Delay of Game (31 page)

He didn’t attempt to shoo Buster away when he trotted along beside him. Was he going to let that dog spend the whole night with him? That might be enough to turn my world on its head.

“’Night, Daddy.”

He went off on his own, walking easier than I was able to do most of the time. Every time he would get up to go do his walking lately, I was starting to feel the urge to get up and do it with him because he seemed to be further along in his recovery than I was. But then I would try to get up and the pain in my side would convince me it was better to stay down, and so I’d let him do it on his own.

He hadn’t been acting as if he was tired. I could only guess that he was trying to give me and Cam time alone together, and I honestly didn’t know what to make of any of these changes in my father’s behavior. I doubted bypass surgery could have been enough to bring all of this on.

“What’s that pout about?” Cam asked when he came back to the sofa. He sat beside me with a sexy, smirky sort of expression that did a number on my girly bits—because there might be any number of things that Cam Johnson frequently did, but smirking was definitely
not
one of them. He was usually stoic. I rarely had any luck naming any expression he bore on his face. But this? This was definitely at least close to a smirk.

It looked insanely hot on him, especially with the growth of facial hair lining his jaw. I wasn’t used to seeing him like that yet. As long as I’d known him, he was always smooth-shaven. But now the buzzed hair on his head was actually shorter than the hair on his face.

Before I had time to think about what I was doing, I lifted my hand and let my palm slide over the scratchy surface of his jaw, trembling from the rasp against my skin.

His hand came up and caught mine, and he shook his head. “You’re trying to distract me. Why are you pouting?”

I hadn’t thought I was pouting before, but now I definitely was and there was no point in trying to deny it. “Because Daddy doesn’t need me. He’s healing faster than I am. I still need help, but he’s doing so much more than I’m able to do right now, and I don’t know how I feel about that.”

“I know how I feel about it.”

I had a hard time not rolling my eyes. “And how is that?”

“Glad. Because it means you need me.”

The way he said it and the look in his eye combined to make me shiver all over.

“I don’t know how I feel about that, either,” I said.

“About what?” He brushed my hair away from my eyes, tucking it behind my ear.

“Needing you.” It felt normal—almost unnaturally so—to tell him that. Like there was nothing else I ought to say to him at that moment.

Cam grunted, or maybe it was a moan. It was hard to discern over the white-water rush of my pulse in my ears. “I need you, too,” he said.

Such a simple statement, only four little words, shouldn’t have had such an effect on me. They shouldn’t have been able to turn my insides to mush, to make my belly flutter with the force of a thousand moths heading toward a flame, to cause all the air in my lungs to stop in place and refuse to budge, but that’s exactly what happened.

I licked my lips and watched his eyes follow the path of my tongue. “I think we’re talking about two different kinds of need.”

The corners of his lips curled up. “You need me that way, too. Just as much as I need you.”

He was right about that. So fucking right.

Over each of the last few days when he’d helped me to shower, his touches had grown bolder, and I hadn’t been able to resist touching him in return.

Each night when he’d been with me in my bed, I’d let my hands roam over his chest and arms and abs. I’d kissed him. A lot, actually. I’d kissed him as deeply, as hungrily, as desperately as I could and for as long as I could manage, until my pain had taken over and I’d been forced to stop. Even then, he’d held me and splayed his big hands over my body, and the feverish burn inside me had only intensified.

I needed him as much as I needed my next breath. Maybe more.

Damn him.

I DIDN’T MAKE
love to Sara that night, despite the fact that I could tell she wanted it just as much as I did. Her skin was flushed and pink and glistening with a sheen of sweat even though she had just been sitting there on the sofa. I didn’t touch her other than where my hand met her wrist. That, combined with the fact that her eyes locked onto mine, her pupils dilated until her eyes were more black than blue, proved I was right; she was just as hot and bothered as I was.

How much we wanted to be together didn’t really matter at that point. She was still in too much pain for what we wanted. Besides, the thought of doing more than kissing her
here
and touching her
there
while we were in her father’s house, while he was just down the hall from the living room, really didn’t sit well with me. Even taking her upstairs wasn’t good enough, wouldn’t get us far enough away from him. The thought of him somehow walking in on us was more than enough to cool me off for a while.

Instead, I’d helped her climb the stairs and assisted her in changing into one of those silky nighties she always seemed to sleep in, and then I’d held her all night long.

Sara had this funny breathing sound she made when she was sleeping that was like a fluttery little hum, and her breaths tickled my chest and neck with each exhalation. Every night since I’d been staying at her house, I would lie on my back and she’d drape her body over me, anchoring herself with her legs on either side of me because it kept her from rolling into overly painful positions in the night.

It also kept me in a near-constant state of both arousal and hyperawareness, at least as far as she was concerned. I knew every breath she took. I could feel the beat of her heart against my chest. Sometimes the fast-paced movements of her eyes when she fell into deep sleep were enough to catch my notice, since her face was usually pressed tight to the sensitive skin of my neck and her lashes would tease my skin so much that I nearly laughed out loud from the delicate touch. I could sense when she’d been in the same position for too long and was in too much pain to move herself, and I knew the precise moment she would start to wake up.

More than anything, I knew the sensual expression in her eyes just before she would kiss me. I knew that one so well it would undoubtedly haunt my dreams during the team’s upcoming road trip, because she kept waking up and putting her lips to mine before either of us really knew what was happening. I knew better than to complain about that—I would take her kisses anytime and any way she wanted to give them—but there was a part of me that wished she would kiss me sometimes when she was fully aware of herself and what she was doing. I needed to know that she wanted it as much as I did, and so far the only time she would initiate a kiss or a touch was when she was still half asleep.

Maybe soon, though. She was coming around to me in more ways than I’d expected. I kept reminding myself to be patient because her whole world was in upheaval right now.

It was a little while after the sun rose the next morning when I felt the soft brush of her eyelids teasing the spot just behind my ear, signaling that she was beginning to rouse. She wasn’t fully awake yet when she slid her hands up my sides and murmured something in her hazy, sexy dream-voice about Captain America’s chest while her fingertips explored the skin and muscle lining my ribs.

I laughed out loud, which jostled her awake. She lifted her head and glared at me. “What’s so funny?” she grumbled.

“I think you just called me Captain America.”

She blushed—something Sara Thomas never, ever did. She didn’t get embarrassed. She was usually too confident for that, too sure of herself and everything she did.

I couldn’t resist teasing her about it even more because her discomposure was so rare and she was so beautiful despite it. “I’m Canadian,” I said. “Captain America doesn’t exactly work.”

“Fine. You can be Thor, then.”

“Um, no. I think Captain America fits better. Canadians are practically Americans. At least that’s what Americans like to think. I’m not so sure about the whole Asgardian, alien-race thing.” Besides, Thor was a cocky ass, and I didn’t want to think of myself that way.

“Oh, shut up. I’m not ready to be awake yet and I’m not allowed to have coffee.” Ever since her first doctor’s visit, she’d been acting surlier than was called for about having to forego her morning coffee, especially considering the fact that I didn’t get the impression she was going through caffeine withdrawals. It was more that she really enjoyed having a cup in the morning as a way to start her day than that she really needed it.

I couldn’t bring myself to mind her hostility over the coffee ban, though. Mainly because she was so fucking cute when she pouted that I just wanted to kiss her on the end of her nose. In fact, that’s exactly what I did.

As soon as I backed off, she tugged a pillow from behind my head and whacked me with it, but then she immediately groaned. She must not have been thinking about her ribs when she did it—a good sign, really, because it meant in general terms that her body was starting to heal.

“Did you hurt yourself?” I asked, easing her off me and onto her back so I could tend to her. I kept my weight on my elbows so I wouldn’t crush her as I leaned over her, brushing her hair back from her face.

“Yes. Damn it.” There wasn’t a tear to be found in her eyes, though, so the pain couldn’t be too bad.

Her sulky mouth looked so damn kissable that I couldn’t resist, even though, yet again, I was the one initiating it. I had to have a taste of her. She parted her lips almost the instant mine touched hers. I forced myself to keep the kiss light and playful, to not take it as deep as I wanted, but God, that was a kind of self-inflicted torture I didn’t think it was possible to really be prepared for.

“Better?” I asked when I managed to pull away.

She didn’t answer—not with words, at least. Her pout was gone, and in its place was a heated look that would melt my flesh if I didn’t get up and get started with my day.

I rolled off her to do just that, and she turned onto her good side, as though to come along with me.

“Cam?”

My legs were over the edge of the bed, my feet on the hardwood floor. I stayed like that, waiting for her to continue with her question before I got up, but she stayed quiet. “Yeah?” I finally said.

“I don’t know how or why this has happened, but I’m going to miss you. When you’re gone. I don’t want you to leave.”

I’d been waiting to hear that or some variation of it from her for a while, but for some reason it didn’t feel as good as I’d imagined it would. Maybe because she didn’t sound like she was happy about it. In fact, she sounded completely, thoroughly dismayed by the idea that she would miss me while I was gone.

That wasn’t even in the same ballpark as me telling her I was falling in love with her. But then again, it was something. And this was Sara. I should take what she’d give me and be happy about it.

“I’ll miss you, too,” I said after a moment. Hell, I missed her already, and she was still in the same room as me. I bit my tongue before I screwed this up by telling her that I loved her—really loved her, not just that I thought I might be getting there. She was still grappling with the fact that she liked being with me. If I pushed too hard, she would push back even harder.

Could I be pussy-whipped like Nicky had claimed if I wasn’t getting any? I was starting to think that was the case.

WHEN I CALLED
Chloe that afternoon to tell her about my relationship with Sara, she admitted how serious her relationship with this Dylan guy was. I already knew at least some of that because Mom had clued me in, but it was good to hear about it from her.

She went on and on about how he was so good to her, how he treated her like she was a princess. He had damn well better treat her at least that well or else he would have to answer to me. Chloe knew all of that, though, and so I was left to wonder if he really
did
treat her as well as she claimed, or if she was just trying to mollify me so I would be more likely to approve of him when I finally got to meet him.