Down London Road (35 page)

While his clothes rustled, his black trousers falling to his ankles, Cam slowly glided two strong fingers into my channel and I leaned against the mirror for support, my eyes on him. He watched his fingers moving in and out of me, fascinated and excited, and it only made me wetter.

‘Cam,’ I moaned softly, and as if he heard me his head came up, his eyes meeting mine in the mirror. They flashed at the expression on my face.

He pinned me against the mirror, one hand flat above mine while the other cradled my hip.

He glided into me with a stifled grunt and I swallowed my gasp. As he began to move, I pushed back against his slow thrusts, and our eyes stayed connected in the mirror as he fucked me.

As the tension began to build inside me, Cam grasped my hips, his cock so deep inside me it was almost painful. Abruptly he lowered himself to his knees, pulling me down with him. Poised over his lap, my hand still pressed to the mirror, his hands caressing my breasts, I began to move against his strokes. I felt his cheek against my back as we chased climax, my orgasm spurred on by the low, needy, guttural noises he was making in the back of his throat.

Sensing that I was about to come, Cam drew up behind me, his hand moving from my breast to cover my mouth. The tight heat cocooning my skin and muscles combusted and I exploded around him, my cry of release muffled against his palm.

Cam followed me to release seconds later, my eyes watching him in the mirror as he stiffened, the muscles in his neck straining. His mouth opened in a silent groan as his hips jerked against my ass and he came, the warm heat of his release flooding me.

‘Fuck,’ he whispered, resting his head against mine.

‘Um, everything all right in there?’ the shop assistant
called loudly. Her sudden interruption filtered through the curtain, so close that we tensed against one another.

Oh, my holy hell! I’d forgotten where we were. ‘Yes,’ I answered, my voice breaking with postcoital exhaustion and embarrassment that I’d got so lost in this man I’d forgotten we were screwing each other on the floor of a changing room.

‘Do you need me to fetch another size, or is the dress okay?’

Go away!
My wide eyes met Cameron’s in the mirror and he gave me no indication of what I should do. He was still inside me, for Christ’s sake. I almost laughed at that and glanced back at the curtain. ‘Everything’s great. In fact … it’s a perfect fit.’

At the innuendo, Cameron collapsed against my back, his laughter muffled in my hair, his shoulders shaking with amusement. It also caused him to jostle inside me, setting off little aftershocks of lust.

‘Okay …’ Her voice trailed off as she wandered away from the curtain.

‘Do you think they heard us?’

He gave a low bark of laughter. ‘I don’t give a shit.’

And he meant it.

With tender gentleness, he eased out of me and helped me to my feet. Hands cupping my cheeks, he drew me against him for a languorous, sensual kiss that made my chest ache with emotion.

I love you
.

I cleared the thought from my eyes as Cam pulled back to gaze at me.

‘Luckily we finally chose a dress because there’s no way I can try anything else on before I have a shower.’

Something darkly sexual heated in his eyes and I knew he was thinking it was hot that I had to walk home with his sweat on me and his seed inside me.

‘Joss is right,’ I murmured. ‘You’re all cavemen.’

Cam didn’t take offence at that. Instead he took his time helping me dress, his knuckles brushing all my sensitive bits until I had to slap his hand away so I could get dressed without wanting to maul him again.

My cheeks were blazing as I handed the dresses I didn’t want back to the suspicious sales assistant. I couldn’t look at Cam because every time I did he shot me a wicked grin that made me want to giggle with equal parts exhilaration and mortification. As soon as we stumbled out of the store with my new dress, I fell against Cam’s side, laughing hard as he wrapped his arm around me.

‘I can’t believe we did that,’ I breathed.

‘Aye, can’t say I’ve done that before.’

‘You better not tell Nate and Peetie.’ My warning didn’t hold much of an impact since I was still grinning like a fool.

‘Why not? That’s a bloody good sex story.’

My cheeks warmed again and Cam laughed, snuggling me against his chest as I giggled. I was so caught up in happy la-la land with him that what happened in the next few moments was even more of a crashing, cold bump back to earth.

Cam stopped abruptly and I grabbed him to keep my balance, my head pulling back to study his face. The colour had leached from it and his eyes were wide with utter
shock. ‘Cam?’ I whispered, feeling something hard begin to form in my stomach. I followed his gaze to the girl who was standing in front of us, her pretty eyes just as wide as Cam’s.

‘Cameron?’ she breathed, taking a step towards us, apparently not even aware that I was there.

‘Blair,’ he answered hoarsely.

I felt my head spin at the sound of her name, my eyes immediately examining her, processing everything about her. To my surprise she wasn’t at all what I’d been expecting. I’d pictured her in my mind as this tall, exotic stunner with an air of mystique. Instead she was shorter than Joss, her body slim and petite. She wore a T-shirt with a band on it over a long-sleeved white top, ratty jeans that fit her well and boots quite like Cam’s. She had short black hair that framed her cute pixie face. Her wide brown eyes were her best feature, framed by long black lashes. Shock mixed with longing haunted those pretty eyes, and I felt my hand fist around the material of Cam’s light jacket.

‘It’s great to see you.’ She gave him a sweet smile.

Cam nodded, clearing his throat and shaking the deer caught in the headlights expression from his eyes. ‘Uh, you too. How long have you been back in Edinburgh?’

‘A few months. I thought about looking you up, but I wasn’t sure …’ Her voice trailed off as she finally registered that I was burrowed into Cam’s side. She took me in, a crestfallen expression on her face, disappointment in her eyes. Disappointment in Cam? For choosing someone like me?

I bristled at the thought and Cam’s arm tightened
around me. ‘No, you should have,’ Cam surprised me by saying.

Blair’s whole face lit up. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’ Cam dropped his arm from around me to pull his phone out of his pocket. ‘Here, give me your number and we’ll arrange to catch up.’

What?

I watched them as they exchanged numbers, Cam’s head bent over hers, and my brain just started screaming at me. What the hell was going on? He was arranging to get in contact with the ex-love of his life! What effed-up reality was this?

To make matters worse, he hadn’t even introduced me.

I stood there, attempting to appear calm and unconcerned.

He laughed softly at something she said and she gazed up at him like he was some kind of miracle. He was a miracle. He was
my
miracle and if he didn’t introduce me I was going –

‘Blair, this is my girlfriend, Jo,’ Cam said as he tucked his phone away. He gave me a reassuring smile that I didn’t return.

‘Nice to meet you.’ I managed to give her a small smile while inside I was flinging every swear word I could think of at her.

She didn’t smile back. ‘You too.’

When our gazes met, we had a silent conversation with each other.
I resent you
, she said.
I think I hate you
, I replied.
He was mine first
, she answered.
He’s mine now
, I growled.

Thick tension fell between the three of us until Cam broke the silence with a few polite questions.

After arranging to speak to one another soon, we left Blair to walk home via Princes Street. To my growing panic, Cam didn’t reach for me again. We walked home side by side, not touching and not talking. He seemed to have disappeared somewhere inside himself and I feared that place almost more than I feared anything else.

Cole knew there was something wrong as soon as I returned to the flat. I kept insisting it was nothing, which pissed him off. I knew this because he told me to my face it pissed him off. I retaliated with a lecture on swearing, which he informed me pissed him off even more, so by the time I was dressed for the party, I was mad at Cam for being an inconsiderate dimwit, terrified that I was facing the end of my relationship, and upset that my wee brother had left to stay with Jamie for the night without saying goodbye to me.

In other words I was really in the party spirit.

My depressed thoughts weren’t eased when I hurried down to Cam’s flat to pick him up and he barely registered my dress. The dress he’d found so hot pre-Blair encounter that he’d ravished me in a public dressing room.

I felt my chest tighten with anxiety as he remained quiet during the taxi ride with Olivia and Uncle Mick. Even Olivia commented on it, asking him if he was all right.

Of course he insisted he was, though we all knew (we, as in I) that he had been thrown for a loop by the arrival of his ex-girlfriend, aka the only woman he had ever loved.

We arrived at Joss and Braden’s flat on Dublin Street to find the party already in full swing. Hannah and Declan were staying with friends tonight, so Elodie and Clark
were free to stay as long as they wanted. Elodie was completely smashed already – and Elodie smashed was just a heightened version of Elodie sober. She kept moving around all the guests asking them if they wanted a refill and when they said yes, she proceeded to overfill their glasses with a loopy ‘Oopsie!’

Cam, Olivia and I settled in a corner with Adam and Ellie. I tried to keep up with the conversation, and attempted to appear as if everything was all right, laughing along with the others as Adam pointed out the growing strain on Joss’s face as she was forced to mingle. At one point we watched as Joss attempted to remove her hand from the grip of the wife of one of Braden’s professional acquaintances as she peered at the engagement ring. Joss tugged politely a few times, but when that didn’t seem to get through, she actually swatted the woman’s hand off hers and then smiled prettily as if nothing had happened, leaving Braden choking on laughter while she excused herself.

We were all laughing, and I turned to Cam to share a smile with him, only to find his head bent over his phone.

‘You okay?’ I asked, looking down at the text message he was typing and feeling that ugly compression on my chest again.

He glanced up and gave me a barely there smile. ‘Yeah, you?’

‘Fine. Who are you texting?’

‘Just Blair. She wanted my address.’

‘Hmm.’ I nodded, hoping my fury wasn’t evident in my eyes. I turned away from him, cursing him to the moon and back.

Come to a party for my friend’s engagement as my bloody date and stand there not paying attention to anything anyone’s saying, tapping away at your bloody phone, talking to an ex-girlfriend you casually mention you were in love with, and expect me not to be bloody well pissed off, you bloody swine, you utter
–

‘So, Jo, how are you liking the new job?’ Adam asked me, interrupting my inner diatribe against my boyfriend.

‘Oh, good.’

Adam waited for me to say more, but I couldn’t make my brain work. While my blood was hot with anger, my chest hurt, and my melancholy thoughts took up all my head space. Realizing he wasn’t going to get anything else out of me, Adam engaged Olivia in conversation and I ignored the worried looks Ellie kept shooting me.

I glanced around the room, wishing I could just escape, lock myself in the bathroom and cry. But that seemed awfully melodramatic, considering Cam hadn’t actually done anything wrong. It was my insecurities that were making me feel this way, right?

I caught Uncle Mick’s eye across the room and smiled. He grinned and then turned back to Clark. The two men were so different, one a scholar, one a manual labourer, and yet they seemed to get on incredibly well with each other. I was glad. It was nice of Joss and Braden to invite Mick and Olivia to their engagement party, but I had worried that they would feel out of place.

Turned out the only one feeling out of place was me.

I listened with half an ear as Ellie managed to engage Cam in conversation. Although he chatted with her about the new project he was creating the graphics for, an independent chocolate shop that was opening in Edinburgh, I
could hear the lack of enthusiasm in his voice. I knew him too well. I knew his mind was off somewhere else tonight.

Was it really my insecurities telling me his mind was on Blair? Or was it my instincts?

I needed the opinion of a blunt, straightforward, honest couple.

Sweeping the crowded sitting room, I couldn’t see Joss and Braden anywhere. I excused myself and headed out into the empty hallway, then proceeded to check the kitchen, where a large group of people had congregated. They weren’t there either. I checked the bedrooms. Both empty.

Wondering if they’d gone outside for some fresh air, I headed down the hall towards the door and that was when I heard the deep, rumbling chuckle.