Page 88 of The Backup Plan
She put down her pencil. “I should prepare you to be disappointed with my singing voice.”
“Your name makes me think of an aviary,” he said, standing behind her like he had Sunday evening. “Finches and parrots and flamingos wouldn’t normally live in the same habitat, but those bright colors and energy all together—that’s you to me.”
He slipped his arms around her, but instead of slumping against him like the last time, she wrapped her arms over his and pulled him closer. He didn’t think fast enough to step back.
“Cameron?”
“Avery?”
“You’re… you’re really hard right now.”
“Yeah, I noticed that, too.”
Fresh off his morning workout, his warm-up pants did little to conceal how he longed for her. That spike of adrenaline atop weeks of desperation pounded his pulse in every vein. He didn’t want to disguise it anymore.
The tiny motions of her breathing pressed her into him just enough to worsen the ache with every exhale. She didn’t speak.
“Look, I know it hasn’t been that long since you and Isaac?—”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“I can’t go another day without telling you how I feel.”
She whirled on her stool to face him. “Then tell me. Rubbing your dick on me doesn’t count.”
“I’m sorry, I?—”
“I kind of liked it.” She fought a tiny smile. “But it doesn’t count.”
He pulled up a stool next to hers and cupped her face in his hands like a jewel before he kissed her. “Avery, I’m crazy about you,” he whispered against her lips before kissing her again. “I should have told you that you captivated me the day we met. When I saw you looking at my sketch, I didn’t know what to do with myself, but I knew I had to know you. I needed to know everything about you all at once, and it scared me. I did everything wrong, and I’m so sorry. You deserve so much more than the jerk I showed you I was.”
Tightening his hold, he teased open her lips for another kiss, pausing only to breathe or murmur another adoration. “You are the brightest, warmest part of every day. Seeing you with someone else was better than not seeing you at all, but I can’t live with it ever being another someone else. It has to be me.”
He pulled back from kissing her until she opened her eyes. “It has to be us, Avery.”
“I don’t think—I mean…”
She trailed off, and he stopped breathing, hands frozen in her hair.
“I don’t think it could ever be anyone else. Cameron, that first day I saw you, I couldn’t get you out of my mind. You moved in and made yourself at home before you ever spoke to me.”
He lost himself in the taste of her lips and her skin, devouring her everywhere he could reach while he gave in to the heat of her hands, already under his shirt and roaming over his pants as she whispered his name. He dotted kisses over her collarbone when she tipped her head back, then lost all semblance of patience and pulled her mouth to his again. Every curve that kept him awake at night was within his grasp, and the need for her body consumed him.
“We have to go somewhere.” He struggled to push out the words. “We’re about to get busted as it is, with all those people in the hall.”
She gestured to their bags and her papers, and he scooped them up while she caught her breath. Intertwining her fingers with his, she pulled him to the door.
“Come with me.”
TWENTY-SIX
It Has to be Me
AVERY
Avery dragged him up a flight of stairs and around corners without a word, into an unfamiliar part of the building. She scanned her ID at the entrance to a long, empty hallway, consulted a screen full of names and room numbers, and tapped one. At the entrance to another door, she scanned her ID again.
She pushed the bags out of his hands before the door locked behind them. “A music class benefit. The practice rooms are mostly soundproof,” she said as he pulled her into his arms. “No one will bother us here.”