But I don’t have it in me right now to ground her. I’m too busy trying to ground myself, trying to keep myself from flying into a million fucking pieces as rage grinds through me.
She let him buy her drinks.
She let him touch her.
She fucking let him hold her, let him kiss her cheek and the corner of her mouth.
While I was sitting right fucking there.
Only a few hours after she let me do the very same thing.
How the fuck am I supposed to feel about that? What the fuck am I supposed to say to her?
He’s her type, way more than I am. A slightly older version of Z, all wrapped up and waiting for her to save him. Gloss and daredevil on the outside, tortured soul and death wish on the inside. And unlike Z, he’s totally interested in her.
Fuck, it’s a miracle she’s out here with me at all—she probably wishes she were going down on him in the bathroom right now. It would totally explain the babbling.
I click my remote as we get to the car, start to climb in without opening Cam’s door for her. But old habits die hard. Plus, my mother taught me better than that. But that doesn’t keep me from slamming the door a little too hard once Cam is inside. Doesn’t keep me from picturing her and Josh doing all the things we’ve already done, all the things I still want to do to—and with—her.
Sexual things, sure, but other things as well. Things like standing on top of a podium with her, first-place ribbons clutched in our hands. Josh can give her that, can give her everything in the snowboarding world that I can’t. Two of the most talented athletes on the planet hooking up? Dating? Getting serious? They’d be the fucking golden couple of winter sports, their faces plastered on every sports show and magazine cover around.
Just the thought makes my stomach churn and my blood freeze as rage turns to fear.
I tell myself I’m being stupid, that I’m blowing the whole fucking thing out of proportion. But I saw how that bastard looked at her tonight. It’s the same way I look at her.
The same way she looks at Z.
Fucked up and pissed off, I slide behind the wheel of my Range Rover, start it up. I pull out of the parking lot in a squeal of tires that has Cam grabbing onto the door handle even as she looks over at me in concern. “Luc, you sure you’re okay to drive?”
The fact that she doesn’t know that I’m stone cold sober—that I stopped drinking hours ago after my second beer—pisses me off even more. I bet she could tell me exactly how many drinks the great Josh Greene had tonight.
And fuck, I need to stop this shit. I sound like a total fucking chump and I’m done with that. I’m so done with it.
Jealousy’s ugly, I get that. It’s fucking ugly. It makes you think crazy things, makes you do crazy shit. God knows, I’ve felt more than my fair share of it through the years when I was watching her moon over my best fucking friend.
But this, this doesn’t feel like jealousy. It feels like my fucking heart breaking wide the fuck open.
Feels like me breaking wide the fuck open all over again.
When we were in South America, I swore that I wasn’t going to do this anymore. Wasn’t going to let Cam get inside me and twist me up into a thousand fucking knots. Wasn’t going to spend my life on the sidelines waiting for her to see me.
Nice to know my resolve lasted all of ten weeks.
Fuuuuuuuuuuck.
It takes every ounce of self-control I have not to pound the shit out of the steering wheel. Instead, I take the turn onto my street a little wide and Cam gasps as she’s thrown against the door. Her incessant chatter finally dies and I can feel her staring at me as she tries to figure out what’s going on. The fact that she doesn’t know—the fact that she’s so clueless about how I feel about her that she doesn’t have any idea what she did to me tonight—only fucks me up more.
I pull into my parking spot too fast, glad it isn’t winter or I would have gone sliding right into the bushes—or worse, into the side of my condo. But it isn’t winter and the SUV slams to a shuddering stop. I can almost hear it groan with relief as I shove it into gear and start to climb out.
Or maybe that’s just Cam, who’s scrambling out before I can even walk around and open the door for her.
“Do you want me to go?” she asks as I unlock my front door.
Since I don’t know the answer to that question right now, I turn it back on her. “Do you want to go?”
“I don’t—no, I just—you seem—”
Listening to her stumble all over herself is painful, so I cut her off before she can do any more damage. “I already told you, you can stay here as long as you want to.”
“Yes, but—”
“But what?” I don’t look at her when I ask. Instead, I walk down the hall to my bedroom, yanking my shirt over my head as I go.
I feel like I’m going to crawl right out of my skin, like I’m going to explode at any second. It’s not the first time I’ve felt like this—Cam and boarding and my ridiculous family have brought me to this place over and over again through the years—so I know the only thing that’s going to make it better is raw, physical exertion. And since fucking Cam is out of the question right now—I don’t have enough self-control to make sure I don’t hurt her the way she’s hurting me—a late night swim will have to do.
Except Cam’s following me down the hall, standing in the doorway of my bedroom as I grab the first pair of board shorts I come to.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
I think about going into the bathroom to change, but fuck it, she’s the one who followed me in here. Besides, it’s not like she hasn’t seen everything I’ve got.
I drop trou in the middle of my room, ignoring the startled sound Cam makes as I step out of my jeans and boxers and pull my swimsuit on. Then I’m throwing open the sliding glass door that takes up half the back wall of my bedroom and stepping out into the late night heat.
I let myself out of my gated patio and follow the path through the copse of trees that separates my condo from the pool. I live in a small luxury complex—only twenty units total—and one of the reasons I bought here was because of the great facilities. I use them a lot, but I’m one of the only ones. Most of these places are vacation homes to people who only use them a few weeks a year, in the winter.
Cam’s following me. I can hear her brushing up against the bushes as she limps along the path. I’m moving fast, though—and am still so pissed off that it doesn’t occur to me to slow down enough for her to catch me. Instead, I pick up my pace, bursting out of the trees and into the pool area at close to a run.
As I do, I toss my towel on the closest chaise longue, and then take a running dive straight into the pool. I go in clean and shallow, the coolness of the water barely permeating my consciousness as I move straight into swimming laps at a punishing speed.
I do twenty before I finally feel the water all around me.
Thirty before the physical exertion starts to cool the rage deep inside of me.
Fifty before my brain starts to work its way free from the haze of hurt and jealousy that grabbed hold of me as I watched Cam laugh and flirt and dance with another guy.
I’m at seventy-five laps when I feel it, another body brushing against mine as I come out of the turn. And then Cam is wrapped around me, arms winding around my waist and legs tangling with mine as she pulls me to a stop in the shallow end of the pool.
When she realizes I’m not going to fight her, she pulls me closer—my back to her naked chest—as she presses hot, open-mouthed kisses along my shoulders and upper back. As her tongue licks along the diagonal lines of the endless knot I have tattooed there, desire whips through me.
It doesn’t erase my fury, but it doesn’t add to it either. Instead it merges with it, getting all mixed up inside me until I can’t tell where the need starts and the rage ends. So when Cam tries to step back, tries to turn me gently around, I grab her instead. Pulling her in
front of me. Press her up against the side of the pool.
And then I devour her.
My mouth slams down onto hers and it’s a battle more than it is a kiss. Lips, teeth, tongues. Biting, sucking, licking, taking. Then my hands are in her hair, pulling hard enough to have her gasping as I yank her head back so that I can go for her throat.
“Luc!” she cries out, her body arching against mine as I ravage her neck, the hollow of her throat, her collarbone, sucking bruises into the delicate skin again and again and again.
I move lower, sucking my way across her breasts to her hard little nipples. She cries out as soon as I pull one into my mouth, reaches down and twists her hands in my board shorts, shoving them over my hips and down my legs.
I kick them off, reach for her thighs so I can wrap them around myself, but she ducks under the water before I can get a good grip. And then her mouth is wrapped around me and she’s sucking me deep into her mouth.
It’s a strange sensation—her hot mouth and the cool water surrounding me at the same time—but it feels amazing. I thrust my hips forward until she’s taking all of me deep into the recesses of her mouth and down her throat.
Her hands clench on my ass, but she doesn’t try to control the rhythm. Instead Cam lets me fuck her mouth for long seconds before she surfaces, gasping for air. She takes a few breaths, starts to duck back down, but I’m too close. If she puts her mouth on me again, I’m going to go off.
So I grab her by the waist instead, lift her up and all but throw her onto the side of the pool. She sits there on the edge, stunned and naked and so fucking hot I can barely breathe, I yank her legs out of the water and over my shoulders. And then I dive in, burying my face in her lap and my tongue deep inside her pussy.
She lets out a strangled scream at the first touch of my mouth on her sex, and though I don’t have many neighbors, I do have a few. I clamp my hand over her mouth to muffle the sounds she’s making and she bites down on my palm, hard. The little shock of pain only makes the need greater and when she sucks two of my fingers into her mouth, I nearly come before I ever get inside her.
Forcing down my own need for just a little while longer, I concentrate on her instead. I circle her clit with my tongue hard enough to have her moaning into my hand, and then—with my free hand—I pinch her nipple at the same time I shove my tongue deep inside of her again.
She goes off like the Fourth of July, her pussy clenching around my tongue, her hips thrusting against my face, her teeth biting into my hand as she comes and comes and comes.
The second she’s done, though, she yanks away from my hands. She pushes herself off the side of the pool, and slides straight into the water—and straight down onto my cock.
She grabs my head in her hands, yanks my face to hers. “Fuck me,” she tells me as she licks her way into my mouth.
I don’t have to be asked twice.
My fingers dig into her hips as I thrust against Cam, lifting and lowering her onto my cock. Her legs are wrapped around my waist, her hard nipples flush against my chest, her teeth biting into my lower lip.
Nothing has ever felt this good. I keep pumping into her, loving the feel of the cool water lapping against my back as her hot pussy clenches around my dick again and again and again. I’m close, so fucking close, and the only thing keeping me in check is a desperate need to make her come again—to know that I’ve satisfied her, that I’m enough for her in at least this one singular and important way.
I slide a hand between us, move it over the gentle swells of her breasts and down the flat plane of her stomach. I move lower still, until I’m touching where we’re joined, stroking the lips of her sex with my fingers even as I brush my thumb over and around her clit in a continuous motion that has her screaming my name. This time I don’t even try to stop her.
Instead, I just hang on for the ride as she rips her mouth from mine, kissing and sucking her way across my jaw and down my throat with a desperation I know is going to leave bruises in the morning.
“Fuck, baby, you feel so good,” I tell her as I slam into her again and again, taking her higher. Taking myself higher. Claiming her with my body in a way she’ll never let me at any other time. “I need you so bad. I need—”
I break off as her teeth sink into the muscle at the top of my shoulder and it’s my turn to go off, my body slipping out of my control and erupting in an orgasm so powerful that I feel it in every nerve ending in my body.
My release triggers hers and then she’s coming too, calling out my name as her pussy clenches around my cock in a rhythm that empties me out even as it makes my eyes cross and my heart stop.
When it’s over, when I can think and breathe and—finally—move again, I lift her gingerly onto the side of the pool. I swing myself out, and gather her into my arms before heading back through the foliage to my condo. I leave my board shorts and her clothes by the side of the pool, not wanting to let go of her for a second. From the way she wraps her arms around my neck and burrows into my chest, I figure she feels exactly the same way.
It’s still warm out, so by the time we get to my apartment, we’re dry enough that a quick pass with a towel is all we need. And then we’re crawling into bed and she’s wrapping herself around me before I can even get the covers pulled over us.
Cam doesn’t say a word as she cuddles into me and neither do I. I’d like to say it’s because we’re so in tune at this moment that words aren’t necessary, but the truth is, I’ve never felt more out of tune with her, despite what we just did.
Everything just feels—wrong. Maybe it’s the memory of what she looked like in Josh’s arms tonight. Or maybe it’s just remembering what she was like when she was chasing after Z for much of the last five years. Or maybe—maybe it’s the fucking knowledge that none of that interest—none of that awareness—exists when she looks at me. We’ve got friendship and we’ve got chemistry, obviously, or the sex wouldn’t be so fucking phenomenal. That should be enough for me. Should be more than enough for me—I’ve settled for so much less from her for so long.
And maybe it would be enough if I hadn’t seen her with Josh. If I hadn’t seen her with Z. If I couldn’t see what we could be if she would just give herself to me. If she would just love me the way I love her. But I can see and it does matter, no matter how much I wish it didn’t…
I tell myself to let it go, but I can’t. Now that I’ve gotten off, the rage has faded some and in its place is a bone-deep sadness that I don’t have a clue how to shake. It’s a sadness that keeps me up, staring at the ceiling long after Cam has drifted to sleep. A sadness that burrows inside of me and undermines any joy I might feel at having her in my arms, in my bed.
Time passes slowly, so slowly, until—unable to lie still one second longer—I shift out from under her. I put some distance between us in the bed.
She doesn’t even notice. And that tells me everything I need to know.
Chapter 11
Cam
I wake up to the sound of my phone alarm going off. It’s on the nightstand next to me, which doesn’t make any sense because I don’t remember getting it out of my purse when we got back from the bar last night. Then again, I don’t remember anything beyond Luc fucking my brains out in the pool—and then carrying me back to his condo. To his bed.
Luc. My eyes fly open, the thought of everything that happened between us last night waking me up more thoroughly than my alarm ever could. Reaching out a hand, I swipe it across my phone to stop the omnipresent shrieking. It works, thank God. The incessant noise is replaced by silence, blessed silence, as I sink back down into bed.
A quick glance over my shoulder tells me what I already knew—that I’m alone in bed. Which is strange considering my alarm is set for seven a.m., and unless boarding is involved, Luc isn’t what anyone would call an early bird.
Throwing off the covers, I roll to sit on the edge of the bed. The room is spinning a little, and I can’t help wondering how much I had to drink last night. I
knew I was pleasantly buzzed when I left the bar, but the sharp pain in my head and the sick rolling of my stomach screams hangover.
A hangover would explain where I got the nerve to take off all my clothes and dive into the pool after Luc last night, even knowing how pissed off he was. And why, when the sex was over, I didn’t force him to talk to me about whatever it was that had sent him spinning off the rails in the first place.
But I’m sober now—queasy, but sober—and I’m going to get to the bottom of it. I push to my feet, then sink slowly back down into the bed. I’ll get to the bottom of it as soon as the room stops spinning.
“Luc,” I call out, hoping he’ll bring me a glass of water and a couple TYLENOL. He doesn’t answer. “Luc?” I say a little more loudly, then wince when it only makes my head hurt worse. When he still doesn’t answer, I reach for my phone, figuring I’ll text him a super-pathetic plea.
But there’s already two messages from him—along with about twenty from my dad and brothers which I continue to studiously ignore. Tapping on his name, I pull up his latest texts.
going to work out with Ash and Z. Be back later.
And two minutes later:
there are bagels and fresh orange juice, if you’re hungry.
That’s it. No, want to meet us at the gym? No, want to get together for lunch? Not even a wham, bam, thank you for last night, ma’am. It feels strange, like things have somehow gotten even more out of kilter instead of less.
I thought we were okay after yesterday at the photo shoot. We hung out all afternoon and things were good, normal. Fun. Even at the bar, things were good. Certainly better than they’d been between us in a long time. And then suddenly, last night, he’d gotten all weird and intense and quiet, something he only does when he’s super pissed. I don’t know what set him off, and when I asked Z and Ash, they’d just shrugged.
And now this.
Maybe I’m blowing things out of proportion. Maybe he didn’t ask me to come because he wanted to let me sleep.