Page 16 of Best Laid Plans (Rock Harbor #1)

CHAPTER EIGHT

CAM

W hen Cam had arrived in Rock Harbor, he’d set his phone on ‘do not disturb’–given the shitstorm that he’d expected to come his way.

Michael hadn’t reached out over the weekend, but by yesterday, the texts had started popping up.

Not that he’d seen them. No, he’d waited until twenty minutes ago, stupidly, to look at them.

Nothing like reading his career imploding in real time to douse the flames of want that had idiotically overtaken him.

Michael

Fine that u took the weekend but I’ll expect u on Wednesday as usual. Thx.

Kyle has been covering for u but u need to get your ass back here soon

Bad look man. You’re digging ur own grave.

I don’t know what u think u saw, but ur wrong. I’m not planning to sue but I do need some good faith on your side. Update pls?

The last one had only come in a few hours ago.

If u aren’t back tomorrow, ur fired.

Well, guess that solved that problem for him. And honestly, what Michael Vittori, piece-of-shit-extraordinaire, thought of Cam was really none of Cam’s business.

He had more pressing problems. Namely, that he didn’t know what version of Elle he was going to get when he returned to the apartment later that night.

And that was on him. Was there an equivalent of blue-balling a woman?

Because if there was, that’s what he’d done to her, and he probably deserved whatever was coming his way.

If they hadn’t been interrupted, he wouldn’t have stopped unless Elle had told him she didn’t want it.

Didn’t want him . And based on how things had been going, it seemed unlikely that would have happened.

Touching Elle had been addictive, and every expanse of skin his hands traced had only made him want more.

It would have been the time of their lives, and a hell of a lot of drama later.

Elle Pierce was not the type of woman that you fucked in a restaurant kitchen and then went your separate ways.

He still couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the fact that she’d wanted to be that person a few hours ago.

For him. And he’d fucking loved it. How well she’d fit against him.

The way her ass had pushed against his cock.

When she’d wanted him to touch her so badly that she’d tried to press his hand against her.

In another minute, after he’d made her come with his fingers, her shorts would have been down around her ankles and he’d have been buried as many inches deep as she could take, fucking her as he licked against the soft expanse of skin at the base of her neck that he’d had a perfect view of from behind.

He shook the thoughts away when he reached the landing. This was the worst possible thing for him to be thinking about right now.

The more he tried to stay away from her, the more he kept being drawn into her orbit. But even if he couldn’t stay away from her, either by intention or design, he could at least not fuck her. That was a long walk off a short pier that he had no interest in taking.

Wyatt would murder him. The Pierces would be disappointed in him. And Elle would realize that he was no good for anyone, and once she figured that out, the curious, interested way that she’d started looking at him would be gone.

He didn’t want that look to be gone yet.

He scratched at his stubble and took a deep breath as he opened the door. The apartment was quiet. The light in Elle’s bedroom was on, but the door was closed. There was a part of him that wanted to knock, but the part of him that had some semblance of control slapped it into submission.

Tomorrow, he’d talk to her. Apologize for his part in what had happened between them. Hopefully, they could go back to their delicate dance of antagonizing each other and then retreating to their respective sides of the apartment.

As his head hit the pillow, he wondered, though, the next time they circled back around to one another, whether he’d be able to stop himself.

Cam was a heavy sleeper. He could drift off anytime, anywhere, if he closed his eyes for more than a minute. It was a gift, really.

Only tonight, he was suffering, unable to shake a feeling he couldn’t escape. He’d caught a few hours, but had unexpectedly woken up well after midnight, when the world outside was quiet.

His cock ached with how hard he was. He couldn’t escape Elle Pierce in real life, and his dreams seemed to have the same idea. He was surprised he hadn’t woken up covered in come. He’d been dreaming about Elle, bent over the prep table, her legs spread wide, wetness dripping down her thighs.

He’d woken up just as he’d entered her, and it was like he could still feel her walls around him, guiding him in deeper. His hand found its way under his boxer briefs, and he started to rub his fingers against his already swollen tip.

“Fuck,” he breathed out quietly, shooting a glance at the door as he wrapped his whole hand around his shaft.

Once, before he’d fallen asleep, he’d heard Elle’s door and then the bathroom door open, but it had been quiet since then. She’d probably snuck out as soon as he was back home, ensuring their paths wouldn’t cross.

Maybe he could fight her, but he couldn’t fight the idea of her. He didn’t have that kind of power. Not when she was assaulting his dreams. It all felt out of his control when he started stroking up and down his shaft, his balls already tight and ready to explode.

He stretched out his long legs and put one of his arms behind his head, trying to draw this one time only moment of pleasure out.

It wasn’t long before she was in his mind’s eye again, the dream and what had happened earlier today blurring together.

He thought about Elle’s thighs, how they’d been shaking from her need as she’d held herself up.

He’d felt them when he was running his hands along her shorts, her skin on fire under the pads of his fingers.

He’d been inches away. Inches from her pussy and how wet he’d known it was with the sounds she’d been making and the way she’d kept pressing her ass into his cock, like she couldn’t get enough.

She’d wanted it just as badly. He stroked harder with that thought, working to let the guilt go. This would help him keep his hands to himself, in every sense of the word, and Elle would be none the wiser.

She would never need to know that as he grew impossibly harder, his hand picking up momentum as he found a rhythm, he started to think about her on her knees.

Thinking about those perfectly plump lips wrapped around his cock, the tongue she loved to berate him with licking his tip before she started to suck him off.

It happened when he thought about ensnaring his hands in her dark hair and guiding her mouth to take him deeper, the idea driving him over the edge.

He gritted his teeth to stay quiet, coming hard with a shudder that wracked his body.

His muscles clenched, and he kept working his cock, pulling every last drop out like it would also remove the traces of Elle that seemed to have shattered through his body and taken root in every molecule and nerve ending.

He reached for the water bottle he kept next to the bed, only to push it off the end table. It skittered somewhere in the darkness, empty anyway from the sound it made.

He blinked, accepting defeat. It was just going to be one of those days, and he was only two hours into it.

He cleaned himself off and threw the towel in a clothes basket, hoping he’d gotten her out of his system.

Or at least, that he’d purged himself of doing anything stupid for at least another day. And that wasn’t nothing.

He stood up, slowly, the air conditioning that Elle insisted on keeping on high pimpling his skin.

There was no reason to throw on a shirt or pants, considering he’d be in the kitchen just long enough to grab a bottle of water.

Water that he’d bought a case of three days ago, though bottles had conspicuously been going missing.

He wondered if she was sulking, smiling reflexively at the thought.

It was easy to picture her in the guest room, a blanket wrapped around her like he knew she liked to do.

A cute little pout on those lips that could bring him to his knees if she was on hers first. She already had, even if it had only been in his imagination.

The reality was that she’d probably be pissed at him when really, he should get a fucking medal for his efforts.

With long strides, he was at the kitchen in a few seconds, and he took a gulp of air in anticipation of a cold bottle of water. But when he opened the door, the fridge was empty. Sure, some of Wyatt’s eggs were there, but the multiple bottles of water that he’d seen earlier this morning were gone.

“Looking for something?” a throaty voice said from behind him.

God, he’d been so out of it post-orgasm that his dehydration had made him single-minded to a fault. Because if he’d been more aware, he’d have noticed the thighs that he’d been fantasizing about moments ago, only feet away from him.

Elle was seated on the island, her legs dangling over the edge. Her hair was up in a ponytail, and she looked like she’d just woken up. And she was wearing his fucking shirt again.

He really couldn’t catch a break.

“Did you take the last water?” he asked hoarsely, ignoring the twitch in his cock at the sight of her.

Elle looked him up and down, and he wondered if she could read his mind. Could know that he’d just been fantasizing about fucking her, which was the reason for his impromptu kitchen trip at two a.m.

“Does it look like I took the last water?” she asked, draining most of the bottle in a single gulp. “You really shouldn’t drink disposable bottles. Bad for the environment.”

He eyed the bottle that she continued to toy with, the same way she was toying with him. “Does that not apply to you?”

“Sometimes a girl just needs some of the good stuff.” She held eye contact with Cam for a long beat before looking at the label. “From the glaciers. Couldn’t pass that up.”

He leaned on the structural beam at the end of the island, crossing his arms across his chest. “Is there something you want to say to me?” They’d get this out in the open, and then they could move past it.

“Nope,” she said before drinking the remainder of the bottle. When she looked toward the recycling bin and threw it, Cam took a second to adjust himself, praying that she couldn’t see the way his underwear was already starting to bulge.

God, what type of spell had Elle cast on him?

“So we’re good?” He knew that he sounded dubious, even as he wanted his words to be true.

Because if they were good, he could stop worrying that there was a world in which he would actually get to have Elle, to know the sounds that she made when she was coming so hard she couldn’t remember her name.

Turning sideways toward him, she crossed her legs, and Cam couldn’t help but follow the movement with his eyes. “I was pretty worked up today when I got home, but I took care of it.”

His eyebrows rose curiously. He couldn’t consider a world in which Elle was implying that she’d come home and gotten herself off because she’d still been so turned on. “Is that so?” he asked, knowing that he was taking the bait but not being able to stop himself from taking the bait.

Elle was teasing him, just like she’d done the day he’d been getting out of the shower. Only this time, he’d now let himself fantasize about her, and it was harder to get those thoughts out of his head.

“I mean, we’re unexpectedly living together in close quarters. Lots of stressful things are happening. And judging by earlier today, you seem to be as attracted to me as I am to you. So, yeah… once you told me that you had no interest in finishing things, I finished them myself. ”

He cleared his throat, resisting the urge to put his hands down to cover his growing erection. It would only draw attention that he absolutely didn’t need. Instead, he pointed to his chest. “Elle, you know that anything between us would be a bad idea. You don’t even like me.”

Elle cocked her head to the side at the same time she tugged her bottom lip between her teeth. “I don’t need to like you to want to sleep with you. In fact, I’d argue that it makes things a lot easier this way.”

The air around them was suddenly still, Elle’s words hanging between them.

Finally, he broke the silence. “A casual lay isn’t enough for me to start World War 3 with your brother.” And that was the damn truth. Or, at least, part of it.

Elle’s face scrunched up adorably. “Eww. Don’t bring him into this.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “Easy for you to say. You’re not the one he’d want to kill if he found out.”

Big, dark eyes looked over at him. Instead of answering, she hopped down from the counter and closed the two feet of space between them, stopping so close that if she exhaled she’d brush against his cock.

Elle looked down, the focus of her stare clear, before she met Cam’s eyes again.

“There seems to be some mutiny afoot towards your words, but have it your way.” She was trying to kill him.

For real this time. Her words were more effective than any baseball bat.

And then, she reached up and pressed her hand to his chest, feeling the insistent thrum of his heartbeat against her palm.

“We’re going to be working together this weekend, so I’ll be on my best behavior.

Promise,” she said, making a criss-cross symbol with her fingertips.

It felt like fire against Cam’s skin.