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  What the hell happened to her?

  I take my time as I wash, then disinfect each separate cut. But there are still a couple random pieces of glass embedded in her foot and I have to use a pair of tweezers to pull them out—something that isn’t exactly fun for either one of us. Cam keeps her stoic face—of course—but the way her foot twitches involuntarily tells me that it hurts. Fuck. The last thing I ever want to do is cause her pain, even if it helps her in the long run. And even if she doesn’t have the same compunction about me.

  After what feels like forever—but is really more like half an hour—she’s bandaged up and ready to go. Except she doesn’t attempt to go anywhere. Instead, she just kind of sits there on the counter, swinging her legs and looking anywhere but at me.

  She didn’t say much while I was cleaning her feet, but then, neither did I. Now, however, the silence hangs between us like a cornice, one that will tumble into an avalanche with the first wrong word, and leave us trapped and suffocating under the snow. It’s a feeling that’s become way too common lately, especially considering the fact that we’ve had each other’s backs for most of our lives.

  Until I fucked up and took her up on the one thing I shouldn’t have. That one mistake screwed everything up. Royally. Today’s brouhaha just adds to the shit that’s already piled up between us.

  When I can’t stand the silence any more, I walk over to the fridge and pop it open. “Want a beer?” I ask, as I reach for one.

  “Yeah, sure,” she answers, accepting the bottle I hold out to her. “But when did you give up tequila and start drinking beer?”

  “A couple months ago, when we were in Chile.” Right around the time I decided I was done with pretending to be something—someone—I wasn’t, all in the vain hope that it would make Cam like me more. Because the truth is, I could drink a gallon of tequila, could land a perfect Quad Cork 1800, could win the fucking X Games, and she still wouldn’t look at me the way she looks at Z.

  “Really? I never noticed.”

  “Why would you?”

  Pretty hard to notice changes when she barely looks at me anymore. I don’t say that, though. No reason to rock the boat now that we’re both finally back aboard.

  She doesn’t answer. Instead, she takes a sip of her beer before wasting a couple minutes peeling at the bottle label and again looking anywhere but at me.

  And suddenly, I’m sick of it all.

  Sick of not being able to talk to Cam about anything when we used to talk about everything.

  Sick of ignoring her when all I really want to do is pull her into my arms and kiss her senseless.

  Sick of pretending I don’t give a fuck that she doesn’t believe in me, doesn’t respect me.

  And most of all, I’m sick of pretending everything is okay when nothing has been okay for months.

  I drain my beer in one long swallow—a little fake courage never hurt anyone—then slam the bottle down onto the counter as I ask the question that’s been burning through my veins from the moment I opened the door and found her standing on my porch. “What are you doing here, Cam?”

  “What do you mean?” She’s so startled by the question that she forgets she’s avoiding my gaze. For the first time since she got here, she looks straight at me and the second her mossy green eyes meet mine I know there’s a lot more going on here than her bloody feet and our bloodier past.

  “You’ve spent the last four months avoiding me—”

  “You’ve been avoiding me!”

  “I’m going to go ahead and call it mutual. And that’s fine. I get it. But suddenly you show up at my condo, looking shell-shocked and with your feet cut all to hell. I’d be an idiot or an asshole if I didn’t know something was really wrong. So what is it? What’s happened? Is it—”

  I stop myself before I say his name, and make everything a million times worse between us. Because Cam’s feelings for Z might just be the only subject touchier than my feelings for her.

  “My mom’s back.” She blurts the words out, and I’m not sure which one of us is more shocked by them.

  “Your mom?” I repeat incredulously. “Since when?”

  “Since tonight. Or maybe before that, I don’t know. I just know that when I got home tonight she and my dad seemed to have worked things out.”

  “Worked things—out?” I sound like a fucking parrot, but I can’t help it. My mind is literally boggling. “How is that possible? He hasn’t heard from her in close to eighteen years.”

  “That’s what I told him. It doesn’t seem to matter. She’s back, and I guess they’ve been talking for a while because they’re back together and we’re supposed to just go back to being one, big, happy family.”

  “Like that’s going to happen.”

  “That’s pretty much what I said,” she answers, hopping down from the counter. She winces when her torn-up feet hit the ground, stumbles.

  I reach out to steady her, wrapping one hand around her elbow and the other around her waist. The second I touch her, I know it’s a mistake, know I’ll end up regretting it. But it’s been four months since I’ve held her, four months since I’ve felt her long, lithe body pressed against mine—and though I know I should, I can’t force myself to let her go. Can’t force my hands to cooperate, or my fingers to uncurl from around her.

  Images bombard me, of Cam naked and spread out beneath me.

  Of her curls wrapped around my hands and her legs wrapped around my waist.

  Of her hard nipples between my fingers, and her sex against my mouth.

  For a few interminable seconds, it’s all I can do not to pull her against me. Not to press my lips to hers. It’s been so long and I’ve spent so many hours remembering what it was like to be inside her that the temptation is almost too great to resist.

  I look at her and I know that she’s remembering, too. I know that right here, right now, that one night is as real to her as it is to me.

  “Cam.” I murmur her name as my fingers gently stroke the delicate skin at the bend of her elbow.

  Her breath breaks and she sways on her feet. Leans into me.

  Suddenly, the air between us is charged with electricity, with memories I have no desire to suppress, and for a moment, just a moment, I forget about this afternoon. I forget about her pity, forget about the fact that she doesn’t think I’m good enough. Forget, even, about the fact that I’m a poor substitute for the guy she really wants.

  I shove it all aside. I cup the back of her head with my hand, urge her just a little closer. Even knowing it’s a bad move, even knowing it’s going to end up costing me everything—I whisper her name. Watch her eyes go wide. And then I kiss her like I’ve been dying to for the past few months.

  Like I’ve been dying to since I was fourteen fucking years old.

  Chapter 5

  Cam

  There are about a million and five reasons this is a bad idea, but I have trouble caring about any of them when it feels this good. When he feels this good.

  We were both drunk the last time he touched me, so all I have are flashes of our night together. Flashes which are dark and intense and hot—so hot, that for months I’ve told myself that I’m remembering wrong. Told myself that nothing could possibly feel as amazing as those memories suggest. But as Luc kisses me, as he licks his way across my lower lip and slowly, slowly, slowly, into my mouth, I realize that I was wrong. It wasn’t that I remembered too much from that night—it was that I didn’t remember enough. Because even those stolen moments of mind-numbing pleasure can’t compare to the deep, drugging intensity of his mouth on mine.

  So instead of pulling away—instead of pushing him away—I wrap my arms around his shoulders. I tilt my head to give him better access. Press my body against the long, lean, hardness of his. And revel in the shudder he doesn’t even try to hide.

  I find his mouth again, nip at his lower lip before sucking it gently into my mouth to soothe the sting. He groans a little at that, shifts his hands down to cup my ass e
ven as he murmurs against my lips.

  “What are we doing?”

  “Whatever we want.”

  I tug at his shirt, pull it free from his jeans so I can slide my hands over the tight, firm muscles of his back. I’ve been thinking about them, off and on, since I first saw him, shirtless, on the lake this morning.

  It must be the right answer, because it’s like a switch flips inside of him. He goes from gentle to hot as fuck in two seconds flat—and takes me along for the ride.

  His hands—huge, hard, calloused—cup my face, tilt my head this way and that as he plunders my mouth. I open for him like he wants, like he demands, and he groans his appreciation as he licks and sucks and bites and strokes my lips, my tongue, the inside of my cheek.

  It takes me up another notch, makes my nipples peak.

  Makes my body ache.

  Makes my mind blank so that I don’t have to think, don’t have to worry, don’t have to do anything but feel.

  And it feels so good.

  “Luc.” His name is ripped from me as I clutch at him, pull at him, arch against him in a desperate need to get closer.

  His only answer is a hand fisting in my hair, pulling my head back sharply enough to make me gasp. To make me see stars. Or maybe that’s just the way his mouth is fastened on my throat.

  I say his name again, and this time it’s a plea, a prayer, a promise. I clutch at him, my fingers digging in. My nails raking scratches down his back.

  “Fuck, yeah,” he growls even as he laps at my collarbone. “Do that again.”

  And so I do, pressing a little harder this time to make sure he feels the burn of my nails on his skin. He curses again, bites at my throat hard enough to leave a mark. And this time he doesn’t do anything to soothe the hurt.

  Instead, he spins me around, slams my pelvis up against the counter. Grabs my tank top and yanks it over my head. He tosses it behind him and then his hands are on my breasts, his thumbs on my nipples.

  “Luc. Oh my God, Luc.” It’s a breathless pant, a cry for help, a shaky mantra I repeat again and again and again as he fastens his mouth right over the spot where my neck meets my shoulder and starts to suck at the same time he squeezes my nipples between his thumbs and forefingers.

  “I’ve got you, baby,” he tells me. And then he bites me a second time, a sharp little nip that has pleasure shooting through me like a falling star—bright and hot and beautiful.

  My knees tremble—they actually tremble—and I grab onto the counter for support. Lean into it in case my legs actually give out. As I do, I press my ass back, right into his cock. He groans, curses, and this time I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one seeing stars.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” His hands drop to my jeans, fumble with the button. With the zipper. He hooks his fingers in the waistband, starts to pull them down, pull them off, but he stops before they even clear my hips.

  “What—why?”

  I reach for his hand, try to bring it back to my hips, but he skims it up my spine, buries it in my hair. Then pulls my head back and to the side so that he can see my face. My eyes.

  “Is this okay?” he demands, his breath hot against my too flushed cheek. “Is this what you want?”

  As I stare into his warm, brown eyes—so dark right now that they’re nearly black—I can see my own want, my own need, reflected there. Just as I can see his determination to get an answer out of me—and his willingness to stop if I so much as hesitate. Because he’s Luc and that’s just who he is. He’d never take advantage, never push for more than I want to give.

  That only makes me want to give him more.

  Makes me want to give him everything.

  “I want you,” I tell him. I grab his hands, slide them over my hips and into my jeans. He groans, low and deep, his fingers toying with the top edge of my panties for long, torturous seconds. Then he’s grabbing on, yanking them—and my jeans—down my legs.

  One of the legs gets caught on my bandaged foot and he drops to his knees. Guides it gently off, making sure nothing brushes against my cuts. Again, of course he does. Because he’s Luc.

  For a second, just a second, stupid tears spring to my eyes. He’s always so careful with me, always so tender, and I don’t know how to deal with it. How to react. The whole world treats me like I’m titanium—tough and hard and impossible to break. Even my family. Even my best friends. But not Luc. Not right now.

  No, he’s treating me like I’m soft. Like I’m breakable. Like I matter. And I don’t know how to react to that. Not when he’s only the second guy I’ve ever been with and the first guy—Darren—never took anywhere near as much care with me.

  “Hey.” Luc’s hands cup my naked ass, his fingers brushing against my hip in a rhythm I know he means to be soothing but that only turns me on more. “Everything okay?”

  “Yes.”

  God, yes. Everything’s perfect. After the day we had, after the weirdness that’s stretched between us for so long, it shouldn’t be. But somehow, right here, right now, with Luc’s hands on my body and his concern washing over me like sweet summer raindrops, everything feels like it’s exactly how it should be.

  I reach for him, wrap my arm around the wicked hardness of his bicep, try to pull him up so that we’re hip to hip. I’m aching, desperate to feel him inside of me, and I don’t want to wait one second longer.

  But Luc has other ideas. He slips out of my grip, then presses a hand against my lower back so I’m bent over the cabinets, my naked breasts flush against the cool granite of his countertops. He grabs my hips, pulls them out a little further. Presses on the inside of my thighs so I widen my stance.

  And then he just stares at me, for long, long seconds that feel like minutes. That feel like hours. I’ve never felt so exposed.

  I’m an athlete, have been one my whole life. I know I have a good body, a strong body, with long, lean muscles and firm, smooth skin. Normally, I’m proud of my body—of the shape it’s in, and the tricks it can do—but that’s on the snow. In the half-pipe. Standing here, naked—with my small breasts and narrow hips—while Luc stares at me…I’ve never felt so insecure. I have the body of a snowboarder, not a snow bunny, and for a moment, I’m terrified that Luc is disgusted; that, sober, he isn’t interested in me or the few charms I have to offer.

  God knows, Darren never passed up a chance to tell me how unfeminine I was.

  “Is,” I start, but my voice breaks as I glance over my shoulder at him. I clear my throat, try again. “Is something wrong?”

  “Fuck, no.” He rests his hands on the back of my thighs again, his thumbs gently stroking my inner thighs even as he pushes my legs just a little further apart. “You’re so beautiful, Cam. So fucking beautiful you take my breath away.”

  Oh, God. His words echo deep inside of me. Make me shiver. Make me wet. Make me want.

  Everything else washes away.

  The crappy way Darren treated me. The fact that my mother is back. The fact that my father took her back. The fact that things between Luc and me are about as far from settled as they can get.

  It’s all gone, all buried under the avalanche of need that slashes through me. “I need you,” I tell him, and my voice is so hoarse it’s nearly unrecognizable. “I need you, I need you, I need—”

  I break off with a low, keening cry as he tilts my hips up until I’m standing on my tippy-toes, and then delivers one long, slow lick along the very heart of me.

  My knees do go then, and the only things holding me up are the counter beneath my cheek and Luc’s shoulders angled between my legs.

  “What are you doing?” I manage to gasp out.

  He laughs a little, his breath warm and wicked against my sex. “If you don’t know, I guess I’m doing something wrong.”

  He licks me again, sliding his tongue between my lips this time and delving deep inside of me. Once, twice, then again and again as I white-knuckle the counter and pray for him to stop. Or to never stop. I can’t decide which. No one’s ev
er done this to me before and I never guessed it could feel this good, no matter what Cosmo says. I never guessed my whole body could become one white-hot, throbbing live wire of want and need and desperation.

  Luc pulls back a little, and I arch my back, try to follow his mouth. He laughs again, but it’s warm and sweet and so, so sexy. Then he slides first one and then a second finger, deep inside of me. I gasp at the feel of them there, at the way he crooks them so they hit my G-spot perfectly. At the way he leans forward and licks his way over my sex, between his fingers, deep inside of me. Pleasure slams through me like a landslide, pulling me under, burying me in the overwhelming power of it all. In the overwhelming heat that burns in my blood, sizzles along my every nerve ending.

  I cry out his name, holding onto the sound that hangs in the air—holding on to him—as my orgasm builds and builds. Luc must sense it, because he grabs my hip with his free hand, pulls me back against him hard. Opens me up so that his fingers can delve deeper and his tongue can circle my clit.

  “Fuck, Luc, I—”

  He doesn’t stop what he’s doing to answer, but his free hand caresses my hip now, soothing me even as my hands shake and my brain goes fuzzy. And then he does something with his tongue that sends me over the edge, sends me hurtling into ecstasy as I lose all control and call out his name again and again.

  He stays with me through it, using his mouth and hands and body to make me crazy. To take me higher. To make the pleasure last and last and last.

  He doesn’t move until it’s over—until I sag against him, gasping for air. Only then does he stand. Only then does he let his pants fall off his hips and down his legs. Only then does he press himself against me from shoulder to thigh and whisper in my ear, “Can you take me?”

  I’m too pleasure-drunk to form words, so I answer him the only way I can. By winding my arms around his hips, palming his ass, and pulling him as tightly against me as I can get him.

  He groans, long and low and deep. And then his thumb is on my still-sensitive clit, circling, circling, circling even as he tilts my hips up and back. Even as he slides a condom on that he got from God only knows where. Even as he sinks home.