J
o settled into her bed, pulling the down comforter up over her legs. She shuffled her knitting kit on her knees and dug around in the bed for the remote control. Maybe TV would distract her from thoughts of Cam. He was still out in California meeting about doing graffiti art for a romantic comedy.
She pulled her hair into a sloppy bun on top of her head and thought of the pampering she had planned for tomorrow. A keratin treatment for this wild bush hair. Mani-pedi. And tending her lady garden. She planned to get lucky pretty soon, and hair down there was not to be tolerated. She’d have everything done by the time she picked Cam up from the airport tomorrow.
Jo plumped the pillows at her back and patted around in the bed to rediscover her knitting kit. She pulled up the pattern she had downloaded to her phone from knitpick.com. These tiny sweaters would be adorable for Brooklin and Harlim. Jo grabbed her glass of white wine from the nightstand, taking a sip before scrolling through the many neglected episodes of
Vikings
on her DVR.
“Come on, Lagertha. If you can hold battle formation in the morning and satisfy Ragnar at night, surely I can figure out a way to get Cam trusting me and into my bed.”
And past all those defenses. Yes, she was grooming herself like a prize mare tomorrow in ever-hoping preparation for some actual screwing, but it really wasn’t about that. She wanted to be as intimate with Cam as possible. On every level and in every way.
Sex was complicated for him? She was running ten miles a day and knitting in her nonexistent free time to manage this libido responsibly. It was complicated for her, too. She wanted, no needed, them to face all the complexities, all the secrets, all the fears together. Sex was basically her gateway drug to Cam’s trust. She crossed her legs in her yoga pants. She had dredged a shirt out of Cam’s hamper. So what if she was wearing his dirty T-shirt?
“I know I have some gum up here,” Jo mumbled halfway through the episode. The blackened salmon salad with fresh fruit Q left waiting for her had been delicious, but she still tasted it.
She paused mid-bloody battle scene to get up and brush her teeth. A few brushing, flossing, rinsing minutes later, she walked back into her bedroom, almost losing her dinner when she spotted Cam under her covers, holding the tiny, almost-done sweater up in the air.
“Cameron Mitchell, you have got to stop.” Jo clutched her chest through his T-shirt, stopping to stand at the edge of the bed. “What are you doing here? You’re not due until tomorrow. I’m picking you up.”
Cam reached one muscled forearm out, pulling her into the downy depths of the bed. He flipped her under him until one knee rested between her legs and the other was on the side. He slipped his nose into the nook between her neck and her ear.
“Yes.” He drew in a deep breath. “This smell right here. That’s the one I missed. I finished up a day early. Wanted to surprise you.”
As much as Jo’s heart stuttered in her chest at the sight of his camouflage shorts, fitted black T-shirt with a huge middle finger on the front, and his dark hair caressing his neck and ears, the sight of how good he looked only served to remind her of the pending morning grooming session.
“Cam, no.” Her hand went to the messy topknot on her head. “I had a plan.”
“What kind of plan?” He dipped his head and slow-pushed his tongue into her mouth, groaning and thrusting between her legs. “God, baby. Being away from you has been torture.”
Jo’s hips, with a mind of their own, pushed back into the hardness only getting harder at the juncture of her thighs. She wrapped her legs, ancient yoga pants and all, around the back of his calves and sent one hand up his shirt, stroking the naked muscles of his back.
“That feels so good, Jo.” Cam pulled her chin between his lips, reaching up to dislodge the scrunchie holding her hair up.
Scrunchie! Her limp, wild hair spilled everywhere. Her breath was just shy of salmon, thanks to the quick brush. She wore a T-shirt from Cam’s dirty clothes hamper.
“Is that my T-shirt?” He lifted enough to stare down at the word
Sorbonne
written across her chest.
“I ran out of clean clothes?”
Cam’s chuckle tickled her chest.
“Somehow I doubt that. I— Ouch! What the hell was that?”
Jo slid from under him, standing to rifle through the fluffy covers until she found her knitting needles.
“This.” She held up a needle for him to see before setting it on the bedside table. “Sorry. I was knitting sweaters for the girls.”
“You knit?” Cam jerked his brows together, but his full lips pulled into a smile. “That’s kind of hot old lady. Will you knit me something?”
He came up on his knees, drawing her closer until her knees touched the mattress. He slipped one hand into her yoga pants, cupping her butt. His other hand seduced her scalp, massaging into the hair at the back of her neck. He tugged until their lips met, but not in a kiss. Just delectable contact. The promise of ravishment.
“I fell asleep on the plane.” Cam pulled her top lip between his and sucked and groaned, pulling her back up on the bed until she faced him, both of them on their knees. “And I dreamed about your ass.”
Jo laughed against his mouth, drawing his bottom lip between hers, repaying a luscious favor.
“You dreamt about my butt?”
“You don’t get it.” Cam smiled into their kiss, running his hands over her braless back under the T-shirt. “I’ve always hated falling asleep on planes. Who knew what I would say or do in my sleep? It was embarrassing tonight because I woke up with my hand wrapped around my dick, but that’s better than swinging and screaming.”
Jo smiled for a moment but couldn’t hold on to it at the thought of him swinging and screaming in his sleep.
“Oh, Cam.” She pushed the hair off his forehead and behind his ears. “Baby.”
“But I didn’t wake up that way. I’ve been sleeping better since we talked.”
“No nightmares?” Hope pulled at the corners of her mouth and lightened her voice.
Cam’s face tried to close off, but she could almost see the effort he made to keep himself open to her. He was really trying.
“I can’t say none, but it hasn’t been every night.” He moved his fingers from her butt to her front, slipping his hand between her legs. “Now you, I dreamt about every night.”
He slipped two fingers inside of her with so much confidence, like he was already intimately acquainted with the lips his fingers were caressing. Like he owned that needy, wet spot.
And maybe he did. Maybe he always had. Maybe that was why Jo had never felt urgent for anyone else. Even at the heights with other men, she’d never felt the fire Cam was stoking with just the barest, most subtle movements inside of her with his fingers.
“I want this.” He withdrew his fingers, palming her, pressing into her with his whole hand. “I want us tonight.”
The edges of Jo’s sanity peeled off like paper burning in a flame. She held on just enough to pull away.
Remember the lady garden.
“Cam, not tonight. Baby, please, not tonight.”
Cam’s hand went still and he pulled back, a frown over his eyes.
“You don’t want…Are you scared?” He scooted back an inch or two on the bed, still on his knees. “I get it. A few less nightmares doesn’t make me safe. I’m not safe. You’re right. I don’t even trust myself.” He bounded off the bed, walking over to the mantel and gathering his keys. “I’m sorry. I assumed…I shouldn’t have.”
“Cam, what…Are you leaving?” Jo couldn’t have disguised the dismay and disappointment in her voice if she’d tried. “I’ve missed you. I want to be with you.”
“I’m sorry, baby.” He tossed his keys back onto the mantel, sliding his hands into his pockets. “I just…I guess there’s been all this lead-up to us being together. And I felt like on this trip, I got there. You know?”
Jo climbed off the bed and crossed over to him. She chased after the hands in his pockets, palming his clenched fists.
“Got where? Tell me.”
His eyes, stormy with all the emotions she could see roiling beneath the surface, grew a little calmer every second he looked at her. And she loved that because the simple contact of holding his hand, of sharing his air again after the time they’d been apart, was doing that for her, too. She stepped closer, until their bodies were flush.
“Tell me,” she whispered against his neck.
He pulled their hands from his pockets so he could rub sparks along the sides of her thighs through the yoga pants.
“I kept replaying our conversation by the river before I left. How you laid all these weak moments out for me.”
“Cam, they were nothing compared to what you’ve been living with.” Jo dipped her head, crossing one chipped-nail-polished toe over the other. “I can’t believe I even thought mine were anything like yours.”
“Everybody’s shit is just that, babe.” He lifted her chin, forcing a collision between their eyes. “Theirs. It takes a lot for you to show your weaknesses.”
Jo nodded. There were more fingers on her hand than people alive she’d be vulnerable with.
“But you’ve always been that with me. Open. Ready.” He pushed her wild hair back. “I want to be open and ready for you. I’m gonna fuck up. I’m warning you now. I’m hardwired to ruin things.”
“Don’t say that.” Jo traced her fingers over his lips, rubbing away the harsh words.
“It’s true.” He grabbed her fingers on his mouth, kissing each one. “It’s why I never pursued you, even when I suspected…how you felt.”
“Suspected?” Jo maneuvered her lips into a wry twist. “You damn well knew how I felt. I was the sure thing you never wanted.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Jo. I’ve wanted you for a long time, but the girls I messed with knew the score. If I had hurt you, and believe me, especially back then, I would have…It was too much to risk.”
He enfolded her face with his hands, caressing the wide bow of her mouth.
“I’d never been accepted just for me. Loved just for me. Not even by my own mother, Jo. You can’t understand what that’s like.”
He was right. Sometimes people called her the Walsh princess, and she had been. She’d lived at the adored, privileged center of a wealthy, loving family her entire life. Cam had been born on the opposite pole and had frozen there alone the first years of his life.
“Ms. Kris gave me that for the first time, and maybe because she raised you, you had that same capacity almost from the beginning. To see past the fights and the anger and the shitheadedness. Somehow, you saw past all that. Saw something worth letting into your life. You think I’d jeopardize that just so I could screw you? Never.”
Cam swallowed, his thumbs making loving trails under her eyes and across her cheekbones.
“I’m still afraid I’ll hurt you.” He silenced her with a look and a quick shake of his head when she started to protest. “Not intentionally. I could never do that and I would kill anyone who hurt you. I’ve always been that way about you, and you know it.”
She nodded, leaning into the gentle touch of his roughened palm.
“I’m afraid of what I’ll do to you when I’m there.” He looked down at the floor. “With him. In my dreams. Out of my head. Or when I lose control.”
“You won’t lose control. I’ll help you.”
“Jo, if it’s the way I think it’ll be between us, you’ll be the last person to help me stay in control.”
His words started a shudder in her belly that spread to her fingertips, leaving them tingling, trembling.
“I used to think he was chasing me.” That same terror and hatred Jo had seen when he first told his story crowded out the tenderness in his eyes. “That he would catch me again, even though he’s dead. But now I don’t feel him chasing me. It’s more like one night in my sleep, he already caught me.”
Cam’s eyes were unfocused, fixed over her shoulder, on nothing visible to the naked eye.
“Like he caught me and possessed me without my permission. Without my knowledge, and he’s just waiting for my guard to be down enough to leap out and hurt the people I care about the most.”
He returned his eyes to her, and they softened by degrees.
“That’s you, by the way. There’s no one left on this earth who means more to me than you, Jo. I don’t know how you want to label that. I don’t need to. I just know that is the space in my heart you own.”
He dusted kisses across her lips and cheeks until he reached her ear.
“You have for a while.”
Jo wasn’t sure how long the tears had been streaking down her cheeks, but she’d just started tasting them in the corners of her mouth. All the words she had been longing to hear from Cam since she was a girl suddenly filled the room. Watering her heart. Breathing life into dead dreams and dusty hopes.
“I’m not afraid of you.” She forced the words past her quivering lips, past the wetness of her tears. “I’ve never been afraid of you, and I’m certainly not now that I know how that monster hurt you.”
“So if it wasn’t fear that had you put a stop to things over there”—he nodded toward the bed where they had been busy combusting when she pressed the brakes—“what was it?”
Jo dropped her forehead to his shoulder, groaning. He had all her other low moments. Why not this one? She swiped the tears from her face.
“My lady garden.”
Cam pulled away, peering down at her, a smile and a frown making peace on his face.
“Your…I’m sorry. Your what garden?”
“I wanted to be perfect for you. For our first time. I was going to get…well, a fresh wax down there. And a keratin treatment to make my hair straight.” She held up her tic-tac toenails, with all the empty spaces where color should be. “Get my nails done. With all that’s been going on at work, I’ve neglected my grooming.”
“Jo, please, stop.” Cam put his fingers over her lips. “Just stop talking because I’m going to laugh, like gut bust laugh if you keep talking. Then you’ll get mad and punch me. And I’ll laugh more because you hit like a girl. It’ll be a whole thing. I promise you.”
Jo’s lips twitched, but she held her ground.
“I wasn’t being vain or ridiculous. I’ve waited like seventeen years for this, and I wanted my—”