She jerked in his hold, her eyes opening wide, dazed, blurred as she felt the implosion tearing through her. The muscles of her pu**y tightened on his shuttling cock, locking down on the stiff, exciting shaft and throbbing around it furiously as she gasped his name and she felt his release spurting hot and hard inside her.
Each heated ejaculation inside her, each flex of her pu**y, sent repeated ecstasy rushing through her. A conflagration of sensations and rapture that whipped through her senses and finally left her limp and exhausted in his arms.
The past week had been heartrending for her; the pain of dealing with her mother’s condition and her father’s grief and heartache had sapped at Cami’s strength.
Lying beneath him, Cami realized with a flash of sudden insight that she had deliberately dared take that turn that brought her past Rafer’s. She knew the sky had darkened with snow. She had known there was a chance of being stranded. She had taken the risk because she had known she could make it as far as Rafer’s ranch.
Feeling the heavy shudders that wracked both their bodies, she realized it wasn’t the pleasure she had been fighting, and it hadn’t really been Rafer she had fought through the years. It had been this—what she could feel at this very moment building inside her.
Those emotional ties tightening inside her, tying knots in her heart that she wouldn’t have a chance of unraveling.
Jaymi had done that. She had let Tye wrap so many chains around her soul that when she lost him, she lost a part of herself.
Losing herself in such a way terrified Cami.
What would happen to her if Rafer was gone? If the dark danger that swirled around him decided to tighten and strike out with the same murderous intent she suspected it had struck out to destroy the rest of the Callahan family?
It wasn’t the danger to her that terrified her. It was the danger to Rafer. The danger to her soul if anything happened to him.
That was what she fought. That was what she continued to run from. Because she knew once she gave her heart to him fully, then if anything happened to him, it would destroy her as well.
The pain of Jaymi’s death had scarred her soul, but when she had lost Rafer’s child, she had never lost her will to live. The agony that had gripped her, the sheer depth of the pain that had held her in its grip had seemed never-ending.
It had followed her every second of her life, and even now, two years later, the realization of the life she had lost burned inside her continually.
It was another loss that had driven her when she had sensed the snowstorm coming. The days spent getting her mother settled into the rest home, feeling her father’s pain, his devotion to her mother, and the sense that his hatred for her had only grown.
She’d needed Rafer. She’d needed him to pull her out of the memories of the little girl who had begged her father to love her. The woman who had knelt before her mother and sobbed against her knee when she’d lost her own child.
Margaret Flannigan had lifted Cami’s chin and stared down at her with sudden, lucid sobriety and whispered, “Trust me, Cami, losing that child was the best thing that could have happened for the baby. Or for you.”
Cami had felt something inside her that had struggled to survive over the years simply fade away. Perhaps it was the love she should have known for her parents. Perhaps it was the compassion for their weaknesses that had seemed to hobble her all her life.
Whatever it was, it had just faded away inside her as though it had never existed.
She should have used her common sense rather than her emotions tonight. Her emotions were about to get her into more trouble than she wanted to deal with.
As Rafe lifted himself from her, Cami deliberately kept her eyes closed, her breathing even. She refused to leave that halfway place where the past the didn’t matter and the future hadn’t yet arrived. God knew she didn’t think she could handle any more upheaval inside her or around her. She wanted to stay right where she was, safe and warm inside. While the realizations and realities she faced remained at a distance.
Rather than forcing her from that place, Rafer slid his arms beneath her and carried her slowly up the huge staircase and into his bedroom. He didn’t speak or force her to speak. He simply took care of her.
She didn’t want to face what she had just done, what she had known she would end up doing the second she had stepped from her car after it slid into the snowdrift at the side of the main road.
Cami didn’t want to face the fact that she had complicated her life more than ever and ensured that she likely would see no peace for quite a while.
Rafer was like a dog with a bone; no, he was worse than that. Five years ago he had given her a clue exactly how serious he was about being her lover.
She couldn’t handle it then, and she couldn’t handle it now. There was too much between the two of them, as well as between him and the townsfolk of Sweetrock.
Her gaze fluttered open long seconds later, though, as she felt him parting her legs. As she watched, he ran a damp, warm cloth between her thighs and along the slick, wet folds of her pu**y as he wiped the excess of both their releases from her body.
He had done this every time they were together. Pushing aside his own need to luxuriate in the satiation, or in his own release, he had instead cleaned her and ensured her comfort.
She couldn’t fault Rafer there. The three times they had been together he had taken excellent care of her. The first time, just after she’d turned twenty, she’d been shocked by it. She’d never heard her friends bragging of their lovers doing such a thing.
“This can’t last, Rafer,” she whispered as he drew back, her gaze caught by the dark sapphire of his eyes and the lazy, satisfied expression on his face.
“I never said it could, Cami.” He shrugged.
But wasn’t exactly agreeing with her either.
“Just for tonight,” she reaffirmed as he drew a dry towel between and over her thighs. “Then we forget it happened.”
And just as it had five years before, something seemed to explode in her chest at the very thought of it. She could feel the dark, forceful contradiction screaming inside her and couldn’t understand why.
“Until the storm is over, and the roads are clear enough for travel.”
He was hard again.
Kneeling with one knee on the bed, the furiously flushed, wide shaft of his c**k pointed out at her, the flared crest dark and throbbing as she dampened her dry lips with a sudden hungry thought.