Along Came Trouble (Camelot 2)

He stuck his hands in his pockets, the very picture of casual, but the heat in his eyes … whoa. “I think if you did, I’d make sure you weren’t sorry.”

“Oh, but I would be sorry. I’d miss my chance to watch you stand guard out here, and I really want to see that.”

His dimple was so deep, she could have fallen into it. “Do you?”

“Yeah. I do.”

He straightened up, turned slightly to face the driveway, folded his arms, and went blank.

Ellen peeled off the wall to approach, walking in a slow circle and stopping right in front of him. He’d become a monolith, a man-mountain carved from obsidian. His biceps bulged beneath his fingers, and his stern soldier face announced that he didn’t intend to let anyone or anything by.

He was gorgeous and remote, the single finest specimen of maleness she’d ever seen in her life, and she couldn’t help herself. Her hand rose up and traced a path down his neck. She settled her thumb over the pulse at the base of his throat. She wanted to feel that he was real.

The pounding of his heart moved through her, a slow throb. She inhaled an unsteady breath. Caleb didn’t move. He didn’t look at her. His pulse picked up.

She knew what she wanted.

She wanted Caleb. No strings, no consequences, no deeper meanings. Just hot sex with this hard, experienced, fascinating man. Two bodies in the dark.

What would Jamie have said if she’d told him that earlier? He wouldn’t have liked it. Probably he would have given her a lecture about how casual sex wasn’t her style. And, yeah, fair enough. She’d always been a relationship kind of gal, packaging sex up with dating and getting-to-know-you conversations, with walking to class together and meeting the parents.

Since Richard, there’d been none of that. No men. No dates. No sex. And absolutely zero interest on her part in any of it.

Now … now she wanted the sex. She wanted Caleb in her bed, skin against skin, those intense eyes looking down at her as he moved deep inside her body. She didn’t want to go to dinner with him or meet his family. She didn’t care if he even had a family. She didn’t want to swap secrets in the afterglow, or to hear about his life before he’d met her or his plans for the future.

She didn’t have the energy for that shit anymore. She was already her son’s loving mother, her brother’s devoted sister, her clients’ fearless champion. And now, it seemed, she was Richard’s long-suffering ex again, too. Playing all those parts exhausted her. The last thing she needed was to be the wind beneath another man’s wings.

Nope. “Lover” she could handle, but nothing heavier than that. Another ounce of weight, and she would buckle.

She wanted to be a Chiclet.

She’d have to seduce him, but she was so out of practice. When it came to this sort of thing, she’d never even really been in practice. The women of magazines licked their lips and unbuttoned their tops and did stripteases to erotic music. She was fairly sure her stereo was cued up to play “The Wheels on the Bus.”

“I’m going to go inside and take a shower,” she said. “Hold down the fort, will you?”

Caleb didn’t reply. He didn’t need to. She knew what she wanted, and she was going to have him.

Caleb stood guard as the light drained out of the overcast sky and listened to the pok-pok-thwack of someone playing tennis on the courts across the street.

Beneath that sound and the crickets, and the occasional car out on the main drag, he heard the muted hiss of running water and tried not to think about Ellen in the shower, soapy and naked. Wet and hot, her hands sliding over her own skin.

He tried, but it was hard. The way she’d smiled before she went inside … like she was planning to have him for dessert. How was he supposed to keep his mind on the job?

Distract yourself, asshole.

It wasn’t as if he lacked for distractions. He knew he must look like a brainless drone out here, standing and staring, but Caleb had a lot to think about, first and foremost his sister.

The more he thought about Katie, the more ashamed he was of how he’d handled their conversation. He hadn’t stopped to think why she was telling him—hadn’t considered what kind of reaction she was looking for from him.

She wanted him to understand, and he didn’t. Not completely. Didn’t she know a good man from a bad one? He was no saint, but if he ever committed an act so unfeeling, he would expect a dawn appointment with the firing squad. Or at least a sound beating.

If Katie had given him the chance, he’d have been happy to administer the beating. As it was, he had no outlet for his frustration. He couldn’t fix a wrong done to her a year ago—or closer to a decade ago, if you counted the wedding itself, which he did. All he could do was wish it hadn’t happened.

Next to useless.

Uselessness was his least favorite feeling. Funny how being back in Camelot kept forcing it on him. His mother. This job. Katie and Levi. Ellen’s problems with her ex. He wanted to fix things, to help all of them out, but he couldn’t think of much of anything to do.

The sound of the shower cut off, and there was Ellen in his head again, dripping wet. Bending over to towel off. His hands on her ass, her hips, her breasts.