After dinner, when Campbell invited me downstairs to hear the new song he was working on, I only hesitated for a moment. I wasn’t stupid. I knew where this was heading. I knew the consequences of where it was heading as well. And still…I said yes.
The hotel he was staying in was more like a condo. It was a two-bedroom with a full kitchen and living room. Much fancier than any hotel I’d ever stayed in.
“This is nice,” I told him, setting my purse on the coffee table.
“Yeah, I thought it’d be easier than renting a house or something since I wasn’t sure how long I’d be in town, and now, I like the ease of it.” He shrugged out of his suit coat and threw it across the back of a chair. Then, he set to rolling up the sleeves of his white button-up.
I tried not to salivate as inch after bare inch was revealed of his forearms. The way he immediately looked more relaxed out of the suit. I almost wanted to tell him he could change, but I also wanted to keep him in this outfit as long as I could.
“It helps that one of the bedrooms can be used as a music room.”
He gestured to the open bedroom door. I peeked inside and found loose sheets of paper all over the bed with a few electric guitars on stands and lying on the pillows.
“So, this is where the magic happens.”
He laughed and reached for the acoustic guitar. “Not really. It’s more like a graveyard for discarded lyrics.”
I picked up one of the pieces of paper and read the lyrics on them. “This doesn’t seem bad.”
He took it out of my hand, balled it up, and chucked it at the already-full rubbish bin. “Trash.”
“Dramatic.”
“You can’t be a musician and not be a little dramatic,” he said as he tuned the guitar. “I can’t even believe that you just read that. I’ll have to make it up to you with this song.”
I followed him back out to the living room, where he perched on the armrest. I took a seat at his side and stared up at him, realizing just how similar this was to our viral video. There was a reason it had taken off after all. It felt entirely natural.
“I like the other songs you’ve been working on.”
He plucked the strings. “Yeah, I think they’re coming along. The band really picked up ‘Alone’ and ran with it.”
“I love that one.” It was about his mom and how he’d felt after her car crash. I couldn’t even imagine singing that over and over again as he did.
“Viv singing the harmony on ‘After You’ is really bringing that one together.”
“Do you have more ideas?”
“I have this one,” he told me. His eyes shifted to mine and back down. “I haven’t even shown the band yet. It’s not quite right, but the chorus…” He chewed on his bottom lip thoughtfully. “The chorus is right.”
Then, he strummed his guitar and began to sing. It wasn’t a bop, like the other songs. It didn’t make me want to get up on my feet and twirl and dance and sing at the top of my lungs. This was like sinking into a down comforter—soft and fluffy and all-encompassing.
His voice started off slow and almost mournful before growing more powerful as he approached that first chorus. His silky-smooth voice turned gruff as the words were ripped from his lungs, as powerful and emotional as if he were reliving the very experience that had created this song.
“Tell me this isn’t the end.
That I don’t have to go on,
Because I can’t live with myself
Knowing that you’re better off without me
The one that got away.
The one that got away.
The one…that got away.
There you are
With that cherry-painted smile
And all-knowing eyes.
Everything falls to a standstill,
Because you’re the one…
The one that got away.
The one that got away.
The one…that got away. (away, away, away)”
The words rolled over me in a torrent. Everything we’d been and everything we could be, all wrapped up in one song. The others were about me, but this one reminded me so much of how I’d felt the first time I heard “I See the Real You.” They weren’t the same song by any stretch of the imagination, but they were both mine.
Campbell repeated the chorus a second time, skipping another verse and bringing it to a bridge before going through the chorus again. Finally, the soft strum of the song died off, and he opened his eyes to meet mine.
He cleared his throat slightly. “So…it’s a work in progress.”
I didn’t respond because words couldn’t accurately describe what I was feeling. So, I got to my feet, ignoring his look of trepidation, and pressed my lips to his.
His hands came to my sides as a smile shot to his face. “I guess you liked it?”
I pulled back just enough to look at him. “I loved it.”
“Even without a second verse?”
“Campbell, shut up.”
We weren’t here to discuss the merit of the lyrics. It was only about how precisely it’d made me feel. Like I was young and in love all over again.
He removed the guitar from around his neck, placing it against the wall, and then he pulled me back against him. “Yes, ma’am.”
When our lips touched, everything went absolutely silent in my mind. He’d kissed me on the Fourth, and it had been miraculous, and yet somehow, it paled to this. I hadn’t been ready then. I hadn’t been anything but tentative and unsure and terrified that he’d hurt me again. I was none of those things now.
I didn’t know what our future held. One glance at this beautiful hotel room told me that Lubbock wasn’t forever for him. He could leave at any time and take my big heart with him. But if I didn’t try, I’d regret it forever.
So, when he kissed me, I kissed him back, and I let the entire world go with it.
“Blaire,” he groaned, pulling me into his lap as he settled onto the couch. “God, I’ve fucking missed you.”
“Mmm.”
“The way you taste.” He kissed down my neck. “The way you smell.” His hands tightened on my dress. “The way you feel.”
He picked me up and effortlessly dropped me back on the couch. His body covered mine.
“Every single thing about you,” he breathed in my ear.
“Oh God.”
My legs came up on either side of his narrow hips. They tightened on him, holding him in place against me.
“Every single thing?”
He brushed my bangs out of my eyes, so he could look down into them. “Every single thing.”
I leaned forward to capture his lips. It felt like a spiral, like diving into a never-ending kiss, drawing me deeper and deeper down. And I didn’t want to stop. I wanted all of this. I wanted all of him.
The kiss morphed in the span of a breath. Suddenly, we were moving with an urgency that bordered on magnetic. As if we couldn’t even hope to pull ourselves apart.
With all the weeks of wanting and the months of orbiting each other and the years that had separated us, it all came down to here, in this place. His body pressed to mine. Our lips sealed like a promise.
But there were no real promises here.
None truly.
Just pent-up want and flushed desire and a hazy glow of need. Something inexplicable and somehow entirely basic. After all this time, falling into each other’s arms felt as easy as breathing. As easy as drowning.
He thickened in his trousers as he shifted forward. The layers of material did nothing to hide what was happening to us. The scents of arousal in the air, the wetness building in the black thong I’d put on, knowing where this night might end, and his cock hard against me.
I moaned, tugging on his shirt and trying to get closer.
And it was in this moment, as his hands sought purchase on my bare skin and his lips trailed down my throat and everything superheated to an inferno inside me, that I discovered all my anger had been misdirected. It had just been a wall I put up between us. Because if I’d given just an inch, I’d have ended up right here. Where I always wanted to be.
Hating Campbell was much easier than wanting him. So much easier than loving him.
He, the breaker of hearts, sunderer of kingdoms, and destroyer of worlds.
Because that inch I’d given had led precisely here. My heart cracked, just a small fissure, just a line that opened to a chasm. And it let him in.
I had no hope of escaping it now that he was in my life again.
“Blaire,” he whispered my name like a prayer. As if he worshipped at the throne of my unending power. As if he, too, were trapped in this moment that put me equally back in his heart.
“Yes,” was the only word I could utter.
I’d only wanted one thing more than Campbell Abbey. And that thing was impossible. And he no longer was.
He kissed his way down my front. My breasts were trapped by the black material of my dress, but he nipped at my nipples through the fabric. I forced my hips upward in delight and desire. It was his turn to groan at the feel of me against his cock.
But Campbell had never been a selfish lover. Even in high school, when he’d been my first, he’d wanted to be sure that I enjoyed it as much or more than he did. He was never, ever like the other boys who offered so little and took so much. Only in the end, of course.
He moved lower, trailing kisses across my stomach, and then lower. He drew my knee up and added a kiss to it. Then, he slid to his knees on the floor and began to ravage every inch of my milky-white skin, leading up, up, up. I quivered under his practiced tongue as he met the edge of my panties.
“Please,” I begged, not caring the slightest about what I sounded like.
He made a noise of approval at that word. Then, he hooked his finger into the side of my panties and pulled it aside. The first touch of him against my core drew another moan from my lips. He pushed my legs farther apart, letting them fall open. Then, he slid his thumb up and down across the folds of my pussy. Every part of me quivered. My body was so starved for his attention that I could barely hold on.
“This?” he asked as he pushed one finger inside of me.
“Oh God, yes.”
“More?”
He slid in another finger, curling inward and then dragging slowly back out.
“More,” I pleaded. I couldn’t be satisfied with just his fingers. I needed all of him.
He wrenched my underwear over my hips and discarded them carelessly to the side before diving back in, licking and sucking my clit. My hands fisted into the couch as I came apart at his ministrations. And I couldn’t be quiet even if I wanted to. There was no hope for me as he circled my clit with his tongue and worked his fingers in and out of me. There was only hanging on for dear life and praying that I came out on the other side.
My breathing grew heavy. I was panting on the couch. As my body built into a crescendo, I held on tighter, knowing what was coming.
“Fuck,” I gasped when I finally tipped over the edge. My body shuddered and contracted around his fingers. My vision dipped and blurred. And after it all came down, I curled in on myself with a soft groan of pleasure.
He kissed my hip and sat back on his heels with a satisfied grin. “I like watching you come.”
I flushed. Even after all that.
With a short laugh at my embarrassment, he hoisted me up and threw me over his shoulder.
I gasped, scrambling for purchase while I dangled over his back. “What are you doing?”
“Carrying you.”
“Oh my God, I can walk.”
He slapped my ass playfully. “Not if I can help it.”
“Awfully cocky,” I said as we stepped into his bedroom.
He flipped me forward, letting my back fall onto the bed. “I just watched you come on my fingers.” He went to work on his shirt, opening button after button. He wrenched it out of his pants and ripped open the black belt at his waist. “I think I have a right to be a little cocky.”
I leaned back on my elbows and watched the show reveal the six-pack that I distinctly did not remember from high school. And the V-line that dipped down into his pants. I salivated as he popped the button on his pants and let them hang open for my imagination to go wild.
He crooked a finger at me, and I moved toward him, drawn like a moth to a flame. His finger came under my chin and tipped it upward. “Now, imagine what it’s going to be like on my cock.”
I licked my lips. Oh, I could imagine. I remembered what it had been like eight years ago, and Campbell was more muscular, more confident than he’d been then. We’d learned together. Now, we were older and wiser, and we had all the time we wanted to enjoy it. He might be cocky, but I’d bet he had reason to be.
He pressed one more kiss to my mouth before lifting me back onto my feet and turning me away from him. He tugged the zipper slowly down my back until it reached the base of my spine. Then, he pushed the sleeves over my shoulders. The dress was tight, but with little resistance, it fell to a heap on the ground.
“That’s better,” he said as I spun around.
He withdrew his cock from his boxers and stroked it once, twice, three times. I looked on the whole time, salivating at how little he cared that I was watching him touch himself. He wanted me to see exactly what I’d done to him. How he could barely contain himself in my presence.
I stepped forward and took him in my hand. He inhaled sharply at my first touch.
“Fuck,” I murmured.
“Yes,” he said through his teeth. His eyes were closed. “Fuck, baby. Fuck.”
I felt so powerful. This international superstar was barely able to stand before me, helpless for wanting me. It was sometimes difficult to pull apart the layers of Campbell because when he fell to his feet, he was just the boy I’d loved, but as he’d unabashedly stroked his cock, he’d turned into the rockstar. And I found that I liked both versions. I wanted both.
He grinned at me. “I need you.”
I nodded. “Yes.”
He reached into a desk drawer and retrieved a condom. There was the tear of foil, and then he sheathed himself.
He pressed a kiss to my nose and then my mouth. “Going to come for me again?”
“If you’re lucky.”
“I have you, don’t I?”
There was no arguing with that. At this moment, I was unequivocally his.
Then, he took complete control. He rotated me, bending me forward at the waist. As his fingers explored my core, slicking through my wetness, anticipation tore through me. He stroked in and out of me a few times before aligning the tip of his cock with my opening.
He slid in roughly, meeting no resistance, and I gasped at the pure bliss of him.
He must have been barely holding himself back because as soon as he was inside of me, he unleashed. He was fierce and unrelenting. I could barely keep up with him pounding inside of me. I reached back for his hand, and he laced his fingers with mine, using the other hand to grasp my hip and leverage himself deeper into me.
Everything mounted as desire turned to a hazy, disoriented need. I built up to an insurmountable cliff, and all I had to do was hit that peak and fall over the edge. Campbell held me there as he worked himself to the same point.
I squeezed his hand. The increased tempo of my moans urging him on.
“Don’t stop,” I gasped.
“Fuck,” he said.
Then, I dropped, plummeting into the great nowhere. And he followed me. We cried out together. Passion and pleasure releasing all at once. Until there was nothing left. Until I was utterly spent.
Campbell slumped forward over my body. “Fuck,” he gasped. Then pressed a kiss to my shoulder.
As he withdrew, I shuddered all over at the loss of him in every tender and sensitive bit of my body. He tossed the condom as I curled into a ball on the bed. Then, he crawled in after me, cradling me against him.
“You’re perfection,” he whispered into my shoulder.
I rolled over to look at him. With my hand on his cheek, I stole another kiss. “Don’t go.”
He drew me in closer. “I’m right here.”
And I wanted nothing more than to believe him.