Chapter Fourteen #2
My fingers slide into the crook of his elbow. Warm, solid, grounding. Everything I’ve been afraid to want. I draw a breath that feels too big for my chest. Tonight isn’t just dinner—it’s the start of something we’ll never be able to undo.
I nod to Knova. “Thank you. I owe you one.”
“No, you don’t.” She pats Bo’s head a few times, then hands my small overnight bag to Cam.
“Love is great and all, but Viktor got a new video game and he insists the sound quality is better without headphones. He’s been up until three o’clock in the morning for the last week fighting dragons at full volume.
If anything, you’re doing me a favor by averting his impending murder.
I’ll also make sure he goes over to your place, Cam, so he can check on Soot and clean her litter. The perfect job for him.”
* * *
Cam valets the Escalade at Wynn and then drops our overnight bags at the bell desk to be taken directly to our room.
I had forgotten that there was a restaurant at Wynn with the same name as my mother until Camden and I were literally walking past it.
Fortunately, our reservations are for Casa Playa.
“Have you ever eaten here?” I ask.
“Nope. It’ll be an adventure.” He winks at me, and my face burns hot. I’m not sure that Mexican food is the ideal meal for tonight, but when a server walks by with a seafood platter, my doubts vanish.
“We’re getting that, right?” I ask.
Camden turns his head to see what I’m looking at. When he does, he nods. “Definitely.”
By the time our first round of cocktails arrives, I’m able to relax.
This is still the Camden I’ve always known.
We chat about the usual things: books I’m reading, how the dogs are adjusting, what needs to happen at the house, and dumb things our friends have said.
We stuff ourselves with seafood, carne asada tacos, and a platter of churros.
I forget to be worried, because I’m so happy.
After dinner, we amble hand in hand to the water and light show. I stand with my back to Camden’s chest, with his arms around me and his chin resting on the top of my head. This would already be a fantastic real first date.
But the night isn’t over yet. We head to the front desk to check in to our room for the night.
As soon as we step into our room, which is actually a suite, Camden starts laughing. “What’s this? A rectangular bed? Whoever designed this room doesn’t understand romance. Where are the bears?”
“There’s no taxidermy, either.” I click my tongue in feigned disappointment. “No taste, I tell you.”
Camden laughs and pulls me close. As soon as I’m pressed against him, our lighthearted mood shifts.
His hands are on me, and suddenly I’m sixteen again, dreaming of a kiss that never came.
Now it’s real—hot, heavy, pressing against my ribs—and all I can do is try not to fall apart before we even get started.
My body remembers exactly how he made me feel the other night, and I want more. My trusty magic wand vibrator can’t compare to the thrill of having his mouth on my skin, or his fingers inside me.
“Cam…” I stand on my toes.
He cups my cheek with one hand and bends to kiss me. His eyes close before mine do. His tongue traces the seam of my lips until I open my mouth. His kiss is hungry and urgent, and he pulls me tight to him, so that I can feel the growing evidence of his arousal pressed against my belly.
He straightens a little, breaking our kiss. “I want to see you this time,” he says.
I turn my back to him and scoop my hair aside. I want him to see me this time, too. Not just naked. Bare. I want to be something soft he’s allowed to touch without breaking. I want to make him ache the way he makes me ache. “Help me with the zipper.”
Last time, in that janky little hotel, I was so desperate to get undressed that I tossed my own shirt and bra aside in my eagerness. I had no idea that the simple act of Camden resting one hand on my hip and undoing the zipper of my dress with the other could turn my knees to jelly.
Camden peels the dress off my shoulders, and the material puddles on the floor at my feet. He sucks in a breath behind me. Not a groan. Not a growl. Just this sharp little inhale, like I knocked the wind out of him. I don’t turn around—I let him look.
His lips brush my neck, raising goosebumps on every inch of exposed skin.
I hiss and lean into his caress, reveling in each path of his palms as his hands explore my hips, my thighs, my belly…
He hasn’t even touched me in any of the good places, and I’m already on fire.
My panties are damp and clinging, just from this. From him.
“Come here,” Camden whispers, guiding me toward the mattress.
I end up perched on the edge of the bed, wearing only my bra, panties, and heels.
Camden kneels between my legs to let his hands trace my thighs, down to my calves.
His eyes move over me like he’s memorizing.
Like he knows this moment will never happen again—the first time he gets to touch me with intention.
Not fumbling in a hotel room. Not driven by desperation.
This is a choice. A vow. He guides one of my feet into his lap with a gentle grip on my ankle so that he can unbuckle first one shoe, then the other.
He doesn’t look up. Just holds my heel in his palm, offering something back.
“Cam!” I gasp.
“You aren’t the only one, you know.”
A strange feeling tugs at my gut. “What?”
He exhales hard, not looking up. “That night in Reno, when you said you were a virgin…” He hesitates, laughs once—quiet, self-deprecating. “I didn’t say it back. My brain was screaming at me to keep my mouth shut, to not ruin the moment, to not make it about me. But—”
“What are you trying to say?”
He looks up then, eyes dark and unsteady. “Dot, I was. I am. You’ll be my first, too.”
I whisper, “You… why didn’t you tell me?”
His mouth curves, but it’s wobbly. “Because I was already terrified. Because for once, I wasn’t overthinking, and I didn’t want to break the spell. You looked at me like I knew what I was doing, and I just… wanted to stay that guy for a minute.”
The confession hits me in the chest—honest, awkward, utterly him.
He presses a kiss to my knee, voice barely there. “I didn’t lie because I was ashamed. I wanted this to be about you. About us.”
When he lifts his gaze again, there’s heat and fear and awe tangled together. “So if I mess something up tonight, you’ll know why.” His hand slides up the back of my calf. “But I’ll learn you by heart, Dot. I swear I will.”
I reach for him, fingers curling into his hair. “Camden.”
He blinks at me, uncertain.
“You won’t mess anything up,” I say, soft but certain. “Like you said to me that night. No such scenario exists. It’s you. It’s me. That’s all it ever needed to be.”
After a single nod, he looks up at me with dark and blazing eyes. “Lie back.”
I do so at once, lifting my hips to help him as he pulls off my panties.
He peels my panties down my legs, kisses the inside of one thigh, then the other. His breath ghosts over my center. I’m so wet I’m slick to the touch, my clit throbbing before he even makes contact.
The first lick is tentative. A slow swipe that makes me jolt.
“Holy fuck.”
“Taste so good,” he groans, then goes in again. This time, firmer. His tongue flicks, circles, then closes his lips around my clit and sucks—only once, but it’s filthy and focused and I make a sound I’ve never made before.
Camden moans like that sound feeds him.
“Fuck,” I whine. I run my fingers through his hair and arch my back to encourage him. “I need more. I need—”
I cry out as his fingers enter me. Goddamn, his hands are big. He can reach places my own fingers could never touch, and as they curl perfectly, I can only imagine how much fuller, how much more satisfied, I’ll be when it’s his dick instead.
Camden pulls away long enough to ask, “Is that what you needed?”
“For now. And don’t stop.” I give his hair a tug.
He laughs into the core of me, his mirth reverberating inside me as his tongue joins his fingers, fucking me open for him. I want more. I want him to lie on top of me, to hold me down, to fill me with his cock.
Camden’s tongue is inside me. Hot, determined, unrelenting. His fingers curl, find that spot deep inside, and—
Oh.
I come with a gasp so loud I’m sure it startles the birds outside.
My back arches off the bed, muscles locking, pulse thundering in my ears.
The orgasm doesn’t break over me—it tears through me, violent and bright, like a short-circuit in my spine.
I don’t breathe. I can’t. I feel—raw and full and completely undone.
But he doesn’t stop. His mouth stays latched to my clit, his tongue coaxing a second wave out of me, sharper and more tender, like my body’s forgotten how to separate pain from pleasure. I twitch. I cry out. I curl around his head as if I could pull him deeper.
When he finally pulls back, I collapse into the mattress with my thighs trembling and my chest slick with sweat.
He looks up at me slowly, as if surfacing from somewhere deep. His mouth is wet. His cheeks flushed. His jaw gleams with me.
Fuck.
Our eyes meet, and the look on his face wrecks me more than the orgasm did—shocked awe, like he got away with a crime he’ll never confess to.
“Dot,” he says softly, reverently. “You taste like candy and sin. I’m ruined.”
And then, since I don’t know how to hold that kind of look in my body without combusting, I blurt, “Your face is—um. Very wet.”
His smile breaks wide, crooked and boyish, and almost embarrassed.
“Yeah. That tends to happen when you go all in.”
“I want you inside me,” I say, though if he insisted on doing this for another, ooh, two hours or so, I wouldn’t complain too much.
Camden sits back on his heels and smiles up at me. He licks the fingers that were just inside of me. “I’ve found my new favorite dessert,” he says in a broken voice. “If you want—”