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That wasn’t a good fit either though, and we all dismissed it almost immediately.
The conversation turned to other things, and Cam sat back as Annie and I caught up, though twenty years was hard to cover in fifteen minutes. She and I made plans to meet at the bar at the Inn later in the week, and then, when the IV was finished, Annie cleaned up and prepared to leave.
“I think you should keep her,” she told Cam.
“I’ll think about it,” he said. “Thanks for coming by, Annie.”
“Yeah, sorry I didn’t get your call,” she said. “I need to get that phone stitched to my hand or something.”
I stood as Annie got to her feet, trying to imagine a life in which my phone wasn’t basically glued to my fingertips. “Give me your number,” I suggested. “I’ll call you about this week.”
She did, and we spent a couple more minutes chatting.
When she’d gone, Cam walked me to the door. “Thanks,” he said, his voice low and warm. “I probably didn’t need to bother you, but I felt better not leaving her here alone.” He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck, a habit I was coming to anticipate and like. “She won’t even let me near her though. Makes it hard to imagine her staying here for six weeks.”
I frowned. “She let me touch her.”
“A person would have to be crazy not to let you touch them if you wanted to.”
A little thrill ran through me at those words, and I lifted a hand, tempted to touch him again, to trace my hand down the line of tattoos snaking around his forearm. “She’s not a person. She’s a dog.” Our eyes met and our gazes held, heat smoldering between us.
“You know what I mean.” He didn’t break eye contact, and I felt like the world around us stopped, silenced, waiting to see what would happen.
“I know what I hope you mean,” I said, maybe telling him too much, admitting too much about the way I felt in his presence. I wanted him to touch me, to trace a finger down my jaw, to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. Anything. My breath was coming quicker as Cam inched nearer.
“Harper,” he said, his hand lifting, his face serious. His fingers were inches from the skin of my cheek and the moment seemed to hang there, my name floating between us, caught between his fingertips like rapidly dissolving strands of filament almost too fragile to be real. He let his hand drop slightly, and my heart fell with it.
“I—” I caught his hand with my own, my body moving to keep the closeness I felt between us before my mind had even planned to do so. I held his solid flesh in my own, felt the roughness and warmth of his skin as my fingers wrapped his, and I lifted his hand back to my face, leaning into the backs of his fingers as I pressed them into my cheek.
“What?” he asked, his voice a hushed shadow. He didn’t pull his hand away, and his blue eyes grew darker as they held mine.
“I’d like to get to know you better,” I told him, throwing caution to the wind. “I don’t know why, but I think about you when I’m up at the house, wonder what you’re doing. I find myself wishing I could come down and see you, spend time with you.” It came out in a whispered rush, half-truths and suggestions of the real feelings I couldn’t exactly explain and definitely couldn’t reveal. “I—“
He lifted his other hand to my chin and kissed me then, swallowing whatever words I’d been about to add. Our lips met in a rush, not softly but with a gentle urgency that conveyed everything we both had a hard time saying. His arms slipped around me, leaving my face and exploring my back, pressing me to him.
I melted into his embrace, my own hands finding smooth hard planes of muscle over his back, one palm finally wrapping deliciously around the back of the thick corded neck I’d been dying to touch. Our lips moved, our tongues touched, and our breaths mingled as my mind floated free in a way it never had when Andrew had kissed me.
My time with Andrew had been full of intent, mired in shared goals and pursuit of accomplishment. With Cam, all I felt I wanted was him. To know him, to understand him, to unburden him if I could.
We kissed for what felt like hours, our heartbeats matching as they found each other in our embrace, and when he finally pulled away, we were both breathing hard.
Cam’s fingers traced my cheek as his other hand kept me near. “Harper,” he breathed, and then he touched my forehead with his own and his eyes slid shut again.
I held onto him, allowing him the quiet of the moment, though my own body was screaming to press forward, to get more, to take more. When I could stand it no more, I pressed myself to him again, and his reaction was immediate. His arms pulled me into his solid body and together we moved to the long couch in the center of the living room where he laid me down and covered me with his weight.
I felt surrounded and protected in those long delicious moments on the couch in Cameron’s little house, as if my life had been narrowing in focus, funneling me slowly toward a single point. This. Here.
We explored one another, our clothing discarded in a pile on the floor beside us, and as we lay in each other’s arms, Cameron finally spoke, and the words were not what I’d expected to hear.
Chapter 11
CAMERON
God, I was weak. I’d just decided to keep my distance, and here I was, doing the exact opposite.
I lay with Harper in my arms on the couch in my living room and felt a disturbing blend of emotions welling up inside me. First was concern—there was a reason I didn’t get close to people, but telling Harper that seemed only to bring her nearer. And that was my fault, for not saying no. Beyond that? Guilt bubbled hot and sickening in my gut. What was I doing? I’d known this woman just over a week, and I’d let myself develop some teenaged infatuation. I was beyond this. I was—had been—a married man. Didn’t I owe to to my dead wife to at least ponder a new relationship more than a week? Didn’t I owe to it what we’d shared to avoid diving headfirst into anything else without really thinking about it? I felt sick and worried as I lay there, wishing I saw an easy way to undo what I’d just done.
“I’m sorry,” I told her, still physically unable to let her go. Her body was soft and warm, molded to mine in every way, matching me like a custom-cut joint with only one possible partner piece. Despite the feelings of self-hatred I was nursing, there were other feelings warring inside me, telling me to keep her close, not to let go of this warm comfort I’d found after years of cold solitude. But I knew I couldn’t.
