Midnight Sins

by Lora Leigh

  He heard the tears then. They didn’t fall. They didn’t fill her eyes. They were stuck in her soul, a wound that never healed, that never eased. And it broke his heart.

  “Cami?” What could have happened? How could he have hurt her in such a way without ever knowing he had done so? Fear lanced through him then. Fear that somehow he had damaged her, taken from her something she hadn’t willingly given because his hunger had been so strong, so wild.

  “You did the night we spent together.” He froze at the statement. “You left a part of yourself inside me that I never wanted to be free of. That I never wanted to live without.” Her voice was ragged now, torn, until he moved for her, desperate to hold her as she jerked back from him, leaving him staring at her in shock as her expression twisted in rage. “And I lost it anyway, Rafe. I lost the baby I already loved until it felt as though my soul had been seared and then ripped from my very spirit. But I was still living, I was still breathing, and I was alone. And I’ve stayed alone. That way, I didn’t lose again. I didn’t suffer again. And I sure as hell didn’t ever take that risk again until I decided to see if rumors were true and drive by the ranch.” Her breathing hitched as she held her hands to her stomach, the rage and anger in her voice ripping his soul apart. The image of complete aloneness that surrounded her, tearing into his soul. Cami should have never been alone. “Until I walked to your house during a blizzard, instead of the Phillipses’, which was closer. Until I realized I had to see you.” And there were the tears; they gleamed in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. “I had to see you; I had to know if you were really home. If you were really here. And I swore I wouldn’t touch you.” Throwing her head back, she blinked desperately as she drew in ragged breaths. “I just had to see you,” she whispered hoarsely. “Now what else do you want to know, Rafe? Tell me!” she screamed then, the pain suddenly overflowing, penned up for five years, locked in a dark part of her soul where she had refused to let it escape, and now it was exploding like a volcano of rage and pain. “What the fuck else do you need to know?”

  She turned to run.

  Cami had never meant to let it go, to let it rise inside her until it spewed from her soul like an erupting volcano that couldn’t be stemmed.

  When he had threatened to leave a part of himself that she would never be free of, he had triggered that inner helpless rage she had been able to control in the past.

  “The hell you will!” Rafe jumped for her as she turned to run, to escape. “Damn you, you’re not going anywhere. You will not run from me again, Cambria. Not this time. Not now.”

  He had seen the intent in her eyes, wild with the agony of a loss he had never known.

  Catching her around the waist, he was only distantly aware of Logan and Crowe rushing back into the house from the front porch. Coming to a stop in the hall, they watched, surprised, not prepared as a desperate cry of agony tore from her and her arm swung with all the force in her small, delicate body.

  Rafe caught her fist a bare inch from his face, staring back at her in surprise, in anger. She dared to try to strike him, even in her pain, in her rage against fate, when she hadn’t told him that together they had created a life? That she had lost that baby and suffered that loss alone and had never given him the chance to share it with her?

  “You never told me,” he snarled down at her. “You were pregnant and you never told me? Why?” As he gripped her upper arms it was all he could do not to shake her, to demand, to rage along with her for the tiny unborn life he had never had the chance to know about.

  The tears fell now. Staring back at him, her eyes were nearly black with the emotions, the secrets she had kept for far too long, and the tears he wondered if she had ever shed.

  Jaymi had remarked several times that Cami held too much inside, even as a child. That Jaymi never knew what her sister was thinking or what Cami was doing until it was already done.

  “Dad said I deserved it,” she whispered as those tears fell from her eyes, her lips trembling violently as she stared up at Rafe beseechingly. “Mom said it was for the best. That I wouldn’t want my child to suffer as you and your cousins did.” Her fingers clutched at his arms now with the same desperation that her fist had aimed for his face with. “It wasn’t for the best, Rafe. I wouldn’t have let my baby suffer. I would never, ever let anyone be cruel to my child.” Hoarse, rough with the tears that fell but the sobs she held back, her voice grated with pain and tore a hole in his soul.

  “Cami. I would have been here.” How had it happened? He had used a condom. He remembered using a condom. Had it broken? Had he only thought he had rolled the latex over the violently hard flesh that was so eager to sink inside her?

  She shook her head as though she had read his thoughts. “It was my fault.” She swallowed tightly. “You had drunk so much that night. After I fell asleep you woke me. You asked if it was okay. You asked if you could have me bare.” Her breathing hitched, those sobs fighting to be free. “I told you it was,” her voice lowered. “I told you it was, and I knew it could happen. I knew, and I wanted—”

  She gave a hard shake of her head, lowering it and fighting to be free again.

  “You wanted my baby?” he asked, baffled, as she struggled to escape. “No, Cami.” A small shake was acceptable, he told himself. Just enough to get her attention. Just enough to make her look up at him, those tears still falling, her lips trembling with such vulnerable pain it was destroying him. “You wanted my baby?”

  Every woman he had ever been with in Corbin County had been damned vigilant about condoms and birth control. Not that he had been any less so. He had been determined no child of his would be raised away from his protection, and he knew no woman in that county would want to claim him as the father.

  Except Cami.

  “I wanted our baby,” she whispered. “I wanted a part of you to hold forever, because you were always leaving, Rafe. You couldn’t stay and I wanted to hold on to you forever because leaving before you awoke, so I wouldn’t have to watch you leave, nearly killed me.”

  She couldn’t let the sobs free. She hadn’t allowed herself to cry, to release the rage and pain building inside her, because she feared the price.

  If she shattered, she might not know how to put herself back together again.

  “Let me go.” If he kept holding her, kept staring at her with that naked hunger, then she might not survive it. “Don’t tear at me anymore, Rafe, please. Please don’t ask any more from me. Please God, don’t ask me for more.”

  Let her go? It wasn’t happening and now wasn’t the time to tell her that was something he would never do. What she definitely didn’t know was that he had never let her go.

  “I won’t leave you alone.” He had to force himself to speak past the lump in his throat.

  As he stared down at her he was only barely aware of the doorbell ringing.

  The door opened before Logan or Crowe could reach it and check for danger. Cami wished they had made it.

  The danger wasn’t physical, it was so much more dangerous than that.

  Stepping into the small den her father had once used, Cami could feel her insides tightening in trepidation as she faced her father.

  She really looked nothing like him.

  She remembered so many times, staring at him and wondering how she had acquired traits and a sense of decency that she knew he didn’t have.

  “Is Mother doing well?” she asked as he moved naturally to the large desk she had taken as her own.

  He sat down in the large padded chair comfortably and stared back at her.

  Cami knew this wasn’t going to go well.

  It never had whenever she had faced him across the table in the past.

  His lips were curled into a sneer, his brown eyes filled with disgust.

  I see the rumors are true,” he mocked her, his tone low. “You’ve not only insisted in fucking the murderers but you have them living with you.” His gaze flicked over her. “Are you fucking all of them?”


  “Is it any of your business?” she asked him.

  His lip curled tighter. “You’ve managed to get my Jaymi killed and now you’ve also turned my brother against me.”

  “I had nothing to do with Jaymi’s murder.” She was already too raw, too shredded inside to take the blame for it.

  He leaned forward against the desk. “She died for you,” he accused her. “To collect medicine you begged her for.” He raked her with a look filled with bitter hatred. “You could have waited until the next morning.”

  She couldn’t deal with this.

  She was savaged from the secrets she had revealed to Rafe, the memories raking her soul as the hatred in his gaze seemed to increase. “You lost your child, Cami, and I thought it only fitting punishment.”

  Vicious, cruel, the sound of the satisfaction in his tone shocked her.

  “Why?” she whispered painfully, shocked. “Why would you say something like that to me?”

  “Because you deserved it.” He rose from the chair then, glaring back at her. “You took Jaymi from the parents who loved her, and you thought your presence would help with that loss?”

  “I thought you had a spark of decency was what I believed,” she whispered painfully. “I learned you didn’t a long time ago, though. And it was no more than the truth.”

  The cold hard smile he directed her way should have hurt her. It should have at least hurt for the simple fact that he was her father.

  “Why should I?” he asked, his voice dropping further to ensure Rafe didn’t hear them, she suspected. “You weren’t my child, Cami. You’re nothing to me. So why should I care?”

  It didn’t hurt, that was the first thing she noticed. The bitterness was there. The pain was there, but Cami found herself unable to care about that either.

  She stared back at him, wondering though if Jami had known …

  “That’s enough.”

  Cami swung around as Rafe pushed the door opened and stepped inside.

  He stood tall, broad, strong.

  And Cami could feel the emotions tearing free inside her then.

  “Bastard,” Mark Flannigan growled insultingly. “You have no say here.”

  “No, I do.” Cami swung around then and this time, she let her gaze rake over him in satisfaction. “You haven’t hurt me, Mark. You didn’t even surprise me. You have no idea how proud I am that you are no father of mine.”

  His brows lowered furiously as his hands fisted at his side.

  “It’s time you left,” she told him. “Leave now, and don’t bother coming back. Because you’re not wanted any more than you ever wanted me.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Cami stalked into the bedroom.

  She’d intended to retreat to her room alone. To hide, lick her wounds, and find a way to repair the shattering of her defenses.

  Rafe wasn’t allowing her to rebuild anything, though. He was behind her, surrounding her as the door closed behind him, and she felt him watching her silently.

  “Could I please have some privacy?” she asked, aware of the belligerence in her tone as she turned back to him, her insides shaking with the emotions flooding her.

  “So you can turn into that pretty little robot you were before you broke down and told me about our child?” He arched his brows in surprise that she would ask. “I doubt it, kitten. But you can try to convince me if you want.”

  Try to convince him?

  “And how am I supposed to do that?” Then his words sank in, and she felt her expression tighten in anger. “I was never a robot.”

  Rafe could feel himself breaking apart inside. Chunks of his soul being shredded as he stared in her eyes and saw the pain, the depth of it, and the years she had all but carried it alone.

  “Do you know what amazes me, Cami?” His voice softened.

  “What?” She was breathing roughly, her breasts rising hard and fast as she glared back at him.

  “That you wanted my baby.”

  Her eyes darkened.

  She’d just learned the man she had called Father all her life hadn’t been. That he thought, at fifteen, she should have suffered her sister’s fate, and that his hatred for her, that she hadn’t, went soul-deep, and that hadn’t seemed to faze her.

  What had fazed her was revealing to Rafe that she had lost their child.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before now?”

  She shook her head.

  “Cami, answer me.” Moving to her, he gripped her chin gently, aware of the bruising of her flesh, and turned her gaze to him. “Why?”

  Her lips trembled. “You were safe. If I had told you, you would have come back here. They might have tried to hurt you again.”

  Nothing could have shocked him more.

  “What?” He could hear the confusion in his own voice.

  “The barons, this town.” Swallowing tightly, she was obviously fighting her tears, her pain as she continued. “They wanted to destroy you and Logan and Crowe. I wasn’t going to help them, Rafe. I couldn’t.”

  A single tear slipped free.

  “But, Cami, that was my child, too,” he said softly.

  “And if I hadn’t lost our child, I would have told you.” That intriguing ring of blue around the soft gray seemed to darken. “I would have told you then, Rafer. I would never have taken something so precious away from you.”

  And she wouldn’t have.

  He framed her face with his hands. “Cami, I would have still held our child as precious,” he whispered.

  “And everyone here would still be waiting to find a way to destroy everything you were fighting for. They would have convicted you for Jaymi’s murder, Rafe, and for the other girls’. They would have stolen your life if they had the chance.”

  “Instead, you let Mark Flannigan steal yours.” Lowering his head, he touched her forehead with his.

  “He hasn’t had that power since he refused to allow me to talk to Mom when I lost our child,” she revealed. “Probably a lot sooner.”

  God, how alone had she been?

  He hadn’t been here for her. He hadn’t protected her as he had sworn to, not just to Cami, but also to himself when he’d realized how much she cared for him so long ago.

  “Sweet Cami,” he whispered as his lips lowered to hers.

  He meant to only brush them, to comfort her, to hopefully ease the pain both of them had endured over the years. A pain that could have been eased, that could have healed if stubbornness and pride hadn’t held them apart.

  But her hands lifted to his chest, small, delicate and warm, lying against it with a tentative, almost hesitant caress as her lips parted beneath his.

  Gentle, heated, the need that rose between them was unlike any he had felt, even with her, in his life. As though something had come together that morning. Something he couldn’t fight or deny, something that slipped free of his soul and began to fill his heart as their kiss deepened, grew hotter, and began to meld them together.

  He had dreamed of finding her soft heart, of feeling her kiss infused with that “something” that only her acceptance of that emotion could bring.

  And she was accepting it. Accepting it and holding it close to her as she was pulling him close to her.

  Disposing of their clothing was easy.

  Her hands pushed at the material of his clothing as his hands removed hers, his fingers brushing against her flesh and feeling the softness of her flesh and the hunger rising between them both.

  It had been there since she had been sixteen. It had only grown through the years.

  Drawing her to the nearest piece of furniture in the room, Rafe sat back in the chair behind him, drew her forward, parted her thighs, then drew her to him.

  He watched.

  Hell, he couldn’t help but watch as the tight, saturated flesh of her pussy eased over his cock head, drawing it inside, sucking it into her body with slow, sweet milking motions of the tight muscles and silken tissue.

  Pleasure whipped every cell of his
body as he held her hips and watched as she shifted hers, rolled them, and slowly took him.

  Her hands were braced on his chest, her head thrown back, pleasure suffusing her expression as she began to thrust against him, above him.

  “God, yes, baby,” he groaned as she finally slid down, taking his full length as her pussy began to flex and clench on his flesh. “Ride my dick, baby. Take it up that tight little pussy.”

  He was dying for her.

  He hadn’t expected this. Not this hunger that surged so hot and fast, searing over his nerve endings and burning through his senses. And he sure as hell hadn’t expected her head to lower, her eyes to meet his. “I love you,” she whispered as she began to move harder, faster.

  Though still tender and bruised, she took him, her pleasure obvious, her need rising.

  His hips rose, thrusting up, shafting her with the thick width of his cock as he felt her tighten, watched her eyes open wide, then watched her orgasm wash through every particle of her being.

  Just as Rafe felt his own release explode in his balls, surge through his cock, and in hard, powerful jets, spill inside the giving depths of her body.

  * * *

  Son of a bitch, she had slipped out of the bed on him again.

  Rafe came awake hours later, the knowledge that Cami wasn’t by his side surging through him.

  It took him a moment to remember where he was, what had happened, and to know his cousins would never allow her to leave the house.

  After showering and dressing, he went in search of her.

  She was in the kitchen, staring in the cabinets with a frown.

  “Dinner,” she mumbled. “I don’t know if I have enough for three mountains pretending to be men.”

  The teasing edge of amusement in her gaze had his lips twitching.

  “Yeah, especially after you helped us build a hell of an appetite.”