It wasn’t the danger to her that terrified her. It was the danger to Rafer. The danger to her soul if anything happened to him.
That was what she fought. That was what she continued to run from. Because she knew once she gave her heart to him fully, then if anything happened to him, it would destroy her as well.
The pain of Jaymi’s death had scarred her soul, but when she had lost Rafer’s child, she had never lost her will to live. The agony that had gripped her, the sheer depth of the pain that had held her in its grip had seemed never-ending.
It had followed her every second of her life, and even now, two years later, the realization of the life she had lost burned inside her continually.
It was another loss that had driven her when she had sensed the snowstorm coming. The days spent getting her mother settled into the rest home, feeling her father’s pain, his devotion to her mother, and the sense that his hatred for her had only grown.
She’d needed Rafer. She’d needed him to pull her out of the memories of the little girl who had begged her father to love her. The woman who had knelt before her mother and sobbed against her knee when she’d lost her own child.
Margaret Flannigan had lifted Cami’s chin and stared down at her with sudden, lucid sobriety and whispered, “Trust me, Cami, losing that child was the best thing that could have happened for the baby. Or for you.”
Cami had felt something inside her that had struggled to survive over the years simply fade away. Perhaps it was the love she should have known for her parents. Perhaps it was the compassion for their weaknesses that had seemed to hobble her all her life.
Whatever it was, it had just faded away inside her as though it had never existed.
She should have used her common sense rather than her emotions tonight. Her emotions were about to get her into more trouble than she wanted to deal with.
As Rafe lifted himself from her, Cami deliberately kept her eyes closed, her breathing even. She refused to leave that halfway place where the past the didn’t matter and the future hadn’t yet arrived. God knew she didn’t think she could handle any more upheaval inside her or around her. She wanted to stay right where she was, safe and warm inside. While the realizations and realities she faced remained at a distance.
Rather than forcing her from that place, Rafer slid his arms beneath her and carried her slowly up the huge staircase and into his bedroom. He didn’t speak or force her to speak. He simply took care of her.
She didn’t want to face what she had just done, what she had known she would end up doing the second she had stepped from her car after it slid into the snowdrift at the side of the main road.
Cami didn’t want to face the fact that she had complicated her life more than ever and ensured that she likely would see no peace for quite a while.
Rafer was like a dog with a bone; no, he was worse than that. Five years ago he had given her a clue exactly how serious he was about being her lover.
She couldn’t handle it then, and she couldn’t handle it now. There was too much between the two of them, as well as between him and the townsfolk of Sweetrock.
Her gaze fluttered open long seconds later, though, as she felt him parting her legs. As she watched, he ran a damp, warm cloth between her thighs and along the slick, wet folds of her pussy as he wiped the excess of both their releases from her body.
He had done this every time they were together. Pushing aside his own need to luxuriate in the satiation, or in his own release, he had instead cleaned her and ensured her comfort.
She couldn’t fault Rafer there. The three times they had been together he had taken excellent care of her. The first time, just after she’d turned twenty, she’d been shocked by it. She’d never heard her friends bragging of their lovers doing such a thing.
“This can’t last, Rafer,” she whispered as he drew back, her gaze caught by the dark sapphire of his eyes and the lazy, satisfied expression on his face.
“I never said it could, Cami.” He shrugged.
But wasn’t exactly agreeing with her either.
“Just for tonight,” she reaffirmed as he drew a dry towel between and over her thighs. “Then we forget it happened.”
And just as it had five years before, something seemed to explode in her chest at the very thought of it. She could feel the dark, forceful contradiction screaming inside her and couldn’t understand why.
“Until the storm is over, and the roads are clear enough for travel.”
He was hard again.
Kneeling with one knee on the bed, the furiously flushed, wide shaft of his cock pointed out at her, the flared crest dark and throbbing as she dampened her dry lips with a sudden hungry thought.
She could have him.
Dawn’s arrival didn’t mean discovery and there was no way she could run from whatever it was he made her feel. It just meant more snow as the system just edging in continued to dump the white stuff across the mountains.
Twenty-four to thirty inches within the first twenty-four hours based on the winds and the amount of precipitation coming through. They could be there for days. She could get the hunger and the need out of her system, and maybe, once it was over, she could find a way to live without the memory of Rafer Callahan tormenting her.
She reached out, her fingers curving beneath the heavy weight, her lips parting, her tongue reaching out to touch the furiously swollen flesh. Slightly salty, tinged with a hint of storm. The subtle tastes and male power sent a heavy fist to clench her womb, her suddenly aching pussy.
Shards of sizzling sensation raced from her scalp to her nipples, her clit, the inner muscles of her sex as his fingers clenched in her hair and tugged.
She licked, circled the silk-over-iron flesh, and tasted the pre-come that eased from the slit at the tip. Her fingers moved lower, cupped his balls, held them, tested their weight as well, and with a hungry cry she sucked the thickened crest deep into her mouth.
“Ah hell, Cami,” he groaned. “There you go, suck my dick, sweetheart.”
His thighs were rock hard.
His hands controlled her head, moving it back and forth, fucking her mouth with slow, shallow thrusts.
Her lips burned. Her tongue flicked against the sensitive underside, tasting him, the freshness of soap where he had washed moments before, and the heat of his hunger.
As though they hadn’t just had each other, as though the pleasure hadn’t burned out of control, within seconds the need was once again raging.
“Come here,” Rafe growled as he pulled her head back, staring into the dark gray of her slitted gaze as he pulled his dick from her mouth.
Her tongue licked over her lips drawing the last taste of him to her tongue. The sight of it had his balls tightening furiously as adrenaline rushed through his system.
“Turn around, on your knees,” he ordered, his jaw tightened as she moved, the pretty curves of her ass tempting him as she lowered her shoulders to the bed and spread her thighs.
Juice gleamed once again on the flushed folds of her pussy. Then he watched as her hand moved beneath her body, her fingers, slender and graceful, parting the intimate lips, as she rubbed at the entrance in invitation. Then he watched, groaning in hunger and need as she pressed that finger slowly into the saturated entrance before easing back.
He gripped the shaft of his cock, moved to the bed on his knees, and over her.
The second the sensitive head met the fiery portal of her cunt, he nearly came instantly.
What was it about Cami? He’d never been able to control his lusts with her as he had with other women. Since the summer she turned eighteen, she had been his greatest weakness.