"Midnight Sins" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leigh Lora)

CHAPTER 7

Cami wanted to protest. She wanted to smack him again, to hurt him as he had hurt her. She wanted to rail as much against fate and the past as against him and what he had said.

She wasn’t an occasional fuck, and she wasn’t afraid of the people of Sweetrock. She was afraid of doing as her sister had done, as she had nearly done three years before. Cami was terrified of giving him everything and losing it all if something happened to him. If the sins of the past were to strike out with deadly accurate fury, leaving her alone. So totally alone she would never recover.

That was it, she assured herself as his lips covered hers and stole her ability to scream or to rail at anything or anyone. As the hunger, a dark, bitter storm inside her began to rage.

She bit at his lips as they moved over hers, only narrowly missing as her teeth snapped together. A snarl grated from her throat.

“How bad do you want it, Rafer?” she snapped furiously as she struggled in his arms, her teeth snapping back at him again.

“Oh, I don’t think so, sweetheart,” he growled, one arm holding her locked to him as the other gripped her jaw. He exerted just enough to control her, just enough pressure to keep her from biting as his lips possessed hers.

Possessed her kiss, possessed each response he wanted, and sent a wave of fiery hunger, need, and anger slamming through Cami. Waves of cataclysmic sensation began tearing through her, mixing with the anger, the hunger, the overwhelming need for this one man. A need she was determined she would not allow to destroy her.

She pushed against his tongue as it thrust past her lips, tangled with it, and fought him for every second of the possession he was claiming. With each stroke of his lips, each arrogant thrust of his tongue, she was enraged anew at him. Enraged and desperate for every caress every touch. So hungry for him that her blood boiled with it, her flesh sensitizing for him.

The pure dominance was more than she could resist. There was something about him, something so wild and untethered, that she couldn’t help but be drawn by him. To hunger for him with a strength that made little sense.

Like a moth to a flame. The pleasure that rose between them was that irresistible and that incredibly bright. Like nothing she had known, like every fantasy and every dream she had ever imagined.

It would be her destruction, but resisting that destruction was beyond her ability. Resisting Rafer had always been impossible and she had sensed it, known it. But a part of her was too aware of every obstacle standing between them.

A moan tore from her throat as his tongue pumped into her mouth, licking at hers, then pulling back to nip at her lips before licking over the erotic little pain.

Her hands were in his hair, mussing it. His hands pushed beneath the layers of her sweatshirt and T-shirt. There he found her needy flesh, stroking her sides and stomach with firm, calloused fingertips as she arched into his touch. The sensations building between them were beginning to burn out of control. The power of their lust overtaking any objections she might have had.

Cami could feel intense burning with a blinding heat blazing as his lust tore through her; resisting him was impossible. Her body was clamoring for more, each touch stroking the flames of lust higher, she moaned into his kiss, his taste; Each stroke of his tongue an aphrodisiac to her senses. Each touch of his body against hers a flame she couldn’t deny.

It had to just be lust.

She could control it. She promised herself she would control any emotions that threatened to rise in that darkened corner of her soul that she’d always ignored. Ignored yet protected with every breath. Until Rafe stole her breath and slipped right past those defenses.

The emotions threatened to build as she gave in to the kiss and returned it with the same ferocity, the same hunger, which it was given. Focusing on the pleasure alone was all she could do. If she let herself feel, if she allowed that dark corner inside her, where Rafer always dominated, to open then she could be lost forever.

The sensual, dominant, and forceful plundering of her mouth was only the precursor to the pleasure, and she knew it. She could feel what was coming. She could feel the flames building, the sensations becoming stronger, piercing deeper than they ever had before. As though the primal anger, the rage that burned so deep inside her, had only this outlet to find freedom.

His hands pushed beneath the shirts, moving to her back to unclip her bra, and dragging a hungry moan from her throat. A wild, feverish heat burned through her womb. It spreading to her pussy, to the swollen bud of her clitoris, and made her drunk on the need.

The lace and silk cups of her bra loosened, rasping over the tender nipples as his hands moved to cup the swollen mounds.

His fingers found the tender tips, gripping them firmly, sending a furious burst of pleasured pain through them as his fingers worked them sensually. Milking them. Sending fingers of fiery, agonizing pleasure tearing through them straight to her womb.

She could feel her juices gathering. Liquid hot, sensitizing her pussy further.

She should be furious. She should be fighting him tooth and nail. She should never give in to the dominant, forceful taking of her senses.

But this was Rafer.

He was dominant.

He was forceful.

His head jerked back, but only because he was quickly pulling the sweatshirt and T-shirt over her head.

He tossed them to the floor before pulling the straps of her bra over her arms and throwing it aside.

She had a chance to fight; to escape. Instead, she pulled at his shirt, buttons popping, scattering heedlessly to the floor as she tried to tear it from his shoulders. Nothing mattered but touching him. She needed to feel his flesh against hers. She ached for it. Her body pulsed with the overwhelming hunger for it.

“Damn you,” she cried out furious with him, with herself, because once he’d touched her, she’d been lost. She was lost. His lips moved to her neck, raking over the sensitive nerve endings as the pleasure pouring through her rocked her senses. “I won’t let you do this to me.” But she let her head fall back, trembled at the feel of his tongue licking over it. “I won’t let you—” She wasn’t going to let him steal her heart, too.

“Who’s asking your permission?” he growled. “Shut the hell up and give me your kiss. Damn you, you’ll fucking be the death of me.”

His lips came over hers again, hungry, seeking, his tongue meeting hers and creating a wave of powerful sensuality that that threatened to overpower them.

Cami was only barely aware they were moving, gravitating to the living room. There was no time to make it to the bedroom. There was no patience to find the nearest bed.

There was no way she could have navigated the stairs. There wasn’t a chance in hell she wanted to hold back to make it up the hall.

She wanted him now, just as quickly as possible, and she wanted all of him.

Nothing mattered now but the blazing, agonizing need consuming her, tearing through her. It was like being forced on a wild, rapidly spinning merry-go-round that refused to stop. Her senses were spinning with each touch, with each lash of sensation whipping through her.

As she was backed into the living room the fiery, biting kisses that ate so hungrily at her lips moved to her neck. His hands went to the snap and zipper of her jeans as the need for flesh on flesh whipped through her senses.

She was pulling at his shirt, one hand beneath it to feel the warmth of his skin, touching his flesh, the other jerking at the loosened edges and fighting to push the material over his shoulders.

Desperate hands, hers and his, tore at metal tabs, at zippers at buttons moored to fragile cloth. Their clothes and her boots were jerked off, cast aside, leaving them blissfully naked. Their hands hungry for bare skin stroked and caressed as Rafe tugged her to the heavy, thick rug before the warmth of the blazing fire.

As they went to their knees, Cami became the aggressor.

She remembered that first night, five years before, much too well. Remembered each sensation of controlling the heavily engorged flesh of his erection, working it inside her and crying out at the pleasure. Moving over him, her thighs had straddled his hips, the sensation of controlling his hunger had made her drunk on the pleasure.

She had controlled each thrust. She had controlled each sensation, and the power had been heady. The remembered ecstasy, the sheer rapture found at the end of that wild, impulsive ride was too much to resist.

“Let me,” she whispered desperately as he moved to force her back to the rug. “Let me ride you Rafer. Let me have it again. Oh God, I might die if I don’t have it again.”

If she didn’t have the pleasure and exquisite sensation of controlling a wild sexual beast as she moved above him.

Her hands pushed at his shoulders, her lips moving to his chest, to the flat, hard male nipples. His hands dug into her hair as her teeth scraped the tips, rasping over them, licking them as the salty male taste intoxicated her senses.

Reclining on the rug as she pressed him down, Cami followed, a wild, feral need flowing through her. It pounded in her veins, clenched her pussy, and rippled through her womb.

Staring down at him, watching the corded strength rippling through her body, Cami felt a moan rising inside her chest. The wicked sensuality gleamed in the intense blue of his eyes as his hand lowered. His fingers curled around the heavy width of his cock.

Long, powerful fingers began a slow, deliberately teasing rhythm along the thick shaft.

“Take it, Cami,” he dared her, his hand stroking up the length of his cock, squeezing the wide, engorged crest as it throbbed imperatively. “Come on, baby, show me how bad you want to fuck me, or do you just want to talk about it?”

It was a dare that hadn’t been required. A challenge she had intended to meet whether it was issued or not.

“You talk about it,” she ordered, feeling powerfully erotic, sensual. “Come, Rafer, tell me what you want. Tell me if you’re enjoying it.”

Swinging her leg over his thighs as he reached down to grip the shaft of his cock, Cami swore she could hear a sob echoing around her.

Her sob.

It was a sound rife with a need that went far beyond the lust she had promised herself she would stop. It sliced straight through her senses, and she swore she could feel the pleasure straight to her soul.

“Ah yes, Cami-girl,” he groaned. “Take it. Show me how much you want my dick.”

Sensation ricocheted through her senses as the blunt, widened crest of his cock slid through the thick, heavy juices coating her cunt. The heated, blunt crest grazed the hard, nerve-laden bud of her clit, circled it, then slid back down to tuck against the clenched entrance of her pussy.

She hadn’t had sex since the night he had given her a child.

She had tried, God knew she had tried, to replace his memory with another man. She had dated; she had even gotten close. A few times, she had even enjoyed the kisses and the touch of several of those men. But it had simply been enjoyment. There had been nothing wild, nothing that even came close to the pleasure she’d found with Rafer. No other man had ever tempted her to rush her heart and her sanity as he did.

Rolling her hips, she felt the crest parting her entrance further, already beginning that slow, pleasure-pain-edged sensation that left her feeling drugged, high on building ecstasy.

Rafer gripped her hips with one hand as he paused, waiting, his gaze narrowed as he watched her.

The world seemed suspended, poised on this moment as she stared down at him. The thick head of his cock just barely breaching at the entrance to her sex. Almost penetrating her, heating her, making her so hungry for him, so desperate to fuck him that her fingers curled against his chest into fists as she fought to hold back.

She trembled.

Shuddered.

“Rafer,” she whispered his name, wishing she could convince herself it was a dream. That she could live the dream, awaken when morning came with no more repercussions than a dream would bring. “Don’t let it end,” she begged, still poised above him and taking only the very tip of the throbbing flesh.

“I have you, love,” he promised, the guttural, raw sound of his voice whispering across her senses. “Let it last, Cami. Don’t rush it, baby; ease into it all you want.”

She didn’t want ease. She wanted it all. The powerful burn, the agonizing pleasure. But there was no way to let that last. No way to make that heat last forever.

“I need you,” she sighed, her lashes fluttering as her hips shifted, pressing down, taking him at the first sensation of heavy pressure parting the clenched entrance. “Oh God, Rafer, how I’ve needed you.”

Was that her voice, so ragged and filled with aching hunger as she began to roll her hips? As she worked the engorged head past the snug, narrow entrance to her pussy.

Flares of wild, agonizing pleasure shot through her clit and ricocheted to her womb.

She could hear herself whimpering, pleasure whipping through her with a painful edge.

She needed him. She needed the pleasure mixed with that flash of pain. The intensity, the binding ecstasy that seemed to wrap around her senses and sink into her soul.

Her lashes fluttered, pleasure suffusing her face as Rafe felt the involuntary jerk of his hips. The pleasure took over, the hunger racing through both of them. She felt the head of his dick pierce the hot entrance to her pussy, pressing inside and stretching her erotically.

A low moan of pleasure whispered in the air around them. Cami lifted against him, then with a hard shift of her hips buried the head of his cock in the torturously tight, ecstatically hot muscles of her pussy.

Rafe’s teeth clenched until his jaw hurt. His hands gripped her hips, possibly too hard, as her nails dug into his chest. Her head tilted back, her breasts pushing as her nipples stood out explicitly. Desperate pleasure twisted her features, her pleasure amplifying his and driving through his senses sharply.

Silky, slick, and fist-tight. The ripple of her flesh around the sensitive head of his cock was almost too much to bear. Satiny, her juices slid along his flesh, easing the penetration, Rafe felt the pinch of her tight pussy opening for him before clenching tight again.

Her pussy milked the engorged width of his cock-head. Her muscles rippled around it as his balls drew tight and he fought to hold back his release. The thick flesh, pulsed warningly. God help him, he didn’t know if he could hold on, didn’t know if he could hold back.

“Rafer,” she gasped his name her voice hoarse as her hips shifted, rolling, pressing, tilting lower as she began to work herself on the iron-hard shaft. “Yes. Fuck me Rafer. So good,” she moaned ecstatically. “Please fuck me harder.” Let me fuck you.”

Slick, easing his way, the slide of her heated cream along his shaft to his balls tore a groan from his chest.

Rafe forced himself to hold back, to hold himself still as she moved over him and above him. Her hips circled and moved over him, rising, falling on the hard shaft.

“Ah, Cami,” he groaned. “That’s it, baby. Work your pussy on me. Take my dick, sweetheart.” His teeth gritted with the burning pleasure of it. “Take every fucking inch of my dick.”

Only the head was buried inside her, throbbing in pleasure as the need for release pulsed in his scrotum.

She was moving so slow, a sensual, erotic vision of sexual hunger and feminine lust as she began to ride him. Her hands pressed into his chest, bracing herself against him as she began rocking above him, taking him inch by inch, her expression transforming to sublime rapture.

Each inch worked inside her was a flash of sizzling electric heat raging through his senses. Each rapid-fire jerk of her hips, burying his flesh ever deeper inside her pussy, tore a groan from his lips.

His hands slid from her hips to her breasts, feeling the firm, pleasure-swollen mounds as he cupped them. He palmed the tight flesh as he fingered the tight, stiff tips and watched her expression at each touch. The pleasure on her face, pleasure he gave her, which she found while working his dick inside her, had an impossible pride racing through him. Her expression was nearing ecstasy. Her teeth dug into her lower lip; her nails bit into his chest. Nothing existed in her world at the moment but him and the hard dick he gave her.

He was giving her this pleasure. Working her into a frenzy of ecstasy when he’d already heard the rumors that Cami Flannigan never gave out. But Rafe knew she did give out. She gave out to him. With every kiss, with every touch, she gave to him.

Perspiration gleamed on her body, beaded on her creamy breasts. She was giving in, taking every inch of him, and loving every second of it. Loving every inch of his cock as she fucked him.

Cami swayed above him, taking him to the hilt with hard, fierce downward glides of her hips. She ground her clit against his pelvis, rocked them with jerky desperate movements as her pussy milked his shaft with erotic spasms.

Small, whimpering moans fell from her lips, tiny erotic cries that sent heat flooding his senses. God, she made him crazy. She made his senses explode just from the hunger, the sheer overriding demand that he touch, taste, that he fuck her as hard and as fast as possible. That he mark her clear to her soul. That he possess — own. Oh God, fill every part of her until she couldn’t survive without him.

She swayed above him, taking him to the hilt with hard, fierce downward glides of her hips. She ground her clit against him again, whispered his name, and — damn her straight to hell — made his fucking arms ache to just hold her.

“Fuck me, damn you,” he snarled his hands tightening on her hips as the lazy movements worked his lust higher. The hunger tore through him in ways he couldn’t explain. It would take more strength than he ever possessed to be able to tear himself away from her at this point.

“Rafer.” Her lashes parted, the soft gray of her eyes darker, the dark blue ring around the dove-gray color nearly black, her face flushed, as she stared down at him, then she licked her lips with a lazy, sensual flick of her little tongue.

Desperation whipped at his control as he slid his fingers from her breasts, down her thighs, and around to her buttocks. “Fuck yes,” he gritted out. “Work that tight little pussy on my dick. Give it to me, Cami.”

Her cry was sharper. Her hips moved faster, lifting and falling in tight, imperative strokes he knew he couldn’t bear for long, as he gave the explicit order.

His fingers slid along the crease of her ass, firm, determined caresses that suddenly had her senses heightening further. Her breathing becoming harder, more labored.

He gripped the rounded little mounds, spread them apart, then delved inside to find the sweet tight little rosebud hidden there.

Her movements became jerkier, tighter. Her eyes flashed open, locked with his.

“I love your ass,” he whispered hoarsely. “So sweet and rounded. So tempting. I’m going to fuck that ass, Cami. I’m going to watch my cock pierce it, stretch it.”

“Rafer?” The confused pleasure that tightened her face had his hips arching, taking over the hard strokes, pushing them both closer to release “So fucking sweet and hot,” he growled, his fingertip working against that forbidden little entrance. “Being buried in your tight little pussy is pure paradise.”

Cami couldn’t stem the pleasure. She couldn’t hold back the sensations or make him stop. The sound of his rough, guttural tone talking dirty to her, the words piercing her pleasure-hazed senses, stoked the flames higher.

As her hips rolled against him, his fingers slid to the heavy layer of juices. With two fingers he eased the slick moisture back, lubricating the tiny entrance, preparing her, wishing, gritting his teeth at the demand that he flip her over and work his cock up that tight little hole. The ultimate possession. It would be the ultimate trust, given to him. It would be pure, sweet, fucking bliss.

“I can make the hurt so good, Cami,” he groaned, and damned if he had ever talked to another woman quite this way. “I can make it so good that you beg for more. That you ache for it. Scream for it.”

Cami felt the erotic pinch of heat as he worked his fingertip inside the virgin entrance, bringing her to an abrupt stop. Her hips stilled instantly. Despite the demand to move. The pleasure pounding through her. Staring down at him, panting for air, she bit her lip and tried to decide if she wanted this new touch, if she could handle it.

But Rafer wasn’t giving her a chance to decide. Wrapping his free arm high around her back, he pulled her down, nearly bringing her to his chest before she jerked back, a little whimper escaping unbidden from her lips.

“Rafer, I don’t know—” if she could handle the sensations. If she could handle the emotions.

She could feel the unknown looming before her as he continued to work his finger gently against the opening.

He tugged her down again, this time his hold firmer, her attempt to jerk back halted by the strength in his powerful arm.

“Scared, baby?” The amusement in his voice was a challenge and a dare. “Are you finally realizing you may not be able to handle me as easily as you think you can?”

He was daring her and he knew it. Pushing her, making the challenge impossible to resist. He knew his Cami. He knew that hidden core of competitiveness, that vein of fierce determination inside her.

The sound of it had her pausing. The pause, the weakening in her resistance, was all it took.

Before she could consider how to resist, how to adapt to the different sensations, his arm tightened around her, two fingers pressing firmly against the tight, too-sensitive, nerve-laden entrance that had never been touched before.

“What are you doing to me?” There were too many sensations, the pleasure and the pain building, the fiery intensity beginning to bloom from her rear through her pussy, her clit, raking through her womb.

His hips rolled beneath her, grinding his pelvis against her oversensitive clit as he thrust just enough, just hard enough, stroking violently sensitive inner nerve endings as his fingers stretched, worked, burned the sensitive ring of tissue that protected the inner flesh of her rear.

She could feel a fury of flames beginning to burn inside her. Wicked, intense, and violently erotic. The heat began to build, to focus inward, blazing through her womb as she felt it begin to convulse.

Her body tightened, the muscles of her pussy, her anus, clamping down on the dual penetration, throwing her into ecstasy.

The implosion blinded her. Pleasure began tearing through her. It rippled and surged through her system as she tightened convulsively crying out and shuddering violently as his name tore past her lips in an agony of pure, burning rapture. She felt the hard, fiery blast of his semen pulsing inside her. Felt his fingers scissoring in her rear, extending the sensations. His free arm held her close to him, and a muted, broken male groan sounded at her ear.

Ecstasy exploded again, tearing through her and pulling a desperate cry from her lips as she heard him whisper her name. His free hand moved up, locked in her hair, and turned her head to him, his lips catching hers, kissing her, devouring her cries and her pleasure as it tore through her.

Torturously intense shudders of rapture raced through her flesh as she swore she could feel Rafer not just inside her body but also under her skin. He was invading parts of her she hadn’t realized he could ever breach.

Lying against him, waves of heat sinking deeper and deeper inside her, Cami fought and failed to keep that inner part of her closed against him.

She could feel, hear, his heartbeat against her breast as her throat tightened with tears. Tears she couldn’t, wouldn’t, allow herself to shed.

Tears that didn’t make sense to her, because she had known, even before he touched her that first time seven years before, that between them there could never be anything more.

* * *

Rafe lay silently, petting Cami’s body gently as the shudders of her release began to slowly ease. The incredibly tense, violent vibrations of her orgasm had taken him by surprise. As though the pleasure had been pulled straight from some inner part of her feminine core and raced through her repeatedly before releasing.

It took long minutes for her body to slowly relax, for the tremors to ease and the heavy, satisfied lassitude to move in and do its work.

To keep her in place. To hold her to him while he tried to find a way to figure out exactly what had just happened.

What had begun out of arrogant male pride and a lust he had no idea how to combat had turned into something more, into something he wasn’t certain he knew how to control.

There was something about Cami that slid right past his defenses and locked inside a part of him that he simply wasn’t familiar with. A dark, dominant, primal part of his psyche that only awakened when he was with her.

And he had no idea what the hell he was supposed to do about it or how to rid himself of it.

“What’s going on between us, Rafer?” Her voice was quiet, wary, as she asked the question. “How do you do this to me?”

In that soft, cautious tone she expressed the same conflicting feelings he could feel roiling inside himself.

“Hell if I know,” he breathed out roughly after several long moments. “Whatever it is, it’s damned good, though.”

It was a pleasure he would be loathe to lose after the storm was over and Cami left. He couldn’t imagine letting her go when the time came. Hell, he couldn’t imagine her walking away from him. Surely there was a way to convince her to stay, just for a little while. Just long enough to explore the pleasure, the dark, sensual need that drew them together.

“It’s snowing again,” she said rather than taking the current conversation any further.

Cami made all those dark hungers swirling inside him, so thick and heavy that it obliterated good common sense.

He stroked his hand slowly down her back, relishing the feel of her satiny flesh, the warmth of her skin, the feel of her heartbeat against his own.

“How long do you think we can stay apart this time without tearing into each other like love-starved teenagers the first time we see each other again?” That was what he was often reminded of since she had shown up on his doorstop the night before. “Do you really think you can escape this addiction another three years?”

She tensed in his arms and for a moment, the briefest weakening moment, he wished he had kept his damned mouth shut.

But the more realistic, logical part of his brain assured him it was a valid question and one she needed to be prepared to answer when they saw each other again. Reality sucked bad enough and there were times he’d give almost anything to escape it, but the truth was, there was no escaping. It. Better he face it now, and deal with it, than to have it surprise him later.

“This can’t happen again, Rafer,” she said softly, pulling out of his arms to sit up in front of the fire. She gazed into the flickering flames.

Her expression was somber, resigned, as she wiped a hand over her face and breathed in roughly. “We aren’t teenagers. And we’re going to have to simply accept that it can’t go anywhere and let it die as it should.”

With her legs bent, her arms wrapped around them, as her chin rested at the top of her knees, she looked like a little lost girl. Especially with that short mop of hair framing her delicate face. She was a woman, though, and she was talking about walking away from something neither of them had been able to deny each time they had been face-to-face with each other.

Her ability to fool herself, to weave daydreams and to believe them, simply amazed him.

“You don’t really think that’s going to happen anytime soon, do you, Cami?” he said mockingly.

No, she didn’t but she knew what was best for her heart, and allowing herself to fall once more into the emotional abyss that awaited her, if she allowed this to continue, was not what was best for her heart.

Turning her head, she stared back at him. He was so comfortable in his nudity, so confident in it that she could only envy him.

“Is this because of your parents?” he asked as he curled one arm behind his head and appeared as relaxed and comfortable as any finely muscled, highly sexual male animal.

God, the man made her breathless only seconds after an orgasm so violent she’d nearly lost her mind. As that thought hit her, so did his question. She stared back at him with a frown. “What? Is what because of my parents?” Genuine confusion filled her.

“Your refusal to admit there’s something between us,” he growled, a disgruntled frown tightening his brow.

“There’s nothing between us,” she agreed. God, she didn’t want to do this right now.

His expression tightened. She could see the male calculation that filled his gaze as well as the determination, and she knew what she had done.

“I’m not a challenge or a dare, Rafer, so don’t start attempting to see me as one. I have no intention of falling into some kind of love-trap with you and losing my soul.”

“Love-trap?” A black brow arched with deliberate arrogance. “What exactly is a love-trap, Cami?”

Her lips thinned. Twisting around, she searched for her clothes before gritting her teeth in frustration. Hell, she had left them in the kitchen. Actually they were scattered from the kitchen to where they were now. She grabbed Rafer’s shirt instead and pushed her arms into the sleeves before pulling the material around her.

“I’m not getting into this with you, Rafer,” she informed him as she moved to rise to her feet.

“The hell you’re not.”

Before she could avoid him, his fingers circled her wrist and pulled her back to him. Caught off balance, Cami found herself sprawled across his chest, staring back at him in surprise.

“And what is this going to accomplish, Rafer?” she questioned him, struggling to keep calm, to refuse to allow the past between them to overwhelm her.

“Tell me, Cami, do you know what everyone in town says when they talk about you?”

He let her push away, but only far enough to sit up again.

Cami turned her gaze away from him to stare into the flames flickering in the fireplace. “Do I want to know?” Wrapping her arms around her knees, she refused to stare back at him.

“Cambria Flannigan doesn’t give up,” he mocked out. “She’s a hell of a friend. Honest as hell. She’s even a cheap date. But she’s frigid as hell, no doubt a virgin, and refuses to let a man get even as far as first base.”

“Well, then, evidently ‘everyone’ is wrong.” Turning back to him, she wished she had kept her eyes averted.

“You’ve not been with another man other than me, Cami.”

“Maybe my lovers just know how to keep their mouths shut,” she retorted with a blatant lie. “And maybe, Rafe, I simply don’t want the emotional ties that go with a ‘relationship’,” she bit out sarcastically. “There are those of us who aren’t all about that commitment that goes with sleeping with certain men.”

She tried to rise to her feet again only to have him pull her back.

“What the hell are you doing, Rafer?” she burst out at the dominance in his refusal to allow her to move away from him.

“I’m getting fucking answers,” he snapped, his voice rising just marginally as his head lifted, his gaze flashing in anger.

“Answers to what, Rafer? Why I refuse to fuck around or fuck men who would just love to advertise it? What business is it of yours?”

“Liar!” His lips drew back as the word rasped from his lips. “You’ve been running from me for six years now, Cami. Sneaking out of the bed like a damned thief when the sun rises and avoiding me like the plague for the past three years. And I want to know why.”

“Well, it sucks to be you, Rafer,” she announced archly as she fought the anger she could feel rising more sharply inside her now.

“And what the hell do you mean by that?” he growled back at her, the muscles of his jaw flexing tightly.

“Exactly what I said.” Shrugging, her lips pursing to hold back the anger, she jerked her arm out of his grip before rolling quickly away from him and to her feet. “I need a shower. Do me a favor and stop listening to gossip. You should know yourself exactly how destructive it can be.”

She stalked from the living room, all but running from the living room and the questions she knew were getting ready to come from him.

Why had she begun ignoring him?

Why had she stopped making the trips to Denver that allowed him to waylay her for those few hours that allowed her to slip away at dawn? And why did she refuse to even question why they couldn’t resist that sexual pull that kept bringing them together?

And they were questions she simply refused to answer. There was too much pain, too many emotions she had no choice but to keep buried inside her.

“Things are going to go your way and be done your way, no matter what. Right?”

“Pretty much,” he agreed.

She so didn’t think so.

Rather than stating the obvious, she turned and stalked to the shower, slamming and locking the door behind her.

He should have followed her. It was his bathroom, his damned house. And by God, she was his damned woman. That was a decision he’d made six years ago, when she was more than eighteen years old. When he left the Marines, when he came back to stay, Cami would be his.

He’d kept track of her. The few contacts he still had in Corbin let him know if she was dating anyone, if it was getting serious, what she was doing, and if she needed anything. He’d taken the decision he’d made very damned seriously.

Cami was his, and he figured it was time he let her know that little fact.

She would fight him. He wasn’t certain why she would fight him, but it was more than apparent that that was exactly what she had in mind.

He hadn’t expected a challenge from her, but he wasn’t about to turn away from one either. It would only make her surrender sweeter, he thought. One of the reasons he’d looked forward to this return was the chance to finally claim Cami once and for all. He might not have that romantic, sweet idea of Prince Charming that she might think she wanted, but he knew how to keep her warm when the nights were cold.

He knew how to please her.

He knew how to protect her.

Now if he could just convince “her” of those few, though no doubt important, facts.