Page 83 of The Easy Way
A few weeks before, Cort had taken great delight in showing him just howmuchhe loved being Cam’sfirstat so many things - first man he’d fallen in love with, first man he’d lived with, first man he’d ditched condomswith.
Cort frowned down at his phone as he read Cam’s message, and his expression had Cam frowning,too.
[Cam:]What’s with the face? You rethinking your stance onfirsts?
[Cort:]Hmmm. Maybe I am alittle.
What the hell? Since when? Cam scowled as hetyped.
[Cam:]Well, you’re a bitlate!
[Cort:]Your firsts aren’t goodenough.
Cam stared at his boyfriend, but Cort was looking out of the window behind Cam’s head, a small smile playing on his lips. Was he trying to be funny? If so, he was failingmiserably.
[Cam:]Fine, then. Maybe I’ll see if Drew or David is interested in giving me some moreexperience.
Fighting words, and Cam knew it, but he was more than a little pissed at the curve this conversation had taken. He jabbed at the Send key with more force than necessary, then placed his phone facedown on the table and pointedly turned his attention toMarcus.
“Thanks, Marcus. Send me that proposal and I’ll have Drew’s team jump on it,” Sebastian said easily. “Sounds like a great fit, and thanks for bringing it to ourattention.”
From down the table, Cam saw Drew lean back with his hands folded across his chest, and nodonce.
“Janine, can you switch to Dr. Grayson, please?” Sebastian asked one of the techs. Janine cut Marcus’s feed and switched to another image, this one was a young brunette with long curly hair and dark eyes. Cam recognized her rightaway.
“Pam,” he said, momentarily forgetting he was pissed at Cort. “How’s itgoing?”
Pam smiled and proceeded to fill them all in on the great progress they’d made in implementing and testing the new virtual reality surgical techniques Cam had greenlit on behalf of Seaver’s biomedicaldivision.
“We’ve already helped save lives thanks to this technique,” she told theboard.
Sebastian glanced down the table at Cam and met his eyes for a moment. From the minute he’d taken up his CEO position again, he’d been filled with nothing but praise for Cam’s performance in holding down the fort during his absence. At first, Cam had rolled his eyes - he’d felt as though he was barely getting the job done from day to day, and anything he’d managed to accomplish was based on nothing but sheer good luck. Slowly, though, he’d started seeing things with new eyes, seeinghimselfwith new eyes. And yeah, maybe some of this had to do with the annoying jerk sitting on the other side of the table who Cam was pointedlynotlookingat.
A few minutes later, Sebastian drew the meeting to a close and everyone slowly began gathering their things, pushing away from the table, and breaking off into smaller conversations. Cam sat where he was, doodling with his pen on the edge of a piece of notepaper. He didn’t want to give Cort the opportunity to explain quite yet. He wanted to stew for a minute or twofirst.
But the door to the conference room suddenly locked with a quietsnick, and Cam lookedup.
Everyone was gone. The room was completely empty except for Cam… and the bane of his existence, who was looking at him with smoldering greeneyes.
“What are you doing?” Camdemanded.
Cort stalked toward him, all long limbs and bunching muscles beneath his casual Friday polo and the jeans he had insisted on wearing. For just a second, some primal part of Cam’s brain lit up in warning.Prey, we have spotted a predator!But this prey had finally learned better than to runaway.
He remembered Cort walking into the ballroom exactly the same way the night of the gala, the first night they’dmet.
“Once upon a time, I thought you looked like a Viking,” he said coolly when Cort was just a few steps away fromhim.
“A Viking?” Cort repeated, amused. He spun Cam’s chair around by the arm and scooped him up bodily, depositing him on the cool, blacktabletop.
Cam’s pulse picked up, but he bit his tongue against the squeak that threatened to burst from his throat… and the moan that always followed when Cort demonstrated just how much bigger and stronger he was. Cam loved that about him - loved the way Cort made him feel safe and protectedalways. But he alsolivedto remind Cort that whilehemight be in charge in the bedroom, he wasnotdominant all the time. They had a constantly evolving set of rules, made ever more exciting by the fact that Cort tried to change them whenever it suited him, but Cam thrived on it. From the time he and Cort had embraced again at the airport on St. Michel, he’d never for a second doubted he had one hundred percent of Cort’s focus, attention, and most importantly, hisheart.
Still, the man needed to learn, his texts weren’t always as amusing as he thought theywere.
“A Viking,” Cam agreed coolly, as though he hadn’t just been plunked bodily onto a new piece of furniture, and his man wasn’t pushing Cam’s knees wide apart so he could step inside them. “LikeFabio.”
Cort grabbed Cam’s neck and yanked it to the side, biting down firmly on the exposed tendon between Cam’s neck and shoulder. It was his favorite spot to mark Cam, who felt his dick becoming hard immediately. Conditioned response. When Cort claimed that spot, Cam wanted nothing more than tosubmit.
But nottoday.
