by Lora Leigh
“Coffee?” He looked at her expectantly, one black brow arching quizzically.
He was too damned good-looking for her peace of mind. Six feet, three inches, broad, muscular — if there was an ounce of fat on his flesh, then she hadn’t found it yet.
His thick, silky black hair fell around his face, giving the savage features a sexy, sensuous cast that immediately drew female eyes. It always looked a bit mussed, as though a woman had just run her fingers through it and enjoyed the soft, cool feel of it.
Dressed in jeans, sneakers and a flannel shirt, the long sleeves rolled to his elbows, he looked like a lazy tiger prowling his lair. Biding his time before he took his mate.
She almost didn’t control the jerk of shock that hit her at the thought. She wasn’t a mate; she wasn’t a lover. This was where she invariably managed to get herself in trouble when it came to Rafer.
Rafe, she reminded herself. She was going to have to begin calling him Rafe, or she would draw more attention to herself than she wanted. Everyone called him Rafe. No one ever called him Rafer except her. And she just couldn’t seem to break the habit.
“Daydreaming or fantasizing, Cambria?” That silky drawl, so wicked in its sensuality, had her gaze jerking from his chest to his face.
“Excuse me?” She blinked back at him, wondering if he could see into those fantasies and daydreams.
He gave a light chuckle as he moved to the coffeepot. “Have a seat; I’ll make the coffee.”
She stepped warily to the table, only just barely controlling her flush of embarrassment at what had taken place on that table the night before.
His head between her thighs, his tongue dancing wickedly over and inside her pussy. His hands on her breasts, her nipples. Her own hands there—
She clasped her hands in her lap tightly and pressed her thighs together with a firm admonishment that she was not going to get wet. She would not get wet. She wasn’t wearing panties and she simply couldn’t afford to have her juices gathering and easing—
Her teeth clenched in anger at herself.
There it was. The slow, easy glide of her juices from her vagina. At this rate, her jeans were going to be wet and she didn’t have anything else to wear.
“You slept deep last night.” He spoke quietly as he set the coffee in front of her. “I think we could have had a bomb going off outside the bedroom and it wouldn’t have shaken you.”
His smile was a slight quirk.
How long had it been since he had smiled?
Had he gotten over Jaymi’s death? Did he even think of the death of his lover in his arms as anything other than the event that had nearly destroyed his life?
“I need to make a few phone calls,” she said. Rather than asking the questions raging through her, she went for something more mundane, something simple. She needed to get in touch with her aunt and uncle and let them know she was safe. No doubt Aunt Ella was beside herself, pacing the floors by now.
“Phones are down; cell-phone reception is lousy at best,” he told her. “There’s a chance you’ll get a text out if you stand on the balcony outside the bedroom.”
Her aunt and uncle were no doubt worried to death.
“There was about a forty-minute lag time on mine to Crowe,” he told her. “He’s in the cabin.” He nodded toward the mountains rising behind the house.
Crowe Callahan’s cabin was so far up that mountain that when the cousins had disappeared after the judge released them twelve years before, it had taken days for the sheriff to find them again when he’d been forced to return their belongings.
She nodded. If she was lucky, her aunt and uncle would at least know she was safe and warm until the storm was over. She’d simply stated she was with a friend. Would they suspect who that friend was, she wondered? Perhaps not at first, but her aunt’s intuition could be amazingly precise.
Sliding the cup of coffee across the table minutes later, Rafe took the opposite chair and lounged back in it lazily.
“So what’s your story?” he asked.
Her cup halfway to her lips, Cami looked up at him slowly, knowing exactly what he was talking about simply from the hint of underlying anger in his voice.
What would her excuse be for being at the Triple R Ranch during a blizzard with Rafer Callahan? And in his eyes she could see a demand for a reason why she would need an excuse.
“The truth usually works.” She sighed. “The car slid into a snowdrift and I had to stay here.”
“And where did you sleep?” The hard curve of his lips didn’t even resemble a smile. “I need to know what to say when the good folks of Sweetrock decide to decimate me again because I slept with one of their favorite daughters.”
“Like I tell the kids at school, don’t borrow trouble and you won’t have as many problems,” she told him. “If they ask, do what you’ve always done before and shoot them that arrogant look before turning and walking away. Change the way you act and you give them more to talk about.”
And what the hell was she going to say? The question was bound to come up. Any woman seen in the company of a Callahan eventually faced the third degree. Then, there was always the series of lectures, and enough harassment that they’d walk away from the Callahan simply out of frustration.
But it was rumored Rafe never really gave a damn. If a lady left before he did, then oh well, was the attitude he seemed to take. That was the impression he had always given, but Cami remembered Jaymi’s comment once that Tye had told her about the times Rafer had often retreated within himself afterwards. Tye had sworn that those rejections and opposition were destroying Rafe. Cami couldn’t imagine that he had endured them without serious internal scars.
“So, we’re on the sly here then.” He gave a slow nod. “Did I give up my bed for you? Or was I my normal cruel self and forced you to sleep on the couch?”
“Don’t, Rafe.” Cami wrapped her hands around the cup as she stared back at him directly. “Things can’t be any different and you know it. What happened to Jaymi changed everything.”
He snorted. “You were only thirteen then, Cami. I had no thoughts at all of you, sexually. But later—” He shook his head. “You want me until it’s all you can do to sit still in that damned chair and you’ll still deny it, won’t you?”
He leaned forward, pushing the cup slowly out of his way as he braced his arms on the table and glared back at her. “Tell me, Cami, when will it stop mattering to you what the people think?”
“When my job no longer depends on it?” she suggested, feeling his tension, his anger, licking at her now. “When my parents don’t stare at my sister’s picture with such grief and my mother isn’t sobbing because she lost her daughter and the men she believes killed her have gone unpunished.”
Her lips thinned as she breathed out roughly.
Cami’s hand jerked up, covered her lips.
God, she hadn’t wanted to say that; She hadn’t wanted to hurt either of them with the truth he should know by now couldn’t be avoided.
His eyes narrowed back at her as mockery filled his expression. “Yeah, that was real dumb,” he drawled. “We both know there’s no way the Callahan cousins can defend themselves against what the good people of Sweetrock think.” He gave a short bark of laughter at the thought. “Or should I say, what the barons tell them to think?”
Cami could only shake her head at the comment. “You know how they are, Rafe. The barons, for whatever reason, want the three of you out of Sweetrock forever. You’ve had twelve years to try to convince everyone differently and you haven’t even made the attempt. You return home every so often, stare down your nose at them, and pretend they don’t matter. When you know that if you want to stay here, then it does matter.”
“What matters, Cami? Their opinion?” Rafe smirked. “When I was ten and my parents had just died, one of the fine teachers of Sweetrock informed me I was better off without them and while the principal lectured me because I had gotten into a fight with a boy that called my
mother a Callahan whore.” By the time he finished he was leaning across the table, almost nose to nose with her, the fury that filled his sapphire eyes frightening in its intensity. “Tell me, why the fuck should I care?”
She hadn’t known about that but she didn’t doubt it in the slightest either.
She knew his life in Sweetrock had never been easy, but she hadn’t known that it had been that terrible when he had been so young. No more than his parents’ lives had been easy. As though there were those determined to make the orphans pay for their fathers’ supposed crimes since their fathers weren’t there to pay themselves.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Pulling back, he shot her a disgusted look before picking up his coffee cup and moving to the sink. It was set in the sink gently, despite the tension raging through him. She had expected him to throw it. She would have.
“Fuck your ‘sorry,’” he grunted. “Your parents for all their love for each other and for Jaymi, they never gave a damn about you. And they had no compassion, and they sure as hell had no sympathy, for three little boys suddenly orphaned and about as alone in the world as they could get. When our parents died every damned one of them turned on us and the few that didn’t ignored it,” he accused. “Tell me, Cami, do you even know why the hell the fine citizens of Sweetrock hated my father and uncles more than they hated any others? What the hell did they do to inspire such fucking animosity toward their children as well?”
Cami could only shake her head. She’d had this discussion with her Aunt, and Ella Flannigan hadn’t been willing to supply the answers.
There had been excuses. There had been embarassment. But, there hadn’t been an explanation that made sense other than the fact that the barons had set the rules on their treatment and everyone seemed to follow.
Even among the teachers Cami had been friends with most of her life seemed unwilling to discuss the Callahan cousins.
She’d always felt as though her parents and their friends were unwilling to face whatever had happened in the past. They were definitely unwilling to discuss their own reasons for so blindly following the cousins’ families in that regard.
Sweetrock was a very small town. A church, a courthouse and sheriff’s office, a single grocer, and several feed and supply stores were all they could boast of. There were fewer than a thousand citizens; the last census counted 605 within the city limits.
“So you’re just going to lie about your little adventure with Rafer Callahan.” He strode back to the table and leaned over, his palms flattening against the tabletop.
“There’s no lie. It was snowing, my car was stuck, and I’m staying here until I can get the car out.” She had to force the words past her lips as she stared into the depths of his burning gaze.
There was anger there. A male fury that burned clear to his soul. But there was also betrayal, and she couldn’t blame him for feeling it or for hating her and everyone else in the county for it.
“If I could get you out of here now, right this minute, I would.” His lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl. “I’ll be damned if I even want you here.”
She rose slowly to her feet, watching as he straightened as well, his chest rising and falling harshly, those blue, blue eyes glaring at her with something akin to hatred.
“I can leave,” she stated.
It shouldn’t be too bad. If she could make it to her car before the storm began again.
If she could get through the freezing drifts before the cold got to her.
But here wasn’t a good place to be if—
Her eyes narrowed.
“Like hell,” she snapped back at him. “You had your chance to get me out of here and you blew it, big boy. It looks like you’re damned sure stuck with me until the storm lets up or someone can bulldoze their way through the snow to get to me.”
“Stuck with you?” he bit out harshly. “Oh, baby, the very last thing I am is stuck with you. Haven’t you heard the fucking rumors in this fine county? I kill women for a fucking hobby.” His voice rose on that last note, the incredulity she knew he felt lying just beneath the fury.
“You wouldn’t hurt a woman! You sure as hell wouldn’t hurt me!” she yelled back at him, suddenly incensed that he would even dare to use such a threat against her. “You would make one want to kill you instead. What the hell does it matter to you that the whole world doesn’t know we were fucking while I was stuck here? Do I have to spread my business around town to satisfy your male pride?”
Her hands went to her hips, indignation and anger surging through her so hard that her heart was pounding furiously kicking her senses into overdrive.
“My male pride doesn’t have a damned thing to do with it,” he snarled back. “But tell me this, Miss Flannigan, once someone rescues your tight little ass, will you even recognize me on the street?”
“I’ve never ignored you, Rafer Callahan,” she burst out, “and don’t you even pretend I have.” She jabbed him in the chest with her finger, shaking in admonishment as his gaze flicked to it with arrogant disregard.
“And when have you seen me on the street since I was arrested for Jaymi’s murder?” He stepped closer. The sound of Cami’s sisters’ name on his lips sent a rush of pain sweeping through her.
“I didn’t do that to you,” she said hoarsely, her throat tightening at the dark emotions that tightened his face. “I never thought you had anything to do with that.”
“How far does your belief in me go then?” he asked her roughly, the sound of his voice, scraping against emotions-raw and pulsing with a hunger that she didn’t understand. “Tell me, Cambria. Does it extend to going to dinner with me? To waking up next to me when there’s no storm to excuse your presence in my home? Tell me, does that belief extend to being my lover or just being my occasional fuck?”
Before she could stop it her hand flew out, cracking against his cheek with a suddenness that drew a gasp from her, and a sneer from him as she jerked her hand back. The red imprint stood out on his face. Rafe curled his lip in the insulting disregard for it, his eyes blazing as he reached out, grabbed her wrist, and yanked her against him.
“You get to pay for that little blow,” he growled, that hunger that had mystified her seconds before now glowing in his eyes like neon lights. A sexual, overpowering hunger so filled with demand that it nearly stole her breath. “If you’re just my occasional fuck, then I’m claiming another of my occasions right now, by God.”
CHAPTER 7
Cami wanted to protest. She wanted to smack him again, to hurt him as he had hurt her. She wanted to rail as much against fate and the past as against him and what he had said.
She wasn’t an occasional fuck, and she wasn’t afraid of the people of Sweetrock. She was afraid of doing as her sister had done, as she had nearly done three years before. Cami was terrified of giving him everything and losing it all if something happened to him. If the sins of the past were to strike out with deadly accurate fury, leaving her alone. So totally alone she would never recover.
That was it, she assured herself as his lips covered hers and stole her ability to scream or to rail at anything or anyone. As the hunger, a dark, bitter storm inside her began to rage.
She bit at his lips as they moved over hers, only narrowly missing as her teeth snapped together. A snarl grated from her throat.
“How bad do you want it, Rafer?” she snapped furiously as she struggled in his arms, her teeth snapping back at him again.
“Oh, I don’t think so, sweetheart,” he growled, one arm holding her locked to him as the other gripped her jaw. He exerted just enough to control her, just enough pressure to keep her from biting as his lips possessed hers.
Possessed her kiss, possessed each response he wanted, and sent a wave of fiery hunger, need, and anger slamming through Cami. Waves of cataclysmic sensation began tearing through her, mixing with the anger, the hunger, the overwhelming need for this one man. A need she was determined she would not allow to dest
roy her.
She pushed against his tongue as it thrust past her lips, tangled with it, and fought him for every second of the possession he was claiming. With each stroke of his lips, each arrogant thrust of his tongue, she was enraged anew at him. Enraged and desperate for every caress every touch. So hungry for him that her blood boiled with it, her flesh sensitizing for him.
The pure dominance was more than she could resist. There was something about him, something so wild and untethered, that she couldn’t help but be drawn by him. To hunger for him with a strength that made little sense.
Like a moth to a flame. The pleasure that rose between them was that irresistible and that incredibly bright. Like nothing she had known, like every fantasy and every dream she had ever imagined.
It would be her destruction, but resisting that destruction was beyond her ability. Resisting Rafer had always been impossible and she had sensed it, known it. But a part of her was too aware of every obstacle standing between them.
A moan tore from her throat as his tongue pumped into her mouth, licking at hers, then pulling back to nip at her lips before licking over the erotic little pain.
Her hands were in his hair, mussing it. His hands pushed beneath the layers of her sweatshirt and T-shirt. There he found her needy flesh, stroking her sides and stomach with firm, calloused fingertips as she arched into his touch. The sensations building between them were beginning to burn out of control. The power of their lust overtaking any objections she might have had.
Cami could feel intense burning with a blinding heat blazing as his lust tore through her; resisting him was impossible. Her body was clamoring for more, each touch stroking the flames of lust higher, she moaned into his kiss, his taste; Each stroke of his tongue an aphrodisiac to her senses. Each touch of his body against hers a flame she couldn’t deny.
It had to just be lust.
She could control it. She promised herself she would control any emotions that threatened to rise in that darkened corner of her soul that she’d always ignored. Ignored yet protected with every breath. Until Rafe stole her breath and slipped right past those defenses.