Down London Road (On Dublin Street 2)

His body started to shake with rueful laughter. He ran slightly shaking fingers through his hair, his eyes bright on me. ‘I just came like a callow youth.’

‘Magic hands,’ I teased.

Cam shook his head. ‘Jo hands,’ he corrected, then pressed a sweet kiss to my mouth.

After he’d cleaned up my hand and himself and changed into a fresh T-shirt, he got back on the bed, but this time he straddled me.

‘What are you doing?’ I breathed, excited but also still in pain. ‘We can’t do anything.’

He shook his head, his eyes full of heat. ‘You don’t have to do anything but stay as still as possible.’ And without another word he went to work on my jeans, carefully pulling them off, along with my underwear.

He pushed my thighs apart and crawled up the bed until his head was between my legs. Gently, he eased two fingers inside me and grunted. ‘Fuck, you’re soaked.’

‘I enjoyed getting you off,’ I whispered, trying not to writhe at the delicious sensation of him inside me.

‘I can feel that.’ Cam took a shuddering breath. ‘This is torture.’

‘Do you know what torture really is? Having your tongue so near and yet so far.’

He threw me a wicked smile and then promptly put that tongue of his to better use.

Epilogue

The peace it brought me to look back and no longer see that wall Cam had helped me scale so long ago was indescribable. I would never be back behind that wall again, or have my colours muted and my personality trapped in the stranglehold of my insecurities. This was me. Life from now on would consist of being real, which was somehow scary and freeing all at the same time.

It helped that the pieces of my life were falling nicely into place for once.

Cole pretended to be indifferent to the news that we were moving into Cam’s flat, but I could tell by the way he’d been enthusiastically packing, and slowly moving something new into the flat every day, that he was happy about the new arrangement.

As for Mum … well … first she’d gone off about how we were abandoning her, and how she wouldn’t let me do this to her, and I couldn’t take Cole, and I was a selfish little whore, and blah, blah, blah …

Allowing her to exhaust herself in a tirade seemed like the best way to cope with her. That way she tired herself out and had no energy to fight me as I calmly told her that if she didn’t let me move Cole downstairs, if she even dared to call the authorities, I’d leave her ass in the dust and never look back. I assured her that this way I would check in with her, and if she needed me I was only a staircase away. Her silence was a bittersweet relief and it informed me in its heavy weightlessness that I’d won this particular argument.

She hadn’t spoken to us for three weeks.

Wiping sweat off my forehead, I blew air out between my now completely healed lips and gazed around Cam’s sitting room. Boxes surrounded me on every side. Cole and I were supposed to be officially moving into Cam’s the next day – a Saturday – so that Cam and the guys could help us with all the boxes. Feeling a little overexcited about the whole thing, and restlessly wandering around the flat, I’d decided to take one of the lighter boxes downstairs to his (our) flat while he was at work. It was now late afternoon, my side was hurting a little, and I’d moved most of the boxes into their new home.

Cam would return from work in an hour or so and a few hours after that I had to be at the bar for one of my last shifts ever at Club 39. I was going to miss everyone at the bar. I’d still see Joss, of course, but that place had been a home away from home for the longest time, and I had spent time there with two of the most important people in my life. It was the end of an era.

However, something new and exciting awaited me. Uncle Mick had already given me two work T-shirts with his company name on them: M HOLLOWAY’S PAINTER & DECORATOR. I loved them. They looked great with the new overalls Cam had bought me.

Humming to myself, I pulled out my iPod and stuck it in Cam’s stereo dock, turning the volume up as I began unpacking. Time passed quickly as I sang along, dancing, and shaking my ass as I found places for all my stuff, attempting not to overwhelm Cam’s space with my things.

Just as I was breaking up the empty boxes, a pair of strong arms slid around my waist and scared the bejesus out of me. I yelped and spun around to find a bemused Cameron smiling at me. He gestured silently to the room and all of the new objects.

‘I got a little carried away,’ I explained, speaking loudly to be heard over the music.

He nodded, his gaze drifting over the mantel, where a photograph of me, him and Cole now sat next to his own pictures. The stylish mantel clock from upstairs now dominated the centre, the photographs dispersed evenly on either side of it. ‘I can see that.’

‘It saved us doing most of it tomorrow.’

Blue eyes dropped to my side and his hand came up, his palm pressing gently against my ribs. At the proximity of his touch to my chest, I felt my ni**les peak against my sweat-dampened tank top. We hadn’t had sex since before the attack. Fooling around while we waited for my ribs to heal had been fun, but my hormones were becoming a tad impatient for the play that succeeded the fore.

‘You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?’ Cam asked, his brows knitting together in concern.

Lying to him a little, I shook my head in response.

As if he knew, he scowled at me.

‘Okay, I got a bit overeager. It’s just because I’m excited to move in with you, baby.’ I tried to charm my way out of the coming admonishment.