5. 5 #3
"Best camping trip ever."
Despite everything, I smiled. "Go to sleep."
"Already there."
His breathing began to slow almost immediately, and I lay with my cheek against his chest, listening to his heartbeat mingle with the quiet movement of the lake.
I closed my eyes and tried to drift, but the ache in my cunt was a constant, throbbing reminder of what I'd lost. The image waiting behind my eyelids wasn't Brandon's face, but the dark shape of a man at the edge of the trees.
I opened them again.
Beyond the dead fire, one downstairs window of the cabin still glowed.
Stay here. The thought was a desperate command. Lie next to your boyfriend. Be warm. Be safe. But the ache was a physical pull, a hook in my gut, tugging me toward that light. My body, still humming with denied release, didn't care about safety. It only cared about finishing what had been started.
I didn't think. I just moved. I lifted Brandon's arm from my waist, his limbs heavy with sleep.
He murmured something I couldn't understand and rolled onto his back, but he didn't wake.
I waited anyway, holding my breath until his breathing settled into the same slow rhythm as before.
Then I slipped out from beneath the blankets.
The night air cooled my damp skin immediately. I pulled my sweatshirt around myself and stood beside Brandon for a moment, looking down at him asleep beneath the stars. I could still get back under the blankets. Instead I turned toward the cabin.
The remains of the firepit lay in front of me, nothing left now but blackened wood and pale ash.
I stepped around it and crossed the clearing, the grass cool beneath my bare feet.
With every step the cabin grew larger and the sound of the lake faded behind me, until I reached the porch and quietly opened the door.
Inside, the house was completely silent.
I closed the door without letting it latch and stood in the darkened great room.
The couch was only a shadow beside me, but I knew exactly where it was.
I could have found the kitchen without turning on a light, could have gotten a glass of water, used the bathroom and gone back outside.
I didn't.
The stairs creaked beneath my weight as I climbed.
Victor's bedroom was at the far end of the hall, opposite the smaller guest room Brandon and I had been using.
I'd barely noticed it before, but now a thin line of amber light showed beneath the door.
I stopped outside it. Behind me, the hallway stretched back toward the stairs. I put my hand on the knob.
The door opened quietly.
Victor's room was larger than ours, built across the lake-facing side of the cabin with a wide bed against one wall and heavy wooden furniture that looked as though it belonged with the house.
A broad window filled most of the opposite wall, the curtains open to the lake and the stars beyond it, while a fire burned low in the stone fireplace, throwing slow-moving shadows across the ceiling.
Through the window, I could see the clearing below. The blankets beside the lake were barely visible from here. So was Brandon. I stared at the tiny shape for a second before movement inside the room pulled my attention away.
Victor stood near the fireplace.
He'd been waiting.
The fire outlined him as he turned toward me, and for several seconds neither of us spoke. There was no surprise on his face, no question about why I was standing in his bedroom in the middle of the night. That somehow made it worse. I shouldn't be here.
This was a mistake.
My body, however, disagreed. A slow, deep heat began to bloom between my thighs, a direct, traitorous response to the sight of him.
My nipples tightened, pulling into hard, sensitive knots that dragged against the inside of my sweatshirt with every shallow breath.
Every nerve ending hummed with an awareness that had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with the memory of his hands, his mouth, his cock.
Victor crossed the room. I stayed where I was, rooted to the spot, my heart hammering against my ribs. When he reached me, he didn't kiss me or pull me against him. He simply placed his hands on my shoulders, the warmth of his palms seeping through my sweatshirt as he looked down at me.
"You're mine."
My throat tightened. The words were a claim, a brand. I could still leave. Victor wasn't holding me there, and somewhere beyond the window Brandon was asleep beneath the stars, waiting for me without even knowing I'd gone.
I swallowed and nodded.
"Yes."
Victor's hands moved, sliding from my shoulders to cradle the back of my head, his fingers tangling in my hair with a rough grip that angled my face up to his. His thumb brushed the sensitive skin behind my ear.
"For tonight," I whispered.
His jaw tightened. For a second his hands tightened in my hair and a muscle jumped in his cheek. Finally, he let out a slow breath and gave me a slow, deliberate nod.
"For tonight."
Then he kissed me.