by Simply BWWM
He set the empty glass down and walked toward her, stopping at the side of the desk as she watched him and listened.
“I couldn’t keep away from you. Then, at the wedding, you pushed me away so much that it just made everything I was feeling that much stronger, that much worse. I couldn’t stand the thought that I couldn’t have you. I wanted you and knew that there was something going on inside of you too, that you could feel this powerful chemistry that we have between us. I saw you react to me so many times. I knew you felt something too. That’s what brought me to your room after the wedding. I had to see if you were still feeling what I was, and you were, and it was one of the best nights of my life.” His eyes were steady on hers as he opened up to her.
The anger in her was still tremendously strong. She lifted her chin stubbornly. “Well, thank you for the explanation. It makes sense, and I can see why you were that way, though it was awful on my end to have to go through it, but it certainly doesn’t solve our problems, and it isn’t the only thing wrong by a long shot.”
He frowned sharply. “What else is the matter? Let’s talk about it.”
Natalie clenched her jaw. “Oh, we need to talk about it. You’re a playboy, and I’m not about to be just another one of the girls that you’ve played. I’m not a notch in your bedpost that you can carve in and then move along to the next girl. That’s not who I am at all. Because of that, I don’t want you to touch me again.”
She couldn’t believe that she had said it, but she definitely meant it. She kept her chin up, and she held her ground.
His mouth fell open. “A playboy? Well, okay, maybe I’ve had a few girlfriends here and there, but that doesn’t have anything to do with you! What are you talking about? Are you holding my past against me?” His tone sharpened, and she saw his eyes flash.
“No.” She shook her head. “Right now, I’m holding today against you, and the day that we were at the yacht. The redheaded woman who was kissing you on the yacht, Kat, I think her name is, she came by here today to pick up her clothes from your bedroom. Now, if you want to be a playboy, you go right on ahead and do it. You have as many girls as you want to, but while you’re doing that, you won’t lay a finger on me. I’m not one to share a man I’m with, and that includes any with whom I’m having an intimate relationship. I’m a monogamous relationship kind of woman, and I’m not about to give myself to anyone who is sleeping around with other women. So, we’re finished. Have all the ladies you want.”
She meant it, though she hated saying it. He gaped at her, stunned for a moment. Natalie turned then and closed her laptop, picking it up in her arms. She walked around Cameron and headed for the door as he began to speak.
“Wait a minute; Kat came by to get her clothes and you… you think that…” He trailed off, but she was already gone. She had left the library and gone to her room, closing and locking the door behind her.
She set her laptop down on the dresser in her room and dropped her face into her hands as tears began to spill from her eyes, running down her face. Her heart felt like it had been ripped into pieces. She couldn’t believe that she could care so much for someone who didn’t care enough for her. She couldn’t believe that she had given herself to someone who did not value her intimacy as he should have.
Natalie laid down on her bed and buried her face into the pillows there, sobbing until she cried herself to sleep. There was no knock on the door, and there was no disturbance. When she woke, she showered and dressed and put a little cream on her slightly puffy eyes. She promised herself that she was going to remain strong. She wasn’t going to be with him again while he was sleeping around with other people and not caring about her at all.
In the days that followed, she refused to speak to him or even to be in the same room that he was in, though every time he saw her he tried to be close to her, tried to talk with her, and tried to make some kind of amends with her. It didn’t work, and it didn’t help. She wouldn’t have anything to do with him, so after a while, he gave her the space that she wanted, and he stayed most of the time in his studio, painting.
She was coming out of the library one day, and she heard him and looked through the sitting room to the foyer. He had his car keys in his hand, and he walked out of the house and closed the door behind him. She stood there for a minute thinking about him. She had started spending a lot of time thinking about him, though she knew that she shouldn’t be.
Natalie thought of their time together in her bed and in the pool, and then she thought of the painting that he had done of the woman coming out of the pool, and she wondered again if it was her or not.
Curiosity held fast to her, and she reasoned that since he was gone, she might step into his studio for a moment and get another good look at the painting to see if it was really her coming out of the pool or not.
She went through the house to his suites. The door that led into his hallway was open, though the door to the studio was closed. She bit at her lower lip and turned the handle on the door, pushing it open. It gave way easily, and a moment later, she stepped inside the big room.
It looked much as it had the last time that she had been in it, save for the fact that there were more paintings of a black woman, a young black woman who looked remarkably, and even undeniably, like her. It wasn’t even just more paintings; it was at least a dozen more.
Her eyes widened, and her mouth fell open as she gazed around the room at all of them. Some were full-figured: the woman walking in a flowing dress, the woman sleeping, her sitting at a desk thinking, her body in full. There were close-up paintings: her laughing, her sleeping, her body in exquisite detail.
It was a beautiful woman, and each of the paintings, while different, showed different sides of her, but it was plain to see that all of them were the same woman, and all of them looked exactly like her.
Her breath caught in her chest, and her hand flew to her mouth. She went to each one, looking closely at them and losing herself in them. They were incredible works of art, beautifully done, and she was astounded and flattered and stunned.
For the first time, she saw herself through his eyes, the way that he saw her, and it was not only eye-opening, but it was heart-opening as well. She could never have guessed that he saw so much in her and yet never said anything about it.
There was a quiet noise, and she turned around quickly in place to see Cameron standing in the doorway. He had stopped short where he was and was staring at her, his cell phone in one hand as if he had just gotten off of a phone call and was putting it away, but froze in the process.
His face was serious, and his eyes were unreadable. He walked toward her slowly, watching her the entire time, and she spoke softly to him.
“Is this me? It looks like me.” She swallowed hard. “Is this how you see me?” she asked, knowing the answer already but needing to hear it from him.
Cameron didn’t stop until he was directly in front of her. He reached his hand up and let his finger trail down her cheek. “It is you, and this is how I see you. Each one in different lights, different shades of life. It’s all you. Beautiful. Distant. Haunting.”
Her heart flipped over in her chest, and he leaned closer to her and kissed her lips tenderly and sweetly. She closed her eyes and let him, feeling overwhelmed at the beauty around her, at the open-heartedness of it all, and at his honesty with her.
Sparks flew as his sweet kiss began to deepen, and he parted her lips with hers and tasted her tongue, twisting his around it as his arms closed around her body, and he pulled her closer to him. She kissed him back, but then pulled away slightly as the warning bells in the back of her mind and her own sense of self-preservation worked to stop her.
“I shouldn’t…” she said just above a whisper, feeling dizzy and warm in his embrace.
He gazed into her eyes and spoke in a low voice. “I’ve tasted you and you’re like no other woman I’ve known. You’re like a drug to me; I can’t stop thinking about you, can’t stay away from you. Pleas
e, give this to me. Share this with me; it’s so incredible.”
Cameron closed the sliver of distance between them as she gasped, kissing her again, deeply and hungrily. She barely felt his hands moving so lightly over her clothes that she was surprised when she realized that they had fallen to the floor, and his met hers there a moment later.
He drew her to the sofa, pulling her down on top of him so that she was straddling him, and he held her to him tightly as he entered her slowly, savoring every moment of it. She closed her eyes and lost her breath, aching to feel him there, loving the pleasure he gave her and ignoring the silent arguments in the back of her mind that kept telling her that she shouldn’t be there with him, moving her body with his, loving him the way that she was, but his hands were firm on her, his fingers pressed into her, and his mouth canvassed her from her lips to her breasts, drinking her in as they moved together, heady with the intense passion that burned so hotly between them.
She rode him a long while, and she could tell that he was making it last as long as he could. She wondered for the briefest of moments if he was stretching the time with her out and making it last because he knew that she might keep her distance from him again. He held her tight to him, almost as if he was loving her as intensely as he could, holding on so that he didn’t have to let go.
Their bodies beaded with sweat and trembled with ecstasy until at last they both arced and cried out as their orgasms rocked through them. She felt the heat and tension in her begin to drift away, and it was as if her senses, her common sense, had been waiting right on the precipice of her pleasure.
Her mind chastised her. She knew that she shouldn’t have done it. She had no business being there with him, not knowing if he was with anyone else, not knowing if it even meant anything more to him to be with her than just the simple act of having sex. Anger flashed through her, and she pushed herself up off of him. She knew that she never should have done it, but she had been weak; she had given in to lust and pleasure and romance. She had given in to heady desire and breathless need, and it had wound her right back up in the same place that she had been trying to get out of.
She went straight for her clothes and began to pull them back on swiftly, but he rose from the sofa and came after her.
“What are you doing? Please don’t go! Please stay here with me. I want you to stay here with me,” he pleaded, reaching for her arm. When his hand closed around it, she jerked it back from him, and he blinked at her in surprise.
“No. I’m not going to stay. I never should have come in here in the first place, and I never should have slept with you again. This was a mistake,” she replied, and he stared at her, crestfallen, as she hurried from his studio and left him there alone.
Natalie went back to her own room and immediately took a long hot shower just so that she could think. She needed to think. She needed to remember all the reasons why she wasn’t going to let him touch her again, why she wasn’t going to be intimate with him again. He was a playboy. She knew that he had other girlfriends, Kat included, and she didn’t want to be a part of that, no matter how obsessed he was with her.
She had to find a solution. Living there with him in the Brookes’ mansion was like being two animals trapped in a cage. She could only avoid him for so long before she would run into him again. She could only stay away from him until he came on to her too strongly for her to resist.
How many more times would he be too close to her, too hungry for her, and be able to kiss her into submission, taking her anywhere he wanted her: in her bed, in the swimming pool, in his studio, and who knows how many other places around the house.
Natalie finally realized that the only way that she was going to be able to get over him was if she didn’t live with her mother and Wilson. The only way that she was going to be able to free herself from her ties to Cameron would be if she left and moved out of the house. She would have to get her own place, and then she would have peace. Then, she would not have an obsessed playboy hungering after her while he held onto all of his other girlfriends. She couldn’t put up with him and his wide-open ways.
If she was going to be intimate with any man, she was going to have to mean everything to him, and she knew that Cameron wasn’t that man. With tears in her eyes, she knew that the only choice was to leave. She didn’t want to leave, but there was no other choice. For her own sanity and self-preservation, there was only one possibility. She had to leave and get her own place. Only then would she be truly free of Cameron Brookes.
Chapter8
Ophelia answered her phone with a smile. “Hey, girl! How are things going?”
The smile didn’t last long. She heard Natalie’s sniffles and immediately shifted to sympathy. “Oh no! What’s wrong?” she asked worriedly.
“I have to move,” Natalie told her miserably.
“Move?” Ophelia couldn’t have sounded more surprised.
“Yes, move.”
“Why? What happened?” Ophelia’s tone was filled with disbelief.
“I just can’t handle living here with Cameron any longer. It’s much too complicated with him. He keeps coming on to me, and I keep meaning to say no and mean no, but he starts kissing me and touching me, and it’s all over. I know that if I stay here, I won’t be able to stop us from having sex in the future. I have no willpower with him. It’s just not there. It gets lost in all the chemistry and emotion and really amazing sex, and then I’m left with nothing but regret. I can’t keep doing this!” Natalie wiped at her eyes and tried to stop crying, but it was a struggle for her.
“Oh honey, I am so sorry. I knew it was a bad idea to get mixed up with that beautiful boy.” Ophelia clicked the back of her tongue in disapproval.
“You were right! I thought I could just make up my mind to stay away from him. I thought I could tell him not to touch me and he wouldn’t. Well, none of that worked. He gets too close to me and starts kissing me, and it’s all over. I want him, and he wants me, and then at the end there’s nothing but regret. That’s not what I want. If I’m going to be in a relationship with anyone, I want it to be a good relationship, a relationship that is meaningful on both sides, and one in which we are loyal to one another and completely monogamous, and he’s not running around with a dozen other women. I want that. I deserve that: a good relationship with a guy who only wants me. Is that too much to ask for? I don’t think that it is.” She was in her bedroom, pacing back and forth as her ire began to build again.
“No, you’re right. That’s not asking too much. That’s what most healthy relationships are like: one person loving one other person and sharing their lives with them. That’s the dream, isn’t it? That’s what most people want. Hell, even I want that, though I’m not sure I want it for a little while longer. But you, you might just be right. If he’s not going to stop coming after you while you’re in that house, then the best thing that you can do is get out of the house.” Ophelia sounded heartbroken for her.
Natalie began to weep. “I wanted to be here so that I could be close to my mother. She’s the only reason I even came back, and none of this other crap with Cameron was supposed to happen. None of it. I was supposed to be able to be here and to enjoy her time and company and live with her as mother and daughter again for a while before I hit the road again. Now, that can’t happen. It can’t happen because he can’t keep his hands or eyes or his mind off of me, and he happens to do that to a lot of women. I refuse to be just another notch in his playboy bedpost! Since he’s not going to stop, that just leaves me with no other choice, and it’s so frustrating!”
“Now, Natalie, you’re going to be all right. Just get your own place, and then you can hang out with your mom whenever you want; just do it away from the Brookes’ house.” Ophelia tried to soften the blow of reality. It wasn’t much help to Natalie, but it was something.
“You’re right.” Natalie sniffed and wiped at her eyes again. “I guess I don’t have to totally give her up. It’s not going to be easy though. How do I
explain why I’m moving out and why I won’t be interested in doing many family functions?”