Midnight Sins (17 page)

deep as possible, feeling her pussy began to

convulse, to spasm around the rapidly throbbing cock

head until they both began to come. Simultaneously,

his head buried against her neck as he groaned her

name, his seed pumping inside her, filling her,

marking her.

He’d never given another woman the intimacy of

coming inside her, of feeling his seed spurting hot

and hard in the blistering heat of her vagina.

Not until Cami. He trusted her that first time when

she had said she was protected. But even more, Rafe

knew if she wasn’t, if she conceived his child, then it

would only bind her to him. It would ensure she never

ran from him again. That she never left him again.

Buried as deep inside her as possible. Holding

her as close to him as possible, he felt a steady glow

radiate in the pit of his stomach that he’d only felt with

Cami.

CHAPTER 5

She slept peacefully, deeply, her head resting against

his heart as her deep, even breaths feathered over

the light dusting of hair on his chest.

Rafe kept his arm curled around her shoulders,

kept her as close to his body as he could get her,

allowing his fingers to stroke the silk of her hair every

so often.

He’d waited years to get her here, and now that

she was, rather than sleeping as peacefully as he had

that first time with her, Rafe was left staring into the

darkness of the bedroom.

He was damned wary about going to sleep and

he fully admitted why. Every time he had done so, he

had wakened to a missing Cami and an empty bed.

Not even so much as a letter or a short
good-bye

written in lipstick on the hotel mirror.

If she ran out on him again in such a way, he’d

end up doing more than busting a hole in a hotel wall

with his fist. Rafe would go looking for her, and that

might be the worst idea he’d had in years. He could

just imagine the shock, the fear, and the suspicion

that would fill her neighbors’ faces if he did such a

thing.She would probably have every male within three

blocks in front of her home within minutes, and every

one of them would be armed. Every one of them

would have murder in his heart and hatred in his gaze,

and Rafe had never fully understood that. Because it

had begun long before the year six young women had

died at the hands of a brutal rapist and torturing

murderer.

Cami’s older sister, Jaymi, had been one of the

victims.

For a second, he heard her screams as clearly

as he, Logan, and Crowe had heard them that hot

summer night they had been quietly fishing on the

bank of Sweetrock Lake, in the densely covered

forest outside of town.

He didn’t want to remember that night. He’d

spent too many years trying to forget it. But the facts

were that the Callahans had been ostracized far

sooner than that year. They’d been ostracized

decades before that, and there had been no

explanation why.

There had only been that barely disguised

distrust and wariness, as well the thinly veiled dislike.

There had been days Rafer had existed in such a

state of rage during his teenage years that even his

Uncle Clyde had been wary of him. Hell, even his

cousins had steered a wide path around him in those

days. He reminded himself that he hadn’t allowed their

opinions to bother him since then though and he

wouldn’t allow them to matter now. Never again would

he allow such destructive fury to rise inside of him

because of such pettiness and never again would he

run from it.

But it would matter to Cami and he couldn’t even

blame her for it. There were times when he had been

able to view the situation logically. Had he believed a

man responsible for such heinous crimes, he then too

would have gone out of his way to make his life hell.

And even before the murders, the years he and

his cousins had endured the scorn of the citizens of

Corbin County, he’d understood, sort of, why they had

done so.

The barons of Corbin County were a powerful

force in not just the county, but also in the state of

Colorado. Their anger could have far-reaching

consequences.

No doubt Cami knew exactly what those

consequences could be. She had seen the many jobs

her sister had gone through and knew what Rafe had

only suspected, that Jaymi had lost those jobs

because of him.

She was a teacher; her job depended on the

goodwill of the other teachers, the school board, and

the parents. No parent in Sweetrock would want a

teacher instructing their children who was sleeping

with the man suspected of having murdered her sister

twelve years ago. A man suspected of conspiring with

his two cousins to rape, torture, and murder five other

young women between Sweetrock and Aspen,

Colorado, during that same time period as well.

Rafe had learned years before not to worry about

what the good people of Sweetrock might believe.

His mind was invariably set on shocking and scaring

any adult who dared to offend him. Hell, they didn’t

have to offend him. He was ready to shock, piss off,

or frighten any adult who found the courage to confront

him in any manner. The inheritance left to him by his

mother might have still been tied up in the court

system, but the interest from it was not. He was

financially secure enough that he didn’t need the

barons’ goodwill to survive. Hell, he didn’t even need

their ignorance of his existence to make it in Corbin

County. All he needed was the military check he

received and the considerable interest payment he

received each month. After that he could piss off or

nearly frighten anyone who attempted to foolishly

confront him.

And he didn’t care a bit to do so.

There were even times he had even gained a hint

of morbid satisfaction in doing so.

He couldn’t do it to Cami, though. It wasn’t her

fault the school board was filled with the high-minded,

panty-starched little prudes. The bastards had

seemed to actually enjoy each punishment they had

dealt out to him during the few years he had attended

the high school.

But he’d seen in the shamed, regretful gazes of a

few of them that they hadn’t agreed with it. He could

find no respect for them, but there was a part of him

that could understand it.

Thankfully, he’d managed to graduate early. By

the first semester of the final year he had had the

credits needed to bypass attendance for the rest of

the year.

The school board had been more than willing to

allow him to simply return home until the end of the

school year. What they hadn’t told him? Unless he

was in attendance a required number of days he

would lose that year and the credits he had

accumulated. Had it not been for the recruiting officer

who’d been shadowing Rafe during those last months

of high school, then he would have never managed to

graduate. He would have been forced to get a GED

rather than the diploma he had busted his ass for and

had suffered at the local high school to attain.

He’d been determined to have that diploma,

even if getting it had been hell. It had been a fight that

both he, and the soldier who had befriended him,

grew frustrated with.

But Rafe had learned why that soldier had been

there. Why he had befriended the three outcast

cousins and drawn them into the armed forces, and

away from Corbin County. Because he, too, was a

Callahan. Given up for adoption by his parents when

he was barely six months old, the only knowledge he

had of his birth family was what his adopted parents

had given him.

When he’d arrived in Corbin County, first during

Rafe’s final year of high school and again six months

before Jaymi had been killed, he had seen the hell his

nephews had endured. It had been on that trip to see

them that he had convinced them to join the Marines.

Rafe looked down at the woman in his arms and

felt that familiar dark anger from his youth rising inside

him. He knew that any moment she could bolt and run,

then she would be gone. And the thought of it

infuriated him.

He was too damned restless to sleep now. It was

one of the reasons he had been drinking himself into

a drunk when she showed up on his doorstep. So he

could sleep. So he could escape the restlessness

and the wary sense of foreboding that had haunted

most of his life. Well, at least that part of his life spent

in Corbin County. Twelve years in the Marines and

eight of those years spent as a sniper, and not once

had he felt that same dark foreboding mission. Step

his ass into Corbin County with the intent to stay,

though, and once again it became a near daily

companion.

Easing from the bed, he felt his heart clench at

her disappointed little murmur when his warmth eased

away from her. She shifted on the bed, searching for

him for a moment before settling back to sleep with

an unconscious little pout to her lips.

She would walk away, he warned himself again.

As easily as, perhaps more easily than, she had

walked into his life once again.

It was better that neither one of them grew used

to sleeping with the other. Better that he simply let her

go. If he could. He had a feeling that letting her go

again would be impossible.

Moving to the dresser on the other side of the

room, Rafe pulled on jeans and a heavy flannel shirt

before sliding his feet into a pair of comfortable

sneakers. He collected one of the slim, fragrant cigars

he preferred, a lighter, and moved to the balcony

doors.

Slipping quietly onto the balcony and easing the

door closed Rafe let the night settle around him.

The acrid, spicy sweet taste mixed with the

smoke had the immediate effect of easing the worse

of the tension that had begun to fill him.

This wasn’t the same warning, or foreboding as

his recruiting officer had called it, that had served

Rafe so well in the Marines. This was something he

had only felt when heading into the most dangerous of

the missions he’d undertaken. This wasn’t just a

foreboding, it was a straight-up fucking warning.

From the moment Cami’s firm little knock had

sounded on his door, those inner sirens had begun

going off. And now, staring into the night, he

wondered at the sense of danger he could feel edging