Page 90 of My Sweetest Agony
It wasn’t the first time he had awoken something deep inside that blistered and seared me permanently.
Camden sees the world in black and white, and he’s acting like that’s what this convoluted situation is, too. But there are so many varying shades of gray.
Ones I see in his works.
They add depth and allow him to take something that would be flat and make it something vibrant and stunning.
Nothing is truly black and white.
Not on his canvases.
Not in our lives.
Not in this situation.
Just like there isn’t simply right and wrong.
What we shared was something in between, something far harder to define—one of those varied shades of gray.
Staring into his tumultuous blue eyes that plead with me to listen to him, to walk away and never look back, all I see are those gaps between the black and white, the spaces between right and wrong.
All I feel is the lingering memory of that night, and I shake my head. “It didn’t feel wrong.”
My voice cracks on the final word, and his entire face falls as he recoils slightly, as if I’ve slapped him rather than admitted the uncomfortable truth that weighs heavily on my soul.
What felt wrong was that it didn’t feel wrong. It felt right.
He shakes his head, his lips pressing together in a firm line. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do.” I swallow through the emotion clogging my throat, willing it to stay down so I can say what needs to be said. “I don’t understand it, Cam. I haven’t since the moment you showed up at my house. Even though everything tells me it’s wrong, every logical thought says you’re right and I should run…the only times I haven’t felt like I was alone, drifting in some dark, endless sea of despair in the last two months have been when I’ve been with you.”
He flinches, his palm cradling my face so gently yet forcefully, like it too is stuck between the two polar opposites.
“You’ve been there for me, Cam. Given me your strength. Taken care of me when I couldn’t take care of myself. You knew what I needed even before I did and made sure I had it, whether it was a story about Drew that brought me joy and laughter again, a great fucking sandwich, a push to finally put him to rest, or a release of everything I had let build up so staggeringly high that I was on the verge of total collapse under its weight. So”—I shake my head, willing the tears to stop falling, though I know they won’t—“I don’t know what to do with that. What to make of it or what it says about me now that I know the truth. But I do know I want more of that—of what you gave me the other night, even if it is wrong in someone else’s mind because they can’t understand this thing between us.”
Not that I do, either.
I don’t understand it at all.
Maybe I never will.
But my confession fills the air between us, mingling with the thumping bass of the music still playing. Buzzing in my ears and through my body as much as the heat from having Cam this close does.
We stand frozen as he searches my gaze, and I watch the war in his.
It seethes violently, that haunted part of him wrestling with the half that cares so deeply, the one that wants to do the right thing even if it will cause him more pain.
Cam has warned me away from him more than once, and I should have listened to that undercurrent of fear in his words. But now, it’s too late. I’m already hopelessly caught in his riptide, and I can’t get out of it, even if I wanted to. Which I’m not confident I do.
I’m not sure about anything anymore…
Except the way it feels to swim in his gaze and have his rough hands on my skin and his leather and citrus scent invading each breath.
He tightens his grip on my cheeks, tilting my face up to his, and lowers his lips until they’re just barely brushing mine. “If we do this, Ivy, if you let me touch you, if you let me get my hands on you like that again, it will not be slow or sweet. I spent four goddamn years wanting you, fantasizing about all the ways I would take you, of how it would feel to have your lips on mine again, your hands against my skin, your nails clawing at my back, and your hot, wet cunt wrapped around my cock, so if you really want this to happen, then it will be hard and fast. I’ve reached the limits of my control when it comes to you, and one simple word from those beautiful lips of yours will send me careening over that edge.”
His new warning, tinged with a savage energy, licks over me, coursing through my veins, heating my blood, flaming to life that part of me I thought died with Drew; the part that wants, the part that feels anything other than absolute agony every moment of every day.
And I want that part to stay lit.
