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“It doesn’t affect us, and there’s nothing between us but too many clothes. ”
She stared back at him silently for long moments, forcing him to turn his head to look at her, to hold back the growl of rage at the pain in her eyes.
“You don’t even hold me, Cam,” she said then. “You leave me as fast as you can, and the closest you come to holding me is keeping my feet warm at night on that damned couch. Do you realize that? Do you realize that unless you’re fucking me, your arms aren’t around me? You hold yourself so distant from me that it hurts. And I allow it. Because leaving you now would hurt worse. ”
“I hold you. ” He knew he did. His arms were always aching to surround her, he was always forcing himself to hold back, to pull back, because he didn’t want to smother her with that need, with that overwhelming urge to pull her to him and never let her go. To shelter her. To protect her. To make certain nothing or no one could ever hurt her again.
“When do you hold me?” A sheen of moisture filled her eyes. “Other than during sex, Cam, when do you hold me?”
His head jerked in an instinctively negative movement. That wasn’t true. As bad as he wanted to hold her, as much as he ached to hold her—she was right. He hadn’t held her.
“Holding you is all I think about sometimes,” he admitted, his voice hoarse. “I hold back Jaci, because I don’t want to hold too hard. I don’t want to frighten you away before I even have you, sweetheart. ”
He pushed his fingers through his hair and grimaced at the impossibility of what he was trying to do. The very thin line he was trying to walk.
He turned and moved back to the Jaguar, bracing his hands on the hood before turning back to her. She watched him, as she always did, those eyes breaking his heart, so filled with life, with a purity of spirit, that sometimes she terrified him.
“I love you, too. ” He watched the shock that filled her face. “I’ve always loved you, Jaci. And I always let you go when you needed to, because I was always afraid of holding you too tight. If I held you too tight, if I wrapped myself around you the way I wanted to, then you might leave forever. And where would I be if you left forever?”
She took a step forward, then stopped. She stared back at him as a single tear slipped from her eyes, and he ached that he had caused it. He would have killed any other man that made her cry, but how did he punish himself for it?
“Why?” she whispered, her voice low and rough with emotion. “Why would you even think of it like that, Cam? I want to hold you, as often as I can. I want you wrapped around me however you can bear it as I sleep. I want every memory we can fill our lives with so that if you’re ever gone, if you ever walk away, or God forbid something should happen to you, then I’ll have something of you to hold onto. ”
He tightened his jaw and turned away from her again. He remembered being a boy, so young, so determined to enjoy every memory he made. Then he remembered the destruction. His parents deaths, the father that had been so strong, so filled with laughter. His petite mother, always hugging and always loving. A woman far different from her sister. Davinda had nearly destroyed him. In a way, she had destroyed him.
He inhaled roughly and shook his head. Jaci didn’t need to know the horror of what he had endured. Neither did Chase. It was bad enough that he knew, that he remembered.
“I need time. ” He turned back to her, steeling himself against the need to give her anything, everything she wanted.
“You’ve had seven years,” she stated.
“And if I need seven more?” He glared back at her now. He’d be damned if he was going to spill his shame to her. Enduring it had been bad enough. Going to Sheriff Bridges had torn a part of his soul free of his body. He would always, always remember the shame of telling the other man what had happened and why he needed to get that bitch away from him and Chase.
The sheriff, despite his attempts to get Cam to file charges, had seemed to understand that rage and shame, though. He had gotten the pictures, the negatives. He had made certain Davinda didn’t leave the house with anything but the clothes on her back, and he had made certain she left town. And he had used his connections to block every investigation Chase had attempted in the past years to find out what had happened to his brother.
Jaci’s lips parted, but then the pouty curves pursed in anger and she stared back at him with all the fire and passion he’d always loved about her.
“I can’t make you talk,” she snapped. “But I’ll be damned if I have to like your silence. And I’ll warn you right now, Cam, this macho bullshit you’re pulling, on not just me but your brother as well, is going to get really old. ”
“Bullshit to you,” he growled back. “It’s not bullshit to me, Jaci. And trust me, what you want to know has nothing to do with what we have together. ”
“There’s where you’re wrong,” she yelled back, that fury igniting inside her, and though he knew the response was completely incongruous to the situation, it made him as hard as hell. “It has everything to do with us, Cam. And everything to do with a relationship developing between us. ”
“If that’s true, then you can tell me about the Robertses,” he demanded. “You can tell me where you got that fucking whip scar from. ”
Her smile was pure sarcasm. “You’re repeating yourself, Cam. ”
“Fine, then let’s repeat this. ”
The argument, the anger, the pure lust she inspired inside him rolled through him like a tidal wave. He had never felt so hot, so in need of one woman’s touch.
Before she could move to evade him, his arm went around her waist and a second later he was laying her over the hood of the Jaguar and bending over her.
God, she was meant to be touched, to be taken with lusty hunger as she took in return. And she was taking. Her hands latched on to his neck, jerked his head to her, and before he could evade her or take her kiss, her teeth nipped, rather hard, at his lower lip.
Cam jerked back, his eyes narrowing on her, his lips pulling back as he fought to breathe through the lust and tasted blood.
“You bit me, Jaci. ” Blood was suddenly thundering through his veins, filling his cock until he was certain the hard length was going to rip through his jeans.
