Midnight Sins (56 page)

intention of bowing down to the dominance that

gleamed in his eyes.

Submissive she truly wasn’t. She would call no

man master, nor would she ever give in to that

dominance without a very sensual struggle.

“There were no details to give, Rafe,” she

assured him quietly as he pushed the comforter to her

knees as she felt her womb flex and her pussy pulse

erotically. The soft slide of her juices from the intimate

recess of her body had her fighting not to arch her

hips and bring attention to the needy flesh between

her thighs.

She ached for him. There was no denying the

fact that she wanted him more than she had ever

wanted anything or anyone in her life. Just as there

was no denying the sensual and emotional abyss that

opened within her each time she had to deal with the

conflicting pleasure and hungers that attacked her

with each touch he gave her.

What the hell was she supposed to do with all

this need? With the hunger for his touch, for his kiss,

mixing with the overwhelming, overriding desire to

challenge
his
arousal and his hunger.

It was like playing tug-of-war with herself.

His fingertips stroked against her knee before

caressing above it, then back. Delicate velvet-soft

touches before they went higher, petting and stroking

as he stared down at her until the caresses were at

her thighs and she was fighting to keep from parting

her thighs.

“Did you recognize anything about the voice?” he

asked her.

She cleared her throat. “It sounded very

mechanical.”

It was all she could do to concentrate on the fact

that when he spoke it wasn’t anything sexy. Still,

though, the dark rumble of his voice had her entire

body sensitizing when combined with the dark

dominance that filled Rafe.

“No. Nothing. It just sounded like a robot.” Her

hips did arch this time as his fingers delved beneath

her gown.

Her thighs parted, her senses becoming

entangled in the insidious pleasure stroking closer to

the swollen bud of her clitoris and the weeping center

of her body.

Her nipples, though excruciatingly tender, ached

with more than the pain of the callous treatment that

had been inflicted on them by her attacker. They were

hardened, throbbing with both arousal as well as the

tenderness. It was an interesting, confusing pleasurepain

that she fought to make sense of.

Rafe’s gaze moved from his fingers playing at

her thighs, moving ever closer to the aching flesh

there as his gaze centered on the hard buds of her

nipples beneath the silk of the gown.

“Let me take your gown off.”

Her breathing seemed to constrict in her chest.

She’d seen the bruises after her shower, and

they were horrendous. Long, thick finger marks

marred the flesh in shades of black, blue, and

abraded red. Her nipples were swollen and a cherry

red, rather than the pink they had once been.

“I don’t want—”

He laid his fingers to her lips, stopping the flow of

words.

“Do I make you feel good when I touch you,

Cami?”

She could feel her breathing accelerate at the

very thought of the pleasure he could give her.

Instantly heat flooded her body, like flames burning out

of control.

“That’s not the point,” she whispered, her fingers

digging into the sheet beneath her as she fought to

control her breathing.

She didn’t dare touch him. Touching him would

be the height of insanity. There was no way she could

hold back then. No way she could pull back from that

pit of dark, hidden emotions that swirled within her.

“You won’t answer my questions, and you won’t

let me love your sweet body?” He reached over,

picked up her hand from her side, and forced her

fingers from their grip on the sheet. “Cami, love, is it

so hard to be my lover?”

“We’re not lovers.” She had to deny it; she

couldn’t let herself accept that they were. Accepting it

meant giving in, and giving in was something she

couldn’t allow herself to do. Not yet.

He only chuckled at the denial, though, his lips

curving, his blue eyes filling with knowing amusement

as she stared up at him.

“Ahh, so, Cami, what does ‘a lover’ mean beyond

the fact that when we’re together we’re fucking like

minks in mating season?”

She had to force her lips from a smile at the

phrasing, as well as the fact that he was right.

He lifted her hand, forcing her fingers to curl

around his as he brought them to the warmth of his

chest.

“Lovers do more than fuck,” she reminded him.

“They spend more time together than that which is

spent in the bed.”

“We didn’t spend the whole weekend in the bed

when you were snowbound,” he reminded her. “We

cooked.”

“I cooked while you shoveled out the sidewalk.”

And she had watched him through the window over

the sink, and she had fought the intimacy of

something so simple, so homey, as the fact that she

was cooking and he was shoveling the snow.

“But we did more than fuck.”

There was no denying that fact.

“Those were very unusual circumstances,” she

reminded him.

“Only because you made them unusual.” He

unfolded her fingers until her hand lay, palm flat,

against the crisp, light mat of curls that spread across

his chest.

Cami felt herself trembling, her fingers shaking

against his chest, the urge to whimper with the need

rising in her chest.

“I will have the answers to my questions.” The

hem of her gown began to rise. “And I’ll see this very

sweet body every night I lie in bed with it.” There was

a demand in his voice that brooked no refusal. “Tell

me you’re not mine, Cami. Tell me I don’t own every

response, every heated second of arousal.” The hem

cleared her thighs, revealing the tiny scrap of silk she

wore as panties.

“Arrogant, aren’t you?” But he was right, so very

right, about the fact that she responded to no one

else. That she wanted, ached for, and needed no

other man except Rafe.

“Right.”

His head lowered as his lips touched hers. Just

touched. It wasn’t a hard, hungry kiss. It was a tease,

a temptation, the threat of that raw, erotic hunger

flaring between them as he stared down at her.

The silk moved higher, over her hips, and she

lifted for it.

She was insane, because she couldn’t refuse

him. She couldn’t say no. She couldn’t pull away from

him. She didn’t have the will to fight herself, let alone

the will to fight him.

Within seconds, he pulled back and lifted her

arms, pulling the gown over her head.

Cami closed her eyes.

She didn’t want to see the damage herself; she

had already seen it. She had already seen the

damage to her skin, the proof that another man had

touched her. No matter the fact that it was forced, or

rather especially because it was forced, her attacker

had left the proof of that force on her flesh.

“Oh God.” Her eyes flew open at the feel of the

violently intense pleasure that lashed through her

system at the incredibly soft stroke of Rafe’s tongue

over the abused flesh.

His expression was mesmerizing. Drowsy male

lust, brooding sensuality, and absorbed hunger.

His cock lay against her thigh, heated and thick,

rubbing against her flesh as his hips moved

imperceptibly. The feel of the hard flesh against her,

his tongue rubbing over her tender nipple as his hand

stroked her other thigh, had her moving against him,

her thighs parting further.

She needed him inside her.

“It’s been so long,” she whispered as her hands

moved to grip his shoulders, her hands sliding over

his skin, loving the warm, rougher texture of his skin

against her softer hands.

“You’re a stubborn woman, Cami,” he crooned as

his lips stroked against the vivid bruises. “You’re my

woman.”

A soft cry left her lips as a sensation akin to a

punch of exquisite pleasure lanced her womb and had

her arching closer to him.

It couldn’t have been the possessive ring in his

voice or the proclamation that she was his woman.

“Rafe, please don’t—” Don’t make promises he

couldn’t keep. Don’t lie to her. To make her hope for

something, dream for things that couldn’t be hers.

“Have you given another man what you’ve given

me?” He breathed over the straining tip of her nipple

before licking it again.

His tongue covered the brutally sensitive tip with

a wash of such incredible pinching pleasure that living

fingers of it shot straight to her clit, clenching her

pussy and her womb as she gasped in response.

“You don’t give me a chance to think,” she

whispered as her nails bit against the skin of his

shoulders as she fought to hold on to him. To hold on

to something. She felt as though she was perched on

a free fall into a whirlpool of ecstasy so vivid it was

nearly terrifying.

This was what he did to her. He made her want to

believe. He made her want to dream, to hope, and to

hold on to the illusion that he would be there

tomorrow, next week, next year, and next lifetime.

“You’ve had weeks to think,” he told her, his voice

roughening as his hands stroked down her thighs and

he began kissing his way down her body.

Pleasure attacked her nerve endings, pulling her

deeper into the morass of erotic sensations building

around her.

It was a roller coaster of pleasure. A thrill ride of

extremes as each touch threw her ever deeper into

the brilliant, heated rush of pleasure that she had only

ever found in his arms.

As his lips and tongue painted a path of heated

strokes and erotic caresses from her breasts to her

hips, there was no pain, no remembered fear. There

was nothing but the ever-increasing pleasure she

could never get enough of.

The years in between his touch could be

measured in the nights she had spent dreaming of his

touch, dreaming of this.

Rafer in her bed, touching her, his lips feathering

over the bare, silken flesh between her thighs, his

tongue licking at the spill of juices that glazed her

flesh.

“Have I ever told you that I’ve dreamed of the

taste of your pussy?” There was no shame in him, no