.
He grabbed my hips and yanked me forward, my legs wrapping around his waist once more. I didn’t even have to guide him to my entrance. It was like it remembered the way; it knew exactly where it belonged.
Just before he plunged into me, he swore and stiffened.
“What?” I gasped, wiggling a little against him.
His hands flexed at my hips. “I don’t have any condoms.”
“I’m on the pill.” I’d been on it since I was seventeen and thought that my first time was going to be just weeks away. That didn’t happen, but I continued taking it.
“You would let me…” His voice trailed away as his penis flexed, brushing against me.
I looked into his eyes. “I trust you, Cam.”
“I’ve never done this with anyone else,” he swore. “I’ve never done this bare.”
“Do it,” I ground out, shifting my hips so he slipped right inside.
A shudder passed through his entire body and moved into mine. His hold on me slipped and his eyes closed. I held a little tighter around his neck and we both just sat like that, the water pushing against us as he stretched me out fully.
He held me to him, his grip almost painful. His arms were like vices, holding me so tight that not even the water could come between us. He began to move—slow rocking motions that really only flexed him inside me because he didn’t pull out but remained penetrated deeply inside.
He was so hard and so deep that he rubbed against the inside of my vaginal wall, and I suddenly understood all the talk about a G-spot. I was pretty sure that he managed to find it.
A few strings of curses slipped between his lips, sounding more like a prayer than bad language. “Is that…?” His voice was hoarse and he opened his eyes to look at me.
I nodded. “Please don’t stop.”
He laughed. “Sweetheart, I wouldn’t even be able to stop if a shark came over here and ate my arm.
I moaned as the first wave of the orgasm washed over me. I fell against him, leaving him to support my weight completely. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t hold myself up and experience the single most powerful thing to ever take over my body.
My mouth opened, but no sound came out.
It lasted longer than any other orgasm I’d ever felt. It seriously stripped away every single barrier that lay within me and bared me to him in a way that was far more intimate than being naked with our bodies joined together.
Emotion bubbled up in my chest until I thoug
ht it might burst. It was almost too intense. If I wasn’t so caught up in the sensation of him, of his skin against my skin, I might have been embarrassed.
“Baby, I got to pull out,” he murmured, his voice strained.
I made a sound of refusal, wrapping my arms tighter around him, not willing to let him go.
Tease Page 17
