Son of a bitch, forgetting the pleasure he found in her was like trying to forget the sweetest paradise ever experienced after being thrown from it.
“And how are your parents?” It was a social nicety and one he had to force past his lips.
How she could stomach even acknowledging her parents, he had never been able to figure out. Neither her mother nor her father had been supportive of her. They hadn’t even pretended to care about her.
“I was there to help Dad settle Mother into a rest home. She never recovered from the stroke she had in the summer.” There was a poignant sadness in Cami’s voice. He couldn’t imagine it was because either parent had tried to make her feel accepted, let alone loved.
No, it had been her aunt and uncle who protected her after her sister had been killed, it had been her aunt and uncle, Ella and Eddy, who had celebrated all the successes and failures, both big and small, with her.
Rafe’s jaw clenched as he turned back to Cami, forcibly pushing those memories aside. “I’m sorry about your mother, Cami,” he said sincerely. For her and for her parents. They’d made her life hell and they both knew it. Cami’s compassion and the love she’d always felt for her parents had been apparent, though. It was a damn shame they hadn’t cared nearly as much for her as she had for them.
“Thank you for that, Rafer.” Cami nodded as she remained poised at the back door. “And thank you for meaning it.”
His lips thinned. He wasn’t going to broach the subject of her parents any further. To do so would only invite the destruction of the fragile truce he could feel settling between them. Though why one would be needed, he wasn’t quite certain. What the hell had he done to make Cami hate him? Or had she too simply given into the hatreds that rose from his past?
That past was a bitter, poisonous brew best left untasted, unremembered, and unvisited.
“I saw your father in town just after I returned home,” he told her.
He’d been back since early fall, and she hadn’t even called. Not that he had expected to hear from her. He’d never imagined she would call. But still, he’d watched his cell phone. He’d watched the driveway, and he’d watched for her in town. He hadn’t given up on her, even if he was certain she had never even considered attempting to find out what it was that lit such a spark between them and had them blazing out of control so quickly.
“I heard Logan and Crowe had returned as well.” There was an edge of worry in her voice now, and he wondered if she even realized it.
His cousins, Logan and Crowe Callahan, along with himself, were considered the scourge of Sweetrock, Colorado, and the citizens most likely to kill everyone else in their sleep, he thought sarcastically.
“They have,” he agreed. “Crowe went back to the cabin his mother left him in the mountains for a while and Logan has moved into the house in town. We finally managed to win the property that was left to us when our parents died. We’re fighting over everything else now.”
She bit at her lip as he turned from her and poured the coffee. Yeah, they were all home now. If everyone didn’t know it by now, then the good citizens of Sweetrock weren’t as diligent in their gossip as they used to be.
Turning back, he set the coffee in front of her and watched as Cami wrapped her fingers around the cup and stared into the contents.
“It’s not poisoned,” he promised as he sipped at his coffee to prove it was safe.
“I never imagined it was.” That frown edged between her brows again. “Stop reading something into everything I do and say. I never imagined for a minute you would hurt me Rafe. Since when did you begin believing something so asinine?”
“And you’re being too sensitive yourself,” he told her. “That wasn’t what I mean by it, Cami. I was being facetious.”
“You’re never facetious.” She shook her head in denial. “I take you at face value, because that’s how you are.”
He had always tried to be, but there had been times over the years that he had wished he wasn’t so damned honest. That trait could be decidedly inconvenient when the rest of the world just loved a good lie.
He sipped his coffee, refusing to comment or to refute her statement.
“I really need to get home,” she finally sighed as she lifted the cup to her lips again.
Rafe let her take a sip, gave it time to hit her system, then sat back in his chair and watched her with lazy amusement.
“It’s not happening, sweet pea,” he told her lightly. “Even I’m not crazy enough to try to drive in that particular blizzard. We wouldn’t even make it out of the drive to the main road.”
She brushed back the long fringe of bangs that fell over her forehead. Rafe realized then that her fingers were shaking.
Glancing at the vein throbbing at her throat, he saw the hard, quick pulse as it thundered beneath her flesh.
Excitement or fear?
There wasn’t a chance it was fear. She was aroused. Hot. Horny. She was ready to f**k. At least her body was. And he could just imagine how sweet and tight her pu**y was.
“I’m going to f**k you before you leave here,” he told her carefully, leaning forward against the table as he braced his forearms on the top and stared into her shocked face. “I’m going to have the sweetest treat right here on this table when I bury my lips in your pu**y and lap at the sweetest cream in the world. Then, I’m going to watch, Cami. While those pretty, pink lips stretch around my dick, I’m going to watch while I sink every inch of it up your hot little pu**y.”
Her lips parted, eyes widening, her face flushed a becoming peach, almost the color of her pu**y in full arousal.
“Tell me, do you still moan and cry when you come? Do you make your lovers growl like an animal when they come inside you because it’s so f**king good they could die in that moment and never regret it?”
“Stop.” She stumbled from the table, heading for the door as Rafe jumped from the chair, uncaring as it crashed to the floor, and caught her around her waist. In the next heartbeat he had her front pressed against the wall, his harder, taller body pressing against her back.
“Don’t say stop, damn you,” he said his head bent, his lips touching the delicate shell of her ear. “Say no. Go ahead, Cami, f**king say it. Tell me you don’t fantasize about having me inside you. Fucking you like I’m dying for you.” Tell me that you don’t touch yourself, whisper my name, and masturbate to the memory of my dick stretching you to the point where you didn’t know if it was pleasure or pain. Go ahead. Tell me, damn you, that you don’t want my dick buried inside you so bad it’s all you can do to breathe for it.”