Page 68 of Be Mine Forever

“You won’t lose control. I’ll help you.”

“Jo, if it’s the way I think it’ll be between us, you’ll be the last person to help me stay in control.”

His words started a shudder in her belly that spread to her fingertips, leaving them tingling, trembling.

“I used to think he was chasing me.” That same terror and hatred Jo had seen when he first told his story crowded out the tenderness in his eyes. “That he would catch me again, even though he’s dead. But now I don’t feel him chasing me. It’s more like one night in my sleep, he already caught me.”

Cam’s eyes were unfocused, fixed over her shoulder, on nothing visible to the naked eye.

“Like he caught me and possessed me without my permission. Without my knowledge, and he’s just waiting for my guard to be down enough to leap out and hurt the people I care about the most.”

He returned his eyes to her, and they softened by degrees.

“That’s you, by the way. There’s no one left on this earth who means more to me than you, Jo. I don’t know how you want to label that. I don’t need to. I just know that is the space in my heart you own.”

He dusted kisses across her lips and cheeks until he reached her ear.

“You have for a while.”

Jo wasn’t sure how long the tears had been streaking down her cheeks, but she’d just started tasting them in the corners of her mouth. All the words she had been longing to hear from Cam since she was a girl suddenly filled the room. Watering her heart. Breathing life into dead dreams and dusty hopes.

“I’m not afraid of you.” She forced the words past her quivering lips, past the wetness of her tears. “I’ve never been afraid of you, and I’m certainly not now that I know how that monster hurt you.”

“So if it wasn’t fear that had you put a stop to things over there”—he nodded toward the bed where they had been busy combusting when she pressed the brakes—“what was it?”

Jo dropped her forehead to his shoulder, groaning. He had all her other low moments. Why not this one? She swiped the tears from her face.

“My lady garden.”

Cam pulled away, peering down at her, a smile and a frown making peace on his face.

“Your…I’m sorry. Your what garden?”

“I wanted to be perfect for you. For our first time. I was going to get…well, a fresh wax down there. And a keratin treatment to make my hair straight.” She held up her tic-tac toenails, with all the empty spaces where color should be. “Get my nails done. With all that’s been going on at work, I’ve neglected my grooming.”

“Jo, please, stop.” Cam put his fingers over her lips. “Just stop talking because I’m going to laugh, like gut bust laugh if you keep talking. Then you’ll get mad and punch me. And I’ll laugh more because you hit like a girl. It’ll be a whole thing. I promise you.”

Jo’s lips twitched, but she held her ground.

“I wasn’t being vain or ridiculous. I’ve waited like seventeen years for this, and I wanted my—”

“Your lady garden?”

“Yes, my lady garden to be all—”

“Freshly waxed. Yeah, you mentioned that.” Cam’s hand wandered down her side and into her yoga pants, into her panties. With no prelude, no warning, his fingers thrust inside her again. “I like your lady garden just the way it is right now.”

Jo’s breath hitched, getting trapped in her lungs and refusing to come out. Her mouth throbbed under his hungry stare, like he was already tasting her, already possessing her in a dimension they just hadn’t reached yet.

“Remember I said I was going to worship you?” He slid his fingers in and out, adding a third, using his thumb to brush across the bundle of nerves swelling and begging for his touch.

Jo just nodded, her mind and mouth already emptied of words by the steady, sensual pull and push of his fingers. Of his hand coated with the evidence of just how ready she was for this to happen.

“I was wrong. I think this first time, I’m gonna have to fuck you.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Take this slowly.

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