He was always right, of course. So I talk my anxiety out instead of ingesting it.
“What did you want to do with your life? You know, before it took a turn for the worse,” I ask. We’ve successfully managed to dance around our personal lives. Well, past lives in our case, since Dark Forces soldiers are dead to the world above.
A soft chuckle escapes his lips and warms my neck. “I was going to school to be a professor. I moved to the States when I was seventeen and always wanted to teach at an old university. It didn’t matter where, I only cared that the buildings were old and had a wealth of history. A nearby forest and mountains to walk through. A home hidden away from everything.” He brushes his fingers through my hair again and this time I know it’s not to keep it from his face.
The image he painted blooms through my mind like watercolor on canvas. His dreary, quiet life would’ve been lovely.
“It sounds charming,” I murmur softly.
“And what of you?” His accent is richest when he whispers. My toes curl with the flutter of his voice.
“I pictured myself writing stories.”
His fingers stray from my hair and trace the curve of my neck. “Happy ones? Or sad?”
I inhale sharply at his touch, the pads of his fingers causing chills to spread across my skin. My thighs press together with need.Don’t think about the shower incident.“You know they would’ve been sad. Likely violent. Perhaps some romance. I find I like those stories best.” My voice is raspy.
Cameron’s fingers pause, surely feeling me squirming this close to him, before he leans forward and presses his lips to my ear. “Is that why you burden me with those longing, haunting eyes? Do you find my story to be a sad one? What are you yearning for, Emery? Tell me, and whatever it is, I will give it to you.” He sets his hand on my waist where it dips deepest into my abdomen.
My heart beats faster, and my lips part at his touch. “I want for nothing,” I say with as much resolve as I can conjure. My thighs rub together shamelessly.
He closes what little space there is between our bodies and nudges his knee between my legs. A soft gasp escapes me as his hand smooths over the crest of my hip and stops with his thumb dipping below my waistband. I arch my back at the contact and push my ass into his crotch instinctively.
“Nothing?” he says sardonically, moving his hand agonizingly slow under the rim of my underwear and down to my clit. I let out a small moan as he slips two fingers between my folds and finds me soaking wet. “This is far from nothing, love.”
I should tell him to stop. I shouldn’t give in to his self-destruction. But God I want to, and I don’t think I have the strength to let this moment slip by. My moments were numbered the second I entered the cell with him.
“Cameron, wait,” I whisper.
He stops moving his hands and presses a kiss against my neck. “Do you want me to stop?” His words are like drops of lust on my skin.
“No, but…what exactly isthisbetween us?” I want him to say it’s more than fooling around. More than just getting off before the horrors of the trials coming, because there’s a weight that seizes a part of me behind everything he does. Every heavy stare and loose grin. It’s unsettling, but I need to know.
He pushes his fingers inside me, rewetting them before he starts circling my clit in a lazy rhythm that makes my eyes loll to the back of my head. “There will never be anything between us,” he says callously. My chest sinks at his words, but he doesn’t stop his teasing swirls. “You’re just the next partner to me. Nothing more. I want to give you a good time while you’re still around. You might as well be satisfied until the end, don’t you think?”
Coldness seeps back into me as I remember myself.
“Yes. Of course,” I murmur. I don’t allow the sting of those words to linger. The pleasure and soft moans that follow as he sinks two fingers deep inside me take any thoughts I had left. Cameron nips at my neck and rolls his hips against my ass as he finger-fucks me into oblivion.
He groans as my breaths get shorter. His shirt rides up and his bare skin rubs against my back. I let my head tilt back and muffle a moan by burying my teeth into my lower lip.
“You make me lose myself, you know that?” He breathes up the back of my neck, angling his finger deeper inside me until he has me trembling in his embrace.
My orgasm peaks as he grinds his boner against my ass. I cover my mouth to keep in the whimper that rises up in my throat as I come on his hand.
Cameron smiles against my nape and presses his lips there before he slowly withdraws his hand from my pants. I wish he wouldn’t offer such soft kisses so easily. It almost feels mocking.
“Get some sleep, Emery.”
When I don’t respond, he turns onto his side so our backs are pressed together. I stare out into the darkness of the barracks. After almost an hour, Cameron’s breaths even out and I know he’s fallen asleep. He must be exhausted because I haven’t heard his breathing this rhythmic before.
Restlessness ails me. No matter of lying here will soothe me into sleep.
I decide to walk the maze of the Under with only my fingertips gliding against the wall as my guide. There’s a possibility I will never see this place again.Right after it started to feel like home.My mouth firms as I pass the weapons room. I know we won’t be getting up at four a.m. to practice tomorrow, but I can’t help but yearn for one more morning of Cameron’s critiques and jabs.
A small cry sounds through the hallway and catches my attention. I follow the sound into the infirmary. There’s a dim light in here like there is in the bathroom, and it’s enough to reveal Bree sitting at the center of the floor with her knees pulled up against her chest.
There’s no reason why I should even try to comfort her. I’m pretty sure she and Damian will try to kill me first thing tomorrow, but still, I linger. It’s not like any of us asked to be down here.
