Not Just One Night

Chapter 19

Camila's POV

She flips to another page and her voice is low and seductive without meaning to be. I see the attraction now to having someone read to you. There's nothing sexier than watching Lauren's mouth move along to words I already know, but it feels like the very first time of hearing them.

I hadn't realized she could any further, but Lauren is constantly surprising me. When she crawled out of my bed, after talking for another hour longer, and retrieved the book she had started at the store earlier today, I had expected for her to hand it to me, pout, and ask me to pick up where she had left off. But instead she mimicked my normal position, her arm around my shoulder, my head on her chest and she bent the spine of the book with her hand, and she began to read softly. But unlike her, I wasn't drifting off to sleep. In fact, the very opposite.

I was enthralled, captivated by every word she said.

"Eleanor was right. She never looked nice," Lauren read aloud. "She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something." Lauren made me feel everything. And the inconvenient part is that usually I felt it all at once. Every good and bad emotion that comes with falling for someone, all in one heartbeat, all in one breath. It felt like falling and flying at the same exact time. Drowning and swimming. Dying and living. She somehow created every conflicting emotion that existed in me.

I knew there was a chance that I could hurt Lauren. Ally only confirmed what I had forced to the back of my thoughts during our fight but even though there's a risk of breaking something that's not even fully mine yet, I can't walk away.

I know she probably wouldn't take the leap if she knew what was inevitable, but I don't care to gamble, I'll risk being the one to get hurt, because I want her.

I want Lauren.

More than I've really wanted anything, and now that I have her, all that's left to figure out is how can I keep her?

How can I not hurt her although it feels so imminent.

She flips to another page, and I play absentmindedly with the bottom of her t-shirt and with my movements, it reveals a small area of skin that I trace my fingertips over. I write out the truth right there on her stomach. It's like that game you play where you take someone's hand and they close their eyes, and you draw letters with your fingers and they have to guess what you're saying. On the skin just above the top of her jeans, I admit: I know I'm going to hurt you but I think I'm falling in love with you, but her reading never stills. She doesn't know to follow each letter I scribble with my left hand, and combine them to decipher my cryptic message that I couldn't say aloud.

The only phasing, was the wake of chills that raised beneath my fingertips as a direct result from my touch. I watched her face change as they loitered on her skin. Her smile was inviting and I could hear it in her voice, the tone had slightly altered and although she was reading the story, her thoughts were elsewhere.

It had been five days since we've been intimate and although there's still a faint lingering smell of Shay's perfume on the sheets, Lauren hadn't noticed, and more than that she hadn't even brought up the topic of the stranger today, which was a relief and terrifying all in the same because I know how her minds works. Just when I think I'm getting close to forcing my lips on hers, or letting my hands fall against her body, at the most inopportune time, she'll stop me to talk about how just last night I was with someone else.

But she lets my advances go on a lot longer than I thought she would. Easily, I guide my hand completely beneath her shirt, and my fingers linger below the underside of her bra, and from their I trail my nails lightly down her taut stomach, feeling the hectic rise and fall of it beneath my touch. Her breathing is unsteady but she's determined to be unfazed until I curl my finger under the waistband of her jeans, teasing the sensitive area of skin. She forgoes the reading, and knowing her words aren't a part of the story, when she says, "Camila, wait." She tosses the book the side not worrying with marking her place, and she grabs a hold of my wrist and stills my movements.