A few minutes later and the backyard filled with the tantalizing sizzle of grilled steaks. I breathed in deeply, my stomach growling.
“You wanted yours medium, right?” he asked. “Not much longer now.”
Which meant it was changing time. While he started poking at the foil-wrapped asparagus, I turned the lawn chair around so that the high back was blocking his view of me. Then, after a quick look around at his neighbors and seeing only darkness from their windows, I shimmied out of my jeans. Unfortunately, I was drunk and had forgotten to take off my boots first. I fell over sideways onto the grass.
“What are you doing over there?” I heard Camden yell and the sound of metal tongs being placed on a rung.
“Stay back! I’m fine!” I yelled, hoping my voice wasn’t loud enough to alert the neighbors.
I thanked my lucky stars that my combat boots had a zipper and quickly unzipped them. Lying on my back with my leg bent up to my head, I pulled off the jeans and tossed them to the side. Then I got on my knees and started to look for my ugly Peg pants. Where the hell did they go?
“Looking for these?” Camden asked from behind me.
Swallowing my pride, I turned around on my knees and looked up. Camden was holding the pants in one hand. He dropped them beside him and then walked over to me. He held out his hand.
“Come on,” he said gently, a shadowed intensity in his eyes.
I shook my head quickly. “No. I’m just in my underwear.”
“I can see that,” he said. “Let me help you up.”
My heart thumped loudly in my ears and I looked away from his face and straight ahead at his knees. “I don’t want you to see.”
Suddenly he was down on his knees, and though there were a few inches between us, he was closer than he’d ever been. “I don’t care, Ellie,” he said determinedly.
I kept shaking my head, unable to form words, unable to tell him how I was feeling. I just wanted him to go away and leave me alone, let me get dressed in peace. I wanted to run. I wanted the darkness to swallow me whole.
“You know how I feel about your scars. They only make you more beautiful,” he whispered, now stroking the side of my face. His eyes were searching mine, begging me to open up but the fear was so big and so damn real.
“You’ve never seen my scars.” My voice was barely audible, even in my own head.
“No, I haven’t. But I’ve seen what they’ve made you.”
His nose nudged the side of mine and maybe because I’d been thinking about it ever since Safeway, or maybe because I was buying some time, I leaned in and kissed him. This wasn’t the tender kiss from earlier. I had no wine bottles held above my head. This kiss was soft for a moment, then hurried. His lips sucked gently on mine, his tongue ravishing my mouth like he couldn’t stop himself. I was suddenly insatiable, each kiss reaching down into my core, making me want all of him, every part. A million thoughts flew through my head and then there was nothing at all. There wasn’t even Camden and Ellie. There was just this hot, primal, crucial need for each other.
Before I could stop him, or at least pretend to stop him, he was pushing me back until I was falling onto the grass. I reluctantly slid my knees out to the side, my legs coming into full view. My scars visible in the dark. He didn’t notice, didn’t care. He kept kissing me passionately, so hot, so sweet, as one of his hands disappeared into the back of my hair, cupping my head. He laid me on the ground, the hard grass tickling the sides of my ears, and that was the last time he was gentle.
He straddled me and pulled my tank top over my head and tossed it aside. Then he leaned back and ripped off his own shirt. As if I wasn’t breathing hard enough already, squirming beneath his form, he looked better than I could have imagined. Here was the new Camden McQueen, shirtless, a tower of defined muscle and gorgeous, darkly dangerous tattoos.
There was a phoenix rising from the ashes along the swoop of muscle of his hipbones, a tiger/dragon hybrid flying up the side of his stomach, scripture peeking out of the top of his boxers. I’d seen only glimpses of them before, and now they glowed before me, lit by the hundreds of warm lights in his garden. He was like a living, breathing painting on an all-male canvas.
I couldn’t gawk at him for long. He quickly took off his shorts, and I decided to help him out by removing my bra. I was glad I took the extra effort to wear my matching yellow and lace number. By the time I was finished unhooking it and throwing it across the grass, our clothes were scattered everywhere and his extremely erect penis was on full display.
I could only smile in response, stunned at the beauty of it, turned on as fuck at the idea of him thrusting it in me. And a tiny bit scared, to be honest, because it had been some time since I was with a man and it had been, well never, since I was with a man built like him. Although I had never been a fan of blow jobs except when it had come to Javier, my first instinct was to lay my lips around his tip and suck him slowly.
But that would have to wait. He leaned forward on me, elbows on each side of my shoulders, his body so wonderfully heavy on mine. His teeth went for my neck, nibbling softly from ear to shoulder while he slipped one of his hands slowly down my side and over my flat stomach until he was teasing the area underneath my thong. Then his fingers brushed against my pubic hair and stopped just as it was getting good. I squirmed, the pressure in my clit building to uncomfortable heights, wanting his hand to go down further. I felt him smile against my lips, as if he were deliberately torturing me, then finally he gave in and gave me what I wanted. I was slick as oil and it didn’t take long at all before his fingers circled my clit enough times and I came.
I cried out, the orgasm catching me by surprise. If I were a man, I would have hung my head in shame. That took one minute, if that. But I didn’t fucking care. I let the waves rock through me, my hand clutched in his hair, until I came to a soft landing.