by Lora Leigh
“Maybe he’s bored,” Rafe suggested with mocking sobriety.
“Yeah, fucking bored,” Logan grunted with a roll of his eyes. “Or maybe he has a death wish I could accommodate.”
Rafe stilled his laughter as he watched the irritation that settled in his cousin’s expression.
“Do you have any idea what he wanted?” Rafe asked as he fixed his cousin’s coffee and slid it across the counter.
“No, to aggravate the hell out of me, maybe? Neighbors are damned sassy, though. All but the kid’s sister that lives next to me. Fucking night owl.” Logan almost grinned.
Evidently that fucking night owl had managed to entertain his cousin in some way.
“Why would the kid care enough to try to pick your lock?”
“For the hell of it? Because he’s a damned teenager?” Logan grunted after sipping at the coffee, then turned and moved to the table.
Before sitting down, Logan stared at the wood table top for a long, thoughtful moment. “You fucked her on the table, didn’t you, cuz?” There was an edge of irritated resignation that Rafe sensed stemmed from the neighbor kid’s sister.
Rafe merely lifted his cup and sipped at his second cup of strong coffee that night. If this kept up, then he was going to start drinking decaf. No wonder his chest was tight with a sense of foreboding.
“Drink your coffee, Logan.” Rafe almost allowed himself to grin. “You can sleep in the downstairs guest room tonight. We’ll check out the house in the morning.” Hell, he’d hoped to get out of letting Cami know about the snowmobile.
Logan stared back at him mockingly. “Storm is supposed to last three days, with a healthy helping of four to maybe six more feet before it’s over, and up to three days to dig out if the temperature stays in the teens as they’re predicting. You really want to lose your houseguest that soon?” Logan’s smile was knowing as he continued.
“I’m fairly certain she doesn’t know about your snowmobile, or she wouldn’t be upstairs in your bed. You’d be on the road trying to navigate the storm and your lust.”
Sucked when someone knew you as well as he and his cousins knew each other.
Rafe sipped at his coffee again, refusing to comment as Logan sat back in his chair and watched him with silent amusement.
“What are you getting yourself into, Rafe?” he finally asked him again the amusement dissipating. “Have you thought about this? Have you thought about how old she is? The same age as Jaymi—”
“Enough, Logan.” He glared back at his cousin. “I won’t think about Jaymi. Not tonight.”
Logan rubbed his hand over his face wearily. “She’s the wrong woman,” he finally growled. “Her father will come after you shooting when he finds out. Are you going to shoot back? Could you shoot back if she were watching?”
“There will be no shooting,” Rafe promised him. “Her father’s in Aspen and he doesn’t come back to Sweetrock very often. Her mother’s health isn’t that good any longer.”
Not that Mark Flannigan had ever taken much interest in his younger daughter. It had been Jaymi that he had shown his love to, and only Jaymi.
Logan shook his head. He was aware of the lack of concern Mark had always shown Cami, especially the summer Jaymi had died. “If she were my daughter, there’s no way in hell I’d sit still while she was in possible danger. Flannigan could end up fooling us.”
“Yeah, and I believe in fairy tales, too,” Rafe drawled cynically. “Trust me, Flannigan’s not going to go to the trouble.”
“And I’m telling you, fucking her is going to rain hell down on you.”
Logan warned him. “For God’s sake, Rafe—”
“Let it go, Logan. As you said, once the storm is over she’ll be gone and she’ll pretend it never happened, just as she has every other time.”
“And the next time the two of you have five minutes alone you’re ripping each other’s clothes off and fucking like minks on top of the kitchen table,” Logan reminded him. “Does that tell you anything?”
“I was too drunk to ignore my hard dick?” Rafe shot back.
“Or too damned stupid to ignore it.” Logan finished his coffee before rising to his feet. Moving to the heavy winter wear he’d taken off after entering the house he told Rafe, “I’m heading to Crowe’s. I doubt very seriously he has a woman in his bed tonight. It would surprise the hell out of me to even learn he’d stayed in the county. That boy ain’t happy to be back. And here he’s the one that talked us into coming back.”
“Why did we come back?” Rafe asked, refusing to stand, knowing how Logan could be. He could get ready to leave fifty times before ever making it out of the door. Knowing Logan as well as Rafe did how and much colder the mountains were as one moved higher into them, he knew damned good and well Logan had probably regretted heading out no sooner than he passed the city limits. Logan was hell for doing his job, no matter how hot or how cold. He was a one-man tracking/killing machine. But he liked his creature comforts and didn’t leave them unless he simply didn’t have a choice.
In his mind, he’d had no choice. He couldn’t reach Rafe by phone and he was determined to ensure his safety. But now he knew his cousin was safe, he’d be damned slow about leaving.
“Why don’t you drop the damned coat and stay here tonight,” Rafe growled as Logan looked outside at the snow and gave a heavy sigh. “If Cami sees you or the snowmobile, then just tell her you’re on your way to Crowe’s and not heading back to town until everything melts enough to drive in.”
That would keep her here without her anger affecting Rafe’s pleasure. And he did intend to have his pleasure until he couldn’t keep her there another second longer.
“That will work.” Logan dropped the coat, but he wasn’t making a move to leave the kitchen.
“What now?” Rafe asked him.
Logan stared back at him, his eyes so hard, so cold, that Rafe wondered if his cousin ever felt warm inside anymore. He definitely didn’t act as though he did.
“You in love with her?” Logan finally asked before giving his head a hard negative jerk as he grimaced. “Yeah, you are,” he answered his own question. “You have been since that first night you spent with her.”
Rafe rose from his chair, finished his coffee, then moved to the sink and set the cup inside it.
“I’m not in love with her.” He turned back to his cousin, confident he wasn’t in love, he couldn’t be in love, he refused to feel anything as futile as love for Cambria Flannigan. She’d run out on him one time too many for him to allow himself to touch that particular fairy tale.
“She’s just a fuck then?”
Rafe’s jaw tightened at the description, some furious, unknown denial raging inside him, demanding he voice the refusal. He held it inside, convincing himself it was simply the too-explicit description his cousin used that bothered him.
“Keep convincing yourself of that,” Logan stated with a mocking smile as he collected his coat, boots, and cold-weather paraphernalia and moved for the living room entrance. “You keep convincing yourself, I’ll keep reminding you, and maybe, when she helps the fine folks of Corbin County decide to try to bury us six feet under and then some, you won’t find that part of your soul shattered.”
As he had before, Rafe wondered as he watched his cousin move through the darkened living room and into the hall that led to the downstairs guest room. Rafe and Crowe had discussed their cousin often, wondering what had happened the year Logan had disappeared from contact completely during a mission he’d been sent on.
Marine snipers were often sent to hotspots that had them out of contact for months at a time. For a year, Logan had been sent on a mission that neither Crowe nor Rafe had been given any information on. Only their uncle and commanding officer, Ryan Calvert, had been aware of what was going on and whether Logan was alive or dead.
When he had returned, he hadn’t been the same man who had left. Logan had been so hard and so cold that for a while Rafe had wondered if his c
ousin had returned or only his ghost.
Giving his head a hard shake, Rafe checked the locks, checked the lower part of the house, the windows, the latches to the iron window covers, and then moved back upstairs where he repeated the lock check.
Satisfied the house was secure and the alarm system operating fully, he moved back to the bedroom and the woman sleeping in his bed.
She hadn’t moved other than to gather his pillow closer beneath her as though searching for him.
No, she wasn’t searching for him, he told himself. He couldn’t let himself think it or believe it. She was going to walk out of his life the minute the roads were open to afford her escape. And once she left, she wouldn’t return unless she simply had no other choice, as she had had no choice tonight.
Shedding his clothes, Rafe slid back into the bed, eased his pillow away from her, then in surprise felt her moving against him until she settled over his chest once again.
Her head rested on his shoulder, her arm was thrown over his abdomen, one slender, silky warm leg tucked between his, she whispered a discontented little sigh and nudged against him once again.
Pulling the blankets carefully around them, Rafe wrapped his arms around her and held her snug against him. Her next sigh was one of satisfaction, of contentment.
What had he gotten himself into here? he wondered, because holding her felt as natural as breathing and just as imperative. But hell, every time they had come together it had felt like finding home. In his life, nothing had ever felt as warm or as natural as her body against him or the warmth of her sinking into him.
Would she try to leave without waking him if he somehow managed to sleep deep enough to miss her slipping from the bed? In all the years since his training in the military, nothing had ever slipped by him in his sleep as easily as Cami had slipped from his bed that first night.
He’d awakened before she’d finished dressing that morning. For a while he had watched her from beneath his lashes as she hurried and dressed. And he’d let her leave. He had refused to hold her to him and he’d refused to confront her.
It wasn’t a mistake he would make again.
He stared down at her for long moments.
Hell, there was no way he could be certain that he would even awaken this time. It had been three years since the last time she had slipped out of the bed on him. She’d almost been gone before he’d missed her warmth.
Rafe hoped, in the past five years his senses had grown sharper, stronger, and he would know when and if she tried to do it again.
To be sure, he set that mental alarm he’d developed. One hour. He’d check on her in one hour. An hour in this kind of weather wouldn’t get her far; he’d at least have a chance of catching up with her before she froze to death.
And if she did try to leave?
Well then, he’d paddle her ass, before he fucked it until she swore, until she knew, believed, and had cemented in her head forever the idea that she would never, ever, run from him again.
CHAPTER 6
It was overcast, bitterly freezing cold, and as white outside as Cami was certain she had ever seen it.
Even dressed, she wrapped her arms around herself, and a shiver still raced through her at the sight of it. Jeans, wool socks, and fur-lined boots simply weren’t enough covering for more than a few minutes in weather such as what she was facing now.
Standing on Rafer’s porch and staring into the heavy, dark clouds still bearing down as they swept around the mountain, she couldn’t help but breathe out roughly.
The blizzard was only waiting to hit with its second round of downy snow to catch the unwary as they foolishly left the warmth of their homes.
She’d listened to the weather after awakening and watched the reports on the satellite before the gathering clouds had completely obliterated the line of sight between satellite and dish.
It may not have been snowing furiously at the ranch at the moment, but it was hitting Aspen and spitting on Sweetrock with a vengence.
And from the looks of it, it would be dumping on the Rafe’s ranch once again as well.
Cami didn’t dare move from the porch. The drifts were piled high around it, on it, and against it as though there were simply no other place to store the icy fluff.
For the first time in her life, she found the snow to be an inconvenience and she was wishing it away with everything inside her. The longer she stayed here, the more likely destruction was apt to build around her.
What had possessed her to ever take this much longer route home? To ever risk something like this happening?
Just to see if she could glimpse signs of life in the Ramsey ranch house. To see if the rumors that Clyde Ramsey’s nephew, Rafer Callahan, had returned were true.
She hadn’t expected it to begin snowing. When it had begun just after she made the turn from Aspen, she had convinced herself it was nothing. It would flurry awhile, then go away just as it had done several times in the past weeks.
By the time her car had slid into an icy drift at the mouth of his driveway she was certain fate was laughing its ass off at her. This was what she got for tempting it, for all those dark, lonely nights that she had wished things were different and she was in his arms rather than sleeping alone.
How silly she had been to have slipped away from him the few nights they’d had together. She should have just stayed with him while he was in and gotten the hunger out of her system rather than running. Leaving as she had, had left so many things unanswered and incomplete. And it had left so many desires still raging inside her, tempting her, tormenting her—
She rubbed at the chill in her arms as a wave of inner heat swept through her womb to settle in her pussy and wrap around her clit.
She was growing wet again, but she was also wishing, remembering — wishing things had been different and remembering the fantasies, not so much of sex or the wild, impossibly heated pleasure that could flare between them. It was the dreams that slipped into her mind once she slept that really tore at her.
The dreams of his arms around her, his laughter at her ear. The sound of his voice, low, deep, as he just whispered her name. The sound of something more — she pushed the thought away. It was those thoughts, those dreams, that slipped up on her and weakened her. That created moments like now. When the nightmares slipped out as well and threatened the fragile peace she had found.
She couldn’t have him and she knew it.
There was too much Rafe was unaware of, and too much pain tearing at her to allow it.
Too much pain, fear, and the knowledge of what would happen to her soul if she lost him to death. If somehow, someone decided to try to harm him, and, God forbid, succeeded.
And still she was torn in her needs and in her anger. She fought not just herself and her own needs but also his desires and the return of reality.
A reality that could destroy her and her own needs.
This wasn’t a good thing. She couldn’t be stuck here until the roads were cleared. Once her car was found, then the first place state workers would search for her was at the ranch. Her uncle Eddy Flannigan worked on the state road crew. She couldn’t imagine the worry, and possibly the fear that she was about to repeat the past, if he found her there. Especially if he realized where she had slept.
In Rafer Callahan’s bed and in his arms. Of course he wouldn’t have to realize anything. He knew her and he would know where she had slept.
She leaned against the support post and stared at the ground where more than four feet of snow had fallen, and the drifts against the house were even higher. In places, they were at least five feet deep or more. The news said to expect two or more feet as well, coming that day or into the evening, and possibly another six to twelve inches before dawn.
It was the blizzard that had threatened to roll across the mountains all winter.
There wasn’t a chance of escaping the icy sanctuary she had found or the emotional abyss she was beginning to stare into.
There
was a reason she had run from Rafe each time they had spent the night together. Slipping from his hotel room before he awoke and catching a ride to the nearest airport or car rental.
She had run because sleeping with him had opened something inside her that she hadn’t been able to face. It had thrown her back into the past with a suddenness that had left her crying for days. The memories were going to destroy her. She could feel it coming. They were right there, fighting to rush in and destroy her control, and there wasn’t a lot of control left some days. Some days the unnamed restless pain that never seemed to dissipate seemed to grow. To overtake that part of her with a hunger that threatened to destroy her.
The first time she had seen him the summer she had turned thirteen, she had sworn she had fallen in love with the man her sister called her best friend, Rafer Callahan. The man Cami had known instinctively that her sister was sleeping with.
Cami had loved his name. She had loved his fierce blue eyes, the laughter in them, the way he walked with such cocky confidence, and the way he had smiled at her.
For months she had haunted her sister’s apartment, even though he had moved out. Cami had watched for him, searched for him. He had never been far from her mind on any given day.
She had promised herself she wouldn’t do this again. Irritation and frustration were rising inside her now. She had sworn she wouldn’t allow herself to ever come this close to losing her soul as she had the last time she and Rafer had been together. Yet here she was doing just that. She was losing the control it took to keep him at arm’s length and to control the emotions that swirled inside her like a violent storm.
Turning, Cami moved back into the warmth of the kitchen, watching as Rafe cleaned up the dishes from the simple dinner of pork roast, red potatoes, gravy, and rolls she had prepared from the supplies he had on hand.
He’d watched her cook as though no one had ever cooked for him. Silently, his sapphire gaze had tracked every move she made, hunger gleaming in his eyes.