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The ants appear on her skin, digging sharp feet into her muscles, making her shudder as a vision plays in her mind of Cameron turning his back on her after she confesses her feelings to him.
No. She’s not going to let them dissuade her. No risk, no reward, as Tori would say. She’s normally talking about the spontaneous alterations she makes to her Nonna’s recipes, but it can be applied here, too.
The shower is still going and Jules follows the tug in her abdomen into the bathroom. Cameron’s left the door ajar so she doesn’t even have to knock.
Cameron wet is a sight to behold. A sight that sends heat flooding into her core as she watches sheets of water slide over the muscles on his back and over the curve of his ass.
‘Room for one more?’ she asks.
Cameron turns to face her, brushing his hair off his forehead. His arm muscles bunch and Jules’s insides clench.
A smile spreads over Cameron’s face, at once sensual and innocently happy. ‘Not sure. Shall we test it?’
Jules steps inside the shower and goes straight for a kiss, sliding her hands over wet muscles and hot skin. Cameron kisses her slow and soft, with obvious tenderness that makes her knees weak and the sensation of butterflies appear in her stomach. She thought that was a turn of phrase, but she swears there are wings fluttering inside her.
‘Hair wet or dry?’ Cameron checks with her, feathering kisses over her forehead. ‘I think there’s a shower cap in that vanity kit out there.’
‘Because shower caps are the epitome of sexy.’
‘You’re the epitome of sexy,’ Cameron parries, rubbing his knuckles on the underside of her breast.
She grabs the shower cap and a condom.
Shower sex is something she’s done before, but though it’s sex, she’s never found it sexy. The awkwardness of limbs in an enclosed space, arguments about water temperature and getting soap in your eyes. The precariousness of balance and grip.
Not with Cameron. Everything is slow and measured and steamy, in all senses of the phrase. Cameron goes to his knees for her, teasing out pleasure with his tongue and fingers until her moans are bouncing off the tiled walls.
After, she braces her forearms on the tiles and cants her hips back for Cameron to slide in. Water sluices between their bodies. He’s got one hand on her hip, the other kneading a breast, and he tries a few angles until he finds the one that makes the little ‘oh’ noises fall from her lips with every thrust.
There’s little speaking between them, but Jules has had the pleasure of Cameron enough times this week to read his body, and he hers. It steals her breath and makes her heart beat loud in her ears. They know each other. They come seconds apart, then lean against the tiles, kissing languidly until Jules’s skin starts pebbling from cold and Cameron gently pushes her beneath the warm spray and steps out of the shower to dry off while he watches her, a soft smile on his face the entire time that creates more butterflies in her stomach.
***
Jules moves through the rest of her morning routine—going back to her room to dress and heading down to the breakfast buffet—with half her thoughts back in Cameron’s room, and half her heart tangled in his sheets. She almost told him this morning, when she stepped out of the shower and he wrapped her up in a towel. Almost said, ‘I’ve got feelings for you. I want to date you.’
She’d taken a breath to prepare and everything, but then her throat closed up. What if he didn’t have feelings for her? What if he laughed? What if he ended things, even their phone calls in the office? She’d gone light-headed, unable to take a proper breath until he’d pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead and made some of the tension slip away.
Then she remembered she was waiting until after his presentation anyway.
Now she has time to push through her fear, to focus on the vision she wants, of her and him together after she sews her heart onto her sleeve for him and asks him out. It’s not what she expected she’d be doing today, based on yesterday afternoon when she’d tried to open up to him so he’d return the favour and he’d run away from her instead. Just like Todd.
You can’t force emotional vulnerability from someone. Cameron was right. It had been foolish to try, and it left her roaming around the hotel that afternoon feeling like someone had thrown a bunch of daggers between her shoulder blades. Exactly how it had felt when Todd left her after she proposed. This leap was smaller in comparison but the result was the same. Knives in her back and a lump in her throat.
It goes to show how deep her feelings for Cameron have grown in a handful of days, to garner the same level of reaction as from her rejected proposal of her ex-boyfriend of four years. Using the L-word in her head yesterday may have been an accident at first, but this morning, waking up with Cameron, seeing him sleepy and unguarded, she’s more certain than ever she wants the whole package. Dates and hand holding and learning more about him and kisses that don’t lead to anything. The chance to fall in love.
It feels natural, right, to think about loving Cameron. Like sitting across from him at that fancy restaurant had felt right—after he’d apologised and explained in a stilted way why he’d run from her. It had also felt like she was crossing off item number three from her list. Go on a date.
Which means she’s now crossed off everything on the list. Talked face-to-face, flirted and gauged his interest, gone on a date, hanky-panky. Lots of hanky-panky. Like it was step one and four and all the way through to 20.
But they’re still not dating.
Her friends were going to help her make a second list when she’s back in Canberra, how to turn a fling into a real relationship, but she doesn’t need a step-by-step. All she needs is honesty.
If things go to plan, they’ll be official by the end of the day. All she’s got to do is tell him how she feels and ask him out.
That brings the ants marching across her shoulders. She rolls them a couple of times but the feeling stays. If the sensation was in her stomach, she’d call it nerves, not fear. At least there’s no back-stabby feeling. It’s day four of the conference and she woke up this morning in Cameron’s bed, with his arm weighing her down into the mattress and his warm breath fanning across the back of her neck.
She smiles as she moves through the breakfast buffet without Cameron by her side since he’s gone to investigate the room he’ll be giving his presentation in. She passes the muesli stand and her stomach swoops. That’s what Cameron eats for breakfast.
