“Maybe we’re supposed to be a diversion. Maybe Javier is setting you up to distract them while he swoops in and takes over. Maybe that’s why you were left behind.”

I shook my head, droplets of sweat flying. “I don’t think so. Why were you left?”

“I’m a diversion too.”

“But if we’re a diversion, then it means we are being set up to fail. They’d want Travis to take us … worse, kill us. Javier wouldn’t do that.”

He stopped and turned to look at me. “You just said that you wouldn’t put it past him to set you up.” His voice was ragged and unmistakable anger burned deep in his eyes.

I threw up my hands and sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. I …” I remembered what Violetta had said about Javier throwing me under a bus if he had to. I swallowed hard. “I think he’d use me, use us, to get what he wants. But I don’t think he’d ever put my life in danger.”

He raised his brows then laughed wickedly, looking up at the sky. “Wow. You have got to be kidding me.”

“What?” I asked, my heart began to thud loudly in my ears.

“What? Ellie, from the start he has been pulling all the puppet strings and you’ve been pulled willingly. You say he wouldn’t put you in any danger but he sent you to Travis’s house to kill him. He made you cozy up to the sick bastard. If that’s not putting you at risk, I don’t know what is. I would never do that to you.”

“And then he saved us. He also saved you again. On the roof. He didn’t have to do that.”

“Didn’t have to save a human being’s life? Who would?” he scoffed.

“Why are we even arguing about this?” I said. My pack was feeling too heavy so I put it on the ground. I hated fighting with him though I knew where it was all coming from. There was a lot of truth in Camden’s words and still a lot of resentment. Toward me.

“Because …” He sighed and turned away. “Because I can’t help it. I can’t stop thinking about … what we did.”

My lungs were definitely working overtime now, my heart feeling as if it were being squeezed by icy fingers. I didn’t like where this was going. Why couldn’t we get over this? Why couldn’t my heart stay intact for a fucking minute?

“What we did?” I asked carefully. “You mean when I fucked you in the bathroom? Or was it what I said?”

He gave me a dirty look. “Was that what it was to you? Just a fuck?”

“Oh my god,” I exclaimed. “What is wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me?” he repeated. His smiled coldly. “Excuse me if I have problems taking your words at face value.”

That fucking hurt. No, that fucking killed me, knife to heart.

Another hit of thunder slammed through the sky and in seconds the clouds broke open. Heavy rain pounded down on us, soaking us in seconds. The forest roared with the sound of raindrops hitting the leaves. Just perfect.

I didn’t even know what to say to that. My mouth fumbled for words, the rain streaming down my face. If I started crying he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

“Why can’t you just forgive me?” I pleaded. “I’m not lying, Camden. I’m being more honest than I’ve ever been.”

“How could you sleep with him so easily and then do the same to me?”

I put my face in my hands, trying to contain myself. I took in a shaky breath and looked at him. He was barely visible through the sheets of rain.

“I can’t take back what I did,” I told him, my voice raw, threatening to crack. “I have my reasons and you know what they are. I can only control what I do from now on in. I slept with you because I love you. I told you the truth in that bathroom. You can decide to forgive me or not, but it’s not my problem anymore if you don’t. I gave you my heart. You have it. You should know you have it. If you can’t find it in yourself to give me another chance then that’s your problem. Stop punishing me for the past when the only thing we have is right now!”

“I’m not punishing you.”

Oh, that did it. I stormed over to him, nearly slipping in the mud and shoved my hands against his wet chest, pushing him back a step. I was unable to contain the stream of words that had been dying to come out. “Now you’re the fucking liar here. You’ve wanted me to suffer the minute you found out about Javier and I. And you’ve been doing a bang-up fucking job about it. You think I don’t hate myself already for what I’ve done? Now I just hate myself even more because every time I look at you I see a man that once loved me, a man whose love I should have believed in, should have had faith in and I didn’t. So I lost that love and I lost you all for nothing! All because I’m a stupid, scared little girl with scars on her leg that never deserved anything good in her life and who believed it. Now for the first time, I think I might be better than I thought, better than I ever gave myself credit for and you’re the one who won’t let me believe it.” I blinked hard, trying to control the tears. They stayed put but the pain in my chest was unbearable. “You told me I was good, Camden. I know you want to believe in me but you’re stopping yourself. Why can’t you just love me again?” I grabbed his face with my hands, his skin slick from the rain that continued to fall steadily. “You own my heart. Please let me have yours.”

He closed his eyes, his lashes dark and wet. He breathed hard, his mouth open. I kept my hands on his face, trying to hold onto him even though I felt him slipping away.

“I don’t want to love you, Ellie.”

All air left me. I was nothing inside but bones and blood. I was hollow, scooped out, unlovable. Undeserving. I was dying in the jungle, holding on to the one with the knife.

A small sob escaped me. His eyes flew open, a blue ocean of pain. He swallowed hard and put his hand behind my head, staring at me with stark determination. “I don’t want to love you, Ellie, but I do love you. I can’t stop myself. I’ve been trying to since the moment I saw you with him. You broke me, you broke my fucking heart.” He closed his eyes again and rested his forehead against mine, our noses pressed against each other. “You broke me into so many pieces that I didn’t think I could find myself again. And I’m so damn scared, I’m scared just like you. You’ve always been my love Ellie Watt, since the very beginning. Since the moment I saw your face, your beautiful young face on that hot dry day. You were water for my soul. You made me feel like I had another half, someone else who understood what it was like to be unwanted.”

Oh Jesus. I was melting in his hands.

He gazed at me, so close, rain drops hanging from his lashes. “But the pain … oh please, I can’t go through that again. I look at you and I see him and I just want to see you again. I want to know that this can work. I want you and I to go home and become a home. I just want my heart to be safe in your hands because yours is safe in mine.”

“You’re safe with me,” I told him, my voice choking up. “Camden, you’re safe with me.”

I kissed him, wet and slick and his fingers pressed harder into my face. I pulled back and whispered, “Please believe that you’re safe with me.” I stroked his lower lip with my finger. “I gave you pain and I can take it away, if you let me. If you let yourself love me.”

His eyes went soft and dreamy for a few moments before they flared with a wild hit of lust. The look made my blood hot. He placed his lips on mine, drawing out a deep hard kiss, pressing himself into me, his tongue warm and feverish against mine. He moaned, the vibrations sinking into my core, heat radiating between my legs. Inappropriate, once again so fucking inappropriate.

But fuck it.

And fuck him. Literally.

“Camden,” I murmured into him, wanting him right there in the rain, his body and soul and heart.

He went for my neck, his tongue swooping up just behind my ear, licking the rim then sliding back down my jawline. He grabbed my hair hard with both hands, tugging sharply, and looked me dead in the eyes. He was all fire and hard angles.

“I love you,” he said, his voice gruff. “And I’ll have you. Keep you. Own you. You belong to me, only to me, from now on.”

Feather-soft butterflies swarmed my heart, filling me with beauty and light and all that was good.

“Until the waves crash at our feet,” I said softly as his full lips pressed at my cheek.

“Beyond that,” he whispered. “Beyond the ocean and the world and the stars. You’re mine beyond that, baby, and I’m yours.” His hands suddenly dropped to my jeans and he swiftly unzipped them, slipping one of his long, skilled fingers down past my hair until it found my clit, swollen and ready. Steady hands, indeed.

“And now, I’m going to make you mine. I’m going to make you forget you’ve ever been with anyone else. I will own you from the inside out, with every hard inch of me.”

With his dirty mouth and his deft fingers, I nearly came right there. Camden wasn’t messing around. And now I would have his body and his heart. I would have him, all of him, every corner of his beautiful soul, every part of his hard, strong frame.

He began swirling his fingers around, dipping down into me.

“Christ, you want this,” he murmured as his fingers pushed in, my wetness soaking him to his knuckles. I gasped at the intrusion, then grinded myself into him.

“I always want this,” I said, kissing him, the frenzy building up inside of me. “I always want you.”

“You’re getting me,” he said. “My beautiful girl.”

With his hand still down my pants, he took my arm in the other and led me backward until I was up against a tree. He carefully pulled down my jeans until they were at my ankles then slid his whole hand between my legs, rubbing me back and forth. I quickly pulled my soaking wet tank top and bra off and his mouth went for my breasts, licking, pinching, making my nipples throb, an exquisite pain. I cried out, rain water pouring into my open mouth.

“Tell me you love me again,” he commanded, pressing me harder against the tree, the bark digging into my back.

“I love you.” I whimpered as he pressed his finger to my wall, massaging in tight circles while his thumb did the same to my clit. I couldn’t hold on anymore. “I love you.”

I came fast and hard, every part of me throbbing, clenching, pulsing as his hand continued to push me over the edge. I surrendered to him, to the rain that continued to pound onto us. My cries carried out into the jungle. “Oh god, oh god. Fucking god.”

He removed his hand, grinning at me while I tried to get my bearings. The world was still spinning and I was lost in my own delirious state, just pulses of pleasure that still fired through me. I barely felt it when he grabbed me by the waist and turned me around so that my hands were clamped on the tree. He put his arm around my stomach and pulled me back, making my back arch. Next thing I heard was his pants coming off. His tee-shirt went flying to the muddy earth beside me.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he groaned and I knew he was stroking himself. I tried to turn around and only got a quick look at his hard tatted body, all firm lines and rigid angles, his magnificent cock in his hands, the rain streaming all over him. He was a wet god and I was about to get pounded.

He pushed me back around. “Grab the tree. This could get messy.”

I did as he asked while I heard him moan again. He pressed the tip of his dick to the small of my back then slid it down my ass crack, my skin extra slick from the rain. I couldn’t hide the shivers that rolled through me and I arched myself more, pressing my ass into him.

“Slowly,” Camden grunted. He put a hand at my waist, holding me in place, and continued to draw himself up and down until my clit calmed down and I needed friction all over again. I wanted him inside me, filing me to the brim, buried to the root. I tried again to get him inside me but his hand was firm. “Slowly,” he repeated. “I don’t know if we’ll get a chance to do this again.”

I knew what he meant by that. Where we were. What we were about to do. It made our coupling that much more urgent, much more sweet, much more poignant. I couldn’t die without having him inside me one more time, feeling him as part of me, knowing he did love me, lust for me, need me.

I heard him suck in his breath and exhaled shakily, trying to contain himself.

“Now,” he said with a grunt. He slammed his cock into me and I shuddered from the impact, crying out, my hands slipping as I tried to hold onto the tree. He started hammering into me fast and smooth, groaning, his breath rapid, his hands tight around my waist. He thrust out and in, all the way to the hilt, till I felt like he’d taken over half my body. The pleasure pain was all encompassing, radiating from my core to my fingertips and toes and he kept pounding and pounding and pounding, his balls smacking against my ass, my breasts swaying from each hit.