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Brock
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Brock was distracted again, but this time, for a different reason.
He felt foolish. More than that, he felt utterly ridiculous for ever thinking that fucking his kid’s nanny was a good idea. For ever thinking that the nanny wasn’t just the nanny at all, but that she was the one.
His one.
Brock had let his loneliness and his primal urges get the best of him. He’d obviously read all the signals wrong, and he’d obviously been very, very wrong about Camilla Benton.
It’s temporary. It won’t last.
“You got that right,” he muttered under his breath. But the only reason his time with Camilla was temporary or short-lived was because she made it that way. He just couldn’t figure out how he had been so blindsided by her, how he didn’t see it coming.
The truth was, he’d been just as willing to jump into bed with her and ignore what was so blatant—they’d moved too fast, and in the blur of those movements Brock had misread Camilla’s intentions.
Brock wondered if Camilla had meant for him to misread the signals she sent. But that thought hurt him more than the rest of it combined, so he tried hard not to let it surface into the forefront of his mind.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t doing a very good job of controlling his thoughts at all.
In his office at the university, he spent the time he should have been grading essays and prepping for his upcoming class that evening instead replaying his night with Camilla over and over in his head, quickly and cruelly followed by the words she’d told whomever was on the phone with her yesterday afternoon. He’d spent the previous evening in a daze, feeling like hell for being so cold and distant with Camilla, and for letting her leave the way he did.
But what did she expect? He had a four-year-old daughter he had to put first, and he wasn’t into playing games and one-night stands. He was a single father, and he had to be a protective, responsible one.
A soft knock on his office door snapped Brock from his spiraling thoughts. It was hardly an interruption when he wasn’t getting any closer to a resolution, anyway.
“Come in.”
If he hadn’t already been sitting, someone could have knocked him over with a feather at the sight of Camilla in the doorway.
“Camilla.” Brock couldn’t stop himself from letting her name fall from his lips, his genuine surprise evident. He stood, though he didn’t know what for. “What are you doing here?”
“The liaison office downstairs told me where to find your office.” She didn’t come into the room any further. “I want to talk to you. About yesterday.”
Brock looked down at the pile of essays to his right, then to the opened one in front of him. “I’m really kind of busy right—”
“What happened?” she interjected. Camilla’s eyes were wide and shrouded in confusion.
“Nothing,” Brock replied. “I just—”
“You just dismissed me, like the night before didn’t happen,” she insisted. “Like what you and I did together didn’t matter. Then, you arranged for Rynn to go to your mom’s? That was a low blow, Brock, especially when I don’t know what the hell is going on.”
“You’re a fine one to talk about low blows,” he snapped. A loud sigh fled his mouth and he raked a hand through his hair. “Come inside and close the door, will you?” The last thing he needed was the rest of the faculty hearing about his extracurricular activities with the nanny and his misguided attempt at a relationship.
Camilla stepped into the office and closed the door, then she whirled around, probably intent on ripping into him, but Brock had rounded his desk to make sure the door was, indeed, shut, and, judging by the wideness of her eyes, he was closer to her than she expected.
“What do you mean by that?” If her words were meant to be strong and assertive, they were lacking in both.
Brock felt as though he was hanging on by a thread. First, she had the audacity to screw him over the way she did, then she tracked him down at the university—at his place of employment, where he was respected and where he kept a lid on his personal life—to rehash the juicy demise of the relationship they’d barely begun? The relationship that she planned to end in the first place once she got whatever it was she wanted from him?
“Is the problem that I ended whatever was going on between us before you got the chance to? Is that what this is about?” There was an edge to Brock’s voice, but he couldn’t deny, he was genuinely curious.
“The problem is that it ended at all, Brock.” The mix of exasperation and hurt in her voice had him immediately rethinking his choice of words, making his gut twist tightly. “I want to know why you ended it, though,” she added. “I want to know why you ended us before we even had a chance to see where it would go.”
Brock let out a hollow scoff. She had a lot of gall, that was for sure. “You know what, Camilla? You can play your little games with me, but don’t you dare play games when it comes to my daughter.” He held up a finger. “On second thought, don’t bother playing them with me, either. It’s not my thing.”
Camilla’s eyes narrowed, her mouth opening and closely. If she was at a loss for words, Brock sure as hell wasn’t.
“I heard your phone conversation,” he blurted out. “Rynn and I aren’t going to be someone’s temporary anything. You seemed pretty confident yesterday that you and I weren’t going to last—” He made quotation marks with his fingers. “—so I went ahead and made sure of it, before anything went any further.”
She stared at him, bewildered. Then, Brock watched as all the pieces seemed to fall into place and Camilla finally understood what he was saying. “Wait, that’s what this is all about?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what this is all about.” Like her, he wanted to sound damn sure of himself. Except, he wasn’t feeling that sure at all, purely because Camilla’s reaction wasn’t at all what he expected, and she suddenly didn’t look nearly as distraught as she’d been when she first showed up.
Camilla took a step forward and shoved her purse onto his desk, zipping it open to fish through it. When she found what she was looking for, she pulled it out. A rectangular piece of cardstock was between her fingers, pale yellow in color with gold foil calligraphy on one side. “Actually, that’s exactly what this is about.” She shoved the card toward him, forcing him to take it.
Brock turned the card in his hands. It was a wedding invitation with the image of a sunflower on it. He held it up to her. “What the hell does this have to do with anything?”
“Everything!” Camilla exclaimed. “You only heard my side of the conversation, Brock, and you just chose to hear what you wanted to hear. When I mentioned things being temporary and that they wouldn’t last, I was talking about my friend, Shannah, and her fiancé. They’re arguing about their damn wedding again, and it’s my duty as her maid of honor to calm her down. Obviously, my words did little to calm you down, however.”
Brock stared at the yellow invitation, then up at Camilla’s face, and back again. All the air had been sucked from the room. “So, you weren’t talking about us.”
“I never even mentioned you in that conversation, Brock. She never let me get a word in about anything other than the wedding and the bridal shower.” She reached out for the invitation. “I’m not playing games with you and Rynn,” she added, her voice softer. “And I sure as hell had no intentions of ending this, you and I, before it even got started.”
Brock grabbed her by the arm she had extended and he pulled her to him. His lips crashed against hers, and he kissed her with every ounce of apology and pain and passion that warred within him.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” he panted out, his lips still grazing against hers as he clutched her against him.
Camilla’s chest heaved as well, and it wasn’t until Brock held her close that he realized she was trembling with the emotion she struggled to keep at bay.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, her eyes heavy-lidded and ignited with the turmoil he’d caused her. “Make it up to me.”
Brock guided her backward until her thighs met the edge of his desk. He’d never been so happy for her to wear a skirt. His mouth trailed from her lips, down the side of her throat where he could feel the wild pulsing just beneath her skin, to her collarbone, where he sucked and nipped at her tender flesh as he worked at hiking her skirt up her thighs and pushing her up onto the edge of his desk.
Camilla fumbled with the silver buckle of his belt while he pushed her skirt as far as he could out of his way and scrambled to push her silky panties to the side. She let out a startled, lust-laden gasp when he pressed one long finger up inside her, stroking her slick walls and basking in the hot wetness that was caused by her desire for him.
“Fuck, Camilla...” He slowly moved his thick digit in and out, biting down on her collarbone as she rubbed at his rock-solid length through his pants. “Fuck, baby, yes.”
Keeping his finger inside her, he used his other hand to help her get his belt and pants undone and pushed out of the way. He needed her, craved her. And he was desperate to prove to her he was sorry for his stupidity.
Camilla, in a frenzy, pushed his pants and boxer briefs down his thighs and let his rigid hardness spring free. Her wetness, his hardness...they were desperate for each other.
Brock withdrew his finger and stepped in closer between her thighs. He didn’t wait—he couldn’t bear to—and he pushed his solid length into her soft, soaked core in one powerful thrust.
Camilla cried out, but the sound was lost somewhere amidst her mouth and his. He kissed her hard and intensely, swallowing the feverish sounds of their relentless plight towards bliss, gripping her hips tightly and guiding her against him to meet each incessant thrust.
Again and again, he pulled out just to the tip, then slammed into her again, relishing in the intoxicating sounds that vibrated off her tongue onto his.
Camilla clutched his shoulders for dear life, clinging to him and taking every solid clash of their hips with the intimate determination of a woman being fueled by her physical desires and her emotional needs.
She’d begged for him to make it up to her, and she was letting him. Giving herself over to him.
Submitting to him and his apologies and his unabashed craving to have her as his own.
It was hard and it was fast, but the moment when they both careened over the edge and found their release together, it was cleansing as well. They’d found their common ground again, reminded themselves of the connection that held them together as though attached by a tether, and felt the relentless heat and ache and tingle that came with being completely and utterly consumed by someone.
By each other.
They couldn’t take back what had happened due to their miscommunication, but Brock knew he would spend the rest of his life trying to make up for his mistakes. Not because Camilla asked him to, but because he wanted to.
Because he wanted her, and there was no way he could deny that now.