“What…” I murmured, looking down and finding a ball of bicolored fur. “Willow? Why—”
Everything came back. Glimpse after glimpse of the last twenty-four hours, toppling right into my mind.
The guy with the hoodie. My panic. The pain emanating from my ankle and traveling up my calf. The irresponsible intake of painkillers. Willow curling up on my lap. Cameron’s arms. The feeling of his chest underneath my cheek. His palm against my hair. The soothing hum of his voice.
Cameron’s arms.
He’d brought me to his cabin. With him. I couldn’t exactly remember why. But if what I’d just recalled was right, he’d gone as far as… soothing me back to sleep. The image was too clear, too sharp, for me to think I’d imagined it. He’d sat by my side and stroked my hair until I’d fallen asleep.
A wave of heat climbed all the way up to my face. God, I must have been in really bad shape.
With more effort than I should have needed, I sat back on the bed, obtaining a skeptical glance from the cat as she stretched her paws by my side. “Sorry, friend,” I told her, and she yawned at me. “Is that okay? That I called you friend?” She jumped over my legs and settled herself against my hip. I took her staying as a yes. “Thanks. I also think we are friends after last night.”
Her head fell back on the comforter again, and I wasn’t going to lie, the cat liking me back felt like a win I’d take. Especially considering the likely awkward conversation I had ahead of me today.
With a sigh, I rolled out of the bed, feeling the sharp bite of pain when I rested my right foot on the floor. I pushed through it. I had more pressing concerns to deal with. I limped my way out of the room and into a hallway, carefully stopping every few feet to make sure where I was going. The last thing I needed right now was to find Cameron in some inappropriate situation like, I don’t know, changing or slipping out of the shower or getting undressed…
Or maybe you should simply stop thinking of Cameron naked, a voice screamed in my head.
I discarded all thoughts involving Cameron and continued my hopping. There was music coming from the far end of the hallway, so I veered that way and encountered the kitchen and living area.
Catching my breath, I braced myself on the white marble island and took a break to let my gaze roam. A cream-colored chaise longue laid right in the middle of the space, rustic and minimalistic décor scattered on shelves, timber beams crossed the ceiling, gorgeous windowpanes let the sunlight in, a half-naked man did a handstand, the table—
My eyes retraced their trajectory a step, snapping into focus.
Whoa.
There were very few instances in life that I’d been as shocked, as wholly and completely befuddled as I was in that instant. Was I imagining this? No, there was no way my mind could summon such perfection. My imagination really sucked. So Cameron had to be there, at the very end of the living room. Gloriously shirtless.
And he hadn’t lied.
Cameron Caldani wasn’t just good at yoga. He excelled at it.
And I apparently excelled at getting hot and bothered watching him.
Because all of my blood was rushing to my face at the sight of him shirtless. With his elbows on the mat, legs up. In a pair of loose workout shorts that gravity was pulling down his beautiful quads. My eyes got lost in there for a second, in that muscled section of his thighs shining with sweat. I could make out the edge of a design there. A thigh tattoo? Oh God, I didn’t think I could take that. It was bad enough that the arm he had covered in ink was now flexed. That his pecs—one of which was also covered in beautiful designs—were bunched up like I’d never seen muscles bunch in real life. It was…
“Ouch,” I yelped, the moment the foot I’d kept up in the air unconsciously touched the ground.
Cameron’s eyes blinked open. And before I could prepare to say anything, to do anything but gawk, his large, glistening, and ridiculously flexible body was toppling to the floor. Sideways. Landing on the mat with a loud thud.
I gasped, starting for him.
But he grunted from the floor, “Don’t move.” And I froze on the spot.
“Are you… okay?”
“Jesus fuck,” he half growled, half sighed as a response. “I was unprepared.”
I opened my mouth to ask unprepared for what, but a dash of orange shot past me, distracting me from my words.
“She’s going to give me shit for that,” Cameron said when I glanced back at him. He sat up with a groan. “That was Pierogi. She likes to lie down at the end of my mat when I work out.”