by Lora Leigh
Every Saturday night beginning in April with the Spring Fling Social, one of the dressier, more formal events held, the socials kicked off. Cami doubted there was a single family that didn’t attend, and very few children that didn’t spend the entire weekend at the community center.
The town square would be lit up like Christmas, the businesses surrounding it closed early, except the town’s single bar, located in the town square which would remain open through most of the night and well past the last call.
The socials were open to all, but they were heavily monitored and the alcohol strictly watched. Through the years, the event had had its ups and downs, but the dedication of the city council and the parents involved with the project kept it going.
The Spring Fling Social itself was highly anticipated. The winter months closed down the socials to allow for skiing activities and the influx of tourism for the skiing season in the surrounding counties. Several outlying ranches in those surrounding counties had turned into resorts with a focus on winter activities, making participation in the socials much lower during the skiing months. April saw the winter activities tapering off, though. The snow began to slack and finally melt. Frozen streams and icy rivers melted and began to run with an abundance of fish and wildlife as the trees began to green and their tiny buds made their debut.
And for the third year in a row, Cami didn’t have a date. She could have had one. If Rafe had returned her phone call, she might have had one.
She had her dress, her shoes, and all her accessories, and she was driving herself to the social, unless she wanted to walk it the second night in a row. Of course, driving meant finding a parking spot which would be impossible. Vehicles were already backing up along her street. On the other hand, finding company to walk home with wouldn’t be a problem.
It would be decidedly harder for anyone to follow her, and not be noticed than it was the night before.
For a moment, she wondered if Rafe would have attended if she had asked him or even if she had simply left him a message.
What did he look like in dress black or a tux? Would he have danced with her? Would the women at the social watch her with envy and longing as Rafer danced with her, as they had the night before?
And why the hell had he left so abruptly come to think of it? This spring was definitely beginning rather oddly, and Cami wasn’t entirely certain she was comfortable with it.
On second thought, hell, no, she wasn’t comfortable with it.
And yes, she thought, Rafer would have danced with her again. He would have held her close as she laid her head against his shoulder, swaying to the music and counting the time until they could leave and find a bed.
She shook her head quickly, trying to chase away the images running through her mind and the needs that rose inside her from those images.
Three weeks. Too damned long.
As she headed to the shower she couldn’t stop the visions of sexual satiation from dancing through her head. Long, hot kisses, the sight of his lips at her breasts, covering a hard, sensitive nipple, his cheeks hollowing as he sucked at the hardened tip, flicking it with the tip of his tongue.
The feel of those lips kissing their way down her torso, running over her belly, moving between her thighs. The feel of his tongue fucking her.
She wanted to moan in need. She was on the verge of screaming in frustration and making a decision she knew she would end up regretting.
Of course, he hadn’t even tried to follow her home, otherwise he would have caught sight of her shadow the night before. If he’d had satisfying that hunger in mind, then he wouldn’t have left her for a second.
She had told him to stay away from her; he was only doing what she had demanded. But even then she had been honest with herself, albeit silently.
She didn’t want him out of her life. She wanted to change the past. She wanted to make things different. She wanted to be able to go to that damned social and dance in his arms before coming home to sleep in them.
She wanted everything she had dreamed of having, everything she had fantasized about having. She wanted Rafe until she was ready to cry with the frustration building inside her.
And Rafe was the one thing she couldn’t have. The one man denied herself. The only man who could destroy her soul.
She wished it was only shame that held her from him. Shame would have been so very easy for her to conquer. The pleasure she found in his arms had shame beat all to hell. The ecstasy that surged bright and hot through her body as her release swept over her would have had such an edge on shame that it wouldn’t have stood a chance.
No matter how much she wished differently though, it wasn’t shame.
And she couldn’t even say in all honesty that it had anything to do with the fact that the county refused to accept the Callahans. She knew it didn’t.
The county had changed a lot in the twenty years since the Callahan cousins’ parents had died. The school board wasn’t from the same deeply rooted families that it had once been. Their ties to the community were new, their influence by the Corbins not the same as it had been with past board members despite Marshal Roberts’s presence there.
The principal at the school where Cami worked lived in Aspen rather than Corbin County or Sweetrock. The mayor had been in the military for years before returning to the county and had run his election on the fact that such political cronyism would come to an end.
Not that she expected it to happen, but it wasn’t as pervasive as it had been when Cami had been a teenager.
Corbin County was changing, and it had been changing for several years. But for all the changes that had occurred, it was still mired in the past and the wealth of the barons.
The barons were old now, though. Each man was nearing his seventies, and though they might yet have several years left in them, still their strength was waning, and with it, their power.
And they knew it.
She had seen it in Marshal Roberts’s eyes, that knowledge that he wasn’t the man he had been thirty-two years ago, and Corbin County wasn’t the county it was thirty-two years ago either.
If they had killed Rafer’s grandparents, parents, and uncle, and if they had been behind the deaths that had swept the county twenty-two years ago, then it wouldn’t happen as easily now. The mayor hadn’t been just a part of the military; he had been rather high-ranking as well. Such tactics, despite his ability to adopt them, didn’t seem to be his style.
They were still dangerous, though, and she believed that was part of the message Marshal Roberts had tried to get across to her that night.
Their power was waning, but it was by no means gone. They would still make very formidable enemies.
CHAPTER 14
The dress was rich black and gold velvet with silver thread trimming the scalloped bodice and emphasizing her full breasts.
The empire waist of the design gave her such a delicate, fragile appearance that Rafe wondered that he hadn’t managed to break her each time he’d fucked her as though he were dying for her.
The short, sassy cut of her hair framed her fine-boned face in a multitude of browns, the natural highlights almost fascinating to him each time he’d concentrated on them.
And her gray eyes. She watched the dancing with a sense of hunger, the slow, sensual sway of the bodies holding her attention as though she was imagining herself on the floor as well: What would it feel like? How would it be to be held against his body, to feel him moving against her?
At least, it damned well better be him she was fantasizing about. And how the hell was he supposed to ensure it when so much distance separated them? When the past and the whole of Corbin County stood between them?
What was he doing here? He should have never let Crowe and Logan convince him to accompany them here. What was Crowe doing even wanting to attend this crap? Hell, they’d even avoided it as teenagers, so why were they here now?
Had Crowe lost his mind as he’d matured? Perhaps taken a bullet to the he
ad? Had he somehow lost his mind? Crowe was sure making some odd-assed decisions lately.
Attending the Spring Fling Social was just one of those decisions.
Everyone in Corbin County seemed to attend the more important socials, as City Hall liked to call them. Through the spring, summer, and early fall, every Saturday the county paid for either a band or DJ and the guests partied, sometimes until the next day’s dawn.
The bar facing the town square remained open even past last call, though alcohol wasn’t sold past a certain time. That didn’t mean many of the partygoers didn’t bring their own. The community center, also facing the square, remained open the full weekend. From Friday afternoon through Sunday evening teenagers as well as young children joined the weekend slumber parties.
If Rafe remembered correctly, the teenagers brought their own sleeping bags or pillows, supplies were donated for pizza making, chips and drinks were brought by the sponsors and chaperones. In holding the weekend events a place was provided to keep the kids off the streets and entertained through the summer months, keeping them from running wild.
It was a pretty cool little setup. And to give the county credit, there hadn’t been a single time that he and his cousins had been turned away when they were younger. Despite the fact that Clyde Ramsey used the weekend activity as a babysitter while he went to Aspen for what he called his adult fun.
Never had the Callahans been turned away from a weekend social or ostracized during one, unless it was their peers ostracizing them. Which it usally was.
And that was enough for the cousins. As soon as they were old enough, Rafe, Logan, and Crowe had begun camping out on the weekends Clyde was gone. He hadn’t totally trusted any of them. Blood will tell, he was known to mutter as he locked up the house and drove them into town. He didn’t want anything stolen out of his house.
Not that the cousins had ever stolen a damned thing in their lives. They hadn’t. And they hadn’t been able to find a single time when anyone had been certain their fathers had stolen anything. It was all supposition and suspicion.
The cousins might not have been ostracized from the socials as teenagers, but as adults it was another story. Standing together in their dress blacks, combed and polished, they were well aware of the looks they were receiving and from which direction.
The citizens of the county who had been there when the Callahan cousins were growing up watched them suspiciously while the new residents, those who had come in since, watched them curiously. And more of the single women than not at least glanced their way in appreciation.
There had been a time Rafe and his cousins would have shown this county exactly how their fathers had managed to catch and marry the boys’ mothers, heiresses though they were. There were several Corbin County moneyed daughters as well as a few he recognized from the social pages from Denver, Grand Junction, and Aspen. And if he wasn’t mistaken— He allowed his lips quirk into a grin as one of those moneyed daughters arched her brow in invitation.
At any other time he would have taken her up on the silent invitation, especially here, in front of every bastard who had ever turned his nose up at a Callahan.
But then Cami had happened.
He was damned if he would mess up a chance to experience the pleasure he found in the sleek, hot depths of the sweetest pussy he’d ever known. And he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, if he so much as considered taking another woman to his bed, then he would never so much as glimpse Cami’s bed again.
Rafe’s gaze slid to her once again, watched as she stood talking to one of the other teachers at the elementary school where she taught.
The bouncy little redhead was full of vivacious laughter, and her gaze kept straying to him, then back to Cami. As though she knew more than she had seen the night before. More than Martin Eisner had told.
Though, honestly, Eisner hadn’t told near as much as Rafe had expected him to. For a damned gossip, he’d been amazingly reticent so far.
“Tell me why we’re here again?” Logan muttered behind Rafe, just loud enough to reach both his and Crowe’s ears.
Logan wasn’t happy to be here either, evidently. But, just as he had done when they were younger, Crowe had all but forced them out of the house and into town.
“Because we’re not hiding anymore,” Crowe answered firmly, not bothering to lower his tone any more than necessary. He wasn’t trying to keep anyone from hearing him, but neither was he trying to tell everyone around them either.
“I wasn’t aware we were hiding before,” Rafe snorted. “Simply uninterested. I’m still not interested.”
And that was a lie of major proportions. The more he watched Cami, the more interested he became in the Sweetrock Saturday night social. He could see where and why the event could come in handy. At least he had a legitimate excuse for being in the same vicinity she was in. If he had his way, he’d have a hell of an excuse for holding her in his arms and staking a silent, though very clear claim on the woman he was considered his own. That sense of possession was growing stronger by the day.
“Well, I am,” Crowe drawled. “If you two want to leave, then find your own ride. Personally, I intend to have a little fun.”
Rafe looked back at him wryly. “I knew riding in with you was a bad decision.”
And it had been all Crowe’s idea. Hell, he should have just brought the Harley, but the mountain air was still colder than hell.
Crowe shrugged, the perfect fit of the black silk evening jacket he wore barely shifting over the broad width of his shoulders. “Sucks to be you boys, then don’t it?”
His cousin was scanning the crowd again, as though searching for someone. As though he knew why he was there and who he was there to see.
Just why was Crowe so interested in being there?
There had to be more to this than simply wanting to force Corbin County to accept them. Because none of them really gave a damn if Corbin County accepted them or not. If they followed through with their plans, then the county would have to accept them anyway. Attending a damned social wasn’t going to make a difference.
Rafe glanced over at Logan. He was staring above them at the brightly strung lights in the newly budding trees overhead.
The white- and peach-colored lights weren’t that interesting. Rafe had always considered them rather bland and boring himself. Peach wasn’t exactly his favorite color.
“You boys are boring me,” Rafe muttered as he lifted the glass of beer he had bought earlier and took a hard drink of the warming liquid as he kept his eyes on Cami.
It was a damned good thing he liked the taste of beer, because it wasn’t at its best after it warmed.
“Well, by all means, don’t let us hold you back,” Crowe grunted. “You’re not chained to us, you know.”
“Hmm.” He all but ignored his cousin as he watched Cami lift her hand, her graceful fingers pushing back a strand of gold-and-walnut-streaked hair back from her cheek as a man, another man, walked up to her, smiled, and handed her a flute of champagne.
And she dared to smile at him?
Her lips curved with charm and graciousness, and was she flirting with the bastard? Were her lashes lowering over her eyes deliberately, giving that son of a bitch a sleepy, sexy, take-me-to-bed look?
Rafe straightened slowly from where he’d been leaning against the post of the pergola he and his cousins were standing beneath.
This wasn’t going to happen.
He glared over at her, as though the force of his look alone would send the son of a bitch running.
Cami’s admirer leaned closer and whispered something in her ear as she leaned in to him.
Fucker! Whoever the hell he was, he was risking his life.
Then, the other man’s hand reached up, his fingers curling around her upper arm.
Another man was touching what was Rafe’s? He could feel his jaw clenching.
Were those his teeth grinding?
He’d be damned if he would have this.
; He set the empty beer glass down slowly, unaware of even having finished the warming brew before shoving his hands in the pockets of his slacks and clenching his fists.
Mine!
“Did you say something, Rafe?” Crowe asked behind him.
He didn’t say a damned thing. Not out loud at least.
Had he?
Then the man standing with her gestured to the dance floor, where another slow song was beginning to fill the night air.
It was an invitation, and it was an invitation that just might get the bastard into more trouble than he could have imagined.
“Ah fuck, don’t do it, Cami,” he muttered.
He practically felt the blood beginning to boil in his veins as a surge of some impossibly possessive urge tore through his senses.
He felt like an animal.
He wanted nothing more than to snarl in primal rage that some son of a bitch thought he could claim, for even a moment, what Rafe had already tried to mark as his own.
Oh, if he hadn’t marked her yet, then he would.
Tonight.
Tonight, he’d show her exactly how he could mark her. How he could take that collection of erotic toys in her bedside drawer and turn her little world inside out. She would be convinced he lived under her skin when he was finished with her.
She would know who that lush, graceful little body belonged to.
She would know exactly who claimed not just her kisses and her juicy little pussy but also every fucking dance she was willing to give away.
He took a step forward.
“Ah, Rafe, wait just a minute.” Logan caught Rafe’s arm, bringing him to a stop only because of the warning in his cousin’s voice. “Are you sure you want to do this here?”
He turned to the other man slowly, his head lowered, his gaze boring into his cousin’s with a fury Logan didn’t know how to handle.