Page 21 of Camera Chemistry
“Really? I’m surprised. I thought maybe you’d… I don’t know, be some womanizer. The hit of the school pickup line.”
“This really appeals to the ladies.” I pat my stomach. “Who needs Joe from the gym when you could have this?”
Maggie knocks my hand out of the way. Her palm rests flush across my skin. “It appeals to me,” she says earnestly. The compliment feels like I just won a fight, a knockout round that wasn’t even close and I’m the champion of the ring. “I’m waiting for the joke, though. You haven’t been with a woman in bed, but you have in your car.”
“Car? Who the hell owns a car in D.C.?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Nope. Nada. Zero. I told you, I’m not looking for a relationship.”
“Sex doesn’t have to include a relationship.”
“Maggie Houston, are you propositioning me?” I tut and shake my head. “I’m appalled.”
“You are such a—hey!” She squeals as I lift her, picking her up and plopping her down on my thighs.
Whatever sarcastic comment she’s going to hurl my way dies in her throat. She looks down at me, and there’s passion there. In her eyes, on her lips. The slight rock of her hips and how hard I have to bite my tongue to keep from letting out a strangled sound.
Five years. Five long, lonely years. I’m not going to fuck Maggie here so everyone can watch. I’m selfish; if that’s a possibility, I want to be the only one to experience the sounds she makes and the way she looks naked under the light of the moon. But simply having a woman look at me like she wants me,touchingme, is soul awakening.
I’ve kind of been faking my confidence up to this point through jokes and banter, hoping she doesn’t see through the facade of nerves and how worried I was about fucking something up for her friend. After hearing how important Jeremiah is to Maggie, it made me want to go all in, to fully commit to doing things right. But now? Now, I'm not pretending. She’s still looking at me, I’m still looking at her, and I wish we were anywhere else because I’m desperate, going fuckingmentalat knowing she’s so close and not being able to do anything about it.
“What are you thinking?” she asks. I can’t hear any clicks of the cameras, and I think Jeremiah is exerting serious patience, letting us ease into these new roles before starting his snapshots.
“I’m thinking about how much I want to do to you—with you—but I can’t.”
“What if you could do something about it?” Maggie leans forward, her hands landing on either side of my shoulders. Her hair covers her face, a curtain shielding her eyes, and I tuck a strand behind her ear. “Tell me what it would be.”
“I’d bring you closer. I’d touch your thighs. Your neck. Your ass. I’d see how well your breast fit in my hand.”
The words spill out, my tongue loose, my inhibitions lowered. I expect her to pull away, to shut this down and end everything right here, right now.
But she doesn’t. She bends to my ear and whispers, “Then do it.”
FOURTEEN
MAGGIE
Aiden moves as fastas a viper going for a kill.
He shifts our position. He drags me up his lap and my legs wrap around his waist. His hands rest on my back, between the valley of my shoulder blades, running his palm up and down my spine.
“Good?” Aiden asks. The lines between acting and reality are becoming blurred, a hazy outline I no longer care to decipher, because this right here? This is as real as the sun rising and the sky being blue.
I’m distracted as his hand moves to my arm, trailing over my elbow and across the top of my chest. He’s painting me like an artist would. I’m his canvas, his muse, the object of his blistering affection. My exhale is shaky, barely controlled. His touch metabolizes me to a bundle of nerves. A puddle of want.
“Yes,” I whisper back. My eyes close and I give into the sensation. I give in tohim. The scent of his cologne. The press of his hard length against the inside of my thigh. The scratch of his beard, rough against my neck. An unfortified realization of howwonderfulall of this is.
He initiated the contact, but I want to make him feel good, too. I drag myself forward half an inch, our hips almost fusing together, and a low hiss escapes his mouth.
“Fuck, Maggie.”
It’s not an admonishment, but a drawn-out exclamation of pleasure. He’s seconds away from begging me to do it again. We’re two magnets joining, an unavoidable bond. The chemistry, the heat from late morning and early afternoon reaching an apex of pent-up passion expanding in the two inches of free space between us.
It’s not enough. I fuse our bodies together in earnest now, two becoming one. My nipples graze his chest. His hand slots into mine, intertwining our fingers. Our hips align, only scraps of clothing separating us from fully uniting. It’s a puzzle piece fitting perfectly in place.
“You feel so good, sweetheart.”
