There was no way Amelia could deny Cami had written about her, though. Her name was there, written in bold black, and the act had been described in exacting detail.
“I’m getting a shower and heading to bed,” Cami told the cousins. “This hasn’t been my best day and I’d just as soon go to sleep and forget it happened for a while.”
She could feel the heaviness weighing her soul down as guilt bit at her hard and deep.
She hadn’t just lost everything she had held dear, but she had also managed to strip every shred of Amelia’s freedom. Because if she hadn’t returned home and done exactly what her daddy wanted, then he would make certain her prints were found inside the safe and the county attorney at the time would have arrested her and made certain she spent time in prison. Then her father had upped the ante. She would do what he wanted, or he would take Cami’s journal and implicate her in the crime as well. He might not be able to arrest Crowe, but Wayne could destroy both her and Cami’s life.
Wayne Sorenson had tied his daughter’s hands, hobbled her, blindfolded her, then shoved a dagger so deep inside her heart that Cami knew her friend would never recover.
Moving through the house and up the stairs, Cami told herself she would make it up to Amelia one of these days. It was one of those promises Cami made almost daily and one she knew she couldn’t fix. She’d lost so much simply because of the county she had been so determined to stay in. She hadn’t wanted to move to Denver, but Aspen was just small enough that she could never live there without running into her parents.
If her mother ever recovered from the stroke she’d had, if she ever left the nursing home— Unfortunately, she had seemed more than content exactly where she was. Away from her husband.
Still, if not her parents, Cami would end up running into her father, and how painful would that be?
The heat of the shower only reminded her how cold she felt inside. How tired she had become. She’d kept her secrets as long as she could, and when they had come spilling out there had been no stopping them. Just as there had been no stopping the emotions tearing her apart.
There were times she felt she’d placed herself in deep freeze after she had lost the only friend she had been able to depend upon, then lost her and Rafe’s child.
That ice was chipping now. She could feel it inside, fracturing, trying to break apart, the seams melting and weakening as she fought to hold back the pain.
Laying her head against the shower wall, the heat of the water pouring over her, Cami fought to hold it inside, to keep the pain from breaking her apart.
The knowledge that she had carried Rafe’s child had been like a ray of hope heating her from the inside out. The thought of that perfect little life, that part of Rafe that could never be taken away from her … Yet it had been taken.
Lifting her head, she hurriedly finished, knowing the cost of what she was doing. Standing there beneath the warmth of the water and letting herself remember, revisit that loss, was the most dangerous thing she could do.
She wasn’t strong enough for this.
She was losing too much too fast and facing too many truths that were coming at her from too many different directions. She’d tried for years to harden herself, but all she’d managed to do was build the most fragile of defenses against the pain. And those defenses were weakening by the moment.
“Are you warm enough yet, kitten?”
She whirled around, her eyes blinking open against the sting of the shower to see Rafe leaning casually against the ceramic wall at the entrance to the shower.
He watched her as though he could see into the very heart of even those secrets she hid from herself.
“I just needed to relax before going to sleep.” She had to turn her back on him.
Staring back at him, seeing the warmth in his gaze, the sensual hunger, and the sparks of anger that still sizzled in the sapphire blue was more than she could bear.
She pushed her face beneath the water once again, because she knew the warmth slipping down her face had nothing to do with the water spilling from the shower.
She’d been finished minutes after stepping beneath the spray. The soft hint of almond milk soap still filled the heated warmth as she tried to force the water to soak beneath her skin.
To warm her.
To hold the nightmares she knew she would have tonight at bay.
“Poor Cami.” Heated and warm, his arms went around her, his bare chest was suddenly at her back, and the feel of his nude body, so hot, so strong, sent a surge of lightning-fast, wicked-hot need erupting through her system.
She was forced to draw in a quick, hard breath.
The solid length of his cock nestled against her lower back, while his powerful thighs cushioned the rounded globes of her rear.
“Do you remember our first night together?” he asked as his lips lowered to her shoulder, brushing against the tender flesh there before nipping at it erotically.
“Yes.” She was almost moaning now in pleasure.
“Do you remember what you begged me for more of?”
Her body felt weak, flushed.
She didn’t want to be reminded of it. Her dreamworld was working out just fine, thank you very much.
Or was it?
It wasn’t this warm.
It wasn’t Rafe holding her against his body.
It wasn’t the feel of him, so very prepared to send her system into a pleasure so extreme it tempted insanity.
“Poor Cami,” he whispered. “Holding everything so tightly inside. Do you ever feel like a wind-up doll ready to blow apart all the mechanics that hold you so tightly bound, Cami?”
“Stop, Rafer.” She didn’t want this.
She didn’t want to break apart into so many pieces it was impossible to put her together again.
He chuckled at her ear before his teeth raked against the sensitive flesh of her lower neck.
“I’m going to fuck you, baby. I’m going to ride us both into exhaustion, feel you beneath me, over me, in front of me,” he whispered at her ear. “I’m going to paddle that pretty little bottom and hear you scream for me, hear you beg for more, as I ease inside your tight little ass and feel you go crazy beneath me.”
No.
She didn’t say the words, she couldn’t force them past her lips, as she felt his fingers sliding between the curves of her rear.
“And I’m going to watch,” he growled, the image of him watching his thick erection stretching her, easing inside her, flickering through her imagination, and sending her juices flooding the outer lips of her pussy.
The heated warmth surrounded her clit as Rafe moved behind her, shifting, his knees bending beside hers until she felt the thick silk-over-iron crest easing against the slick, bare lips of her cunt.
“Yes. Rafer, yes.” Her legs parted farther as she leaned against the shower wall.
His hands gripped her hips, easing her back, positioning her hips as she felt the engorged cock head parting the folds of flesh.
A second later she cried out in such erotic shock she nearly lost her footing in the shower.
His hand landed in a gentle, sensation-igniting pat, just heavy enough that the sound of wet flesh coming in instant contact echoed around her.
It was the heat that bloomed against the soft rise of her pussy that held most of her attention, though. The sensation, so rich and lush with sensual eroticism, was almost too much to bear.
The heat blossomed around her clit, swelling it tighter as the head of his cock forged its way into the snug opening of her sex.
“There, baby,” he groaned as he pulled her hips back a fraction farther and, with one foot, pressed her legs wider.
“I could fuck you for hours, Cami. Stay inside this hot little pussy and do nothing but relish the feel of you.”