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 f**king 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 f**k around or f**k 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.
CHAPTER 8
“Has he lost his f**king mind?” Crowe Callahan asked Logan the next morning, speaking through the voice-activated link to his cousin’s communications set. Crowe sat on the winter-white snowmobile, the winter camo protective gear he wore insulating him against the freezing wind as he held the matching binoculars to the eye slit of the thermal full-face ski mask.
Staring from his position on the snow-covered mountainside, he couldn’t believe Rafe was actually standing out in the freezing cold and smoking yet another of the cigars Crowe and Logan kept trying to convince him to throw away.
“Told you,” Logan said as he leaned back, ignoring Crowe’s intense, questioning look.
Dressed in identical snow gear, Logan rested casually against the pack strapped to the back half of the seat as the now gently falling snow, the final edge of the blizzard, collected on the protective face mask and shaded goggles he wore. “What’s he doing this time?”
The lazy, unconcerned drawl of his voice was distinctly at odds with the worry Crowe had seen earlier in his cousin’s face.
Shaking his head, Crowe turned back, lifted the military-issue binoculars back to his eyes, and watched as his cousin leaned against the support post of the sheltered porch below, the cigar clenched between his teeth, tension radiating in the stiff set of his shoulders and the dark glower on his face.
“He didn’t close the curtains to the living room,” Crowe mused as Cami Flannigan pulled the man’s long-sleeved white shirt over her na**d body after rising from the bed of pillows, feather comforters, and quilts that Rafe had obviously made the night before.
Like an animal creating a nest for his mate. Soft, warm, comforting, and protective. The aura of intimacy was so heavy it made Crowe’s back teeth ache in frustrated anger. His baby cousin was making nests, getting intimate, and staring into the stark snowscape furiously. Just before his little lover stalked from the room. Then, Rafe just had to follow the girl.
“Really?” Logan rose from his reclined position. “Let me see.”