A soft sigh escaped him. He unscrewed the water bottle and tipped half of the contents down his tattooed throat. I watched his muscles work, aware that I should probably speak, but I said nothing for the longest time. I let him stare at me unchallenged and think whatever he wanted to think. Life was better that way. It made more sense.
“Something happened today.” Cam’s voice pitched low. Scratchy, as though he’d spoken too much already and he was tired of it. “I want to tell you about it because I think you’ll understand, but at the same time, if you do, then everything I was worried about becomes real again.”
I considered his words. Dissected them. “You assume that if I understand the world you come from that I must be an enemy.”
A statement of fact, not a question.
Cam nodded, eyes tight at the corners. “It’s not easy to make friends in this life.”
“It isn’t.”
My agreement was my only answer, and he heard me, nodding slightly as a wry grin warmed his handsome face. “You said before that we could be that—friends, I mean. Was that bullshit?”
“Bullshit?” I shook my head. “You mistake me for someone who has the patience for games.”
“That’s what I thought. Then someone tried to kill me today and it made me wonder if it was connected to the only new thing in my life right now.”
I unpicked that. Latched onto the part that didn’t make me want to dig the monster from my soul and slaughter whatever poor fool had tried to hurt him. “You think I tried to kill you and Ifailed?”
Cam raised a brow, eyes warming with whatever it was about me he was trying to understand, the sinister clues that were starting to click into place and form a picture that he liked. “Are you telling me that if it was you who’d cut the brake lines on my bike, you’d have done it properly?”
“No. I am telling you that if I wanted to kill you,Cam, you would already be dead.”
The truth was a funny thing. Sometimes it seemed my entire existence was dedicated to keeping it locked up. Others it slipped out of me like water running downhill and I didn’t care to stop it.
I turned my attention back to the accounts for Kings Building Ltd. I was a third of the way through, still drowning in notes and receipts that made no sense. But I’d been right in my rudimentary assessment of the trading profit. There was plenty of money coming in, enough for whoever was involved to make a decent and legal living. Was that what Cam wanted? What he craved? Or was he here because he craved me?
“Can I ask you something?”
His low rumble slid over my skin like silk. I turned back to him, revelling in the fact that the warmth radiating from his large frame seeped into my exposed upper body. The only thing missing was his bare skin. “You can ask me anything you like.”
“Will you answer?”
“Perhaps.”
Cam’s cautious smirk widened a touch. He drank the other half of his water in one long swallow, then leaned closer, his arms once again a cage of strength around my slighter frame. “Are you as dangerous as I think you are?”
I let a beat of silence stretch between us, loaded with everything I should’ve fought to contain but that, somehow, the acceptance in his gaze made me believe I didn’t have to. “What you think and whatisare things you don’t have to worry about as long as we are friends.”
“Are we friends, Teddy?”
“Would you like to be?”
Cam didn’t answer with words. He tilted his broad torso ever closer, gifting me a perfect view of the bloodied dagger tattoos on his neck. His scent overwhelmed me, and every instinct I possessed urged me to meet him halfway, but I stayed where I was, frozen as my pulse thundered in my ears. I knew what he wanted and I wanted it too, but I’d make him take it.
I was difficult like that. Unkind to myself, perhaps. But I hadn’t lived a life that deserved much kindness. I hadn’t led an existence that deserved the affection of a man like Cam. In his own way, he was as dark and dangerous as me, but there was a warmth in him I did not possess, and I didn’t dare reach for it in case it burned me alive.
Cam chuckled and gripped my chin in his work-hardened palm. “I can’t explain what you do to me.”
“I would not ask you to.”
“Would you tell me to stop?”
“Stop what?”
“This.” Cam closed the final few inches between us and pressed his lips to mine. They were warm and dry and seemed to be connected to every nerve in my body, awakening me in ways I couldn’t comprehend.
I kissed him back without stopping to make sense of what was happening to me, and the kiss deepened to a soft, sweet place that made my head spin and my blood heat.
