Chapter 13
‘Cam’s here,’ I said to Philly on the phone once I was back in my own villa.
‘Cam Cam?’ she questioned.
‘Yes, him!’
‘You sure? How do you know?’ she asked. I didn’t blame her; it was utterly unbelievable. If I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes, or felt it between my arms – I really should have let him pass out – I wouldn’t have believed it either.
I walked around closing all the curtains and locking the doors, in case Cam knew where I was.
‘Yes, I’m sure. I was stuck in a cupboard with him.
In Victor’s room. He’s here investigating Victor too,’ I said, jamming something under the back door that led out to the private garden so it couldn’t be prised open.
‘What would the police want with Victor?’ Philly asked.
‘Well, I can tell you what they don’t want with him. And that would be him fucking around with his assistant or Pilates instructor. There’s obviously much more going on here than a wayward husband spanking his slutty little kitten on the side.’
‘His what?’
‘Trust me, you don’t want to know.’
‘So what happened when you saw each other?’ Philly asked.
I’d told her everything that had happened between Cam and me that fateful night six years ago.
She’d caught me in a vulnerable moment, something I seldom have.
But it had been my birthday, and although my perfect evening usually involves me eating pizza alone on the couch, watching Star Trek, that night had been different.
In fact, that night I’d felt . . . lonely.
An unfamiliar feeling for me, and that was how I’d found myself on Philly’s couch, sharing the pizza.
I’d told her my entire life story. I’d even cried.
(I never cry.) She’d held my hand and comforted me as I’d then proceeded to tell her the story of Cam: the sex, the lie, and the cheating that had ended it all before it had even begun.
Six hours. That was the entirety of our relationship.
I’d knocked on his door at exactly 2.20 a.m. and left at exactly 8.
20. The only man I’d ever felt anything for, gone before it even started.
‘Oh, you know, the usual. We wrestled, I put him in a chokehold, he hung me upside down, I elbowed him in the arm and then we insulted each other verbally.’
‘Sounds like a great reunion.’
‘Wonderful!’
‘What’s going to happen now?’ she asked.
‘We agreed to stay out of each other’s hair. He’ll do his thing, whatever the hell that is, and I’ll do mine. As long as he doesn’t cross my path again, I won’t have to hurt him.’
‘Though I bet you do want to hurt him,’ she said.
‘More than you’ll ever know.’ Although there was probably no amount of elbows or words I could throw at Cam that would hurt him in the same way he’d hurt me all those years ago.
No one else had ever hurt me like that, and no one ever would.
That part was in my control, because after Cam, I’d purposefully kept everyone at arm’s length.
‘Where is he now?’
‘Probably still stuck in the cupboard in Victor’s room.
Good news is that Victor’s mistress is finally here.
So at least I can tell Sharaz that. My camera is set up in the room, and I’m sure I’ll have something soon.
’ I hadn’t had time to connect the camera to my phone, though, so it wasn’t live-streaming.
It would record into the device, which I would have to retrieve at some stage.
At least I knew there was something very good on it already.
Six years ago
2.20 a.m.
Hour 1
‘Cam! Cam!’ I banged my fist on the door, calling out louder when I didn’t get a response immediately.
‘What the hell, Elizabeth?’ I finally heard him say.
I heard footsteps, a loud yawn, and then the locks clicked.
‘What are you doing here?’ He pulled the door wider, his voice groggy with sleep.
Rubbing his eyes, he let out another long yawn.
But when he finally opened them fully, it looked like his sleepiness vanished in a heartbeat.
‘And what the hell are you wearing . . . and your hair?’
I reached up and tried to push my curly hair behind my shoulders.
Why had I agreed to let Emily dress me tonight?
Come on, we’ll never have drinks again at the academy.
This is our last night, let’s celebrate.
For some reason – perhaps a misguided sense of sentimentality – I’d agreed to let her do my hair and make-up and lend me her clothes.
Jeans and a figure-hugging pink tank top.
I tugged at the top self-consciously. It clung to me like a second skin, and all I wanted to do was rip it the hell off. My idea of casual clothing was gym T-shirt, track pants and running shoes.
‘I have something to say to you,’ I began, placing a hand on the door frame to brace myself.
Not because of the drink – I wasn’t nearly drunk enough for this – but because of the sheer absurdity of what I was about to say.
I could not believe I was standing here about to open my mouth and utter these words to the man who had been my toughest competition for years.
The same man who’d just beaten me in the final test. The man who had won.
The man whose career would now be fast-tracked.
The man who was going to get everything I had wanted for basically my entire life.
‘What?’ He ran a hand through his hair, the move making his T-shirt rise ever so slightly.
My eyes drifted down to the abs that had just made themselves known from under his clothing.
I had seen him semi-naked before, and it was a sight to behold by anyone’s standards, but I’d never seen him semi-naked in this context.
In a context that had nothing to do with exercise or training, but rather in a private context.
The context of a man who’d just climbed out of bed and was now standing in front of me wearing nothing but boxer shorts and a T-shirt.
Before I could stop them, my eyes drifted even lower.
I tried to keep my face expressionless, tried to stop my eyes from widening at the very obvious outline of a cock beneath the thin material of his boxer shorts that really just begged to be on the floor.
I quickly glanced away, but it was too late.
He knew exactly where I’d been looking; I knew that because he was currently smiling at me with a sexy, knowing smile.
‘See something you like there, Lizzy?’ Wow!
That was the first time he’d called me by my nickname, the one that only half a handful of people in the world used.
There was such an intimacy in those five letters that despite myself – and despite the fact that I’d sworn I would never be a woman who swooned – I swooned. Just a little bit.
The slight sway of my legs betrayed me as I stared into those stupid blue eyes of his.
Those eyes that had been so close to mine on so many occasions as he pinned me down, twisting my arm, leg or neck into submission.
Or as I straddled him, my legs wrapped tightly around his body, manoeuvring him into positions that always seemed to teeter on the edge of pain and pleasure.
And maybe that was the problem. I could never quite figure out where one ended and the other began.
This pull-push, this back-and-forth, advance-and-retreat, attack-and-defend.
There had been so many moments – me smashed into the floor, his weight pushing into me, mouth mere inches from mine – when we’d stared into each other’s eyes and it had felt like it wasn’t wrestling any more.
It was foreplay, and sometimes even fucking.
And in these last few months, knowing that our time together was ending, it had started to feel like even more than that.
At the end of every move, after we’d released each other, our hands had lingered.
Tracing curves and lines that didn’t need to be touched.
His fingers grazing my ribs, my hips, my thighs.
Mine trailing over his chest, his back, his inner thigh.
‘So?’ he prompted.
Honestly, I had no idea what came over me then. I didn’t know why I said it. Maybe it was the margaritas, maybe it was the fact that I’d been forcing my feelings down for so long that it was only inevitable they would come rushing out one day . . . today.
‘Maybe,’ I said, and then my eyes slid down again of their own accord, and this time, I saw something tug against the thin fabric of those stupid boxers that now definitively needed to be on the floor.
I looked up at him, and he smiled at me, slow and sexy.
A smile that was surely about to knock me off my feet, despite the fact I was holding on to the door frame.
‘Is that why you’re here, Lizzy?’ he said, and stepped forward. His sudden proximity ignited a flicker of uncertainty in me. Was it too late to turn and run? But I didn’t run.
‘No, I came to congratulate you,’ I said.
‘What?’ He did something that looked like a double-take.
I took a deep breath. ‘Yes, Cam, I am here to congratulate you on your . . . uh . . . well-deserved win today.’ The words felt unpalatable on my tongue and came out with a rehearsed, robotic sound.
‘Wow! Okay! Uh . . .’ He ran both hands through his hair now, and I tried not to stare at the way his forearm muscles rippled. God, he had the best forearms in the world. Veins running the length of them, just the right amount of hair to make him extra manly. ‘Is this some kind of joke?’
‘Nope, not a joke.’
‘You’re saying that you’re here in my room, at twenty past two in the morning, to tell me that I deserved to win today?’
‘Yup,’ I managed through a very tightly clenched jaw.
‘You’re serious?’