Her mouth fell open. “Cam! You can’t just take naked pictures of a woman without her permission.”
“You weren’t naked, I made sure you were covered up, and I did ask, and you said, ‘mmm hmmm’ and I already sent every one of them to your phone. You can tell me which ones to delete or tell me to delete all of them. I hope you don’t though. I really like them.”
She frowned. Well, that sounded all right then. “I want to see.”
He picked his phone up off his dresser and sank down onto the bed beside her, opened up his photos and handed it over. Just like that.
She hesitated, the phone sitting on her palm. “You can just show me if you want to.”
He frowned. “Why would I care if you see photos on my phone?”
“I don’t know,” she said softly. “I feel…” She handed it back to him. “I feel like I’m doing something wrong.”
His frown deepened, and he snatched the phone from her hand, then started scrolling fast through his pictures. There was a dozen of her sleeping, his satin sheets covering her, but accentuating her curves, and her face was relaxed with sleep. She looked kind of beautiful. And then he shocked her by flipping through more photos. They were mostly pictures of the outdoors, and some food, a couple of a group of guys laughing while he stood in the middle of them. A couple of a little kid playing hockey—his nephew, she would guess. One with that kiddo up on his shoulders as they were both mid-laugh. There was one of him with his arm around a woman, and he stopped on that one. “My sister, Avery,” he explained. “You’ll meet her tonight if you go with me.”
“I…” The words were stuck in her throat. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“Mmm, let me guess. Your ex was territorial over his phone?”
“Very. He drilled it into my head that if I even looked at it over his shoulder, it was an indicator that I didn’t trust him.”
“How long did that go on?”
“Three years.”
He gave a dark chuckle and handed her the phone back. “Go through the photos and text yourself the ones you want. I’m not territorial over my phone because I have nothing to hide. If aman is defending his phone like that, drop him,” he gritted out as he stood. He jogged down the stairs and disappeared, and she was left in his bed holding his open, unlocked phone.
What the hell?
She blinked hard and went through the pictures of herself. Moira couldn’t shake the feeling that she was doing something wrong, but she thought about it. He’d given her his phone, and encouraged her to look through the pictures, and he wasn’t hiding it. And he owed her nothing. They’d just met. They were strangers.
Her heart fluttered as she looked at the pictures he’d taken of her. She liked the way he saw her. She liked the way he took pictures, and the angles he chose.
She looked at peace.
So strange to find peace with a stranger.
So strange to find peace with anyone.
Moira texted herself one of the pictures. She liked the way she looked in it, sure, but from this angle, she could see Cam in the reflection of the dresser mirror, and his abs and arms looked shredded. The camera covered his face, but good gah, he looked so hot standing there taking pictures of her.
She wanted that one for memories.
She would never forget today, or the way he was making her feel.
But a little dark thought overcame her. This is what Cam did. He met women, fucked women, and released them back into the wild to continue their lives with a memory and a story.
He was good at this because he had done it before.
She backed out of the picture and looked at the grid of recent pictures and scrolled. She couldn’t find any pictures of women, but that was probably because he deleted them. Just like he would delete hers, so he could hand his next conquest the phone and pretend he didn’t have anything to hide.
All men had something to hide.
She pursed her lips and let the phone screen go dark, then got up and dressed, taking her time.
Downstairs, the kitchen was situated right below the loft, so she couldn’t see him, but she could hear Cam moving around the kitchen. The clink of pots sounded, and the rustle of packaging.
As she stepped carefully down the loft stairs, she caught the first whiff of tomato soup. He was heating up the meal she’d brought.
