Midnight Sins

by Lora Leigh

  “Lift your nipple to me,” he suddenly bit out in demand, the sound of his voice a hard, primitive rasp.

  Cupping a mound, she did as she was bid, then cried out at the incredible heat of his mouth surrounding the desperately sensitive peak. His tongue began to thrash against it, erotically licking and tasting with rising hunger.

  “Rafe.” The sound of her own voice, so dark, so locked in complete sexual surrender, shocked her.

  “Damn, Cami,” he suddenly groaned. “It’s not enough, sweetheart. I have to have you myself.”

  The vibrator pulled free of her body, only to have Rafer move in closer, his hips dipping, his cock lodging against her entrance. The heavy, thick crest was hotter than any toy created by man or by woman.

  “Lift your legs, knees at my hips,” he growled, those hips working, twisting, pushing forward to work his cock deeper inside the clenched muscles of her pussy.

  Her hands were at his shoulders, nails biting into his flesh. She gripped his hips with her knees and tilted her pussy up to take more, to take him deeper. To facilitate each heavy thrust.

  “Yes, fuck me, Rafer,” she whispered as the coarse mat of hair on his chest raked across her tender nipples, sensitizing them further.

  His pelvis stroked over her clit, his cock worked inside her, stretching her with such incredible pleasure she could only whimper with the sensations raking across her nerve endings.

  His head lowered, his lips against her shoulder, his tongue licking over her flesh. With a final, hard thrust he buried into the hilt, the stroke forceful, powering through the clenched, slickened muscles of her pussy and spearing to the depths of it.

  Buried deep inside her, pulsing, throbbing.

  “So fucking tight,” he groaned as his lips moved to her neck, his teeth raking against the tender nerve endings. “I couldn’t forget how tight you were after you left, how hot and slick your pussy is. How it grips me and sucks at my dick until it’s all I can do to keep from losing my mind with the need to fuck you.”

  Explicit. Demanding.

  His hips were moving harder, faster.

  Lifting one hand, he speared his fingers in her hair, clenching the short strands before pulling her head back, his lips covering hers, his tongue filling her mouth as the heavy, engorged flesh of his erection pumped inside her with ever-increasing strokes.

  His lips rubbed against hers, parting them, his tongue licking against hers, tasting her as she tasted him, holding her to him, moving against her. Waves of heat and incredible bliss began to roll through her. Her muscles tightened, her pussy clamping down on his cock, rippling around it as he moved harder and faster inside her.

  The bite of pleasure-pain began to burn hotter. It began to tighten further in impending ecstasy. It was a pleasure she couldn’t resist, one she couldn’t deny.

  Holding on to him as his lips tore from hers, his head tilting back and a grimace contorting his face, Cami jumped headlong into the ecstasy of release and the pleasure that could only be found in Rafer’s arms.

  As she cried out his name, shudders began to race through her, tremors that shook her body, shudders that began to quake through her womb. Above her, Rafer buried his face against her neck, pushed in hard, deep, and with a ragged growl filled her with the hard, heated release that had been locked inside his balls.

  Cami felt the flesh buried inside her as it seemed to thicken, to throb, then the heavy, fierce spurts of his semen pulsed inside her, searing her.

  She could only hold onto him and gasp in brilliant ectasy. It seemed never-ending, exploding through her again and again as Rafer continued to thrust against her.

  His arms were around her, holding her close as he kept his weight from falling to her completely. As his chest met her breasts, Cami fought for breath, the ecstasy so intense she didn’t know if she would ever learn how to breathe properly again.

  God, what was she going to do if the time came when there was no chance at all of ever having him hold her? If she forever lost the fiery heat of his possession and his kiss again?

  If something happened to him.

  Was it truly better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all?

  Would she have wanted to miss the pleasure she’d found in his arms?

  “I hear you became very curious and began asking questions about the Callahans this week,” he murmured as his heart still raced. “You should have come to the ranch, darlin’. I would have answered any question you had about any of us.”

  Would he have known the answers to her questions, though?

  She gave a deceptively unconcerned shrug of her shoulders. “They weren’t questions about you or your cousins in particular,” she told him. “I just wanted to know a few things.”

  “No, the questions were about our parents and about us in particular. Don’t lie to me, Cami, and I’ll say again, you could have asked me. You told me my bastard of a grandfather made his first visit to one of my lovers. Now I want to know why.”

  Even as she lay against him she could hear the warning in his voice. He wanted answers now. If she had any further questions, then she had better ask him rather than anyone else.

  “I just wanted to know what happened,” she said softly. “Nearly a whole community turns against three children and it seems no one has questioned why? Perhaps I thought it was time someone asked those questions.”

  “Let me give you the answer there, kitten,” he offered as though the why didn’t matter to him any longer. “Our fathers not only married three of Sweetrock’s favorite daughters, but they married into the three richest families from here to Denver and past Aspen. Three supposedly shiftless, no-account brothers stepped in shit and came out smelling like a rose, as they say. Those families didn’t appreciate the defection of their daughters, they didn’t care for the bad blood that had been injected into their grandsons, and they sure as hell wanted to make certain that bad blood didn’t go any further. And there you have it, the reason why a whole community turned against three young boys. To ensure they learned their place and never aspired to step above it.” And there was the bitterness, just the thinnest vein of it, as he gave her the explanation everyone else accepted as well. “Now what the hell did Marshal Roberts want? Don’t make me ask again, Cami.” He rolled from her as he made the demand.

  She sat up slowly, pulling the sheet around her breasts as she turned to stare down at him watching as he lounged back on her pillows, unashamedly naked. He didn’t even bother to pull the sheet around his hips as he watched her closely.

  She hadn’t noticed his lashes before, she realized. They were thick, lush lashes women cried over because they didn’t have, surrounding the deep sapphire blue of his eyes.

  And she had picked a hell of a time to notice it.

  “I’m not certain what Marshal Roberts was after,” she finally said, trembling at the icy look in his sapphire eyes. “He made me very curious though about everything that’s happened.”

  “Such as?” If possible, his voice and his expression were harder. Colder.

  Cami swallowed with a hint of nervousness that she couldn’t hide. “Your parents’ deaths. Your uncles’.” She had to fight to hold back her tears at the next thought. “My sister’s.”

  Pulling her knees up, she rested her chin on them as Rafe sat up slowly.

  “Cami, you know those deaths were unrelated.”

  She shook her head, her heart pounding in fear. “Your parents and uncle died on the same mountain road, on the same curve. God, Rafer,” her voice dropped further. “Do you realize it was the exact place your grandparents, JR and Eileen Callahan died?”

  It was too much. There were too many Callahans to die in the same place, the same way, and nearly the same excuse used across three generations. And no one seemed to want to question it, or to see the trail of suspicion.

  “Cami, stop this, baby.” His expression gentled slowly. “You’re letting that old bastard fuck with your head. You can’t do that.”

>   He wasn’t hearing her.

  She could feel the danger that swirled around him. She had always felt it. As though some shadow haunted him and his cousins and refused to dissipate.

  “Rafer, listen to me,” she whispered, almost terrified that someone else would hear her. “There are too many coincidences. You say you don’t believe in them, yet you’re just accepting three generations dying in the same place, as well as your uncle Clyde. Do you realize no one else has ever died in that same place in the history of that mountain road?”

  “Cami…” She could see his refusal to listen to her in his expression, hear it in his voice.

  “No.” She pushed her fingers through her hair with an edge of desperation. “You have to listen to me, Rafer.” She clenched at the strands of hair she held as she fought and failed to fight back her fear for him.

  “Cami, he’s fucking with you, dammit!”

  Rafer could feel the need to confront Marshal Roberts rising inside him with a wave of fury. He couldn’t believe that old bastard had finally figured out that Cami was more important to him than any other woman in his life had been. And to actually have the sheer nerve to come to her house and frighten her this way was unforgivable.

  “He’s not fucking with me.” She lifted her gaze to him as he pushed her back to the pillows, propping himself up to stare down at her. “What about Jaymi?”

  He could see the fear flashing in her eyes now.

  “Cami, Jaymi was killed by a fucking lunatic, you know that.” He ached for her. Jaymi’s death had destroyed her, he knew that, but she had to realize—

  “Did she tell you about the phone calls?”

  He could feel his stomach clench with trepidation then. “What phone calls? Jaymi never mentioned any phone calls, Cami, neither did you.”

  He watched her lips tremble, watched the misery that darkened her eyes.

  “I’m getting them now.”

  Fear tore a hole through his soul.

  “What phone calls, Cami?” He could feel the rage beginning to burn in his stomach.

  “The ones that warned her that if she didn’t stay away from you, that something would happen to her. She knew who it was. She knew the voice, but she didn’t put it together until the last social we attended with you, Logan, and Crowe. I heard her that night, telling him that she knew something. Then she went into her room where I couldn’t hear her. She wouldn’t tell me what it was, or who it was.” Her breathing hitched with tears, the sound of them breaking his heart. “Two days later, she was dead.” Her breath caught, and Rafe watched as she fought back her tears.

  That wasn’t a coincidence, because Jaymi hadn’t been the only one of the young women who died that summer who had received such phone calls. And now, Cami was getting them?

  “You were called?” he questioned her.

  She nodded quickly. “I recognize the voice, Rafer, just as Jaymi did. I know that voice, but I can’t put a face to it. When I do—”

  “When you do, you’ll tell me and I’ll fucking deal with it,” he informed her harshly, his hands moving to grip her shoulders imperatively as he made the order. “Do you understand me, Cami?”

  “And if he decides to just kill you, Logan, and Crowe instead?” she asked tearfully, though she held the tears back. “What then?”

  Rafe moved from her slowly, sitting up on the side of the bed and pushing his hands through his hair in irritation.

  “That bastard is playing with both of us,” he finally gritted out as he gave his head a hard shake.

  Marshal Roberts was a master at manipulation. He had known it all his life.

  How many times had Clyde been lured away from the ranch because Marshal had called for some reason or another, and convinced him to meet him somewhere? How many times had the ranch been vandalized each time, and Roberts hadn’t made the meeting with Clyde?

  It was a cycle. It had taken Clyde a few times to realize what his brother-in-law was doing. A few years to realize that the core of decency he thought Marshal had didn’t exist.

  When Marshal couldn’t lure him away on his own, he’d found other means to pull Clyde, Rafe, Logan, and Crowe from the ranch.

  It hadn’t been to protect them as Clyde had once mused. Fuck, no, Marshal had done it out of a vindictive desire to destroy the ranch and make them completely paranoid. If it had been to protect them, then the attacks would have come the times they had sat in the ranch dark, silent ranch house and waited, weapons ready, for the vandals to strike again.

  “I want to know everything he said, Cami,” he finally told her. “And don’t leave anything out.”

  He watched as she stared up at the ceiling.

  “I can’t do a play-by-play,” she told him wearily as she turned her head to gaze back at him. “You don’t believe me, do you, Rafer?”

  “I don’t disbelieve you,” he finally sighed. “But, Cami, you don’t know him as I do.” He shook his head at the lifetime of memories he had where Marshal Roberts and his deceptions were concerned.

  “Rafer, he was trying to tell me something,” she whispered, and Rafer knew she truly believed that. “What else could it be?”

  “Because he’s a son of a bitch?” he sighed wearily.

  “That’s not a good enough reason, Rafer,” she said, saddened not just because of the life she knew he and his cousins had lived but also because he seemed to have accepted it as deeply as everyone else in Corbin County. “Coincidences like this don’t happen. There has to be more to it.”

  “The reason doesn’t matter, Cami,” he assured her with an edge of mockery. “And coincidences are called that for a reason, I’ve learned. Sometimes, it truly is a coincidence. Now I’m not concerned with the past, with grandparents or with Marshal Roberts. I want to know about those phone calls.”

  “I told you about the phone calls, Rafer,” she argued with a surge of anger. The fear was being overshadowed now. Overshadowed by the anger that Rafer refused to even consider the fact that danger could be haunting him. “Why aren’t you willing to listen to me?”

  He gave a heavy sigh.

  “Did you know the Corbins began this little campaign?” he asked her softly. “Crowe’s granddaddy stood at the entrance to the funeral home when Logan, Crowe, and myself arrived at the funeral home with Clyde. He barred our way. The Callahans had no place there, he said. They murdered his daughter and he refused to have one attend her funeral, and Saul Rafferty, Logan’s grandfather, and Marshal Roberts backed him on it. We weren’t welcome there.”

  Cami had heard that story more than once, and each time she’d seen the conflict most people still had over it. She had also seen the knowledge that James Corbin had drawn the line that day and over the years and he’d enforced it. Marshal Roberts and Saul Rafferty hadn’t, though, if she remembered the Callahan history correct. And she was pretty certain she did.

  “James Corbin enforced it,” she repeated. “Not the others.”

  “The other’s backed him, Cami,” he growled, frustration filling his voice now. “Mine and Logan’s grandfathers were just as much a part of it as James Corbin was.”

  “I don’t think Marshal Roberts was,” she argued. “I don’t know about Saul Rafferty, but I do know he moved from Corbin County just after his daughter’s funeral. He only returns to oversee certain aspects of the ranch, other than that his manager handles everything. He’s separated himself from the entire situation, hasn’t he?” She knew he had. She had made it her business in the past few days to find out.

  “Let it go, Cami,” Rafe warned her. “This isn’t your fight, and it’s a fight you’ll lose. For God’s sake, if any part of what you suspect is true, then can you imagine the danger it would place you in?”

  “You already suspected it?” she whispered, shocked that he was fighting her if he had already suspected something wasn’t right about the past.

  “No, Cami, I don’t,” he told her, his tone short now as he denied the charge. “Do you think we haven’t thoug
ht of every question you’ve come up with?” He reached out, his fingertips caressing down the side of her face before he pulled back and watched her quietly for long moments. “Honey, this time, coincidence is coincidence.”

  “You’re just accepting it?” She couldn’t believe it. That Rafe wouldn’t fight against the suspected murders of his family? Especially his parents and his uncle?

  “It’s not a question of accepting it or not accepting it,” he informed her brusquely. “It’s the way things are, plain and simple. The only reason you want to change it at this point is so you can fuck me without having to worry about the fine citizens of this county looking down at you for sharing a bed with a Callahan.”

  Could she blame him for believing it? How many people had ever questioned how the Callahan cousins had been treated over the years?

  How many had ever stood up for them?

  Or had they, like her, been torn by the fear of losing someone they would love with all their hearts and the three men who only sneered in the face of their unacceptance and flaunted the fact that they didn’t give a damn? Men who dared their enemies to strike out at them or anyone who loved them.

  “Why did you even come here tonight if all you wanted was to know about your grandfather’s visit?” She was angry at herself, but a part of her was even angrier at him. “What did it accomplish, Rafer? You should have just called.”

  He chuckled at her question then, a dark, sexy sound of male amusement as the frustration and anger eased from his gaze.

  “What did it accomplish?” he asked arched his brow, and gave her a heavy-lidded look of complete male satisfaction. “Other than eliminating your need for that fake dick tonight? It accomplished a hell of a lot of pleasure and the best come I’ve had since the last time I had my cock buried in your sweet little pussy.”

  “It’s last time it’s going to be buried,” she retorted, knowing it was an empty threat, but growing so furious now that her pride kicked in. “You should have stayed home, Rafe.” She pushed away from him, sliding from the bed as she acknowledged she wasn’t going to walk away from him unscathed. Not now, and not in the future. “You’re not willing to fight for anything, are you, but I’m supposed to risk every part of my heart and soul for the pleasure of having you in my bed? Does this seem a little skewed to you somehow? Tell me, Rafe Callahan, do you even care what a woman would go through in this fucking county for you? Would it even make a difference if you knew you had broken her heart after she had already placed herself on the firing line?”