“I’m not in love with her.” He turned back to his cousin, confident he wasn’t in love, he couldn’t be in love, he refused to feel anything as futile as love for Cambria Flannigan. She’d run out on him one time too many for him to allow himself to touch that particular fairy tale.
“She’s just a fuck then?”
Rafe’s jaw tightened at the description, some furious, unknown denial raging inside him, demanding he voice the refusal. He held it inside, convincing himself it was simply the too-explicit description his cousin used that bothered him.
“Keep convincing yourself of that,” Logan stated with a mocking smile as he collected his coat, boots, and cold-weather paraphernalia and moved for the living room entrance. “You keep convincing yourself, I’ll keep reminding you, and maybe, when she helps the fine folks of Corbin County decide to try to bury us six feet under and then some, you won’t find that part of your soul shattered.”
As he had before, Rafe wondered as he watched his cousin move through the darkened living room and into the hall that led to the downstairs guest room. Rafe and Crowe had discussed their cousin often, wondering what had happened the year Logan had disappeared from contact completely during a mission he’d been sent on.
Marine snipers were often sent to hotspots that had them out of contact for months at a time. For a year, Logan had been sent on a mission that neither Crowe nor Rafe had been given any information on. Only their uncle and commanding officer, Ryan Calvert, had been aware of what was going on and whether Logan was alive or dead.
When he had returned, he hadn’t been the same man who had left. Logan had been so hard and so cold that for a while Rafe had wondered if his cousin had returned or only his ghost.
Giving his head a hard shake, Rafe checked the locks, checked the lower part of the house, the windows, the latches to the iron window covers, and then moved back upstairs where he repeated the lock check.
Satisfied the house was secure and the alarm system operating fully, he moved back to the bedroom and the woman sleeping in his bed.
She hadn’t moved other than to gather his pillow closer beneath her as though searching for him.
No, she wasn’t searching for him, he told himself. He couldn’t let himself think it or believe it. She was going to walk out of his life the minute the roads were open to afford her escape. And once she left, she wouldn’t return unless she simply had no other choice, as she had had no choice tonight.
Shedding his clothes, Rafe slid back into the bed, eased his pillow away from her, then in surprise felt her moving against him until she settled over his chest once again.
Her head rested on his shoulder, her arm was thrown over his abdomen, one slender, silky warm leg tucked between his, she whispered a discontented little sigh and nudged against him once again.
Pulling the blankets carefully around them, Rafe wrapped his arms around her and held her snug against him. Her next sigh was one of satisfaction, of contentment.
What had he gotten himself into here? he wondered, because holding her felt as natural as breathing and just as imperative. But hell, every time they had come together it had felt like finding home. In his life, nothing had ever felt as warm or as natural as her body against him or the warmth of her sinking into him.
Would she try to leave without waking him if he somehow managed to sleep deep enough to miss her slipping from the bed? In all the years since his training in the military, nothing had ever slipped by him in his sleep as easily as Cami had slipped from his bed that first night.
He’d awakened before she’d finished dressing that morning. For a while he had watched her from beneath his lashes as she hurried and dressed. And he’d let her leave. He had refused to hold her to him and he’d refused to confront her.
It wasn’t a mistake he would make again.
He stared down at her for long moments.
Hell, there was no way he could be certain that he would even awaken this time. It had been three years since the last time she had slipped out of the bed on him. She’d almost been gone before he’d missed her warmth.
Rafe hoped, in the past five years his senses had grown sharper, stronger, and he would know when and if she tried to do it again.
To be sure, he set that mental alarm he’d developed. One hour. He’d check on her in one hour. An hour in this kind of weather wouldn’t get her far; he’d at least have a chance of catching up with her before she froze to death.
And if she did try to leave?
Well then, he’d paddle her ass, before he fucked it until she swore, until she knew, believed, and had cemented in her head forever the idea that she would never, ever, run from him again.
It was overcast, bitterly freezing cold, and as white outside as Cami was certain she had ever seen it.
Even dressed, she wrapped her arms around herself, and a shiver still raced through her at the sight of it. Jeans, wool socks, and fur-lined boots simply weren’t enough covering for more than a few minutes in weather such as what she was facing now.
Standing on Rafer’s porch and staring into the heavy, dark clouds still bearing down as they swept around the mountain, she couldn’t help but breathe out roughly.
The blizzard was only waiting to hit with its second round of downy snow to catch the unwary as they foolishly left the warmth of their homes.
She’d listened to the weather after awakening and watched the reports on the satellite before the gathering clouds had completely obliterated the line of sight between satellite and dish.
It may not have been snowing furiously at the ranch at the moment, but it was hitting Aspen and spitting on Sweetrock with a vengence.
And from the looks of it, it would be dumping on the Rafe’s ranch once again as well.
Cami didn’t dare move from the porch. The drifts were piled high around it, on it, and against it as though there were simply no other place to store the icy fluff.
For the first time in her life, she found the snow to be an inconvenience and she was wishing it away with everything inside her. The longer she stayed here, the more likely destruction was apt to build around her.
What had possessed her to ever take this much longer route home? To ever risk something like this happening?
Just to see if she could glimpse signs of life in the Ramsey ranch house. To see if the rumors that Clyde Ramsey’s nephew, Rafer Callahan, had returned were true.
She hadn’t expected it to begin snowing. When it had begun just after she made the turn from Aspen, she had convinced herself it was nothing. It would flurry awhile, then go away just as it had done several times in the past weeks.
By the time her car had slid into an icy drift at the mouth of his driveway she was certain fate was laughing its ass off at her. This was what she got for tempting it, for all those dark, lonely nights that she had wished things were different and she was in his arms rather than sleeping alone.
How silly she had been to have slipped away from him the few nights they’d had together. She should have just stayed with him while he was in and gotten the hunger out of her system rather than running. Leaving as she had, had left so many things unanswered and incomplete. And it had left so many desires still raging inside her, tempting her, tormenting her—
She rubbed at the chill in her arms as a wave of inner heat swept through her womb to settle in her pussy and wrap around her clit.
She was growing wet again, but she was also wishing, remembering — wishing things had been different and remembering the fantasies, not so much of sex or the wild, impossibly heated pleasure that could flare between them. It was the dreams that slipped into her mind once she slept that really tore at her.
The dreams of his arms around her, his laughter at her ear. The sound of his voice, low, deep, as he just whispered her name. The sound of something more — she pushed the thought away. It was those thoughts, those dreams, that slipped up on her and weakened her. That created moments like now. When the nightmares slipped out as well and threatened the fragile peace she had found.
She couldn’t have him and she knew it.
There was too much Rafe was unaware of, and too much pain tearing at her to allow it.
Too much pain, fear, and the knowledge of what would happen to her soul if she lost him to death. If somehow, someone decided to try to harm him, and, God forbid, succeeded.
And still she was torn in her needs and in her anger. She fought not just herself and her own needs but also his desires and the return of reality.
A reality that could destroy her and her own needs.
This wasn’t a good thing. She couldn’t be stuck here until the roads were cleared. Once her car was found, then the first place state workers would search for her was at the ranch. Her uncle Eddy Flannigan worked on the state road crew. She couldn’t imagine the worry, and possibly the fear that she was about to repeat the past, if he found her there. Especially if he realized where she had slept.
In Rafer Callahan’s bed and in his arms. Of course he wouldn’t have to realize anything. He knew her and he would know where she had slept.
She leaned against the support post and stared at the ground where more than four feet of snow had fallen, and the drifts against the house were even higher. In places, they were at least five feet deep or more. The news said to expect two or more feet as well, coming that day or into the evening, and possibly another six to twelve inches before dawn.