I pulled Cam up for a kiss I never wanted to end, then he helped me get my shirt off without aggravating my injury. I lifted my hips so he could slide the borrowed skirt down my legs, trailing his fingers the whole way. His touch gave me chills, yet somehow stoked a growing flame inside me, and the conflict of fire and ice amplified every touch. Magnified every sensation.

I squirmed out of my underwear while he stepped out of his jeans, and then there was nothing between us. Nothing but memories, and the desperate hope that there’d be time to build a few more.

For one long moment, Cam stood in front of the couch staring down at me. Looking at me as if he was trying to memorize the sight. I looked back, aching to touch him, and treasuring that moment of anticipation, when possibilities abound and reality promises even more.

Then the moment was over and I had to touch him.

I pulled Cam onto the couch with me and indulged my greedy hands, my selfish lips. I wanted to touch all of him, and his desires mirrored my own, and the blaze between us burned so hot anyone standing near would surely have been scorched.

When I could stand no more teasing, no more promises without payoff, I arched into Cam’s touch, aching for more. Demanding it. His laugh was soft and deep in my ear, and his hand played a little deeper. A little rougher. “What do you want?” he whispered, and I groaned, overwhelmed by the possibilities. By needs I couldn’t put into words.

“You.”

“Anything more specific?” His lips trailed down my neck again, and I closed my eyes when he lifted my breast. My back arched when his mouth closed over my nipple, pulling gently, sending waves of heat to echo lower.

“You. Now.”

“Not yet…” he murmured, and I groaned. His tongue trailed down the center of my stomach slowly, leaving a hot, wet trail as he crawled down the length of my body. I writhed beneath him and sucked in a sharp breath when his hands slid beneath me, lifting my hips. His stubble scratched my thighs and I opened wider, breathing heavily, anticipation a wild blaze consuming me from inside.

With the first stroke of his tongue—fire given rhythm and form—his hand slid up my side and over my stomach to cup my breast. I gasped and arched into him, lost in need building with every pause, cresting with every touch. Pleasure coiled, so hot and fast nothing else existed in that moment.

“Wait!” I gasped. But he only pushed my hand away when I tried to pull him up. The strokes came faster, hotter, and I clenched the couch cushion beneath me. Then that single point of heat spilled over, and my entire body rocked with wave after wave of pleasure.

Cam groaned, and for a second, the air was cold where he’d been. Then his weight settled over me and I pulled him closer, clutching at him as the muscles in his back shifted beneath my hand. He slid inside me in one stroke, then stayed there, moaning, while aftershocks of my own pleasure clenched around him. Then he was moving inside me, and that heat built again with every stroke.

So familiar, yet so much better than I remembered, and the whole world funneled around me until there was only him, and us, and the rhythm that defined our reunion. And in that moment, as pleasure built between us, racing toward a conclusion I needed, yet was desperate to delay, it felt possible that there might never be anything else. That we could live like this forever. That I could subsist on Cam Caballero alone and never want for a thing in my life.

Then the rhythm changed. The strokes deepened. And I fell right over the edge of need into a wordless, thoughtless convulsion of pleasure. Cam groaned in my ear, and my legs tightened around him, and we rode the last waves together until electric aftershocks gave way to a pleasant numbness, and he collapsed on the couch beside me, his body stretched down the length of mine.

His hand splayed over my stomach, damp with our combined sweat, and his lips found my ear one more time. “I love you, Olivia,” he whispered, and my heart ahio as if it would break in half. “You think we’ll die if we stay together, but I’ve been dying slowly for the last six years. I’m taking my life back, Liv. Our life together. And this time, I’m not going to let you go.”

Seventeen

My phone rang in the dark, interrupting my first sleep since I’d been called out for Rawlinson’s job at two the previous morning. I glanced at Cam’s alarm clock, glowing red from his nightstand. Eleven o’clock at night. Shen had been dead twenty-seven hours. I’d been asleep for three.

My nap was just a tease, and I knew before I even glanced at my phone that it was over.

Groaning, I twisted away from Cam to free my good arm, then reached toward the nightstand to unplug my cell from the travel charger. Cavazos’s private number flashed on the screen.

Son of a bitch… What the hell did he want?

“Don’t answer it,” Cam mumbled, trailing one finger down my arm as I turned on the lamp. “You’ve earned a nap. Hell, you’ve earned a coma.”

“No choice.” When Cavazos called, I had to answer. I sat up, and Cam’s warm arm wrapped around my bare waist. “Can you…not talk?” I turned to give him an apologetic smile, and he nodded. But he wasn’t happy.

I pressed the accept-call button, and Cavazos was talking before I even had the phone at my ear. “What are you doing, Olivia?” He was pissed. I could tell by how smooth and low his voice was—the calm before the storm.

“Working.”

“You’re working? Right this minute? Getting paid?” he said, and my internal alarm sputtered to life and tried to wail.