The Proposition

by JC Harroway

  It doesn’t matter who’s right.

  Cam and I had our fun, and soon it will be time to say goodbye.

  With that certainty weighing me down, my heels click as I make my way upstairs from the ground floor. I glance around his home, looking for clues of the real Cam. While luxurious, the whole space seems cold and cavernous, every sound echoing off the bare walls. Hardly any colour, no personality, and no sign of the warm, compassionate, vibrant man I’m lucky enough to know.

  When I reach the second floor and the main living areas, my adrenaline pumping as it always does in anticipation of seeing Cam, there’s still no sign of him. Neither in person nor in any evidence that he even lives here, although he told me he only bought the place four months ago. A single solitary leather armchair and a telescope face the wraparound windows, which open onto a spacious veranda and give almost three-hundred-and-sixty-degree harbour views. But there’s no character, no life anywhere to be found, certainly no sign of the fun-loving, energetic Cam, a man who’s entirely occupied my head since we landed in Sydney twenty-four hours ago.

  My throat grows tight. This isn’t Cam. This flashy, modern residence that screams status. Then it hits me. It’s another of his revenge purchases against his father. I’m no more likely to find the real Cam here than I am searching the moon. Not that I should want to find the real Cam, because I have to give him up. And soon.

  I pace over to the window and grip the back of the armchair, my nails digging and my heart clenching as I imagine him sitting here. Alone, trying to work out a way forward. Trying to be himself in a world that’s shifted on its axis.

  But then, what do I know about having everything all worked out?

  I thought once we arrived back in Australia, things would fall into place. We’d share a parting kiss, perhaps laugh as we recalled the highs of our adventure, and part with only a modicum of regret. Instead, I found myself inviting Cam to the gala even before his private plane touched down.

  I can’t want him, but I can’t do without him.

  I sigh, my nerves and my need demanding I find him when I’m fully aware that all I’ve done is prolong the agony, drawn out the final farewell, which must come. Because my stance on relationships hasn’t changed. The past week of disagreements proves my theories are correct: I’m no good at emotional entanglements. I’m better off with my single life and my shocking work-life imbalance.

  My breath catches, my insistence no longer carrying the same certainty. In practice, within the limitations of my proposition, Cam and I work. But outside of that? Despite his struggles to come to terms with the inheritance left to him by a man who let him down, I know he’d be content to return to his simple, hard-working life. And I know he’s going to be just fine.

  We spent most of the flight from Singapore brainstorming his ideas for a construction school that teaches vulnerable and underprivileged young men and women valuable skills they can take into the workforce. Young people who need a break in life because of the path they’ve found themselves on. Young people like Cam might have been without his hard-working mother and his own determination to make something of himself. With some financial guidance from me, and with Cam’s passion, their lives could be rich and fulfilling in all the ways that matter.

  And me?

  I fight the hot tears threatening, swallowing them down. Cam needs a woman who can share that life. A woman who shares his goals. A woman free to walk and sleep and love by his side. It’s what he deserves.

  But I’m not that woman.

  He was right about me. I need to work. It’s who I am.

  With a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach, I go in search of him. As I walk towards a corridor lined with what I assume are bedrooms, I hear a series of low, rhythmic thuds. Some sort of bass-heavy music.

  My pulse leaps. He told me the penthouse has a gym; perhaps I’ll get another show of Cam working out—half naked, sweaty, a visual feast. My mouth dries in anticipation, and a surge of acid burns behind my breastbone, jealousy I’m going to have to get used to if Cam gets the happy-ever-after he deserves with some other woman.

  The beat builds. I open the room the noise seems to be coming from and freeze in the doorway.

  The sound is deafening. Cam sits at a massive drum kit facing a floor-to-ceiling window with ocean views. He’s stripped to the waist, his back slicked with perspiration and his muscular arms almost a blur as he creates the rapid drum loop that goes on and on, as if he’s pounding out the rhythm of my regret.

  I’m frozen. I want to watch. I want to go to him. I want to run away and sob myself into oblivion. Without making a sound I cast a quick glance around the room. Like the rest of the house, the furnishings in this room are sparse—a large bed, a sofa and some sleek Bluetooth speakers, but there’s more of Cam’s personality in this room than the rest of the house combined, as if he’s carved out a sanctuary inside this cavernous shell. A place he can be himself.

  I watch and listen from my spot by the door, indulging myself for what will likely be one of the last times. The last grains of sand are sliding through the hourglass, and any day now I’m going to have to give him up.

  The thought traps my breath and sends shards of pain between my ribs. How can I walk away from someone who makes me smile without effort? Who brightens my mornings and competes with the constant draw to stay at the office? How can I go back to boring, burnt-out Orla when all I want to do is stay in our bubble with Cam?

  He must see my reflection in the glass because he stops, the sudden silence ripping me from the insanity of formulating ways I can continue to see him now the proposition has run its course.

  He’s panting, his chest heaving as he drags in air and looks at me from beneath his brows. I’m instantly damp—hell, I was damp before I entered the house, because I know him. I know how good we are together. I’ve always known that, from the moment our eyes met across the roulette wheel in Monaco.

  I don’t speak a word.

  As if he too knows this is close to finishing and he’s as desperate as me to keep the illusion alive, he simply stares.

  Waiting.

  I saunter over, slowly shedding my blouse, skirt and heels as I approach. My need for him hasn’t lessened since our first time together. If anything it’s stronger, because I’m alive when I’m with Cam, but never more so than when I’m in his arms, his heart thudding against mine, our breath mingling.

  I reach him and I almost chicken out, flee. I extend a shaky hand to skim his shoulders and back as I round him. His skin is warm, his muscles tense under my touch. I stand between his spread legs and he pushes back his stool to accommodate me in the small space between his body and the drums.

  I twirl my fingers in his hair, holding his handsome face, tilting his mouth up to my kiss. He groans, dropping the drumsticks so he can slide his hands up my thighs and around to cup my buttocks with possessive fingers.

  ‘Orla, what are you trying to do? Kill me?’ he mumbles against my lips.

  I smile, but nothing inside me feels light enough for humour. It’s as if I’m weighed down by my feelings, as if there are too many of them for me to even contemplate lifting my feet from the sumptuous carpet.

  ‘I want you. I’ve missed the way you make me feel.’ I almost gasp at the stark honesty of my words.

  He grips my hips tighter, his hands so big they span half my lower back. He drops his head to my chest, where he nuzzles my cleavage, his breath hot. ‘And how do I make you feel?’ His hands slide up my back and he unhooks my bra without looking up, while he presses kisses to the tops of my breasts and my breastbone.

  My head drops back as I absorb the heady sensation of Cam’s touch. The words spring from nowhere, or perhaps from that tightly guarded part deep inside. ‘Alive. Free. Invincible.’

  It’s as close to a declaration of my feelings as I dare.

  I sense his smile, but
when I look down his expression is bittersweet. ‘You were all those things before you met me.’

  The burn is back in my throat. My beautiful, broken Cam. But I know he’ll be all right. He’s young, he’s resilient and he has so much to give.

  ‘Well, perhaps you make me appreciate them more, then. Perhaps playing hard has put working hard into perspective.’ I press my finger to his beautiful mouth, shushing him. ‘I want to play hard now.’

  I slide off my bra and lean over to kiss him. I want to forget that this is almost over. Forget that life after my adventure with Cam will go back to pre-Cam predictability. But I’ll never forget how he unleashed this sexual being I neglected for so long. How he challenged me and then cherished me.

  Slipping my thong off, I straddle his thighs where he sits. My hands push down his shorts just enough so his erection is freed. I take him in my hand between us and pump him while we kiss, and then I angle him back and sink slowly onto him, inch by glorious inch.

  He holds me so tight to his chest that I fear I won’t be able to draw breath, but then I stretch up on the balls of my feet and lower myself into his lap and we groan-gasp together at the depth of the penetration. This feels so right I never want to give it up, but despite the journey we’ve travelled, I’m still me.

  We rock together, clinging tight while we kiss and move just enough to stay balanced on the stool but also to give and take what we need from each other. But it’s not enough. I want him to know how much he’s meant to me, to understand that, while I can’t give him commitment, or the kind of future I see for him, the kind he deserves, I can give him all of me, physically.

  I pull back, my lips swollen. ‘Cam. It’s time.’

  He knows what I mean. Ever since Zurich we’ve skirted this issue. I want him every way I can. He’ll know that I was his, briefly, but completely.

  He grips my waist and stands without slipping from my body. In two strides we’re on the bed, me on my back and him taking charge of our pleasure by thrusting above me. He clasps my hands, his fingers locking with mine, his beautiful face tight with pleasure, and then he dives for my nipple, sucking hard so I cry out and arch my neck.

  I get lost, so lost I think he’s missed my meaning or has changed his mind, but when I’m close to climaxing, my body drunk on the pleasure Cam delivers without fail, he finally withdraws and guides me onto all fours.

  He takes my hand and directs my fingers to my drenched and swollen clit. ‘Rub yourself.’

  I hear him tear into a condom and then I feel the thrilling chill of lube between my buttocks.

  ‘Don’t stop.’ He handles me like I’m made of glass, his rough hands sliding over the skin of my back and shoulders and hips, even as I feel him push against my opening for the first time.

  I want this. I want what only he can give me. And I want it on my timescale, not Cam’s, which I’d bet my entire wealth is in deference to my comfort. But there is no more time. There’s only now. Us. This moment of trust and forbidden intimacy.

  I push back, the feeling foreign and thrilling but not uncomfortable after all his care and preparation. And just as I know I can trust him with my body, that he’d never hurt me, I also know he needs convincing. ‘Cam, I want this. I want you this way. Every way.’

  I hear his groan, feel his fingers digging into my hips as the pressure of his possession increases. I rub my clit faster to counter the slight twinge of discomfort but then I’m full and he leans over me with a long moan, his sweaty chest plastered to my back.

  ‘Fuck, Orla. I’ll never get enough of you.’

  It’s as close to any sort of declaration as we’ve come, dangerously close. And it electrifies me even as I try to block it out by rocking my hips to distract us both back towards pleasure. My ploy works because Cam’s hand joins mine between my legs, our fingers working in unison on my clit until I start to see stars and need both my hands to brace for the impact of my inevitable orgasm.

  Cam arches over me, taking his weight, but I want it, I want it all. To be smothered in him, to forget where I end and he begins, to be his completely, just in this moment. Not Cam and Orla. Just a man and a woman, lost together.

  ‘Cam, I’m close.’ I struggle to get the words out, but I want him to know what he does to me, how he’s changed me, enriched my life, made me feel impossible things I thought were long past. But I can’t confess anything remotely as vulnerable, so I focus on the sensations that wash my body.

  ‘Come for me, then, squeeze me, show me the real you, and what you like.’

  His words liberate me and I fly, every convulsion a tribute to him, every cry his name until I’m certain that I know I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life inviting Cam North into my world.

  When I’m fully spent, he surprises me by easing out of my body, allowing me to collapse onto my back to catch my breath. He tears off the condom and repositions himself between my thighs, his fingers spreading me open so he can guide himself back inside me. He looks up, a million emotions written in the depths of his grey eyes, before they roll closed with pleasure and he whispers one word.

  ‘Orla.’

  I know then that I’ve ruined him, that he’s developed feelings for me, because it’s there in the tenderness of his touch as he uses both hands to push my hair back from my face. It’s there in the possessive and agonising eye contact he pins me with and the reverent way he kisses me time after time. He’s making love to me. He’s given me everything I wanted and now he’s showing me what he wants.

  I struggle to breathe, although I crave his weight on me pressing me into the mattress as he seeks his own climax. He groans, pushes his face against the side of my neck and I breathe in his familiar scent, as if committing it to memory.

  His hips start to buck, his rhythm stalling as he reaches his orgasm, and I grip him tight, holding him even though I know the pain will come as soon as I have to let him go.

  * * *

  The Masquerade Gala is held in the lavish ballroom of Sydney’s M Club, a dazzling waterfront location with harbour views featuring the iconic Opera House and Harbour Bridge.

  As dinner is over, most members have removed their masks, Cam and I no exception. Not that he needed the simple black mask to look dangerously handsome—he was that the day I met him. I just didn’t anticipate the end would be quite so hard.

  On the dance floor, I look up at Cam, determined to enjoy tonight as it’s likely to be our last date. He’s been uncharacteristically quiet since our arrival, although he was attentive and charming at dinner, and as soon at the music began he asked me to dance, dragging me away from some long-time business associate and saving me from talking shop. And he’s kept me here, for song after song. It’s as if he doesn’t want to let me go, as if he too wants to live in denial for as long as possible.

  Like me, apparently, because I ask, ‘How is work on the cottage coming along?’ I steer the conversation away from the inevitable train wreck I can sense approaching from the haunted look in Cam’s eyes.

  He takes the bait with a small indulgent smile. ‘Good. I ripped out the old kitchen today and knocked down a wall.’ His arms grip me a little tighter and I feel cherished, as I always do in his arms. ‘I’d like to show it to you sometime, if you’re free.’ His hand presses between my shoulder blades and I rest my head on his chest, sniffing him, inhaling deeply and hiding from his searching stare.

  ‘I’d love to see it.’ It’s not a lie. He’s so passionate about his beloved cottage, so committed to undertaking all the renovations with his own two hands...

  ‘Tomorrow?’ I feel the enthusiastic thudding of his heart under my cheek and my stomach tightens with a reminder that I’m going to have to end this sooner rather than later, before Cam develops crazy ideas of attachment or worse...

  I look up, real regret pinching my eyebrows in a frown. ‘I’d love to, but I can’t tomorrow. I’m required at t
hat family barbecue I told you about. I’m dreading it, to be honest.’

  ‘Still?’ he asks.

  I sigh. I thought I wouldn’t have to think about this until tomorrow, but it’s a perfect distraction from wondering how and when to end the incredible journey with this man. ‘Well, things between my father and me are strained at the best of times. I’ll have to tolerate his snide remarks that I stole Jensen’s’ business out from under his nose, for the sake of family harmony and for my mum.’

  He glances down before he says, ‘Why go at all if that’s how he’s going to behave?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  His jaw clenches in the way I’ve learned means business. ‘I mean, if your father is going to make things awkward because he’s a sore loser, why put yourself through that?’

  ‘Cam...’ I say, a hint of warning in my voice. I know he means well, but someone telling me what to do is almost as bad as someone telling me what I can’t do, and guaranteed to make me dig in my heels.

  ‘What? I’m serious. You owe him nothing. You said yourself he was distant while you were growing up, and then he overlooked you for CEO. He’s had enough chances. If you’re good enough to steal a client from him, perhaps he should have valued you more when he had you on his team—it’s too late for sour grapes.’ His face grows sombre and I wonder if he’s making comparisons, thinking about his own father. And he’s right. My father has always made me feel as if I’m not good enough, probably the reason relationships and I don’t work, but I told Cam those things in moments of shared intimacy, not to have them thrown back in my face.

  The storm that’s been brewing all day strikes, my hackles rising. ‘Perhaps he has had enough chances, but just because you’re carrying resentment about your father doesn’t mean I have to do the same.’

  He frowns, his eyes sharp with anger. ‘I wasn’t suggesting you should. This isn’t a competition, Orla. We’re not talking about me. I’m simply suggesting he doesn’t deserve you if he’s going to disrespect you.’ He grapples his frustration under control and I hold him closer, each of us stepping back from the edge.