He turned me around, ever so mindful of my leg, and kissed me deeply. It was a kiss that reached right into you, stirred you around until you were effervescent and sparkling and deliriously happy. It was soft, warm lips and silken, skilled tongue. It made you hungry and thirsty and longing for more, for it to go on forever, satisfying yet insatiable. It turned me on, flipped the switch, awakened the passion that wouldn’t stop until we could fully devour each other. It was a kiss of the earth and the moon, all gravity and pull, a prelude to many forevers.
I don’t know how long we made out like that, just feeding from the love and the lust that we could only consume from one another, me surrendering in his arms, his arms that kept me close and kept me safe. Finally he pulled away and rubbed his thumb over my lips.
“I’d suggest sex on the beach,” he said, his voice husky, my mouth feeling empty without his. “But I think the two of us deserve a bed for once.”
That, and sex on the beach was highly overrated.
He bent down and picked me up in his arms. I let out a small laugh, wrapping my arms around his neck and burying my face below his ear. I breathed in his smell, absolutely intoxicating, and let him carry me all the way to our hotel room where he lay me down on the white, shabby-chic bedspread.
This was the first time we’d really been alone, been intimate, since we left the compound. I had something to tell him, but I wasn’t quite sure how to phrase it. I loved him beyond all doubt and I knew the man loved me. I knew we were the moon and the earth and each other’s future, revolving and evolving. But I was still scared to tell him what I knew, tell him what I wanted.
He bent over me, hands at the drawstring on my pants, but I pushed him back, hand on his chest and said, “I’m always getting naked first. Drop your clothes.”
Camden grinned wickedly and I bit my lip in anticipation, leaning back on my elbows to watch.
He took off his wifebeater first, the tats on his stomach and chest now on full display, then slowly started to unbutton his shorts.
“Are you doing a striptease?” I asked playfully.
“I’m stripping and I’m teasing,” he answered as he very deliberately rolled the zipper down before looping his thumbs on the waistband and inching them off. Bit by bit, until the ink faded into the hard Vs of hip bones and I saw the hard, glistening tip of his erection appear, flush to his pelvis.
He let the shorts drop and he took my breath away.
“Derek never got me any briefs,” he explained, as if I cared that he was going commando. Fuck me, he was a man who would never stop giving me the chills. I’d never seen a cock so large and beautiful as the one on Camden McQueen. My man. My moon. My everything.
He slowly walked toward the bed, growing larger as he came closer, so tall, so strong, so ready for me. His eyes held assurance and lust, drive and desire. He knew what he looked like, he knew what he was offering me, his perfect body and his perfect soul.
“When I saw you, I fell in love,” he said to me as I lay back against the bed and he crawled on top of me on all fours. “And you smiled because you knew.”
I grinned lazily as he bent down and slowly kissed along my neck. “Quoting Shakespeare, now?”
“If only Juliet had been a scowly faced teenager,” he murmured against my neck. “Because while I’m pretty sure you knew I loved you, I don’t think it made you smile.”
I jerked my head away from him and held his face in my hands. “Camden. You always made me smile, even when I didn’t show it. You were my only friend and I was too young to know what your heart was worth.”
“And you know now.”
I ran my hands through his thick hair. “I knew then, now and always.” I pulled his face to mine and kissed him softly before looking deep and hard into his eyes, trying to figure out how to say this. “Camden … I was on the pill until, well, until we left Veracruz. I’ve only been with you since.”
He frowned, a look of wonderment and fear in his eyes. “Are you pregnant?”
I shook my head. “No. I don’t think so. I’m just …” I chewed on my lip. “I’m just thinking … I don’t want to go back on them.” There. I said it. The weight of it all hung in the room.
He blinked, his dark brow still furrowed, and suddenly I was unbearably frightened that I had scared him off. My heart felt like lead.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I—”
“You want a baby?” he asked gently. His face was softening, his eyes searching mine, pulling truth from me.
“I don’t mean right now,” I managed to say. “Or maybe I do. But yes. With you. I want a family of my own. To start new. To give us both what we never had.”
“Oh, Ellie,” he whispered. His face crumpled slightly and he brought it to my neck. He whispered into my ear, “Oh, Ellie. I will give you that. It’s all I’ve ever wanted for us. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
And suddenly I was all love.
“Really?” I asked.
He looked at me, glassy-eyed, and grinned so wide, so amazing. “Really. A brother or sister for Ben.” He swallowed loudly, taking a moment to contain himself. “My beautiful Ellie, I want this. I want this. We need this.”