Undisclosed Desire (The Complete Box Set

by Falon Gold

  Shit.

  Knee deep.

  He rises slowly from the bed then stops a snap of a finger away. His exhales warm my face while the rest of the atmosphere stands still. Waiting. Along with me. His hands lift off, framing my face, rotating it sideways. My lips spread, inviting him in without my consent. Instincts forming on his behalf. Self-preservation nowhere to be seen.

  His mouth finds mine, rocking me off-balance. My mind doesn’t even rebel against the gentle lip lock. Tiny shudders skip through me, hands grasping for stability at his waist.

  My thumbs trail the V shape of his abdomen that points to happy-inducing terrain. He vibrates beneath the pads of my fingers, tongue grazing mine. A purr splits the air wide open. I want more reasons to moan like that. Starving for them, and making up for the loss of a man’s affections with the enemy no less who’s tormenting me with feather-light kisses.

  Remember you’re just another body in an extensive line of them, Amari. Whatever you do, don’t get sucked into his lovemaking. Time with him is temporary.

  His mouth retreats. I drop my hands, back away from him mentally, to stare over his shoulder, seeing nothing. Bizarrely, I’m feeling teased. He keeps heating me up then calling a halt to the seduction.

  “Amari,” he murmurs above me.

  “What?” I answer blandly.

  “Look at me.”

  I sigh then obey.

  He runs his thumb over my mouth. “Are you upset with me?”

  I shake my head. Just disappointed, as I always am when he fails to do any of the things I need him to. Like notice me when I worked for him. I rub at my forehead, which is letting a long-forgotten wish enter it. They’re all supposed to be filed away in a cabinet in the back of my mind, with a lock on it.

  Not anymore.

  “Talk to me, sweetheart, please,” he pleads.

  “Okay. What’s your story?”

  He exhales then looks over my shoulder. “That again. You’re persistent for sure, but you’ll still have to wait.”

  Why did I expect him to suddenly open up to me? I hardly know anything about what makes him… well, him. Hoping I’ll learn is a dangerous game to play with him.

  “Fine, Camron. I’ll give you first crack at the bathroom next door. Don’t bump your head walking inside.”

  “No. I want to know what’s on your mind. You seem so damn far away suddenly, and I know it’s my fault.”

  What hasn’t been his fault for the last five years?

  “Camron, I came for a story. I didn’t get it. Can we go now, or is the king not pleased with his lowly subject?”

  Yes, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but I’m not feeling all that witty or inclined to be obliging in another moment where I give and he takes.

  “We can go, but the only time I’m not pleased with you is when you shut down on me. You do that a lot, Amari… and it’s discouraging.”

  It’s second nature to me now after five years around him.

  “I only do it when there’s no point to being all in my feelings. I can’t make you do anything like you can me, remember?”

  “Amari—”

  “Would like to go now if you don’t mind,” I interrupt in a bored tone.

  He puffs out an agitated breath. “We’ll talk about this later.”

  I wheel around, opening the door and grumbling, “Apparently, we’re about to talk about it now with my family, so no need for later.”

  He walks out. I plant a shoulder in the short wall between the bathroom he’s in and the bedroom he left, then cross my feet.

  When it’s my turn, I rush through washing my hands, as I should have since my mother is waiting outside with Camron when I come out.

  “Amari, help me serve. Camron, you can go sit with the men at the table. Take the first two lefts. The dining room is just off the kitchen. Sit anywhere but at the heads of the table.”

  He ducks his head. “A traditional household then, Mrs. Spencer?”

  She shrugs. “Not necessarily. Amari and I are the only ones who don’t have two left feet when carrying dishes, and I don’t trust you with them either. And I like to see what’s happening at all times while I’m eating.” Spying.

  “Traditional by necessity then,” he jokes, but Cecilia Spencer does things in her home herself because she wants them done right.

  “That sounds about right, Camron. Now go. I need a private moment alone with my daughter.”

  He gives me a meaningful glance, moving away only when I nod my head just enough for him to get my subliminal message of ‘Quit worrying already’. It’s like being stalked by a big cat that’s waiting for me to slip up.

  Fingers snap together in my face. “Amari, come back, and then come on. Jeez, he isn’t going to get lost from here to the dining room. You haven’t been acting like yourself since you arrived in his arms and he couldn’t be convinced to put you down so you’d sleep more comfortably.”

  She saunters off. I realize I’m frozen, scrutinizing Camron’s backside. Get it together, Amari.

  I follow her into the kitchen. The men are thirty feet away at an oak six-chair dining room table, with a backdrop of the backyard from a semi-circle of bare, bow windows encompassed by ceiling-mounted ferns. Camron caresses the flute of a wine glass on the left side of my father. Directly in front of Camron, Brandon talks quietly with them both.

  “Are you pregnant, Amari?” my mother whispers out of the blue, while transferring the corn to a platter on a granite countertop.

  “No, Mama. You need to have sex for that. What do you want me to do first?”

  “Come put the roast dish on its heating pad. So, you two aren’t sleeping together?”

  “No. We just decided to make it official yesterday. There hasn’t been time to… sleep together.”

  You hope so though… and soon.

  Alright, yes, I do. Camron has lit too many damn fires under my skin, in my core, and it’s only right he douses them before they consume me… or I take what I want from him.

  Who’s the sexual deviant now?

  Oh, shut up.

  Cecilia spoons beans into a round bowl. “Amari, I’m going to be honest with you. This whole getting together and bringing him to meet everyone right afterwards feels weird. Nobody does that. And Gabriela saw your car at the gas station yesterday on her way to a doctor’s appointment in Candleton. You were definitely on your way here, so what’s going on with you two if you’re not pregnant too?”

  “I had a problem with my credit card that I went back… home to straighten out. Camron… came by. The rest is history. Mama, aren’t you supposed to be hanging Camron by a noose with all these questions instead of me?”

  Just roll the man under the bus and then ride over him, why don’t you?

  Why not? He’s the reason we’re here and I’m telling half-truths.

  You’re getting good at that too.

  She pulls out a drawer, picking out different oversized utensils then passing them on to me. “When my daughter is exhibiting odd behavior after quitting her job, happily I might add, then turns up with the same boss that made her miserable for five years, claiming him as her boyfriend, I’m interviewing everybody in the room. You seemed content in his arms while you slept by the way. Care to tell me how you really feel about him because something is off? I know it. Mitchum knows it. Even Brandon knows it, and he’s too silly to notice anything obvious, even less what’s off with anybody. Lord knows how he got a woman like Gabriela to marry him. She’ll be here in a little while. Spending time with her mother right now. So, what is unsettling about your new relationship that’s worrying me?”

  If only I could answer her without raising even more questions. My family doesn’t deserve to be kept out of the loop when something affects us all. Keeping the lies to a minimum is the best I can do.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a relationship, Mama. You’ll get used to it.”

  “Get used to what?” Camron asks from behind me, tone harder
than stone.

  I whip around. “Us, Camron. We’ll talk more tomorrow about it, Mama.”

  You don’t have your phone, nitwit.

  “Oh… ah my phone is… not working properly.” Certainly not if I don’t have it with me.

  She pats my forearm. “Camron said it’s at your home when I asked why didn’t you call like you were supposed to before showing up. He promised you’d have it by the time you get to his house on Blanchard Row tonight, and it’s okay if you call me from his phone if you need anything before you get there. He already gave me his number and his address right after you got here.”

  Camron has said a lot, and my mother knows more about what’ll happen in the next few hours of my life than I do. Both bothers me.

  I swirl around on my heels to face off with Camron. “Is there anything else I missed while I was sleep?”

  My mother taps me on the shoulder. “Only Brandon’s arrival right behind yours, which is probably why you woke up in the first place. Take the beans and roast to the table, baby girl. I’ll bring the rest. I need to speak with Camron about something.”

  I balance the overstuffed dishes on each palm, then breeze angrily by him.

  “If you hurt my daughter in any way, Camron, nothing in this world, including your gobs of money will keep me off your ass. You understand?”

  Horrified by my mother’s threat, I look back and stumble over my own feet into the dining room, giving Brandon something to cackle about.

  “Crystal clear, Mrs. Spencer,” Camron says equally soft, “and it’s a good thing I don’t plan on hurting her, doesn’t it?

  “Very good for you, Camron,” my mother using her dead serious tone that Brandon and I know better than to talk back to.

  “Need help with the food, Mrs. Spencer?” It’s as if he’s discussing the weather with my mother.

  He should be as disturbed as I am by her promise, which he could’ve avoided if he’d steered clear of Winchester.

  “Nope, but thank you, Camron.”

  He shows up in the dining room while I’m placing the serving ware in the middle of the table. I have to smack Brandon’s hand away from the potatoes simmering in the roast casserole. Camron pulls out a chair beside his, waiting for me to sit down. This isn’t the Camron I know.

  You wanted him to change.

  I gave up on that years ago too.

  Yeah well, shit doesn’t happen when you want it to all the time.

  True. But why change now when I need things to hate him for?

  You’ll have to ask him that.

  No freaking way.

  Suit yourself.

  When he scoots my chair under the table with me in it, the doorbell rings. Gabriela. Maybe everyone will gush over her pregnancy and forget about me and Camron’s sham of a relationship. Not likely, but I can hope.

  “I got it.” Brandon gets up.

  I sip water and eyeball my mother taking her seat. Brandon and his wife are back in a matter of seconds. I jet upwards to hug her, with my brother hovering. Nothing I can see has changed in Gabriela’s appearance. Her build still slim, skin perfectly tan and unblemished, black, silky straight hair from her Cuban heritage maintained at waist-length after three years of marriage. Yet, she carries the future within her. That changes everybody around her.

  We give cheek smooches before I introduce her to Camron standing behind me. She’s immediately intrigued. Before she can sink her teeth into him, Brandon escorts her to the empty chair next to his.

  She doesn’t have to lift a finger to serve herself, being catered to by everyone at the table, including me. Am I jealous? Hell yes. Can’t picture Camron giving up his lifestyle for a wife and kids, even after he’s married. God, I hope I’m long gone by the time he marries someone else. Don’t want to see it.

  Don’t want to wish it was you.

  That too—already been there, done that, and admitted I would never be enough for him before planting my feet firmly in reality.

  Yeah, but you were a little in love with him before that.

  Ripping the rest of my heart out of my chest, longing for something I’ll never have with him, is not something I’d like to be a party to.

  ********

  Camron

  I get my first taste of a family more than happy to interact with each other and me too, and it’s mind-blowing. Not once am I regulated to outsider looking in. There isn't a subject started that I'm not asked my opinion on. It's almost too noisy as they help themselves to dinner, fuss over, and with, one another with an easy rapport that allows them to say exactly what's on their minds. No one takes offense. Quick to respond with a bark of laughter, cherished memory, or snappy comeback that contradicts the other's point of view, or all three.

  Ebbing and flowing as they work together to make sure everyone has enough with their own two hands. No servant or butler needed. Yeah, I know nothing about this. It's almost too damn loud in here, and I’ll be damned if I don't wish my life was like this. I'm too old to be adopted but not to adopt their ways, so I absorb their behavior with a fascination that I found only from observing Amari.

  She gets extremely quiet after serving her and I, pushing her food around her plate with her fork. Distant again, off in her own world, but present enough in this one to give one-worded replies to every question she's directly asked.

  At least I'm not the only one she does that to.

  Gabriela, a tiny, twenty-six-year old kindergarten teacher, who looks fresh out of high school and already ready to give birth, sets her gray-eyed sights on Amari. "Sis-n-law, how long have you and Camron been circling each other around the office?"

  Maybe I should field Gabriela's curiosity, getting the ball rolling on my secrets... uh, story. "She hasn't been circling me, Mrs. Spencer, but I've been circling her."

  Amari kicks the side of my foot under the table without looking up. That's definitely the signal to shut up, or a warning to keep the fibs to a short stack. More than likely both, and I would if I was fibbing.

  Gabriela tables her fork and forms an arch with her fingers over her plate. "Yeah, Camron, I don't know if you are talking to me or Cecilia when you say Mrs. Spencer. Call me Gabby. I'll call you Camron. How long?"

  "Six years, Gabby." I move my foot out of Amari's range.

  Brandon chokes, swallows too fast, and then scrambles for his water glass. Grabby beats him too hard in the back with a fist. Amari's jaw drops into her beans, eyes wide and trained on me. She holds my attention simply by being too damn beautiful to look away from. I've been suffering with that for quite a long time now. Doesn't look like that's ever going to change either, no matter who I’m dating or not, and I don't want it to.

  Mrs. Spencer frowns behind Amari's turned head. "You've only known her for five years."

  Blindly, I reach for the eight-hundred-dollar wine I brought, then gulp it down. The carefree mood stretches taut like a rubber band. Here goes everything.

  "I first saw Amari at her college. A classmate of mine from Stanford teaches there, Professor Sorensen. He requested I speak about the pros and pitfalls of being in business during Amari's human resource class one Friday before summer started. Amari walked out of the building just as I drove up. In the old days, they'd say I was smitten. Hasn't changed. I never found out why she didn't stay for the speech, but I have wondered all these years."

  "I had to choose between listening to your speech in a class that I was ace-ing and going to celebrate my roommate's birthday with her," she whispers.

  "Now that I know you much better, sweetheart, I understand why you chose the latter. You were and are more beautiful than any horizon I've witnessed from my yacht... but too young back then, so I kept a limited eye on you and your grades, making personally sure you knew there was a job opening at my company when you graduated... and became a woman. You just never became my woman until today."

  "You called me for the personal assistant job?"

  "Yes."

  "I didn't know you were outside t
he school, Camron, or I'd have stayed for sure to hear you speak."

  So, she is or was attracted to me. I’ll be doing my damndest to make ‘is’ the verb that describes her attraction to me from here on out.

  I locate her hand under the table, bringing it up to kiss her knuckles. Gabriela ahhh's beside Brandon, who chews slowly on his meat and potatoes.

  "So, you've been stalking my little sister?"

  "No, I made regular calls to her Professor, and that's it." I hope Brandon doesn't find it rude I'm not looking him in the eye as I talk. His little sister has me caught in whatever the spell she weaves whenever she looks at me, like always. "I expected her to enjoy college with all that entails."

  "In other words, get other men, maybe even women, and partying out her system before becoming yours in every way, huh?"

  "Something like that. I wasn't ready to marry anyone then, and don't believe in double standards, but I’ve always wanted an exclusive relationship with her for as long as it lasts."

  "Get women out of her system. Really, Brandon?" Gabriela condescends with a slap to the back of his head.

  He ducks too late. "No need for violence, Gabby. People experiment in college. This isn’t breaking news to you."

  "But you still don’t want marriage?" Mr. Spencer speaks for the first time since opening the door.

  The 'observant, not going to waste my breath unless I have something to say' type. Amari’s fingers strangle mine. For once, it matters what I say and do to someone outside of the office. I matter, and have expectations to live up to that exceed growing money and the reach of Powers’ influence.

  "If Amari would have me, I'd marry her right now."

  "Not without my blessing and me walking her down the aisle in a church, you won't."

  I nod respectfully in her father’s direction. "Duly noted, Mr. Spencer."

  He grins. "Call me Mitchum. I don't know if you're talking to me or my son."

  Gabriel sniggers nasally. Amari hasn't lost her baffled expression yet, but she blinks finally. Seems to be the only one thrown by my full disclosure.

  "Amari is definitely not ready for marriage after only twenty-four hours of being with you, Camron," Mrs. Spencer dictates.