How to Misbehave (Camelot 1)

In the meantime, she would steal every intimacy she could get. Transgress every boundary. Take every stupid, doe-eyed risk, and hand him her heart and her body.

He couldn’t break her. She could only do that to herself, and she’d rather get broken this way than spend her life safe and afraid.

“I think you had more perversions to teach me?” she asked.

He ran his hand down the gully of her spine. “Dozens.”

She sank to her knees. “Let’s start with this one.”

When she wrapped her hand around him, he said, “Jesus, bunny.”

“Don’t call me ‘bunny,’ ” she replied, and then took him in her mouth.

Chapter Eleven

She fell asleep at around one.

Tony sat on the edge of the bed, looking out at the moon and trying to work up the will to leave.

If he stayed until morning, she would want to make him breakfast. She’d already fixed him pasta with homemade sauce from the fridge, something that had sausage in it and was nearly as good as his mother’s, though she hadn’t believed him when he said so.

He figured in the morning it would be bacon and eggs and Amber in that ugly pink robe, with her little satisfied cat smile, looking all mussed up because he’d spent half the night mussing her.

He wanted that. Too much.

She rustled under the blanket. “Tony?”

“Over here.”

“It’s dark.”

“I know, honey.”

“You want me to find you a candle?”

“No, I’m okay.”

He was okay because the moon was out, but more than that, he was okay because he could hear her breathing. He knew that if he lay down, he could find her again and wrap his arms around her sleepy body and hold her.

What did that mean, that she could make everything feel like it was okay?

He kept trying to tell himself it didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t real. But he no longer believed his own bullshit.

“Will you come back to bed?”

He didn’t answer, and that was answer enough.

When the lump under the sheet shifted and sat up, he could see the shape of her face, the fall of her hair.

“Are you going?” she asked.

“I’m trying to.”

A long pause. “Tell me why first.”

“I already told you how I am.”

Coward.