Who Do You Love (Rock Royalty Book 7) (10 page)

He reached around her, two fingertips finding the cleft of her ass. Cami froze as he drew them down, slowly, slowly.

“Breathe, beautiful,” he said against her lips. “Let’s see how wet you are.”

Gloriously wet. Greedily wet. She whimpered as he traced her soft lips and insinuated his touch between them, opening her for a better exploration. As he did, her tongue found his and slid against it, sweet and smooth.

He nudged the engorged button of her clit.

She gasped and broke the kiss. “Eamon…” she said. “Oh, God.”

His fingers slid through drenched tissues to her entrance and he circled it, gentle. Too gentle, he knew.

“
Eamon.
” She clutched at his shoulders.

“What do you need, sweetheart?”

“You.” She lifted her heavy-lidded eyes and gazed into his face. “You,” she said. “I need you.”

Her palm cupped his cheek, and the gauze wrapping her cut fingers caught in the whiskers on his jaw. The little tug pierced through the haze of his lust.

Hell. Oh, hell. Going any farther was a terrible idea.

“Cami.” Struggling to take in a calming breath, he pressed his forehead to hers and eased his hand from between her thighs. “I hate…I hate what I’m about to say. But we can’t do this.”

“We can’t do this,” she repeated, as if the words were in an unfamiliar language.

“I don’t have a condom on me,” he said, choosing the simplest of the reasons.

“No condom.” Then she grabbed the sides of her hair and yanked. “Aah!”

It was furious and frustrated and it made him feel marginally better.

Eamon rolled away from her, leaving an inch of space between them. The room had taken on the pearl gray of dawn, and he glanced at her, noting the mulish set to her chin.

“It doesn’t have to end,” he started. “You could—”

“Touch yourself,” she finished with him.

The lust he was trying to cool flared at the base of his spine and spread outward. “Cami…”

“I want to watch you,” she said, and when her head turned toward him he could see the determined glitter in her eyes. “And I want to come.”

He groaned. “I could—”

“No. We’re not together anymore, so we won’t do that.”

Shouldn’t
do that, the point he’d hesitated to make to her.

“So touch yourself,” she said, and this time it was a little offhand, like she didn’t care that much either way.

Christ
. He was aching for some release, but maybe it wasn’t wise… His thoughts derailed as he watched her small hand crawl up her bare leg. Her thighs parted, and he stared as her fingertips found the petaled furrow.

Any notion of refusal vanished.

Gaze fixed on her, he palmed his shaft, and marveled at the sight of her, her naked legs and sex, the flannel shirt—
his
flannel shirt, he realized—still covering her perfect breasts. He thought of reaching across and freeing the buttons but didn’t think she’d appreciate it, and the fact was…the vision of this much of her was blowing his mind. The tails of the shirt had parted to reveal her belly button, and even that was making him sweat.

Next time he was going to fuck her there, first with his tongue, to get it wet, and then he’d press the head of his cock into that shallow indentation—but there’d be no next time.

No other time he’d get to fuck her.

Shit
.

Her eyes closed as she caressed herself, but he couldn’t look away and only pulled more roughly on his flesh as he watched her fingers circle and stroke. He could hear her over his own harsh breaths, the soft, short gasps, and he knew she was getting close to climax.

Was she thinking of him? Of someone else?

The idea made the distance between them unbearable, and he leaned toward her. Her head moved in his direction, too, and they were kissing, mouths fused in a tender but wet kiss, tongues twined like he wished their bodies might be.

And then she was there, the peak. He sensed her muscles go tense and then her telltale shudders and it was all that was needed for him to go, too, his semen shooting across his hand and belly.

The kiss ended and they lay on their backs, heads on separate pillows. He glanced out the window, noting that the sun had come up while they were engaged in—he didn’t know the term for it. Partnered self-pleasuring?

His breathing had steadied enough to speak, and he reached for the box of tissues on the bedside table to clean himself up. “You still fast-walking in the morning?”

“Yeah.”

“Still running the last half-mile with the imaginary incentive you’re going to catch the people who dreamed up the
Real Housewives
franchise and punch them into promising they’ll never again work in television?”

“Yeah.”

For a little thing, she had a bloodthirsty streak.

Her hands reached for the covers, and she pulled them over herself. “You still working out at that fight gym?”

He tossed away the crumpled tissues. “Yes.”

“You never said what motivates you to beat up a punching bag.”

“Right now, as a surrogate for my shit-heel of a cousin.”

She stilled, then sat up, gathering the duvet to tuck it around her breasts, clearly aware that he had something important to say. “Are you ready to tell me what’s going on?”

Stifling his sigh, he shoved his feet into his boxers and pants, then got up to find the T-shirt draped on the other bed. Once dressed, he moved toward the in-room coffee maker.

“I don’t exactly know what’s going on,” he admitted.

Crappy caffeine beverages wouldn’t make this any better, he decided with a sigh.

Turning to face her, he leaned against the countertop and laid it out. His cousin’s involvement with illegal substances, his subsequent arrest, the threat by the Sons, what happened to the barista, the eyes he’d had on Cami for the past weeks.

The timing of all that and the end of their relationship she guessed for herself.

“That’s why you broke up with me…so I wouldn’t be a part of the…situation.”

He shrugged, turning his gaze out the window. “We were going to end anyway, Cami. I told you I don’t do commitment.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw her get out of bed, his shirt hanging to her naked knees. Then she was standing before him, her toes inches from his.

“But at that moment, on that day, it wasn’t that you didn’t want me anymore?” she asked.

He glanced over her shoulder, at that bed where they’d been rolling around just minutes before, and gave a short laugh. “What do you think?”

Her hand flashed up, and she slapped him across the face. His head jerked back and so did she.

“I…” She looked at her striking hand, then crossed her arms over her chest, her expression changing from stunned to stubborn. “I’m not sorry I did that.”

He rubbed his jaw, feeling heat and whiskers. “I don’t blame you.”

Turning, she marched away on her bare feet and began to gather up her clothes. “It’s time for you to take me back to my place.”

“I’m afraid that’s not going to happen,” he said. During the night, he’d run through the options, and there was only one he could live with. “You’re coming home with me.”

Cami sat in the passenger seat of Eamon’s car, watching the world pass by and trying to figure out exactly how she was feeling. Shocked? Shamed? Stymied?

Some of all three, she supposed. And throw in a little trapped, because she’d ended up agreeing to Eamon’s plan.
You’re coming home with me
, he’d said, and here she was, despite her protests. When he’d promised it was only for a few days, she’d continued to object.

He’d decimated each one of her arguments.

First, she’d lobbied for her return to her Santa Monica bungalow. Though floored to think she might have inadvertently become a pawn in a war between two MCs, the fact was they couldn’t actually pin the damage at her house on the Savage Sons, even though the state of her guitar had spooked Eamon. They didn’t know it
wasn’t
their doing, he’d pointed out, his expression grim, the mark left by her hand still showing red on his hard cheek.

When she’d suggested retreating to Ren or Payne’s, Eamon’s blow had been low. Did she want to bring danger to their households? If the bad guys knew where to find Cami, then they could locate her at her brothers’ if more mayhem was intended.

Okay, that had made her shiver.

But not soft! She’d still been fighting. Her next suggestion was holing herself away at the Velvet Lemons’ Laurel Canyon compound—the place was walled in. But he’d countered with the very thing she thought made it so secure, its privacy. Being alone, according to Eamon, wasn’t safe, either.

She glanced at him now. His profile shed no light on his mental state. “I’m not convinced me retreating to the Canyon wouldn’t work. You should see my dad’s house. Big-game trophies everywhere. It frightens
me
, and I grew up in the place. Even the meanest biker dude is going to run screaming when he’s greeted by Bast, the Bengal tiger in the foyer, or Crusader, the Cape buffalo in the family room.”

He shot her a look. “The trophies have names?”

She hung onto her seat as Eamon whipped into the driveway of a coffee place and then shot into a parking space. “I thought giving them names made them seem more…like family.”

He was looking at her as he turned off the car, a strange expression on his face.

“What?” she said, frowning.

“You gave them names.” His hand reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

The tender touch made her shiver, and she pushed his hand away. “They’re stuffed animals, aren’t they? I wanted to call them Tabby and Buffy, but Ren and Payne wouldn’t hear of it.”

“So it’s Bast, the Egyptian cat goddess, and the Cape buffalo is Crusader…”

“For the Caped Crusader, of course. But we couldn’t have Bast and Batman. Too similar.”

His mouth twitched. “Of course not.”

Heat crawled up her neck. “Go ahead and laugh. But I had to keep myself amused with my imagination because I was left alone a lot as a kid.”

His expression softened. “
A ghrá
.”

“Stop,” she hissed. “Stop calling me that. You said it was what your old Irish granny called you, and you’re not my grandmother.”

Without replying, he leaned toward her, and she pressed back in her seat, embarrassed by the sudden leap of her heart when she realized he was merely opening the glove compartment—and not moving in for another kiss. Then he pulled something out, and her heart jumped again.

“What is that?” she demanded. “That’s a gun. Why do you have a gun? Is it legal for you to have a gun?”

He was tucking it into the back waistband of his jeans.

“Yes,” he said, pulling the hem of his shirt over it. “It’s a gun, it’s legal for me to have a gun, and I’ll tell you why I have a gun later. What kind of coffee do you want?”

He made her wait in the car with the doors locked, stewing until his return. Once he’d settled back behind the wheel and handed her the latté she’d requested, she raised an eyebrow.

“Well?”

“My, you’re suddenly an inquisitive thing,” he said, backing out of the parking space.

“You might not find that quality so amusing with a lap of hot coffee, mister.”

He managed to wince and laugh at the same time as he turned onto the Pacific Coast Highway in the direction of Malibu. “Okay, okay. I have a permit for the gun, and I carry it because I’m a private investigator.”

Cami’s jaw dropped. “I thought that you’re an attorney.”

“That too. I do have a license to practice law, and once Spence and I formed our firm we contracted a seasoned P.I. to be part of our team. Turns out I liked his job more than I liked what I was doing, so I worked with him for the stipulated amount of time the state requires and then went forward on my own once I had my license.”

“Oh.” That was a lot to take in and only underscored again how little she’d learned about him during their secrecy-drenched sexual affair.

“Curiosity satisfied, sweetheart?”

Not altogether—actually not even close. And her curiosity was at the core of the real reason she’d agreed to do things Eamon’s way…because it meant going to Eamon’s home.

She wanted to see it in the worst way. Perhaps by delving into the last of the mystery surrounding him the final dregs of the fascination he’d held for her would evaporate.

Midway along the twenty miles or so of Malibu coastline, they turned off the highway. The exit button-hooked and led to a formidable gate manned by an even more formidable-looking female guard wearing a crisp uniform.

A strange panic pooled in Cami’s belly and second thoughts rushed into her head. “Wait,” she said, putting out her hand.

Frowning, Eamon braked and glanced over. “What?”

“I’m thinking…really. I’ll be fine by myself in Laurel Canyon.”

“And I’d lose my mind,” he said. Quiet. Serious. Then he put his foot on the accelerator once more, and the car eased forward.

But I might lose something even more important than that
, she thought as the security person pushed aside the gate and waved them through. The access closed behind them, and Cami forced in calming breaths, taking in the one- and two-story houses they passed. They nestled shoulder-to-shoulder, with shallow front yards that were walled from the narrow street.

“There’s only seventeen houses in this particular cluster,” he said, “and this road is the only access.”

He’s trying to reassure you,
Cami told herself. But her nerves jangled at the idea of the isolation. Of being secluded with him.

She swallowed. “What made you, um, choose to live here?” Small talk could be soothing.

The car turned into a driveway, and a double-wide garage door slowly rose. Inside she could see bikes and paddle boards and a pair of kayaks hanging from the rafters. A motorcycle, covered. Cases of bottled water, tuna fish, and protein powder were stacked against one wall.

“It’s very nice,” she said, though there wasn’t much more to see than stucco, those sports objects, and the food supplies. As they pulled in, she spied a case of jarred applesauce next to a tower of plastic-wrapped paper plates.