Scandalous Sins. Tara Pammi
it out of his mind. He could think of nothing else but how her mouth responded to his. How her lips had been as soft as down, her tongue both playful and shy. How her body felt when she’d brushed up against him. How her dainty little curves made him want to crush her to him so he could ease this relentless ache of need. How he wanted to explore every inch of her body and claim it, nurture it, release it from its prison of fear.
But how could he do that, knowing she had so much more invested in their relationship? She was after the fairytale he was avoiding because loving someone to that degree had the potential to ruin lives. If—and it was a big if—he ever settled down with a partner, he would go for a companionable relationship that was based on similar interests rather than the fickleness of love that could fade after its first flush of heat. His mother had paid the price—was still paying it—for loving without caution. It hadn’t just ruined her life but that of several others along the way, as well. He didn’t want that sort of emotional carnage. He already had feelings for Violet. Feelings that could slip into the danger zone if he wasn’t careful. Having her here under his roof was only intensifying those feelings. The thought of her being only a few doors away was a form of torture. Making love with Violet would be exactly that: making love. Encouraging love, feeding love, nurturing it to grow and blossom. Sex was easy to deal with if he kept his feelings out of it. But having sex with Violet would be all about feelings. Emotions. Bonding. Commitment. All the things he shied away from because they had the potential to disrupt the neat and controlled order of his life.
He had to be strong. Determined. Resolute. Violet was looking for someone to give her heart to. She was vulnerable and it would be wrong of him to give her the impression an affair between them could go anywhere.
Why couldn’t it?
Cam slapped the thought away like he was swatting away a fly. But it kept coming back, buzzing around the edges of his resolve, making him think of how it would be day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year with Violet in his life. Having her not just as a temporary houseguest but as a permanent partner. He wasn’t so cynical that he couldn’t see the benefits of a long-term marriage. He had only to look at Violet’s parents to see how well a good marriage could work.
But how could he guarantee his would work? There were no guarantees, which was what scared him the most.
* * *
Violet didn’t expect to sleep after the evening’s disturbance. She thought she’d have nightmares about her flat being invaded but the only dreams she had were of Cam kissing her, touching her, making her feel things she’d never expected to feel. With time to reflect on it, she understood his caution about getting involved with her sexually. Of course it would be a risk. It would change everything about their relationship. Every single dynamic would be altered. You couldn’t undo something like that. Every time she saw him at family gatherings in the future it would be there between them—their sensual history. He had only kissed her and held her and yet she was going to have a task ahead of her to forget about it. It was like his touch had seeped through every pore of her skin, tunnelling its way into her body so deep she instinctively knew she would never feel like that with anyone else. How could she? His touch was like a code breaker to her frozen sensuality. It unlocked the primal urges she had hidden away out of shame. He’d awoken those sleeping urges and now they were jumping up and down in her body like hyperactive kids on a trampoline.
Violet threw off the bedcovers and showered but when she looked at her overnight bag of belongings she’d hastily packed last night she knew she could never bring herself to touch them, let alone wear them. How could she know for sure if the intruders had touched them? What if she wore them and then out on the street the burglars recognised them as the ones they had rifled through last night? She had only the clothes she’d been wearing for the dinner last night. She didn’t fancy putting them on again after her shower and, besides, the velvet cocktail dress was hardly Saturday morning wear. It was way too dressed up. If she went out in that get-up, she would look like she had been out all night. She rinsed out her knickers and dried them with the hairdryer she found in one of the drawers in the bathroom. There was a plush bathrobe hanging on the back of the bathroom door so she slipped it on over her underwear.
Cam was in the kitchen pouring cereal into a bowl when she came in. He looked up and Violet saw the way his eyes automatically scanned her body as if he was imagining what she looked like underneath the bathrobe. He cleared his throat and turned back to his cereal, making rather a business of sealing the inside packet and folding down the flaps on top of the box. ‘Sleep okay?’
‘Not bad...’
He took a spoon out of one of the drawers and then turned and opened the fridge for the milk. Violet drank in the image of him dressed in dark blue jeans and a black finely woven cashmere sweater with a white T-shirt underneath. There should be a law against a man looking so good in casual clothes. The denim hugged his trim and toned buttocks; the close-fitting sweater showcased the superb musculature of his upper body. His hair was still damp from a shower and it looked like his fingers had been its most recent combing tool, for she could see the finger-spaced grooves between the dark brown strands.
‘What would you like for breakfast?’ he said, turning from the fridge. ‘I’m afraid I can’t match your mother’s famous breakfast spreads but I can do cereal, toast and fruit and yoghurt.’
‘Sounds lovely.’ Violet perched on the stool opposite him. ‘Can I ask a favour?’
His gaze met hers. ‘Look, we had this discussion last night and the answer is—’
‘It’s not about...that.’ Violet captured her lip between her teeth. Did he have to rub it in? So he didn’t want to sleep with her. Fine. She wasn’t going to drag him kicking and screaming to the nearest bedroom. ‘It’s about my clothes. I need to get new ones. I can’t bear wearing any of mine from the flat, not even the ones I brought with me, and I don’t want to wear my cocktail dress because I’ll look like I’ve been out all night.’
A frown pulled at his forehead. ‘You want me to go...shopping for you?’
Did he have to make it sound like she’d asked him to dance naked in Trafalgar Square? ‘I’ll give you my credit card. I just need some basics and then I can do the rest myself once you bring those couple of things back.’
He blew out a breath and reached for a pen and a slip of paper, pushing it across the bench. ‘Write me a list.’
* * *
Cam had never shopped for women’s clothing before. Who knew there was so much to choose from? But choosing a pair of jeans and a warm sweater wasn’t too much of a problem. The problem was he kept looking at the lingerie section and imagining Violet in the sexy little lacy numbers. He had to walk out before he was tempted to buy her the black lace teddy with the hot pink feathers. Or the red corset one with black silk lacing. Once he’d completed his mission, he was making his way back to his house when he walked past a jewellery store. He’d walked past that store hundreds, if not thousands, of times and never looked in the window, let alone gone in. But for some reason he found himself pushing the door open, going inside and standing next to the ring counter.
It’s just a prop.
Violet’s office party was tonight and what sort of cheap fiancé would he look if he hadn’t bought her a decent ring? No need to mortgage the house on a diamond but that one at the back there looked perfect for Violet’s hand. He didn’t have too much trouble guessing her ring size; he had thought of her hands—holding them, feeling them on his skin—enough times to know the exact dimensions. Actually, he knew pretty much the exact dimensions of her whole body. They were imprinted on his brain and kept him awake at night.
Cam paid for the ring, placed it in his pocket and walked out of the store. Just as he was about to turn the corner for home, he got a call from Fraser. He couldn’t avoid the conversation any longer, but something about lying to his best mate didn’t sit too comfortably. ‘Hey, sorry I haven’t returned your calls,’ he said. ‘Things have been happening so fast I—’
Fraser gave a light laugh. ‘You don’t have to apologise