After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded. He continued, gently stroking her hair away from the beautifully sculpted curve of her cheekbone. It was probably wishful thinking on his part, but he could have sworn she wanted to press her cheek against his hand—instead, a soft flush lent a delicate bloom to her creamy skin.
“Tell me what’s happened, Stacie,” he commanded gently, injecting a little of his Dom tone into his voice. “It’s not just your car, is it? Something far more significant is bothering you.”
Another tentative nod, and then she was looking away from him.
“It’s silly,” she said. “Stuff like this happens all the time. Relationships end.”
And she hadn’t wanted it to end. Cam pushed aside the totally bizarre sense of jealousy he felt in that instant, only realising he’d given voice to his thoughts when Stacie spoke again.
“No, I finished with him.” Her eyes locked on to a bad memory. “I’d had my suspicions for a while, that something wasn’t quite right. A couple of days ago, when I somewhat impulsively acted on those suspicions, I found him in bed with another woman. Enough was enough.”
She took a fortifying sip of her coffee. When the tip of her tongue, pink and kitten-like, swept over her lips, Cam shifted uncomfortably in his seat—his cock was taking way too much notice of that innocent little gesture.
Suddenly she gave a nervous, self-conscious little laugh. “Why on earth am I telling you all this? I’m sorry—I must be boring you to death.”
“Not at all. I get the feeling that it’s something you need to get off your chest.” And don’t look at her chest!
Stacie’s expression turned into a grateful smile. “Maybe so. Well, since I found them together, he’s bombarded me with phone calls and text messages, until the early hours of this morning when he came to my apartment, banged on the door and demanded to see me. There was no way I was letting him in. He yelled through the door, said he wanted me back—he said he still wanted me to move in with him, and no one else could have me. He was so angry. And drunk.” She sighed. “I assumed he was drunk, anyway. I suppose it could have been something else. With this happening, it makes me wonder what else he might have been hiding from me.”
Cam was ready to string the bastard up for so many reasons. “Did you call the police?”
She shook her head. “Perhaps I should have done, but I just wanted him to go. I didn’t want any trouble. When I got to work, I asked my boss for some time off.”
“You needed to get away for a few days?”
She nodded. “I didn’t want to be there in case he came back. Except I forgot to pick up the sat nav when I left home this morning. I got lost when I left the motorway, and then with all that rain, and it being dark, and to top it all off, the car…”
Christ, no wonder she was so distressed. Cam couldn’t help himself this time—he laid his hand gently against her cheek, his thumb stroking her incredibly soft skin. If only she’d been a submissive—then he could have taken care of her the best way a Dom could take care of a sub.
“Stacie, your ex is a piece of shit and not worth your tears,” he said bluntly, more than a little distracted by the way she was letting her cheek rest against his hand. “We’ll deal with everything else tomorrow. Right now, you need to get some sleep.” He glanced at his watch, mildly taken aback by the lateness of the hour. “We have an early start ahead of us to get you on your way again.”
He watched her draw in a deep breath and let it out on a sigh.
“You’re right, Cam. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me tonight. I’d probably still be sitting in the car if it weren’t for you and the Lombards—if you hadn’t come along when you did. I’m sorry, I’m not normally like this, but like I said, it’s been a very long day, and I do feel very tired.”
“Stacie, I want you to stop apologising. You’ve done nothing you need to apologise for. Come with me—it’s time for me to escort you to your room and let you get some sleep.”
He offered her his arm, savouring the moment when she took it and fell into step beside him. It felt right. He kept his place slow and deliberate, all the time wanting the staircase to be longer, her suite to be further away, anything to delay leaving her at the door to her room.
The inevitable could only be delayed for so long. With deep reluctance he opened that door and guided her through it. When she turned to face him, looking up at him with such a guileless expression, he knew he had no choice.
With a sense of wonder, he touched his fingertips to her jaw, exerted just enough pressure to coax her face into the right position for him to lower his head and caress her lips with his. He wasn’t what she’d need or want, he knew that, but for those precious seconds, maybe he could do something to help.
“Sleep well, Stacie,” he murmured. “And don’t worry—we’ll work it out.”
As he stripped off in his own room, Cam wondered precisely what he’d meant by that—exactly what it had he been talking about? Her car? The bastard who’d terrified her? Or how he could have a relationship with someone so sweet, so beautiful, so young?
Oh, no. No, that wasn’t on the table, it couldn’t be. Whatever he’d thought earlier, about Stacie filling the empty space in his life…it couldn’t be right. That was just the combined effect of a very attractive woman and intimate lighting at the end of a long, tiring day on a man with a high sex drive who hadn’t had any in a while.
Cam tossed the thoughts aside and freshened up quickly, before changing into pyjamas—his usual leathers would have been too difficult to explain, should Stacie happen to wander about while he was moving between rooms.
He headed out of the door, unable to resist a brief glance down the hall to the room where she’d be sleeping, hopefully peacefully. Then he turned in the opposite direction, his destination the master bedroom. He knocked softly on the door and entered.
Alex looked up at his friend. “Sorry, Cam, she couldn’t wait. She’s been unreasonably worried about the party tomorrow night, as you know, and I needed to get her to relax.”
“No problem.” Cam pulled off his pyjama jacket, leaving the pants in place. “How is she now?”
The other man grinned. “Relaxed.”
Cam looked at the woman splayed face down on the huge bed. From the hot colour of her backside, it had been a truly intensive session—little wonder then that the endorphins had kicked in and sent her soaring. “Need a hand with aftercare?”
He knew that Alex was perfectly capable of looking after his wife during her return from subspace. Alongside their visits to Aegis, all three of them had discovered a liking for sharing the intimacy of D/s as a private group—hence Cam’s regular weekends in Hampshire.
As Alex released his sub from her bonds, Cam glanced over at him, a question in his eyes. The other man nodded his permission, so Cam moved closer to Beth, helping to warm her as she returned to normality while her husband lovingly applied a soothing cream to her reddened skin.
Beth shifted slightly and gave a contented sigh. Again with her husband’s consent, Cam laid a gentle hand between her shoulder blades. She stilled immediately, responding to the familiar touch of the only other Dom allowed near her.
Beth had come so far in the last year. In the bedroom and the playroom, she’d truly embraced her submissive nature and there was no doubt in either his mind or her husband’s that that was the reason why her first novel had proved so popular.
“So what’s with you and Miss Matheson?”
Cam looked at his old friend and gave a casual shrug. “Nothing. I’ve known her half an hour longer than you have.”
“But you like her.”
Cam went still. “What’s Beth been saying?”
Her husband laughed quietly, so as not to disturb his drowsy wife, and glanced tellingly towards her backside. “Don’t worry, I put her straight about leaving the matchmaking alone, although I don’t suppose for one moment she’ll take any notice. You know what she’s like. So—what are you
going to do about Stacie?”
“There’s nothing I can do. I’ll help her with her car in the morning, get her on her way…end of story.”
“You do realise she’s interested in you?”
Cam shook his head. “Don’t think I’m not tempted, but whether that’s the case or not, I’m too old for her.” He caught his friend’s change of expression. “What?”
Alex rolled his eyes. “She couldn’t keep her eyes off you over dinner. She noticed whenever Beth touched me, she saw how Beth kept looking at me, and every time, she immediately looked at you. She’s interested. And so are you.”
Cam wouldn’t let himself believe it—he couldn’t. “Didn’t you hear what I said? I’m too old for her. Besides, she’s only just split up with her boyfriend. Even if…Just don’t, Alex. It’s not going anywhere. It’s not even starting. Apart from anything else, I need a sub and she isn’t one. And I’m not ready for this.”
Chapter 3
Cam closed the door to Beth and Alex’s suite behind him. Even though the click was too soft to be heard, he stopped and held his breath. He doubted that Stacie would be awake at just gone four o’clock in the morning, but it didn’t do to take that for granted. One thing was certain, though—waiting a couple of hours would significantly increase the risk of an accidental encounter that could arouse her suspicions and make things awkward for everyone.
Finally rid of the pyjamas, Cam slipped between the sheets—he needed another couple of hours’ sleep before he’d be ready to face Stacie over breakfast, but as he lay on his side, his head pillowed on his arm while his free hand stroked his hardening cock, he knew that sleep wasn’t going to come. Not while he was mentally replaying his friend’s observations regarding the woman who was just a few yards away.
“I’m not ready for this. It’s too soon,” he grumbled, repeating the words he’d said to Alex a short time ago while Beth was deeply asleep.
You are ready, Cam. More than you realise. You’ve already admitted you like the idea of settling down.
No, not yet, Alex. I’ve been alone a long time. I need—
Stop hiding from the truth. You’re every bit as damaged as I was, just in a different way.
I’ve never denied it, but I can’t inflict that on Stacie. She doesn’t need a man like me. Besides, I’m too old—
Give the age crap a rest, Cam. It’s just numbers and they aren’t worth shit. Have you considered that you might need a woman like her? She could be the antidote to loneliness that you’re looking for.
Since when had he and Alex got so touchy-feely? Cam groaned again. Since Beth had dragged them forcibly out of their individual man-caves—for a sub, she could be an almighty pain in a Dom’s backside. A half-smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. A beautiful pain, granted.
His thoughts went back to Alex’s words. Loneliness and being alone. Two quite different concepts, and Cam had known plenty of both during his life—far too well. They had become a way of life nearly forty years ago, when he was just a child. He’d learned very quickly to push the loneliness into the shadowy corners of his life. Being alone was simply a physical state that came and went.
Although he’d been very much a part of Beth and Alex’s life together—his regular weekend visits to Winterleigh had always included an invitation from Beth, as the sub in the mix, to join them for a mutually agreeable play session each night—just recently, he’d started to find it more difficult to keep the loneliness at bay. More and more, he’d found himself wanting what his friends had. The closeness they shared meant that neither of them would ever feel lonely again.
What they had was special and because of that he’d started to distance himself from the couple as well—he didn’t want to intrude. Hence his recent extended trip to the Middle East.
He didn’t begrudge Alex the luck of having Beth in his life—he’d just wondered if he could be as fortunate, or if he was doomed to the disappointment of failing to achieve the perfection he saw in their relationship.
But now he’d met Stacie and what had started out as a simple act of goodwill towards a stranded traveller was becoming more complicated with each passing hour. He was attracted to her in a way he hadn’t been attracted to any woman for a long time, but she was too young, he was too old, and he had needs that were very…specific.
And still he wanted her.
Cam thought of the unattached subs he knew at the club, the ones who knew what he needed from them and what he could give them in return. Those were purely transactional relationships, a temporary exchange of power resulting in an evening’s pleasure for both parties. None of them stirred him the way Stacie did, a woman he’d known for a matter of hours and who knew nothing of the public and private worlds he inhabited.
His professional life, both in the service of Her Majesty and in the private sector, had shown him the horrors mankind was capable of inflicting on guilty and innocent alike. As for his personal life…not everyone would or could understand the significance of D/s when it came to what made him the man he was.
Cam found himself craving sleep, the kind of deep dreamless sleep that would vanquish the images playing across his mind. One in particular persisted—Stacie at the club, tied with silk ropes chosen to compliment her colouring, trusting him to take her to the heights of pleasure, where he would send her soaring into subspace, set her free to fly wherever her desires would take her, and be there to catch her and care for her when she returned to earth.
With his hand still on his cock, he rolled onto his back. Thighs tensed, his grip became firmer as his fist moved up and down. In his mind, however, it wasn’t his hand that sheathed his cock but Stacie’s body as she rode him and took her pleasure. Tight and heavy, his balls drew up and all of a sudden, in an orgasm that almost shattered his spine, his hips made one final thrust upwards and he came, his seed spattering messily across his abdomen and chest.
When he could move again Cam headed for the bathroom. He leaned on the edge of the basin, looking at his reflection with disgust as he rubbed at the sticky white streaks smeared across his belly. Was he really reduced to this?
He closed his eyes, mouth briefly curved into a grimace at the direction his thoughts were taking. He didn’t want to imagine what it might be like to hear a soft voice speak his name, feel a gentle hand on his arm, the curves of a body that was all woman beside him…see storm-grey eyes looking at him with passion and desire…tenderness and love…
Stacie woke early. She grabbed her watch from the bedside table and groaned when she saw just how early. Were there really two six o’clocks in one day? It would seem so.
Given the circumstances, she shouldn’t have been surprised to wake at this ungodly hour. It was probably more than a little foolish for her to have hoped that things would look better after a good night’s sleep. For one thing, she hadn’t exactly had a good night’s sleep to begin with. The reason for that made her stomach churn again—when she’d checked her mobile phone before going to bed, there’d been another batch of messages from her ex, each more abusive than the last. Only a day ago that sort of behaviour had sent her scurrying out of town—today it just pissed her off, and when she got back home, she wasn’t going to let him get away with it again.
And then there was her car. That was a far more pressing problem than Jonty. What on earth was she going to do about that if it couldn’t be fixed?
“No use borrowing trouble,” she muttered. Cam could easily have been wrong about it. For all she knew, all it needed was some new part or other and a little—okay, maybe a lot of sweet-talking from an experienced mechanic.
Stacie stretched, using the time to collect what remained of her thoughts. There wasn’t much and most of that seemed to have something to do with Cam Fraser. She hadn’t been able to get the man out of her mind or out of her dreams. Not after the kiss he’d given her before saying goodnight. Just as well she’d soon be on her way and he’d be nothing more than a memory.
What the hell was wron
g with her? This obsession with someone she’d only just met was stupid, but the more she tried to rationalise it away, the more she felt drawn to the tattooed mountain of a man who’d made her feel more cared for in a few hours than Jonty had at any point in their relationship.
Even now, she couldn’t stop thinking about Cam—the sound of his voice, the colour of his eyes, the way his mouth tasted. How could an obsession start so quickly and still burn so fiercely?
And why couldn’t she stop wondering if he’d send her on her way with one last kiss?
~~*~~
“Stacie doesn’t know it yet, but she is going to do me a massive favour and get both of you out from under my feet, because even though I’m quite sure that all she needs is a lift to her car, you are both going with her to make sure everything’s all right. Stan’s on his way from the village, so I suggest that the two of you get your arses into gear and go. Now!”
Having enjoyed one of Beth’s delicious cooked breakfasts, Cam watched with barely stifled amusement as Alex opened his mouth to object, only to shut it abruptly when his wife raised a chastising finger, a look of sheer menace in her bewitching eyes. “A pussy-whipped Dom,” he murmured under his breath with a grin, knowing it would irritate Alex no end. “Who’d have thought it? Now I’ve seen it all.”
“And you can stop smirking, Cam Fraser! You heard what I said—I want both of you out of here. I have things to do before the caterers get here, and I need to get changed!”
“And fifteen-all,” Alex shot back at his friend, adding darkly, “Oh, she is not getting away with that.”
Cam knew exactly what his friend was planning by way of retribution—it would involve Alex’s hand coming into repeated contact with his wife’s curvaceous rear. “I wouldn’t bother,” he advised as they both exited the kitchen. “You know she’ll only enjoy it.”
“Remind me again why I married her.”
Love Is Danger (Club Aegis Book 3) Page 4