Duke
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Cam asks as I stand at the foot of her bed.
“Seems only logical given what we did last night.”
She presses her lips together, clearly not convinced but willing to let me do what it takes to move on. “How do you want to start?” Her gaze settles on my bare chest, on the scars I carry.
“Lying down.” I lift my eyebrows and chuckle with her. She’s so cute when she laughs.
“Come on then.” Cam pats the mattress with a smile.
I take a deep breath and climb on, crawling up the bed to where she sits. “You know, any time you’re not okay with this, just tell me.”
“If I wasn’t okay with it,” she says, tracing a line between my abs with her finger, “I would have laughed at you when you first brought it up.”
After she took me down the driveway to share that most intimate detail with me, Cam and I returned to the house to go through our usual nightly routine. She showered, I changed, and we looked awkwardly at each other in the mirror as we brushed our teeth.
Knowing we could do this dance forever, and that our time together is short, I bit the bullet and brought the subject up: why not share the same bed?
“How do you like it?” she asks as I settle on my side, my head propped on my hand to watch her.
“I usually start out on my back, but most of the time face down is better.”
“Same.” She nudges me in the side with a loose fist. “See? Look at us being best buddies again.”
I laugh, reaching out and pulling her to me. “Naw. My bestie.”
Cam squeals as I rub her head with my fist, giving her a noogie. “Duke. Stop it.”
I do, but only so I can roll to my back and take her with me. She’s all kitted out in a sensible pyjama set: skulls with bows on their heads adorn her pink-flocked flannelettes. I pinch the soft fabric between my fingers.
“These really are a tease, you know. A woman could get herself in trouble wearing flannelette around a red-blooded man like me.”
She snorts the most un-ladylike laugh at my sarcasm. “Maybe that was my intention?”
A moment passes where neither of us say a thing. Cam lies on top of me, her fingers making lazy circles in my hair.
“This week’s going too fast,” I say quietly, reaching for her butt.
She smirks as I take a decent handful and squeeze. “It doesn’t have to be just a week. You could stay longer, or come back.”
“I’ve got counselling to start, and a job to find. I need to spend some time with Mum, make up for being such a jerk to her.”
She sighs out her nose, her eyes hard. “Guess I better put in more hours and get my dungeon finished, then.”
She cracks up laughing as I tickle her sides. “Is that so? You going to lock me up, keep me all for yourself?”
“Is that such a bad idea?” she asks between gasped breaths. “Honestly, Duke, stop tickling me.”
I relent, waiting until she’s caught her breath to kiss her. “Take a day off,” I plead. “Skip work for one day so we can hang out together.”
“You want me to pull a sickie?” Her words protest the thought, but her eyes say she’s all in.
“Yeah. Show me around, babe. Show me what it is you love about this town.”
“It’s totally going to look dodgy when I turn up at the show looking fit as a fiddle.”
“So, say you had a migraine. How they going to know you’re lying?”
“Um,” she says, tapping a finger to her lips. “They might know my excuse is bullshit when I’m spotted around town with you.”
“We’ll make it a mission then.” I put on my best authoritarian voice. “Operation Sight-Seer. Your mission is to show me the best parts of Burbank without anyone of note knowing our whereabouts.”
She does a lame-as-fuck salute, giggling. “Mission accepted.”
“Now put your head on my shoulder and go to sleep, woman, because I want you rested for your big day.”
She smiles, yet does as she’s told and tucks her head onto my shoulder, her nose brushing my throat ever-so-slightly. I thread my fingers in her hair, pulling my arm away to let the lengths runs through my grasp, and then repeat the action.
“Duke?”
“Yeah, Cam?”
“I’m so glad your brother doesn’t know how to pick a good car.”
I silently chuckle, keeping the sound trapped in my chest. “Me too.”
A few more minutes pass with me stroking her hair, and Cammie seemingly drifting off.
“Can I turn the lamp off? Do you think you’ll be okay?” She startles the hell out of me when she speaks again.
Will I be okay? I want to say having her beside me will calm the irrational side of my mind, but I’m not sure. I never had anyone since I got home. I’ve got nothing to compare this to.
“Flick it off. I can always turn it back on after you go to sleep.”
“Okay.” Cammie reaches out, clicking the switch on the cord.
My muscles tense, my body stiff beneath her as I remind myself where I am, who I’m with.
“You okay?”
“I think so.”
She hums, shifting around so that her arms are tucked under my shoulders, her forearms cradling my head. It’s such a simple position, one a person might assume purely to be comfortable, but knowing why she does it tears me apart. Her arms give me a false sense of security, make me feel encased and secure. She does it to make me feel better, but what she doesn’t realise is that she makes me feel better. Not what she does, but who she is.
“Can I ask you a question?” She sounds so unsure of herself, which is rare.
“Of course.”
“What was your wife like?” Cam whispers to the dark.
“Are you sure you want to talk about this?”
She moves around on top of me, and even though I can’t see her, I know she’s propped herself up by the bony elbows digging into my ribs. “I feel as though she’s a part of what made you who you are today, and if I want to know the gorgeous man in my bed a little better, I need to understand that aspect of your history as well.”
I get what she’s saying, but a part of me is reluctant to tell her because that would only open the Pandora’s box of pain and confusion I’ve kept shelved for so long. If she did it, so can you.
“We got together the same year I enlisted in the army,” I explain. “We were young: I’d literally just turned twenty, and she was nineteen.”
“High school sweethearts?”
“No. We met after graduating. Her brother was friends with mine. We didn’t date for long before we were married.”
“Love at first sight, then?”
“Not quite. I thought if I married her it would tame her jealous streak.” I chuckle, recalling the night of my stag do. “Just made her worse. She had a wicked temper when it came to other women and me.”
“She loved you.” Cam says. “I’d be jealous too.”
“That so?” I reach out and run my hands over her head, brushing Cam’s hair off her face.
“Mm-hmm.” She leans across and flicks the lamp on, a shy smile on her lips as I blink at the light. “I figured we’re not trying to sleep anyway.”
Doesn’t bother me any. At least I can see her now, read her expressions and reactions to the things I tell her.
Cam pushes on my chest to lean forward and place a chaste kiss to my lips. “Carry on.”
“There’s not much else to say, other than we decided to start a family while I was home between deployments. She was six and half months pregnant when they died.”
“Why didn’t you say that before?” Cammie frowns. “Duke?”
“Never seemed relevant, given what you went through. I didn’t want you to feel as though I was cheapening your loss by comparing it to mine.” I run my thumb across her bottom lip as she stares at me, her frown still in place.
“Why would you think that’s how I’d feel?”
“Because you knew your daughter,” I say. “I didn’t meet my son. He didn’t have a name until he died with her.”
“Doesn’t make him any less important,” she whispers.
I wipe the tear from her cheek and continue, keen to get this conversation finished and shelved again for another day. “We’d talked the week before, and she was happy; baby was good, she was healthy.” I pause when I realise Cam stares at me with a sad smile on her face. “What?”
“Nothing really. It’s just …”
I lift my eyebrows to tell her to explain.
“It’s just the look on your face when you talk about her. I can tell you loved her.”
She picks her words carefully, but I can still see the uncertainty in her eyes, feel the tension in her body. Yeah, I loved my wife. Still do. But our time together came to an end the day she died, and this fucking ace of a girl lying on top of me needs to know that.
“Loved her,” I stress. “She’ll always be in my heart, but Cam, it’s time to move on. I’m ready to find forever in someone else, someone who’s here, now.”
She can’t hide her relief. Cam’s cheeks pink as she tucks her chin against me to hide her face behind her hair.
With my thumbs on her jaw, I coax her head up again, holding her gaze. “Talk to me.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s something,” I say, brushing my thumbs across her cheekbones. “Why did you ask me about her, really?”
“I would say it’s jealousy, but we both know that’s not it.”
“So, what is it?”
“Insecurity,” she whispers.
I roll to my left, Cam in my arms so that she ends up beneath me. “Why?”
“You loved her,” she says simply, watching her finger as she toys with the ends of my hair. “What if I don’t compare, Duke?”
She’s scared of losing out again, of being burned for not being enough. And damn, don’t I know how that feels. It makes me want to know why a woman who should be loved as much as her feels as though she couldn’t be. It makes me ask the only logical question. “Why did Jared leave you, Cam?”
“Started fucking his hairdresser,” she states, cool and detached. “But that was just the outcome of a long and rocky patch, anyway. We’d been over for at least a year before that.”
“So he should have left,” I grit out, trying to tamp down my anger. Fuck, he could have walked out when he knew the marriage was over. He didn’t have to hurt her unnecessarily like that.
“It’s okay,” she says with a sad smile. “It’s old news.”
“It’s not okay, Cam.” I lean down and kiss her forehead. “It’s not okay.”
“Can’t change the past, right?”
“No. But we can sure enjoy the future.” I kiss her slow and careful, threading my fingers through her hair before I pull away.
She watches me with such intensity, such worry. “What does our future hold, Duke?”
My dick twitches as she takes her bottom lip between her teeth, her eyes hopeful.
“What do you want it to hold, Cam?” I rock my hardening erection into her, making her aware exactly what the sight of that pinched lip does to me.
She releases the flesh with a pop, pressing her lips together instead, as though doubting herself.
I lean down and kiss the point where her neck curves into her shoulder, running my tongue in a line to her earlobe before whispering, “Tell me.”
Cam swallows, her cheeks flushed as she says, “I want you to fuck me, Duke. I don’t know where this thing between us leads, but I know one thing for sure.” Her hands track a path along my arms, over my shoulders and down my back. “I don’t want to be left wondering what might have happened if I wasn’t afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” I pop the buttons on her pyjama top as we talk, pushing the fabric aside to reveal her full tits. Jesus—they’re everything I thought they’d be.
“Of telling you how I feel.” She gasps as I take one of her pert nipples between my forefinger and thumb, and pinch.
I can’t help myself—I lean down and take the nipple in my mouth, running my tongue around the tight bud and sucking her soft flesh. She whimpers, squirming beneath me and biting down on that fucking lip again as she tries to stifle the sounds she makes.
“There’s no need to be quiet, babe,” I say. “You can be as loud as you want.”
Fuck it all if her nipples don’t harden to rock at that suggestion.
“Talk to me, Cam,” I say, rocking myself against her so my dick rubs her clit. “How do you feel right now?”
She shuts down, her arms twitching as she tries to cover her chest. “I don’t want you to think I’m rushing us into this, Duke. I don’t want to scare you away.”
“Babe,” I grumble, “you’re so fucking turned on your nipples could cut glass, not to mention the fact I’m about ten seconds away from ripping your fucking pyjamas off so there’s nothing between us anymore. You’re worried about scaring me off?” I search her eyes, finding only raw lust. “If you can’t tell I want this as much as you do, then I don’t know what else I can say or do to show you that.” I rock against her, pulling a whimper from that sweet mouth. “Get undressed.”
She sucks in a sharp breath as I push against the mattress and get off her to do the same. Cam’s cheeks stay the perfect shade of pink as she removes her pyjamas, slow and as sensual as you can make it when they’re a practical winter set. Not that it matters; she’d look sexy in a paper bag, I’m sure of it.
She drops the clothing off the side of the bed, settling her shoulders back against the headboard. I strip my boxers off and kick them across the floor, then take my dick in my hand and stroke it a few times before re-joining her on the bed. Those crisp blue eyes track my every movement, her legs falling open as I settle between her ankles, sitting back on my heels.
“Every bit as beautiful as I thought you’d be.”
The blush in her cheeks grows, and yet, she takes me by surprise when she lifts a hand to her mouth, wets her fingertips, and then promptly begins to play. The sight of her rubbing circles over her mound drives me to take my cock in hand again and lazily pull at the taut flesh as she starts to squirm.
“Fucking beautiful,” I whisper as I shift to my stomach to lie with my head between her legs.
Cam slows her play, allowing me to take over when I place two fingers to her pussy and spread her wide. “Can I?”
“Please,” she whispers on an exhale.
I shuffle up the bed until I’m so close that I can smell how aroused she is. And she thought I wouldn’t want this? Is the woman crazy?
A guttural groan echoes around the room as I run the tip of my tongue along the length of her slit. “Fuck, you taste good.” Better than anything she could whip up in that kitchen of hers, unless it was Cam spread out naked on her dining table.
“Duke,” she murmurs, her eyes closed as she presses her head back into the bed.
“Yeah, babe?” I run my tongue the length of her again, this time finishing with a sneaky flick of her clit.
She damn near bucks me off the bed. “Oh!”
A guy has to assume she’s this sensitive because it’s been a while since she’s had a man’s touch. Fuck, I choose to believe that, because the thought of some guy with his hands on her would drive me to fuck her hard and fast, and that’s not what I want for us tonight. She has to be cherished, reminded why she deserves better than an asshole who up and left her for his fucking hairdresser.
I slip one finger inside of her, pumping it slowly back and forth, watching her grow glistening wet. “So pretty.” Adding another finger, I drive deep, pushing them to the knuckles as I rub her clit with my thumb.
The sounds coming from Cam are nothing short of magic as she wriggles up the bed, her thighs clamping down on my head as I lean in and flick my tongue across her hood. “Duke, I’m going to come if you keep that up.”
“Then come, babe.” Because I’m sure to have her doing it again in no time.
Her fingers find my hair, her grasp harsh as she clamps her hand down on the back of my head and holds me in place. I thrust harder with my fingers, stopping every so often with them buried deep to curl one toward her G-spot. Cam’s muscles tighten, her pussy hot and swollen as I lick the length of her, drinking her taste while she climaxes.
“Fuck, Duke.” She throws her head back, those tits pushed out in such a way that I can’t help but reach around her leg and take one in my grasp. “Oh, fuck.”
I slow my pace, pulling my fingers free of her cunt as she reaches the end of her high. She watches me with sated eyes as I lick them clean, and then stalk up the bed until I’m over top of her.
“I’m telling you now, I’m clean. So it’s up to you whether you want me bare or gloved, babe.” I already saw the birth control pills in the bathroom.
She hesitates, the indecision clear in the slight furrow of her brow. “Bare always feels better.”
I steal her next breath with my kiss, sweeping my tongue around hers before saying, “Damn straight it does.”
She pulls in a deep breath, her eyes locked on mine as I lean down and rest my forehead against hers. For a split second, it’s everything—the two of us connected in such a way that for a fleeting moment I forget all the shit that happened to bring me to her.
I edge my hips forward, Cam tilting hers to line my cock up with her entrance. She sighs as I edge the tip inside, biting her lip and groaning when I push the rest of myself balls’ deep.
Fuck … that’s heaven, right there.
“God damn you feel good.” I slide out, relishing every twitch her muscles make as I do, and then slam home hard and fast.
She cries out, moaning as I repeat the process a little faster. The harder I fuck her, the louder she gets, spurring me on. I drive my cock into her slick pussy, palming her breasts as she arches her back off the bed, crying my name. “Keep saying it, babe. Keep telling me what you want.”
“Hard, Duke.” She gasps as my hips bruise her. “Yes.”
Cam tips her head to the side, her neck exposed on such a beautiful angle as she presses into the bed. I slide my hand from her chest over her collarbone, and rest it at her throat to test the waters.
Her pussy clamps on my cock, holding me captive as I flex my fingers a little tighter.
“God, yes,” she groans, grinding herself into me. “Do that.”
I grip her neck tight, using my hold on her to drive her harder down onto me on the upstroke. Her mouth forms a fuckable “O” as she takes a hold of her tits and pinches her nipples, the sexiest moans wrapping me in a lust-filled haze as I bring the woman to orgasm.
She screams out a string of barely comprehendible expletives as her body crunches in on itself, her muscles tight, choking the hell out of my dick as I increase my pace to the point where I feel like a seventeen-year-old kid busting a nut on his first fuck all over again. She’s. That. Good.
“Fuck, Cam.” I grit my teeth and jerk my hips, spilling my release into the sweetest woman I’ve ever met.
So sweet that as much as I feel our connection just now was the only natural way to proceed with what we have, I still can’t see how we would ever work.
The devil may have once been an angel, but there’s no room for Cam’s pure innocence in the circle of hell I’m confined to.
No room at all.