Chapter Twenty-One
Cameron
I was cold; that was what woke me up. I opened my eyes and looked up at the ceiling. Why was I up here... oh, right. I had slept in the bed last night. Well, we had fallen asleep eventually; other things had happened first. I scrubbed a hand over my face and stretched. I felt good. Great, actually. That might have been one of the best nights that I had ever had. It was good being back in the bed after the last couple nights on the couch, but it might have been my partner last night that had really done the trick.
She must have been up already. I was alone in the bed. I got up, looking around the loft. Where was she? I would have thought downstairs, but I couldn't hear anything.
"Natalie?" I called. No answer. Maybe she was in the bathroom, I thought. Taking a phone call outside perhaps. I looked around the loft. I hadn't really come up here since giving it over to her to use while she was here. Where did she put her clothes? I knew that she had had some, but I couldn't see them anywhere. I checked the dresser and closet where my stuff was, but it wasn't in there. Weird.
"Natalie?" I called again, coming down the stairs. She wasn't in the kitchen or the bathroom when I checked. I unlocked the deck and looked out there too but nothing. Where the hell was she, I asked myself, opening the front door and looking out on the porch. I heard a car—her car.
I could just make her out behind the wheel as the car pulled out and she started down the driveway towards the road.
"Shit," I said, running out to the porch. I called to her, but she didn't hear me. Where the hell did she—
I stopped. She turned out onto the road, and her wheels gave out, sliding across the ice, off the road towards the trees lining it on one side. I ran inside to get some shoes on and hurried back outside. I ran out onto the road to her car. It seemed alright; it wasn’t smoking or on fire or anything. No apparent damage. It had skidded on the ice and gotten lodged in the snowbank by the side of the road. If that hadn’t stopped it, ramming sidelong into the trees would have. Her door was open; I went over to help her out.
She seemed okay too, apart from the fact that she apparently thought that she’d be able to get anywhere in her car. The ice and snow were inches thick; hadn't she said herself that I'd need a snowmobile up here to get around?
"What the hell, Natalie? What were you doing? What the fuck were you thinking?" I asked, getting her out of the car. She looked at it, stuck in the snow, and cursed.
"I'm sorry," she said, looking down. "I just..."
"You just what? What happened?"
"Last night? What we did? It was a mistake, Cameron." Mistake? I was pretty sure it had been the best night I had had in a long time.
"What are you talking about?"
"I shouldn't have asked you to come to the bed. I shouldn't have come onto you."
"Come onto me?" I asked. I was pretty sure I had been the one who had made a pass at her, not the other way around. Who had done what wasn't important right then. She was upset, so upset she had driven her car off the road trying to...shit. Had she been trying to get away from me?
"You're Mr. Porter’s son. I shouldn't have," she stopped and cursed, burying her face in her hands.
"Hey, Natalie," I said, taking her wrists and pulling her hands away from her face. Shit, was she about to cry? I didn't want that. This wasn't as serious as she thought it was. I didn't want her to feel bad. She looked at me and sighed.
"Your dad was my boss. This isn't supposed to happen. You and I last night wasn't supposed to happen." She had been saying something very different last night, I thought, remembering the two of us in bed. She had been more than eager to get the ball rolling the night before. I’d never forget her begging for my cock, moaning as I fucked her. You didn’t go from that to this in a matter of eight hours. She needed to cool it. Maybe she thought her job was in trouble or something. I tried to calm her down.
"It's not that serious, Nat," I said.
"Yes, yes, it is," she insisted. She was getting upset.
"Okay. Okay. Let's... let's just get you back in the house first, alright?"
She grudgingly let me lead her back into the cabin. Well… good morning to me, I guessed. After the night we had had, I had been expecting something different, let’s say that. Best case scenario would have been waking up to her with my cock in her mouth, but I would have settled for some coffee and the woman I had just slept with not trying to walk out on me before I had gotten up. In the beginning, I had felt a little iffy about making a move too. I could get that. But now it had happened, and it had been incredible. Every move I had made, she had responded to. Every word, every touch, and now this. She had tried to run away. Literally.
I walked into the cabin after her and told her to go sit on the couch. I went to the kitchen and started some coffee before going over to the fireplace. She was sitting, running her hands through her hair, clearly anxious.
"Are you hungry?" I asked.
"No."
"Where were you going?" I asked. She didn't answer. "Why did you leave?"
"I'm sorry I didn't say anything before going."
"That's not what I asked you," I said. She finally looked at me. Her eyes shone like she was going to cry, but she wasn't. Yet.
"Where was I going? Home would have been ideal but generally as far as I could get from here had been the plan. Clearly, it didn’t work."
"Why?"
"Because of last night, Cameron," she said as I got up and walked to the kitchen. She started again when I came back with two mugs of coffee for us. "I've been attracted to you since getting here. Since before that even. I thought that keeping my distance while we were stuck up here would mean being able to control myself, and for a couple nights, it did.
"I asked you to come to bed to me, and I shouldn't have. It was unprofessional, and I feel horrible about it." Horrible: definitely hadn't heard that after sex. "Not because of you," she added quickly, probably seeing my reaction. "I felt bad because I shouldn't have done it. It's tacky and unprofessional, and it blurs the lines where everything should be cut and dried and orderly."
"Natalie, it's not a big deal. You aren't going to get into trouble for this. Nothing illegal or skeevy happened. It isn’t even against company rules. I'm attracted to you too. I would have made a move earlier if I had thought you were interested."
"Don't say that."
"It's true. Since the first time I saw you in the office, Natalie. I think you're beautiful." She looked at me silently, and it felt like a long time before she said anything.
"Thank you. I think you are too. Handsome, I mean, not beautiful. I mean you are, but…" she trailed off. Her face was bright pink. She was still uncomfortable.
"Don’t feel sorry. You have nothing to be sorry for."
"I felt like," another pause. "I felt dirty after what we did. Not because of you; because of me. You were sweet, and sexy and... attentive." Her face turned an even deeper pink when she said the last word. I knew she was uncomfortable, and I felt sorry for that, but I couldn’t lie and say it wasn’t a little fun watching her squirm. At least she wasn’t sitting there saying she wasn’t attracted to me because her whole demeanor was giving her away. She was attracted to me; she just didn’t want to be anymore.
"After everything, when we were done, when I came back to my senses, I felt so guilty. I remembered where we were; why you had come here, everything that’s happened the past few weeks. and I felt like I took advantage of you. It hasn't even been a month since the funeral."
"Took advantage of me? I wanted you, Natalie. I wouldn’t have waited ‘til last night at all if I had thought you would have given me a chance earlier. You didn't do anything wrong."
"I could hardly get to sleep last night when we went back to bed thinking about how I showed up here and ruined your little winter utopia, then threw myself at you like that. I'm sorry. I freaked out. I should have said something instead of trying to leave. I felt so trashy going after my boss' son. I just panicked."
"It's okay, Natalie. Really. Nobody at work is going to think any different of you after this."
"You don't know that," she said. She had a point. I didn't know anything that had happened at the office lately. It wasn't like we had talked while we had both been there. I didn't know what it would have been like for her to have rumors about her sex life discussed by her colleagues. Not good, I supposed. Embarrassing, probably. Whatever it would be like, she didn't want to find out.
"Nobody's going to find out," I told her. "Unless you or I tell anyone, and I'm not going to if you don't want me to."
"I'm sorry for giving you the wrong message last night," she said. Ouch. I had been there last night. I had heard her moan and beg and felt her come when I had been inside her, twice. That wasn't true. The message had been loud and clear, and I felt the same way. She might have felt bad afterward for doing it, but that didn't mean she hadn't wanted me as much as I wanted her.
So what, are you going to fight her on this? I thought. Make her admit that she wanted it? Like that would work. She was upset about what happened. She thinks she made a terrible mistake and perhaps many people would agree and say that she had. I don’t think many people thought sleeping with your boss’ son was a good move, even if the boss was dead and the son had wanted to fuck you practically since you’d met.
Arguing about it wasn't going to make her feel better. And what would making her agree that she had enjoyed herself do? She knew that she had, and it wasn’t like I was trying to spare my feelings. It was a weird situation, and at the end of the day, the reason why didn’t even matter that much. All that mattered was she didn’t want it to happen again, and whatever I thought, I had to respect that.
"I get it if you think we shouldn't have hooked up last night, but I know what I felt." She didn't bother arguing with that. "Do you regret what you feel or what you did?"
"What I did," she said quietly, "and the timing; that could have been better. And the circumstances. I can't help what I feel."
"If I wasn't me and my parents weren't dead..." and she didn't feel this fear about what other people would think of her, and she stopped thinking she was taking advantage of me, and she could just let go and be honest with what she felt…
"I wish things were different, but they aren't. I don't feel right pursuing anything further. Last night was great, it was amazing, but it can't happen again." Not with that attitude, I thought, cynically. It wouldn't have worked trying to convince her. You didn't get a person to sleep with you by wearing them down. She wasn't budging.
"Just for the record, I enjoyed our time together last night too, but if you're uncomfortable, I can go back downstairs, if you feel like that would make you feel better."
"It would make me feel better. Sorry," she apologized again.
"It's okay," I told her. And it was. Spending the next couple nights on the couch was not about to kill me. I'd survive that. I was just sorry that she felt so uncomfortable with what had happened last night. Knowing that it just wasn’t realistic for me to think about this turning into something serious didn’t make the rejection sting any less. I still wanted her, but oh well, back to sitting on my hands and taking cold showers.
"Can I just say, I don't think anybody has ever said that they felt dirty after having sex with me." I had said it lightly which made her laugh a little.
"I didn't mean like that. I meant that—” she said.
"I know what you meant. Don't worry about it." I took her empty coffee cup from her and took it to the kitchen. Don't take personal offense, I thought. She's basically saying she'd do you again in a second but can't because she thinks it's wrong. It all came back to timing, didn't it? This was the worst time that we could have met, tried to do anything. The best thing you can do at this point is to try not to jerk your dick ‘til it falls off before she leaves.
She got up from the couch and said she had to go back outside. She had actually transferred all her stuff to her car, thinking she'd be able to get far during her escape attempt. I offered to help her, but she declined, saying she had it. I watched her disappear outside the door and walked over to look outside. The snow didn't look like it had gotten worse, but it hadn't really gotten better. The roads were still impassable. She'd really try brave inches of snow in her sedan to get away from me?
The thought slipped through unchecked. I knew from what she had said that that wasn't the case, but it was an easy conclusion to jump to. I had at least a few more days with her before she could leave. It would be better for everyone if I didn't take what she had said personally.