by Lora Leigh
She wanted to scream, but first she would have to breathe. She wanted to breathe, but first she would have to find the ability to process more than just the rapid flood of sensations racing through her.
Then, he added to them.
His fingers moved between her thighs; two pushed inside her pussy, burning the sensitized flesh there, increasing the bursts of ecstatic pleasure as she began rocketing higher, reaching, crying out for that ultimate release.
His hips were moving fiercely now, his cock thrusting harder, faster, inside the tightening depths of her rear as his fingers moved in quick thrusts inside her pussy.
Each thrust, each burning stretch, each gasping moan increased the pleasure that became so much more than pleasure that there was no way to understand it, no way to process it.
And Rafe was controlling it. The measured thrusts were pushing her deeper into the starbursts, tiny explosions erupting through her system. She was reaching desperately for release. She could feel it, just out of reach, teasing her, there, and then moving back, coming closer only to retreat.
She could feel the insanity of that need clawing at her until she and Rafe bent closer, his fingers turning inside her pussy as he twisted his wrist to the side, thrust his fingers inside her, then ground his palm against the swollen, violently sensitive bud of her clit.
It tore through her then. Ecstasy exploded with a white-hot brilliance that tore at her mind, ripping it from its moorings as pleasure expanded, exploded, enraptured until she swore her spirit was torn from her own body and shot straight to Rafe’s.
The emotions that swirled through the pleasure were a combination of so many things, so many hopes, needs, and dreams that she had never known she had.
The bond she had always sensed between them seemed to open up, to burn around her, as she stared into the rich brilliant blue of his eyes as he tightened before her, his expression tightening, his body tensing, his teeth baring a second before she watched his release flood his expression and the sensitive recess of her rear.
Hard, fiery spurts of semen blasted inside her, the sensation adding to the ecstasy, pushing it higher, increasing it, rocking the very foundations of her knowledge of herself and Rafe.
As though such pleasure could never be contained, it exploded again, imploded, tore through every particle of her body, then tossed her through the sensations until she found herself trembling beneath Rafe, shuddering at the extremity of the sensations as she fought to catch her breath.
She was wasted. Exhausted. She was so weak she could only whimper helplessly as she felt him slowly pull free to collapse beside her.
She was used to Rafe cuddling her afterward, but when he wrapped his arms around her he pulled her close to his heart, holding her more firmly than he had before.
And she hadn’t even realized how she had needed this each time they had been together. To be held so snugly, so close, that there would be no chance of slipping free of him, whether he was asleep or not.
Drowsiness gripped her, exhaustion settled inside her, as she felt the heavy lassitude of sleep slowly easing over her.
She roused only seconds later as she felt Rafe running a warm, wet cloth over and between her thighs, reaching back to the slick cleft of her rear. He cleaned her as though the thought of her comfort was uppermost. He had every time. Each time they had been together he had taken the time needed to rise from the bed, collect the cloth, then clean her gently.
Her lashes lifted drowsily, as she was uncertain whether she wanted to wake enough to watch him or not.
“Sleep, baby,” he murmured tenderly as he dropped the cloth to the towels that lay beside the bed. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
About what?
She didn’t ask the question, though. Instead, she let sleep overtake her, though she didn’t slip into the deepest reaches of it until she felt Rafe return to the bed. When his arms went around her, he pulled her into his embrace and the heavy beat of his heart against her ear lulled her into a sleep more peaceful, more fulfilling, than any she had known before.
CHAPTER 24
She had expected Amelia to show up before dawn, to slip into the house as she had done when they were teenagers and grounded for some transgression.
What Cami didn’t expect was to come sharply awake just after dawn to the heavy crack of her bedroom door against the frame.
Before her eyes were open Rafe was moving.
He rolled her from the bed, still naked, moving with a powerful surge of strength as he took her over the side of the bed to the floor, the weapon in his hand trained across the room.
She couldn’t blame him for it. He’d been trained to react and to move at the slightest sign of danger.
After all that had happened in the past weeks, who could have blamed him for leveling that weapon on her father?
Her sperm donor, she liked to call him, because there was nothing fatherly about Mark Flannigan.
“What the hell are you doing here, Flannigan?” Rafe growled, even as he wondered where his cousins were.
“Now then, wouldn’t it just surprise you to know I’m here to see my wife’s daughter.”
His wife’s daughter, not his own. Rafe caught the mocking inference in Mark’s tone, and from the flinch of her body he knew Cami had caught it as well.
“I need my robe,” she whispered almost silently, more than uncomfortable at the thought of being naked in front of her father.
Rafe had no such problems, though.
Rising to his feet as he cast Mark a scowl, Rafe padded across the room to where the silken robe was draped over the lady’s chair that sat in the corner.
Pulling it quickly over her arms, Cami kept her gaze on her father and wondered why he was there. In the time since she had bought the house from her parents, not once had either of them come by to see her home.
“There was no need,” he assured her, his gaze scathing as it flickered over her and Rafe again.
Rafe still hadn’t dressed. He was too busy sitting on the bed and watching her father warningly. She could have told Rafe that no amount of warning could stop whatever her father had in mind to say.
His gaze flicked back to her again.
“How disappointing,” he told her, a sneer pulling at his lips. “I would have never expected such a betrayal of your family, even from you.”
Even from her, as though betrayal were something he had grown to accept as a part of her.
“Your opinion of me or anything I do isn’t anything I lose sleep over, Mark,” she told him casually, knowing that the worst thing she could do was allow him to see how easily he could wound her.
She had learned better than that years before.
“What I’d like to know is how he managed to slip past Logan and Crowe,” Rafe stated.
Mark snorted. “They were out back for some reason.” He shrugged comfortably. “I have a key.”
“I’d like that key back,” she informed him. “Is Mom okay?”
“As if you care,” he accused her. “You’re too busy fucking her daughter’s murderer to even check up on her.”
Cami could only shake her head. She called the facility daily and went to visit whenever she could.
Her mother didn’t even recognize her. Cami doubted her mother even thought of her when she did have the presence of mind to remember her.
“What do you want, Mark?” Cami asked wearily as Rafe rose to his feet, pulled his jeans over his legs, and pulled the zipper up nonchalantly.
“I couldn’t believe it when I heard how you were consorting with these bastards.” Mark flicked his fingers to Rafe to indicate not just him but also his cousins, who weren’t in the room at the moment.
“I don’t want to hear this.” Cami lifted her hand, seeing the rage in her father’s face and wishing she had changed the locks to the house when she had the chance.
“You don’t want to hear this,” he sneered back at her. “This is how you repay the love and loyalty Jaymi felt for you
, isn’t it? They killed her, Cami—”
“They didn’t kill her, and I won’t deal with you at the moment. Leave, Mark.”
His expression twisted in fury. “Give me the courtesy of calling me Father, you little whore.”
The conversation was over as far as she was concerned. The accusations she could handle; the name-calling was much harder to overlook or to turn the other cheek on.
“Your mother heard what you were doing here, in her home, in the room where she once slept in her bed,” he snarled back at Cami as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks and watched her as though she were a foul odor he couldn’t disperse.
“Then you told her,” Cami accused him, feeling her chest tighten in pain and anger at the thought of what Mark would have said or could have done to torment her mother. “Tell me, Mark, don’t you ever get tired of punishing Mother for having me, and me for living when Jaymi didn’t?”
His expression darkened further. “I forgave her for giving birth to you,” he informed her. “But no, Cami, after this.” He nodded toward Rafe. “After this, I’ll never forgive you for living. Jaymi wouldn’t have betrayed you this way. She sure as hell would have never slept with the man who killed you.”
“I would hope not.” Cami shrugged. “You should leave now. If you really believe Rafe and his cousins are murderers, then it’s hard telling how they’ll react if you continue to stand here and throw their crimes in their faces.”
She glanced at Rafe. The smile he gave her father was all teeth. “Yeah, only God knows how much fun we could have with that one,” Rafe snorted.
“Leave the key before you go, Mark.” It should have hurt. It should have broken her heart a thousand times over, but all she felt was regret.
He could have been a father to her.
He had been Jaymi’s father. He had loved Jaymi with a father’s devotion that Cami had envied.
A devotion she’d prayed for just a bit of. An ounce of. Hell, she would have settled for Mark to simply tolerate her.
The smile that curved his lips was one that echoed with relish. She knew that whatever was coming, he expected to cut her to the bone.
“Your mother will never know I told you the truth,” he told Cami confidently. “She’ll never know I finally found the chance to tell you how thankful I am that you’re not my child.”
Shouldn’t she be shocked?
Cami stared back at him as Rafe cursed under his breath and moved to her. His arm went around her as he moved behind her, drawing her against him and providing a warmth, a security, she’d never had before. Facing Mark had never been easy. It had never been comfortable. But he’d never been so deliberately cruel either.
It wasn’t shock that filled her, though, and it wasn’t pain.
“I think I’ve known that for a very long time,” she told him softly. “If you meant to hurt me, Mark, then you haven’t succeeded.”
That was exactly what he had expected.
He glowered back at her and Rafe. “You’ll pay for this,” Mark finally snapped. “You’ll pay, Cami, when he kills you. When he tortures and rapes you—”
“And if you didn’t notice the fact he was in my bed when you so rudely barged in, then you’d realize he didn’t have to rape me,” she retorted. “No more than he would have had to rape Jaymi. Stop walking the Corbins’ line, Mark, and think for yourself for a change. Jaymi tried to tell you he and his cousins weren’t involved in any wrongdoings. But like everyone else, it’s much easier to please James Corbin than it is to think for yourself, isn’t it.”
“Cami,” Rafe said her name softly. “Go get ready, sweetheart. We have things to do today, remember?”
No, that wasn’t what she remembered.
He’d told her last night they had things to clear up, and that was far different.
“I’m finished with the little tramp—”
Before Cami could process the fact that Rafe had moved, he had done just that.
His hand was wrapped around Mark’s throat, holding him pinned to the wall he had thrown him into.
“Leave,” Rafe said softly.
Anything else he said Cami missed while waiting for her brain to kick into gear once again.
She rushed to the two men, and her fingers curled around the arm that bulged with strength as he drew on that power to keep his fingers wrapped around Mark’s throat.
“That’s enough,” she said softly. “I really don’t want to have to deal with Archer later, Rafe. And you know Mark; he would definitely file a complaint if you leave so much as a single bruise.”
“Oh, he won’t be bruised,” Rafe promised her, though he released Mark slowly. “But I bet you he remembers how little I like hearing that trash rolling out of his mouth to you.”
“And I’m sure he really won’t care once he gets away from you,” she told him before turning her gaze back to the man who had thought he could destroy her.
“Who was my father?” she asked Mark.
“Dead.” He seemed to relish the word. “The bastard was some cop in Denver when she left me one summer. She never made that mistake again. Again,” he reminded Cami.
“Did you kill him?”
Mark chuckled at the question. “I only wish I’d had the chance. A drug dealer and his tramp did that for me when he thought he could poke his nose in their business. His stupidity got him killed.”
If Mark could have set it up, then he would have, Cami thought.
She could see it in his eyes, in the hatred and regret that filled his expression.
“I’m going to shower and dress,” she only partially lied. She’d showered the night before; she only intended to dress and face whatever issues Rafe thought they should iron out. Or clear up. He’d said they had things to clear up, and she had a feeling she knew exactly what a few of those things were. The fact that she’d kept secrets from him, that she hadn’t contacted him when she needed him.
Turning her back on Mark, she moved to the dresser, collected her clothing, then moved into the bathroom.
Whatever Mark had thought he would accomplish by attempting to ambush her, he hadn’t quite managed it. Had it been ten years before, even five, then he could have shattered her with that knowledge.
Perhaps a part of her had already accepted, over the years, that no father could be as cruel as he had been over the years. He hadn’t laid a hand on her, but there were times that words could hurt much worse than a fist.
Moving into the bathroom, she wondered at how easily Mark had slipped in, though. He’d obviously been watching her, waiting, stalking her.
At this point, she didn’t give a damn what Rafe said to Mark. She was beginning to wonder if she would even care what Rafe did to him. Mark had made her mother’s life hell, and Cami knew it. A part of her acknowledged that he was the reason her mother had turned to the Valium and the wine. He was the reason she had closed herself off, even from the child she’d conceived, likely with a man who had loved her.
Cami dressed quickly, unwilling to leave Rafe with Mark long enough to actually hurt him. But when she stepped out into the bedroom, it was to find Rafe sitting in the large easy chair, lounging back, as he waited patiently for her.
His expression was slightly mocking, knowing.
“You know, he didn’t come through the front door,” Rafe told her. “There are several webcams scattered through the house now. He came through the basement window, just as your attacker did.”
Cami paused and stared back at Rafe, confused at the statement.
“But you secured that window.” And she knew he and his cousins would have done the job right.
“Yes, we did,” he agreed. “And from what I saw on the camera, he’s damned good at picking a lock, Cami.”
She rubbed at her temple, uncertain what to make of that. “He wasn’t the one that attacked me.” Was he?
If he had been, then that meant he had also been the one behind Jaymi’s death.
Cami shook her head. �
��He would have never hurt Jaymi. Whoever tried to hurt me was behind Thomas Jones attacking her as well. Mark was devoted to her.”
“But she was sleeping with me,” Rafe pointed out.
Cami shook her head again. “He truly loved her, Rafe. He loved her, and he loved Mother, despite any infidelity she may have committed. It was me he hated. It was me he made pay for it; that way he could could forgive her.”
And Cami believed that to the bottom of her soul. “Mark’s world began and ended with Mother and Jaymi. Losing a part of that world was more than he could bear.”
Rafe watched her for long, considering moments. “Pack up.” He surprised her with the command. “We’ll move to the ranch until this is resolved.”
“And what will that solve?” She breathed out with an edge of weariness. “Running won’t make him move any faster; it will only delay the inevitable. And I’m not running. Not yet.”
She hadn’t run from her problems since she was a child. “That was one of the few lessons Mark has taught me. Running shows weakness and fear. I’m not ready to give that impression quite yet.”
“You’re being too damned stubborn,” Rafe muttered as he came out of the chair and stalked over to her. “Should I have that put on your gravestone? ‘She Died Stubborn.’”
Her lips almost twitched. “Look at it this way,” she suggested. “I may die stubborn, but I intend to make certain that he knows he didn’t get the best of me in any other way. He’ll know he failed.”
“And that’s so important to you?” Rafe asked incredulously.
“Important?” she whispered. “Not so much important, Rafe, as all I have left. Through the years it’s all I’ve had, Rafe; Mark took everything else. And what he didn’t take Thomas Jones did when he killed Jaymi. Besides, what will leaving accomplish?”
“I know my home turf. I can protect it,” Rafe answered her instantly.
“And he doesn’t. Whoever attacked me won’t come after me there. He’ll just wait, and he’ll watch, and the Callahan cousins will have to blink eventually.”
