As his lips joined his stroking tongue, surrounding her swollen clit as his thumb pressed into her pussy and his fingertip eased deeper into her anal entrance, Cami fought desperately for a release that teased at the edges of pleasure.
She could feel Rafe beginning to lose himself in the taste of her, in the act of pleasuring her. She had never understood it. She had never heard her friends discuss their own lovers placing such emphasis on their pleasure. She had never known Rafe to touch her any other way.
His earthy male groan echoed around her as her hips writhed beneath him. His fingers fucked her with even, shallow thrusts as his thumb sank into her pussy, possessing it and rasping against the tender inner tissue with rapid strokes of intense sensation.
With each caress, each stroke of his tongue, his lips, his fingers, she flew higher, hurtling faster toward the center of an ecstasy she hadn’t expected.
It shouldn’t be this intense.
The bruising of her flesh, the memory of the night before, should have somehow affected her ability to reach so high, to strain so desperately toward the sensations building inside her. But she should have expected, should have known, Rafe could possess every part of her even to the point that nothing existed but pleasure. To the point that pain merged with the building ecstasy, erasing itself as it became part of the sensations Rafe stroked through her system.
Her fingers clenched in his hair as it continued to build. The sensations wrapped around her, flew through her, pulsed in her veins, and beat through her senses until they exploded through her with a surge of such incredible, blazing ecstasy that Cami swore she could feel herself melting. From the inside out she was dissolving with pleasure, exploding, imploding, and surging through a starburst of pure, erotic rapture.
It seemed never ending.
As she clenched, tightening over and again, the sensations arched her body, locking it in place as he continued to suckle at her exploding clit as his thumb fucked into her pussy and the tip of his finger worked itself rapidly into the clenched entrance of her rear.
As the exploding blaze of sensation reached its pinnacle, she felt each stroke, each touch, each caress begin to ease. As the aftershocks and waves of intensity began to shudder through her, he prolonged each one, using his lips and tongue to draw each sensation to its height.
When she finally collapsed, exhausted, to the bed, her body damp with perspiration, her senses ragged and laid to waste from the explosions that had torn through her, it was to feel the tender, soothing kisses at her thighs and lower belly as he eased his fingers from her body.
They were both breathing heavily, just as she realized he hadn’t possessed her in a way that would have given him the same release.
As his head lifted, his gaze dark with drowsy satisfaction, she stared back at him in confusion.
“You didn’t…” She wasn’t as adapt with the words as he was, she realized as she struggled to finish the statement.
“I didn’t come?” His voice was a deep, dark growl. “Sweetheart, you’re the only woman I know that has the power to cause me to come in the sheets because I’m so damned excited over your climax.”
Amusement gleamed in his eyes as confusion edged at her mind.
No, her friends had definitely never mentioned this when it came to their lovers, husbands, or one-night stands.
She swallowed tightly. “I could—”
“Shh.” He moved up her body, his lips brushing against hers. “Your sweet body can handle only so much, baby. I found my release and, even more important to me, you’ve found yours.”
With a quick kiss to her lips he eased from the bed before padding quickly to the bathroom.
Cami was too exhausted to move. Breathing out deeply, she let her eyes close and was almost easing into sleep when she felt the touch of a warm cloth against her thighs.
Opening her eyes, she watched him, so confident, so completely male, despite the fact that he was cleaning her and drying the sheets between her thighs and legs so thoroughly.
“Sleep, baby.” When he finished, he laid a kiss at the top of her mound, just above her clit, then moved to her lips and kissed them gently as she stared up at him. “I’ll watch over you. I promise.”
How had he known? How could he have known that she had worried about coming home before he arrived at the hospital? That even after he had tucked her into her bed and gone to shower she’d been too tense to sleep? Until the moment he promised to watch over her, there had been a fear she hadn’t realized she had.
That fear eased from her almost immediately.
Her lashes were suddenly heavier, lassitude invading her limbs as he slid into bed beside her and drew her against him, his arms sheltering her.
“Sleep, baby,” he growled against her ear. “We’ll work the rest out tomorrow.”
* * *
As Rafe felt her drift into sleep he stared across the room, his expression hardening. The marks on her breasts, the swollen flesh of her nipple, and the deep bruising at her hip and her head had rage building inside him.
The son of a bitch had thought he could rape, torture, and kill Rafe’s Cami in her own home. Thought that she was too weak, that she would be too frightened to attempt to fight back.
She had fought back. But her attacker had given them all a heads-up. They knew he was out there now, no longer a piece of the past. Someone was trying to resurrect the past instead.
The man who had raped, tortured, and killed Jaymi and the other women twelve years before was dead. Crowe had killed him as Rafe had held Jaymi’s dying body.
Now he was holding her sister, loving her sister. He and Jaymi had truly been more friends than lovers. She claimed he was her best friend, her last tie to the husband she had lost in a war so far away.
Rafe and Tye Kramer had been best friends. Tye had been from Aspen, born and raised there, and it was there he and Jaymi had lived before he had been called from the Reserves to go overseas.
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.