Chapter 13 #2
‘As a heart attack,’ I said, because I’d suddenly become very, very conscious of my heart and how fast it was beating and whether I might actually be having some type of cardiac event.
I stuck my hand out suddenly, offering it up for him to shake, and the double-take of before progressed to something borderline triple-take-ish.
He looked down at my hand and narrowed his eyes.
We’d spent years with our bodies pressed into each other’s, not to mention the fact that he’d offered me his hand many times before.
This was not new. But this time, the second his hand slipped into mine, it felt completely different.
The way our palms met, the way our fingers instinctively curled around each other’s. It felt . . .
Intimate.
‘Really? Is that why you’re really here?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Then why don’t I believe you? In the last two years you’ve never said anything nice to me.’
‘I could say the same for you,’ I said, standing a little straighter, alert as he increased the pressure on my hand. I looked down at it, ready and waiting for something to happen. What was going to happen?
‘You know what I think?’ he said, squeezing my hand even harder and then tilting it slightly as if he was about to put me into a wrist lock. I spread my legs, bracing myself, ready to defend or attack.
‘What?’
‘I think you’re here to exact revenge on me.’
He stepped closer, and instinctively I reached down and grabbed his forearm. He looked down at my hand and smiled, his expression a mixture of amusement and . . . was that challenge?
‘Just what I thought,’ he said, and then he twisted my arm.
I reacted instantly, shifting my weight to break his hold.
When we’d first started wrestling, they’d tried to make me sit it out.
As the only woman in the year, I was told to wait until one of the women from the year above could spar with me.
But I’d refused. I’d been studying ju-jitsu for years, and as a result, I knew that fighting wasn’t just about brute strength.
It was about technique, timing and balance.
A woman could just as easily make a man tap out if she exploited his weaknesses correctly.
Besides, I probably weighed as much as him anyway, and was almost as muscular.
The pressure of our holds intensified. Neither of us was going to give an inch. We moved closer, until we were standing only centimetres apart.
‘I think you came here to whip my ass for beating you today, that’s what I think, Lizzy.’
A feeling started building inside me. Anger, irritation, rage . . . lust. That deadly combination that made itself known every single time I was near Cam. A feeling that over the years had been getting stronger and stronger and so damn hard to resist.
‘So what are you waiting for?’ His voice taunted me and his eyes challenged me, sweeping my face in a way they’d never done before.
He’d never looked at me like this. Not ever.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Something inside me started to unravel, like a ball of wool dropped from the top of a staircase, falling, falling, falling.
He leaned in, closing the gap until a sheet of paper wouldn’t fit between us.
A deep chuckle slipped from his mouth, and the warmth of his breath swept across my face.
And then, the lightest, faintest brush of his lips along my cheek.
My eyes fluttered shut as his mouth moved up to my ear, trailing against my skin.
An involuntary moan escaped me, and I mentally cursed myself for it.
I didn’t want him to know what kind of effect he was having on me, that made me weak, but I was struggling to contain it.
‘I’ll ask you again, what are you waiting for, Lizzy?
’ My head seemed to fall back, totally without my brain’s permission, and I relished the physical pleasure of those words.
They were a warm hum against my now pebbling skin, making me feel like I might dissolve into a puddle on the floor.
Wait, what had I come here to do? Everything felt like it was suddenly getting muddled, confused; I felt off-kilter.
I didn’t like that feeling, and I definitely didn’t want him to know that.
‘Come on, I know you want to,’ he said. God, something about that want, not to mention that know, knocked me from off-kilter to downright dismantled.
My body took over now, and I tilted my head even more, giving him full access to my neck.
I wanted to feel his mouth on the sensitive skin there, I wanted to feel his mouth everywhere, but then . . .
‘I can’t believe you fell for that!’ He wrapped his arm around my neck and twisted me round, slamming my back into his chest and locking me into a rear choke. ‘What the hell are you really doing here? Was it your plan to distract me, looking all hot and sexy like that?’
Hot . . . sexy. He’d never said anything like that to me before. He’d never acknowledged the way I looked. This was the first time, and hearing those words from his lips almost made me not want to—
‘Ow! Fuck!’ He let go of me and stumbled backwards, clutching his shin. Maybe high heels were good for something after all. I followed him into the room. So much for coming here to be nice.
‘Maybe I just let you think I’d fallen for it,’ I said angrily.
‘So this is what you came for tonight, then, to attack me?’
I stopped advancing on him. ‘I really did come here to congratulate you, but I can see what a mistake that was now.’
His entire demeanour changed, as if that information somehow suddenly changed things. He sank onto the edge of his bed and his shoulders slumped. Suddenly he looked totally defeated, and something about that caused a strange, sharp sensation in my gut.
‘You know, for a second there, when I first opened the door, I thought, well, maybe . . .’ His words were soft now.
‘Maybe what?’
He leaned back and looked up at me. ‘I thought that maybe, after all these years, you’d finally come here for something else.’ Cam raised his brows as if he’d just asked a question and was waiting for an answer. I shook my head.
‘Really, Lizzy. You don’t know where I’m going with this?’
I looked at him for what felt like the longest time, and as I did, little snippets of sense floated towards me. My brain was taking its time processing the snippets tonight, but once they had been sequentially pieced together, like a puzzle, I gasped.
‘Wait . . . you thought . . .’ I gestured to the space between us, flicking my hand back and forth. ‘That we might . . .’ Shit, had he seen what I’d been thinking and feeling this entire time? Realised what power he could wield over me?
I straightened up quickly and tried to flip it all around. I had to; I couldn’t let him win this moment, couldn’t let him think he could disarm me like this again.
‘Oh my God, Cam. You thought that you and I might actually . . .’ I forced a laugh, hoping he would buy it as Seriously, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, as opposed to Please throw me down on the nearest horizontal surface and have your way with me already.
And I think he did. Because the look that swept across his face, contorting his features into something that looked almost ugly, was clearly driven by pain. He stood up suddenly, his demeanour totally changing.
‘It’s late. I’m tired, and I think you should go.’ He gripped my shoulders and started walking me backwards towards the door.
Something inside me started to panic. Something told me that if I walked out of his room tonight and didn’t show him what I was really feeling, I would regret it. Even if that meant making myself vulnerable.
He reached for the door and began to open it. I reacted instantly, kicking it shut, the sharp sound echoing through the room. Then, mirroring what he’d done to me, I placed my hands firmly on his shoulders and started pushing him backwards.
‘Maybe I don’t want to leave,’ I said.
‘Well, maybe I do want you to leave.’ He seized control back and started pushing me towards the door again. When we reached it, I planted my hands firmly against it to stop him from opening it.
He looked at my hands, and for a second I could see the wheels turning in his head as he contemplated how to prise them off. I jumped into action before he could, shoving him in the chest. Hard. He glanced down at my hand, still on his chest, and then back up at me.
‘You know I could just snap that little wrist of yours with one hand if I wanted to.’ He started to lean forward, pressing all his body weight against my palm, bending my wrist backwards.
I knew immediately there was no way I could hold him back – especially since it was my left hand doing all the work.
‘So do it. I dare you. What are you waiting for?’ I hissed in his face, our noses almost touching. His weight was pressing into my wrist, and in a second it was all going to . . .
Collapse.
His body slammed into mine, crushing me against the door.
Our heads banged together, and pain radiated across my skull.
But despite all of this, neither of us pulled away.
He pushed his forehead into mine, and I slipped my hand to the front of his neck, wrapping my fingers around it and squeezed.
He let out a moan. It was not from the discomfort.
He pushed me even harder into the door, pinning me there . . . and I fucking loved it.
‘Lizzy,’ he said, his lips grazing mine.
‘Cam.’ I let go of his neck and ran my fingers into his hair, tangling them there and pulling. He moaned again, and I couldn’t take it any longer. Not for one more second. It had been two years, and it was time to put an end to this torturous game we’d clearly been playing with each other.
‘You were right, I didn’t come here to congratulate you,’ I said, tightening my grip on his hair and then bringing his lips down to mine.
Her kiss caused the universe around us – the one that held up all the galaxies and solar systems and planets – to suddenly disappear. It shrank down to a small dot, until there was nothing left of it except us.
Just like it should be. Like it should have been for the past two years. We’d wasted so much time fighting, and it was time to put a stop to that. Finally we were here, where we were always meant to be, and I wasn’t going to let anything come between us again.