“I shouldn’t discuss him with you.”
Cam sighed. “See? Stubborn. That characteristic weighs heavily in our conversations about you, Reggie darling.”
She huffed against him.
He rubbed his hand up and down her shoulder. “What did you mean about getting through to Sawyer?”
She lay there for a long time, and he could feel the battle raging inside her. Loyalty was strong in her, and she’d always been loyal to him, Hutch and Sawyer. In her mind, confiding in him about one of the other two was a betrayal. It was choosing him over them.
They had been right in realizing that she’d never choose between them and that their only chance of a life with her was convincing her to belong to all of them. Only now Hutch was doing his best to fuck everything up.
Despite his best effort, anger swelled within Cam. It was irrational. It didn’t serve anything, but it still pissed him off that with one fit of temper, Hutch had risked everything. Not only his relationship with Reggie but Cam’s and Sawyer’s as well.
“He held back,” she finally said. “A year ago he held back, and then when we made love again the other night, he wouldn’t . . .”
She seemed to struggle with the right words, and Cam thought back to those encounters to try and see what she was seeing. In both instances, Hutch and Cam had been the only ones to actually take her. He frowned. Both times Sawyer had used her mouth and nothing more. Until today.
“He didn’t penetrate you . . . vaginally,” Cam offered, stumbling over the damn word like a moron.
“He’s afraid of hurting me,” she said quietly. “Sawyer’s rough around the edges. No secret there. And I think he feels guilty because he’s had frequent sexual encounters with other women.”
Cam frowned again. It made sense in a twisted Sawyer kind of way. To be honest, he’d never evaluated Sawyer’s performance during sex. Just wasn’t high on his list of priorities, but now that Reggie had brought it up, he could see her point.
“So you threatened to rape him this morning?” Cam asked with only a thread of amusement.
“Something like that,” she mumbled. “I sorta jumped him in the kitchen and made it very clear what I wanted from him.”
“Hell, I think I’m jealous,” Cam murmured.
She dug her fist into his gut, and he grinned.
“Things were going great. Well, except his need to tie me up,” she said darkly. “And the whole spanking thing.”
Cam chuckled. “You loved it.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not the point. But then Hutch flipped out. I mean what the fuck was he thinking? Does he really think you or Sawyer would ever hurt me? If he doesn’t trust you and Sawyer, how on earth does he think this could ever work? I mean I guess I can understand his protective streak when it comes to other people or dangers I might face, but protecting me against you and Sawyer?”
Cam didn’t have an answer to that, because it was something he wanted to know as well.
“Did you see the look in Sawyer’s eyes, Cam?”
Emotion squeezed her voice, and she sounded near tears.
“He just stood there while Hutch hit him like he deserved it, like he deserved all the accusations Hutch hurled at him. And I couldn’t even go to him because then it would look like I was taking his side against Hutch.”
She leaned away again and stared up at Cam.
“What was I supposed to do, Cam?”
“What did you want to do?” he asked gently.
Her shoulders sagged. “I wanted to knock Hutch on his ass, and then I wanted to wrap my arms around Sawyer and tell him that I love him, that I know he’d never hurt me.”
“Then that’s what you should have done.”
“You make it sound so simple,” she grumbled. “How is me doing that not choosing between you?”
“Because Hutch was being a horse’s ass, and if it had been over anything else you would have immediately called him on it and set him straight.”
