10. Dax #2
Cam moved so his face was directly over mine, and I was looking into his eyes instead of the sky. “The only thing that matters is the answer to this one question. Everything else I can figure out along the way.”
“Well, what’s the question?”
“Do you still love me?” Cam asked bluntly.
I should have seen this coming. I should have known there was no other question he’d want to ask. He was right to make it part of the deal to be honest, though, because I could come up with thousands of ways to work around this question, but I was a woman of my word.
“Y—”
His lips were on mine the second I started to say the first letter of that word, and his hands gripped my hair tightly.
He moved from my mouth to kiss along my jaw, then down my neck, paying attention to where Void had left his mark on me earlier.
Then I heard the snick of a knife blade popping out of its sheath, and the cool metal ran up my stomach as Cam cut away my shirt, exposing me to him.
He trailed the knife along my skin as if he was drawing something on it only he could see.
The feel of the blade’s tip burned along my skin as he used enough pressure for me to feel it but not enough to cut me… yet.
“You claimed me as yours. and I see the others have been trying to put their mark on you as well. Do they know about the one I left on you?” Cam whispered along my skin as he kissed his way down my stomach.
Reaching my pants, he pulled down the leggings, knowing I hated to wear underwear with them and let them bunch around my ankles.
Taking my legs, he spread them open until I was in a butterfly pose, revealing everything to him.
Bending down, he kissed a scar on the inside of my thigh near where it met the core of my body.
That scar was in the shape of a heart. “Do you remember when I did this?”
“It’s not something a person forgets, letting her boyfriend cut her up,” I commented.
Cam’s head snapped up, his eyes narrowing at me. “Don’t make it sound crass when it was anything but.”
“You asked for one honest answer, not multiple,” I pointed out.
“So you can’t be honest with yourself about this time in your life. I guess that makes sense why you did what you did so it could never happen again,” Cam said as his hand drifted over my stomach. “Neither of us was ready nor should have been parents at that point in our lives.”
My eyes burned as he brought up one of the hardest moments of my life besides losing Devin.
This was a secret I hadn’t even told Wes about and a huge driving force for why I got my tubes tied.
If I was twenty-two and lost a baby early while I was in perfect health, then there was no way it would get better as I aged.
No, I was just going to stop that from ever becoming an issue again.
“The night I came home after they told me we lost the baby, we had sex even though I cried through it. You carved that into my leg so I’d always remember to love through the pain.
Then a few weeks later, I lost Devin, and I couldn’t do that.
I couldn’t love you through that pain. My heart was too broken at that point,” I whispered as a tear rolled down the side of my cheek.
“There isn’t anything I can say to make it better, but I’m sorry I hurt you. ”
Cam kissed his mark once more before closing my legs.
He pulled up my pants and moved to lay beside me, pulling me tight against him.
“It took me time, but I understood. That’s why I’m still here watching over you, even if I had to do it from a distance for a while.
It was worth it, though, for us to now be back together.
I won’t let you push me away again. I’ll fight for us no matter what you say.
You’re the only woman for me, no matter what that looks like or who else you love. ”
“Can I trust you, Cam?” I whispered into his neck. “I want to believe what you’re saying and let you back into my life, but I don’t know if I can.”
“I’ll show you that you can trust me, Dax, just like I did when we first met. You always say actions speak louder than words, so I will prove myself to you, even if it ends with a knife in my heart protecting you.”
“That’s oddly specific,” I said, shoving away from him so I could see his face. “What do you know?”
“Marco tried to get me to turn on you. He offered me everything, trying to get me to play you into his hands. I sent back his man with my answer written on his messenger’s skin… he didn’t like that very much,” Cam answered truthfully.
“So that’s what you’ve been keeping from me,” I mused aloud. “Let me guess, he said for ignoring his offer, he’d cut out your heart?”
“Pretty close to that, yeah. I’d never let anyone who wasn’t you have my heart so that option is off the table. He’ll have to get more creative.”
I chuckled, shaking my head as this moment felt like we were back in college in the forest, looking up at the stars after a night of fun. “You’re fucking psycho, you know that, right?”
“Yeah, but that’s the way you like your men… which makes Weston the odd man out, doesn’t it?” I answered that with an elbow to the gut. “Right, right, sorry. I’ll work on playing nice with the nerd.”