His heart thumped relentlessly in his chest, almost accusatory in its rhythm. Carefully, he tried to lean up, to pull his arm out from under Cami’s sleeping form. His stomach turned to lead as she stirred, rolling toward him in her sleepiness. He grabbed her pillow, trying to ease it under her to replace the arm he was removing. The sweet, softly floral scent of her shampoo floated toward him, and it implored him to relax, calm down.But the longer he let this go on, the worse it would get. She deserved better.
She murmured as he pulled his arm out from under her. He thought, for one hopeful second, that she might just roll over and go back to sleep, but the dark blonde of her eyelashes fluttered.
She blinked her eyes open, looking blearily up at him. “Des?”
“Hey,” he whispered. The thudding in his chest stuttered, stopped, and resumed. “I have to go. I have a work thing. I’m sorry, it’s really early. You should go back to sleep.”
“You’re going?” she repeated. There was a sleepy gravel in her voice that was endearing, and he couldn’t help but reach out and smooth a tangle of hair back from her forehead.
“Yeah.” But he leaned down and pressed a kiss first to her forehead, then to her lips when she tilted her face up to his. “I’m sorry.” She pouted, and when she reached for his arm to try to pull him back into her embrace, he deflected the motion into laying a third kiss to her palm. “We’ll talk later. Get some more rest.”
This time she didn’t reach for him when he slipped out of the bed, instead grabbing hold of the pillow he’d lain on and pulling it against her, a makeshift cuddle buddy. It wasn’t cold in her apartment, but there was a chill that ran through him as he dressed, quickly and efficiently, avoiding looking at her as she fell back asleep in her second-hand, too-small bed. It had been so clear, seemed so easy, to slip out when she was asleep, nestled in the blankets they’d warmed together, but the second she’d blinked up at him, lips pushed into an inviting, adorable sulk, it had become much more complicated. He had to get out of here, put some distance between them. He couldn’t think right around her.
Once he was dressed, he grabbed his wallet from where he’d dropped it the night before, haphazardly stuffed the ardor-strewn contents back in the cash flap. Then he checked his phone—two new messages, one from Gabriel, one from Olivia, both of which he ignored—and ducked out of Cami’s apartment.
Outside, in the hazy light of the Santa Monica sunrise, it was easier to breathe. He ran a frustrated hand over his hair, approaching his bike. Then he slammed his helmet down over his head. This morning, the protective foam was unusually stifling.
The motorcycle roared to life under him. He started to back it out of its parking spot, just across from the closed-up storefront of Sex on the Beach. When he came around and it was in view, he cast a furtive glance at the windows, masked with posters and protective window clings for the modesty of passersby. Then he risked one glance at Cami’s window, and drove away.
18
Shortly before one o’clock, Cami pulled herself away from her laptop where she’d been fiddling with some coding for the back end of Lenny’s website. They had toyed with the idea of setting up a website for Sex on the Beach back when Cami had first started at SMC, and ever since, she’d been using that as a baseline for how much she’d learned. Every time a new concept cropped up in her education, she’d try to implement it into this website, which for the moment, wasn’t available to the public. Maybe once she’d finished her degree, she would put it up if she could convince Lenny to invest in setting up an online storefront.
Maybe once she was working full-time, she’d have less brain space to devote to Dad Search 2026. If it wasn’t lurking in the back of her mind so much, she could get more work done. She wouldn’t have to constantly switch between her coding and her genetic genealogy accounts. Once upon a time, she’d thought finding answers would give her peace of mind, but her consistent lack of results was depressing. Maybe she should just shelve it. Come back in five years when the DNA database was bigger.
Besides, she had better, sexier things to worry about now.
She didn’t know what time Des had left, but she had a foggy memory of gray lighting the color of his eyes, a quick goodbye kiss, and snuggling up to his pillow. She’d woken up like that sometime later, wrapped around the cushion like Wyle E. Coyote clung to a cartoon telephone pole. Then, sore in places she didn’t know it was possible to be sore, she’d taken a long, hot bath, and decided to try to function like a human instead of sulking that she hadn’t woken up to a morning erection.
Maybe he’d panicked. She supposed she could understand that; their arrangement had been as clear-cut and simple as they could make it—toys only. It had been about testing sexual enhancement devices, not spending time together, or truly being intimate.
Just the memory of last night made her feel adrift. It was possible that he had had second thoughts in the middle of the night, when they were both sated and their brains weren’t clouded with lust. Maybe he needed to clear his head.
Or maybe he just had to go. He had a life, and a busy one at that. He probably didn’t have much time to spend on unplanned sleepovers with retail associates. She couldn’t expect him to hang around for snuggles. They weren’t dating, and nothing he had said to her at all over the past few months made her think he was even interested in the concept.
So, freshly bathed, she’d poured herself a cup of coffee and re-immersed herself in coding. It did an incredible job of distracting her until the alarm on her phone went off, signaling it was almost time for her shift at the store. She took a moment to stretch and scarf down a day-old croissant from the bakery a few doors down. Then she left through the back door that led to the store through a claustrophobic staircase.
Lenny was finishing up a sale to a middle-aged Indian couple. She wished them well, and they headed out the door, the chime above it tingling merrily. Then she turned to Cami,propping herself up on the stool behind the counter. “Hey, kiddo.” She reached for a large green smoothie in a disposable plastic cup. “Eventful night?”
The phrasing stopped Cami in mid-step, her eyes narrowing on the older woman. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Lenny said, voice high and overtly innocent. Holmes gave a whuff of interest at the tone, and the office door swung open as he shoved it aside, lumbering into the storefront so that he could crowd Lenny and lay his head on her knee. She stroked his ears absently, looking for all the world like Ursula the Sea Witch with one of her eels. “You know, I was out for a walk pretty early this morning.”
The non-sequitur made her even more suspicious, but Cami forced herself to check the store cleaning log and see what Lenny had neglected to do this morning. “Oh?” she prompted, almost certain she didn’t want to know where this was going.
“Mhmm,” Lenny hummed into her smoothie. “There was a motorcycle leaving the parking lot.”
Ugh, of course.
Cami struggled to sound nonchalant. “Interesting.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
When she got close, Holmes gave a thump with his tail and Cami petted his nose, doing her best to avoid looking at his mistress.
“What was Des doing sneaking out of your place at quarter to six, Cami?”
“Um...” Determined to carry on as though this was everyday conversation, she shrugged. “I don’t know what you mean. Maybe he was robbing the store. Have you checked the safe?”
