Chapter 27 #2
“I’m not saying I think I will,” I add. “I’m saying I don’t know what happens when instinct gets that loud again. I’ve never trusted anybody who tells me they’re absolutely sure what they’re capable of.”
“That’s comforting.”
“I thought you’d appreciate the honesty.”
“I’d appreciate the honesty more if we weren’t discussing whether you might go feral and murder me during sex.”
Despite myself, I laugh. “I’m pretty confident about the murder part.”
“Oh, good.”
“The rest I’ve been working on.”
She bumps her knee against mine. “By standing three feet away from me.”
“Exactly.”
“Very scientific.”
“I had a control group.”
That gets the corner of her mouth. I let it sit there for a second before I go on, because this is the part I’ve actually been trying to work out.
“I watched Jackson walk out of the kitchen when you told us about the stairwell. He wanted to put a hole in something and he didn’t.
He came back and stood in the doorway with his arms crossed until you were finished.
Bo knows what you want before you ask half the time, but I’ve never seen him use that to corner you.
Gray had every reason in the world to make that call for you from his father’s terrace, and he called you instead.
” I drag my thumb through the sand, making a trench between my boots.
“Beckett’s Beckett, and somehow he’s shown more restraint than anybody. ”
“That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said about him.”
“Don’t tell him.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
I look at her. “My point is, every one of them has had a moment where wanting you gave them an excuse to decide something for you. None of them took it.”
She understands where I’m going before I get there. I can tell because the humor leaves her face.
“That tells you who they are,” she says. “Not who you are.”
“No. It doesn’t.” I lean back on my hands and look up at the strip of sky above us. There’s no good answer after that, so I give her the true one. “I still don’t know.”
She stays quiet.
“I’ve spent two months trying to make sure I knew before I touched you again. Turns out I can’t. Not completely.” I look over at her. “At some point, keeping my distance stopped being careful and started being me making the decision for both of us.”
Reese’s fingers stop worrying at the thread on her jeans.
“So I’m done doing that,” I say. “I’d rather find out with you than about you.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“If you tell me to stop, I stop.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I know. She wants the answer underneath it, and she’s not going to let me hand her the clean version.
I rub a hand over the back of my neck. “If I ever put my hands on you and see my father in them, I’m gone.”
Her face tightens. “Cameron.”
“I’m not saying I’m going to.”
“You’re saying you’d leave.”
“I’m saying I’m not making you live with something I spent half my life getting away from.”
She stares at me, then reaches over and catches the front of my jacket in her fist.
“You are such a fucking idiot.”
“Probably.”
Then she pulls me toward her, and I go.
There’s nothing careful about the first kiss. Reese kisses the same as she coxes, already three strokes ahead and irritated that everybody else hasn’t caught up. Her knee slides over mine, my hand lands in the sand behind her, and for a few seconds I let her set whatever insane rate she wants.
Then I get my hand into her hair and slow her down.
She makes an aggravated sound against my mouth.
“We’ve got all night,” I tell her.
“I’ve been waiting two months.”
“So have I.”
“Then keep up.”
I laugh, and she kisses me again before I can answer.
My jacket ends up under us mostly by accident. My shirt follows hers into the sand, and when Reese puts her palm against the scarred side of my ribs, I tense before I can stop myself.
She notices. Of course she does.
But she doesn’t pull away or trace them with her fingers. She doesn’t ask which one came from which night or look at me like I’ve handed her something fragile. Her hand just stays where she put it, warm against my skin while she kisses the other side of my chest.
It’s such a small thing that I almost miss what it does to me.
Almost.
I slide my hand around the back of her neck and pull her up to kiss her again.
We take our time getting the rest of the way undressed, which is harder than it should be on sand. Reese gets one leg caught in her jeans and nearly kicks me in the face trying to get free.
“Very sexy,” I tell her.
“Shut up and help me.”
“I’m enjoying this.”
“Cameron.”
I catch her ankle before she can actually kick me and get the jeans off. “There.”
“Asshole.”
“Still here.”
She grabs my face and kisses me, and somewhere between laughing at her and getting her back down onto my jacket, the last of the tightness in my chest disappears.
I put my mouth on her and take my time.
Reese does not.
She tries to rush me almost immediately, one hand in my hair, the other braced against the sand, and I have to catch her hips when she starts trying to set the pace herself.
“Stop coxing me.”
Her head comes up. “Did you seriously—”
I don’t let her finish.
She drops back onto the jacket with a curse and her fingers tighten hard enough in my hair that it hurts. I don’t mind. Nobody is coming down this road. Nobody is waiting outside a door. Nobody is going to knock or call her name from another room.
For once, she doesn’t have to be quiet.
She isn’t.
I’ve heard it exactly once before, up at the overlook with nothing but valley lights underneath us, and I’ve thought about it more than I’d tell anybody.
By the time she drags me back up by the hair, she’s flushed and impatient and glaring at me like I’ve personally offended her.
“Now, Blake.”
I stop.
Her eyes narrow. “Don’t.”
“Cameron.”
“Oh my God.”
“Say it.”
She grabs my jaw. “Now, Cameron.”
“Better.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Yeah.”
I kiss her and push into her.
We both go still.
Not because anything is wrong. Because nothing is.
That’s what catches me.
The last time I was inside her I had her bent over the tank of that bike with my teeth on her shoulder, forcing the knot back down with everything I had.
I know what she feels like. I’ve known since that night.
What I’ve never had is this part, where there’s nothing running in the back of my head telling me how far I’m allowed to go.
There’s nothing running at all.
Just Reese underneath me, her arms around my shoulders and her legs locked around my hips, looking straight at me.
And I don’t want anything from her that she isn’t already giving me.
The realization is so simple I almost laugh.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“Cameron.”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
Her hand slides around the back of my neck. “Good.”
I kiss her jaw, then the place beneath her ear, and let myself stop thinking.
The rhythm’s already there. We found it on the bike and neither of us lost it.
Reese moves with me instead of against me, and when I slow down, she slows down too.
When I lose it a little and drive harder, her nails dig into my shoulders and she pulls me closer.
There’s no fear in her scent. No hesitation. Nothing I have to decode.
Just her.
Later I put my mouth against her jaw. “Where do you want the mark?”
She doesn’t even have to think about it.
“Somewhere Vance can’t put on a media wire.”
The laugh gets out before I can stop it, and Reese starts laughing too. It should probably ruin the moment. Instead she tightens around me and I have to bury my face in her neck until I get myself back under control.
“You’re a menace.”
“You like me.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Enough to bite me?”
I lift my head. “Turn over.”
Her smile disappears.
Not because she’s scared.
Because she knows.
She rolls onto her stomach, then pushes herself onto her knees and looks back at me over her shoulder. I run my hand down the center of her back, following the line of her spine until my palm settles low, just above the curve of her ass.
She shivers.
“Here?”
Her eyes stay on mine. “There.”
I push back into her and her head drops with a low sound. My hand spreads between her shoulder blades while I give her a second to adjust, but Reese reaches back, catches my thigh and pulls.
“Not fragile.”
“I know.”
“Then stop treating me like I am.”
Fair.
I give her what she’s asking for.
She takes it with her face turned into my jacket, one hand fisted in the leather and the other reaching back for me whenever I get too far away. My control doesn’t disappear. It stretches. There’s a difference, and for the first time I understand exactly what that difference feels like.
When my knot starts to build, Reese feels it too. Her whole body tightens, and I slow enough to make sure she’s with me.
“Cameron.”
“I’m here.”
“I know.”
Two words shouldn’t do anything to me.
They do.
I pull out of her.
The noise she makes into the jacket is pure outrage. “What are you doing.”
“Two seconds.”
I put my mouth low on her back, against the place we chose, and her skin is hot under my lips. I can feel her pulse even this low on her body, or maybe I’m imagining it because mine is beating hard enough to make everything feel alive.
“Still here?” I ask.
She turns her face enough that I can see one eye.
“Bite me, Cameron.”
So I do.
My teeth break skin at the base of her spine. Reese swears into the leather and her back arches under my mouth, and I’m inside her again before she finishes the word.
The bond opens while I’m still moving.
It doesn’t hit me.
That’s the first thing I understand.
There’s no explosion, no violent rush, no moment where I disappear inside something bigger than myself. It just arrives, so naturally that for a second I don’t realize what’s changed.
Then I feel her.
Not her thoughts. Not words. Nothing that simple.
Her.
Warm and bright and exhausted and happy and so completely Reese that I close my eyes.
I’ve spent seven years waiting for the second before everything goes wrong.
It doesn’t come.