“Are you sure? Because I think you do.” I entered her, just enough to torment her and flexed my hips.
Her breathing intensified and her eyes went glassy.
“Tell me you want this cock in your dripping pussy.” I pulled back out and rubbed the head over her pussy, making sure to come close to but never quite touch her aching clit. “All you have to do is say the word and it’s yours.”
Her hips bucked and her nails dug into my back. “Please,” she begged.
“Say it.”
“Cameron …”
“Say you want my cock Sarah.”
When she screamed out “Oh Christ, I want that perfect, delicious, fucking amazing cock deep in my pussy!” I plunged into the slippery heat of her and lost myself.
“Oh god Cameron. I’m going to come!”
Before she did though, I pulled nearly all the way out her and then in one fluid motion glided back in and upward, thrusting deep to hit her g-spot. All at once she broke apart and uncontrollable, shuddering contractions wracked her body.
“I want you to come with me when I come.” I buried my face in the crook of her neck and sucked, bit, and laved, my cock slinking in and out of her plush heat.
“I can’t take any more,” she whispered as I felt the evidence of her last orgasm coat me from root to tip.
“Yes you can.” I ground my pelvis against her sensitive clit. “Come with me Sarah.”
Dazed with an intoxicating combination of exhaustion and a pleasure I knew bordered on pain, her next orgasm hit, throwing her over the edge and she sobbed as her body trembled beneath me. “My body … my heart …” she choked out between ragged breaths, “It’s not my own anymore. You own me, completely.”
She was wrong. She owned me.
With a powerful, driving thrust my balls contracted and my vision blurred as I joined her with an explosion of release that tore me apart and knitted me back together again. In a moment of blinding clarity, I knew I’d give up everything I had, everything to come, if it meant I could be with her always.
One heartbeat, ten, maybe a million beats later, she opened her eyes and her kiss-swollen lips tipped up in an exhausted smile and I saw my future in her eyes. In the span of an instant I witnessed us growing old side by side, her name the last word on my lips before I departed this earth, and I wanted that more than anything I’d ever wanted before in my life.
“Marry me Sarah,” I choked out before burying my head in the crook of her neck.
From the first moment I realized I was in love with Sarah Travers, my best friend and the best person I’d ever known, I’d imagined the moment I’d ask her to marry me. After picking up the ring from my parents, I’d planned all manner of proposals in my head, but none of them had ever looked like this. Even though I couldn’t bring myself to regret how I’d done it, I hoped I hadn’t just made the most colossal mistake yet.
His words hit me like a two-ton truck, a crash that obliterated my defenses. Marry him? He couldn’t be serious. And yet …why not?
Other marriages – even a number of successful marriages – had been built on less. Hell, if this were Regency England we’d have been betrothed after knowing each other only a couple of weeks, and that was only if we were lucky. And we certainly wouldn’t have been able to do what we’d just done, repeatedly, in an effort to determine if we suited. Safe to say, there was no question of our physical compatibility. Rarely did reality live up to fantasy, but in our case, reality had to be even better.
In my experience, sex was rarely, if ever, this good. I’d lost my virginity at 18 to my high school boyfriend (prom night, how cliché) in what had proven to be a whole lot of anticipation and not a lot of exhilaration, and in the ensuing 15 years I’d had only two or three lovers who’d made my toes curl. What Cameron and I had though? That was some next level shit.
If I had to say what made it different with him, it was the fact that I was wholly invested. It sounded trite, but it wasn’t just sex with Cameron. It was making love. Pure, unadulterated love. Sure I could demand he take me harder and he could use all sorts of dirty language to turn me on, but when it was like it’d just been? We’d made love with our hearts as well as our bodies. Don’t get me wrong, not every we came together was some special special snowflake, transcendent experience where our hearts, minds, and souls united in harmony. There had been some down and dirty fucking thrown in for good measure, but when he gazed at me with wonder and awe while our bodies were joined, I knew to the depths of my soul that what we had together was some special snowflake shit. That it mattered. That it was the foundation something greater would be built upon.
But marry him? Could I? Things were happening so damn fast and a part of me felt like we needed to slow down, take a minute. Only days ago, I’d thought our friendship over for good and now I was contemplating the reality of becoming his wife. Not that I hadn’t dreamed about it in the hidden recesses of my heart, but that was the stuff of fantasy. This wasn’t make believe. His proposal hadn’t been something he’d thrown out in the heat of the moment because I’d overwhelmed him with my magical vagina. The feelings behind it had been real. I knew that, because I knew him. But still …
“Say something, please,” he begged and I realized several moments had passed since he’d changed everything between us – again. I’d been rattling around in my head, his words crashing around my skull, my thoughts coming a mile a minute as I tried to work through whether or not I could actually do it, say the words he wanted to hear, and meanwhile he’d been waiting for my answer. Terrified at what I’d say, I could tell, by the fact that he was even now trembling in my arms.
I wrapped my arms around him and crushed him to me tightly. I didn’t want to say no, I knew that much for certain, but I also didn’t know if I could say yes.
We had a long established friendship; that much was true. Way more than friendship, actually. Cameron was everything to me. And I’d known that well before those shots of tequila had tipped my world on its axis. I had loved him in secret for so long that I’d begun to think of our friendship differently. To think of him differently. Tonight had turned that thinking on its head once again and I was feeling spun out of control.
Once we’d decided to give our relationship a shot, I assumed at some point we would sit down and discuss the future, how we’d transition our relationship from friends to lovers. There were legitimate issues to sort through, details that needed to be hammered out, not the least of which was the other major change in Cameron’s life – being cast in Broderick’s movie. And yet that hadn’t happened.
Okay, so I’d thought about this way too much – sue me – but there hadn’t been a day in the past year where I hadn’t wondered what it would be like to be with him. And yeah, I’d concocted this fantasy narrative where we’d be so sickeningly perfect together that other couples would hate us. I’d be wonderfully devoted to him and everything between us would be just terrific. Because when you’re building up your fantasy life? There was no room for the unpleasant truths of reality. Namely, being with a man in Cameron’s position actually came with a whole lot of challenges. I’d watched women throw themselves at him when they had no idea who he was. Add legitimate fame and star power on top of his looks and it’d be a million times worse. And being married to all that? Well, that’d probably harder than anything I’d experienced in life thus far. We’d face pressure other couples couldn’t imagine. No part of my secret daydream had ever taken into account Cameron being a bonafide movie star.
I’d already experienced first-hand what the entertainment press and gossip bloggers – not to mention the rabid fandom! – were like where his relationships were concerned. There was no forgetting they’d already had him paired off with the most beautiful of friends and that they’d basically already written the narrative they wanted without having ever heard him speak about his private life. Which reminded me, I still had to deal with the whole PR fiasco come Monday.
Could I let my fear of what th
e gossip machine would say about Cameron and me influence my decision? I didn’t want it to and yet … I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified of how they’d paint me. My earlier words to Cameron flitted through my mind: men who look like him didn’t fall in love with women who looked like me, especially not in Hollywood where a female’s currency was defined by her measurements. I knew the first time I saw a picture of us labeled “Cameron Scott and friend” I’d go ape shit. Or, even worse, when I was relegated to that horrible caption, “Cameron Scott and unidentified female.”
If I remained Cameron’s girlfriend, the likely truth was I would always be consigned to the background of his public persona. As his wife though? They would be forced to acknowledge me. Even if the photos were only ever labeled “Cameron Scott and wife” I’d exist in that world. They couldn’t push me into the shadows then. It angered me to no end that a smart, funny, loyal, woman like me would always be viewed as less than. Any man would be lucky to have me. I knew this, and yet the devil on my shoulder told me other people wouldn’t think so.
I went from resigned to my fate to indignant in the flash of a nanosecond. So what if I didn’t live up to Hollywood’s ideal of beauty? Cameron saw me for who I was and he loved me for it. I was not going to let someone else’s standard of beauty, love, or anything else I didn’t agree with keep me from fighting for the one thing I wanted most – Cameron.
I took a deep breath and let the surety of my decision wash over me, push away any and all doubts. Settle in my head and my heart.
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Yes?” Cameron pushed up onto his forearms and stared down at me. I saw surprise flash in his eyes.
“Yes,” I repeated, a stupid happy smile stretching across my face.
Cameron’s smile echoed my own and when he grabbed my hands and brought them to his lips, he winced. We’d been so careful the past couple of days with his hand, that this was the first time he’d been in pain since early yesterday afternoon.
“Will you promise you’ll get that looked at tomorrow?”
“Yes ma’am.”
Cameron laughed, launching himself from the bed and digging his phone out of his jeans’ pocket. His thumbs flew over the keyboard and he continued chuckling to himself. The click, clack, click of the virtual keyboard sounded as he typed, and I wondered what he was saying and to who. Before I could ask, the whoosh of a message being sent echoed in the room and then the beep, beep, beep on my phone signaled I’d received a new text message.
I raised my eyebrow, a silent question, and he laughed again. Crawling his way toward me on the bed, his eyes sparked with mischief and I had to laugh back. I’d always thought Cameron a happy person, but in the minutes since I’d agreed to marry him, that happiness had become a pulsing, living thing. He was joyful and carefree in a way I was surprised to realize I hadn’t seen in many, many months. Had the secret of his love for me weighed as heavily on him as mine had on me? Was that why over the past few months he’d seemed a dimmer version of his best self?
He nudged me into the pillows at my bad and straddled me, his chest hovering over my face. It took every ounce of willpower I had not to lick the muscled expanse of skin before me, to bite and suckle it as I wanted to. I grinned as a memory from last summer popped into my head. Knowing my secret was safe with her, I’d confided to a work friend who’d come to one of my barbeques that I wanted to lick Cameron from head to toe. She’d taken one look at him, ran her eyes up and down his body, and had said, “Yup, I can see that.” How was it that I could do that now, whenever I wanted? It was like I’d won the Beautiful Man Lottery.
Before I could put my plans of licking him to distraction into play, Cameron grabbed my phone off of the bedside table and dropped back on his haunches as he typed in my four-digit passcode and handed it to me.
I took it, asking, “Wait, you know my secret code?”
He shrugged. “Of course. You know mine too.”
“Yeah, but yours is easy. 1-1-1-1 isn’t exactly quantum physics.”
“Neither is your birthday.” He had me there. “You have a message,” he nodded to the device in my hand.
I hit the green icon and saw a new message where the “to” field had been populated with the names and numbers of several of our friends. Below was a selfie I’d taken four months ago, me smiling cheerfully at the camera while Cameron’s lips rested playfully on my cheek in a quick, stolen kiss.
Despite the few – okay, let’s be real, the many – beers I’d consumed that afternoon, I recalled the moment the photo had been taken perfectly. A bunch of us were horsing around in James and Charlie’s backyard, waiting for him to finish cooking the steaks on the grill. The sun was shining, birds were chirping, and it was a glorious Saturday afternoon in Southern California.
While my friends laughed, talked, and bantered amongst themselves, I pulled out my phone and started taking pictures. After about twenty snaps of couples, friends, groups of friends, I went to put my phone away when Cameron trotted over to complain that I hadn’t taken a picture of us. Frankly, I’d been surprised he’d noticed.
I’d been trying to keep my distance from him because I wasn’t doing too well dealing with my unrequited love. If we were out in a group, I could manage, just barely, but I got through it. But when he started paying too much attention to me or singled me out, I worried I’d say or do something that would give my feelings away. So I’d had done my best to avoid those situations and thought I’d done a good job abstaining from one-on-one time with him until he sauntered over and demanded I take the picture. Avoiding taking the photo after he’d asked me to would have put too much scrutiny on my reasons for dodging him all day and that was scrutiny I didn’t think I could hold up under.
So I wrapped my arm around him to pull him in close, our heads nearly touching, and told him to smile on the count of three. Just as I moved my finger to hit the button Cameron turned his face and planted a kiss on my cheek. There was nothing overtly romantic about the gesture but it flustered me nonetheless. Looking at the photo now you’d never guess that seconds later I’d hidden away in the bathroom, talking myself down from the proverbial ledge. The picture staring back at me was of two happy, carefree people, a sweet, easy moment captured forever.
Now I knew Cameron had had his own struggles that day, his love for me locked away in the safety of his heart. I looked down at the phone in my hand, seeing the photograph in an entirely new light, all of our interactions for the last several months in a whole new way. My lips hitched up in a sad, rueful smile. We’d wasted so much time.
My thoughts back in the present, I read the text accompanying the photo.
Cameron: The pleasure of your company is requested tomorrow at noon to celebrate the engagement of Cameron Scott and Sarah Travers. Bring all the booze you have because the party starts at noon!”
As I read the words reality crashed over me and I started shaking. My eyes welled with tears that soon cascaded down my face in streaming rivulets as a sob broke free from my mouth. It was real. We were real. Cameron had just told all of our friends we were getting married. He picked me up like I weighed nothing and sat me in his lap, hugging me to his body while I released all the pent up emotions I’d been holding in for as long as I could remember. All the heartache, the secrets, and unfulfilled desires were nothing compared to the sheer joy and unabashed happiness I felt now.
Cameron pushed my hair off my face and wiped away my tears with the pads of his thumbs. “Shhh … don’t cry sweetheart.” He kissed my forehead and brought my face to rest against his chest while he rocked me back and forth. In the background, our phones dinged, likely angry responses that Cameron had texted them this early. The congratulations would come later.
When I had cried myself dry, I wiped my face, hugged Cameron quickly, and climbed from his lap. My face was a red, splotchy mess but I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop smiling. “It looks like we’re throwing a party so we better go shopping.”
The c
lock read 4 a.m. which meant both Whole Foods and Gelson’s were still closed, but this wasn’t the first time I’d needed to make a grocery run after the sun had gone down or before it’d come back up. The Ralph’s on Sunset, open 24 hours for all your middle-of-the-night needs, would have everything we’d need to feed our friends. We were sure to encounter a veritable who’s who of weirdoes at this time of the morning, but that was Hollywood for you.
“But first I need to shower.”
There was absolutely no way I was leaving the house in my current state. Images of our lovemaking came back to me, snippets of our bodies coming together in ecstasy, Cameron’s face taut as he loomed over me, coming inside of me, crying out my name as he climaxed. I blushed and felt a wicked heat crawl up my body that had nothing to do with the temperature in my bedroom. I turned to walk into the bathroom – intent on taking a cold shower – but before I could reach the doorway, Cameron was behind me, wrapping his arms around my middle and kissing the back of my neck where it met the slope of my back. “Come back to bed,” he whispered in my ear. “First we need to celebrate, Mrs. Scott.”
His words sent a tremor through me, the knowledge that someday soon I would indeed be his wife. Mrs. Cameron Scott. Sarah Travers Scott. Sarah Scott.
Yes, we had a lot to celebrate.
I leaned into his body and felt his erection, already hard and wanting, press against me. How he had it in him to make love to me so soon I didn’t know but I wasn’t going to question my good fortune. After all, not every woman got to marry a man who fulfilled all of her wildest fantasies. And we were just getting started.
Two hours later we walked through the store picking up provisions for the party. To my utter delight, Cameron seemed unable to keep himself from touching me. When our trip began to take longer than it should have because he needed me within an arm’s reach at all times, I recommended we split up and he rolled his eyes and told me that wasn’t going to happen.
Lucky Star: A Hollywood Love Story Page 10