He hadn’t expected this. Not this hunger that surged so hot and fast, searing over his nerve endings and burning through his senses. And he sure as hell hadn’t expected her head to lower, her eyes to meet his. “I love you,” she whispered as she began to move harder, faster.
Though still tender and bruised, she took him, her pleasure obvious, her need rising.
His hips rose, thrusting up, shafting her with the thick width of his cock as he felt her tighten, watched her eyes open wide, then watched her orgasm wash through every particle of her being.
Just as Rafe felt his own release explode in his balls, surge through his cock, and in hard, powerful jets, spill inside the giving depths of her body.
* * *
Son of a bitch, she had slipped out of the bed on him again.
Rafe came awake hours later, the knowledge that Cami wasn’t by his side surging through him.
It took him a moment to remember where he was, what had happened, and to know his cousins would never allow her to leave the house.
After showering and dressing, he went in search of her.
She was in the kitchen, staring in the cabinets with a frown.
“Dinner,” she mumbled. “I don’t know if I have enough for three mountains pretending to be men.”
The teasing edge of amusement in her gaze had his lips twitching.
“Yeah, especially after you helped us build a hell of an appetite.”
He moved to her, kissed her neck, then wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him.
He kissed her gently at first, and would have gone for more if his own stomach hadn’t decided to begin growling.
Cami laughed at the sound before pulling away from him and moving back to the ingredients she had laid out.
Just then, Crowe’s cell phone rang and they heard his cousin walk down the hall to take the call.
It wasn’t long before Crowe came back.
His expression was a hardened demand that spurred Rafe and Logan both into action.
“What’s happened?” Rafe questioned harshly as Cami moved to his side, her face etched with concern.
“It’s Archer on the phone,” Crowe growled. “Jack Townsend’s garage outside of town just exploded. Jack’s tow truck and Jeannie’s car were both in the parking lot and no one saw them leave.” He glanced at Cami as a small, unconscious sob finally tore from her, only to quiet just as quickly. “It looks like they were killed in the explosion.”
CHAPTER 20
Cami felt numb inside as Rafe pulled the Denali SUV into the parking lot of Jack’s Towing and Repair just outside Sweetrock city limits no less than fifteen minutes later. Staring at the burned, charred mess of the building, she couldn’t imagine how anyone could have survived such an explosion. Especially if they had been in the apartment overhead where Jack and Jeannie had lived.
More than half of the garage was just gone, with the debris scattered through the parking lot, vehicles lying in a tangled mess here and there. One lay in the field across from the garage. There were more than half a dozen that had been parked in the waiting lot, ready for needed repairs.
There was no repairing the damaged messes they were now. Cinder blocks, mortar, and metal had been slammed onto the vehicles. The wreckage defied any sense of logic or attempts to make sense of what had happened.
Cami stepped out of the truck, aware of being surrounded by Callahans and all the eyes that turned to them as three hard-cored, hard-muscled, steel-eyed Callahan men wrapped themselves around her and defied anyone to attempt to get close to her.
As she stared up at the garage, her heart in her chest, she tried to blink back the tears she couldn’t hold back any longer. She couldn’t believe this had happened.
“This wasn’t an accident,” Crowe muttered from behind her and Rafe as she felt his arm tighten around her back, his hand falling to her hip, his fingers gripping it firmly, as though she would attempt to tear herself away from him.
At the moment, her emotions were so torn, conflicted, and thrown into chaos that she couldn’t imagine moving away from the only person who seemed to ground them.
“No,” Rafe growled. “It wasn’t an accident.”
“How can you be so certain?” she asked faintly. “Why would anyone want to hurt Jack and Jeannie?”
“We’ll find out,” Rafe promised as Cami glimpsed Archer amid a group of volunteer firefighters and several state police officers.
Catching sight of the Rafe and Cami, Archer lifted his hand in acknowledgment before excusing himself and moving quickly across the debris-strewn parking lot. “The fire marshal is refusing to allow anyone onto the premises.” Archer’s voice was low as he reached them, his gaze filled with somber anger. “I can’t check for the bodies, Rafe.”
Cami wanted to close her eyes; she wanted to deny that this could have happened. That there was a chance that Jack and or Jeannie could have been in that building. But Jack’s tow truck was there, as was Jeannie’s little gray car. Was there even the smallest chance that they weren’t in the building?
“Neighbors saw Jack going in maybe half an hour before the explosion,” Archer sighed. “They didn’t see anyone else.”
“He was at the house the other day,” Cami told Archer softly. “He remembered the accident Jaymi was in just before she was killed; his father towed the car in and repaired it. The brake lines had been deliberately cut.”
As the four men stared at her, their expressions cast in hard, brooding lines, Cami detailed the meeting and the information Jack had given her.
“You’re getting the same phone calls,” Rafe stated when she finished. “You’re getting them and you didn’t tell me. Someone else had to tell me.”
He was furious.
Cami could see the pure rage burning in his eyes now, as well as the silent promise that it was a subject they would discuss in detail later.
She could feel the regret then, that feeling that had hidden inside her for the past weeks, teasing her, brooding in her mind. It was regret, and the knowledge that when Rafe did learn what she had been holding back from him, everything she had been holding back for him, the time to pay would come.
That time was growing closer by the second, and she was suddenly very aware of what she could lose.
His trust.
Whatever emotion burned in his gaze for her.
She could lose Rafe, and she suddenly realized that despite the distance she had placed between them, she didn’t want to lose him. She couldn’t bear to lose him.
For the past five years she had lived for the rare times they had come together. She had waited for him, watched for him, and she longed for him with a strength that had kept her from settling for any other lover.
And in that second, gazing in his eyes, she realized that was what she would do if she wasn’t very careful. She was going to damage whatever it was between them that had kept them coming to each other over the years. That bond of hunger, and something, something she simply couldn’t define, that kept the hunger growing ever stronger.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I should have told you, Rafe. I should have told you so many things.”
She should have never kept the secrets she had kept. Not just about the phone calls but about most especially about the child she had lost. That part of Rafe, that part of the soul-deep need she had for him that she
