A short puff of breath fell against my temple, and for an instant panic settled in my gut at his silence. I cared what Cameron thought of me. I cared how he felt and how he saw me. I cared too much, and I realized now that it wasn’t something new. A part of me had always cared.
“I think,” he finally said, his hand suddenly cupping my face and tipping my chin up. “That for someone who’s always justifying everybody else’s shit behavior, you’re extremely hard on yourself.” The green of his eyes darkened, and his tongue flicked over his bottom lip, as if preparing himself for what was coming next. “I think that you’ve worked so hard at keeping yourself contained, so in control and safe behind that hard shell you put around yourself, that it was all bound to collapse.” His gaze dropped down to my lips, and his thumb caressed the line of my mouth. “I also know that I’ll need to stop myself from catching a flight to Miami the moment we get up from this blanket.” His frown turned serious. Focused. Distracting. “And last but certainly not least…” he trailed off, his voice changing, morphing into a rasp.
I could do nothing but watch as the man holding me inhaled deep and slow through his nose, as if needing a pause. A moment. A curse left him under his breath, and before I could prepare, his hands were moving, reaching around my waist and guiding me around his lap until we were fully facing each other.
My body lit up, and I rested my palms on his chest. My heart pounded, mirroring the way his chest seemed to thrum against my hands.
“Last but not least,” he resumed, voice so low I wouldn’t have heard it if I wasn’t so close. “I know, with terrifying certainty, that once the shock and anger at the world for being so fucking ugly had passed, I’ve never been more in awe, more stunned silly, more turned on, by such a display of viciousness.” He pushed me up with his legs, leveling my gaze with his, and making my knees fall onto the blanket on each side of his hips. “So much that ever since seeing that video, I’ve been physically restraining myself from kissing you. From taking your mouth and feeling all that fire burning inside you against my tongue.”
All that fire.
Fire. Cameron saw fire in me.
And it did feel like flames were suddenly licking at my skin from the inside, making me so suddenly hot that I was finding it hard to pull in a breath. All I could think was Kiss me. Please. Take my mouth. “That’s ridiculous,” I whispered.
“Maybe,” he said, his expression tightening, the tilt of his mouth severe. “But it doesn’t make it any less true.”
My hands closed around the fabric of his jacket. I’d never experienced this kind of need in my life. This dizzying attraction that went beyond looks and ink and muscles. It was him. Cameron, who caused this craving to pierce right though me.
Cameron’s chin dipped down. “Don’t you see? You are anything but dispassionate, Adalyn. You’re relentless, determined, fiery, and have made every moment I’ve happened to be next to you as alive as the fucking sun lighting everything up at dawn. Anybody who fails to see that is either blind or some worthless piece of sh—”
“Cameron,” I whispered, bringing his words to a stop.
Something passed between us.
His jaw clenched. “Tell me,” he said. My heart sped up, wanting out of my chest. His hands moved around my waist, his fingers pressing into my skin with barely restrained pressure. “Give me permission to—”
I closed the distance between our mouths.
Cameron was stunned for a fraction of a second, as if he had expected me to deny him, and then he melted against me, making a deep, throaty sound. His mouth moved on mine, lips parted, and one of his hands moved up, finding the back of my head, bringing me closer to him.
Every cell, every ounce of who I was, came alive against his lips. Cameron deepened the kiss, and when a whimper climbed out of my chest, his fingers curled around my hair. My arms flew to his neck in response, snaking around it and clutching him to me with a desperation I’d never felt before him.
Another groan vibrated against my chest, mouth, body, and I felt his other hand move to my back, stopping at the base of my spine. He pulled me deeper into his lap. Hips clashed, and God, I could feel him so hard and hot beneath me, so unbelievably solid against my body, that all sense escaped me.
I came up for air with a breathless gasp. And Cameron’s mouth dropped to my jaw, traveled along my skin, down my neck and up to my ear. He nipped at a sensitive spot there, and when my eyelids fluttered shut, a loud moan I wasn’t sure was mine echoed in the night.
“Fuck,” he rasped against my skin.
Waves of tingles—sparks, electricity—spread throughout me as my blood pulsed, swirling with need and traveling right where the junction of my thighs met his. I opened my eyes again, finding his gaze on me, attentive, determined, letting me know that there was no turning back. This was a kiss that changed something, and I should know that. Cameron was telling me. And I wasn’t fighting that notion, or him, any longer.
I was giving myself a chance.
Fingers that were now shaking moved to the back of his neck, and this time I savored the taste of his lips, memorized the feel of this tongue against mine and let my whole body shake with the sensation of kissing and being kissed like this.
We came up for air at the same time, breathless, drunk, and Cameron whispered, “Tell me you feel this, too.”
I gave him a single nod, telling him silently that I wanted to feel even more. Everything. Cameron thrusted his hips up. A moan fell off my lips at the friction, the sensation it created against a growingly sensitive spot between my legs. God, I was pulsing. Pounding with need.
“More?” Cameron asked against my lips. And when I didn’t answer, he tightened his grip on me, pulling gently just as he jerked my body closer to him with a new motion of his hips. Another brisk thrust. My lips parted with an abandoned sound, and he said, “That’s what I thought.”
I closed my eyes again, trying to get a hold of every single sensation wreaking havoc inside of me, pushing me further and further into the night. Into him. Cameron.
He moved then, widening his legs and positioning me in a way that heightened that swirling need coursing through me. Now, I could feel him grow impossibly hard under me, I could feel his heat. Instinctively, I swayed my hips.
Oh God.
“Again,” he demanded, bringing both of his hands behind my head. When I didn’t move, still too stunned by how good that had felt, he took my mouth, begging and commanding me to move. My hips swayed again. Then again, and again. And when Cameron broke the kiss, he moved his mouth to my ear. “Good girl.”
A reckless sound left me in response, something inside of me overpowering all sense, making me sink and push and stroke myself against his length with utmost desperate need.
“Let’s see how sweet you come,” he rasped in my ear, accompanying my motions with his hips. My whole body was trembling now, pulsing with every rough drive of our hips. My hands started moving, desperately seeking ways to get rid of whatever was between us. I tugged at his jacket, at mine, wanting to tear them apart. Make them disappear. One of Cameron’s hands snatched my wrists. “Ride me like this,” he ordered, voice impossibly dark.
He released my hands for an instant, but only to bring them behind my back. My body arched with the change, my hips shifted, and his length rubbed right against my clit. “I need to feel you,” I mumbled. I wasn’t even talking about the grip he had on my hands. I wanted him. “I need to feel your skin.”
“I’m not taking a single thing off you or me,” he whispered against my mouth. “What did I tell you, huh, love?” He thrust his hips, pushing me further and further into him. “I’m a little mean when I have to be. Now, lift your hips and make yourself come against me.”