Page 42 of Best Laid Plans (Rock Harbor #1)

“I think you could.” Elle had done an extensive amount of research in the last few hours, sporadically pulling over on her meandering drive home whenever an idea struck her.

Ideally, this planning would have been done at a desk with a computer, but she couldn’t control when inspiration would strike.

Which, in her case, had been as she’d been driving up the coast on the scenic highway that took at least three times as long as usual to get back to Rock Harbor.

She’d always found that the best way to avoid her own problems was to throw herself into someone else’s.

“I have a non-compete in place, and I told you that Michael has every intention of invoking it. Rock Harbor will still be on his radar. Honestly, anywhere I go will be on his radar. I don’t want to drag your family into that.

” Elle was gearing up to speak again when he held his hand up.

“Not that I’m agreeing with your idea in any way, shape, or form. To be clear.”

She smiled. It was hard not to appreciate that he already had her number. But that call connected both ways. “That’s why you aren’t going to buy this place.” She held for a beat, watching his eyebrows rise. “You’re going to invest in it.”

The small smile playing at his lips abated, as he scrunched his face in serious consideration. He scratched thoughtfully at his jaw, still not on board. “There’s still the Michael of it all. I don’t think you understand what a merciless ass he can be when he wants something. ”

Elle waved her hand. Cam was acting like this guy was the Oprah of restaurants instead of a nepo-baby who’d gotten a serious injection of cash from his family’s company to start his first restaurant group.

Michael Vittori had had zero experience and a fat blank check to hire people far more talented than himself.

People like Cam. Because yeah, she’d done that research, too.

“Let him try. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be annoying, but I’m fairly confident that it would be less annoying than Pierce’s becoming storage space. ”

Cam’s eyes flashed with fire, like he was imagining that exact scene playing out.

Good. She wanted him mad. She wanted him to want something.

And even if the thing he wanted wasn’t her–at least not in the way that she wanted him–getting him on board with this was still the right thing to do. She just needed to get him to see that.

Pierce’s Lobster Co. wasn’t just her family’s restaurant. It was a Rock Harbor staple that had been good to this town and its people. It still had life left in it. Elle was sure of it.

There was something exciting crackling in the area, and she hoped that Cam felt it, too.

It was possibility. Real possibility that they could right this ship before Pierce’s was gone forever.

Cam had to be able to see how important this was.

Had to understand that if it wasn’t going to be her dad at the helm, it should be Cam.

She walked around the prep table, ready to shake him into seeing it her way. But when confronted with his solid, imposing form in front of her, her whole body vibrated with awareness as she honest-to-god went a little weak in the knees at being so close to him.

Because regardless of what happened next, it was already too late.

Whether Cam made an offer. Whether anyone found out about them.

Whether she ever got to wake up next to him again.

None of that really mattered because the reality was, he wasn’t going to be someone that she got over with the passage of time or wherever their lives took them.

He was always going to be a part of her. And in some small, deep recess of her own heart, she hoped it was the same for him.

“Cam,” she said quietly, putting her hand on his chest, trying to find a purchase to cling to while she centered herself.

But she had to make him understand. Not only for Pierce’s, but for him.

He needed to know that it was okay to want things for himself.

“If you want this, you can do it. I will help you put together a proposal to present to my parents.” She stilled her fingers against his chest and looked up to meet his stare.

“So the real question is… do you want this?”

There was a moment of calm, where every feature of Cam’s face was as still as stone, like they were frozen in time.

She felt the coolness of the prep table through her pants before she even realized that she’d been lifted.

Cam fisted her hair in his hand, and she moved toward him, their lips meeting as sparks shot through her body.

He slid between her legs, which she quickly bracketed around him, as much as his larger frame would allow.

She could feel the bulge through his pants, both of them frantic for more with the layers between them.

“You’re driving me crazy, Elle. Making me want so many things,” he said between hungry kisses that moved from her lips to her jaw to her neck.

She didn’t have time to unpack his words because the wanting, desperate timber of his voice sent a pang of want to her clit, and she tried to push her body closer, needing to feel all of him against her.

She was already unbuttoning his pants and pushing them down, and he’d managed to untuck her shirt with a single pull.

“If you’re trying to distract me from this conversation, it’s working.

For now.” How she’d managed those words, she wasn’t sure.

His ragged breath was the greatest sound that Elle had ever heard when she lifted up his shirt and skimmed her nails down his torso, the muscles flexing underneath wherever she touched.

With one hand, he lifted her enough that he could pull her pants and underwear down with the other, and suddenly, Elle’s bare ass was against cool metal. But she barely registered it with the heat coursing through her own body, Cam’s arm still encircling her, keeping her close.

Cam squeezed one of her thighs, her hips opening wider. “I want you, right now. Like this. That’s what I want.” She wondered if she could come from the gruff sound of his voice alone.

Her whole body was buzzing, struck by what they were doing and more importantly, where they were doing it, but not really able to care.

“Yes. I want this.” She reached forward to grab at Cam’s boxer briefs, the only thing he was still wearing from the waist down.

“I’m on the pill,” she said as she pulled them off, his hard cock already thick and straining with need.

She couldn’t wait to feel all of him, to take him inside with no barrier and feel every ridge thrusting into her.

She reached forward to take him in her hands, but he wrapped his own hand around his shaft and started moving it slowly, rhythmically, watching her with a focus that made her feel so vulnerable that she didn’t know what to do with it.

Elle was hypnotized, the blood rushing in her ears as she could make out the panting, labored breaths coming out of her mouth.

Her stomach bottomed out watching him, loving this more than she’d ever anticipated.

“Do you know that I think about you every time I come?” Cam asked, slotting in an inch closer so that his tip, already beaded wet, was almost touching her. She imagined that she could feel the heat from it, so fucking close to where she needed it.

All she wanted to do was get closer to him, but she was already at the edge of the table.

“Cam,” she whined, grabbing at his hip and digging her fingernails in.

It was so incredibly sexy to watch as he worked himself, methodically pumping up and down his shaft, his eyes flicking between her face and her pussy, like he couldn’t get enough of either one of them.

“Unbutton your shirt for me?” he asked, both as a question and a statement, and she happily obliged.

Her fingers fumbled on some of the buttons with the frantic energy coursing through her, but within seconds, her shirt fluttered open, the tops of her breasts trying to heave out of her bra with her labored breathing. “Will you touch yourself for me?”

Her clit pulsed with the request, which she desperately wanted to comply with. Grant had never cared about her pleasure, had never looked at her the way Cam was staring at her now, like he wanted to both torture her and devour her in equal measure.

Cam stepped almost imperceptibly closer, except that his head brushed against her lips and her whole body quaked at the slight touch.

“You know that I want you.” He rubbed his finger over the tip of his cock, coating his fingers in the wetness.

Then, he eased his hand forward, in between Elle’s legs, rubbing in smooth, focused circles around her clit.

Her hips fell completely open, one of her elbows giving out while she tried to keep holding herself up. This man was going to be the death of her.

“I need you wet enough for what I want to do to you, Elle. How hard I’m going to fuck you.

” His grip on his cock got tighter as his speed picked up, his other hand continuing to toy with Elle’s clit before he’d dip lower and play at her entrance.

“But it seems like I’m doing a good enough job getting you ready,” he said as he slipped two fingers inside, which she took embarrassingly easily.

She moaned at the intrusion, wishing so badly that she could brace her legs against something.

It felt like her body was turning inside out, exposed and wanting and completely at Cam’s mercy.

“I like watching you,” she admitted, loving how Cam’s hand continued to flex, how his cock had grown impossibly bigger since he’d started touching her, too.

“Fuck, Elle. You’re so perfect,” Cam said reverently, almost like he was talking to himself.

“I need you, Cam.” Elle was begging for him, ignoring the flutter in her heart with his words. She couldn’t take another second, needing to feel him inside of her. Needing them to come together in this way. She didn’t care what it would do to her heart.

Even if she hadn’t come here tonight looking for this, there was no possible way that she could stop herself–could stop the inevitability of this moment.

Cam took Elle’s hand in his own, guiding it over to his cock.

She wrapped her fingers around him, loving the heat and the little pulses that shot through his shaft as she started working him up and down.

Slowly, even though it was excruciating, she guided him toward her entrance, edging herself on the anticipation at how good she was about to feel.

She had no doubt that she could take all of him, reveling in the feeling of fullness that she knew was coming.

When his head reached her lips, she rubbed the tip around her entrance, thrilled at how Cam’s knees buckled, and he braced his hand hard against the table.

“Fuck, Elle. God, you feel so fucking good,” he panted through gritted teeth.

Elle couldn’t take it anymore. Thighs spread wide, she eased his tip inside, Cam’s hips immediately thrusting deeper. She groaned at the same time Cam swore, pressure already starting to mount in her body.

One of Cam’s strong arms wrapped around her, pulling her upward so that she didn’t need to support herself. The friction was one of the most gratifying things she’d ever experienced, as Cam pushed into her fully, every nerve ending in her pussy like a live wire.

“Cam,” she started repeating, like it was a mantra. As his hips thrust harder. As she started to see stars behind her eyes. As she realized the care with which he was holding her, even as he wrecked her.

When she started to come—all the pressure exploding inside of her body and afraid she was going to scream so loudly that Wyatt could hear upstairs—she bit into his shoulder, hard.

Cam moaned, his hips jerking erratically as he pushed into her one last time, his cock pushing so deep that she’d never felt closer to someone, the way their bodies melted into one singular experience.

He came then, too, his fingers wrapped through her hair as he kissed her swollen lips, which he really did seem to love. She ran her hands along his back, tracing the lines of muscle that bracketed his spine.

Cam continued to hold her while she came down, rubbing gently down her back as he held her close. She wanted to live in this moment forever, in the way his arms encircled her, in the warmth of his body pressed so closely.

And mostly, what she realized as Cam placed a soft kiss on her temple, was that this feeling–the one she felt when they were together–was better, and more terrifying, than anything she’d ever felt before.