Page 54

“Do you doubt me?” she asked, turning back from where she’d dropped the gemstones onto the entry table.

I wanted a clever repartee, but her hands had drifted to my waist, her fingers lingering at the tie of my wrap dress.

“Is this okay, Kam?”

Her playful insolence was gone, her hands stilled, waiting for permission. She meant it, I realized. She wasn’t pressuring me. She wasn’t pushing toward the endgame. I could have told her no and there wasn’t a single particle of me that believed she would have made me feel small or met my hesitation with resentment.

I won’t lie—her search for consent was an incredible turn on.

“Yes,” I think I articulated. I couldn’t hear my voice over the ocean of blood crashing through my arteries. Whatever I managed, she must have received the message, because her lips turned again with her arch smile as she worked loose the satin tie, allowing the wrap to fall open.

“You know,” she whispered, sliding her hands to my hips, forcing my audible inhalation, “I recently heard somewhere you liked playing hard to get—so I wholeheartedly appreciate the convenience of tonight’s choice of attire.”

“Fucking Dani,” I tried to laugh, but my body had gone into survival mode, its only focus on not imploding.

She leaned to kiss my neck, her hands sliding higher, her fingers grazing every ridge and channel of my ribcage. I closedmy eyes, tilting my head back, absorbing the sensation of her palms against my breasts, her thumbs teasing my nipples to attention. The plunging neckline of my cocktail dress hadn’t allowed for a bra, and despite being aware that Dani’s brother and his friends had spent the entire night staring at my cleavage, I was now glad to be sans one less complication.

I felt, as her mouth traveled along my collarbone, her hands moving to slip the dress off my shoulders, that I needed to respond in turn. That I should reciprocate her actions. But at the same time, I was struggling to even breathe, and she seemed to read my mind, aware I was already beginning to panic I wasn’t doing this correctly.

“Kam,” she gently captured the hand I’d raised to struggle with her buttons. “Just wait. For now, let me.”

She was offering the license just to experience it. The allowance to not know what to do and let it be okay.

And, to clarify—there were things I wanted to do. Things I’d been thinking about doing since she’d kissed me on a picnic table while eating take-out in front of Hana Bay. Things Iwoulddo, I didn’t doubt. But for the moment, I was relieved to let her lead.

It was entirely erotic, the unabashed way she stepped back to look at me. Knowing the ways she wanted me. I should have felt self-conscious, standing there in nothing but my heels and underwear—an impractically lacy pair I’d spent a puerile amount of time selecting earlier in the morning, for exactly this purpose—but there was something about her that didn’t allow me to feel uneasy at all.

“You’re really beautiful, Kameryn,” she said, finding my gaze again as she stepped forward to entwine her hands in mine, drawing me backward toward the bed.

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. Not as she bent, sliding the lace material down my hips, trailing her knuckles along the bareskin of my legs as she knelt to slip off my heels. The grazing touch sent my heart on an expedition, drubbing a hole through my chest. I had to reach back to steady myself against the pillow-top mattress, wondering what the statistics were of dying from anticipation? I was only twenty-three. If I was found dead in the morning, no one would believe my obituary when it readdied peacefully in her sleep.

Slowly, leisurely, she rose, kissing the curve of my calf, the tender skin at the crook of my knee, the inside of my thigh. Impatience gnawed at me, and before her lips had grazed their slow path up the plane of my stomach, I’d laced my fingers through her hair, pulling her upright, anxious to find her mouth.

I loved the way she kissed me. I loved the fullness of her lips, unlike any boy I’d ever kissed, the brush of her eyelashes, the inebriating smell of salt and sea that belonged to her and only her. I think I surprised her with my fervency, with the urgency of my need, because when at last she drew away, I wasn’t the only one fighting for breath.

“Amynedd piau hi, Kam-Kameryn,” she laughed, the musical rhythm of the unfamiliar words filling the silence in between my heartbeats. “Patience in all things.”

I doubted, somehow, that she was prone to follow the same advice, given the competitiveness of her nature, but whatever retort I sought to return was stifled as she pressed me back against the quilted comforter, and moved to kneel above me.

My mind was turned to other things.

Things like her fingertips—the way they teased, giving and retreating with their unhurried, deliberate exploration. Or her mouth that followed suit, retracing every inch of skin with the same prolonged reiteration.

My body ached. Ached in ways I didn’t know it could, vulnerable with wanting.

I gave in to closing my eyes, my fingers grappling for purchase on the varnished wooden planks of the headboard, allowing myself to fall into the intensity of every heightened sensation.

Nothing in my life had ever been like this. As out of control. As intolerable as it was intoxicating.

I felt torn apart—and then pieced back together again.

It felt like an eternity before I recovered sentience, though I imagine in reality it was probably only a few seconds. I could feel her hovering above me, the brush of her untucked blouse against my naked belly. When I opened my eyes, she was smiling.

“You alright, Kam-Kameryn?”

Was I alright? Did alright mean something different in Wales than it did in the land of Uncle Sam? Was it the plain old “a-okay” but nothing outstanding? Because if that was the case—no, I wasn’talright.

I was top-shelf, Versace-clutch, Michelin 5-star restaurant living. I was Dodgers-won-the-World Series and Kings-took-home-the-Stanley-Cup winning.