by Zoey Derrick
“Keep going,” she breathes.
I take a deep breath because I know that I am getting through to her. “I love to be around you. You make me happier than I have ever been in my entire life. We know each other better than we know ourselves, and there is nothing that will stop me from ever finding out more and more about you.” I take a couple of tentative steps in her direction. Staring into her beautiful blue eyes is hypnotic and I’m dazed by her. The fight in me is gone, washing away like a hot shower. “I love the way you dress, the way you walk, the way you curl your hair around your finger when you’re nervous.” I watch as she realizes she is doing just that, but she doesn’t stop. “I love the way your barbell clicks against your teeth when you’re deep in thought.” Another step toward her. “I love the way you get angry because, for the briefest of moments, you’re vulnerable, and then you open your heart and lay it all out there.” Another step in her direction. “I wear my heart on my sleeve, which makes me an open book, but I love the look in your eyes when you realize I’ve done something completely unexpected.” Another step. Getting closer. “You are like a firework. Simple yet capable of the extraordinary. When you’re lit, you explode into the most beautiful colors that light up the night’s sky.” I’m standing in front of her. I can see the tears in her eyes. I reach up to cup her cheek in my hand. “I will never, ever let you walk away from me. I’m yours, always. Be mine forever. Don’t shut me out. Keep me close.”
My words are interrupted abruptly by her lips on mine in a fierce, ferocious kiss that takes my breath away. Our bodies mesh together and I hold her to me, tighter than I’ve ever held her before. Her hands are in my hair, holding me to her. Our tongues begin to dance and my head begins to swim at the desire in her touch, and I feel dizzy, drunk on her.
My hands go to her waist and I find the zipper on the back of her skirt, unhooking the small clasp and slowly sliding the zipper down. Her skirt falls straight to the floor. Next comes her jacket. I slide it off of her shoulders and it joins her skirt in a crumpled heap on the floor. Her hands begin to move like mine. They are between us as she works on my jeans, getting the button and the zipper down. I feel her thumbs hook into the waistband and she pushes down, her lips becoming stronger and more demanding on mine.
Once my jeans are down to my thighs and my erection meets the air, it twitches, and then her hands are on me, lightly stroking, tugging, begging me. I start on the buttons on her blouse and decide that it is too much to handle right now, and the next thing I know the buttons from her shirt are flying against my chest and her hands are pulling my shirt up. Our kiss breaks and my shirt is off and over my head before I know it. Her hands slide greedily over my shoulders and down my chest and stomach, and then she is on her knees and my cock is in her hand.
She looks up at me through her lashes and I watch as her tongue runs from base to tip, and I shiver. Her mouth makes that perfect O and then I’m inside her mouth. “Shit.” My mind goes blank as she sucks me in, inch by inch, until I feel the head of my cock reach the back of her throat, and just when I think she is going to slide back up, I feel the muscles in the back of her throat contract and I go a little deeper. “Damn it,” I growl; she’s taking me in just a little further until she slowly slides back up. Her hand follows her mouth along my shaft and I feel like I could explode. But she doesn’t stop, and I’m coming closer. “Cami, stop.” She sucks me in again. “Cami, stop, I don’t want to come in your mouth.” But she won’t stop, and it is one more stroke and I come undone, spurting hot down the back of her throat. My eyes close and my knees tremble. I have to grab onto her head for support and she continues to flick her tongue across the underside of my cock, right on my piercing, and I tremble again.
I take a fistful of her hair and pull back at the same time I pull my dick from her mouth, and she lets it go with an audible pop. I look down at her; there is sadness in her eyes and I can’t understand what’s going on. I lower myself to my knees in front of her. “I’m sorry,” she says, and the tears start.
“Sorry for what?” I embrace her, bringing her close to me.
“You said stop and I didn’t.”
“That’s not why you’re upset. Talk to me, sweets.” My heart aches as I realize that is the first time since we left Tarah that I’ve used that nickname on her, and I vow here and now to use it more often.
“You’re going to think this is really stupid.”
“Nothing you ever say is stupid. Tell me.”
She hesitates long enough for me to start wondering what it is that she’s thinking. But I can tell she is fighting her own inner demons to tell me whatever it is that she has to say. I don’t push her; I want her to tell me, but I want her to do so on her own time.
I hear her take a few deep breaths and I brace myself for whatever she has to say. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop.” That’s it, that’s what’s bothering her.
“That’s not it, Cami, and I know it. The only reason I wanted you to stop was because it didn’t exactly seem fair to me.”
She lowers her head into her hands. “I didn’t stop because I thought that if I got you off, it would clear your mind and you’d see that—”
I stand up, taking a few steps back. “You thought that if I didn’t have a raging hard-on my feelings for you would change?” I can’t stop the anger from dripping into my voice. “You think that all I want from you is sex? That I have to say all those things to you to get laid?”
Though she doesn’t open her eyes, she turns away from me and I can see her body visibly shaking with the tears that are wracking her entire body. “You think that all I want you for is your body, to be my receptacle whenever I feel like using it? What in the Sam fucking hell makes you think that? I am so unbelievably angry that you would ever consider yourself to be anything less than the woman I love. I am not him, Cameron. I am not your father and I am not Reed and, goddammit, I am NOT any of those other men you’ve had in your life.”
I walk over to her and I sit down behind her, putting my legs on either side of her. I wrap my arms around her, trying desperately to pry my way in between her belly and her legs. I want to hold her. I need to hold her.
She relaxes her legs and allows me to grab ahold of her and pull her back into me. She turns slightly, tears streaking down her cheeks. Her lips meet mine once, twice. She twists around, looking me in the eyes, her hands in my hair. “Show me.” She kisses me again and I’m at a loss as to what to do. Show her? How? “Show me how much you love me.”
She pushes me down onto the carpet and then crawls up my body, licking and sucking her way to my nipples, where she flicks her tongue across one, then across the other. She comes up to kiss me and I seize my chance to straighten her leg and roll her over so that she is under me. “I’m supposed to be showing you.” I kiss her once, twice, and finally a long, slow, passionate kiss filled with all my love and every ounce of anger that I feel, just so that I can feel the anger to make way for the flood of emotion I know she needs to feel and to understand. All while my free hand roams along her body.
I cup her breast in my hand, then hook my finger into the cup of her bra and pull it down, exposing that soft, supple swell of her breast and nipple in all its beauty. I pull back from her lips and kiss along her jaw, along her neck, down to her exposed breast, and I take her nipple into my mouth and suck, hard. Her back bows to my touch and her eyes flutter closed.
My hand finds its way under her panties and into the dripping wet slit of her sex. It’s on fire with her own need. I find her clit and flick once; her whole body convulses with an urgent need for more. I flick again and again, feeling her clit swell beneath my finger, and I know it is only moments before she explodes. I pull back from her clit and plunge two fingers inside, hard and fast, just to pull them out soft and slow. I repeat the process again and again until the muscles of her sex clamp down hard on my fingers, and I watch as her whole body goes stiff and that soft red blush spreads across her entire body.
I pull m
y hand back to begin massaging her clit once again, but she is hypersensitive and I love watching as her nipples harden and her back bows as she quivers with each flick. I pull a nipple into my mouth and suckle and lick, then move across her chest to the other one. Then I slowly kiss my way down her stomach, pushing her panties down with my hand as I bring my lips closer to the spot my hand has occupied. It’s my tongue’s turn to devour her.
I ignore the fact that my balls are tight and my cock is throbbing until I’ve given her two more orgasms with my tongue. I then pick her up off of the floor and carry her over to the bed, laying her out and fanning her hair on the pillow over her head.
“I need you,” she breathes. “I love you,” she whispers as I slide myself in between her legs. My erection is pressed between us, but I don’t move. I want to hear more. I feel her hips rock against my cock and I know she is probing and pushing, hoping to line me up just right so I will slide into her, but I don’t.
“Tell me more,” I whisper.
“I’m sorry I ever thought you were using me. I know now you’re not and I knew before you weren’t.”
“So why say it, Cams. Why tell me that?”
“Because—” I watch her close her eyes tight. “Because we never talk about tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Or the day after that, or next week, or next month, or next year. We’ve never once talked about our future and where we will go from here.”
It all makes perfect sense now. She’s afraid that this is all we’ll ever be together. “Look at me, sweets.” I watch a tear escape her eye at my nickname for her. “Cams, look at me.”
I give her a minute to compose herself and she does; she opens her eyes and she looks right at me. Her eyes are full of love and doubt and fear. “So let’s talk about our future.” I kiss away the tear lines streaking down into her hair. “Let’s talk about tomorrow, after I’m done loving you.” I kiss her on the lips and her hips flick once more against my erection and I get that we are both back on the same page, both fighting for proof. I lift my hips at the same time she lifts hers. This time she holds herself up and I feel the head of my cock sliding into her. We both shiver as the realization of our overwhelming love for each other washes over us.
EIGHTEEN
******
Cami
******
“The only reason I’ve never brought up a future with us is because I was afraid I would scare you,” he says soft as a whisper. His fingers are lightly playing with my hair and turning circles on my arm with his thumb. We’re curled up in bed after what I can only describe as the most intimate and passionate experience of my life. Tristan and I have had strong passionate sex before, but this was so much more.
“It scares me that we don’t talk about it.”
“I can see that now, but this is why I keep telling you that you need to talk this stuff out with me. Cami, as much as I’d like to, I can’t read your mind.”
“It’s hard. Especially when it comes to things like Bobby. Did you know that Beau and I were roommates for over a year before she found out that I had a trust fund?”
I feel him shift to look at me. I lift my head so that I can look at him. “Why?”
“Because I knew almost immediately upon meeting her that money was a sticky subject with her. I didn’t want to flaunt the fact that I had more money than I knew what to do with at that time. I eventually told her, and it was hard. I honestly thought I was going to lose her as my best friend over it. When Bobby’s funeral came around, I didn’t want her to come. I knew it was going to be ugly and I didn’t want her to see it. But she insisted and she came, and it turned out that I was glad she did. She was, too. That was when she met Mick for the first time.” I smile tentatively at him, hoping to hide the fact that, like Jolene, I feel a little jealous about Beau’s engagement. But I’m not fooling him.
“Is that where some of this is coming from? Mick’s proposal?” I know I blush beet red and I try to hide my face by putting my head back down. His hand is there, on my chin, pulling me back to look at him. “It is, isn’t it?”
“No,” I say too sharply.
“Uh huh. You should know better than that by now, I know when you’re lying to me.” He smiles. “Tell me.”
I decide that it is not worth the fight anymore. “It’s part of it. It is part the fact that Beau has found that man she wants to spend the rest of her life with and he sees that in her too. The other part of that is the fact that they will be getting married and they will eventually be starting a family, and I’m deathly afraid of where that will leave me in Beau’s mind.”
“I love it when you’re jealous.”
I playfully smack his chest. “I am not jealous.”
He laughs. “Yes you are.” He kisses my forehead, and there is that shiver of goose bumps that flies across my skin. That is something I know I never want to get used to when it comes to him. “Cami, every single minute of the future I see is filled with images of you and me, and maybe even little ones running around. I’d propose to you right now if I knew you’d say yes, but I am also enjoying us just the way we are. We start talking about marriage and then other things factor in.”
I pull my hand up to rest on his chest and I place my chin on top. “Other things like what?”
He takes a deep breath. “Things like you starting your career at Bold, me getting my post-Love Is Burning career moving forward. Hell, Cams, I don’t even have a place to live. When I’m not with you, I’m in hotels. I feel so unstable and I’ve felt that way for a long time. When I’m with you, I’m finally starting to feel some sense of normalcy and stability, but I’m not quite there yet.” He pauses momentarily. “Sure, I have loads of money — because I don’t spend it.”
I can’t help the chuckle that escapes my lips. “Don’t spend it? My ass. Do you not remember your Tarah bill?”
He laughs a little at that. “Oh I remember it, it’s hard to forget over two hundred thousand dollars.”
“I told you that I’d pay for half of that.”
“Shh, we’re done talking about that. I told you no before, and I am saying it again. No.” I roll my eyes at him and he smirks at me. “Seriously, though, my career could be over tomorrow. I could get cut from Catalyst or whatever the hell the next one in New York is the minute they find someone better or decide to give up. I could not find another script I like, then I end up settling just so I can do movies. Cams, my career is a nightmare and there are no guarantees.”
“There was one point you were ready to give it all up.”
He adjusts himself underneath me and puts his head back onto the pillow. “I’m still not sure that might not happen.”
“Is that what you want?”
He sighs. “I don’t know. It’s not as fun as it was before.”
“That’s my fault.”
His head comes off of his pillow and he looks at me. “Explain, please?”
“Well look at the last six weeks. Things were great, you go to L.A., then you come home to find me in the mess I was in, then we come to Montana and I’ve been miserable and a bitch. Look at everything around you, Tristan, don’t you think that factors into why you’re not enjoying yourself?” As soon as the words leave my lips I’m not sure that’s really how I wanted to say that, but I do my best to brace myself for whatever he has to say back.
“These last six weeks have downright sucked. I won’t lie, Cami. I was so afraid to leave you, scared shitless about what I was going to come home to. I thought maybe if we got away and came up here, out of your condo, things would be better, but they only got worse because he’s thirty minutes away, and after today, I don’t know what to expect from you anymore and it scares me.”
His voices falls off to a whisper toward the end.
“I see it now. What he said to me today, about how he was trying. It started the day I left for college. He could have been long gone from the house, but he wasn’t. He stayed and waited for me. He told me to be
careful, and even then I wanted to forgive him, run back to him, hug him, tell him things should and would be different. But I didn’t. I couldn’t make my legs do it because I wanted more, I wanted more than a morning at home. I wanted explanations that I thought I deserved or was entitled to, and I’d never gotten them and had finally gotten to the point that I’d accepted the fact that I was never going to get them when that package showed up.” I lift my head and start to draw circles along his chest around the outline of his dragon head. “Now I have them, now I know, and I haven’t the first damn clue what the hell to do with them.”
He takes my head in his hands and he kisses me. “No one said you have to decide today...or even tomorrow. This is not something that is going to heal in a matter of minutes, Cami. It took you a year to accept that he was gone and those answers were never coming to you. Now that you have them, you need time to process them, no matter what, and you have all the time you need.” He kisses me again.
NINETEEN
“Will you come with me?” I ask Tristan as we’re both getting dressed.
