Midnight Sins (9 page)

have slipped out later. While he showered. Perhaps

while he met with Logan and Crowe at the lawyer’s

office. There was no way to hold Cami if she didn’t

want to be held, and Rafe knew it.

And she was simply too damned scared of what

had happened between them not to run.

Blowing out a hard breath, he looked around the

hotel room, then finally focused on the incriminating

stain on the sheets.

Cami had been a virgin.

His throat tightened at the proof of her innocence,

at the knowledge that he had been the first to touch

her so intimately. That he had been first to possess

the liquid heat and fist-tight depths of her pussy.

The first to hear her cries of completion.

Instantly, furiously, his dick was spike hard, the

head throbbing in renewed hunger. Perhaps it was a

good thing she had slipped out so early, because

fucking her into complete screaming submission had

been all he could have thought of. Logan and Crowe

would have had to drag him from the room.

All these years, along with his cousins, he had

fought to hold on to what was his. Not just the property

their parents had left to them but also the cash that

had been frozen in their accounts since the day the

Callahan brothers and their wives had been killed.

Fourteen years. He and his cousins had been

fighting for their inheritance for twelve years and there

were times he swore it was a battle that wouldn’t be

won until the Corbins, Robertses, and Raffertys were

dead.But, as imperative as this appointment was, as

crucial to their case as it was, still, he didn’t know if he

could have forced himself away from Cami long

enough to have made it on time. She did something

to his brain. He couldn’t help it. She managed to get

under his skin and made it damned impossible to

think of anything but touching her once she had stood

up from that table and he’d seen all the hunger filling

her eyes.

He’d fought it. God knew, he’d been fighting it at

least for the past three years. Each time he’d seen

her since she had turned eighteen, once a year, it had

ended in a kiss. A kiss that had nearly flamed out of

control last year. She was like this fire he couldn’t

resist because when he was with her, he found the

cold that usually encased him becoming heated and

warm.Admitting to it now was a moot point. It was there

like a fire in the night, like a temptation no man could

be expected to resist. That was Cami. His own

personal temptation. The one woman he couldn’t turn

away from no matter how hard he tried.

Rafe was being driven insane by the need to

have her again already. She hadn’t been gone five

minutes and the need throbbing through his body was

like a vicious hunger, impossible to deny.

Pushing his fingers through his hair, Rafe blew

out a hard breath before heading toward the shower.

He had things to do. Things that didn’t include

pacing the floors because Cami had slipped out of

his bed.

And it sure as hell didn’t include chasing after

her, no matter how desperately he wanted to.

Two months later

Fate conspired against her. It laughed at her. The

playful bitch did its best to destroy her, Cami thought

as she stared out the window of the apartment her

sister had once lived in. The one Cami now lived in

herself.

She couldn’t seem to stop crying, sobbing

actually. It had been two months, eight weeks to the

day since she had run into Rafe while in Denver for

educational training. It was the third year they had run

into each other and shared a night of passion.

Her palm was pressed flat against her abdomen,

the realization of the emptiness that existed there

tearing through her again as her breathing hitched

and she cried with all the rage and lost hope that filled

her.

She was aware of her aunt in the kitchen behind

her. Ella had brought Cami from the hospital that

morning and had stayed with her throughout the day.

She had listened to Cami’s sobs silently, and a few

times she thought she had caught her aunt crying as

well.

Cami’s mother wasn’t here.

Margaret Flannigan hadn’t come to the hospital.

She hadn’t called or come to the apartment. Cami’s

father had answered the phone when she had called,

though.

“Your mother’s busy,” he’d informed her when

she asked to speak with Margaret.

“Please, Dad,” Cami remembered whispering

tearfully. “Please let her know I need to talk to her.”

“So you can cry over losing that little bastard he

gave you?” Cami’s father had rasped furiously. “Your

sister is turning over in her grave, Cami. Your

mother’s heart is broken. How could you allow the

monster that stole your sister from us to touch you?

Are you so desperate to take everything your sister

had that you have to take the lover that killed her? The

child she couldn’t have? Maybe we’ll all get lucky and

he’ll kill you next rather than some innocent, helpless

girl.”

Then he’d hung up on her.

Cami had listened numbly to the dial tone in her

ear for long moments before placing the phone back

in its cradle slowly.

At least, for a while, he had made her stop crying.

Shock had driven every emotion she could have felt

so deep inside her that it had taken hours for her to

make sense of what he had said, what he had meant.

“Cami.” Ella stepped to the window seat as Cami

continued to stare onto the street below. “Come to the

house, baby. Eddy’s beside himself worrying about

you, and I don’t want to leave you here alone.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said.

She was lying. She would never be fine again. As

long as she lived, she would never be fine again.

She had lost her baby. The baby she and Rafer

had created the night they had come together two

months before.

It hadn’t been a blizzard. She told herself it had

been a coincidence, nothing more. Just as she told

herself every year and managed to convince herself of

it. There was no way he could have known where she

would be and when. There was no way he could have

been heading to the airport on the same day, at the

same time, to the same city, every year. It couldn’t be

coincidence; that was simply stretching the

explanation further than she could believe.

But what else could it be?

The only other explanation was more than she

could imagine. That it was by design.

“Are you going to call him, Cami?” Ella asked

gently.

Cami shook her head, sobbing again as she

turned her head from her aunt.

Cami ached. Inside, out. To the depths of her

soul, to the last particle of her spirit, she ached until

she wondered if it were possible to die of it.

“He would want to know.”

Ella eased down beside her niece, her heart

breaking for the girl. It was all Ella could do to hold

back her own tears. To keep from sobbing with Cami.

God, how could her mother leave her alone now?

How could Margaret have left this precious, beautiful

child to fend for herself against the cruelties her father

waged against her?

Did Margaret even know the many, many times

Mark had separated them? Had her sister-in-law even

realized, in the Valium haze she existed within, that

her daughter was being tormented by the man who

had sworn to protect her?

“Cami,” Ella whispered as she laid her hand on

the girl’s knee. “You don’t have to go through this

alone. He would want to know.”

She shook her head again.

“Why?”

Cami turned back to her, the gray of her eyes like

storm clouds, swirling with pain, with anger and

desperation. “Hasn’t he had enough taken from him?”

she asked painfully. “I can’t tell him, Ella. I can’t do that

to him.”

No matter how much she needed him.

“Don’t tell him.” Cami suddenly gripped Ella’s

arm, as though she knew the thoughts that hadn’t yet

fully formed in her mind. “Please, Aunt Ella. Don’t do

that to me. Don’t let me be someone else that’s hurt

him. Please.” The last was a sob as more tears fell

from her eyes, joining those that already had soaked

her face.

Ella nodded hesitantly. She didn’t like it. She

hated it. But this was Cami’s choice, and she chose

to bear the burden alone rather than allow that young

man to know that he had lost something so precious

as the child he had created with Cami. She clearly

remembered how he had come to her after getting out

of jail, accused of Jaymi’s murder, his own eyes wet

with tears as he comforted Cami then. He would have

come for her now as well.

Could she blame her niece? Wouldn’t she have

protected Eddy if the situation were the same though?

Would she have done anything different? She knew

she wouldn’t have.

Ella sighed heavily. “How much more are you

going to carry alone, Cami?”

Cami shook her head, those tear-drenched eyes

breaking Ella’s heart. “Don’t,” Cami whispered. “Just

let it go. Just let
me
go, Ella. Please. I can’t talk right

now.”

Ella let her go and understood the request. Cami

had whispered those words to her the first time, nine

years ago, when her sister had been laid in the

ground.

The funeral had been over and everyone had left.

Ella and Eddy had been unable to find Cami until the

funeral director had called.

Cami had stayed at the gravesite, and she was

silently watching as they buried her sister’s coffin. He

was terrified if someone didn’t come for her, then they

might be laying her beside Jaymi soon.

Ella had rushed to Cami’s side, trying to

convince her to return to the house.

“
Let me go, Aunt Ella,
” her voice had echoed

with such pure, deep agony that even Eddy had

grimaced, forced to turn his head away to fight his

tears.
“Let me go, before I hurt you, too.”

Cami had just drifted away then. Ella had

watched her eyes lose emotion, her expression

become distant despite the tears that rained down

her face. Emotionally and spiritually, Cami had drifted

away from them.

That was what she was doing now. Turning back

to the window, she stared out onto the street, and Ella

wondered what Cami saw there. Where did Cami go

when she sat there and stared onto the sun-drenched