CHAPTER 3

Eighteen months later

It was colder than a witch’s tit. The temperature hovered just below zero with the windchill and a hard western wind blew across the mountains with a banshee’s moan. The blizzard had become a whiteout, with the rapidly falling fluff piling fast and hard against the house in heavy pristine drifts.

The weatherman said to expect a blizzard, and he hadn’t been far off track. Problem was, this looked like blizzards combined. The previous year’s mild winter was cashing in interest during this late-season storm.

He was snowed in on a Saturday night watching the snow pile up and wondering what the hell he was doing back in Corbin County. And he was doing it just after yet another funeral. Just after the death of another man who tried to stand against his grandfather, Marshall Roberts, and his two business partners. The group everyone called the barons. He was half-drunk, damned morose, and fighting nightmares from a past he couldn’t seem to shake. And son of a bitch if he wasn’t so fucking horny for one damned woman that he could barely stand it. His dick was iron hard, his balls throbbed. They were so tight and the need to touch her was almost torture.

So it wasn’t exactly hard for Rafer Callahan to convince himself that the woman standing on his doorstep couldn’t be real.

Could she?

After all, why would this particular part of his past show up now, of all times? Hadn’t she already shown him that there wasn’t a chance in hell of ever having her again?

Which was the reason he just went ahead and convinced himself that she was the vision of his most explicit, his naughtiest, his nastiest fantasies.

Sometimes, a man just needed something to hold on to, and she was it for him.

“Hello, Rafer.”

Rafer stared hard at the young woman standing on his porch, watching him expectantly.

He lifted his gaze, checked the position of the moon, and gave a mental nod.

Yep, it was midnight.

Now all he had to decide was if this lovely, too-alluring vision was a figment of his fantasies coming to life or if fate was standing behind the lovely Cami Flannigan, laughing her ass off while he stood there with a hard dick.

Hell, he could always take his chances. After all, he’d made a huge gamble returning once again to the small town that had spawned him, hadn’t he? What was that if it wasn’t the dumbest decision of his life? This one couldn’t be any worse, now could it?

“You’re not naked,” he drawled, deciding to go with the fantasy idea. And boy, did he have enough fantasies where Cami Flannigan was concerned.

Black lace, candlelight, slick, wet flesh, and hungry-feminine-moaning type fantasies that he couldn’t manage to shake. He’d only had her three times in the past five years and the last time was three years ago. It wasn’t hardly enough.

The vision of creamy flesh and blue-ringed velvet gray eyes blinked back at him before narrowing in feminine offense. “I have to be naked to knock on your door?”

There was a sudden snap to her tone that had a smile wanting to curl his lips. Damn, he surely did love that tone in her voice. It just made his dick harder, just made all his little perverted fantasies push to the forefront of his mind. But it also made him doubt that it was possible this was a fantasy. Only the real version of Cami spoke to him with that snap in her voice.

Yes she was acting less and less like a figment of a fantasy by the second. Especially when she propped a slender hand on her cocked hip and glared back at him as though he had crawled from beneath a rock. When had Cami begun looking at him like that?

A sigh of resignation escaped his chest. A man could dream, couldn’t he?

“It depends on why you’re here,” he still answered her, though, and he still kept to the program.

Fantasy. Erotic. Hard dick.

That little frown brewing between perfectly arched—plucked or waxed? he wondered—dark brows tightened.

Was her pussy still waxed? The first time he’d glimpsed those perfectly bare folds he’d nearly come in the sheets rather than her snug little pussy.

“I can’t imagine the reason why it would matter. Did one of those bulls you breed butt your head a little too hard or something? I’m stuck in the snow, Rafer. Why else would I be standing in the middle of a blizzard on your front porch?”

For his hard dick?

The words almost slipped past his lips.

“What did you say?” She blinked back at him in outraged amazement.

Oops, maybe he hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

He smiled back at her, still not certain. “I said something?”

He arched a brow. He’d learned early that the gesture tended to throw most people off and he used it shamelessly.

Hell, maybe he’d just drunk too much damned whisky. That was always a possibility.

Suspicion filled her eyes, narrowed them, and thinned her lips. “I’m pretty certain you did,” she informed him between clenched teeth. “And I’m really certain it was uncalled for.”

Well, he didn’t know how uncalled for it was. It was honest. A man could hope.

“I might be drunk.” He cleared his throat as she continued to stare, anger beginning to shadow her gray eyes. “Can I blame it on the booze?”

Hell, she did have pretty eyes. They looked like the finest dark gray velvet with a narrow ring of dark blue. He’d always said Cami Flannigan had the prettiest eyes. Anyone could just ask his cousins, Logan and Crowe, they’d tell it; Rafe said it often. So often sometimes that they told him to shut the fuck up.

“‘Might’ hardly describes the situation,” she snorted with ladylike charm. “You reek of booze, Rafer.”

Cami called him Rafer sometimes, rather than the shortened version, Rafe, that most people used. He liked the sound of it on her lips. Especially when she was moaning it. She wasn’t moaning right now.

“That could be possible.” He nodded as his gaze raked over her shivering body. “It just seemed the night for it, I guess.”

He’d only just realized she was shivering, hard. Her hand had dropped from her hip and she was once again huddled against herself. She was obviously cold, dressed in nothing but jeans, boots, and a heavy hooded sweatshirt that proclaimed: Teachers Rock.

He wondered if she would let him warm her. He knew exactly how to do it. How to touch her so her eyes darkened in passion, how to make the juices slicken the delicate tissue of her tight pussy.

“Stop undressing me with your eyes, Rafer,” she ordered. “Could you at least let me in where it’s warm? Or perhaps drive me home? My car is stuck in the snow out by the main road.” She waved her hand toward the drive, now covered in nearly a foot of snow in less than an hour. “Surely you still have a four-by-four?”

All his fantasies came crashing down on him. No fantasy. She wasn’t there for his hard dick, candlelight, or black lace. She was there because her car was stuck in the snow.

Lifting his gaze again, he stared into the blizzard. The whiteout conditions were only increasing. Travel would be impossible, let alone getting the car out of wherever it was stuck.

So this wasn’t the erotic fourth chance of a lifetime standing on his doorstep. The first three chances hadn’t been nearly enough to satisfy him, let alone to sate the hunger he had for her.

“Rafer, are you all right?” Suspicion laced her voice. “Are you smoking something you shouldn’t be as well as drinking too much whisky tonight?”

He snorted at that as his gaze dropped back to her. Short, sassy layered strands of dark brown hair framed almost kittenish features as big gray eyes blinked back at him. Suspicious gray eyes. She thought he was high?

He wasn’t that lucky.

“I told you, I might be a little drunk.” He sighed, glancing at the snow again. “But not too drunk to know we’re not going anywhere in this storm.” He turned back to her, arched his brow, smiled. “Looks like you’re stuck here with me, Cami-girl. Unless you want to take your chances in the snow?” He nodded toward the storm outside the porch. “Personally, I’m not willing to take that risk with my truck or my life.” And especially not with her life.

Rafe watched her still for the briefest second before turning to look out at the storm herself.

Her shoulders seemed to slump, as though whatever weight she carried was too much for her. He wished he could see her face, look in her eyes and read her thoughts as he had when she was younger. But hell, it seemed those days were gone. When she turned back to him, all he saw in her face, or in her eyes, was weariness—weariness and resignation.

That look made his chest ache. Son of a bitch, Cami should never have such a look in her eyes.

“Come on in; I’ll make coffee.” Hell, he might as well sober up. A man had to learn to keep his wits about him when dealing with a Flannigan. Especially this one.

“I can’t stay, Rafer.” Pure tempered steel filled her voice as well as her expression as she stared back to him, the quiet, even tone at odds with the conflict he could see in her eyes.

What the hell had happened to the sweet, loving Cami he had once known?

“Afraid temptation will get the best of you?” Letting his gaze drift over her, Rafe made damned certain she remembered everything he knew she wanted to forget.

She flushed. Her gray eyes darkened in both arousal as well as anger. Temptation was the least of her worries. It wasn’t the temptation that was going to get her back into his bed. It was the memories that would accomplish that. The memories of pleasure so hot, so intense it had sent her running in fear when she thought he had finally gone to sleep. Oh yeah, he had her now and there would be no escape. At least, not until someone managed to dig the snow out of his road.

His cock throbbed, pulsing in memory of the sweetest pleasure he had ever known, buried in the ultratight, fiery hot grip of her pussy. For a second, the remembered sound of her shattered cries, the feel of her going wild atop him, riding his dick until they both exploded in a release he swore marked something inside him. It was definitely a memory that tortured him with a hunger no other could slake. The memory of it had the power to keep him awake at night. And it made him ache.

Five years. For five years he had been tormented with that memory, unable to find that release with any other woman, and ache for the pleasure and the woman who caused it, until at times he swore even his back teeth hurt from the need.

“Stop, Rafer.” She shivered hard as the wind whipped around them and the memories heated them. “We agreed—”

“We didn’t agree to a damn thing; you fucking decided to pretend it didn’t happen without so much as consulting me. And I’ve had enough of the cold. I’m going inside.”

He turned and slammed inside the house, entering the warmth of the kitchen. Furious now, his drunk wearing off, Rafe stalked to the counter and the coffeemaker he prepped for morning.

Flipping the switch, he stood, waiting until the dark liquid began streaming into the pot. Behind him, the door opened, then closed again softly, bringing with it the sweet, clean scent of the blizzard and the woman he hadn’t been able to even try to forget.

He stared at the wall, anger churning along with the lust and creating a searing heat in his gut.

She still wore that familiar spicy scent he remembered. It tugged at a man’s memory making him think of summer, sex, and pleasure. The scent of her perfume became a little deeper, a little more evocative, and hot when she melted beneath him.

“What the hell are you doing out in a blizzard anyway?” he asked, keeping his back to her as he pulled two mugs from the cabinet over the coffeemaker.

“I was visiting my parents in Aspen.” There was no sense of reluctance or hesitation in her voice as there had been the last time she had spoken to him at that damned funeral. But it also wasn’t as husky and sexy as it had been the last time he’d had her. Or the first time.

His balls tightened in agony.

Son of a bitch, forgetting the pleasure he found in her was like trying to forget the sweetest paradise ever experienced after being thrown from it.

“And how are your parents?” It was a social nicety and one he had to force past his lips.

How she could stomach even acknowledging her parents, he had never been able to figure out. Neither her mother nor her father had been supportive of her. They hadn’t even pretended to care about her.

“I was there to help Dad settle Mother into a rest home. She never recovered from the stroke she had in the summer.” There was a poignant sadness in Cami’s voice. He couldn’t imagine it was because either parent had tried to make her feel accepted, let alone loved.

No, it had been her aunt and uncle who protected her after her sister had been killed, it had been her aunt and uncle, Ella and Eddy, who had celebrated all the successes and failures, both big and small, with her.

Rafe’s jaw clenched as he turned back to Cami, forcibly pushing those memories aside. “I’m sorry about your mother, Cami,” he said sincerely. For her and for her parents. They’d made her life hell and they both knew it. Cami’s compassion and the love she’d always felt for her parents had been apparent, though. It was a damn shame they hadn’t cared nearly as much for her as she had for them.

“Thank you for that, Rafer.” Cami nodded as she remained poised at the back door. “And thank you for meaning it.”

His lips thinned. He wasn’t going to broach the subject of her parents any further. To do so would only invite the destruction of the fragile truce he could feel settling between them. Though why one would be needed, he wasn’t quite certain. What the hell had he done to make Cami hate him? Or had she too simply given into the hatreds that rose from his past?

That past was a bitter, poisonous brew best left untasted, unremembered, and unvisited.

“I saw your father in town just after I returned home,” he told her.

He’d been back since early fall, and she hadn’t even called. Not that he had expected to hear from her. He’d never imagined she would call. But still, he’d watched his cell phone. He’d watched the driveway, and he’d watched for her in town. He hadn’t given up on her, even if he was certain she had never even considered attempting to find out what it was that lit such a spark between them and had them blazing out of control so quickly.

“I heard Logan and Crowe had returned as well.” There was an edge of worry in her voice now, and he wondered if she even realized it.

His cousins, Logan and Crowe Callahan, along with himself, were considered the scourge of Sweetrock, Colorado, and the citizens most likely to kill everyone else in their sleep, he thought sarcastically.

“They have,” he agreed. “Crowe went back to the cabin his mother left him in the mountains for a while and Logan has moved into the house in town. We finally managed to win the property that was left to us when our parents died. We’re fighting over everything else now.”

She bit at her lip as he turned from her and poured the coffee. Yeah, they were all home now. If everyone didn’t know it by now, then the good citizens of Sweetrock weren’t as diligent in their gossip as they used to be.

Turning back, he set the coffee in front of her and watched as Cami wrapped her fingers around the cup and stared into the contents.

“It’s not poisoned,” he promised as he sipped at his coffee to prove it was safe.

“I never imagined it was.” That frown edged between her brows again. “Stop reading something into everything I do and say. I never imagined for a minute you would hurt me Rafe. Since when did you begin believing something so asinine?”

“And you’re being too sensitive yourself,” he told her. “That wasn’t what I mean by it, Cami. I was being facetious.”

“You’re never facetious.” She shook her head in denial. “I take you at face value, because that’s how you are.”

He had always tried to be, but there had been times over the years that he had wished he wasn’t so damned honest. That trait could be decidedly inconvenient when the rest of the world just loved a good lie.

He sipped his coffee, refusing to comment or to refute her statement.

“I really need to get home,” she finally sighed as she lifted the cup to her lips again.

Rafe let her take a sip, gave it time to hit her system, then sat back in his chair and watched her with lazy amusement.

“It’s not happening, sweet pea,” he told her lightly. “Even I’m not crazy enough to try to drive in that particular blizzard. We wouldn’t even make it out of the drive to the main road.”

She brushed back the long fringe of bangs that fell over her forehead. Rafe realized then that her fingers were shaking.

Glancing at the vein throbbing at her throat, he saw the hard, quick pulse as it thundered beneath her flesh.

Excitement or fear?

There wasn’t a chance it was fear. She was aroused. Hot. Horny. She was ready to fuck. At least her body was. And he could just imagine how sweet and tight her pussy was.

“I’m going to fuck you before you leave here,” he told her carefully, leaning forward against the table as he braced his forearms on the top and stared into her shocked face. “I’m going to have the sweetest treat right here on this table when I bury my lips in your pussy and lap at the sweetest cream in the world. Then, I’m going to watch, Cami. While those pretty, pink lips stretch around my dick, I’m going to watch while I sink every inch of it up your hot little pussy.”

Her lips parted, eyes widening, her face flushed a becoming peach, almost the color of her pussy in full arousal.

“Tell me, do you still moan and cry when you come? Do you make your lovers growl like an animal when they come inside you because it’s so fucking good they could die in that moment and never regret it?”

“Stop.” She stumbled from the table, heading for the door as Rafe jumped from the chair, uncaring as it crashed to the floor, and caught her around her waist. In the next heartbeat he had her front pressed against the wall, his harder, taller body pressing against her back.

“Don’t say stop, damn you,” he said his head bent, his lips touching the delicate shell of her ear. “Say no. Go ahead, Cami, fucking say it. Tell me you don’t fantasize about having me inside you. Fucking you like I’m dying for you.” Tell me that you don’t touch yourself, whisper my name, and masturbate to the memory of my dick stretching you to the point where you didn’t know if it was pleasure or pain. Go ahead. Tell me, damn you, that you don’t want my dick buried inside you so bad it’s all you can do to breathe for it.”

A whimper, a fragile, soft little cry, was his only answer as he watched her fingers curl into a fist against the wall, felt her body tense as she fought against the hunger.

“I dare you.” He breathed out against her ear. “I dare you to tell me ‘no.’”

He had braced one hand against the wall, and pushed the other beneath her sweatshirt, immediately finding silky, heated, naked flesh.

He flattened his hand against her stomach, feeling the muscles clench and ripple in response. His fingers moved to the snap of her jeans.

“Rafer, please!” A beseeching little whimper slipped past her lips. As though she wanted to. She wanted to tell him no. She wanted to deny it, refuse the pleasure.

He knew it, and a part of him hated her for it.

“Don’t do this to us,” she whispered, her voice hoarse despite the softening of her body as the snap of her jeans released and his fingers gripped the tab of the zipper. “You’ll destroy us both Rafer.”

One hand jerked to his wrist, her delicate fingers gripping it as he slid the zipper down.

“And this hunger isn’t already destroying us?” His fingers were almost shaking as he pushed them into the opening he’d made in the jeans, her fingers uncurling but still lying against his forearm. “Tell me, Cami, how could it be worse?”

He prayed he didn’t give her a chance to answer, because he knew it could get worse. He had seen it worse.

But this, this was paradise. This was a healing balm to the pain that often racked his soul. This was Cami, and God help him, he needed her.

His fingers found the folds of her pussy, so slick and naked to the touch. He had to clench his teeth to hold back the groan rising in his chest.

“You still wax,” he whispered as her legs shifted, parting farther for him rather than closing against his touch. “I love the feel of your bare pussy, Cami. Feeling it against my fingers.” He licked the shell of her ear as he fought to breathe. “Against my tongue,” he said with rising hunger. “I’m going to fuck you with my tongue, baby. Fuck you and taste your come as you orgasm. I’m going to lick every sweet drop of it from your pussy.”

He stroked his fingers around her clit as he spoke, plumping it, exciting it as he felt it throb and swell beneath his fingers.

“Why?” she whispered. “Why do you have to do this to me?”

He slid his fingers lower, parting the plump, swollen flesh and finding the clenched entrance of her cunt.

“Why?” Was the anger churning with the hunger inside her as it was for him? “Because you ran from me. Not just once or twice, Cami. Three times. You ran from me as though you were too ashamed to face the fact you had let a Callahan touch you. Because you left before I even awoke, and thought I’d take it.”

Two fingers. With two fingers he pushed inside with a determined, hard stroke as the silky juices gathered around his them and aided the penetration. Her snug flesh was liquid-hot, her too-tight pussy clenching and rippling around the impalement.

She was still virgin tight, reminding him how long it had taken him to work his cock inside her untouched flesh that first time. And the two years after. He’d known each time he took her that there had been no other lovers. No other man had touched what he had been the first to claim.

“We could be stuck here for days,” he groaned as she cried out against the penetration. “Just think of how many ways I could fuck you, Cami. And if you’re as brave as you were five years ago, I’ll end up sinking my dick up that sweet ass of yours before you leave.”

Pressing her hips closer, he ground his jeans-covered dick against her rear at the thought. She would be a virgin there as well as untouched. The extremity of the pleasure he could give her was unknown. The thought of the uncontrolled violence of her pleasure—a pleasure only he would give her—had him desperate for her now.

And it was no less intense for her. He could hear it in the low cadence of her moans, feel it in the clench of her ass against him, and her pussy gripping his fingers. Her juices spilled slick and hot around him with each thrust of his fingers, each slow grind of her hips.

“Rafer.” The sound of his name on her lips had the power to make his dick harder, thicker. And he would have thought that was impossible.

He wanted inside her. So deep inside her that he couldn’t tell where he ended and she began. So deep that when it was over it would be like ripping her heart from her chest to deny him, because that was what it was like for him. Like killing himself.

“Please—” Her hips churned moving against his thrusting fingers with jerky, desperate movements, as her sex clenched and milked his fingers hungrily.

“You want me inside you, don’t you, Cami?” he said. “You want me to fuck you, don’t you, baby? Deeper and harder than before. Fuck you until you can’t live without my cock sliding inside you any more than I could live without your sweet pussy milking the come from my balls.”

He pushed his hand up her torso, his palm finding a bare, unrestrained breast and he cupped the swollen mound with hungry desperation.

Her nipple was spike hard against his touch and responsive beneath the rasp of his thumb as he caressed her. It tightened further beneath his touch, the mound of breast becoming more swollen.

“Rafer. God, yes,” she cried out as he found that spot in her pussy that had her jerking against him as his thumb stroked the berry-hard tip of her breast. “Oh God, it’s been so long,” she moaned.

She was beginning to lose herself to pleasure. Her pussy spasmed around his fingers as her hips shifted and ground into the penetration. The ripple of her inner muscles around each thrust was heaven and hell. The need biting at his cock, aching in his balls, was nearly more than he could stand.

This was what being with Cami was. Sensations so rich, so striking, it was all a man could do to survive it.

“Tell me, Cami,” he demanded his lips against her ear, his need to hear her acceptance tearing at him. “Are you brave enough, Cami girl? Tell me what you want. Are you hungry enough to ask for what you want now?”

Her head tipped back to rest against his shoulder. Each breath that passed her lips was a little moan as she fucked his fingers back. Her hips moved hard and fast. The warning ripples of her release began to tighten around his fingers as her body lifted and strained against him.

“Tell me, or I’ll stop.” He wouldn’t stop. He didn’t dare. His fingers were moving inside her. The need to feel her release becoming more desperate by the second.

Quick, hard strokes buried inside her flesh. His fingertips stroked the walls of her pussy. Each caress found nerve endings so sensitive that she was crying out begging with each whimper that left her throat.

“Please.” Her hands gripped his wrists, holding on to him as she began to pant for air. Her lashes feathered against her cheek. Her eyes closed, as her lips parted, and her expression began to tighten with her impending release. “Please, Rafer. Fuck me,” she pleaded breathlessly. “Fuck me until I come for you.”

He nearly spilled his seed in his jeans with no more than the sound of her voice begging for his touch, his fingers, his possession.

He increased the strokes, driving inside her harder, faster, as he began to work her into the release she begged so prettily for.

“Let me feel you come on my fingers first, baby. First my fingers, then I’ll fuck your sweet pussy with my tongue until you’re begging to come on it, too.”

He was too far gone, too far enmeshed in the hunger tearing through him to stop now. The need to pleasure her was suddenly deeper, more driving than his own need for release. Nothing else mattered, nothing else was as important as giving Cami the pleasure, the sheer ecstasy she deserved.

The long, ragged wail that left her lips was barely audible. As though the violence of the spiraling sensations had stolen the last breath she possessed as she suddenly tensed and began shuddering violently in his arms.

Her pussy flexed, tightening until he was forced to bury his fingers inside her and simply stroke the over excited flesh with his fingertips rather than risk hurting her with hard thrusts. The orgasm that tore through her and rippled around him, tightening her flesh around them had her juices rushing across his fingers.

So tight, the thought of having his cock buried in her as she came so violently made him insane to fuck her.

He existed purely for this pleasure.

In the back of his mind, Rafer knew he had been born to possess this one woman. That he could easily find himself living simply for the chance to touch her, to feel her coming for him, to hear his name as a gasping plea on her lips.

And if he wasn’t very very careful, she would destroy him when she slipped away from him again.

When Cami collapsed against him, her breathing harsh, heavy, Rafe lowered his head to her ear once more.

“Now, it’s my turn,” he said as she trembled against him. “Are you ready for me, baby? Because I’m damned sure ready for you.”