“Of course it’s good.” She patted his thigh. “Let’s look at this another way. You could have hurt him a lot worse than you did. I’ve seen you at full throttle. You turn into a cold, brutal beast—there’s no rage, no hesitation, no mercy, no calculation; there’s just pure savagery. But you didn’t go that far with Grant. You kept a leash on that beast you can be. You didn’t have to, but you did.
“You’re not evil, Camden. You’re not wired wrong. Your old pride mates put that in your head when you were young. They weren’t willing to see that you were a traumatized child, because then they’d have had to acknowledge that they were partly at fault for that trauma; that they didn’t properly protect you. It made them feel better to believe you were just born with something missing.”
“Don’t be so sure they were wrong. The first time I ever met Corbin, I was fascinated by his size. I’d never seen a man that big before. I had a sudden image of him lying on the ground, broken and bruised and coughing up blood. And seeing that image in my head made me feel good. It used to happen a lot when I looked at people.”
“Yeah, so?”
He frowned. “What do you mean, so?”
“You are far too hard on that child you once were, and I don’t like it. I watched him struggle every day with trying to be ‘good’ when he wasn’t entirely sure what that was. In some ways, he had it harder than kids like me. Things like empathy and guilt would hit me whenever I got the urge to do something bad. They were like heavy weights, pressuring me to make the right decision. You never had any ‘weights’ like that back then. It was just as easy for you to pick ‘bad’ as it was ‘good.’ But you picked the latter.”
“Not always.” There were times he simply hadn’t cared to.
“Well no one does it always.”
“You realize that as a child I made or dismissed most of my decisions based on whether or not I thought they’d meet your approval?”
The corner of her mouth tipped up. “I liked being your own personal Jeremy Crocket—or whatever his name was. I liked helping you. After a while, you didn’t need me anymore.”
“I’ll always need you.”
“Then you’re in luck, because I don’t intend to go anywhere.” She rose. “You sure you don’t want anything?”
Oh, he wanted something. He wanted her. Wanted in her. Before he knew it, he’d fisted her shirt and dragged her onto his lap.
Her eyes wide, she gripped his arms tight. “What are—”
“I just need to hold you.”
“Hold me?”
“Yes. You calm me.”
Feeling his hand put pressure on her back, Aspen leaned forward to rest against his bare chest. She knew better. Knew she was flirting with temptation here. And even as she silently called herself all kinds of stupid, she rested her head on his shoulder and slipped her arms around his neck.
Her bearcat settled, always relaxed when he was close. Aspen saw no reason why she couldn’t relax, too. It wasn’t like she hadn’t hugged him plenty of times before, was it? Of course, she hadn’t been straddling him on those occasions, and neither of them had been half-naked. Still, it was no biggie. She’d do the same for any other friend.
The dial on her bullshit meter started going crazy.
Calling on her exceptional ability to ignore the obvious, she paid no attention to the way her pulse quickened. Paid no heed to how her nerve-endings came alive. Pretended her nipples hadn’t tightened.
The hands splayed on her back tugged her closer so she was pretty much plastered against him, chest to chest, groin to groin. He nuzzled her hair and pressed a kiss to her head. She ignored that, too. It just seemed easier that way.
Oh, hell, his cock was not hardening. His shaft had not just twitched right against her clit. And this was not renewing the giddy tingles she’d felt on waking from her sex dream.
The air suddenly became thick. Humid. Taut.
She felt so hyperaware of every rise and fall of her chest—it caused her nipples to rub against her shirt, and the slight friction went straight to her pulsing clit. It took genuine effort not to squirm and grind against his cock. An ache was beginning to build inside her. She could feel herself growing damp.
It was officially time to go.
Aspen lifted her head. “Camden—” She gasped as his mouth latched onto her neck and suckled. Fingers knotted in her hair, holding her head in place. Which annoyingly made her inner walls spasm.
His free hand smoothed down her back, skated over her hip, slid down her thigh and bunched the bottom of her shirt. He lifted the material slightly, so that it was no longer a barrier between her and the hard cock tenting his sweatpants. And she knew if she didn’t act now, her panties would be gone next.