Page 24 of Training Rain
“If you are trying to win me over here, you’re doing a shit job.” Still, she didn’t walk out.
He took that as a good sign and he took a deep breath. “I’m trying to be honest.”
“Maybe you should just fuck me. You can get it out of both of our systems and we can move on separately.”
He hated what she was saying, though his cock thought it was a pretty good idea. And since they were both standing in the middle of the room completely naked, it wouldn’t take much to comply. “I’m pretty sure it will never be enough.”
He heard the words coming out of his mouth, but he could hardly believe he was saying them. His fists clenched and released and it took a major effort not to grab hold of her and make her see how much he needed her.
Rain walked into the living room. She didn’t put any clothes on and he watched her as she stepped stunningly naked into the light of the fireplace embers that still burned from when he’d last fed the fire. She ran her hands through her tangle of hair. Her round ass faced him along with the tattoo that so intrigued him. He wanted to know what it meant, to know more about the mysterious woman who’d twice saved him. Even after spending several days in her constant company, Jess knew only bits and pieces about her.
He watched as she turned toward him. There was a blanket on the couch, but she didn’t cover herself. He stepped into the living room, picked up the blanket as he went and wrapped it around her slim shoulders.
“I don’t know what to make of you, Jess. You’re not like the men I’ve known.”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment.” He kissed the tip of her nose.
“What is it you want from me?”
He shook his head. “I just want you tonotrun away. I can practically feel you getting ready to bolt and run far enough that you think I won’t find you.”
She laughed, but there was no humor behind the sound. “I have a feeling you would find me no matter how far I ran.”
One side of his mouth pulled up. “You make me sound like a stalker,cher. What I want to be is your lover.”
“I don’t see how that could work. You’re going your way and the Psi Alliance will likely send me in another. Why don’t we just call this night what it is? A release of pent up emotion and stress.” She pulled the blanket tighter around herself and sat on the couch. Yas made his way over and curled onto the floor at her feet.
He was losing her. His heart actually hurt, but he couldn’t think of anything more to say to change her mind. “I hate that you’re minimizing what this is.”
“While you are making sex between two people grandiose. Jess, I’ll grant you, it was great sex, the best of my life, but it was just one night. You’re the one who laid down the rules. You said you were turning my case over to some other agent.”
Had he used those cold, heartless words? It sounded like him. He didn’t get involved with women beyond the physical. So why did everything she said twist his gut into knots and make him want to shake her? “I can’t protect you. You’re a distraction for me. Can’t you understand that I don’t want to leave you, but I also don’t want to get you killed?”
“That just sounds as if you’re a man making an excuse for leaving me.”
Was it? Was she right? He grabbed another blanket from the back of the couch and covered himself before sitting down. “You said that Adianca rescued you. What did you mean?”
Rain’s eyes stayed focused on the dwindling fire.
Jess got up and added a few extra logs, and waited for them to catch.
He had almost given up on her responding. Her voice was even and so low it hummed in the dark room and sent its vibration directly to his soul. “My mother left when I was a child. My father did the best he could, but I was a wild teenager. I got into some trouble and Adianca came to the house to speak to me. I listened, but her words made no difference. I was angry. A year later, my father died in a car wreck. It took them three days to find me and tell me that my only family was gone and I was truly alone in the world. By that time his body had been cremated. I never got the chance to see him or say goodbye. The house was foreclosed on a few months later since I went right back to myfriendsin the street.
“The day I turned eighteen, Adianca showed up and told me it was time to go. I never even questioned her. I got in the truck with nothing but the clothes on my back and a dead heart. She brought me to Nevada and began my education in the ways of the medicine woman and she made me finish school.”
He tried to visualize the woman next to him as a street kid with no direction, but he couldn’t equate the two. “You must have been pretty tough even then to have survived in the street.”
She turned fierce eyes on him. “I gave my body in return for food and anything else I needed. I whored myself out for some drugs or booze. I didn’t even like getting high and I sure as hell didn’t enjoy the sex. I just didn’t want to go home and admit I’d been wrong.”
“I’m sorry,cher.”
She turned back to the fire. The light glinted on a tear that rolled down her cheek. “Now you can take me down from the pedestal you seem determined to keep me on. You can see I’m just a prostitute who managed to get away.”
His brain was exploding with questions, none of which he could ask her. She was too upset and there were other more important issues to sort out. “You’re wrong,cher. I see a magnificent woman who overcame a difficult past. It’s you who see the worst of yourself.”
“Then you must have blinders on.”
He leaned forward until his body pressed into her and she was trapped against the arm of the couch. He brushed the tear away from her cheek and slid his fingers around the nape of her neck so she was forced to look him in the eye. “I don’t care about your past beyond the fact it has made you the person you are today. Do you think you could have survived the last few days if you hadn’t known hardship? Forgive yourself, Rain.”
