Midnight Sins

by Lora Leigh

  When he had died, it had destroyed Jaymi, and Rafe had wondered how she would survive it. She had survived by holding on to everything Tye had claimed. Including his best friend.

  And now someone thought he could resurrect the horror of the past and take something else from Rafe? From the Callahan cousins?

  Cami was his, that meant Logan and Crowe would give their lives for her if needed. Definitely they would help Rafe protect her with everything inside them.

  Because she belonged to him and that meant she belonged to the Callahans.

  Cami didn’t know it yet, but she was a Callahan.

  Because he had no intentions whatsoever of ever letting her go.

  CHAPTER 18

  Having three men in her small house wasn’t Cami’s idea of peace and relaxation. Two days later, as she moved down the stairs, pushing back the memory of her desperate flight the night she was attacked, she came to a slow stop at the bottom of the stairs.

  Leaning against the curved banister, she stared at the floor of her living room where, sleeping-bag-encased, Logan and Crowe slept in positions that would block all access to the stairs.

  There was no way in hell to get from the kitchen to the stairs or from the stairs to the kitchen, where her coffeepot awaited.

  “Just tell them to move their sorry asses,” Rafe said lightly as he bounded down the stairs behind her rather than walking softly as she had.

  “They’re sleeping.” She frowned up at him, not entirely agreeing with the command.

  “They were, until Lard Ass stomped down the stairs,” Crowe groused as he rolled over in the sleeping bag and jerked the extra-down-filled material over his head.

  It wasn’t exactly cold, but a fire would have been nice. Before she’d acquired three grown male bodyguards, she would have had the fire ready to light and the coffee set to have already been made.

  She held back the sigh that would have slipped past her lips and looked at the clock.

  Before she had acquired her bodyguards, she would have had a job to go to. The fire would have waited until evening, and then it would have been a nice glass of wine rather than coffee as she graded papers.

  She was going to have to call the principal, though her Uncle Eddy had promised to talk to his other niece himself. Serena Carlyle was Ella’s sister’s daughter and had taken the post of principal the year before when the previous principal had retired.

  A resident of Aspen, Serena wasn’t influenced by the barons though. Thank God!

  “Someone needs to make coffee,” Logan grumbled from somewhere inside his sleeping bag.

  “Get your lazy ass up,” Rafe ordered as he stepped into the living room and began stepping over the bodies. “We have a busy day ahead of us.”

  “And what is ahead of you that’s going to be so busy?” Cami asked as she followed behind him, albeit picking her way through the living room more slowly.

  She was still incredibly tender, her hip was still one large bruise, and though the headaches weren’t as severe or as often as they had been at first, they were still prone to hit and last for hours at a time.

  The bruising to her skull could have resulted in much, much more serious complications. Thankfully, the initial concussion and disorientation was the worst she had suffered.

  She could have returned to work, though she admitted it wouldn’t have been easy. Cami was guessing she could look forward to spending the rest of the school year out on leave and when the new fall season began she doubted she would have a job.

  Moving to Aspen was out of the question, she thought as she stepped into the kitchen, greeted by the tempting scent of coffee beginning.

  “And what are you doing today that’s going to be so busy?” she asked as she pulled the edges of the gray sweater she wore snugly around the white cotton shirt she had tucked into her jeans.

  “We have a few errands to run,” Rafe told her as he moved to the cabinets and, as he had the day before, began preparing breakfast.

  They never asked her to fix breakfast, though Rafe had acted like a kid in a candy store the morning she had cooked during their snowbound adventure.

  “Logan and I have to check the ranch and my house before meeting you and Rafe at the courthouse,” Crowe finished as he too stepped into the kitchen.

  “Meeting us at the courthouse?” She arched a brow as she looked over to where Rafe was loading one of her larger skillets with bacon. “And why are we going to the courthouse?”

  “My lawyer and I have a meeting with the county attorney to discuss Deputy Eisner and his lack of talent in navigating private drives with a piece of county equipment.”

  She almost winced. “You’ve sued the county?”

  “Not yet.” Rafe flashed her a grin over his shoulder before turning back to the two pounds of bacon Logan had brought in the day before. “That’s what we’re discussing.”

  Cami lowered her head, shaking it at the impossible sense of fun that seemed to fill Rafe’s face.

  “You know this is insane, right?” she accused him. “Rafe, suing the county is only going to piss more people off.”

  “Fuck ’em,” Logan drawled as he moved plates from the cabinet and handed them to Rafe before taking Cami’s cup from her hand and filling it with coffee. “You’re probably the only one in this county that likes us anyway.”

  “Who says I like you?” She arched her brow, hiding the fact that she did like him.

  She had always liked the Callahan cousins, even when she was younger. Especially when she was younger, when the cousins had been like fables, larger than life and used as a bogeyman threat against little children who refused to behave.

  Logan pouted good-naturedly as Crowe grunted at the response. She noticed he did that a lot. He didn’t talk much, but he watched, listened, and he waited. There was always a sense of waiting where Crowe was concerned, as though he knew something was about to happen and was determined to be prepared.

  “So I have to go to this meeting why?” She turned back to Rafe as he moved to the refrigerator and pulled a dozen eggs from the inside.

  He flicked her a look that assured her he meant for her to go, one way or the other.

  She crossed her arms over her breasts, cocked a hip, and tapped her toe against the floor twice as she waited.

  “Ignoring me isn’t going to get you your way automatically,” she assured him as he returned to the sizzling bacon. “I have things to do today myself.”

  “And I have no intentions of leaving you here alone,” he informed her, his tone hardening. “And I can’t miss this meeting. Eisner deliberately took that fence out, and he was too damned gleeful about the results to suit me; now he’s going to pay for it.”

  “And you don’t think it would be a good time to take the high road and let it go?” she asked him. “Give it a rest, Rafe. No one is going to care if Deputy Eisner is fired or not, except Eisner. But what they will do is come together against you, rather than for him.”

  Rafe shrugged. “Good luck to them.”

  She turned to Crowe, wondering if, as the oldest cousin, he would at least show a bit more maturity.

  “You should stay out of this one,” he told her instead, his darker voice rumbling more than usual. “Let Eisner pay for his sins. He’s quick enough to attempt to make others pay for sins that aren’t theirs.”

  “Stay out of it?” She let her brows arch in amused disbelief. “There’s not the first one of you that could possibly keep your nose out of my business at this point, and you have the nerve to tell me to keep mine out of a part of yours? Or his?” She nodded to Rafe. “Not as long as he’s sleeping in my bed I won’t.”

  Rafe had to turn back to the sizzling bacon to hide the grin tugging at his lips as Cami turned that teacher’s attitude on Crowe without a thought.

  There were very few people Rafe had ever known who were willing to stand and stare at his older cousin as though he were a mischievous schoolboy stepping out of line.

  “I’m not
sleeping in your bed, though,” he pointed out.

  “No, you’re sleeping on my living room floor,” she retorted with false sweetness. “If you don’t like my opinion, then you’re more than welcome to sleep in the backyard.”

  Logan’s snort of laughter was followed by another of Crowe’s less than impressed male grunts.

  “The backyard is probably more comfortable,” Crowe informed her. “Unfortunately, not as secure.”

  “Yeah, like someone’s going to get past Rafe while he’s pacing the bedroom floor,” she stated.

  Rafe arched his brows at the acidic little comment. He had no idea she was aware of the fact that sleep was often a long time coming for him.

  He wasn’t exactly pacing the bedroom floor, though. That would have been counterproductive. More often than not he was standing by the bedroom window, silent, still, and watching the shadowed edge of her back garden carefully.

  Crowe had managed to pinpoint the location where her attacker had come into her yard and slipped into the window well that hadn’t been as secure as it should have been.

  There had been no prints, just as Archer said there hadn’t been. But what Crowe had found was that the back door lock had been broken from the inside, not the outside. Someone hadn’t wanted it known that the basement had been used for the entrance point into the house. That window had been opened from the inside as well, not from the outside.

  Someone she had trusted had opened that window.

  Crowe had locked it back, and now the cousins were going to see about giving that someone a chance to slip in and unlock it again.

  That meant getting her out of the house without it appearing as though he had deliberately gotten her out of the house. The meeting was the perfect opportunity for that.

  Besides that, he knew for a fact that the county attorney, Wayne Sorenson, would have a much harder time playing the bastard with Cami sitting there watching him.

  Cami and Wayne Sorenson’s daughter, Amelia, had been best friends. They had practically grown up in the same house. Amelia’s mother had been best friends with Cami’s mother, and the two girls had been inseparable as children and young adults.

  Wayne and Mark hadn’t associated with each other much, though. Wayne had been younger and hadn’t seemed to connect with Mark’s aloof bigotry.

  “It may not be a good idea to take me to that meeting with you, Rafe,” Cami advised him as the last of the breakfast dishes were cleared away more than an hour later.

  She was still limping a bit, the bruise on her hip obviously bothering her as she shifted in her chair again, accepting the cup of coffee Logan reached to her as Crowe finished loading the dishwasher.

  She had watched them as though they were aliens as they cleaned her kitchen. Or as though she had expected them to leave the mess for her.

  “And why is that?” Rafe asked as he rinsed the skillet he’d used to prepare the meal and turned back to her.

  Drying his hands, he watched her as she nibbled at her thumbnail, a concerned expression on her face as she watched him.

  “Wayne’s not exactly enamored of me any longer,” she finally sighed. “And Amelia and I haven’t spoken in ages.”

  There was a shadow of hurt in Cami’s gaze before she looked down at her coffee, but there was also a shadow of deception in her eyes. She was hiding more half-truths and shadows of lies than Rafe could have ever guessed.

  What the hell had happened to her since he had been gone?

  Rafe glanced at his cousins in a silent exchange that had the other two men making their excuses and leaving the kitchen. Several minutes later the sound of the front door clicking shut had her head lifting once again. She was obviously surprised that the other two had left the room and she was now alone with Rafe.

  And she didn’t look comfortable with him.

  What the hell did it take, he wondered, for her to get a clue that she was stuck with him?

  “Why haven’t you and Amelia spoken for the past few years?” he finally asked Cami.

  She breathed out heavily as her shoulders lifted in an uncomfortable, defensive little gesture more telling than words.

  “Things happen.” She shrugged. “It began before we graduated college. That last year actually. I started work as a substitute and Amelia already had an offer for her own classroom in Aspen for a while.” Cami smiled at something that she obviously still found to be a pleasant memory before rubbing at the side of her neck a bit nervously. “Something changed that year, I guess. No matter what I did, I couldn’t stop her from disassociating herself from me.”

  Rafe knew she had been twenty-two that year. She and Amelia had roomed together at college and watched out for each other as they navigated the much larger city after being raised in near isolation in Sweetrock. It didn’t make sense that they would have just grown apart.

  “There’s more to it, Cami,” he probed. “The half-truths are only going to piss me off. Now tell me what the hell happened before I have to begin questioning others. You don’t want to push this much further.”

  Her lips thinned as a flash of anger clouded her eyes. She glanced away from him for a second, obviously searching for some other way to get out of answering the question.

  Rafe stalked to the table, planted his hand on the top of it, and leaned close as she stared back at him in surprise, her eyes widening as he leaned in, nearly nose to nose with her.

  “I asked you a question,” he growled furiously as he felt that primal instinct itching between his shoulder blades again. The secrets she was keeping had somehow contributed to the isolated, near-friendless life she was living at the moment.

  “Lie to me and I’ll paddle your ass.”

  Delicate little nostrils flared. “Perhaps I’ll like it,” she snapped back. “Go ahead and try it, Rafer.”

  “Oh, you’ll like it,” he promised her as he came in closer. “You’ll love it, Cami. You’ll beg for it. Your pussy will become so hot, so wet, so desperate for release that you’ll beg me to fuck you. You’ll beg for my cock as deep and as hard as you can take me.”

  Her face flushed, her eyes darkened.

  “And I’ll even give it to you,” he promised, dropping his voice until he knew the lower, rougher tone would take on a brooding, rasping quality that never failed to affect her.

  And it did.

  Her face flushed, arousal heating her cheeks at the very sensual promise.

  “And that’s supposed to convince me—”

  “Do you know what that does to a woman, Cami?” he whispered. “You don’t see yourself as submissive. You’re an independent, freethinking woman. But once you’ve come until you can come no more, once you think it’s all you can do to breathe, once you think it’s over.” His voice dropped further. “I’ll do it again, Cami. And I’ll do it again. And when it’s over, when it’s all you can do just to breathe, what you’ll realize is what will sear you to your very soul. You’ll realize I didn’t just spill my come inside you so many times, pumping it as deep inside you as possible. You’ll realize I own you. Heart and soul. You’ll be completely mine, Cami, and you’ll love being mine. You’ll ache for more of it. You’ll come to me when I so much as whisper your name, because I’ll be buried so deeply inside your soul that you won’t be able to cut me out. There will be no forcing me out. Is that what you want now? Is that a step you think you’re ready to take at this moment?”

  It was a step she had already taken and one she that had nearly destroyed her. Those horrible, bleak days were still a part of her, still a part of her memories, and the scars were still a part of her soul.

  It would destroy her to belong to him so completely again. And she couldn’t risk his attempt to do just as he said he would, because he could. She was too weak where his touch, his kiss, was concerned. Too weak, too hungry. He was already too much a part of her.

  “Now, I’m going to ask you again, kitten. What happened?”

  She swallowed tightly. “Amelia used to keep a diary,�
�� she whispered, her gaze lifting to him as the anger faded from her gray eyes and they darkened in pain instead.

  He eased back slowly. “And someone found it?”

  Cami drew in a slow, deep breath. “It wouldn’t be hard to guess. Her father did while helping Amelia move the year we graduated. He learned both our secrets.”

  “And what were those secrets?” It was worth a try.

  Cami shook her head, stubborn determination smoothing all but the final, last vestiges of emotion. “It’s her secret,” Cami whispered. “I’ll never betray her, not in any way.”

  “She betrayed you, evidently.”

  Cami only shrugged.

  “And what did he learn of your secrets?” Rafe asked her instead.

  “He learned of the night we had spent together and how I felt about it.” She licked her lips nervously. “How I felt about you. And while he was being nosy, he learned something Amelia had fought to hide from him. After that night, she never spoke to me again.”

  That secret must have been a huge one. If Rafe remembered correctly, there was some sort of gossip surrounding her return and the hasty marriage that took place weeks later.

  “She’s married now, isn’t she?” he asked to be certain.

  “She’s married,” Cami agreed.

  “And how did Wayne handle these secrets?”

  Her lips quirked bitterly. “He was very disappointed in both of us, he said. And he was, but I really didn’t give a damn. Shame wasn’t the reason I didn’t tell anyone, and shame has never been the reason I didn’t want anyone to know we were lovers.”

  She rose slowly from her chair.

  She felt as though she had aged ten years. As though exhaustion were so much a part of her now that there would never be any shaking it off.

  “Cami.” He moved to touch her, to draw her into his arms, to give her what little comfort he could.

  Her hand lifted imperatively, a demand that he stop as he watched a hard shudder shake her body.

  “I don’t have friends for a reason,” she whispered. “I don’t have my parents for a reason.” She lifted her gaze to him and it didn’t take a frigging diary to see the pain that filled her eyes. “Because you never had to fuck me all night long, spank me, or make yourself so much a part of me that I couldn’t exist without you, or without that part that I’ll suddenly be living and breathing for.”