Melt for You (Slow Burn #2)(90)
I’ll need something to sustain me through the next fifty celibate years.
“I never asked you why you and Kellen switched apartments,” I murmur. My limbs are heavy, and I’m sore in various places, thanks to Cam’s remarkable stamina. We’ve had sex three times in the last two hours—twice in bed and once in the shower.
Cam trails his fingers up my spine and presses a kiss to my temple. “My coach thought a change of scenery would do me good.”
I tilt my head and gaze up at him, smiling. “And did it?”
The smile he returns is soft and sweet. “Aye.” He pauses for a moment, his smile fading. “And no.”
I know what he means. We both hear the clock ticking down to zero in the background.
“What did you need a change of scenery for?”
After another pause, Cam sighs heavily. “My life had become . . . unmanageable.”
The pregnant underage girl Michael mentioned immediately comes to mind. I’m loath to bring it up and ruin an otherwise beautiful moment, but if I’ve got only a few days to find out everything I can about Cameron McGregor, I’m doing it. “That teenager, you mean.”
“Aye. Among other things. I was drinkin’ way too much. Lashin’ out at everyone. I’ve never been great at dealin’ constructively with my anger, even after years of therapy.”
“You were in therapy? For years?”
“I worked on my head as hard as I worked on my body. Can’t say the effect was as successful, but yeah. Therapy. Seein’ how badly my mum was mind fucked by life, I’ve always been into self-improvement. I also read a lot. Everything, really, biographies to history to politics. I didn’t go to college—gettin’ through secondary school with a learnin’ disability was tough enough—but I do love to read.”
He’s all that he is, and he loves books. Why, universe? Why give me this with someone who has a life on the other side of the world? I snuggle closer to him, breathing in his wonderful, warm scent, swallowing around the lump in my throat. “You don’t seem particularly angry to me, prancer.”
He chuckles and nuzzles his nose into my hair. “Beauty tames the savage beast, I suppose.”
My heart glows at hearing him call me Beauty, but I hate the thought of him being unhappy. My maternal instinct wants to hug him close to my chest and fight off the wolves for him, but another instinct tells me that his wolves are all on the inside, not out.
“Awkward segue alert.”
His chest shakes with suppressed laughter. “Okay. Go.”
“The lawsuit you’re in, the one I overheard you talking with someone on the phone about. Is it related to the pregnant teenager?”
He nods. “She’s suin’ me for paternity.”
When I gasp, he’s quick to add, “I’m not the father, lass. I might not be a pillar of morality, but I know enough to steer clear of adolescents.”
“I know. I believed you before when you told me it wasn’t true. How old is she?”
“Sixteen.”
“Oh my God! She’s a child!”
His voice turns dry. “You wouldn’t say that if you saw her picture. Or got a look inside her mind. She’s a cunning little thing. Wants attention, knows how to get it.”
“I think you’d better just tell me the story, because I’m cooking up some really scary scenarios in my mind right now, Cam.”
He absentmindedly combs his fingers through my hair as he speaks. “The story, to put it in a nutshell, is that I’m a target. A big dumb bulls-eye. I’ve done myself no favors with the way I act—drunk and disorderly, my ‘dating’ history, so to speak. My barrister thinks it’s a miracle I haven’t seen more of these kinds of accusations.” His laugh is chillingly dark. “Lucky me.”
I wait, holding my breath, until he continues.
“I had a party at my house. I was always havin’ parties. Havin’ people around makes me feel better. Less . . . antsy. My house was always filled with people. Friends—if you could call them that—teammates, strangers, whoever.”
I think of the strip poker party he had the first night we met, the anonymous girl he picked up in a bar, and shudder to think what would’ve happened if I lived on a different floor and we’d never met. He might have some random woman accusing him of fathering her unborn child here, too.
Maybe truthfully this time.
“One night over the summer, this guy brings his sister. She looks twenty, at least. Full makeup, high heels, the works. The party gets wild. By three a.m., I’m passed out on the lawn in the backyard. When I wake up in the mornin’, the place is a wreck and everyone’s gone except this girl, who I find cryin’ in my kitchen, lookin’ a mess. I ask her what’s wrong, she says her brother left and she has no way home. So, idiot me, I offer to drive her. And that’s it. That’s all I did: drove her home. The next week I got a visit from the police, who wanted to discuss how I’d like to plead to sexual coercion under the Sexual Offences Act.”
I’m queasy. Maybe hearing this story wasn’t such a good idea after all. “So she claimed the two of you had sex?”
“Aye. I was drunk, but I bloody well wasn’t drunk enough to forget that. I never saw her after she first came in. So my legal team interviews everyone from the party, and it turns out no one can corroborate her bein’ near me at any time. Because there was no physical evidence, either, and she had no witnesses to back up her story, the charges weren’t filed. But by then the news had picked up the story. I was called everything from a child molester to a rapist.”