Melt for You (Slow Burn #2)(95)



Then it becomes a game of who comes first. Also known as a win-win.

We go back and forth, slowly, taking turns. First he licks and suckles me for a moment, then stops as I lick and suckle him. When I cheat and begin to languidly stroke his balls, he cheats by slipping a finger under my bra and tweaking my throbbing nipple. I take him down my throat, all the way to his base, and he slides two fingers inside me and circles them.

When my entire body is shaking and I’m sweating and cross-eyed, I break first.

“I need to come, Cam.”

“So come.” He goes back to licking.

“Come with me.”

“Like this, or . . . ?”

I’m glad he asked, because suddenly I’m needing eye contact. This game is incredibly hot, but I’m craving more—I’m craving him. I want to go over the edge looking into his eyes.

Damn. I knew I was gonna regret this.

I climb off him, get another condom from the bedside table, and get him all wrapped up. Feeling satisfied with my technique, I smile at his erection.

Cam grabs my arms and flips me over so I’m on my back, looking up at him. Easing between my legs, he says gruffly, “Is this want you wanted?”

I nod, biting my lip against a moan. He slides inside me, and God, it’s good.

But he doesn’t go fast and hard again. He goes achingly slow, cupping my bottom in one hand, cradling my head in the other, propped up on an elbow and staring down into my eyes.

Swamped with emotion, I inhale a hitching breath. He smiles, but it’s achingly sad.

“Go ahead, luv,” he murmurs. “Tell me it doesn’t matter. Tell me it’s all a mistake.”

I have to turn my face away because I don’t want him to see the tears gathering in my eyes. When I finally do go over the edge, he’s right there with me, groaning my name and twitching inside me, carving his name into my heart the way Michael never did.

So this is love. Man, it’s even worse than Christmas.





THIRTY-FOUR

The mechanics of love go something like this:

Birdsong in the air and your heart in his kiss,

Eyes meet, breath catches, a sparkle of lust

A pulse of pure joy and an aching you must

Pursue against logic; that small voice in your mind

Warns of goblins and trapdoors and things you might find

Your beloved will do that will irk and grow boring

Like farting and lateness and that god-awful snoring.

But your heart insists on its impossible dream

Until one day you wake to find a terrible scream

Trapped in your throat with nowhere to go

And you think back on that time which seems so long ago

When your love was a bird, flying high on the wing

Not this dry little crust of a shriveled-up thing.

“Well, that’s one for the Romance Hall of Fame,” I say aloud, examining with alarm the poem I’ve just completed. It’s not even a proper sonnet, just a bunch of depressing rhyming verses that could be handed out as warnings to couples in premarriage counseling. Here, see what you have to look forward to? Do you really want to sign up for this?

I scratch a big X through the whole thing and slam my sonnet book closed.

It’s January 2, the day after New Year’s. Tomorrow I go back to work to get fired for being the office slut, which is really unfair considering when it came time to earn my title, I opted out. Only it didn’t look like I did, which is all that matters.

Also tomorrow, Cam leaves for Scotland. Every night since he gave me the key, I’ve been going over to his place for some hot, angry sex and leaving feeling a little worse than the day before.

We’re not talking, except to discuss which position we should switch to next. We’re not working out together. We’re not having dinner together. We’ve been reduced to the worst of all possible worlds—fuck buddies, without the buddies part.

The sex is incredible, but I really miss my friend. I miss laughing with him. I miss everything.

It’s my fault. I know it’s all my fault. I slipped and fell on his magical dick and ruined everything.

I’m too depressed to even look through the help wanted ads. Nobody ever finds a job like that, anyway. I spend a number of hours dejectedly browsing through online recruitment sites but inevitably end up opening a bottle of wine and attempting to drown my sorrows. Spoiler: it doesn’t work.

At four o’clock in the afternoon, I’m on my third glass of wine when the phone rings. I don’t answer it because it’s either my mother . . . or it’s my mother. Michael hasn’t tried to contact me at all. No emailed apology, no “Oops, I was drunk” text, no nothing.

I’ll admit it: that hurts. I mean, it twinges. It doesn’t feel anything like what I feel when I let myself dwell on what will happen to me when Cam is gone and I’m forced to admit my life is a giant stinking poop emoji without him.

I know I’ll eventually find another job. But there’s not a chance in hell I’ll ever find someone else like Cameron McGregor. I just hope it’s a few years before I pick up the paper and see a smiling picture of him and his beautiful wife and their perfect babies, because I need a little time between now and then to convince myself I’m not really in love with him.

Like, ten, twenty years.

A few moments after the phone stops ringing, the flashing red light on the machine tells me I have a voice mail. With nothing better to do, I decide to find out who it is.

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