“I’m not punishing you.”
Oh, that did it. I stormed over to him, nearly slipping in the mud and shoved my hands against his wet chest, pushing him back a step. I was unable to contain the stream of words that had been dying to come out. “Now you’re the fucking liar here. You’ve wanted me to suffer the minute you found out about Javier and I. And you’ve been doing a bang-up fucking job about it. You think I don’t hate myself already for what I’ve done? Now I just hate myself even more because every time I look at you I see a man that once loved me, a man whose love I should have believed in, should have had faith in and I didn’t. So I lost that love and I lost you all for nothing! All because I’m a stupid, scared little girl with scars on her leg that never deserved anything good in her life and who believed it. Now for the first time, I think I might be better than I thought, better than I ever gave myself credit for and you’re the one who won’t let me believe it.” I blinked hard, trying to control the tears. They stayed put but the pain in my chest was unbearable. “You told me I was good, Camden. I know you want to believe in me but you’re stopping yourself. Why can’t you just love me again?” I grabbed his face with my hands, his skin slick from the rain that continued to fall steadily. “You own my heart. Please let me have yours.”
He closed his eyes, his lashes dark and wet. He breathed hard, his mouth open. I kept my hands on his face, trying to hold onto him even though I felt him slipping away.
“I don’t want to love you, Ellie.”
All air left me. I was nothing inside but bones and blood. I was hollow, scooped out, unlovable. Undeserving. I was dying in the jungle, holding on to the one with the knife.
A small sob escaped me. His eyes flew open, a blue ocean of pain. He swallowed hard and put his hand behind my head, staring at me with stark determination. “I don’t want to love you, Ellie, but I do love you. I can’t stop myself. I’ve been trying to since the moment I saw you with him. You broke me, you broke my fucking heart.” He closed his eyes again and rested his forehead against mine, our noses pressed against each other. “You broke me into so many pieces that I didn’t think I could find myself again. And I’m so damn scared, I’m scared just like you. You’ve always been my love Ellie Watt, since the very beginning. Since the moment I saw your face, your beautiful young face on that hot dry day. You were water for my soul. You made me feel like I had another half, someone else who understood what it was like to be unwanted.”
Oh Jesus. I was melting in his hands.
He gazed at me, so close, rain drops hanging from his lashes. “But the pain … oh please, I can’t go through that again. I look at you and I see him and I just want to see you again. I want to know that this can work. I want you and I to go home and become a home. I just want my heart to be safe in your hands because yours is safe in mine.”
“You’re safe with me,” I told him, my voice choking up. “Camden, you’re safe with me.”
I kissed him, wet and slick and his fingers pressed harder into my face. I pulled back and whispered, “Please believe that you’re safe with me.” I stroked his lower lip with my finger. “I gave you pain and I can take it away, if you let me. If you let yourself love me.”
His eyes went soft and dreamy for a few moments before they flared with a wild hit of lust. The look made my blood hot. He placed his lips on mine, drawing out a deep hard kiss, pressing himself into me, his tongue warm and feverish against mine. He moaned, the vibrations sinking into my core, heat radiating between my legs. Inappropriate, once again so fucking inappropriate.
But fuck it.
And fuck him. Literally.
“Camden,” I murmured into him, wanting him right there in the rain, his body and soul and heart.
He went for my neck, his tongue swooping up just behind my ear, licking the rim then sliding back down my jawline. He grabbed my hair hard with both hands, tugging sharply, and looked me dead in the eyes. He was all fire and hard angles.
“I love you,” he said, his voice gruff. “And I’ll have you. Keep you. Own you. You belong to me, only to me, from now on.”
Feather-soft butterflies swarmed my heart, filling me with beauty and light and all that was good.
“Until the waves crash at our feet,” I said softly as his full lips pressed at my cheek.
“Beyond that,” he whispered. “Beyond the ocean and the world and the stars. You’re mine beyond that, baby, and I’m yours.” His hands suddenly dropped to my jeans and he swiftly unzipped them, slipping one of his long, skilled fingers down past my hair until it found my clit, swollen and ready. Steady hands, indeed.