Seductive Secrecy (Shadows series) (17 page)

My hands twitched.

I knew I should have been spending this time working on Chet’s piece. I should have been adding the final strokes to the others I had
due this week, too. I should have been completing the homework I
had been assigned or finishing the reading that we would be covering in today’s class.

I wanted the control more.

I wanted to do something for myself. I wanted it to be my choice. Not an obligation, not a task or a duty; I wanted to
want
.

My fingers drifted down my stomach and stopped once they reached that tiny, hard nub that throbbed with a raw, intense pulse. I didn’t want a slow, drawn-out grind. I wanted fast, hard, squeezing out an orgasm as quickly as my body would allow.

My legs spread, and my fingers began to circle. My other hand reached behind me and gripped the headboard.

Each breath I released was a moan. I didn’t try to lower my voice, my cries of pleasure. I didn’t even reach for the toys that we kept in the nightstand, the vibrator or the dildo. I wanted to create the spasms from my skin, my pressure, my pacing.

I pushed the back of my head into the pillow and arched my
spine, letting the flow of waves bring me closer to the edge. My
knees bent; my heels dug into the foam mattress. I gripped the wood even harder, stabbing my nails into hard coating, channeling some of the passion that coursed through me. But as my body prepared to buck
against my fingertips, I felt something. A set of eyes upon me; a
stare.

I wasn’t alone.

I tilted my head up and met Cameron’s gaze. He was standing in the doorway, without a shirt on. Paint was splattered across his chest and speckled over his dark tattoos. The jeans he wore rode low on his hips; there were holes in the thighs, a few more in the knees. His hands were in pockets.

He sighed when he saw what I was doing.

“Don’t stop because of me,” he said.

THE EUPHORIA THAT HAD BEEN GRADUALLY BUILDING
in my body didn’t slow at the same rate it had climbed. It came to an immediate halt instead. The indifference in Cameron’s expression didn’t help soothe the ache that followed. I had touched myself in
front of him before, but it was foreplay and had been aimed at
turning
him on
both of us, actually. This felt like he had burst in on me
doing something wrong, and my whole body was tightening in response.

The blanket and sheets had fallen during my short session, so I
reached for them, pulling them up until they covered my chest. I
continued yanking until they rested at the base of my neck. Then I
leaned my back into the headboard, bent my knees and wrapped my arms around them.

No words came to me. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say, how to process my thoughts from earlier, how to justify my actions. Did I even need to? Was it odd to walk into your bedroom and find your girlfriend masturbating? Touching my body had been such a huge presence in my life before I had moved in here, but since then
there really hadn’t been a need. Cameron took care of those
desires… which was why this felt so awkward. Would he think he wasn’t satisfying me? That he was inadequate? That my fingers felt better than his, or that I’d rather please myself than him?

I wondered if this was how Chet had felt when I had entered his den, just waiting for my expression to turn to either understanding or repulsion.

I couldn’t read Cameron; I couldn’t hide more than I already
had.

And I couldn’t take the silence anymore.

“Say something,” I whispered.

“What turned you on so much?” He shifted against the
doorframe, crushing his shoulder into the molding. “Was it another man?”

“No…it wasn’t anyone else. It was…” I hesitated. “It was me.”

My mind immediately went back to that place. That place of
question, of masks, of true purposes. I was more naked before him now with the sheets pulled up around me than I ever had been during our most passionate moments. What did he see when he looked at his bed?

Did he really see me, or want me for
me
?

He could see the questions in my eyes. “Ask me,” he said.
“Whatever it is, I’ll answer anything. But you need to speak…I know something is bothering you.”

I thought back to the more significant conversations we’d had while I’d been hiding out at my father’s apartment, and the ones that had taken place since I’d been out. The one that stood out the most was the moment right before we’d had sex for the very first time. Cameron thought I’d left the country. He was coming to my father’s apartment to ask him where I’d gone.

I wanted to find you. To meet you there. To start over again with you,
wherever you were…I don’t know what you went through before you
started working in
that place
; I’m not going to pretend to understand. Something in your life must have been bad enough for you to have made that choice, and I can’t judge you for that. We’ve all done things we regret, Charlie
.

“You told me once that you didn’t judge me for working at the mansion…but how did it really make you feel?”

“Can I come sit down?”

I nodded, pulling the blanket a little tighter and straightening its folds and wrinkles so it wouldn’t bunch underneath him.

He pushed off the doorway and casually walked to the bed. I didn’t know if any of the paint on his jeans or on his body was wet, but that didn’t stop him from sitting on top of the comforter. He sat toward the center of the mattress, giving us both a little space.

“My opinion hasn’t changed. I’m not you; I’m not the one who had to make that choice. I’ll never fault you for that. But do I like the thought that other men paid to touch you?” He took several breaths, his stare never leaving mine. “No, I don’t. I fucking
hate
it. I wish I’d been the first man who’d ever touched you.” I wondered if I wished that, too. “You’re twenty-four years old and you’re insatiable—something I
love
about you—so I didn’t expect you to be a virgin. But of course a part of me wishes you didn’t have memories of anyone but me pleasuring you to the point of orgasm.”

As I searched his face, nothing but honesty came back toward me. It was then that I knew: this was the moment where I needed to let go of it all. There were questions that I hadn’t asked because the possibility of the answer—of the
truth
—scared me. Too much of it had been forced upon me at one time
the mansion, my father, Emma’s father, the reality that existed behind those walls—until I couldn’t take any more. Enough time had passed now. 

I could handle a little more honesty.

“We’re not all that different, you know,” I told him.

“No,” he said, “we’re not. When you met me, Lora was getting
much more than just my friendship. There were several other women who were, too. They didn’t pay me…but they might as well have.”

Cameron didn’t need Lora or any of those women to help his
career; he had Professor Freeman for that. He slept with them because he
loved to fuck. That was a main overlap between us: we were both
able
to disconnect, to give our bodies without attaching ourselves
emotionally to the person we were having sex with.

But when I compared what we had to everyone else I had slept with, I knew what I felt for him was different. I just hoped it wasn’t because he was giving me the best sex I’d ever had.

I hoped it was because, when I was with him, I didn’t
want
to disconnect.

I wanted to care about him, for him, beyond anything sexual.

“What made you stop?” I asked. “You went from all of them to just me. It happened so fast…why?”

He grabbed the end of the comforter and snaked it between his fingers, wrapping the fabric tightly around his skin so his circulation was cut off. His nails turned white. “You were the first woman to not give me what I wanted.”

I wished the reason for that was because I’d been playing hard to get. It wasn’t, though. I didn’t spread my legs for him because I was working at the mansion, and it felt wrong to be with him and a client in the same night. I had done that to Dallas, and I hadn’t liked what I felt about myself afterward.

I didn’t want to do that to Cameron, too.

“That’s not quite everything.” He released the blanket and
glanced down, rubbing his palms over his jeans. “I knew we had something in common before you told me anything about your mother. I felt it in you…I saw it.” He rose from the bed without warning. I heard his bare feet treading over the hardwood floors in the hallway and the clanking of glass as he opened and shut the refrigerator door. When he returned, he had two beers in his hand. He gave me one and took a sip of the other, holding the liquid in his mouth for several seconds before he swallowed. “This is hard to explain, but when I met you, I
knew you were as shattered as I was. When two people come
together
with pasts as crippling as ours, there’s a connection that just
feels… right somehow.”

“I know.”

My voice wasn’t more than a whisper. It didn’t need to be. I really did know what he was describing. I’d felt it immediately with
him. The scars on his chest
the ones that resided under his
tattoo
confirmed it. But there was something I felt before I had seen those. I couldn’t explain it and I sensed that he couldn’t either, but it was there. It was palpable, and at times, overwhelming, even.

He was gripping the beer bottle so tightly, I was worried the glass was going to crack in his hand. I didn’t reach out, though, and I
didn’t try to loosen his grip. I concentrated on his face and his
words, allowing him to purge in the way he needed to.

“The way you endured all that pain is so sexy to me,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, I wish none of it had ever happened, and if I could take all of it away for you, I would…really, I would. But when I look at you now, I don’t see a body marred by abuse or a mind reduced to hatred. I see a survivor…someone who came through her darkness with her spirit intact.”