Tiny Dancer(Divine Creek Ranch 13)(72)

More than anything, he wanted for her to have whatever she needed. “Baby…” She took the floggers from him and dropped them in the box and closed the closet door. “If you ever need to…”

Camilla wrapped her arms around his waist, and Quinten wondered if she was losing weight. She felt small and frail in his arms. Breakable.

“You’d dominate me if I asked you to, wouldn’t you, Quinten? You’d do that for me?”

“Of course. But I’d have to learn more about what you need. I’m not really proper Dom material.”

“You’d probably get a lot of enjoyment out of tying me up and tickling me,” she said with a giggle in her voice. “Baby, you’re already giving me what I need, right now. This. To be needed and wanted. To be trusted. And loved. That was what I needed.” He didn’t take her words lightly, recalling her early doubts.

From the doorway, Ben spoke. “We’ll save it all, Camilla. I’ve been talking to Joseph and Ethan some more, and I’m honestly curious now.” He opened the closet door and lifted the boxes out.

Camilla’s face glowed as she smiled at Ben. “All right. I like it when you take charge like that.”

Quinten feigned shock. “Said the woman who growled at me when I complained about her sexy, revealing costumes.”

Camilla poked him. “I’m never gonna hear the end of that, am I?” She tried to sound disgusted, but it was hard to do while she yawned.

Ben stroked her nape and kissed her forehead. “We have everything loaded up but the boxes in the garage. It’s suppertime, and you need to rest.” She nodded with a heavy sigh. Quinten was relieved that she responded to their efforts to take care of her.

Ben reached up and lifted a shoe box from the closet shelf. “What about this? Want to pack it or pitch it?”

Camilla reached for the box and held it to her. “No. I need to take this with me.”

Quinten recalled watching her clutch it to her chest the day after the break-in when she’d walked around her house surveying the chaos. “Baby, what is that?”

“It–It’s my mom’s ashes.” She bit her lip and glanced from one man to the other.

“You have your mom’s ashes in a shoe box?” Ben gently asked as he peered into her eyes.

Camilla was silent for several seconds, as though debating. “Yes. That’s how the crematorium sent them to me. She had no insurance and because I had no way to pay for a funeral, or an urn, or…anything, they cremated her remains and shipped them to me in this box.”

“You were sixteen. Of course you couldn’t afford a funeral. That was your father’s responsibility.”

“Before he left me that day, he told me he saw no need to have a service or a casket or anything. He said it would cause unnecessary upheaval in his family to have to go through the burial of his first wife. He said she probably didn’t have any friends who would come anyway. She had friends. Just not that many. So I kept her ashes. I always meant to buy a pretty urn for her, but that would mean…opening the box, and I just can’t make myself do that.”

Ben and Quinten bracketed her in a comforting hug, and Quinten said, “That son of a bitch had better never show his face to us.”

“Don’t worry, he won’t.” She seemed very sure of that. Part of Quinten wanted him to cross their paths someday. For a father to do that to his daughter was reprehensible.

“What he thought doesn’t matter anymore,” Ben said, stroking her head. “Your mom is coming with us. We can even go shopping for a nice urn and we’ll take care of transferring her to it for you, if it bothers you too much. You have two men who love you and we’re willing to step up to the plate.”

Still looking so frail, Camilla tilted her head up and kissed Ben, and then Quinten, with such tenderness it made his heart ache. In the truck on the way home, the shoe box sat on her lap, and he noticed the way she stroked it with her fingertips.

At their house, she made supper while the two of them unloaded the flatbed trailer. After supper, they watched a movie. Camilla was in the bathtub and they were turning down the bed when they heard her abrupt shout from the bathroom.

“The ashes!”

Both men rushed in the bathroom as she shut the tap off and sat up with a slosh, washing away the lavender-scented bubbles from her beautiful breasts.

Quinten licked his lips as her nipples peeked out among the foamy suds. “What, baby?”

Camilla snorted. “My eyes are up here, boys.”

Both men laughed at being caught ogling her, and she said, “I figured out what’s so odd about the break-in.”