Page 56 of Already At Risk
I neededmore.
Instinctively, I leaned in.
Cameron sensed it. His grip trailed down my jawbone, breathing becoming ragged.
“Natalie.” He gasped my name as his lips flirted with the corner of my mouth, and I strained for more, tipping my face in his grasp. “Fuck,” he cursed beneath his breath. “I’ve never—I can’t—” He broke off, struggling with words that heated my skin, sending shivers down my trembling body.
“It’s okay, Cam,” I breathed, needing him to understand that I was right here with him, right herewantingwith him.
He could kiss me if he wanted to. I wasn’t going anywhere this time, didn’twantto go anywhere. There was nowhere in the world I’d rather be right now than here in his grasp.
I opened my eyes to see Cameron shaking his head, his lips once again grazing the upward curve of mine.
“It’s not.” He sounded tortured to admit it. “It’s not okay.”
I swayed toward him, placing a hand on his chest. I could feel the pounding of his pulse through his crisp dress shirt, the warmth of his skin. I had to hold myself back from slipping my fingers through the opening between buttons, wanting badly to feel more.
“Why?”
Even as I asked the question, reasons flooded in. He was mylawyer. We had thecaseto think about, and?—
“You want something slow,” he said, a brusque reminder that surprised me. “You want something in control. And that’s not how I feel right now, Natalie.” His hands dropped to my shoulders, like he was going to force me back but couldn’t. They just gripped tight, holding me in place. “Right now…it’s not the time. Right now, I feel like if I kissed you, I wouldn’t know how to stop.”
It took every ounce of restraint in me not to tell him thatright nowI really wanted that—for him to kiss me and not stop. Especially when he said things like that, when his concern for whatIwanted was at the top of his mind, instead of all the obvious things.
Like we were standing in his office in the middle of the workday.
“God, it’s torture, though.” Cameron dropped his head to the crook of my neck. His lips brushed my pulse point, sending me back to that night in the back hallways of Mulligan’s. I closed my eyes, reeling from the sensation of past and present colliding. “You feel…fuck.”
The guttural curse vibrated through me, sending another shock wave of heat, and his name left my mouth on a gasp.
“Yeah?” he responded, and I felt the tip of his nose trail up the length of my neck, until his lips were grazing the shell of my ear, the warm panting of his breath hitting some erogenous zone I didn’t even know existed. My insides liquified as he murmured, “I’m right here.”
“I’m sorry.” My fingers twisted in his shirt, feeling moments away from crumbling in his arms under the weight of everything—the roller coaster of adrenaline, the desire, the want, theneed. “I’m sorry for making this so hard.”
I wasn’t sure I’d ever forgive myself, honestly. For messing everything up for us.
“Hard,” Cameron repeated, a husky chuckle in the back of his throat. “Yeah, you’re definitely the reason I’m so fucking hard right now, Sunshine.”
After that admission, he took a forceful step back, an undistinguished growl rising from his chest. I detached myself from his shirt, and he raked a hand down his face. When he dropped it, his gaze flicked to mine, immediately tracking my eye movements, which were trailing down, wanting to see the evidence of what he’d just muttered.
“Don’t,” he warned, catching my jaw in his grip, tipping my chin up again. “Fuck, Natalie. I don’t think I could handle your eyes on me like that right now.”
Feeling guilty, I bit down on my bottom lip, tugging it between my teeth in a way that sparked a ferality in Cameron’s gaze, which was now trained on my mouth.
“I’m sorry,” I breathed again, meaning it.
“Holy hell, what are you doing to me?” The words were barely discernible. He shook his head, trying to bring back some level of awareness, I was sure. And then, said more audibly, “There’s no need to apologize, okay?” His thumb trailed from my jaw to my chin to the lower curve of my lip, just barely tracing it.
“Okay,” I agreed, even though I wasn’t sure I believed it.
“When I can, I want to give you more, want to give youeverything. I fucking know I could,” he said, voice so unbelievably confident.
I sucked in and then nodded, eager for it. “I…I can wait for that.” Even as I said it, I wondered how the hell I would ever be able to follow through on that when the tension between us felt this palpable, thisunbearable. But still, I tried to make it sound believable, doable. “We can wait until this is all over. It’ll be…” The little confidence I had in my words quickly trailed away as Cameron’s thumb traveled the edge of my lips, like he was memorizing the shape of them. “Okay,” I finished lamely.
“No, it won’t.” Cameron’s lips tugged to the side, and his voice lowered. “But I find it really cute that you think it could be.”
My brows tugged together. “What are you say?—”
