Page 31 of His to Seduce
Chapter 11
David
I hated that for Camden. I hated that she’d had that kind of life, and yet learning the bits and pieces she’d begun sharing last night in the pool, it explained so much more about her.
It told me everything I needed to know about her, even though we had barely scratched the surface of who we really were. Yet I wanted to know more.
“How’d you get the scar?” I asked, feeling the raised and rigid flesh beneath my fingertips. Every time I touched it, she flinched. I wasn’t an idiot. I’d treated enough knife wounds to know what it was.
“Accident when I was a kid.” I felt her swallow harshly against my chest, forcing the words through her throat. It was the most she was going to willingly give me, but I pushed for more.
Three inches long, jagged and wide, it probably had needed staples, not just stitches. Unless someone had chucked a knife at her during a magic trick gone horrifically wrong, it was no accident. Knives needed pressure, a lot of it, to leave that thick of a mark.
“Looks like a knife wound,” I muttered as kindly as I could. My lips pressed against the top of her hair and inhaled the scent of it. Salt air lingered and mixed with her coconut shampoo, a smell I’d never forget.
“Yeah? You know a lot about knife wounds?”
Bitterness suffused her tone. I’d gone too far. Not that I could tell her that yes, I had treated wounds like hers almost every night for five years.
“Bartenders see a lot of things,” I said instead. Not quite a lie. I bet they did. Hell, wounded men from bar brawls weren’t uncommon in the emergency room, either.
She huffed against me, her warm breath tickling my skin. “I was twelve,” she finally said, her voice curt. “I barely remember it.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“I lost it when I was twelve.”
The strange statement made more sense, left more pieces to the puzzle that was Camden scattered all around. The pain in her voice made me change the subject.
“Want to order room service? Eat some breakfast?”
She was quiet for several moments before a soft “Yeah, that sounds good” fell from her lips.
I uncurled from her and pushed to a sitting position. I ignored the fact that I was naked and climbed out of bed, headed toward the other room for the menu.
When I returned to the bedroom, her gaze dropped to my dick, semi-hard from a mixture of waking up and waking up next to her. “Later,” I said with a wink, and crawled back onto the bed. As I moved, she sat up. I pushed myself until my back was against the headboard and tugged Camden into my lap, between my knees. I settled my chin on her shoulder and opened the menu in front of us. “Let’s eat first, then you can look at me all you want.”
“So sure of yourself, aren’t you,” she muttered, but the pain in her voice had disappeared.
“When it comes to you, absolutely not.”
She was a wild card, skittish and closed off. Out of anyone I could go after, Camden would be the hardest to win.
—
The last two hours, sitting with Camden on the bed, her wrapped in a fluffy, bright white robe and curled up next to me while we ate breakfast and talked, had been an effort in self-control.
The white of her robe made her hair seem more vibrant, and it was softer after she’d showered. Makeup free, and clean and fresh, she still smelled delicious and felt like silk. When she’d tried to tie her hair up and off her face, I’d snapped the hair tie out of her hand and slid it onto my wrist.
“Why do you do that?” she asked, her eyebrows arched in surprise.
I waved my wrist in the air. “I already told you. I like your hair down.”
“Yeah, but you could give them back to me.”
“No way,” I laughed. “They’re awards, reminders that I’m the one who causes you to let your hair down. Figuratively and literally.”
She’d rolled her eyes. “Whatever. You’re weird.”
