“I would if I was dating any of them. But considering Paula is my cousin on my dad’s side, and the girl from the ski slope is married to my friend from college, and Tammy is in a committed relationship with my other friend—Angela—I think it would be in seriously bad form to date any of them. But if you would like to talk about Instagram, I am here for it. I really enjoyed watching your relationship with Forehead Freddy from the IG bench.”
My head snapped back. “Who?”
“The guy with the big forehead who always puts his arms around you and I can never see his fucking hand so I have no idea where he’s grabbing you and it literally devoured me every time you posted a picture of the two of you.”
“You mean Charles?”
He threw his arms out to the sides, slapping them against his thighs. “I don’t know!”
“Oh, good Lord, Cam. Charles is a very, very married art teacher at my school. He helps with the bag lunch program, likes to take pictures, and brings me succulent clippings once a month. That is the extent of our relationship.”
He shut his mouth and cut his gaze off to the side. “Well…that is…good to know.”
An unlikely smile curled my lips. “You stalk my Instagram?”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t give me shit. It’s part of being on the hook.”
We stood there in silence for a long minute.
Camden caught his breath, fascinated with his shoes.
I felt like a heel, but I was utterly enthralled by how he was one rung on the ladder away from being a monk.
“Why haven’t you ever been with anyone else?”
His head popped up, his gaze incredulous. “Because I want you! Why is this such a difficult concept?” His long legs swallowed the distance between us. Grabbing my hand, he pressed it into his chest, his heart pounding beneath it. “Five years, five hundred years—it doesn’t matter. I want you, Nora. In my life. In my bed. At my side. Any and every way I can have you. I only want you. I don’t care if it’s messy or complicated. I don’t care if you are still working through the shit-hand life dealt you. I don’t care how it comes or what it looks like. I only want you.” He paused to take a breath, but I’d heard enough.
I wanted all those things too. No, I wasn’t perfect—and messy and complicated were literally the definition of my life.
But I loved him.
My entire life, I had loved Freaking Camden Cole. That had never changed.
I didn’t just press my lips to his; my mouth collided with his like a hurricane hitting the coast. He groaned into my mouth, his tongue tangling with mine, desperate and commanding. I pressed up onto my toes and circled my arms around his neck, but I couldn’t get close enough and I ended up crawling up his strong body.
His hands immediately went to my ass. He ground his cock into me through the confines of his jeans.
“Fuck,” he hissed.
“Bed. Room,” I panted between kisses.
With heavy steps that were somehow frenzied yet purposeful, he carried me down the hall, straight to my bed. As if taking me to bed were old hat and not only the second time he'd done it, he acted with intention and grace. How was it even possible that, with such limited experience, our bodies recognized the desire they had for one another without much thought or concentration at all?
“Every day. Every night. This need for you never stops,” he rumbled, moving his attention to my neck, sucking and licking until chills exploded across my skin. “You’re mine.”
“I’ve always been yours,” I whispered. “Only yours.”
Leaning to one side, his wandering hand lifted my shirt, the one I’d stolen from him all those years ago. The black bralette I’d tugged on before letting him in didn’t hide much.
But I didn’t want to hide from Camden.
Not anymore.
Not ever again.
Crisscrossing my arms, I tore both the shirt and the bra off in one swoop.
He hissed through his teeth and bit his lower lip, a fire sparking in his blue eyes.
Then I lost sight of them altogether as his head dipped low and he sealed his warm mouth over my nipple.
“Oh, God!” I cried, thrusting a hand into the top of his hair.
“Don’t you ever fucking tell me you aren’t perfect,” he rumbled.
With Camden, I’d always felt perfect. It was when we were apart that my mind would make up stories and scenarios where I wasn’t good enough or couldn’t ever be who he deserved.
Realization hit me. The walls I’d built around my heart crumbled around us one by one.
“Cam, please,” I choked.
He kept his head down, dividing his sensual attention between my breasts. Nipping and sucking, teasing and kneading. “Swear to me this is it. I can’t take another fucking goodbye. Never again. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” I breathed.
He suddenly sat up. “Say it, Nora. Say you're really mine.”
It required exactly no thought to answer. “I’ve always belonged to you, the same way you belong to me.”
An inferno ignited in his eyes as he hooked two fingers under the waistband of my sweats, tugging them down. My panties followed just as quickly, and in the next blink, his shirt joined them on the floor.
Naked, I sat up and traced the ridges of his abs up to his pecs. He stared down at me, his lusty gaze tracking my every movement.
I kissed my way down his stomach to the sexy V. His breath hitched when I popped open the button on his jeans.
“Make love to me, Cam.”
A growl vibrated in his chest as he kicked his jeans off. When his lips found mine again, the frenzy returned tenfold.
He kissed me hard and his hands roamed my soft curves while I raked my nails down his back, exploring the rigid planes.
Coaxing me to the edge, his long fingers played between my legs until I was breathless with urgency. But, no matter how I begged, Camden took his time, circling my clit between feathery strokes. My climax came in devastating waves with his name clinging to my lips.
“Fucking incredible,” he moaned, swallowing my pleasure as I rode out the wake.
Only then did Camden move on top of me. Those blue eyes that had claimed me when I was only a girl stared down at me, blazing with more love than I’d ever dreamed was possible.
But that was my Cam.
In that moment, I knew I would spend the rest of my life doing whatever it took to give that love back to him.
He entered me with a devastating control, the muscles on his back flexing with every thrust. It wasn’t long before he found a rhythm that drove us both wild. He uttered gravelly words into my neck, my name punctuating all of them, and I clung to him, ripples of pleasure building within me.
Unsure how much longer I could hold on, I locked my legs around his hips and urged him deeper. “Oh, God, I’m close.”
“Give it to me, Nora,” he ordered, his rhythm quickening.
My resolve snapped, and with a shattering climax, I unraveled beneath him.
“Yesss,” he hissed. “That’s it, baby. Oh, fuck, that’s it.”
One last drive and he seated himself to the hilt and emptied inside me.
We both lay there for several minutes, a tangled heap of arms and legs, chests heaving and hearts racing.
“Can you breathe?” he asked, his face hidden in the curve of my neck.
“Yeah.”
“Okay, good, because it’s going to be a while before I can move.”
I laughed, and his head popped up, a goofy smile doing nothing to hinder the sexiness that was Camden Cole disheveled post-orgasm.
“Hey, you,” he whispered.
I smoothed down his short, brown locks. “Hi.”
“I’m going to say something, and it might not sound like a compliment, but trust me. It is the highest praise I can give. Holy fuck. Being with you is infinitely better than the last five years I’ve spent with my hand.”
I lifted my palm into his line of sight and
gave him a finger wave. “Don’t I know it.”
His grin was so wide it looked like a toothpaste commercial. “I love you so fucking much.”
“Thank God, because you’re stuck with me now. And you should know I am currently suspended from my job, have a soon-to-be very empty rainy-day-slash-Louboutin fund, and I am out on bail with pending drug charges. So, congratulations.”
He chuckled. “If it means I’m lucky enough to keep you, I’ll take my chances.”
But as I lay there staring at him, sated and languid, my heart so full of love, I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to process it all, because he was wrong.
I was the lucky one.
“Come on, Nora. You’ve gotta have a preference,” he said, standing in my bedroom, a towel wrapped around his hips, his glorious abs on display, little droplets of water dripping from his hair. Plus, he had this irresistible glimmer in his bright-blue eyes.
It was early morning and I still hadn’t mustered the strength to get out of bed, though Camden in a towel was sparking some energy for other things.
After Camden had made love to me, we’d spent the day in bed—talking and laughing, kissing and touching. We never made it to get my drug test or to the brunch he’d promised me, but as the sun sank beneath the horizon and Camden’s mouth trailed down my body for the third time, I couldn’t bring myself to be concerned with anything else.
We were ravenous by dinner time, so we had pizza delivered and ate it around my coffee table in various degrees of undress. After that, we shifted to the sofa to cuddle for a change of pace. I laid my head on his shoulder and trailed my fingertips up and down his naked torso while he played with a strand of my hair. Every so often, he’d dip his head, press his lips to mine, and murmur, “We’re finally gonna to do this, right? Me and you?”
Every single time, I answered, “Forever, Cam.”
I hated how he still had doubts, but I understood. In the past, our times together were always punctuated with long goodbyes. He wasn’t wrong. I did think there was a physical and emotional destination. Like maybe I'd wake up one morning and everything would finally feel right. The brick wall of my past would melt away to reveal Camden and a golden path to our future.
But too much time had already been wasted.
I’d always been such a burden on the people who loved me. I didn’t want to put that on Camden’s shoulders too. I’d dreamed of being whole and having the ability to offer him something more than trouble for once.
But maybe the things I wanted to offer him weren’t the things he needed.
Choices. Everyone makes them.
But not all of them should be yours to make alone.
Which was exactly why, as I stared at him in that towel, the bright morning sun illuminating the room, as he impatiently waited for me to give him feedback on where we would be settling as a couple, I replied, “You are my preference, Cam. Where do you want to live?”
He prowled over to me, putting his knee to the bed before bending over for an entirely too chaste kiss. “I don’t know if you’d even like New York. We could always move out of the city, but even the suburbs are a whole different world than Clovert.”
I circled my arms around his neck and dragged him down for a lingering kiss. My body was sore from his constant attention the night before but it began to hum back to life. “You’re in New York though.”
He settled on his side and cradled his head in his hand, his elbow on the bed, and slid the blanket back to reveal my breasts. Tracing his finger around my nipple, he replied, “I am right now, but I only have a tiny studio apartment and it doesn’t even have a stove.”
After gliding my palm down his stomach, I tugged at the tucked fabric on his towel, popping it open. “I don’t need a stove. I need you.”
Smiling, he grabbed my wrist. “You’re not going to distract me from this conversation. We need to figure it out. Assuming we can get things settled this week with your case, I’ll need to get back to the city. Now, whether it’s to put in my notice and pack my stuff or to take a few days to scope out a house for us before you follow me is up to you. But I’m not leaving until we have a plan of action.”
“Then hurry up and make a plan so I can”—there was a damn blanket dividing us, but I scooted closer and rolled my hip, not surprisingly finding him hard and ready—“get back to other plans.”
He hummed deep in his throat. “Okay. So you’ll come with me to New York, then. What about your students? And your summer lunch program? And Joe? You know, Thea and Ramsey might decide to move back one day, but even if they don’t, New York is a long way from Georgia.”
Damn. He had a point.
And I really fucking hated that he had a point while I was so close to having him inside me again. “You are taking all the fun out of this with your rational questions.”
“Trust me. Nobody hates being rational right now more than I do.”
I sagged into the bed. “I haven’t really considered it all yet. As far as my family goes, I’ll miss them, but Joe has Misty and her kids around him, and we could always come back for visits, right?”
He kissed the tip of my nose. “Of course.”
“It might take a while, but I could probably get a job teaching in New York. Some of the other teachers at school might be willing to take over the lunch program.”
“Is that what you want?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, but after everything we’ve been through, I can’t ask you to give up your entire life and move back to Clovert. You’ve worked too hard to build your life—even while suffocating on my hook. I don’t want to be the hook anymore, Cam. I want to be a team for once.”
With an arm around my hips, he rolled me to my side, my chest coming flush with his. “Okay. We’ll figure it out. Maybe I can look around Clovert for opportunities. Then you can come up to New York and see if it’s even someplace you could see yourself being happy. Hell, maybe we compromise and move to somewhere totally different. My roots have only ever been with you.”
God, how was he so sweet?
“I’m not sure if you’re aware or not, but you, Camden Cole, are pretty damn amazing.” I tipped my head up to ask for a kiss and he didn’t keep me waiting long.
“Good. Then we’re even,” he murmured, his hand snaking under the covers, headed straight for my ass.
The sound of my doorbell pulled him up short.
“Ignore it,” I urged.
“What if it’s Joe?”
“Then we’ll be doing him a favor by not letting him in right before you do wicked things to his daughter.”
The side of his mouth curled. “I thought she was about to do wicked things to me.”
I raked my teeth over my bottom lip. “We could do both.”
The doorbell rang again.
“Noooooooo,” I groaned.
He chuckled. “Just go answer it. It might be import—”
That was all he got out before Thea’s voice came from my living room. “Wake up. Wake up. Breakfast has arrived, and you’ve got some explaining to do.”
I sat straight up in bed, nearly knocking Cam off the side.
“Do you have any cream cheese? A half dozen bagels and they didn’t put any in the damn bag,” Ramsey called out as though he and his maniac wife had not just broken into my house.
Though I did love that maniac and her crazy husband. And while I didn’t get to see them nearly as much as I would have liked, interrupting me when I was in bed with a gorgeous man was not ideal timing. But I wasn’t going to send them away, either.
“Who is that?” Cam asked, his brows furrowed.
I scrambled from the bed and went to my dresser to drag on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. “Ramsey and Thea. I guess it’s meet-the-family day. You should probably get dressed.”
His eyes flared and it made me laugh.
Still tugging my shirt down, I sauntered over to him and bent for a quick kiss. “Relax. They’ll love you, but hurry up. A half dozen bage
ls isn’t going to last long with Ramsey.”
With that, I was out the door, carefully shutting it behind me so he had privacy to get dressed. “Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in. I see you found my hide-a-key.”
“Who needs a hide-a-key? I made a copy of that thing,” Thea teased.
Ramsey’s whole face lit when he saw me. Abandoning his bagel on the plate, he headed straight for me and wrapped me up in a bear hug. “Jesus, Nora. Why the hell didn’t you call?”
Because Ramsey would have felt guilty for having moved away. Thea would have gotten pissed and raised immortal hell at the police station.
And, well, they had just gotten married and started a life together. I really liked the idea of not dragging them into more of my mess again. But, most of all, with Camden at my side, I really felt like we had things under control.
I stepped out of my brother’s hold and crossed my arms over my chest. “I’ve been…busy.”
“Doing what?” Thea asked, sliding the tub of cream cheese she’d found in my fridge toward Ramsey. “You were arrested, Nora. By a freaking Caskey. We would have been here sooner but we had to get special permission to come down for the day. Dad tried to tell me you were in good hands, but honestly—” Her shoulders snapped back as her gaze lifted over my shoulder.
“Hi,” Camden said, his front hitting my back, his hand going to my hip.
“Oh my God,” Thea whispered.
Her eyes bounced from me to Camden and back again. While Thea didn’t understand the depths of my relationship with Camden, she’d heard me talk about him over the years. Being that her soul mate had been incarcerated for the majority of her adult life, I’d tried not to rub it in on the few occasions I had gotten to spend time with Camden. Though, one night, after a few too many glasses of wine, I’d spilled all about our night in and out of the hot tub. I’d even shown her a picture of him from Instagram once too. But as far as she knew, Camden Cole was the one who got away.
“Are you…” She flicked her gaze back to me. “Is that…”
Shocking the hell out of me, it was Ramsey who finished her stammered question. “Mr. Cole.” He wiped his hand on the thigh of his jeans twice before extending it for a shake.
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