A few minutes later and the backyard filled with the tantalizing sizzle of grilled steaks. I breathed in deeply, my stomach growling.

“You wanted yours medium, right?” he asked. “Not much longer now.”

Which meant it was changing time. While he started poking at the foil-wrapped asparagus, I turned the lawn chair around so that the high back was blocking his view of me. Then, after a quick look around at his neighbors and seeing only darkness from their windows, I shimmied out of my jeans. Unfortunately, I was drunk and had forgotten to take off my boots first. I fell over sideways onto the grass.

“What are you doing over there?” I heard Camden yell and the sound of metal tongs being placed on a rung.

“Stay back! I’m fine!” I yelled, hoping my voice wasn’t loud enough to alert the neighbors.

I thanked my lucky stars that my combat boots had a zipper and quickly unzipped them. Lying on my back with my leg bent up to my head, I pulled off the jeans and tossed them to the side. Then I got on my knees and started to look for my ugly Peg pants. Where the hell did they go?

“Looking for these?” Camden asked from behind me.

Swallowing my pride, I turned around on my knees and looked up. Camden was holding the pants in one hand. He dropped them beside him and then walked over to me. He held out his hand.

“Come on,” he said gently, a shadowed intensity in his eyes.

I shook my head quickly. “No. I’m just in my underwear.”

“I can see that,” he said. “Let me help you up.”

My heart thumped loudly in my ears and I looked away from his face and straight ahead at his knees. “I don’t want you to see.”

Suddenly he was down on his knees, and though there were a few inches between us, he was closer than he’d ever been. “I don’t care, Ellie,” he said determinedly.

I kept shaking my head, unable to form words, unable to tell him how I was feeling. I just wanted him to go away and leave me alone, let me get dressed in peace. I wanted to run. I wanted the darkness to swallow me whole.

“You know how I feel about your scars. They only make you more beautiful,” he whispered, now stroking the side of my face. His eyes were searching mine, begging me to open up but the fear was so big and so damn real.

“You’ve never seen my scars.” My voice was barely audible, even in my own head.

“No, I haven’t. But I’ve seen what they’ve made you.”

His nose nudged the side of mine and maybe because I’d been thinking about it ever since Safeway, or maybe because I was buying some time, I leaned in and kissed him. This wasn’t the tender kiss from earlier. I had no wine bottles held above my head. This kiss was soft for a moment, then hurried. His lips sucked gently on mine, his tongue ravishing my mouth like he couldn’t stop himself. I was suddenly insatiable, each kiss reaching down into my core, making me want all of him, every part. A million thoughts flew through my head and then there was nothing at all. There wasn’t even Camden and Ellie. There was just this hot, primal, crucial need for each other.

Before I could stop him, or at least pretend to stop him, he was pushing me back until I was falling onto the grass. I reluctantly slid my knees out to the side, my legs coming into full view. My scars visible in the dark. He didn’t notice, didn’t care. He kept kissing me passionately, so hot, so sweet, as one of his hands disappeared into the back of my hair, cupping my head. He laid me on the ground, the hard grass tickling the sides of my ears, and that was the last time he was gentle.

He straddled me and pulled my tank top over my head and tossed it aside. Then he leaned back and ripped off his own shirt. As if I wasn’t breathing hard enough already, squirming beneath his form, he looked better than I could have imagined. Here was the new Camden McQueen, shirtless, a tower of defined muscle and gorgeous, darkly dangerous tattoos.

There was a phoenix rising from the ashes along the swoop of muscle of his hipbones, a tiger/dragon hybrid flying up the side of his stomach, scripture peeking out of the top of his boxers. I’d seen only glimpses of them before, and now they glowed before me, lit by the hundreds of warm lights in his garden. He was like a living, breathing painting on an all-male canvas.

I couldn’t gawk at him for long. He quickly took off his shorts, and I decided to help him out by removing my bra. I was glad I took the extra effort to wear my matching yellow and lace number. By the time I was finished unhooking it and throwing it across the grass, our clothes were scattered everywhere and his extremely erect penis was on full display.

I could only smile in response, stunned at the beauty of it, turned on as fuck at the idea of him thrusting it in me. And a tiny bit scared, to be honest, because it had been some time since I was with a man and it had been, well never, since I was with a man built like him. Although I had never been a fan of blow jobs except when it had come to Javier, my first instinct was to lay my lips around his tip and suck him slowly.

But that would have to wait. He leaned forward on me, elbows on each side of my shoulders, his body so wonderfully heavy on mine. His teeth went for my neck, nibbling softly from ear to shoulder while he slipped one of his hands slowly down my side and over my flat stomach until he was teasing the area underneath my thong. Then his fingers brushed against my pubic hair and stopped just as it was getting good. I squirmed, the pressure in my clit building to uncomfortable heights, wanting his hand to go down further. I felt him smile against my lips, as if he were deliberately torturing me, then finally he gave in and gave me what I wanted. I was slick as oil and it didn’t take long at all before his fingers circled my clit enough times and I came.

I cried out, the orgasm catching me by surprise. If I were a man, I would have hung my head in shame. That took one minute, if that. But I didn’t fucking care. I let the waves rock through me, my hand clutched in his hair, until I came to a soft landing.

I cleared my throat and spoke into his kiss. “Sorry, it’s been a while.”

“You should expect to hear the same thing from me in about five minutes,” he murmured.

“Five minutes, huh?”

“I’ll make it the best five minutes of your life.”

I bit his lip, hard, then released him and looked into those intense blues. “Clock’s ticking.”

He grinned, dimples and all, then grabbed me by the sides of my arms and flipped me over on my stomach. I tried to turn over but he just pushed my shoulder down into the grass. I felt him go for my underwear, trying to roll it off my ample ass. Then I heard him give up.

It sounded just like a rip.

“That was my only matching pair to the bra!” I cried out, voice mercifully muffled by the grass.

“I’ll tattoo you some new ones,” he answered roughly. I felt his fingers slide down the crack of my rear, and before I could protest or freak out he slipped his hand underneath my pelvis and pulled me up until my ass was in the air.

I could hear him let out a long breath and could feel his eyes burning a hole through my skin. I was starting to feel uncomfortable, afraid that he’d seen the scars on my leg and was becoming turned off, but all my fears were banished when he brought his palm down across my ass. It stung to high heaven.

Holy shit, did Camden just spank me?

There was another hard slap on my other cheek and before I could start worrying whether I was getting caught up in some wannabe BDSM relationship, I felt his hot, wet lips kiss both of the slap marks. I closed my eyes to the pleasure and let out a groan when his fingers slipped inside me. It didn’t matter if I just came, I was more than ready to go again.

I felt his presence move off of me and heard the rustle of something plastic. Seconds later there was the telltale sound of a condom wrapper tearing. You can almost hear the concentration when a man is trying to put one of those on.

With one hand holding me at the small of my waist, he entered himself slowly. With him taking me from behind, I couldn’t see what he was doing, I could only feel. And I could feel everything. Pain, mostly. At first. Pain that slowly melted into a wet warmth that seemed to saturate every part of me from my stomach to my nipples. I felt uninhibited, and considering I lived my life by my own rules, I felt strangely free. With each thrust, Camden drove himself deeper. He rocked me against the ground in a rhythm that felt as intuitive as it was pleasurable. He filled me up, the thickness building inside while my own pressure built on the outside. He tightened his grip around my waist, making me feel irresistibly petite and vulnerable and pounded me harder, faster.

His breathing became heavier, more laborious, and the occasional moan came out of him that made my urge to come triple. He went faster, harder and just when it sounded like he might lose it, I felt his fingers at my clit, working me into a frenzy with him. We came at the same time, groaning loudly, panting quietly, trying to control the volume. But, hell, if a neighbor were to stick their head out their window and see a tattooed god ramming a chick in the neighbor’s backyard all lit by romantic lights, they’d probably watch. I’d watch too.

When the shockwaves slowed their roll through me and my mind and body were coming back to earth, sorting through the delicious high of endorphins, I collapsed on my elbows, too blissed out to move. The grass could eat me alive and I wouldn’t care.

Camden lay beside me, his head propped up by his hand, facing me. Still totally nude, breathing hard but with a smile that matched mine. Satisfied.

“So, I think the steaks are ruined,” he said lightly, between breaths.

I sniffed the air, catching a whiff of charcoal from the burned steaks, and made a sad face. “Aw, I’m sorry.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’ve waited my whole life to sleep with you, Ellie Watt. I can’t just pick you up from Safeway.”

I smiled, kind of embarrassed at that admission, and looked down at the grass. He was staring at me so earnestly, so…obviously…that I felt I should say something like that back. But I couldn’t think of anything except, “So if we substitute sex for playing dress-up, does that still count in Camden and Ellie’s Day of Fun?”

He grinned. “More than anything.”

A light caught my eye and we both turned to look. One of the lights in the neighbor’s window had just come on.

“Ah shit,” I said. Now that I wasn’t in the throes of passion, it turned out that being caught naked would be kind of embarrassing.

But Camden had quickly hopped to his feet and lifted up a wicker trunk that lined the patio. He brought a couple of fleece blankets, wrapping one around his waist and holding the other one out for me. He didn’t leer at me as I got to my feet or stare anywhere I didn’t want him to. He just wrapped the blanket around my chest and we quickly scooped up the clothes from the garden before we caused a scene. I grabbed the half-full bottle of wine, made another sad face at the overcooked food as he turned off the grill, and we scampered back inside.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Then

The girl hated gym class more than anything else. Even by the time tenth grade rolled around and she had made a few more friends, the class still scared the hell out of her.