The Thrill of It (28 page)

Cam stomps his foot and curses loudly. “Fuck.”

He turns around, grabs his hair in his hand, and pulls hard. He’s such a big man, but something about him right now, the foot stomping, the hair pulling, reminds me of an angry leprechaun.

He whirls back to me, grits his teeth and blows out steam. “No. Really? You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not,” I say, standing my ground, shaking my head. “This is my choice. I have to do this.” I flash back to my conversation with Joanne about accountability, about ownership. I don’t know if I’m doing it right, but I’d like to think I’m starting to figure it out. I’m stumbling and bumbling and messing it up, but at least I’m starting to speak the truth.

“I don’t want to say goodbye.” For the first time Cam sounds like he’s whining. A chink in his cool-as-a-cucumber style.

“I know. But I have to try. I have to do this.”

He grabs my shoulders, grips me tight. “No. You don’t have to do this,” he says, his hot breath painting my cheek. I can feel the burn of the vodka he just downed.

“Cam.” I stare sharply at his hands that pin me. “I
do
. I do have to do this.”

He moans angrily and narrows his eyes. But he lets go of his hold on my shoulders. “I just got you back, babydoll. Don’t do this to me.”

“Cam, I’m sorry.”

His eyes light up with a sneaky sort of glow. “Then, I’ll beg. I told you when you came to my office that I’d beg you, and I’m not fucking above begging.” He drops to his knees instantly, raises his face, and looks at me with those big blue eyes. He clasps his hands together. Holy shit. He was serious. “Please, don’t go.”

A part of my heart aches not just for him, but for me letting him go too.

“But this isn’t fair. You leave me. You come back. You leave me again,” he says, shaking his clasped hands at me to emphasize his point. “And I don’t like it. I don’t like being jerked around.”

All my instincts tell me to fall to my knees, to hug him, to say I’m sorry I disappointed him too. But I keep my body still. I can’t give in to him. And I can’t give into my past. I want my future. I want to make the better choice now. “I never meant to hurt you, and I’m sorry I jerked you around, Cam. But there’s nothing you can do to change my mind. I have to move on. ”

“You belong with me.” He pounds a fist against the floor. “You’re mine. You’re my Layla,” he says, grasping to keep me.

“Cam,” I say softly, but firmly. “You had Layla. But that’s not me anymore. I have to be Harley now. Only Harley.”

He sighs heavily, then bangs his forehead once, twice, three times against the cool hardwood floor of the bar. It must hurt like hell. When he raises his head, I can see the start of a red, angry bump but also the resignation in his eyes.

I offer him a hand. “Come on. Get up. Let me say a proper goodbye.”

“Dammit to hell,” he mutters as he stands up from his plaintive post.

Then I look him in the eyes and I speak from the heart. “I want you to know you gave me something that mattered deeply to me, that I needed desperately at that time in life. You gave me choices, you gave me control, and you gave me a place to belong. And I don’t regret anything I did, because everything I did brought me to where I am today. And I will never regret you. You were there for me more than my own mother ever was.”

I watch him, saying nothing, trying to gage his reaction, predict his next move. He’s still as his eyes glass over, then he abandons the begging and pleading. “I’m going to miss you. Like miss you for real, Harley,” he says, and I don’t blanch when he uses my real name. Because that’s who I am to him now. I am shedding Layla, right here, right now, leaving her behind.

I hug him one last time. I want to tell him I will see him again, that we’ll grab a cup of coffee and catch up, but we won’t and we shouldn’t and that’s okay too. Some people come into your life for a little while to help you through. Some stay a lifetime. Cam and I had our moment, and now the moment is gone, but it won’t be forgotten. I won’t forget him. I won’t forget how he took care of me when nobody else would.

That’s when it hits me. In some warped way, Cam was like family to me too. Only better than my flesh and blood parents.

He groans and flubs air through his lips, like he’s letting out a long train of steam. “I’m not going to say I want this, but if this is what you need, babydoll, then I’m not going to stand in your way. Mr Stewart is going to pitch some kind of fit, but I’ll take my lumps like a big boy,” he says, nodding, and I can see the gears in his sneaky brain kicking in when he adds, “I’m just going to go up there, tell him you ate something nasty, you threw up something fierce, and you’re sick to the stomach and had to go home, because that’s about the only reason that won’t have him slicing off my neck.”

I laugh once, but hope he’s joking. “I don’t want your neck sliced off.”

“Believe you me, nor do I. I like what’s above the neck and below it. Now get the hell out of here before I try to steal you back.”

I hug him and I’m betting Trey is quaking in his boots, and if he is then that boy will just have to deal, because I need to say goodbye to this man who loved me too.

We leave the bar together and Cam stops when he sees Trey, shakes a finger at him, huffs out through his nostrils. For a fleeting moment, I can see the worst unfolding. But instead, Cam takes Trey’s hand in his, then places his other hand on Trey’s shoulder. “Now listen, you better fucking take care of her because I am about to endure a shitstorm up there for her. I’m letting her go and this better be real, and you better love her and treat her like a queen. Because she deserves everything good in the world. Got it?”

Trey is stunned speechless. His jaw hangs open, then he quickly recovers, and nods. “Yes, sir.”

Then Cam marches upstairs to fix the mess I made for him.

Forget the myth of the hooker with a heart of gold. He’s the pimp with one.

I turn to Trey. “I’m yours now and you’re mine.”

“You better fucking believe it,” he says.

He grabs my hand and we run like hell out of the Parker Meridien and into the New York night to a new beginning.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Harley

Breathless.

I am breathless from running, from the night, from being kissed senseless on the cab ride downtown. From the anticipation that this is it.

Trey shuts the door behind him, and we are back where we were several nights ago. His apartment.

And now this is the unknown. This is all blind trust and faith. The leap off the dock into the dark waters, with the hope the current won’t pull you down.

I hope.

I have so much hope now, so much more than I had mere hours ago, and it’s amazing how hope can be replenished like a geyser, and you can be overflowing. I have hope for the future, for love, for happiness, for the end to my empty, aching need for a fix.

This is more than a fix. This is real.

Because he is not Twenty-Five for me. This is the other side, all the way on the other side. Trey is Number One on a list I will never keep again. And I am so in love with Trey I can barely stand it, I can barely hold the words inside myself any longer, I want to tell him, to shout it, to sing it. “I’m so in love with you,” I say, because I can.

All this honesty, all this openness, without guise, without tricks — it’s like the sky is expanding, spreading. As it stretches, I stretch. It feels good and it hurts at the same time.

We stumble into the entryway, all hands and arms tangled up together.

“I am so fucking in love with you,” he says hungrily, and he loops his arms around my neck, tucks his face in my hair, and breathes me in as if I’m his oxygen. I’ve never known what it’s like to be cherished, but I’m starting to get a sense, and it’s a heady feeling. I’m no longer a prize, but a treasure.
His
treasure.

Somehow we manage to move to the futon because it’s clear this night is going horizontal.

“So what now?” I ask as he touches my arms, my hair, my waist. He can’t keep his hands off me, and I’m pretty sure I want them all over me.

“I guess that’s up to you.”

I run my finger along the waistband of his t-shirt, my thumb grazing the hard planes of his belly. He’s mine. This man is mine and I’m terrified, but certain at the same time. “I know what I want.”

“What do you want?” he asks, his lips quirking up.

“I want my first.”

“Are you sure?”

I nod. “So sure. I want to know what sex feels like. I want to know what it’s like with someone I’m in love with.”

He swallows, breathes hard. “Harley, you know this is going to be like a first time for me too.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve never had sex with someone I love,” he says, running his hands through my hair, letting it fall through his fingers. All the while he never takes his eyes off mine. “Sex has always been separate. I’ve never been in love before, so this is like a first time for both of us in a way.”

The moment curls in on itself, and I am sure time and space have narrowed to only the two of us, here on his couch. There are no cars outside, no sounds, no noise, no buildings, no night, no day. It is Trey and me, only us, only now, only this. He takes the pad of his thumb, brings it to his tongue, and licks it. He presses his thumb against my shoulder and rubs off some of the tattoo concealer. “I’m giving you a new one soon. But I still like to see it on you because it reminds me of the night we met. And you were different than anyone I’d ever known, and I wanted to know you, and then you came back into my life. Like it was fate.”

I watch him rub his thumb across my shoulder, wetting and re-wetting it, like a restorer returning a work of art to its original glory. I don’t know that my red ribbon is glorious, and I don’t even know that it’s what I want anymore, but it’s a part of me, and it’s going to become a better part of me.

Then he’s done and with one finger he pushes off the strap of my dress, letting it fall to my elbow. He bends his head to kiss my shoulder blade and I shiver at the slightest touch. He reaches for my hands, pulls me up. Now I’m standing and his arms are around my back.

“I want to undress you,” he says in a hot, hoarse voice as his fingers reach the zipper of my dress, and he unhooks it.

He starts to slide down the zipper, but I can feel his hands shaking and he can’t undo it.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“Yeah. Just nervous I guess.”

“You are? I never pictured you being nervous.”

“I am,” he says. “Because I want it to be perfect for you.”

“It doesn’t have to be perfect. We can keep practicing if it’s not,” I tell him, running my index finger softly against his cheek, tracing his scar.

“Sign me up for lots of practice then,” he says and returns to the zipper, easing it open, then gently pushing the dress past my shoulders, over my breasts, to my waist. He lets go and the fabric falls into a silky pile on the floor. I step out of it, still wearing my heels. His hands follow the dress, down my hips, over my thighs, brushing my skin, and I melt into his touch. It all feels so natural and so right. He kneels at my feet, then slips off one shoe, and I’m back in time, picturing the night on my stoop when he took off my socks after I’d seen Cam. So much is similar, but so much is different. Here he is again and we still want each other, but we want so much more, and we’ve let ourselves not only voice it, but feel it. We have finally given ourselves permission to let in that thing we barely understand.

He runs his hand along the arch of my foot. I don’t have a foot fetish, and I’m glad he doesn’t either, but there’s something so tender and caring about the way he’s undressing me as he removes my other pump and I stand barefoot now. Every move, every touch is like the sweetest caress. Every thing he does he does with care, and I feel like a new girl with him. Because I’m here with him, not
for
him. I haven’t been ordered, I haven’t been bought, and there are no step-by-step instructions given in advance. We are living each moment, seeing how each moment feels.

Picking up my dress and my shoes, he brings them over to a chair, laying them down neatly. It’s a small gesture, but the little things matter, and I kind of love that the dress isn’t wadded up.

When he returns, he looks me over, and there is something like reverence, like wonder, in his green eyes as if he can’t believe he’s here with me.

“Will you take off the rest of my clothes?” I ask in a nervous voice. I know he will, but I don’t want to take anything for granted, and I want to let him know what I want.

He groans, and it’s both an appreciative and terribly needy sound as he loops his arms around my back and unhooks my strapless bra. I grab it and toss it to the chair. In seconds his hands are on my breasts. “They’re so fucking perfect. I can’t stop touching them,” he says as he cups my breasts. “I know I’m supposed to be fighting any kind of addiction, but fuck that. I want to be addicted to your breasts. They deserve a shrine, Harley. I want to build a temple and dedicate it to your breasts.”

“What will you call your temple?” I ask, playing along, grateful for a moment of levity in the midst of this intensity.

“My favorite Ds.”

I laugh. “You wish. They’re not Ds. Cs though.”

“C, D, E, F, G. Whatever they are, I fucking love –” he emphasizes that last word “–having my hands on them.” Then he squeezes them. Hard. “Sorry, I’m supposed to be gentle.”

“It’s okay. I like the way you touch me.”

“You do?”

“Yes,” I say. “You make me feel incredible.”

“You are incredible,” he says.

He kneads them roughly once more, brushing his thumbs over my nipples. He moans and I sigh at the same time, and we both laugh.

“You forgot one more item to take off,” I tease.

“I didn’t forget. I just want to savor it.” Then he slides his hand between my legs. His eyes widen when he feels the cotton panel of my panties. Touches me. Learns how turned on I am. I rock into his hand. “Fuck savoring. I need to get these off.”

Then he is no longer slow or lingering. He is frenzied and fevered as he pushes them over my hips and down my legs. I am naked before him and I love being naked with him.