Chapter Eighteen

Havermouth, Present Time

Aislen was not surprised when Cameron appeared by her gate later that afternoon. She had just paused for a drink, leaning on the porch, and admiring the over half-full skip bin. She lifted her eyebrows when he ran to the fence and came to a stop.

“Are you going to run by this house every day that I am here?” She asked him with a sigh.

“I run every day,” he replied, letting himself in the gate. “Sometimes several times a day.”

“Yeah, perhaps, but I guarantee you only started running by here…” She started and then broke off. The sentence was dangerous, she thought to herself, as it implied something she wasn’t sure she wanted to face.

“You still prefer Rhett,” he scraped his sweat-damp hair back from his face.

She raised her eyebrows. “He was the only one of the three of you who was nice to me…” She broke off again because she had realized that wasn’t true. Rhett’s niceness had been part of their plan, a honeytrap to lure her in, and it was working again, damn it! “All three of you were fucks,” she finished in irritation. “You didn’t care who you fucked as long as you got your rocks off.”

“You made us what we were in high school,” Cameron said stepping up onto the porch. “From the first day, you were such an arrogant, stuck-up little bitch to me and Heath. It was like you decided to hate us on sight, and not just hate us, but tear the three of us apart because you’d be a vile little monster to Heath and me and then make doe eyes at Rhett.”

There was a truth to what he said, but her dislike had been because of her ability to see what lay within their thoughts, and from the first time she’d encountered Cameron and Heath, the things she had seen inside their minds had been disturbingly sexual – but she couldn’t admit it without confessing her ability, her gift.

“How dare you blame me,” she snapped defensively. “Your reputation was well established before I moved to Havermouth. The Triquetra of rapists, taking as they liked and enjoying tormenting the girls that they abused. You’d be sweet as sweet, until you got her where you wanted her, then you’d fucking rape her, and humiliate her with all your friends afterwards. If I was vile to you, it was because you deserved it.”

“If that were true, you would have been vile to Rhett too. He was right there with us, every single time,” Cameron replied. “You and I hit it off first, before you met Rhett.”

That was also true, she thought. Cameron had been the first of the Triquetra she had met. He had been sitting next to her in her first class, when she was shy and decidedly out of place, she had been grateful that the good-looking boy had been kind to her. He’d asked her where she was from and made her laugh, and then showed her the way to her next class through the maze of a school, carrying her books for her.

It wasn’t until their hands had brushed when he’d handed her back her books and she’d seen a vivid image of him bending her over a school desk and fucking her from behind with his palm prints on her arse, that she had gone from flattered by his interest, to revolted by it.

“Yes,” she said softly, remembering. “You were very nice and charming to me.”

“You were attracted to me,” the anger had gone from his face, and he moved closer, his voice gentling. “You liked me.” He reached out and stroked her hair back from her face and she saw herself as she had been that day, shining with innocence and sweetness, so that he’d wanted nothing more than to taste it on his tongue…

“Yes,” she admitted, her eyes falling to his lips.

“Until you saw Rhett,” he finished.

“No,” she lifted her eyes to his. “Until I discovered that you were just trying to get into my pants.”

“Sweetheart,” he tugged her against him, and she could feel that he was hard. “I was eighteen. It’s more unusual when an eighteen-year-old boy ISN’T trying to get into a girl’s pants.” He ground his hips against her, and his fingers stroked through her hair, cupping her skull, lifting her face to his.

“Yeah, but you were not a normal eighteen-year-old boy,” she said. “You were, and still are, part of the Triquetra.”

“And again, I point out, so was and is Rhett.” He leaned down and his breath was warm on her lips. “I have given it a lot of thought over the last five years and I think that you were scared.”

“Of you?”

“Of how you felt about me when you met me,” he closed the distance between their mouths and the kiss was breathtaking in its sweetness, his mouth gentle, his tongue exploring her bottom lip before he sucked upon it, and his hands stroking down her back.

As she had done five years before, she threaded her fingers into his russet curls and pressed herself tightly against him, and the memories tumbled between them restlessly, the perspective changing with his thoughts, but one thing becoming very clear - They shared the same memories, but viewed them very differently.

He moaned, his kisses trailing down her neck as he lifted her so that her legs wrapped around his waist. He opened the door and carried her into the hallway, down to her room. “Single bed,” he commented with a laugh. “Fun.”

His wolf was in his eyes, despite his laughter, and she realized that he was putting up a front, laughing to hide his true feelings. She swallowed hard. She wondered what she was doing. She had fucked Rhett in the hallway that morning, and now she had Cameron in her room…

“Fuck,” he cursed, suddenly, shoving his hand through his hair. “I have lost you again. You are… impossible to hold. Like water,” he was frustrated into anger. “I don’t know how to…”

“No,” she stepped up to him, pulling his hand out of his hair, and stroking his face soothingly. “You haven’t lost me… It’s just… I don’t know. I thought that this was behind me, the Triquetra and all that mind-fuckery that the three of you pulled, and yet…”

“We’re not done,” he caught her face between his hands. “We are far from done with you.” He kissed her as he skimmed her dress up and sent her underwear to the floor. He shoved his running shorts down, his cock in its nest of dark auburn hair jutting out, and sat upon the bed, pulling her with him so that she straddled him, a knee on the mattress to each side of his hips. His moan as she took him into her was muffled against her neck.

We’re not done. The phrase echoed in her thoughts as she wrapped tightly around him and returned his breathless kisses. He thrusted up from beneath her, his grip on her waist holding her tightly to him, so that his thrusts were deep and intense, forcing the air from their lungs and grinding his pubic bone against her clit. His eyes on her face held an expression that made her want to forget the past, to begin again…

Was he right? She was in that dangerous place of self-doubt that had possessed her when she was eighteen. That confused sense of reality where she questioned everything that she had taken for-granted, second-guessing everything that she thought she knew…

He caught her face between his hands and brought her forehead to his. “Stay with me, Aislen,” he breathed. “Look at me and stay with me.”

Staring into his blue eyes in such an intent way, sharing their breath as they ground their bodies together, was raw and intimate. She cupped his cheeks in her hands, feeling the stubble that was just beginning to press through his skin against her palms.

“Yes,” he said. “YES.” She lost focus as she came, and felt him follow, his sharp triumph-tinged pleasure almost overwhelming her own. Finally, he thought, finally she SEES me again.

“I have always seen you,” she told him with an aching pain. “I saw you when you and Heath raped me, and I saw you when you told the entire fucking town that the Triquetra had fucked me. I saw you when the entire school laughed at me, led by you and Heath. I saw you when you broke my self-esteem down until I lost who I was whilst the three of you used me as a sex toy.”

“Aislen,” he was taken aback.

She lifted from him, feeling the bite of tears. “If I made you what you are, Cameron, it was only because you made me what I am first. Get the fuck out of my house and don’t come back.”