The Book of Daniel (16 page)

He collapsed on my left side, leaving my arm uncrushed but the rest of me ringing like I’d been hit by a meteor, and for exactly the first time in my life, I wanted to be reassured that I wasn’t just somebody’s latest fuck.

Irony will kill you if you let it.

“This is…? You know.” I asked when he wrapped an arm around my head and clutched me to him again. “It’s not just
this
, right?”

“Hell no. I’m keeping you. I thought you knew that.”

“Thanks.” I tucked my head next to his chin.

He peered at me. “You?”

“Just try to get away. All I have to do to make you come running is start a fire.”

He huffed a laugh and said, “Yeah, if you want to go to jail.”

I kissed his bicep. “You’d be worth it.”

I believed that. Cameron Rooney would be worth anything. Even being honest, which is what he seemed to want from me, damn it.

I’d try.

Heaven knew I’d try. But oh, man. Precedent for that shit was not in our favor at all.

* * *

I woke up and realized Cam had been watching me sleep again.

That may sound romantic at first—when you open your eyes and someone else’s eyes are gazing down at you—but seriously, it makes you jump. It makes your heart race and your skin crawl. Even if the eyes looking at you are some of your favorite eyes in the world, if they’re watching you while you’re asleep, it makes for a rather unsettling few minutes as you’re gathering your first thoughts on waking.

“
Jeez
. What are you looking at?” I asked.

“Don’t think I didn’t notice you fucking laminated me.”

“What?” I shook my head to clear it.

“What’s with the rubber gloves and the latex dams. I get why you might not want to let me come in your mouth. I know why we glove up for anal. But it was like you didn’t even want to touch me.”

“You didn’t seem to mind at the time.”

“You didn’t exactly give me a chance to think about it then.”

I sat up, resting my back against the headboard. “No I didn’t. I didn’t want to spoil anything for you. And judging from your response, you were flying.”

Cam opened his mouth to say something then closed it again. “Daniel, if there’s something you need to tell me. If you’re HIV positive, now would—”

“No.” I reassured him. “Hell no. If I were positive, I’d have told you long before this. Before I even touched you.”

“Me too.” He frowned. “You have to know I wouldn’t let you touch me like that if it wasn’t safe.” I guess I was quiet too long, because he shifted away from me. “You don’t trust me.”

“Of course I don’t.” Oh, crap, honesty was going to kill me.

“Thanks.” He got up and stalked to his duffel, reaching for a pair of jeans. “I’ll just be—”

“Wait. Don’t I get to have my say?” I smacked the bed, and he sat. “By any standards, what I did to you was risky sexual behavior. By public health standards, I might as well drink raw sewage. I’m not going in without a strategy. You can take it or leave it. It doesn’t spoil my fun, and you certainly seemed to enjoy it, so I don’t know what you’re complaining about.”

“I felt like”—he seemed to search for the words—“unclean. I felt unclean.”

“Cam.” I tried to coax him into my arms. “I never wanted you to feel like that.”

“I know. I should applaud your efforts to keep yourself safe. That’s better for me as your partner. But I kept thinking about it while you were sleeping. I’m not some fucking leper. I’d know if I were sick. I get tested regularly and—”

“Since Tree-Blow Guy?”

He shook his head.

“That’s not good enough. Not for me and not for you.”

Cam was silent for a moment. He looked away. “I know.”

“Look. I’m not asking for a commitment. I’m not even saying I won’t do whatever you need, whenever you need it. What I am saying is I always use protection when there’s bodily fluids. Mine or yours. That’s the way it is.”

“All right. But you used gloves. Like you couldn’t even stand to touch me.”

I sighed. “I’ll let you in on a little secret if you’ll come back to bed, all right?” I patted the space next to me.

Uncertain, he got under the covers and pulled pillows around so he could lie on his side, facing me. I relaxed back down next to him and looked up at the ceiling. It wasn’t going to be easy confiding in Cam. If I had any deepest, darkest secrets, they would all be about this.

“BreeAnna has…issues. That’s why I started doing this—beside the fact that I trick. BreeAnna couldn’t stand to have saliva touch her skin. She didn’t want semen inside her. Even my bare fingers made her feel sick. She wanted none of that. She hated it. You spend the night trying to coax a woman out of the closet, where she’s rocking and pulling her hair out, and you’ll do whatever it takes.”

Cam shuddered delicately. “I can’t imagine fucking a woman.”

“Maybe I’m bi or something. I don’t know. It was okay. It was my trade-off to make. When we first got together, I thought I loved her.”

“Yeah?”

“Of course. I’m not a monster. I wanted to please her. I knew I couldn’t be everything she wanted, but I wanted to at least make her happy in bed. At first it just seemed like she thought certain things were gross. I made a game out of it, and she responded. That wasn’t easy, but we were young, and I thought we were in love. I thought someday we’d have kids and we would concentrate on them. Drift apart. Cheat. The entire American dream.”

“I wouldn’t want to live like that.”

“It’s not like I believed I had a choice. Jake was gay. I was really close to my mother, and I knew what it would do to her if she thought neither of her kids would get married or have kids of their own. I had to be straight because Jake wasn’t.”

“So you made the best of a bad situation?”

“I made a
mess
. I took a bad situation and made it worse by marrying Bree. Her problems got so much worse over the years. Kids weren’t ever a possibility. She said she could feel my sperm swimming inside her. That my spit burned, and semen made her feel bloated. It all made her feel crazy.”

“So you McGyvered the sex so she could feel comfortable.”

“Who am I to say everything wasn’t as painful as she said it was. There was no point in arguing. It bothered her, so I tried to help. She deserved my compassion because she was my wife, and if I had to treat her like she was the heroine of ‘The Princess and the Pea,’ well… Why not? We were together for twelve years. There was more between us than what happened in the bedroom.”

“That must have been awkward.”

“I kind of grew to enjoy control rather than sex itself. I get off on giving my partner the mindless oblivion you only get when all your senses are overwhelmed. I knew I could take Bree out of herself, and she needed that. Of course, then she fell in love with someone else, and now she’s like…some kind of porn queen. I found videotaped evidence that it was just me she couldn’t stand.”

“Aw, shit, Dan.” Cam’s brows drew together. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s over. Who cares.” Maybe I thought if I said that enough, I’d believe it. It still hurt though, damn it, if only because I didn’t see myself as some kind of freak show. “That was all Bree. No one likes to be treated like they’re repugnant, but I’d always figured she’d be like that with everyone. It was kind of a shock when I realized she didn’t have the same aversion to another man.”

“That sucks. Overwhelming the senses is very nice, though.” Cam shivered a little. “You’ve got that going like nobody ever.”

I raised myself up on one arm so I could face him. “You like?”

“Yeah. Does that mean I’m your new princess?”

“Maybe. It means I want to treat you right. I want to give you everything I have to give and make you fly. Does that bother you?”

“Won’t you get tired of having another princess? You’re divorcing her.”

I hooked my leg over his and pulled him toward me with it until our hips touched, until we were cock to cock, and I could feel his dick filling lazily. “We’re not divorcing because she’s a princess. We’re divorcing because she’s a cheating bitch.”

Cam snorted.

“And despite even that, I’d have stayed except she fell in love and wanted to move on. I’m loyal. When I make a commitment, I keep it.”

“The spirit if not the letter of it anyway,” he reminded me.

For honesty’s sake, I answered, “Yes.”

I was probably going to have to do something about that. As things stood, Bree believed she was the only person to violate our prenup. I had done that early and often as well. If I wanted to live a life free of lies, that was another thing I had to come clean about and
that
would cost me money.

Well,
shit.

Cam’s cock nudged mine, and I forgot my troubles almost immediately. Moments later we were kissing. He rolled me over onto my back and—this time without any hint of competition—he ground against me. We rocked and kissed and came. No fireworks. Just comfort and quality friction.

I never thought I’d be able to have that, and it struck me how simple it could be to misinterpret it—to choke it off by squeezing it too tight or to lose it by not holding on tightly enough.

For the first time, I had to walk the line in a relationship with a man I could really care about, and it scared me.

We showered off quickly again and shaved in silence, then got ready to check out. I hung back a little. I didn’t want to leave the quiet intimacy of that room.

“Hungry?” I asked after he picked up both our bags again. I got my briefcase and we exited our room. He caught my hand in his and led me down the hall.

“I could go for steak and eggs. I’m starved.”

I handed him my keys again. “You can drive. I’m still half-asleep.”

Cam laughed as we got on the elevator. “What you are my friend, is fucked out. That is a condition of total satisfaction, which follows getting laid by me. It’s characterized by lack of focus and loss of muscle tone. Poor reaction time.”

“It’s also characterized by irritability and the constant sound of
bragging
in one’s ears.” I argued. “I’ve heard of this, yes.”

“Shut up or no more free rides.”

“Oh, yeah, the much vaunted
Camshaft
.”

“Are you complaining?” Cam nuzzled me with his nose again. I was pretty sure he knew I was kidding.

“Nope. It was far better than advertised. Here,” I pushed the button for the lobby.

We emerged with lips swollen from elevator kisses, and if anyone thought anything about that, I didn’t care.

Chapter Sixteen

Al’s wife Ellie’s laughter was infectious. Cam was anxious to greet the horses, so they headed off to the stables with Al’s girls, Katie and Jana, first thing. All three ladies sported jeans and cowboy boots, decorated denim jackets, and cream cowboy hats. Next to those girls, Cam looked like a city slicker in his jeans, T-shirt, and baseball cap. They had dark hair and laughing brown eyes and each one of them had eyelashes like long sooty brooms, they were so thick. I’d held both the girls when they were born, and at the time they’d looked like squashed grapefruits. I should have known based on Ellie’s beauty they would turn out just fine. In reality, they’d turned out better than fine; it always took a moment to adjust to them. They were far more gorgeous than you’d imagine if you’d only seen Al, and every time I saw them it almost took my breath away. They could certainly have been little pageant girls if their mother didn’t have their feet firmly planted on the ground.

Cam was an instant hit with Katie and Jana—no surprise there. They took one look at him and burst into fits of hysterical, pink giggling. They fairly sizzled with excitement, but as soon as they saw the horses a reverent hush fell over them. Horses made those two weak in the knees, and as the unofficial uncle who spoiled them, I was marginally laudable too, for bringing them there.

I originally planned to sit out the guided trail ride on the beach with Al, who refused to ride, but Cam and the girls were so disappointed, I let our guide, Taylor, provide an unflappable, broad-backed mare named Buttercup for me.

I mounted Buttercup with some trepidation, but it felt more like heading up the gangway to a cruise ship than actually riding a horse. It’s not that I couldn’t ride. Bree was an accomplished horsewoman, and I’d learned because—in that odd, hit-and-miss way she had with her phobias—she lit up around horses like nothing else. I wasn’t
incapable
of riding even a spirited horse like Cam’s; I was simply still too afraid of falling off and being injured worse, of having to go through the surgeries and the early, terrifying physical therapy all over again. I think Taylor might have misunderstood, and I didn’t set her straight. No way was I going to fall off a big hairball like that horse, so I kept my mouth shut. Buttercup’s tail switched away flies occasionally while we waited for Cam and the ladies to mount up, or I might have thought she’d been stuffed.

Al informed us all loftily that he’d be getting coffee in one of the restaurants that dot the beach, and we could call him when we were done. He waved at us from his car and took off.

Cam’s gelding danced beneath him, and they seemed delighted to have found one another. The damned horse was big; it had to be to carry Cam. And it looked like it was smiling. I’d never seen a horse do that.

“He’s exuberant,” I remarked.

Taylor lightly mounted her own horse, a gray mare named Shadow—
what else
?—and acknowledged that the horse was indeed a happy camper. “Blue Boy there loves a rider that knows what he’s doing.”

I snorted. Who wouldn’t? “
Blue Boy
?”

Taylor blushed. “The boss’s daughter named him. We mostly call him Blue.”

Cam patted Blue Boy’s neck. “I love blue roans. He’s a handsome boy, and he feels like he likes to run.”

“He does. He’ll get away from you if you let him. I don’t put anyone on him who’s not an experienced rider.”

“I’ve got experience.”

Taylor’s look was appraising and flirtatious. “I knew that the moment I laid eyes on you.”

I looked away but not before I saw Cam soak up her admiration and return her interest with a little harmless flirtation of his own.