On My Knees (2 page)

He shifted his hips so I could take him deeper. I threw my head back and cried out as pleasure took its hold. My breasts became heavy and tender as he sucked my nipples to hard hypersensitive points. I gasped and tightened around his penetration, increasing the friction of every thrust.

He worked me over his cock until my grip on reality began to slip. I wanted to make this last for both of us, but he was launching my body into overload. Sweat misted over my skin.

I groaned. I needed an orgasm like I needed my next breath. I matched his thrusts, leveraging them with my weight to drive him deeper. My body was slick around him. He pumped quickly and easily.
Faster, harder
. My mind was lost in a flurry of silent wants and demands. Anything to bring us closer.

“Maya, look at me.” He wove his fingers through my hair, bringing my focus back to him.

Our gazes locked on each other, our breathing ragged and uneven. Something in his half-lidded eyes and the firm set of his jaw as he thrust inside me broke through my single-minded need to come. The fierceness in his next thrust robbed me of air. My jaw dropped in a soundless cry. I thought my heart might explode if he held me this way much longer, but I couldn’t escape… Didn’t want to.

“Cam.” The quiet plea signaled a certain surrender. I was giving him everything now. My body, my heart, my trust.

“I’ve got you.” The rasp of his promise sent a tingle over my skin.

Cameron wasn’t only fucking me. He was loving me with every touch. Caressing my lips with his, guiding my motions with a firm grasp at my hip. Churning inside me with a fierce pressure that had me on the brink of rapture, he satisfied every raw need, inside and out.

He licked the pad of his thumb and rubbed tiny expert circles over my clit. I shifted over him, thrashing and grabbing as the tension mounted within.

“Oh my God,” I cried.

“That’s it. Stay with me.” He held me tight, holding my focus and forcing me to pinpoint all my energy on his eyes, now dark and intense.

“I’m going to come… Oh, fuck.” I squeezed my eyes closed, unable to focus on anything. I could only feel.

And I felt everything.

Everywhere we met clashed and clenched, as if something precious might slip away if we didn’t hold on for dear life. His cock lengthened, throbbing and rigid, as he drove his pelvis deep into my sensitive tissues. I dug my nails into his skin, raking down his chest as mindless release took over.

“Fuck,” he growled.

My eyes flew open. The sight of him losing that last thread of control did me in. The orgasm, the weight of our separation and our love, and the acute need to be fucked like I’d never been fucked before, crashed down onto me like a tidal wave. Pleasure and relief racked my body with a string of violent shudders. I screamed. I grabbed feebly at the bed behind him, fisting the fabric in an attempt to ground myself to earth when my body was soaring with delirious pleasure.

“I love you. Love you so much.” I suppressed a sob as the words left me. Tears prickled the corners of my eyes as I came back down.

His hips arched off the floor, extending the moment as he chased his own release, setting me off again. He swallowed my last cry with a desperate kiss. Uttering a feral moan into my mouth, he froze and then came, the warm rush filling me.

Weakened, I leaned back on his raised knees, letting all the tension go. His arms wrapped around my waist, and his damp forehead rested between my heaving breasts as I struggled for air.

I held him to me, so grateful for everything. For Cameron, for this moment, for whatever miracle brought him into my life. I swallowed over the painful knot in my throat. I felt stripped. I wanted to cry and rid myself of all the fears and doubts and worry that I’d carried before today. I wanted to be rid of all of it, until only our love remained.

He lifted his head, reflecting a look of complete and utter emotional wreckage.

“Jesus, Maya. That was…”

“Amazing.” I finished the thought. “Amazing” was a weak description of what had just happened between us. Epic and earth-shattering also fit the bill. Rug burn-inducing even, I thought, vaguely aware of the sting on my knees where they met the area rug protecting us from the wood floors. I didn’t care.

I feathered my fingers over his skin, still drunk on our passion but, like a true addict, still wanting more. He reached up to kiss me. Our soft lazy kisses quickly became urgent, stoking the warm embers of my desire anew. He thickened inside me.

“Let’s do that again,” he rasped.

* * *

We had the week to ourselves, to simply be together, which was all we really needed or wanted.

While my dorm mates frolicked on Southern beaches for spring break, we spent our days in bed. At night we’d walk downtown, have dinner, and get tipsy. We’d rush home so we could make love again or fuck wildly and loudly, our uninhibited sex sounds echoing through the mercifully empty halls of the house.

We soaked up every precious minute and talked endlessly about the future we wanted together. Marriage and babies and happily ever after. With so much of the future unknown, we let ourselves dream and imagine the life we could have. I had no idea when or how our future would take shape, but I prayed that when the time came, I could give him everything he wanted.

As the days passed, our touches lingered. Our kisses were deeper and the wild fucking gave way to tender, unhurried lovemaking. I let the tears come, finally, and he kissed them away, never asking why. He held me, loved me, and helped me forget, if only for a moment, that we were running out of time.

As hard as we tried, loving slowly couldn’t delay the passing of time. We walked along the edge of the campus, and I tried not to think about the dwindling days. Soon he’d fly back, and I’d return to my monotonous and work-filled life as a student. I leaned against his shoulder, wishing I could freeze time or kidnap him. Surely my roommate wouldn’t mind a third.

The pond sparkled with moonlight as it fed into the river. Cameron slowed, turning to me. Held my hands in his. I looked up at him, mesmerized by how his eyes glittered in the semi-darkness. He was beautiful. Perfect. And at least for now, all mine.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine,” I lied. I didn’t want to waste time talking about the inevitable.

“I don’t want to go either,” he said, echoing my thoughts.

I stared at the ground between us. “I can’t even think about it.”

“We’ll get through it. After I get through tech school, everything will be easier, I promise.”

My heart ached at the thought of enduring another long separation. “Summer will be here soon,” I said, offering a ray of hope, but I swallowed the tears that threatened. I had to save the rest of them until he left. I couldn’t taint our last couple days with sadness over the unavoidable.

“About that…”

I looked up, questioning the sudden tension in his pose. His jaw was tight, and he looked down to our intertwined hands. He took a deep breath.

“What? What’s wrong?” My stomach knotted. Had he waited to drop more bad news on me?

“I know you said that you were going to try to work up here over the summer.”

I nodded. “The housing is cheaper with my tuition. It makes the most sense.”

“I know, but maybe instead of visiting me wherever I get stationed, you could come live with me for the summer.”

I frowned. “But you said you couldn’t live off base. I couldn’t afford it, Cameron.” I hated admitting my financial woes. Such limitations had never existed for him.

“I can’t live off base right now, but I could…”

I tried to finish his thought in my mind, but I knew nothing about the intricacies of the military. Already the institution had more rules than I could fully comprehend.

“How?”

“We could get married.”

I widened my eyes and dropped my jaw slightly as I sucked in a sharp breath of the cool night air. “Married?” I barely recognized my voice as I said the word. The sound, strained and high, betrayed my panic and ran in stark contrast to how we’d spoken of it hours ago, a far off dream we’d both shared.

“If we got married, I could live off base. We could be together. I’d make plenty of money to support us both until you came back to school. And after, of course.”

The intensity that once hummed between us now hung frozen in the air as I absorbed his words. I struggled to reply, my lips moving wordlessly. Panic seized my lungs. I couldn’t breathe.

This wasn’t how it had happened in my fantasies. We were older, my life was far more stable than it currently was, and I was smiling and crying and jumping to kiss him with one yes after the other pouring from my lips. Yet now I fought a wave of nausea. My vision blurred. The subtle sounds around us muffled behind a jumble of broken thoughts flooding my brain.

“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” I finally said. True enough, I had no idea where this proposal had come from.

He gripped my hands tightly. I was vaguely aware of the dampness of my palms, but my thoughts were too scattered to care.

“Maya, I want to marry you.”

The earlier softness in his voice gave way to determination. He looked at me intently. He was serious. I was scared to death that he was.

“There are logistics with the military, yes, but none of that matters as much as wanting to be married to you. Everything we’ve had this week… I want that forever, to know that nothing can take that away from us.”

“But—” I stumbled over my words, hoping I didn’t look as scared as I felt. “Are you… Do you mean, like, now?”

He paused. “We could do it this weekend, before I leave. Just you and me. We don’t need anyone else.”

I took a small step back and out of his grasp, hoping it would allow me to breathe easier. My chest heaved with labored breaths. My mind had spun straight out of the love coma that we’d been living in for days. For all my loving him, I could not have been more shocked by this.

“I don’t have a ring…” His shoulders sagged.

My uneasiness only grew with the asking in his eyes.

“I don’t care about a ring, Cameron, but this is so sudden. Do you realize what you’re asking me?”

“I know exactly what I’m asking you. Trust me, I’ve thought about little else for weeks. I wanted to ask you the minute I saw you.”

My gaze darted between the ground and buildings in the distance. I needed something to hold my focus, because my thoughts were running rampant.

The future we spoke of seemed a lot closer for him than I’d realized. The dreams we shared were within reach now, but I couldn’t feel anything but crushed emotionally. The warm blanket of the past few days had been ripped away, and I was left with the shock of his request.

“Why now?”

“Why wait?”

“I can’t just run away. I have things I need to take care of. Things here.”

A confused frown marked his brow. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. Work, I guess.” I offered the weak half-truth, not wanting to get into the real reasons why I couldn’t skip town with my would-be husband come May.

“You can find work wherever I am, or don’t worry about it at all. Take the summer off. I’ll be making more and can take care of you, of us.”

As if anything could be that simple.

Frozen, I tried to think of how I could convince him this was rash. Too soon. “I don’t know, Cameron,” I murmured. “I need time to think about this, I guess.”

I chanced a look in his eyes. His jaw was tightly clenched, his whole posture on edge.

“Do you want to marry me or not?” His voice was a mere whisper.

I’d asked for time to think, but this wasn’t a negotiation of terms. This was a moment—one that demanded an answer, not an excuse.

Fine mist swept over my skin, and I fought a new wave of sickness. I couldn’t. It was too much. Too fast. As head over heels as I was, as we both were, I couldn’t go through with it. One day, yes. But I couldn’t say when that would be. He wanted to take care of me, but he’d never really understand the weight I carried.

“I do want to marry you, Cameron. I really honestly do, one day, but not…
today
. We shouldn’t rush into this.”

“Rush? I’ve spent two months away from you and it’s killing me. I thought you felt the same way.”

I fought the tremble in my hands, wringing my fingers together. With each word, I felt him slip further from me. I stared past him to the pond. The campus had darkened under the night sky. This was my life, and I hadn’t really thought seriously about what it might look like outside of our idle dreaming. He was calling me out on all the promises we’d made, and here I was reneging.

I loved Cameron, but being with him was like being in a dream, a fantasy where I could believe that everything was possible, that everything was going to be okay. But he didn’t know everything. He’d never understand the forces that weighed me down, the battles I fought away from the eyes of my friends here. He’d only known a life of privilege. Security, normalcy, a family that by most standards would be considered perfect. Certainly compared to mine.

I’d hinted about the situation with my mother, but I’d never shared the embarrassing details of how I’d grown up, or how her life had fallen into woeful disrepair since I left for school. What chance would I have with him if he knew who I really was?

“I want to be with you, Cam.” I prayed that could be enough.

“Then marry me. There’s never going to be anyone else for me. This is it.” The look of love in his eyes, the look I’d seen so many times before, left no doubt.

“Marriage?” I shook my head, pleading with him to relent on this dream that I couldn’t give him.

He winced. “You say the word like it makes you sick, Maya.”

“It is making me sick.” I half turned away, wrapping my arms around myself to chase away the chill of the night. He was pushing me so hard. Everything I was saying was disappointing him, hurting him. I hated it. I hated everything about this conversation. I wanted to go home and fall asleep in his arms and wake up as if we’d never had it.

The hurt in his eyes lanced through me. My heart fell.

“You’re telling me no, then.”

I shook my head, my heart breaking. I had no other choice, and I’d never be able to make him understand my reasons. “I can’t.”