She could feel him pulsing inside her. His growl of release was loud in her bedroom as he continued pushing inside her wet sheath. “Take it,” he whispered. “Oh, fuck, baby. Yeah, take all of it. I’m never letting you go. I can’t. I won’t. I’ll kill anyone who tries to break us apart.”
Camille knew she should be upset with his words, but as she basked in the afterglow of good sex, she couldn’t muster up the energy. Right now, her focus was resting for a few minutes before convincing Tristan to go for a second round.
CHAPTER 7
Two Months Later
“You’ve been ignoring me.” Shandra cut her eyes at Camille as they ate lunch in one of the many restaurants in downtown Providence.
“I haven’t,” she automatically denied, even though she knew there was some truth to it. In the two months since she began seeing Tristan, he’d been slowly integrating himself into all aspects of her life. Not that she minded one bit, but there were moments like this that she wished it hadn’t been so much, so quickly.
“You such a hoe for that fine ass Italian. I guess I can’t blame you for wanting to be all over his fat dick. It is fat, right?”
Camille spewed her drink at Shandra’s words. Her friend never failed to speak her mind. If they hadn’t known each other for so long, she might have been offended by her words. But since they’d been friends for years, she knew this was Shandra’s way of letting Camille know everything was all good.
“I’m not telling you about the size of my man’s dick.” She tried to be all hard and mean, but the smile on her face gave her away.
Sucking her teeth, Shandra rolled her eyes. “Damn. You’re stingy as fuck with your shit. Now, if I was fucking a man who looked like that, I’d tellyouif his sex game was on point.”
“Yeah, ‘cause you still don’t have any home training,” Camille quipped.
Shandra placed her elbow on the table, resting her chin on her open palm. “I just want to know what it’s like. How does it feel to have a man so fucking in love with you he can’t stand to be away from you for a day? What does it feel like to have someone love you so much, without asking for anything in return? Plus, he’s white. Well, Italian, which a lot of people say isn’t the same thing.” Flashing a cheeky smile at Camille, she lifted her glass and took a sip of her pomegranate martini.
Camille wanted to make a joke, but something in her friend’s words and tone gave a hint that she was battling her old demons again. “When I look at him, his skin color doesn’t matter. I don’t care what his last name is, all I care about is the way he treats me. And girl—” she paused to take a breath. Reaching across the table, she grabbed Shandra’s hand. “Do you remember how we’d always build our perfect man who would take us far away and treat us like queens?
“I do,” Shandra said, nodding.
“He does that for me. Every damn day. The way he looks at me. How he holds me at night when everything is quiet. How I feel when I’m with him. I could ask for the moon, and I swear that man would try to get it for me.”
“Damn, girl. Hell, I’m not trying to judge. It doesn’t matter to me if he’s fucking blue, as long as he treats you well.” Closing her eyes for a moment, Shandra took a deep breath before looking at Camille. “I don’t know, you just seem so different. In a good way. If this man is the one who can bring a smile to your face, then I’m down for that. You know that, right? I’m glad one of us is getting our happily ever after.”
“Yeah, I know. Then again, with this man, I’m not sure if that’s the right phrase.”
“So, is it true what they say about the Lucarelli men?” Doing crazed version of Charlie Chaplin’s famous eyebrow raise, Shandra laughed out loud.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Camille said in response. “Eat, girl. You know that man’ll be here before we know it.”
Looking across the table, she couldn’t help but smile at her best friend. Her sister. They’d been through so much shit over the years, they could practically finish each other’s sentences. Truth be told, she didn’t think she could have gotten through without her best friend.
And even though they never talked about it, she knew Shandra needed her, too. Shandra had gone through her own life-changing situation some years ago, about a year after finishing her master’s degree. A man who she thought was the one, turned out to be the worst one she’d ever encountered.
He’d plied her with his soft words, sweet promises, and pipe dreams. Until the night he turned against her, leaving Shandra alone and scared in a backwoods town where she had no friends. No way to reach out for help. No way to escape. Which was when the men showed up with evil intent. Claiming they’d paid good money to spend time with a woman tied to a bed. They meant to get their money’s worth, no matter the cost to the woman screaming for them to go away and leave her alone.
The horrors her friend had gone through for five days straight had changed her. It was her own determination and will to live that had gotten her out of that place. She’d escaped, running butt-ass naked for over three miles until she came to a gas station. The clerk had been an older woman with children of her own. When she saw Shandra, she’d taken her to a back room, called the local sheriff’s office, and grabbed her bolt-action rifle. You know, just in case those low-life sons of bitches decided to come looking for Shandra.
Her best friend had gone from a sweet, trusting girl, to a cynical, hard, take no prisoners woman. There were only a few people in the world who still had the privilege of seeing the woman underneath the armor.
It wasn’t often Shandra allowed her shields to drop. That she’d allowed some vulnerability to show today was telling. They considered themselves outcasts, different from everyone else. Women who could survive without the world’s expectations crushing them into a copycat of themselves. Childhood dreams had been just that, and best left in the past.
Each of them had parents who loved each other like the other person delivered the sun to the sky each morning, and the moon and stars at night. They weren’t going to settle for anything less than that. If they had to wait their whole lives, that’s what they would do.
It hurt her heart that her best friend still had demons to work through.
That fact she had a little girl as a product of that horrific incident didn’t help either. Amina, Shandra’s little girl, and Camille’s goddaughter, was the most beautiful, kind-hearted little girl she’d ever known. When Shandra discovered she was pregnant, everyone thought she’d end the pregnancy. She didn’t. Instead, she chose to raise her daughter in a home filled with an abundance of love instead.
And it turned out that Shandra was the best mom, aside from Camille’s own mother. Of course.
Placing her napkin on the table, she took a sip of her own drink. “Bitch, you know I love you, right?”