Bold Tricks

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

We ended saying goodbye to Derek in Acapulco. Even though we felt a camaraderie with him after everything we went through, he still wanted his money. All the money we had was still in checks that we hadn’t cashed yet, so we had to promise him an IOU through monthly PayPal installments. The funny part was that he trusted us to do so and I knew I would make good on my promise. Maybe I’d picked a lot of locks in the last few days, but the scamming days were truly gone for me. I had the second chance I asked for.

After we dropped him off (and after he bought us all clean clothes from a local Wal-Mart), we continued on with the Escalade to Zihuatanejo, a beach town that Gus had always wanted to go to because Morgan Freeman ended up there at the end of The Shawshank Redemption. I’d put fake plates on the Escalade back in Acapulco, knowing now that I could never ever be too careful again, though we planned to steal a new car once we were heading up to California. For now, we needed to catch our breaths and take stock in the fact that we were still alive.

The three of us were sitting on the patio of a restaurant that lined the silky sand beach, enjoying gigantic margaritas, when Camden got up to go to the washroom.

“So, Ellie,” Gus said, sitting back in his chair with controlled movement. In the end, his gunshot wound was healing nicely. For whatever reason, Javier hadn’t mistreated Gus. After he’d been shot by Raul and after Camden came running for me, Javier took Gus immediately to a doctor who removed the bullet and stitched him up. Then Gus was knocked up full of roofies (Javier’s drug of choice, it seemed) and the next thing he remembered was waking up in the stash house where he was guarded by three formidable men and two idiots (according to him). He wasn’t allowed to leave the bedroom upstairs and was tethered to the first half of the room by a chain around his leg, thus not allowing him to reach the windows. He was permitted bathroom breaks though, he could watch TV and he ate whatever food the rest of his captors ate. He was more comfortable than I thought he would have been, certainly more than my mother was. If that was the way Javier treated the people he captured, he had shown he wasn’t as much of an animal as Travis was.

Of course, he’d shown he was an animal in so many other ways.

“So, Gus,” I said, pulling my shades on to my head so I could look him in the eye, even though the sun was setting, causing the ocean to refract in beams of light.

He gave me a smile that could only be described as shy. And Gus was not a shy man. Suddenly I realized why Camden had excused himself with a knowing look on his face. Gus and I had not discussed what I learned yet. But I had a feeling it was about to come up.

It made me feel as awkward as a child. I rubbed my hands on my linen pants and smiled back.

He rubbed at his beard and said, “I think you and I have something to … talk about.”

I nodded, waiting.

“I know what your mother told you back at … back where you saw her.”

Oh god. Don’t tell me he wasn’t my father.

“She said that I’m your dad,” he went on. He picked up a chip from the tortilla basket and started spinning it around on the tablecloth. “That we had an affair before you were born.” He looked up at me, his eyes sad.

Oh please no. Please don’t take this away from me.

“I loved your mother very much, Ellie,” Gus said. “I loved your father too. I never really understood how I could do that to my friend, but I did. And your mother stayed on my mind ever since. I was still allowed to see you from time to time. You remember me around. But I could never be your father. I hope I can be now.”

I exhaled, smiling so wide that my face hurt. “You really are my father.”

“There was even a paternity test. Your father knew of course. He was a good man, Ellie, he really was. And I regret what I did but I don’t regret the consequences.”

“You sound a lot like Camden, there.”

“Camden is a good man too. That boy, he’s so in love with you that he can’t even see straight. I can’t even begin to tell you how hard he fought to get you back. He never gave up, even when he was knocked down. You were the most important thing in the world to him, you still are. I hope you can give your heart to him, I know how hard that is for you, to trust, to let go.”

I gave him a reassuring smile, his words about Camden inflating me with joy. “He has my heart. He knows it. At least I hope he does. I’ll keep giving it anyway. I love him.”

I want to spend my whole life with him. I want to marry him, I thought. But of course I didn’t say that.

He gave me a quick grin and stuffed a chip in his face, talking with his mouth full. “Good. That’s what I wanted to hear. The boy drove me nuts for most of the trip to be honest. He just wouldn’t shut up about you. But he has moxie and I like that. You’re both perfect for each other. And if he ever wants to become my son-in-law,” he trailed off and looked over my shoulder. “Perhaps I should shut my big mouth now.” And in went another chip.

I turned in my seat to see Camden coming toward me. My god he was absolutely beautiful, knee-length cargo shorts, a wifebeater that showed off his muscles and colorful art, from wrist to collarbone. He still had a bandage over his gunshot wound on the shoulder and his face was marred by a few healing gashes but that only made him look more manly. That man would kill for me. He would die for me. And he would fuck me to death if I asked him.

I was tempted. What a way to go.

He stopped above us and smiled, dimples and white teeth illuminating his face in the setting sun. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

I shook my head, eager for him to join us, especially after I knew that Gus approved of him. I mean, how couldn’t he? This was a man I wanted to spend the rest of my life trying to make happy, trying to give him the life he deserved for the kind of good person he was.

Which is why I had to bring up a more serious topic, one we hadn’t discussed yet.

“So, what’s the plan after this,” I broached slowly as Camden sat back down beside me. “How do we get back Ben?”

Camden straightened up at the mention of his son’s name, his fingers gripping the end of the arm rests. He bit his lip, brows drawn together, and cast a furtive glance at Gus. Then he said, “I don’t know yet.”

Gus tilted his head sympathetically. “You’re still a wanted criminal in the USA. Maybe not as wanted as you were before. It’s probably all blown over. But if you’re ever caught by the police for something, you’ll be in big shit. If you’re ever recognized by anyone, you’re in big shit. If Sophia ever sees you again …”

“I’m in big shit,” Camden filled in.

“Or you’re dead.” Gus rested his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together. “So we have to do what we can to avoid that. You know this will be the hardest part, even harder than getting Ellie back. Sophia won’t give you Ben. You’ll never be able to get custody. You’ll never be able to see him. You’ll never get visitation rights. It’s either you take him from her or leave him with her. There is no in between here.”

“No grey,” I whispered, a sinking feeling in my chest.

“That’s right,” Gus said. “No grey. These aren’t the choices you’ll want to make but you’ll have to make them. Can you go on your way and let Sophia have him?”

“No!” Camden cried out, attracting a few looks from the patrons around us. He quickly shot them a sheepish look and then lowered his voice, shaking his head. “No. I can’t. She wasn’t a very good mother before. That’s when all our problems started. When she was on drugs and never at home. Now I know she’s involved with her brothers. She’s part of that gang. Fuck, she used Ben, her son, our son, to lure me in, to get money, to hand me over to her brothers. They were going to kill me, in front of him if they could. It’s made me sick every time I think about where he is right now, and what he’s doing. I can’t let him grow up in that life. I won’t let that happen.”

“Then you’ve made your choice,” Gus told him solemnly. “If you can’t let him stay with her, if you can’t say goodbye to him, then you must take him. And we will help you. You can’t do this on your own.”

Camden put his head in his hands, his knee bouncing up and down.

“Baby,” I said softly, and put my hand on his jumping knee. “You’re not doing this alone. Even if it seems impossible, even if it doesn’t feel like a choice you want to make, you have to do this if you want him back. Ben deserves to be with you, Camden. Someone with a big heart, a father who will do anything for his child. That’s what you are. You have that in you to give and Ben is a lucky boy that you’re his dad. You’re giving him the future he needs.”

Camden turned his head to the side, glancing at me with damp eyes. “And you’re the future I need.”

I leaned over and kissed him, sweetly, slowly, then blushed once Gus cleared his throat, reminding us he was there.

I pulled back, smiling to myself and had a good long sip of the margarita, gazing out at the ocean. I wondered if Camden still wanted to go to Gualala, that beach town he dreamed of, his personal paradise. I wondered if I was his future, if that’s where we could build a home, build a life. Me, him and Ben. Gus too. And maybe, just maybe, a child of our own.

I was getting ahead of myself – wasn’t I? – and Camden sighed, bringing my focus back to the problem at hand. If Ben was in our future, how did we get him?

“It’s just that kidnapping a child,” Camden murmured, voice barely audible, “I can’t imagine how I’d live with that.”

“You’re doing it for the right reasons,” I said. “That’s how.”

His knee started bouncing again. “But how do we pull it off without hurting Ben?”

That was the problem. I licked the salt off my lips and sat back in my chair, thinking. “Ben knows you’re his father. Right?” He nodded. I went on, “He trusts you then. He’s young. Kids are impressionable. I couldn’t tell you the things that were probably done to me when I was young, the ways I was used for bait, to con people, to steal, and I don’t even remember.”

“It won’t be easy but Ellie’s right,” Gus said. “Obviously we don’t want to make a scene or do anything that would endanger or mentally damage the boy. But I think if we take him, in the right way, and if you can find a way to face your guilt that I have no doubt you’ll feel for some time, he can grow up with no damage. He’ll be resilient. And he’ll have the life he needs.”

Camden looks up, face newly determined. “So when do we do this?”

Gus scratched at his mustache. “We find Sophia. We stake out her place. We start planning our moves. The three of us, we can do this together. We can do it quickly. No fuss. In and out. It might take a few weeks for everything to roll into place.”

“We don’t have a few weeks,” Camden moaned.

“Camden,” Gus said sternly. “You have a few weeks. A few weeks is nothing compared to a lifetime of being together – or not being together. My god, you and Ellie are both as impatient as Chihuahuas. No wonder you belong together.”

Camden and I exchanged a coy look. We did belong together. We all did.

Once dinner was over, we made our way back to the small hotel we were staying at, right on the beach. Gus retired to his room, said he wanted to continue watching this Telemundo show he got hooked on when he was being held hostage, and Camden grabbed my hand, leading me to the sand and crashing waves. The moon was in a perfect quarter, its reflection shining on the black-blue water.

He brought me to the ocean’s edge and stood behind me, wrapping his warm arms around me.

“I love you,” he whispered in my ear. “Every minute that goes by, you fill my heart. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Ellie. I’ve been so close to losing you.”

I gripped his hands over my stomach and leaned back into him, my head settling into the crook of his arms, and let that beautifully light feeling sink into me. “I love you. You have me. I think, deep down, you always did, even when I didn’t know it.”

We stood like that for quite some time, our feet in the cool, soft sand, just watching the waves crash, the stars shining, the moon so far, so close, so constant. Every night it appeared, no matter where in the world we were, even hidden by clouds, it was still there.

“You’re my moon,” I said quietly.

“Then you’re my earth.”

He turned me around, ever so mindful of my leg, and kissed me deeply. It was a kiss that reached right into you, stirred you around until you were effervescent and sparkling and deliriously happy. It was soft, warm lips and silken, skilled tongue. It made you hungry and thirsty and longing for more, for it to go on forever, satisfying yet insatiable. It turned me on, flipped the switch, awakened the passion that wouldn’t stop until we could fully devour each other. It was a kiss of the earth and the moon, all gravity and pull, a prelude to many forevers.

I don’t know how long we made out like that, just feeding from the love and the lust that we could only consume from one another, me surrendering in his arms, his arms that kept me close and kept me safe. Finally he pulled away and rubbed his thumb over my lips.

“I’d suggest sex on the beach,” he said, his voice husky, my mouth feeling empty without his. “But I think the two of us deserve a bed for once.”

That, and sex on the beach was highly overrated.

He bent down and picked me up in his arms. I let out a small laugh, wrapping my arms around his neck and burying my face below his ear. I breathed in his smell, absolutely intoxicating, and let him carry me all the way to our hotel room where he lay me down on the white, shabby-chic bedspread.

This was the first time we’d really been alone, been intimate, since we left the compound. I had something to tell him, but I wasn’t quite sure how to phrase it. I loved him beyond all doubt and I knew the man loved me. I knew we were the moon and the earth and each other’s future, revolving and evolving. But I was still scared to tell him what I knew, tell him what I wanted.

He bent over me, hands at the drawstring on my pants, but I pushed him back, hand on his chest and said, “I’m always getting naked first. Drop your clothes.”

Camden grinned wickedly and I bit my lip in anticipation, leaning back on my elbows to watch.

He took off his wifebeater first, the tats on his stomach and chest now on full display, then slowly started to unbutton his shorts.

“Are you doing a striptease?” I asked playfully.

“I’m stripping and I’m teasing,” he answered as he very deliberately rolled the zipper down before looping his thumbs on the waistband and inching them off. Bit by bit, until the ink faded into the hard Vs of hip bones and I saw the hard, glistening tip of his erection appear, flush to his pelvis.

He let the shorts drop and he took my breath away.

“Derek never got me any briefs,” he explained, as if I cared that he was going commando. Fuck me, he was a man who would never stop giving me the chills. I’d never seen a cock so large and beautiful as the one on Camden McQueen. My man. My moon. My everything.

He slowly walked toward the bed, growing larger as he came closer, so tall, so strong, so ready for me. His eyes held assurance and lust, drive and desire. He knew what he looked like, he knew what he was offering me, his perfect body and his perfect soul.

“When I saw you, I fell in love,” he said to me as I lay back against the bed and he crawled on top of me on all fours. “And you smiled because you knew.”

I grinned lazily as he bent down and slowly kissed along my neck. “Quoting Shakespeare, now?”

“If only Juliet had been a scowly faced teenager,” he murmured against my neck. “Because while I’m pretty sure you knew I loved you, I don’t think it made you smile.”

I jerked my head away from him and held his face in my hands. “Camden. You always made me smile, even when I didn’t show it. You were my only friend and I was too young to know what your heart was worth.”

“And you know now.”

I ran my hands through his thick hair. “I knew then, now and always.” I pulled his face to mine and kissed him softly before looking deep and hard into his eyes, trying to figure out how to say this. “Camden … I was on the pill until, well, until we left Veracruz. I’ve only been with you since.”

He frowned, a look of wonderment and fear in his eyes. “Are you pregnant?”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t think so. I’m just …” I chewed on my lip. “I’m just thinking … I don’t want to go back on them.” There. I said it. The weight of it all hung in the room.

He blinked, his dark brow still furrowed, and suddenly I was unbearably frightened that I had scared him off. My heart felt like lead.

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I—”

“You want a baby?” he asked gently. His face was softening, his eyes searching mine, pulling truth from me.

“I don’t mean right now,” I managed to say. “Or maybe I do. But yes. With you. I want a family of my own. To start new. To give us both what we never had.”

“Oh, Ellie,” he whispered. His face crumpled slightly and he brought it to my neck. He whispered into my ear, “Oh, Ellie. I will give you that. It’s all I’ve ever wanted for us. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

And suddenly I was all love.

“Really?” I asked.

He looked at me, glassy-eyed, and grinned so wide, so amazing. “Really. A brother or sister for Ben.” He swallowed loudly, taking a moment to contain himself. “My beautiful Ellie, I want this. I want this. We need this.”

He reached down and slowly unbuttoned my blouse until my breasts were bare and spread before him - he wasn’t the only one going commando. He trailed his fingers over my flesh, goosebumps rising in his wake, and tugged lightly at my nipple ring. I groaned and arched my back, offering myself to him, needing more.

But he wasn’t in a hurry, not tonight. He slowly made his way from my breasts to my abdomen, kissing and licking over my stomach, concentrating his mouth there as if willing his seed to be planted. He finished untying my pants and cautiously pulled them off, taking it slow around my leg.

“Does this hurt?” he whispered as he held my damaged leg in his hand, his eyes roaming all over my naked body.

I shook my head no. “Not right now.”

He peered at the bandages. “Once these come off, once it heals, I’ll make you beautiful again.”

“You already made me beautiful, Camden,” I whispered. “Now get your head between my legs.”

His dimples appeared. “As you wish.”

He parted my legs and started moving his mouth up my inner thigh until he was teasing my lips. Once his tongue found my clit, needy and full, he spent no time getting me off. I grabbed his hair, yanking on it with each wave of orgasm as he moaned into me, the vibrations bringing me to new heights.

When I was coming back down, he looked up at me with his glistening mouth and a devious glint in his eyes. “You know that’s not how we’re supposed to make a baby.”

“Then show me.”

He came back on top of me and poised his stiff cock into me, entering slowly, very slowly.

Torturously slow.

“Camden,” I whispered, my body bucking for him. “Faster.”

“I’m in no rush,” he purred. “I want to live in every inch of you.”

He pushed in and out, silky smooth with just enough friction. I watched him as his wide chest overpowered me, straining with each controlled movement. He looked up at the ceiling and groaned loudly as he pushed through, then looked down at me with heavy eyes, his mouth open in lust. His gaze undid me, so much passion and love, now more than ever.

He picked up the pace, wrapping one of his large hands around my waist while the other began stroking at my clit again. Each thrust became harder, deeper, until he was buried far inside of me. His breath hitched as he said, “I want to put a baby in you. I want this. Oh, I want this.” He moaned again and I joined in, my nerves white hot and begging for release. Blood was pooling deep in my core, the pressure building. This was love-making, baby-making, an act of creation and pure, raw, primal power.

We elapsed into a steady rhythm, the headboard slamming against the wall, the paintings rattling, sweat streaming off each other’s bodies in the hot, tropical night. I was wet, so wet, and blossoming for him, driven by his mass, stretched by his fullness. I was fulfilled and yearning all at once, and I watched as his slick cock slid in and out of me, watched his whole body as he drove in deeper and deeper until I thought I was being staked to the bed.

“Oh fuck!” I cried out, taken by surprise and coming fast and hard. I dug my nails into the back of his shoulders, my hips rocking in unison with his.

He came too, floored by his orgasm and I felt higher than the clouds as he poured his seed inside of me, my convulsions bringing it out of him and harboring it deep inside. He swore amidst his groans, his thrusts slowing down, until he lay down on top of me and kept himself inside me.

He brushed the hair off my face, gently running his fingers over my cheeks. He cleared his throat and smiled, sated, happy. “You know, if that didn’t take, I am game for trying every day. Several times a day. On the hour.”

I grinned and pressed him close to me. “Don’t think I won’t hold you to that. I’m addicted to you. I must have my fix.”

“Is fix another term for cock?”

“It is for yours. You should have a warning label on that thing.”

He let out a small laugh, his lips tickling my collarbone. “Eh, it’ll probably rub off anyway from all the use.”

I sighed contently and wrapped my arms around him. He made beautiful sense out of all the ugly things I had done.

We fell asleep like that.