Bone Deep (17 page)

Without making a so
und, I gently prop the screen against the stucco side of the house and climb in, not wasting any time to close the space between us.

I fling my hat to the floor then grip her face and cover her lips with mine, slipping my tongue into her mouth before she has a chance to whisper my name. Her body presses
into me, warm and soft, like my own personal blanket. “Goddamn, I’ve missed you,” I say, sliding my hands down her neck and arms until I reach the small dip in her waist. They fit perfectly there, like the space was made specifically for them.

She settles her palms on my chest, fingers hooking the collar of my shirt. Skin on skin, not very much, but enough to send a ripple of excitement through me. I tug at her hips, and she steps in between my legs at the same time plunging her tongue deep into my mouth. A tiny groan trickles from her lips along with the words, “I should get you to miss me more often.” Her hands cradle my neck, slender fingers gripping strong to my jaw as her teeth nibble my bottom lip
. “I like the way you miss me.”

My
touch slips beneath the edge of her T-shirt and up her bare back. A mischievous glint in her eye brings her gaze to mine as my fingertips scrape the skin where silky material would typically stretch across but doesn’t. Suddenly, my hands itch to touch her…
every
where.

I shuffle her to the bed: a large queen dotted with a ridiculous number of round, colorful pillows. So much different than the sparseness of her dorm bed. I settle her in the center and crawl up beside her, never once breaking contact with her smooth, flat stomach. She blinks slowly and smiles.

“If I didn’t know better I’d think you had some sort of surveillance on me…watching to see when I’m having a shitty day so you can come make it better.”

Better? My hand stills
at the waistband of her shorts.

“What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

Her pinkie slips beneath my shirt and runs a tentative line around my waist, a small, tight smile on her lips. “Just a not-so-good day. Much better now that you’re here.” She tugs the hem of my shirt up and tilts her head. “Off?” Her smile grows wider as my shirt slides up and over my head, but I stop her as she reaches for the button on my jeans.

“Hang on.”
Pulling her with me, I sit up. “Listen, I will stay here and do
any
thing you want for as long as you wish, but…I’m not going to be that guy who distracts you from whatever it is you’re dealing with anymore. I want to be more than that. Your friend. And it would make me really happy if you talked to me.” I slip my fingers between hers and squeeze tight, noticing right in this very moment the guilt and constant struggle of wondering when I should tell her is gone, replaced with the blooming sensation that something in me is changing. I kiss her knuckles then say, “Tell me the not-so-good part of your day?”

She stares into my eyes for a stretched-out moment, gently scraping her nail over the raised scar on my hand. I imagine I can feel it, little tingles where my skin has gone permanently numb.
She gives me a tiny nod with the look of gratitude beaming from her eyes before her gaze flicks to the door and back, and then she whispers, “My brother’s been acting really weird lately. And it’s more than just him not dealing with his grief over my mom. It’s like he’s completely losing himself to his…anger. I guess that’s what you could call it.”

At the word “anger,” my insides clench. He’s a hockey player, she’s told me this much, which means he’s likely got the temper of a bull. A hot wave flushes over me—if he’s so much as put a finger on her…

“What’s he doing?” I choke out.

She shakes her head, lips pinched shut, then leans in and rests her forehead against my collarbone with a stiff chuckle. “Not beating people up
anymore, at least.” Her warm breath fans down my chest, hair tickles my chin, and I let out a slow, measured breath. “I don’t know… I’m just worried about him. He’s not the same person he was a year ago.”

Because of my dad
. I close my eyes away from the thought.

The warmth from my chest disappears, and suddenly her lips press to the underside of my jaw. Once. Twice. Then she runs the tip of her tongue up to my ear. “
Krister, you need to say something. Because you lying here shirtless in front of me is like putting ice cream in front of a kid and telling her not to touch it.” Her finger scrapes a line down the center of my chest to the button of my jeans and, again, I catch it.

“My dad,” I say and cringe with the words. “I came over here because my dad decided to show up after being gone for a year and thinks we can just pick back up where we left off. That disappearing for a year hasn’t changed him or me or the way we’re supposed to act around each other. We got into a fight about it, and then I went to the movies with my best friend and saw that my ex-girlfriend has moved on with some dude from New York, and I spent the whole movie wondering why I didn’t care.”

Cambria leans back, looks at me—eyes big and round and searching. “And now you’re here…trying to be distracted?”

“No
.” I take her face in my hands and just let my thoughts flow out of my mouth. “I’m here because you make me feel good. Alive. And like—for the first time in a long time—things aren’t so horrible.” My lips are mere millimeters from hers now.

Slowly she wets her lips, an
d then she pounces, legs straddling my waist and pushing me back onto the pillows at the same time. She peels off her shirt, tosses it to the floor then collapses on top of me, mouth crushing mine.

Seeing her shirt
less, her bare chest rubbing against mine, yellow shorts stretched across the curve of her tight ass…yeah, I’m not even going to try to stop myself now. Ahold of her ribs, I guide her higher, skimming my lips down her neck and chest until my mouth finds her nipple. A whimper pulses in the room as my tongue swirls one hard nub after another, stirring up the thought that the sound of her voice reacting to my touch will haunt me in my dreams tonight.

I roll to the side
, taking her with me and pin her into the cushy mattress. My hands find the elastic band of her shorts and before I can say “Mother of God” she’s lying naked beneath me with a flush of pink growing on her cheeks as I look her up and down, appreciating every magnificent dip and curve of her body.

My fingers brush along her cheek. “You’re blushing.”

Silence—the calm, pliant kind that isn’t awkward at all. And then she says in a whisper, “Nobody’s ever looked at me like you do.” She tugs down my jeans and then my boxers. “It feels like you’re looking at more than just my body.”

I kiss her before my mind can take that comment and run. ’Cause I was looking past the smooth skin and tiny, jelly-bean-shaped birthmark on her hip, the sky
-blue color of her nails or the way her knees bump my now-bare hips…

Hope. That’s what was in her voice when she said it. She was hoping there was more to the way I was looking at her. And the smile her lips hold tell
s me that hope makes her happy.

Eyes on hers, I pull back just a sliv
er and say with my lips along hers, “I’m really glad you tricked me into kissing you that day.”

“I’m glad I did, too
.”

Then I
suck in her bottom lip without a chance for her to say anything more. My body rocks against hers, a spiral of tingles sinking lower and lower. She kisses my neck with the words, “Hold on,” as she wiggles out from under me. I watch as she scoots off the bed and pads her tight, little ass over to her small dresser.

Drawer open,
she rummages through the socks until she retrieves a still-intact strip of condoms. I don’t know why, but the fact that they haven’t been used yet triggers a smile on my face. If one had been missing…

My chest burns at the thought of someone else touching her. Kissing her. And suddenly, the space of carpeted floor between us is too much. I roll off the bed and sneak up behind her, pressing into her backside.

“You’re taking too long,” I tease and drop a line of kisses down her shoulder. Then I catch her hands and pry the condom free, spinning her around to face me in the process.

“You’re
cute when you’re impatient,” she says and takes back the condom. I watch as she hesitantly rips open the package and then as a look like she doesn’t know what she’s doing spreads across her face—eyes a little wide, a tiny crinkle between her brows. Obviously she’s never put a condom on a guy before, but underneath the hesitation is determination. For whatever reason, she wants to try.

Throw me in a cage and call me a guinea pig.

But as she withdraws the condom, her fingers begin to shake. I smooth my hands down her arms, elbow to wrist, and then slowly—because I have a feeling this has something to do with the whisper of a thought I put into her head last time about living—I guide her hands and the condom in place. Touching me like that, with her eyes burning into me the whole time, makes me feel more naked than I already am.

And I like it.

On her tiptoes, she clasps her arms around my neck as I take her by the waist and lift her to the edge of the dresser, stepping between her legs. She spreads them wider, and I slowly push inside her, at the same time pressing my lips gently to hers. Hands on her cheeks, I plant kisses on her mouth in rhythm with the movement of my body. This is only our second time, but our bodies move in sync like we’ve been doing it for years.

She
arches into me, hooking her legs around my waist, and I groan against her mouth. “Jesus, Cambria, you don’t know what you do to me.”

Just slightly, she
leans back. “Show me.”

Could I? Tell her how I really feel about her—more than I already have? Explain that it’s her face I see every time I close my eyes? That since meeting her, my mind is less on the train wreck and more on moving on? I’m helping her live, to get over her mom’s death, but she’s helping me do the very same thing.

I grip her wrist and slide her hand down my neck and press her palm flat to the left side of my chest, just above my quick-beating heart. “This is what seeing you naked does to me, but…” I slither her hand to the center of my chest, and then down to my side. With one finger over hers, I dig our fingers into my ribs. “…every moment I spend with you, you imprint another little piece of you here.” Our fingers bump over another rib. “And here.” Another. “And here. For the rest of my life I will live with you…because you are un-erasable.”

The rawness of my voice as I say
these words draws a smile to her face, and then I snatch her off the dresser and carry her to the bed. She clings to my neck as I lower us onto the mattress and doesn’t let go as I spend the next hour slowly making love to every beautiful inch of her.

~*~

Cambria
wakes to my fingertips walking up and down her spine. Holding her breath, she waits until my fingers reach the small of her back and then start to reverse their steps before she untucks her head from under my chin and kisses my neck.

“How long have you been awake?”
she asks.

“Not sure I really slept at all. Hazards of having a stunning, half-naked girl curled up
beside me, I guess.”

She
inclines back, her brow crinkled. “Sorry?”

“I’m not.” I
smile and kiss her forehead. “Sleep is overrated when I can stare at you the whole night.”

My thoughts—the ones stinging my brain before she woke—rush back into me:
This is easy. Lying with her. Being with her. If only everything else in my life could be as non-complicated as this moment right here.

“I was thinking
,” she suddenly says, quiet, but loud against my thoughts as she hooks her arm around my waist, “about what you said last night. Your dad, and how he came back into your life.”

My
expression tightens, though with her head tucked to my chest she doesn’t see.

“No matter how much my mom and I fought,
” she continues, “how controlling and protective she was…there’s not a day that goes by I don’t wish it was as easy as her simply walking back into my life. As cliché as this sounds, you should cherish the time you have with him, because you never know when he’ll be gone for good.”

I kiss the top of her head. I know it’s not easy for her to talk about her mom, yet she’s enduring the pain for me. And my problems.
I try not to let the irritability that comes with talk of my father seep into my voice. “Not easy to do when every time I look at him I’m reminded of the reason he left in the first place.”

“Why did he leave?”

She looks so content right now. So happy. Every cell in my body knows I can’t steal that away from her, not after I practically told her I loved her last night. But my traitorous mouth starts to open anyway, the words she will hate me for on the tip of my tongue—

No. God, fuck. Not today.

Quickly, I climb out of the bed, find my jeans, and try not to trip and stumble as I step into them. “I’ve got to get to class,” I say in a rush as I lean down and kiss her cheek then point to the window. “Do you want me to go out the way I came in?”

She
sits up, pushes back her hair. “Wait, Krister, I didn’t mean to upset you. I know talking about your dad isn’t easy. I’m sorry. I should never have asked that.”