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Rain Storms Ch. 01

By: Trahi



Author's note: First and most importantly, I'd like to thank Nelle1022, not only for all the time and effort put into reading and editing my stories but also for offering invaluable feedback. Thank you so much! You rock! Also, this is a continuation of Rain Falls. If you haven't yet, I strongly suggest that you read that first. While this story probably could stand on its own, it was not intended to do so. 

*****

I prided myself on never forgetting a face or the name that went with it. Even if that had not been true, I would have liked to think that I never would have forgotten his. Dylan. I owed him a debt of gratitude. Thanks to him, I had a life that I could be proud of. I had an education, a career, and I had been loved. I spent five very happy years being loved to a degree that, while it hadn't erased the damage that had come before, it certainly had made up for most of it. Even the tumultuous year and subsequent horrid breakup did not negate the joy that those five years had given me. It had ended so badly with Eric that it had taken us a year to be able to be in the same room without screaming at each other. 

Nonetheless, I owed the man sitting across from me a heartfelt thank you. He had changed my life, for the better. Our only prior meeting had been brief and I wondered if he remembered me. I hung back after the negotiations had completed, hoping for my chance to speak with him. Unfortunately, he left with the others. I sighed, thinking maybe next time, and stood to gather my copies of the paperwork.

"Mr. Dutton? Was there something else?"

I looked up from my briefcase to see him standing in the doorway, holding the conference room door ajar. I smiled, "Mr. Granger." Encouraged by his return smile, and emboldened by the knowledge that he, at one time, found me attractive, I took a leap. "Would you like to have lunch with me?"

"It's three o'clock, Mr. Dutton," he pointed out.

Perfect setup. "How about dinner then?" I suggested.

I watched the smile drift from his features as his eyes slowly scanned my body. He stepped forward, allowing the conference room door to close behind him. "Was there something business related that you wanted to discuss?"

He looked concerned. He hid it well but I knew what to look for. There was a slight hitch in his breathing and a small, almost nonexistent, downturn of his beautiful brown eyes. There was nothing in his appearance, dress, or mannerisms that declared his sexuality, but I had inside information. He'd already told me that he was gay. "Not business related, no." I smiled at him again but, this time, he didn't return it. "I would like to talk to you. Someplace not here." I swept my arm to indicate the office.

He studied my face but I wasn't sure what he was expecting to find there. I wondered if his hesitance was due to the fact that he wasn't interested in me, he wasn't out, or if he just had a problem with the fact that we now, technically, worked together.

"Just talk," I assured him. "I promise that I don't bite." I couldn't contain the small chuckle over the memory that the statement brought to surface.

"I remember you, you know," he told me as soon as the hostess had seated him at my table.

"Do you?" I asked. "That's good. It saves me the trouble of a long explanation."

"I didn't," he admitted. "Not until after you left this afternoon. It was the name that triggered the memory. There are not a lot of people named Rain. I guess that I never believed that it was really your name."

I grinned and nodded. "That's understandable."

"So you're in networking now." It was a statement, not a question.

"Yes," I answered anyway. "It's a pretty big change from 'entertainment', right?"

He chuckled. "Not bad. How'd that come about?"

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about." I halted while our waitress came to take orders. I studied him while he ordered, much the same as I had done that afternoon during the business meeting. The past seven years had been kind to him. He was just as handsome as he had been then. There were small lines at the corners of his gorgeous cinnamon eyes, but he still had a full head of light brown hair, cut short in the typical business appropriate style. His tailored suit did little to hide the strength in the breadth of his shoulders or the power in his arms and legs. His glasses had changed but they were still wire rimmed and accentuated his strong, square jawline and masculine features. "Do you still build furniture?"

He looked surprised. "Yes. When I have the time."

He quietly evaluated the changes in me while his drink was delivered and he waited for me to continue. I had changed a lot in the last seven years, and I knew he was comparing what he was seeing now to what he remembered from before. I had filled out considerably from the skinny kid that I was. My body would never be bulky and massive but I had some good definition and I worked to keep it that way. My face had aged but was still more on the pretty side than handsome, with the same blue/gray eyes, pouty lips, and sharp features. My thick, straight, black hair was short now. I had cut it all off in a fit after Eric and I had split up, and I had kept it short since. 

"I wanted to thank you," I told him. 

"For what?"

"You helped me see some things that I couldn't have on my own. After I left, I talked to Eric."

"Dracula?" he smirked.

"Yes," I laughed. "Him. We were together for six years. Five of them were very good. He put me through school and I discovered a talent for computers. That's how I got into networking. What you said to me that night, it changed my life and I'm grateful."

"You're welcome, but I don't think I actually did anything except give you someone to talk to," he replied. "And on that note, thank you as well. You helped me work out a little of my own issues too."

"With your parents?" I asked.

"Yes," he explained. "I tried to keep what you said in mind every time I had to deal with them. It helped, and I managed to keep a good relationship with them until the end. They've both passed now and I'm not left with any regrets."

"It's hard to fathom that half an hour spent with each other had such a profound effect on both of our lives."

"So what happened with Eric?"

I shrugged it off. "People change. We both changed, me more than him, I think. I love him. I will always love him, and I think he loves me too. He told me from the beginning that he was not good at relationships and he hated talking about himself or his feelings. It made it very difficult to please him when he wouldn't tell me what he was upset about. He would keep everything inside until he flew off the handle and I couldn't cope with his outbursts. He's an artist and he's temperamental to start with. I exacerbated the issue. We became very volatile toward the end."

He frowned. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"What about you? Surely you haven't been single all this time. You're entirely too yummy to not be snatched up."

"I'm yummy?" he chuckled. "That was a pretty gay phrase for a man who wasn't sure of his sexuality."

"Oh, I'm sure now," I said. "I fall somewhere in the range of gay with bisexual tendencies. I'm still attracted to women but I can't imagine ending up with one in the long term."

"Ah. No. I'm single," he confessed. "Boyfriends don't stick around too long when they figure out that I'm never going to introduce them as such."

"You're in the closet," I nodded. "I wondered from your reaction to my invitation this afternoon."

"Half in, half out," he replied. "My friends know, but I don't make it public knowledge, and none of my co-workers know."

"You own the company, Dylan. Why do you care what your employees think?"

"I don't own the company. It's a partnership. But, honestly, I don't care. The clients though, they may care. It's hard to keep a company in the black without any clients."

"I can understand that, but it's an architectural firm. Surely you'd still have clients even if you were openly gay."

"Probably, but I can't imagine that my partners would be happy to find out," he grinned. "How about you? Are you out?"

"Yes," I responded. "Sort of. I don't deny it but I don't advertise it either. I've been single since I started working for this company and I don't make friends very easily. I haven't been on very many dates since Eric and I split."

"How long ago was that?" he asked.

"Fifteen months, six days, and four hours... Give or take," I sighed. "There was a short-lived, and ultimately disastrous, attempt to reconcile a few months ago. It's better this way. I know that but I miss coming home to someone. I miss the love and affection. I miss the passion and the sex." I groaned, "God, I miss the sex. I don't miss the fighting."

He smirked at my misery. "Rain, you're a hot, young guy. You could be getting laid every night."

"I could hang out down on Cedar Springs but I've never been the type," I said.

"What type?"

"Slutty," I replied. "I don't sleep around."

He half choked on his drink, laughing. He set the glass on the table and coughed and laughed. I leaned back in my chair, with my hands folded in my lap and a smirk on my face, and watched him struggle to breathe while he laughed at me. He was still chuckling when our food was delivered.

I dropped my keys on the bar and stripped out of my clothes on my way to the bathroom. The tension in my neck and shoulders didn't start to unclench until I stood under the warm spray of the showerhead. Three weeks and the server room still was not set up. How many times were we going to put up with this kind of shit before the company seriously considered my proposal of hiring our own, reliable, contractors? I attempted to blank my mind and just let the sensation of the water sluicing over my body overwhelm me. There was something about being in warm water that had always somehow brought me peace. I had spent so much time in the shower over the last couple of years that my water bills were atrocious. Thankfully, in my current apartment, the water was included. I could spend as much time as I wanted in the shower.

I needed to go to the gym but I wasn't in the mood to deal with being hit on. I had intentionally chosen a gay friendly gym because I thought that I would feel more comfortable there, but it also meant that it was somewhat of a meat market. I couldn't take a shower there without someone coming on to me. It had been so long since I'd had sex that I might cave and let some stranger have at me. Just the thought gave me chills and flashbacks. 

I slapped the play button on the answering machine as I padded by, bare footed and bare assed, towel drying my hair, on the way to the kitchen. The first message made me smile.

"It's Dylan. Just making sure that we're still on for tomorrow night. You don't have to bring anything. And don't worry, my friends don't bite."

We had gone out a few times in the three weeks that my company had been working for his but nothing romantic had come of it. We were just getting to know each other. It was nice but I wanted more. He invited me to his house for a dinner party and I was looking forward to it. I knew that his friends were going to be there but I was hoping that he'd want to take the next logical step with me.

The machine rolled to the next message and I froze with my hand on the door of the fridge. "Rain. Come home. I miss you," the unmistakable sultry voice purred making me both nauseated and rock hard. Then I got angry. I slammed the refrigerator door, knocking the stupid magnets off of it. Why was he doing this to me again? Why now? Did he have some sort of sixth sense telling him that I might be seeing someone else? He had done exactly the same thing the last time I was getting close to intimacy with someone else, and I had fallen for it. Like an idiot, I had run right back into his arms, and his bed, only to find out the hard way that I wasn't the only one sharing it.

I had thought we were doing well. I had thought we were going to work things out and be together again. That was, until I walked in on him buried balls deep inside some chick that I had never seen before. His version of not cheating on me? He only fucks girls on the side. That debacle was six months ago. Now he wanted to do it all over again? I had barely survived the last time. Not again. No.

I snatched the cordless phone off the cradle and dialed. "Hello?"

"Irish, he's doing it again. Make him stop." My voice was whiny but I couldn't help it.

Eric's best friend sighed. "I'll talk to him but you know that I can't make him do anything."

"Why is he doing this to me? Why?"

"Because he loves you, Rain," she replied. "He just sucks at showing it."

A dry, sarcastic laugh was my only response.

"He's not the only one with issues here, Rain," she pointed out.

"I know that, Irish."

She continued anyway. "You're needy and clingy and he's distant and non-communicative. If either one of you could resolve one of those quirks you'd get on like a house on fire."

"He was fine while I was needy and clingy," I argued. "It was after I didn't need him so much that things started falling apart."

"I wasn't talking about financially and you know it," she snapped. "You have this constant need to be reassured of his love and he needs space and solitude."

"What he needs is pussy lined up by the handful just waiting for his pleasure," I shot back. 

"Rain," she sighed.

"It's not just little personality quirks, Irish. How many girls did he fuck while we were supposed to be exclusive?" I asked. "How many? I know that you know."

She responded with silence which just confirmed what I had already suspected.

"I love you, Jess. I really do," I told her. "I know that he's your best friend, and I was just the boyfriend, but I should have been told."

"You were told, Rain," she replied. "I flat out told you that the reason I would never date him again is because he couldn't keep his dick in his pants. You knew that he was cheating on his girlfriends with you. What made you think that he'd be faithful to you?"

"He promised me!" I shouted. "I loved him and I trusted him!"

She sighed again. "I'll talk to him."

"Thank you."

I forced myself to fix and eat dinner. Eric had taught me to cook and I had loved doing it. Unfortunately, it wasn't as much fun to cook for yourself as it was to cook for someone else. I was glad that Eric had Jessica but it made me wish that I had a best friend to turn to. I had destroyed my friendship with my best friend, Melissa, when I tried to use her as a rebound. For some reason, she had taken offense to that. I still had hope that she'd forgive me, one day, but it had been over a year and she hadn't yet. I didn't really blame her. As a result, she had been the only person that I had sex with since Eric and I had broken up. Other than Eric, that is.

I turned on the TV but I couldn't get into any of the shows. Instead, I looked around at my apartment. I hated it. I had been there for almost five months, and it was the same as the other three that I had rented since Eric and I had started on the inevitable road to breaking up with a trial separation. I liked the place when I signed the lease, but as soon as I had the boxes moved in, the thrill was over. I had never even bothered to unpack this time. I still had boxes stacked up in the corners. I needed to find someplace else. I had already submitted my intent to vacate and my lease was up in five weeks. It was hopeless. Nothing was going to feel like home without Eric in it.

Christ, I was maudlin. I had to get out. I slipped on some comfortable clothes and gathered up my keys, not even bothering to do anything with my shaggy hair, before I headed out to a local watering hole. I picked a dive bar close to my apartment. I had been there before and it offered cheap but strong drinks, and the patrons were friendly but not pushy. 

"Hey, Rain," the bartender greeted me as I took up residence on a barstool. "White Russian?"

"Yeah. Thanks, Barb." This is why I liked this place. I had been there a total of four times and the bartender not only remembered my name but also my choice of poison. She was older, in her fifties was my best guess, with curly hair that was more gray than anything else. She reminded me of a diner waitress with hot pink fingernails and a certain sway of her hips.

"Bad night?" she asked, taking note of my expression as she slid my drink across the bar.

"Bad decade," I replied.

She snorted her agreement. "I hear that. You got girl trouble, Honey?"

I chuckled dryly. "Something like that."

"Well cheer up, Honey," she smirked. "More than one fish in the sea."

"Too many fish as far as I'm concerned," I mumbled as I spun the stool around to watch the billiards game going on behind me. The bar was more crowded than I had expected it to be on a Thursday night. I guessed that there was some kind of celebration going on based on the fact that most of the forty or so customers in the place all seemed to be together. I scanned their faces strictly out of habit. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, and their drunken revelry was starting to affect me in a good way, until my focus landed on a face that I recognized. His big blue eyes grew larger as they locked with mine and his soft little Cupid's bow lips parted in surprise. He definitely remembered me. I watched the expression on his pretty face as it morphed from surprise to suspicion and then settled on something akin to desire as he scanned my body. My body twitched in response. 

He wasn't my type. He had never been my type but my body reacted to the lust on his face. It felt good to be so blatantly wanted. I arched my eyebrow at him, wondering if he'd come over. His feet were not quite touching the ground and he had to jump a little to get off the high barstool. I waited until he climbed up onto the barstool next to me before I turned to him.

"Hey." I would have greeted him by name but I doubted that the name I knew was still the one he used.

"Hey you too," he replied. "How long has it been?"

"Seven years," I told him. "You still in the biz?"

"No." He shook his head. "You?"

"No," I told him. "I think the last time I saw you was the night that I quit."

He nodded. "I quit right after that." He glanced around at all the people in close proximity. "Do you want to get a table or something?" he asked. "So we can talk?"

"You want to talk in private? I live close by," I offered.

His perfect little lips turned up in a smirk. "Yeah. Ok."

He followed me in his car to my apartment. He looked around when we got inside. "You just move in?"

"Moving out," I told him. "Would you like a drink?"

"Anything is fine." 

I made us both White Russians while he made himself comfortable. "The last time I saw you, your name was Marc," I said.

"It's Ryan," he smirked. "What's yours?"

"Rain," I grinned. "I only ever used my real name."

"So what happened to you? You were there one day and then poof."

"I got involved in a relationship. We lasted six years," I explained. "What about you?"

"I got a sugar daddy." He took a sip. "This is good. Thank you."

"You're welcome. What happened to your sugar daddy?"

"He died," Ryan explained. "He had cancer and I took care of him until he passed. He took care of me in his will. It worked out for both of us. He died happily in the arms of his lover and I get to live in a style that I never would have achieved on my own."

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"Thank you," he replied. "I wasn't in love with him but he was good to me and I made sure that he was happy. What happened with your boyfriend?"

I shrugged. "We fell apart. Spectacularly. But I managed to get an education and a job that I love working with computers. Hopefully, one day, I'll find someone to grow old with. What about you? Are you seeing someone?"


Rain Storms Ch. 01



He shook his head. "I no longer have sex with anyone that I don't really want. Turns out that I'm actually very picky about my bed partners. I haven't taken anyone to bed in almost a year."

I laughed. "Sounds like me. I wonder if that's a common thing amongst ex-hookers."

He grinned. "Maybe. Are you a top or a bottom?"

"I'm versatile," I replied. 

"Good," he smirked and set his drink on the coffee table. "Because I am definitely a bottom." He crawled across the couch and into my lap. "Kiss me," he breathed against my lips. He didn't have to ask twice.

His lips were as soft as I had imagined and he tasted so fucking sweet. His body was small and soft like a girl, but, from the erection poking me in the stomach, he was definitely not a girl. I was a goner as soon as he started sucking on my tongue. I slipped my hands under his ass and stood up with him in my arms. I carried him like that to the bedroom. I had never been with a twink and I was determined to change that, immediately if not sooner. 

I laid him down in the center of my bed and quickly divested both of us of our clothing. He was beauty in miniature. Everything about him, from his lips, to his hands, to his feet, was all tiny. His body was smooth and mostly hairless. He had a small amount of downy soft fluff above the base of his small penis. Even that was perfect. I could, most assuredly, see the allure in bedding a femme boy. While I couldn't see myself in a long term relationship with a bottom, for the same reason I couldn't with a girl, I loved to be filled and fucked, I was definitely going to enjoying sinking into his depths and making him writhe in pleasure.

"Holy shit, Rain," he moaned wrapping his diminutive fingers around my shaft. "You're wasted as a bottom. If I had known that you were hung like this, I would have been fucking you all those years ago."

"It's too bad that you weren't," I husked, thrusting into his tight grip. "It would have been nice to be able to use it occasionally."

He leaned up and wrapped those soft pink lips around my cockhead, laving and licking the sensitive glans. 

"Fuck yes," I moaned, sliding my fingers into his light blonde hair. I didn't guide or force him. I just caressed his head. He was a professional, he knew what he was doing. My dick looked huge in his little mouth and it was only moments before he was taking all eight inches of my length down his tight and talented throat. "You're going to make me come," I warned him.

He pulled off me long enough to say, "Not in my mouth, Rain." Then he went back to worshiping my cock with his incredible mouth.

"Then you'd better stop before I get too far gone."

He pulled off me again with a slight scowl. "Do you have condoms?"

"Yes." I crawled across the bed and pulled the condoms and lube out of the nightstand. 

He took one and read the foil packet before opening it. "Not my preference but it'll do." He rolled one on me and went back to sucking me off. 

The rubber deadened enough of the sensation to help me back off the edge but Ryan brought me back quicker than I could have imagined. His little tongue never stopped flicking along my shaft and head. Even with a condom, he gave the best blowjob that I had ever had. I was even willing to admit that he might be better at it than I was, but then, I was sorely out of practice. "Fuck, Ryan," I gasped. "I'm going to shoot."

He didn't pull off this time. He increased the suction and speed and pushed me right over the precipice with a howl.

I collapsed sideways on the bed and opened my eyes to see him giving me an evil little grin. "Now I don't have to worry about you coming the second you get inside me."

"Oh, I don't know about that, Minx," I panted while he removed the condom from my spent cock. "If your ass feels anything near as good as your mouth, I may be in trouble. That was fucking amazing."

He shrugged, still smirking. "I aim to please."

"Come here." I lurched up, grabbed him, and pulled his lithe little body on top of mine. I kissed him and could taste the flavor of the condom, spoiling the sweet ambrosia of his mouth. "I want to taste you," I told him and rolled us so that I could kiss my way down his cute body.

"Don't make me come," he moaned when I got my mouth around his cock. "I want to come while you're fucking me."

His pre-cum was so sweet that I knew I was going to have a hard time resisting my natural inclination to take his load in my mouth. I knew what I was doing was unsafe. Times had been different when I was turning tricks. AIDS was not something that we even worried about. It was out there, and it was an epidemic, but we, stupidly, didn't even concern ourselves with it. I had been in what, I thought, was a monogamous relationship when it finally got through my thick skull how dangerous it was. At least, it had been monogamous on my part. I knew that I was clean. I had been tested every month in the six months since I last had sex with Eric, and I hadn't been with anyone else. I didn't know about Ryan. Just because he claimed that he hadn't had sex in a year didn't mean that he was clean.

When he started tugging on my hair, I realized that I had let my mind wander and slipped into auto-pilot. It wasn't fair. He wasn't a John. I actually wanted to pay attention to what I was doing with him, but I hadn't, and now he was making me stop.

"Fuck, Rain," he gasped for breath. "Now I know why you were so fucking popular. Holy shit."

At least I had pleased him, even if I had no idea what I had done.

"I need you inside me," he moaned. "It's been a long time. I'm going to need prep. Do you want to do it or do you want me to?"

"I want to," I told him, grabbing the lube. I really did want to but I also needed the stimulation. The problem with auto-pilot was that I was not the slightest bit aroused. "On your knees, Minx. I want to watch."

"Oh God," he moaned as he got into position. With his head and shoulders down on the bed, and his ass high in the air, his hole was on display for me. His tiny pink star was beautiful and perfect, just like the rest of him. The sight alone made my eyes roll back in my head and solved my arousal problem. I hadn't topped in so long that, even with the fact that I had just come, I didn't think I was going to last long. I bent over and ran my tongue up his crack.

He jumped. "Holy shit. Did you just lick me?"

"Yes," I husked. "And I'm going to do it some more." 

I blew softly on his tightly furled hole, and watched it twitch in response, before I delved in and tasted him properly.

"Jesus. Fuck. Oh my God," he moaned and writhed and thrust back against me. "Please. Please. Oh God."

"Please what, Minx?" I asked, running my fingers around his saliva wet hole.

"More," he begged. "Nobody has ever... Please."

I smiled with my lips against his adorable little butt cheek. "You taste divine, Ryan." I buried my tongue inside him and I could feel his needy little hole trying to pull me in deeper while he cursed and moaned and shuddered. I set about giving him a rim job that he'd never forget.

"Stop! Oh God, stop! I'm going to come!" 

I didn't want to stop. I really wanted to make him fall apart like that, but he wanted my cock inside him. I was oozing pre-cum like a leaky faucet and was more than happy to oblige. I rolled a new condom on and used a generous amount of lube to slick it before I greased him up. He was so relaxed that there was no resistance to three fingers penetrating him. 

"Oh fuck yes," he moaned. "Fuck me, Rain."

"That's just three fingers, Minx. I'm bigger than this," I told him, continuing to add lube. "How do you want it?"

"Fuck me," he pleaded. "Please."

I pulled my fingers out and lined up with his eager fuckhole. "Ready?" I asked.

He pushed back slowly but firmly, and we both gasped when my cockhead popped inside his tight ring. He froze and moaned loudly, "Fuck." 

I stayed still and watched my length disappear inside him while he pushed back. He stopped again when his ass rested flush against my groin. "Fuck, you're tight, Ryan."

"Been a long time," he panted. "Feels so fucking good."

"Yeah, it does," I agreed. "Tell me when, Minx. I'm going to make you see Heaven."

"Already there," he moaned. "Move."

I gripped his hips, already slick with sweat, and gently pulled almost all the way out of him. Then I drove back in with one fluid stroke. We both yelled, "Fuck!" in unison but he added, "Again!" I pulled back and repeated the maneuver, deep dicking him in a pounding rhythm. He moaned and cursed out his pleasure. When it got to be too much for me, I pushed his body down on the bed and slowed my drives. 

"I'm not going to last, Minx," I crooned into his ear. "You feel too fucking amazing. I need you to come for me."

He nodded. "Close. Just need..."

"Need what, Minx?" I asked, rocking in and out of him, adjusting my angle slightly each time until he gasped. 

"There!" he hissed. "Just. Like. That. Oh Fuck," he groaned and tucked his chin and hands in to his chest. 

I kept the same angle of my thrust as I watched his body start to vibrate and felt his muscles clench around my cock in a death grip. I was so close, and the vise grip he had on my dick was not helping. I was just trying to hold out long enough for him to find his release. It needed to be soon. Very soon.

I was too close, past the point of no return. I sped up, racing toward a single goal. 

"FUCK!" he screamed, muffled by the bedding. His back arched up and his body began to spasm, pushing me headfirst over the edge into an earth-shattering orgasm.

"Holy fuck, Rain," he breathed. "That was..."

"Ditto." As soon as I had control of my motor functions again, I disposed of the condom and tucked us both into bed. I pulled his smaller body into mine, spoon fashion. The irony of it being exactly what Eric would do to me after sex was not lost on me.

"That rim job was amazing," he whispered.

I kissed the crown of his head. "No one has ever eaten you out before?"

"No," he replied. "I've done it. But not since I was working. Tony didn't do it and never asked me for it."

"Well, your lovers have all been missing out. You taste wonderful."

"How much did you make a night back then?" he asked. "On average."

"The most I ever made in one night was $1500," I told him. "How about you?"

"Not that much," he admitted. "I was a one trick pony. The guys that wanted me usually wanted my ass. I couldn't turn more than one or two tricks a night. Two didn't happen very often. Almost never."

"They were usually interested in my oral skills," I told him. "I did have a couple that wanted me to top. That was fun."

He giggled softly. "Thank God nobody ever asked me to top. I wouldn't have known what to do."

"Sure you would have." I snuggled him tighter. "You would have sent them to me."

"Yeah," he giggled again.

"I'm clean, by the way," I told him. "I just got the results from my last test on Monday and I haven't been with anyone in six months."

"Me too," he replied. "I haven't been tested in months but I haven't been with anyone in over a year."

"Why so long, Minx?"

"I went a little crazy after Tony died and got myself into a situation. I was raped."

"I'm sorry, Ryan."

"Don't worry about it," he sighed. "It's not the first time that I had to let someone that I didn't like fuck me. It was just the first time that I didn't get paid for it."

"Seriously? I got stiffed all the time out on the streets."

"I never worked the streets," he told me. "I was brought to the hotel by a daddy and dumped there. I started hooking in order to get home. I never made it."

"Where's home?" I asked.

"New Hampshire."

"You haven't been back?"

"I went back after Tony died," he said. "That's where I got into trouble. I came back here and I've been here ever since. I never expected to see anyone that knew me back then."

I chuckled. "You're the second person that I've run across recently from back then," I told him. "I'm working with a guy that I met the night I quit."

"A John?"

"No. Just a nice guy. He tried to pick me up in the bar. Like, as a date."

He laughed. "That's funny. You practically had hooker stamped on your forehead. You just oozed sex. You still do but it's more refined now."

"Thank you... I think."

He giggled and yawned. "I should go. I'm tired."

"You can stay, Ryan. You don't have to run off."

He wiggled around to face me so that we were nose to nose. "You want me to stay the night?"

I kissed his nose. "I wouldn't mind but I don't want to make you uncomfortable."

"I miss your hair." He reached up and combed his fingers through my short mop. "I guess respectable businessmen don't have long hair, huh?"

"I cut it all off in a tantrum when Eric and I split up," I admitted as the phone started ringing. 

"Are you going to get that?" he asked when I didn't move.

"No."

"Why not?"

I sighed. "Because it's after ten so it can only be one person. Every time I say his name out loud, I summon him."

He giggled. "Like a demon?"

"Yes."

We listened as the machine picked up. "Baby, pick up the phone," Eric purred. "I know you're there. Come on, Rain. You sicced Irish on me. The least you can do is talk to me."

"Wow," Ryan breathed. "Sexy voice."

"It goes with the rest of him," I admitted.

"Baby, pick up. I need you. Come home. I miss you. I love you. Please come home. I'll do better. I promise. Please talk to me."

"If the rest of him is half as sexy as that voice, I don't know how you can resist," Ryan said after the machine clicked off.

"I can't. That's why I didn't answer."

"Why not? He sounded sincere."

"He's very sincere," I agreed. "He absolutely means everything he said. Until he becomes complacent. Then it all goes to hell in a hand basket. I can't keep living like that."

"Well shit," he smirked. "Give me his number. I'll let him do whatever he wants to me as long as he keeps talking."

I laughed. "Careful there, Minx. He's hung like a horse, he likes rough sex, and he bites. He may be more than your little body can handle."

"Hung like a horse?" he echoed. "If you think he's hung like a horse that's kind of scary. How big are we talking here?"

"Let's just say that it took me a year of solid practice to be able to give him a decent blowjob; and, even then, I couldn't deepthroat him. He's too long and too big to fit down my throat."

"You never measured him?" he asked.

"I tried." I chuckled at the memory. "I know it was around eleven inches in length, but every time I got him hard in order to get a measurement, he wanted to stick it in me. I let him. So I never really got an accurate reading. It turned into a big wrestling match and he always pinned me. The fun way. It became a sort of Pavlovian response. Every time he saw me with a tape measure in my hands, he'd try to bend me over the closest surface."

Ryan giggled. "Sounds like you guys were good together."

"We were," I admitted with a sigh. "At the beginning. We were great together for five years. Then we were toxic."

"I'm sorry." Ryan snuggled into me. "I didn't mean to make you sad."

"It's fine, Minx," I assured him, holding him tightly. "It's just a sad thing. I really do love him."

"I can tell," he mumbled into my chest.

I held him until he drifted off to sleep. Then I just listened to him make soft little snoring noises until I joined him.

When my alarm went off at six o'clock, it took me a minute to remember that I shouldn't have been alone in bed, but I was.

I spent the morning mentally kicking myself for several things. First and foremost, I hadn't gotten Ryan's last name or phone number. I had no way to find him. Second, that stupid conversation about Eric. I knew that was why he'd left. He wasn't about to try to compete with someone that I loved. I had blown any chance I had with Ryan and I regretted it. Even though Ryan was strictly a bottom, and I wasn't strictly a top, we could have been good together. We shared a common history. We understood each other. The sex issue could have been worked out. I had finally found someone that I connected with and I had fucked it up. 

At least the server room was operational. We had power and everything. I finally got to do what I do best, setup the fucking network. Unfortunately, it only occupied a small percentage of my mind, leaving the rest to berate and abuse myself for my own stupidity. We arrived at the office at eight, and by eight-o-one my co-worker and partner in crime on this project, Jason, had figured out that I was in a pissy mood and wisely decided to leave me alone.

"Hey." I looked up from the screen to see Dylan with just his head in the doorway. "Are you guys going to work through lunch?"

I glanced at the time, fifteen after noon. "No." I turned to see Jason staring at me. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because someone pissed in your Wheaties and I like my head where it is, thank you," Jason retorted.

"Pussy," I shot back.

Jason's green eyes widened and his thick eyebrows shot up into his dark brown mop of shaggy hair as he glanced at Dylan.

"Don't worry about him, Jase," I explained. "Dylan and I go way back. He's cool."

Dylan stepped into the server room. "Did you have a run-in last night with your ex?" 

"Yes."

"Ah," Dylan nodded. "That explains the wet Wheaties. Do you want to go to lunch and tell me about it?"

I shook my head. "I don't want to rehash it. Same shit, different day. Thanks for the offer though."

"I'm going to go to lunch," Jason said. "Do you want me to pick something up for you?"

"I'm not really hungry, Jase. Go. Have fun. I'll be right here when you get back."

"Ok." Jason stood to go. As he walked by me, he patted me on the shoulder. "Don't stress, man. Chicks are psycho."

After he left, Dylan and I looked at each other and busted up laughing. "One of these days, I'm going to have to show him a picture of my ex-girlfriend." 

"Do you have one?" Dylan asked.

"Yes." I turned back to the screen and entered another line of code.

"On you?" he prodded.

"Unfortunately, yes," I confessed.

"Rain," he sighed, shaking his head.

"I know," I grimaced. "Give me a break. I'm doing the best I can."

He was quiet for a minute. "Are you still coming tonight?"

"Yes," I grinned at him. "If I'm still welcome. I've been looking forward to it."

"You're still welcome, Rain. You're practically the guest of honor. Everyone else already knows one another."

"Oh goody!" I exclaimed in mock excitement. "That won't be awkward or uncomfortable in the slightest."

He chuckled. "They're good people."

"They are going to think that I'm your boyfriend, Dylan," I pointed out.

"Does that bother you?" His voice was barely above a whisper.

"It wouldn't bother me in the least," I told him. "But if I'm going to take the fallout then I'd like to be receiving some of the benefits too," I leered at him.

"You're so sweet to think that there'd be any benefit there," he murmured and skipped his fingertips along my jawline. "I'm afraid that I'd be nothing but a disappointment to you in that regard."

I was stunned. Was that what the problem was? "You could never be a disappointment to me, Dylan."

"Hey, Rain." Jason stuck his head back in the room and Dylan snapped his hand back as if he'd stuck it in a fire. "There's a package for you at the front desk."

"Stick around for a sec, Jase," I shouted at the closing door. He stuck his head back in. "That will be the paychecks. I'll let you take it now if you wait a minute."

Jason smiled a big, toothy smile. "I'll wait for that, yeah."

"This discussion is not over, Dylan." I glared at him until he smirked.

"Go take care of your guy," Dylan nudged. "We can argue about it later."

After work, I had time to go to the gym and home to shower before I had to leave for Dylan's house. I had never been to Dylan's house before so I didn't know what to expect. One thing that I really didn't expect was for him to live in the same neighborhood as Eric's parents.




Rain Storms Ch. 01



"Did you find the place ok?" Dylan asked as he let me in.

"Yes."

He stared at me. "What's wrong, Rain? Are you nervous about meeting my friends? They really don't bite."

"I... No."

"Talk to me," he insisted.

"I know someone who lives around the corner," I said.

"Really? Who?"

"The Ungers," I replied.

"Dr. and Mr. Unger?" he said over his shoulder as he walked through the house. "I know them. How do you know them?"

"They're Eric's parents," I said to his back and he froze mid-step.

He turned slowly. "Eric Unger is your Eric? Dracula?"

I nodded. "Yes."

"Well," he smirked. "I guess it is a small world after all."

"You never met him?" I asked. "He grew up here."

"No. When I bought the house, their son was in college in Boston. He never moved back into the house. He got a place in Downtown," he explained. "They rave about how talented he is all the time. They never mentioned that he's gay."

"Technically, since he habitually sleeps with women, he's not gay."

"But he sleeps with men too," he argued.

"Just the one." I held up my pointer finger. "He doesn't sleep with men. Just with me."

"Then he's gay for you," he smirked.

"Something like that."

"The man loves you," he said.

"Love doesn't solve everything, Dylan."

He sighed. "If he were to get his shit together, and figure out how to open up and talk to you, would you go back to him?"

"In a heartbeat," I admitted.

He frowned. "I can't compete with that, Rain."

"It's not going to happen, Dylan," I sighed. "I love him. I can't change the way that I feel. But he's never going to change and I can't live like that. So does that mean that I'm doomed to spend the rest of my life alone? I'm not allowed to love someone else?"

"No," he replied. "It doesn't. But I..." We both turned at the sound of the doorbell. "I want to have this conversation with you but can we hold off until after they've left?"

"Yes," I nodded. "Get the door. I'm fine."

But I wasn't fine. There was a tempest raging inside my mind and I had checked out. I still functioned in a manner that would pass for normal but my brain was somewhere else. I had spent a majority of my life learning to separate my thoughts from my actions so that my body could be doing what was expected of it completely autonomous from my mind. The talent had developed out of necessity for survival, but now it was getting me in trouble. I remembered enough that I would be able to recognize Dylan's friends if I saw them on the street, but not much else.

I knew one thing for sure; If Dylan was trying to introduce me as just a friend, he had done a piss-poor job. He had invited three couples to join us, two straight couples and a gay couple, drawing the inference that we were also a couple. Then he had stayed close to me all evening. Not touching but not more than an arm's length away either. He was confusing the fuck out of me. Between Eric and Ryan and Dylan, I didn't know how much more confusion my mind could handle before I snapped.

"Where were we?" He sat on the edge of the couch as far away from me as he could be while still sharing the same piece of furniture.

"You were telling me that I'm not allowed to have feelings for you," I reminded him.

"Do you? Have feelings for me?"

"Of course I do," I replied, setting my drink on the coffee table. "I thought I had been pretty clear about that. But in case there's any question about it... You're smart, successful, sweet, handsome, insanely sexy, kind, caring, open, and honest. In fact, I have yet to discover a single thing wrong with you. And trust me, I've been looking. So yes. I have feelings for you. I have very strong feelings for you, which I would love to explore. But I can't do that if you're going to push me away because I've been in a serious relationship before."

"It's not just a serious relationship, Rain. It's love. You're in love with Eric and he's in love with you. It has been that way since I first met you and it's never going to be any different. How can you expect me to give my heart to you knowing that you're going to break it the second that man figures out what an idiot he is for not doing any, and every, thing in his power to keep you?"

"You think he's an idiot for that?" I asked, latching on to the one opening that he'd given me.

"Absolutely," he swore.

"Aren't you doing the same thing?" I asked, quietly. "At least he tried to make it work. He went out on a limb and risked his whole being for the chance. He fought against his very nature to be with me. You don't have to do that. You know who and what you are. You're comfortable in your own skin. I'm offering myself to you. All you have to do is reach out and take it. There are no promises. We may be incompatible in ways that have nothing to do with Eric, but we will never know unless we try. I'm willing to take that risk with you. For you. Take it." I held out my hand to him, palm up.

He hesitated but he did, eventually, slide his hand into mine. I closed my fingers around his and yanked him toward me. He allowed me to pull his body into mine. He was a great deal bigger than me. Not all that much taller. We were about the same height but he was broader and more powerful. I couldn't have moved him if he had resisted, but he didn't. Once I had my arms around him, I threaded my fingers through the hair on the back of his head and kissed him. It was our first real kiss and, honestly, it was awkward and short. He pulled away after only a brief moment.

He stood and straightened his clothes. "If we're going to do this then we're going to do it right." He held out his hand to me and I didn't hesitate to grip it. He gently tugged me to my feet and pulled off his glasses before sliding one hand behind my head and the other around my waist. This time, when we kissed, he led and I followed. He didn't hold back, and fully engaged Dylan was something the romance books always try to capture but never succeed. Fireworks, weak knees, heart pounding, blood rushing in my ears. All of that was there but it was so much more. If this was what the man did to me from a simple kiss, I wasn't likely to survive making love with him.

He broke away long after I was done in and way before I was ready. I groaned and he softly chuckled. 

"Like that, did you?" he murmured against my neck.

"Your mouth should be licensed," I husked. "Kiss me again."

He moved those incredible lips up to my ear and I could feel his hot breath as he whispered, "No." He raised his head and locked eyes with me. "Before this goes any further, we need to have 'The Talk'."

I groaned. "Can we play now and talk later?"

He chuckled. "Talking would be pointless after, Rain," he chided. "We need to do this. It's important."

It suddenly occurred to me what he wanted to talk about and I realized that I didn't want to have the conversation. I didn't want to admit what he was going to ask me. If we had only taken this step the day before, I would have been more than happy to talk. Now... What a difference one day, or night, can make. I took a deep breath. "Ok. Go."

He released me and indicated that we should sit. "Have you been tested?"

"Yes," I nodded. "Frequently. I get tested once a month and got my last test results on Monday."

"Jesus," he breathed. "Why?"

"Eric was cheating on me and I don't know how safe he was being," I told him. "What about you?"

"I haven't been tested recently," he admitted. "It's been about eight months. But I try to stay as safe as possible. I don't bareback. I'm willing to hold off on sex if you would prefer."

"If we wait, we'll have to wait six months, Dylan. I don't want to do that."

"Just five," he corrected. "I haven't been with anyone in a month."

"It'll be six, Dylan."

He tilted his head slightly in confusion. "You don't believe me?"

"I believe you," I promised. "It'll be six months for me," I admitted.

I watched realization dawn on his face. "You weren't upset about Eric this morning, were you?"

"I was," I replied. "I was upset about what Eric's phone call interrupted."

"Ahh," he replied. I could tell from the look on his face that he was upset.

"He's the only person that I've had sex with, and he told me that he was clean and I trusted him. But then, I trusted Eric when he told me that he'd be faithful to me too, so my trust may be misplaced," I explained. "We used protection but there is still a risk. I understand that we both have some risk attached but I still want to be with you."

"Truthfully, I'm more of a risk than you are," he replied. "I'm not worried about that. We can be safe. I'm more bothered by the fact that you had someone else inside you less than twenty-four hours ago. I guess I'm jealous. I shouldn't be. I have no right to be. I even encouraged you to go out and get laid. But there it is. I don't like that someone else had his hands on you."

I smirked at him. "I didn't know that you were so possessive alpha male."

He grinned back. "Neither did I."

"If it makes you feel any better, HE wasn't inside ME," I told him with an arch of my eyebrow.

All expression washed off his face but his focus bounced around my face searching... searching. "I thought... I mean Eric..." He took a breath and tried again. "Are you a top, Rain?"

I was confused by his response. He almost seemed excited. I had assumed that he was a top but maybe I was wrong. "I'll be anything that you want me to be, Dylan."

He bolted off the couch and started pacing. "Don't do that, Rain. Don't give me paid escort responses. I want to know what you really feel and like. It will drive me insane if I think you're just telling me what you think I want to hear."

"Dylan, sit," I commanded. He was really upset, and I didn't understand why, but I knew that I had to make it better. I waited until he sat back down to continue. "I wasn't giving you a hooker response. I know that's how it seems sometimes. Honestly, I do fall back on that on occasion. But not this time. I like it both ways. Eric is a top. This guy last night, Ryan, he's a bottom. I don't care if you want to top or bottom. I just want to be with you."

"I haven't bottomed in a long time, Rain," he sighed. "I don't want to be a disappointment to you. I'm worried that I won't be able to please you. It freaks me out that I may not even be able to tell if you're getting any enjoyment out of being with me."

I had a flashback of a previous conversation. It was like being transported back to a twenty year old me telling him that I didn't even get aroused by most of the things that I did with Johns. I knew, without a doubt, that was why he kept me at arm's length for the previous three weeks. He was afraid that I would fake it with him. I also knew that not a single thing that I could say would alleviate his fears. Words meant nothing. I stood up and held out my hand. "Let me show you."

He tentatively took my hand and let me lead him to his bedroom. In his bedroom, like the rest of the house, all of his furniture was made of heavy wood. Everything looked sturdy and, in a way, delicate. But I wasn't noticing the intricate carving of the head and foot boards, or the painstaking craftsmanship that went into the dresser and night stands. All I noticed was the bed.

"That's a big bed, Dylan."

"It's an oversized California King," he explained. "I'm not a very good sleeper. I tend to toss and turn. It could be difficult for someone to sleep in the same bed if there isn't a lot of acreage."

I winced and swallowed at the image of him sharing his bed with other men but I shoved the discomfort down, determined not to let my green-eyed monster spoil the night. Ignoring the bed, and the visions that my overactive imagination brought forth, I turned to him. "Kiss me."

He was still carrying his glasses in his hand, and he set them down on the bedside table before he stepped into my personal space. He tenderly cupped the back of my head and brushed the tip of my nose with his. "There's no turning back from this, Rain." His breath huffed across my face and still smelled slightly of the bourbon that he'd been drinking. It was warm and masculine and sexy. It was a scent that I would always associate with him and it was a huge turn on. 

"We can't go back, Dylan," I whispered. "We've been on this course since the beginning. It's just taken us a very long time to get here. Please kiss me."

His lips lightly grazed mine. He was being sweet and romantic and so typical Dylan. I wanted more. I wanted that same dizzy and shaky feeling from before. My tongue darted out to taste him and he took the hint. He kicked it up a notch. He kicked it up about a hundred and fifty notches until my body was trembling and I was clutching at his arms, his back, and my sanity.

"Oh my God, Dylan," I gasped. "I could die a happy man right now."

He chuckled. "Please don't."

"No," I agreed. "I need to be naked with you at least once before your kisses make my head explode."

"I think we can make that happen." He started unbuttoning my shirt and I tried to capture his lips with mine but he backed away. "No. Naked first. Then more kissing."

"Oh fuck yes," I groaned and reached for his shirt but he batted my hands away.

"Let me," he ordered. "I was denied this pleasure seven years ago. I want it now."

"You could have had me then, Dylan," I smirked. "I was a sure thing."

He shook his head. "No. Then you were aloof and untouchable. I could have fucked you. Don't think I didn't consider it. But then I would have been just another John to you. I didn't want that." He got my shirt off and made short work of my pants and underwear. I toed off my shoes and socks. He stepped back and surveyed my naked and aroused form. His jaw set and his brown eyes turned nearly black with desire. "I wanted you rumpled." His voice was thickened by lust. "You're fucking gorgeous, Rain."

He ran his fingers over my stomach and traced the groove of my Adonis belt. His fingertips continued to blaze a hot trail over my body as he caressed and touched with just enough pressure to keep me from bursting into a fit of giggles. I just stood there and let him explore, wanting, craving, and needing to reciprocate until I couldn't stand it anymore. "If you don't let me touch you, my brain is going to leak out my ears and you'll never get your network functional."

He startled, as if he'd been jerked out of a trance, and he started laughing. "Well, we can't have that." He shed his clothes and stood before me. He looked even better than I had imagined, and I had thought about it a lot. He had been starring in my jerk-off fantasies for weeks now. I ran my fingers through the hair coating his chest and it felt amazing. A lot of men have course hair that feels like pubic hair but his was as soft as the hair on his head. The light brown hair was thick but not so thick that you couldn't see his perfect pink nipples. It tapered in around his midsection and formed a thin line that spread out again at his groin. 

He was strong and broad shouldered but not ripped. He had a nice soft layer of padding over very dense and solidly packed muscles. He wasn't fat. He wasn't even what would be considered overweight. He was perfect. 

"You've got your hands on my naked body," he grinned. "Now what are you going to do with me?"

I shook my head and backed away from him, my body screaming at the loss of contact. "Not thinking," I husked, sliding backwards onto the bed. "Just feeling." I got into the relative center of the huge bed and crooked my finger at him in a come here motion.

He crawled across the bed toward me with a look in his eyes that would have made my knees weak if I had been standing. He was so intense and sexy that I pretty much swooned anyway when he took possession of my mouth and lowered me back onto the bed. He kissed me gently and slowly, as if he had suddenly become timid now that we were naked and in bed. His weight settling on top of me was comforting. My body was relaxed and languid, and I was content with just that for the moment. I enjoyed the sensation but I knew it wouldn't last. 

Sure enough, he shifted his lower body and our erections came in contact with one another making me gasp. He arched up a little to be able to look between our bodies. He braced himself on one elbow and reached between us, gripping our cocks together. "You've got a big dick, Rain."

I looked down and he was right. I was longer than him by at least an inch but it was hard to tell from the angle. Girth-wise, we were similar. "Does that bother you?" I asked, nervously. I had no idea what I would do if it did. 

He chuckled softly, "No." His hand moved slowly up and down, jacking us both together, and forcing my eyes to roll back in my head. "It's mine, right?"

"Fuck yes," I moaned. "As long as you'll have me."

"I'm going to have you for a long time," he promised.

"Oh God," I moaned. I felt the familiar tightening in my groin and rocked my hips involuntarily. "If you keep doing that, I'm going to come."

"Really?" His voice spiked an octave in surprise. "Hair trigger?"

"No," I panted. He hadn't stopped and I was trying to hold off my orgasm. "It's you. You have no idea what you do to me."

He smirked. "I guess I'm about to find out."

He continued his slow, lazy assault on my cock, and I was teetering on the edge. I needed more but he was straddling my thighs and I couldn't get the leverage that I needed. My fingertips dug into his triceps as I squirmed and writhed beneath him. "Please!" I begged. "Please. Oh God." 

"What do you need, Gorgeous?" he crooned. "Tell me."

"Please," I moaned. I couldn't articulate what I needed. I was so close that I couldn't think at all.

He leaned down, sucked my nipple into his wicked mouth, and rolled the nub gently between his teeth. I gripped the back of his head and pulled his face hard against me. He bit down and the small shock of pain shoved me, screaming, over the edge.

I blinked hard as my mind and heartrate returned to something akin to normal functionality. Dylan was on his side, casually drawing mindless patterns through the evidence of my pleasure painted across my midsection. "Oh God," I groaned. "That was fast."

He grinned at me, skimmed his wet fingertip up my chest, and circled my recently abused nipple. "I'd forgotten that about you. Or blanked it out."

"What?"

"That you like pain," he clarified. "That's going to be a problem, Lover. I'm not the kind of person who can deal out pain. I just don't have it in me to hurt you."

"What just happened... That bite... Was that too much for you?" I asked.

"No," he replied. "But it was close."

"I'll never ask for more than that," I promised. "That was enough for me." I looked down at the mess I'd made. "Obviously."

"But, Rain..."

"Dylan," I sighed. "Stop trying to come up with reasons why we can't be together and focus on ways that we can work out our differences. I want to be with you. I want to make it work. I don't need the pain to orgasm. The sharper sides of pleasure just make it more intense. You didn't damage me. You didn't even bite me hard. It was just in a sensitive spot and it was good."

"But, Rain..."

"And you can't seriously still be worried that you won't be able to tell if I'm getting enjoyment out of what you're doing to me, right?"

"True," he chuckled warmly.

I frowned. "But now I'm worried that I'll pop off every time you touch me and I won't be able to please you." 

He laughed. "It will please me to no end if you pop off every time I touch you."

"Be serious," I scolded. "You know what I mean."

He squinted at me and scooted off the bed. "Come on." He held out his hand and I took it. We entered the master bath, hand-in-hand, and he turned on the shower. He took his time carefully washing every inch of my body before he handed the shower gel over to me. I took the silent hint and washed him, head to toe. By the time I had finished, we were both hard and leaking pre-cum. He stood over me, looking down and breathing heavily, while I was rinsing the last of the soap off his feet.




Rain Storms Ch. 01



He pulled me up to my feet and took my mouth hard. It was unlike his other kisses. This one was aggressive and punishing and my toes curled as a whimper escaped my throat. He ripped his mouth away and spun me around, pushing my body against the wall. I felt the heat of his body against mine and heard the snick of the flip cap on the shower gel. I tensed when I felt the blunt head of his cock between my cheeks.

"Relax, Rain," he growled in my ear. "I'm not going to fuck you."

The slicked up length of his cock glided easily between my thighs. He guided my hips back a little and adjusted my stance to suit him, then he started thrusting. He slid continuously across my hole and perineum as he fucked my thighs. It was sensual and erotic, and I knew that if I arched my back, just a little, he'd slide right inside my ass on the in stroke. It was tempting, very fucking tempting. There were only two thoughts that kept me from doing just that. One, that he'd be pissed, and two, I hadn't been penetrated in six months, and, without some prep, it might fuck me up. That was the last coherent thought I had before he reached around with a hand, slick with shower gel, and grabbed my achingly hard cock.

I woke up in someone else's bed, naked and alone. I hated that. I got out of bed, used the bathroom, and went looking for my host. I found him in the kitchen.

He glanced up from the newspaper and smiled at my naked and sleep tousled appearance. "Good morning, Sunshine. Did you sleep ok?"

"Better than you did," I grumbled. "Is that coffee?"

He watched me with a bemused expression as I added cream and sugar to my caffeine and joined him at the kitchen table. "Are you going to spend all day sans clothing?"

I arched an eyebrow at him. "Are you complaining?"

"Not in the slightest," he smirked. "You might be a little uncomfortable in about..." He checked his watch. "Ten minutes. When my housekeeper gets here."

"Your housekeeper comes on Saturdays?"

"Only when she knows there was a dinner party here the night before," he replied.

I looked around the state-of-the-art kitchen. "We didn't make a mess."

"Try telling her that," he grinned. "She's not going to knock, you know. She'll just stroll in and find your gorgeous naked ass in her kitchen."

"In that case..." I stood up, displaying my wares. "I'll take my gorgeous naked ass back to your enormous lonely bed."

"Tease."

I gasped. "I'm not a tease. I'm perfectly willing to go all the way. Come back to bed and I'll prove it."

"I can't, Rain," he pouted. "I've got a client meeting on Monday and the drafts aren't ready. I have to work this weekend."

"Well shit, Dylan. I was looking forward to spending the weekend with you doing horribly dirty things to each other."

He chuckled. "Let me see how today goes and maybe we can do dirty tonight. How's that sound?"

"Better," I smiled then jumped when I heard the door shut. "Shit," I mumbled and Dylan laughed.

"I warned you."

I glared at him and gathered my dignity like a shroud. I straightened my shoulders and casually strolled back to the bedroom with my coffee cup.

I pondered my run in with Dylan's housekeeper the entire drive home. Not only had she not seemed put out by the presence of a nude male in her employer's home, she actually seemed quite amused. She wasn't what I expected. She was a young, attractive brunette who was cleaning homes for extra money while she attended college. She was a bright and funny twenty-something named Wendy with a great ass. I had to keep reminding myself that Dylan was gay. He wasn't Eric.

When I got home, the answering machine was blinking five and it gave me momentary pause. Why was he being so persistent? It wasn't like him. Eric didn't chase. All he had to do was crook his finger and women, and men, came running. Ryan had accused me of oozing sensuality but he had never met Eric. In all the time I had known him, we had never gone anywhere without someone hitting on him. He was beautiful and talented and rich. He didn't pursue. Ever.

I ignored the machine and showered and changed clothes. I needed to find a new apartment and thought that maybe I would look in Plano. It was further from work but closer to Dylan. Besides, since I was a contractor and worked in other people's offices, it didn't make sense to try to get a place close to work. I never knew where the next job would take me. Close to Dylan seemed like a great idea.

I found an apartment that I liked. It was two story, like a townhouse, and was in a fantastic location, close to the highway and across the street from the mall. The only thing that I didn't like about it was that the only bathroom was upstairs. That had always annoyed me at Eric's. I would probably take it anyway. I was most likely going to hate it the minute I moved in, regardless. 

I didn't get back home until after six. The machine was flashing seven. I was torn because I knew that there could be a message from Dylan, but I would have to make it through at least five, possibly from Eric, before I got to the latest two. I needed to get caller ID. I decided to bypass the machine and just call him.

"Hey." 

"Hey you," he replied. "How was your day?"

"Good. I went apartment hunting. How was yours?"

"Lonely. I missed you," he responded, making my heart swell. "I didn't know that you were moving."

"Yeah. My lease is up at the end of next month," I told him. "Did you get your work done?"

"Not completely. But I think we can do a little dirty tonight if you don't keep me up too late."

"I thought keeping you up was the whole idea," I purred.

"I'm up right now, Rain," he husked.

"I'm on my way."

I think I broke land-speed records getting to his house. I wasn't three feet inside the door before he was on me, kissing me senseless. Fuck! His kisses made me all soft and squishy. Or, more accurately, hard and gooey. 

We tumbled onto the bed before I realized that he'd been leading me to the bedroom. "Skin. Skin," I pleaded, tugging at his clothes.

"Oh yes," he moaned, stripping me. I did my best to help but I was frantic and I was somewhat of a hindrance. We managed to get each other undressed irrespective of the fumbling and flailing. 

"Make love to me, Dylan," I begged. "I need you inside me."

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Yes. Please."

He crawled off the bed and came back with condoms and lube. Stopping at the edge of the bed, he looked at me through hooded eyes. "Are you going to pop off the second that I touch you?" he smirked.

"Good chance," I admitted. "But don't let that stop you."

"Well then, let's resolve that issue now." He crawled between my legs and rolled a condom over my throbbing erection. He wasted no time taking me into his mouth and swallowing me down his throat. I wasted even less unloading into the sheath buried in the warm recesses of his throat. It was embarrassing, really. The only time I had come faster was the first time that Eric had given me head. I forcefully shut down that train of thought. I didn't want Eric's spectre in bed with us.

He removed and disposed of the condom and let me come down a little from my euphoria. "That was fun." He wiggled his eyebrows at me.

"Don't get used to it," I warned. "It'll stop happening when my mind and body accept the reality that you're finally touching me."

"I don't know if I like the sound of that," he frowned. "I love the fact that you're that excited to be with me."

"I'll still be as thrilled to be with you, Dylan," I assured him. "I'll just have enough control to be able to enjoy it more."

He held up the bottle of lube in his hand. "How do you want this?"

"It's been a long time," I reminded him. "I should probably be on my knees."

He nodded. "Then turn over, Lover." I settled, face down, ass up, on the bed, and he sat between my parted legs. "Jesus," he breathed, running his hand up my thigh and over my butt. "You've got the most gorgeous ass known to man."

I wiggled my butt at him. "Right now I've got the neediest ass known to man. Please don't tease me."

The bed shifted and I could feel his hot breath on my twitching hole. "I want to taste you," he murmured. "Only..."

"It's not safe," I supplied.

"No," he stated, sitting back up.

I got up on all fours and turned my head back to look at him. "Dylan, I'm not going to be able to hold out six months without sticking my tongue in your ass. Just be aware of that. Ok?"

He smirked at me and ran his finger down my crack, making me shudder. "I'll try to keep that in mind."

I dropped my head back down while he donned a condom and lubed up his fingers. The cold lube drizzling on my hole got me instantly hard in anticipation. He rubbed it around and I had to fight to keep from ejaculating the moment he pressed one finger inside my slippery entrance. It had been a long time but my body remembered. I relaxed around his probing digit instantly. 

"Fuck me," I groaned when he added a second finger.

"Gonna," he husked.

"Now would be good," I moaned.

"Don't want to hurt you, Rain."

"You won't hurt me, Dylan. Please." I rocked back, fucking myself on his fingers. 

My body literally convulsed as he pushed three fingers inside me. "Fuck, Rain. You really want this, don't you?"

"Want you," I gasped. "Wanted you for years. Don't make me keep waiting."

I hiccupped and nearly cried when he pulled his fingers out of me, but moaned instead when he replaced them with his cockhead at my hole.

"You know the drill," he said. "It's all you."

I pushed back tentatively at first, accustomed to the pain of taking Eric. There wasn't any pain, just the mild burn of stretching. It felt glorious. I didn't wait. I kept going and took him all in one drive.

"Yes," he hissed and gripped my hips, holding me still with his pubes tickling my butt. "Are you ok?"

"Be better if you'd move," I panted.

"Give me a second," he breathed. "You feel too fucking good."

I wiggled my butt impatiently.

"Oh fuck," he groaned and pulled back. "Gonna be quick," he warned before slamming home.

Sometimes I just don't understand the thought process of tops. Eric's version of a quickie was thirty minutes of relentlessly pounding me into the floor. Dylan wasn't much different. Not that I'm complaining. I spent that thirty minutes in blissful la-la land. It's just that when I say it's going to be quick, I mean like ten or fifteen seconds. Not a half an hour. By the time he came, we had changed positions once and I had come twice, making a total of three times for his one. I was worn the fuck out.

I didn't even remember falling asleep, but I must have, because I woke up in the middle of the night to Dylan thrashing around like he was having a nightmare. I snuggled up to his body, playing the big spoon, and he calmed down. I went back to sleep and woke up alone again. This time, I slipped on my jeans before wandering through the house.

"Do you have to work today?" I asked while fishing the funnies out of his pile of Sunday paper on the table.

"Yes." He looked up at me and pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. How a man can pull off fucking adorable and sexy at the same time is beyond me. "But I have everything I need here. I shouldn't have to go into the office."

"Will I be too much of a distraction if I stay?"

"I don't know," he grinned. "Will you?"

"Not if you don't want me to be," I promised. "Do you have nightmares?"

His grin turned into a frown. "Yes. Did I wake you?"

"Yes," I nodded. "Don't worry about it. I'm more bothered that you have nightmares."

"I always have," he explained. "Nightmares. Night terrors. I've tried all sorts of therapy and nothing helps."

"I have a reoccurring one about being torn apart by wild animals," I admitted. "What are yours about?"

"There's no pattern. They're always different. I think that's why nothing helped. They don't give me anything to latch on to as the root cause," he said. "I didn't think I had a problem last night. I woke up in your arms."

I nodded around my sip of coffee. "That's because holding you seemed to soothe you. You settled right down."

He smiled at me. "Thank you."

"It was my pleasure," I smiled. "Do you mind if I shower while you work?"

"Not at all. Make yourself at home. Mi casa es su casa. In fact, you can wash your clothes, if you like."

"No need. I have a change of clothes in the car."

"Do you?" He arched his eyebrow. "Planning ahead?"

I chuckled. "I always keep some things in the car."

"Why?"

I shrugged. "Old habits die hard."

I read a novel that I had in the car, and fixed him lunch, while he worked. To reward me for being good and not trying to distract him, he took me to an early movie and a late dinner.

"This is why I don't date women," he said after we were seated in the restaurant.

"That's why?" I laughed. "You're afraid of Sharon Stone?"

"Yes," he smirked.

"Are you sure that it's not just because you really like cock?"

He chuckled. "That may have something to do with it."

"Oh come on," I taunted. "You can't tell me that you don't think that woman is sex on legs."

He pulled a face and stuck out his tongue. "I could do without the ice pick."

"Well..." I admitted reluctantly. "Not my favorite thing to be poked with either."

"Rain?"

I looked up at the sound of my name. "Hey Jase."

He walked over to stand at the end of our table. "Hello, Mr. Granger. Wow. I guess you guys really are friends."

"It's Dylan," he replied. "And yes we are. Really."

"We were just debating the physical characteristics of Sharon Stone," I informed Jason.

"Did you guys see Basic Instinct?" Jason asked, pulling up a chair and sitting at our table, uninvited.

"Yes."

"Jesus," Jason groaned. "That woman is smokin' hot."

"See!" I exclaimed. "That's what I said."

"You don't think so?" Jason asked Dylan.

"She's not my type," Dylan smirked, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands in his lap.

"What is your type?" Jason asked.

"I'm partial to brunettes," Dylan replied.

"Like Cindy Crawford?" Jason asked. "I'd do that."

"That's closer," was Dylan's non-committal response.

I have to admit that it irked me. I knew that he wasn't out at work but it still bothered me. I didn't really expect him to claim me as his boyfriend. He'd already told me that he didn't do that. It would have been nice, though. As much as I didn't want to give Eric any credit, that was one thing that I never had to face with him. He had never, ever, denied what we were to each other. He not only called me his boyfriend, he held my hand and kissed me whenever and wherever he felt like it. He simply didn't care what other people thought. He was so demonstrative in public that it often frightened me. Things were getting better and better for same sex couples, but it was Texas, and I seriously doubted that we would ever see true acceptance in my lifetime.

Jason hung out at our table until our food was delivered, so I was still smarting from Dylan's repudiation when we got back to his house. I didn't bring it up but I was pretty sure that he knew it was bothering me. After all, this wasn't his first rodeo. He'd destroyed his other relationships the exact same way. He didn't mention it either. Instead, he took me to bed and made me forget why I was upset. Then he made me forget my own name.



Rain Storms Ch. 02



The next morning brought the whole issue crashing down on me again when he woke me early to send me home. Even though we were going to the exact same place, for the same amount of time, he didn't want to ride in together. I didn't make an issue of it to him. I certainly made of issue of it to my steering wheel and dashboard. I bitched at them the entire way home. I was so flustered that I failed to notice the gorgeous hunk of Goth sitting on the stairs to my apartment until I was right up on him.

"Where have you been all night, Rain?" Eric growled. His stormy gray eyes were flashing with anger and it was the absolute sexiest thing in the world short of those same eyes heavy with lust.

"Are you stalking me now, Eric?" I snarled right back.

"No," he snapped. "I have been trying to talk to you but you're avoiding me. Where were you all night?"

"No," I shot back. "You don't get to ask me that. You forfeited the rights to my whereabouts the second you stuck your dick in someone else."

He rolled those stunning eyes. "I'm not here to fight with you."

"Then why are you here?"

"Are you going to let me in?"

I didn't want to. I already had no defense against him. If he decided to seduce me once we got inside, I wouldn't stand a chance. But then, he was just as likely to seduce me right there in the open breezeway if that's what he wanted. I walked past him, up the stairs, and unlocked the door.

"Why won't you take my calls?" Eric asked.

"You know why," I grumbled. "I have to get ready for work. Can you just say what you came to say and be done with it?"

"You can get ready," he said softly. "I'm not going to rape you, Rain."

I just stared at him. No. He wasn't going to force me. I had no fear of that. I was more worried that I would jump him. I hated that I had no power to resist him. My body was already humming with the need for him to touch me just from being in his proximity. My clothing was the only protection that I had against my body's visceral reaction to him. If I shed even one piece, there would be no stopping the primal instinct to join with him.

"Fine," he huffed when I made no move toward changing clothes. "I wanted to tell you that I'm being sued. I didn't want you to hear it from someone else."

"Sued?" I asked, confused. "What for?"

"Paternity."

The word slammed into me like a ton of bricks, and I couldn't stop the gasp from escaping my lips. Eric was going to be a father.

"The kid isn't mine," he rushed to explain. "He looks like me but he's not mine. I swear to you, Baby. He's not mine."

"K-K-Kid?" I stuttered. "He? Looks... How old is your son?"

"He's not my son, Rain."

"How old, Eric?"

"He's two."

"Two?" I repeated, doing the math in my head. "TWO?!"

"He's not mine, Baby! I promise you! I didn't fuck her! I didn't!"

"TWO?!" I yelled again. "You sorry son-of-a-bitch! I was working my ass off trying to get a degree and you were getting your dick wet?"

"No!" he roared. "You're not listening to me! I did not fuck her! You're never going to believe me, are you? Fine! Even if I had fucked her, which I did not, the kid still wouldn't be mine! I'm sterile. I had a vasectomy."

"You did what?" I was still shouting. "When?"

"When I was in college," he explained. "In Boston. They made me wait until I was twenty-one, but I got it the day I turned of age. I'm telling you the truth. The kid is not mine."

"You had a vasectomy and you never told me?" I shouted. "Jesus fucking Christ, Eric! You didn't think that was something you should have shared with your partner?"

"Why?" he asked, honestly confused. "You know how much I hate kids. And it's not like you were ever going to ask me to get you pregnant. Why would you even give a shit that I got snipped?"

"Oh my fucking God!" I screamed. "You are never going to fucking get it, are you? Get out. Get out of my house!"

"Baby, please," he whimpered. "Please don't do this. I love you so fucking much. Please."

I could see it. Pain, confusion, and love were, clear as day, stamped across his exquisite features, but it didn't matter. It didn't matter that everything I was, I owed to him. It didn't matter that there was no color or joy or love in my life without him. None of that mattered as much as the pain of betrayal that clouded everything. I couldn't get past it.

"Get out, Eric," I said.

He slumped, defeated, shook his head sadly, and left without another word.

I changed clothes and went to work. I was an hour early. But if I didn't get my mind on something else, I was going to curl up into a ball and die.

Dylan found me, sometime close to eight, sitting at the console with a box of Kleenex in my lap. I wasn't a crier. I absolutely wasn't. But it's amazing what having your heart ripped out and stomped on will do for you. Especially when you're fully aware that most of the fault is your own.

"Are you upset with me?" he asked, taking note of my puffy red eyes, I'm sure.

I shook my head but continued working. "Eric's being named in a paternity suit."

"Paternity?" he asked. "There's a baby on the way?"

I shook my head again. "The kid is two," I told him as I hit print screen and pushed my rolling chair back to pull the page off the printer.

"Two?" he mumbled. "But that means..."

"I know what it means," I replied, rolling back to the console. "I can do basic math."

"I'm sorry," he said.

"He claims it's not his," I continued. "He says that he got a vasectomy when he was at Mass Art."

"Seriously?" Dylan asked. "Jesus. You never knew?"

I shook my head as Jason came strolling into the server room.

"Have lunch with me," Dylan offered. "We can talk about it then."

"Yeah. Ok," I agreed and Dylan nodded and headed to his office.

"Are we going to run the CAT today?" Jason asked after he'd set his bag down.

"Yeah," I replied. "Just let me finish this."

"Ok." He sat down to wait and I could feel him boring holes into the back of my head. I flinched when I heard him inhale to speak. "Are you ok, man? You look like shit."

"Fuck you too," I chuckled.

He snickered. "Seriously man. Are you still having trouble with your ex-girlfriend?"

I spun the chair around to face him. "I'm not going to play the pronoun game with you, Jase."

"The what?"

"The pronoun game. He, she, him, her," I replied. "My ex-girlfriend is a guy. I'm gay. If that's going to be a problem for you, I need to know that now. I can't do anything about this assignment but there's only a couple of weeks left on it. I can make sure that the company assigns me someone else on the next gig. If you back out before this one's finished, you're going to take the hit for it."

He looked stunned. Flabbergasted is a more accurate word. "You're ga..."

"The word is gay. And yes. I am." I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket and slid out the picture of me and Eric that I had been carrying around for years. I looked at it before handing it over. It had been taken outside the Starlight Café. Eric was leaning back against the brick wall and I was leaning back against him. It was winter and he had his arms and his leather trench coat wrapped around me to keep me warm. The man was a walking space heater and I hated being cold. Neither of us had known the picture was being taken and it was a very candid and sweet shot of us just being us.

"Holy shit," Jason said when I handed him the photo. "How fucking tall is this guy?"

"Six foot eight."

He studied the picture long enough for me to get nervous that he wasn't going to give it back. Then he handed it back with a smirk. "He's hot. I mean he's no Sharon Stone but, yeah, I'd do that."

I laughed and put the picture back in my wallet back where it belonged.

"Should this be open?" Dylan asked, indicating the server room door. I had it propped open because it was on a timed lock that engaged at five and I didn't want to have to deal with it every time I left the room.

"It's fine," I told him. "It's frigid in here without this monstrosity up and running."

"Isn't it supposed to be cold?"

"Yes. To protect the systems. But they aren't operational yet."

"Ok." Dylan looked around to make sure that we were alone, even though it was well after five and everyone had already left for the night. "Are you coming over tonight?" 

"I don't think so." I finished packing up for the evening and stood to go. 

"You are upset with me," Dylan sighed. "You said that you aren't but you are."

"I'm not upset with you," I lied. "I'm just trying to deal with what's going on in my head and heart and I have no desire to get up at five a.m."

"Rain, you know the score. You knew before we ever got here."

"I know," I sighed. "I just... Do you know how insulting it is to not be acknowledged? Do I expect you to tell your clients that you're fucking the IT guy? No. But being kicked out of your bed before the crack of dawn was a bit much for me."

"I didn't mean it like that, Rain," he argued. "I just knew that you didn't have any work clothes with you and I thought you'd want time to not have to be in a rush."

"So you're implying that you wouldn't have sent me home if I had work clothes with me?" I asked. "Because it felt like you should have been giving me money on my way out the door."

His mouth dropped open in shock but he recovered quickly. "I thought you didn't sleep with your clients," he said with a smirk. "What's the going rate for an overnighter, Rain?"

I knew that he was teasing but I wasn't in the mood. "Ass," I said as pushed past him and kicked the doorstop out from under the door on my way through.

"Rain! Wait!" he called after me. "I was kidding!"

I spun on him. "I know that you were kidding, Dylan," I snapped. "The thing is, I wasn't. That's how it made me feel. If that's what this is to you then that's what it is. It would just be nice for me to know that so I don't get my hopes up that you actually give a shit. Don't worry. I'm not going to stop letting you fuck me just because I'm only a piece of ass to you. I just need to know that because even whores have feelings."

"Dylan?" Senior partner, Albert Weston, of Granger, Weston & Graham, stepped out of the copy room three feet further down the hall than where Dylan and I were having our little spat. At high volume. And there was no door on the copy room. The man had heard everything. 

Dylan closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath. When he opened them again, he was looking right at me with no expression at all. I had never seen him look so blank. Even his eyes had lost that warm sparkle they always had for me.

"I'm sorry, Dylan," I said. "I'm so fucking sorry." At that, I turned and fled from the office.

The machine was flashing ten when I got home. I bit the bullet and hit play. How much worse could it get? On top of everything else, I was about to be fired. I didn't think getting fired for fucking the client was going to look very good on my resume. I started stripping while the machine played back the messages.

"Baby, pick up the phone," Eric purred. "I know you're there. Come on, Rain. You sicced Irish on me..."

I hit erase. I'd heard that one live.

"Rain." Eric's sultry voice still stirred unspeakable things in me. "Please talk to me. I need to talk."

Erase.

"Baby. I'm getting worried about you. Please call me."

That was short and sweet. Erase.

"Hello," a voice boomed, making me jump. "This is councilman..."

Erase. Jesus, damn. I won't forget to vote. Must those pre-recorded political messages be deafening? November fourth, and the end of all the annoying campaigning, couldn't come fast enough for me.

"Rain, just talk to him," Irish sighed. "He needs to talk to you."

Thanks Jessica. I got that. Erase.

"Rain. Pick up," Eric commanded. "I'm not kidding. Pick up the damn phone."

How presumptuous. I wasn't even home. Erase.

"I'm wrapping up here," Dylan said. "I seem to recall you having an interesting suggestion that I haven't been able to get off my mind all day. Call me."

That made me smile. Damn him. Erase.

"Rain, Baby. I really need to talk to you. I'm begging. Please. Call me back. It's important. If I don't hear from you soon, I'm coming over. I'm serious. Please call me."

That would have been good to know. Oh well. Erase.

"Ok," Irish started. "This is none of my business, and I should just stay out of it, but I want you to know that he swears he didn't fuck her. You know he'd tell me if he did. He says that she tried but he turned her down. So this is how she gets back at him? I don't know. Maybe she's psycho. The court ordered tests will tell, right? Anyway. Don't just dismiss him out of hand, even though, he probably deserves it."

Ok. That also would have been good to know... like yesterday. Erase.

"Rain?" A voice that I didn't recognize. "I hope this is the right number. This is Ryan. I got your last name from Barb. How many Rains can there be, right? I'm going to be back there tonight, if you're the right person, and you're interested in having a drink with me, you know where to find me. A lot of ifs, right?"

Hmm. Choices. Do I stay home, curl up in a fetal position, and lick my wounds; or do I go out, potentially get hammered, and let an adorable femme boy lick my... wounds? Not really that much of a choice.

How did I even get here? I had no clue. I'd had too much to drink on an empty stomach, that was for sure. I didn't really care. I had ended up exactly where I wanted to be. Buried balls deep inside the tight velvet heat of Ryan's ass. And it was Heaven.

I'd dressed for him. Black, because it looked good on me. Silk, because I wanted him to touch me. I'd even added some kohl around my eyes, because I wanted him to drool. It worked. But then, I'd been doing some drooling myself. He'd worn white. Soft, flowy, diaphanous, white. Like he was a bride. That's what he was, my bride for the night. 

All the alcohol was making it hard for me to think or concentrate. It was also making me numb, which made it hard to come. That was fine. For once, I wasn't the one with the hair trigger. I'd taken him over the edge twice and watched him fall apart. It was astounding. This was the joy of being a top. This was the drive and the goal. My pleasure was secondary, inconsequential. There was nothing like the feeling of power, the rush, which came with giving another person their ultimate joy, ecstasy. He was beautiful just existing, but when he came for me, he was blindingly gorgeous. Every atom and fiber of his being I held in my grip, laid bare for me to see, and it was stunning. In that moment, he was totally and completely mine. And a few moments later, I was his.

I woke alone again. It was starting to become a pattern. A very annoying pattern. I also had a headache. That was fine. I deserved a little pain. I showered and got dressed. I wasn't too sure what to wear since I was pretty sure that I was going to be fired. I went with black. It seemed most appropriate. I went into the kitchen and made coffee. There was a message on the machine so I hit play. It was the same one from the night before. I had forgotten to erase it.

I took my coffee to the living room because I didn't have a dining room table. Or a dining room, for that matter. I found a note on the coffee table.

Rain,

I'm sorry I'm bailing on you again. I have business. I'd like to see you again. I'm not in a place for a boyfriend but I don't think you are either. You're too hung up on that guy. But that's ok. I'd like to be friends. And I really like the benefits. Call me.

Kisses.

Ryan

I sipped my coffee with a smile wondering why I couldn't find a top who understood me that well. I finished my coffee and headed out to work, or my execution. At least I'd have a smile on my face while my head was on the chopping block. 

Amazingly enough, it didn't occur to me to be nervous. About being fired, yes. But I was so sure that was going to happen that I never thought about how difficult it would be to continue to work there. That is, until I was standing in the lobby of the building. I nearly had a panic attack just trying to push the button for the elevator. I didn't want to be fired but I quickly realized that job hunting may be preferable to having to face Dylan. And his partners. And a whole firm of employees that probably all now knew that I was fucking the boss. 

I convinced myself to go up and hold my head up high, like nothing had ever happened. As the day wore on, I heard not one peep from my company. I also saw neither hide nor hair of Dylan. I was anxious, relieved, and agitated. I was torn between needing to see him so badly that I ached and not wanting to see him at all. I really didn't know what I wanted, which was not normal for me, and I found it very disconcerting. Usually my wants were pretty clear; a roof over my head, clothes on my back, food in my stomach, warmth, love. I was pretty low maintenance, so all this confusion in my life was... well... confusing.

I made it through the day without getting the dreaded phone call or visit from my boss. But I also never saw, or heard from, Dylan. He couldn't avoid me for the next couple of weeks, could he? There were no new messages on the machine when I got home. Just the one from Ryan that I had never erased. I didn't know why, sentimental I guess.

I took a long shower to wash some of the stress from the day away, then I settled sideways on the couch and picked up the phone.

"Hello?"

"What's your last name, Minx?"

"Rain?"

"Yeah," I smirked. "How many people you got calling you minx?"

He giggled. "Just you... so far. But I like it. I'm considering collecting more."

The possessive noise that came out of me was completely involuntary.

"Did you just growl at me?" Ryan laughed.

"Maybe."

"Oh my God," Ryan laughed. "You're so funny."

"So what is it?" I asked again.

"My last name?"

"Yes, Ryan. Your last name," I teased. "Don't you think we've achieved a level of intimacy that merits an exchange of names?" 

"Tanner, Goofball," he snickered. "My name is Ryan Marc Tanner."

"Ah," I grinned. "So you were using your real name after all."

"Yeah," he replied. "It was easier. What's your middle name?"

"I don't have one."

"Really? I thought it was some sort of law," he joked.

"What can I say? I'm a rebel," I chuckled. "Come over. I'll show you how rebellious I can get."

"Hmm. I can't. I have a thing tonight."

"I know that you have a thing, Minx," I purred. "I want to play with it."

"Tease." 

"I'm not a tease, Ryan. You know better than that. I'm hard as hell just thinking about the way that you taste."

"Stop that, Rain. You're going to make me go to dinner with a hard-on."

"Skip it," I suggested. "I've got something for that gorgeous mouth of yours right here."

His giggle was too cute. "You're a horndog. It's hard to believe that you went six months without sex. Didn't you get enough last night?"

"You just don't know how incredible it feels to slide deep inside you," I crooned. "It's so fucking amazing, filling you up, making you come, with your tight heat milking every drop of cum out of me. I don't know if I could ever get enough of you."

"Rain." His voice was soft and poignant. "Don't get attached to me. Not like that. I wasn't kidding about what I wrote. I'm not in a good place. I can't handle more than I'm already giving you. You're not in a good place either and I don't want you to try to latch on to me. I don't want to hurt you and that's what will happen if you get carried away. You've been hurt enough lately. Please don't make me add to it."

"I'm sorry, Ryan. I'm being pushy," I sighed. "Yes. I'm a little needy right now but I'll try to dial it back some, ok? I do want to be friends. I want more but you're right about all of it. I do that. I destroyed one friendship already trying to rebound. Just... Don't give up on me, ok? Slap me down if you have to. It's alright. I need it sometimes."




Rain Storms Ch. 02



"Honestly, Rain, I'm afraid you'd like it too much if I started slapping you around." he ribbed. "If I remember correctly, word was that you got off on the rough stuff."

"Holy shit," I groaned and rolled my eyes. "Seriously? That's what they said about me?"

"Among other things."

"Like what?" I prodded.

"I didn't take too much stock in the gossiping of whores," he replied. "But they did say that you had a golden mouth. Tony the bartender, not my Tony, used to tease the girls that he had it on good authority that you gave the best head. I just thought he was trying to get a rise out of them. Now I know it was probably true."

"Thanks but I'm putting my money on your mouth. You're better than I am."

"I don't think so," he snickered.

"Why don't you come over we'll test the theory," I playfully suggested.

He laughed. "You're incorrigible."

"You're irresistible," I chuckled.

"Oh shit!" he exclaimed. "I have to go. My lawyer's here."

"Lawyer? Are you in trouble?"

"No, Babe. It's just business. I have to go. I'll call you later."

"Ok. Enjoy your business dinner."

After he hung up, I snuggled down into the couch with a warm fuzzy feeling because he'd called me Babe.

When the phone rang a few minutes after ten, I lifted my head from the book that I was reading but let the machine pick it up.

"Hey Rain. It's Ryan. I know it's late but I said I'd call..."

I picked up the receiver. "Hey Minx. How was your dinner?"

"It was good. Thanks," he replied. "I'm sorry it's so late. Were you sleeping?"

"No. I was just..."

"Screening your calls?"

"Yes."

"Well I'm honored to have made it through the process," he teased. "Did he call?"

"Which one?" I asked.

"There's more than one?" he asked. "I only know about Eric."

"Yeah. There's Dylan too. The guy that I'm working for that I told you about. The one that knew me way back when."

"And you're avoiding him too?"

"Not avoiding," I told him. "We just had a little run in. Enough about that. What do you need a lawyer for?"

"It's just business," he explained. "When Tony died, he left me everything. He owned a bunch of little businesses. Mom and Pop sorts of things like dry cleaners and video stores. A couple of service stations, things like that. He didn't manage anything. He let other people do that because he was basically pretty lazy. It's all a huge mess and I've been trying to get it all under control. He had a son, an illegitimate one. The kid is eight but his mom wouldn't let Tony get anywhere near him. I'm planning to hand everything over to him when he's of age. I figure it's the least I can do for Tony."

"I thought you said that you didn't love him. That sounds like love to me." 

"I said that I wasn't in love with him," he corrected. "I loved him. He was a good person and he died way too young."

"You said he had cancer."

"Yes," he replied. "It was called small cell lung cancer. It sounds pretty innocuous but it was terrible. He wasted away in less than ten months. He was only forty-five."

"I'm sorry that you had to go through that, Ryan. What are you going to do with yourself if you give everything to this kid in fifteen years?" 

"I'm going to enjoy taking care of the one business that I actually own. It'll be fun."

"What do you own?"

He giggled. "The bar."

"The one that..."

"Yes," he snickered. "Doesn't seem like me, huh? It's where I met Tony. He bought it for me the night we met. He was at the bar that night because he was planning to buy it. On a whim, he put it in my name, instead. It was never in his name so it's not part of his legacy. It's mine. I don't know if he was trying to impress me, or buy me, but, either way, it worked. I never left his side from that night until I buried him."

"That's a very sweet story."

"I know it's a hole-in-the-wall but it's mine," he said. "I keep it separate from Tony's businesses. I want to fix it up but it doesn't make a huge profit so I'm forced to go slowly."

"The dive atmosphere is part of the charm, Ryan," I told him. "Please don't turn it into some swanky place."

"I agree," he responded. "It would just be nice to have functioning plumbing all the time."

"That makes me feel better, in a way," I admitted. "I was a little concerned about Barb giving my name out to random strangers, but I guess you're her boss."

"So tell me about this Dylan."

"Oh God, Ryan," I sighed. "My life is such a mess."

"Talk to me, Babe," he urged. "That's what friends are for."

I did. I told him everything. We talked for two hours and, after, I felt better. Better, but exhausted. I fell asleep while still holding the phone. The loud off-the-hook noise startled me awake. I hung up the phone and fell immediately back to sleep.

I saw Dylan over the next two days but we didn't speak. He didn't come to the server room and I had no occasion to be in his office. I kept my head down and my butt planted firmly in my chair at the console unless it was absolutely necessary for me to be somewhere else. I barely spoke, except to Jason, and only about things work related. I didn't socialize. I came in early, worked through lunch, and stayed long after everyone had gone home. I was the first in the office and the last to leave, as Jason was on hourly and I sent him home at five. I didn't get home until seven on Wednesday, and on Thursday, I decided to leave when I noticed that it was six-thirty.

As I walked out of the building, I was calculating how much longer until the job would be over. I already knew that Jason would have to stay when I moved on to the next job. The company was going to have to assign me someone else. It was too bad. I had just gotten to a point where I was comfortable around him and we worked well together. I came around the corner of the building, on my way to the nearly empty parking lot, to see Dylan leaning against my car. 

"You haven't called," he accused me as I unlocked my car and dropped my case on the seat.

"I didn't know that I was supposed to," I replied.

His brow furrowed. "You're still mad at me."

"I'm not mad at you, Dylan," I told him. "I thought that you didn't want anything to do with me."

His eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Because we had an argument?"

"No," I whispered. "Because I outed you. I'm so sorry. I never would have done that on purpose. I didn't know that he was there."

He nodded. "I know," he sighed. "It had to happen sooner or later."

"You're not mad at me?"

He shook his head. "It was as much my fault. Probably more. We came to an agreement. I told him to stay the fuck out of my personal life and he told me to keep my fucking life out of the office. Pun intended."

"So I'm not going to be fired?" I asked.

"God no!" he exclaimed. "I would never let that happen, Rain. Never."

"If you're not mad at me, why haven't you spoken to me?" I whined.

"You told me that you wanted space to get your head on straight," he explained. "I thought that's what I was giving you."

"I thought that you were done with me."

"I'm so sorry, Lover." He shook his head sadly. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I wish I could hold you right now and kiss that wounded look off your face." He checked his watch. "I need to go. I want to talk to you but I have a meeting with a potential client. I didn't expect you to work so late. Will you come over tomorrow night?"

A hard knot formed in my stomach. "I can't," I admitted. "I have plans."

His brow furrowed again. "Plans? You're back with Eric."

I shook my head. "I haven't even heard from him since Monday. I have plans with Ryan."

"Ryan?" I could see the gears turning in his head as he tried to place the name. "The bottom?"

"Yes."

The pain on his expressive face was obvious.

"No, Dylan," I rushed to explain. "It's not what you think. He's not my boyfriend. We're just friends."

"Friends who have sex," he stated.

"Yes."

"I thought you were mine." His voice was scratchy and laced with sorrow.

"Were we supposed to be exclusive?" I asked. "We never discussed it. I'm not a cheater, Dylan. If you want us to be monogamous, I can do that. But it's something that we would need to talk about. I would need more from you than you may be capable of, or willing to give."

"I want us to be together," he responded. "Just us. I want you to be my boyfriend."

"I need you to think about that for a while," I told him. "I can't have another one-sided relationship. I just can't. I'm not in the closet, Dylan, and I'm not going in. People will know that we're together. If you can't handle that then I can't commit to you, not like that. I'm not trying to push you or force you. I'm just making things clear where I stand. You need to decide if that's what you really want."

He nodded his understanding but didn't reply.

"Go to your meeting," I prodded. "We can talk later, when you've had time to consider. Ok?"

He frowned. "And in the meantime you'll be seeing Ryan."

"Please don't do that," I sighed. "I don't have many friends. I don't make friends easily. Ryan is important to me. Even if he and I never have sex again, he's still going to be my friend."

He checked his watch again, even though less than five minutes had passed since the last time. "I really need to go. I'll call you later."

I watched him walk toward his car and get in. For some idiotic reason, I had expected him to kiss me goodbye. He didn't.

I didn't see Dylan all day on Friday. He was in the office, but he and the other senior partners were holed up in the conference room with a client. It must have been an important client because they never had meetings that lasted more than a couple of hours. Right at six o'clock, I was headed out the door when someone stepped into my path as I attempted to pass the conference room. Having almost plowed into him, I looked up sharply into familiar hooded eyes.

"Sheldon!" I exclaimed in shock.

He had not changed a single bit in the intervening years since I had seen him the one and only time. Everything, down to his all black clothing and brown pony tail, was exactly the same. The only thing missing was the pentacle around his neck, but I could see a silver chain peeking out from under his collar. He looked confused.

"I'm sorry," I said. "You may not remember me. My name is Rain. Rain Dutton. Eric's Rain."

His sleepy eyes grew wide in surprise. "Goddess! Of course I remember you! Twelve by four!" he laughed. "I told that story for years! It was the funniest thing to see someone that unflappable get all flustered."

I glanced around and realized that we had developed an audience. All three of the senior partners, and a few other people, were within earshot.

"How are you?" he asked. "And how is my favorite stoic artist?"

"I'm fine," I replied. "We split up some time ago."

He frowned. "I'm so sorry to hear that. You were good for him." He turned suddenly then turned back to me and whispered, "Did I just get you in trouble?"

"No," I whispered back, dramatically. "I'm out. Besides, I'm just the contracted network guy."

"Good," he whispered back with a big smile. "I hate having to throw the prima donna, wronged customer fit. It's so boring."

I laughed but noticed that no one else that had been in the meeting was smiling. "I should go. I don't want to keep you."

"No!" he exclaimed. "This is kismet! We were breaking for dinner. You must join us and explain to me all the benefits that this company can provide me in this digital age." He dropped into a sotto voce, "They have to do whatever I want and they are boring me to tears! Please come. I'll die if you don't."

"I have dinner plans," I explained, still trying to bow out. 

"Like a date?" He clapped his hands in excitement. "You must bring him. I insist. The suits won't mind. Will you guys?" He had directed the question over his shoulder but didn't wait for a response. "They don't mind. We'll hold dinner for you. Someone will tell you where we're going. I'm not taking no for an answer."

"But Sheldon!" I argued as he turned away from me.

"No. See you there," he tossed over his shoulder as he and two other guys strolled out of the office.

Holy crap. He'd just bulldozed over me and the partners didn't look at all happy about it. The last time we'd met he must have been seriously stoned or something because he hadn't been nearly that pushy. 

Mr. Graham and Mr. Weston looked at each other. Mr. Graham shrugged. "I'm not even going to be there. It's all you guys." He turned and headed back to his office.

"Kyle!" Mr. Weston called. Mr. Graham just waved his hand over his head in a dismissive manner. Mr. Weston turned on Dylan. "Fix it," he ordered.

"Fix it how, Al?" Dylan asked. "Do you want the account or not? Add up all the zeros before you answer."

"How many queers do I have to have dinner with to secure one client?" Mr. Weston snarled, pissing me off.

"Looks like five, at least," I retorted. They both turned to me, shocked that I would speak up. I was a little shocked myself, truthfully. It didn't stop me from continuing. "Sheldon is gay and, unless I am mistaken, which is highly unlikely, one of those men with him was his lover. I could be wrong though. The last time I saw him was at a gay pickup place and it was fairly dark."

They both stared at me but I could see a slight twinkle in Dylan's eyes, encouraging me to keep going. "In fact, Mr. Weston, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that you were the only straight guy at the table. But don't worry about it. I'm almost positive that it's not contagious... Usually."

"I'm sorry that I'm late," I said to Ryan as I got out of my car in the parking lot of my apartment complex. "There was a delay at work."

"Server problems?" he asked.

"No," I explained, letting us into my apartment. "The client that they are romancing turned out to be someone that I knew. I have been ordered to come to dinner with them."

Ryan pouted a little and his protruding bottom lip was irresistible. I bent down and kissed him. "I was looking forward to having dinner with you all week."

"You still can," I said. "Your presence has been requested."

"Seriously?" he exclaimed. "I'm not dressed for a business dinner."

He was wearing all white again. He had on tight jeans that hugged his little body just so and boots with high enough heels that he stood slightly taller than the 5'2 that he claimed to be, which I doubted. Over that, he had a white undershirt and a white button down that was unbuttoned and untucked. He was also wearing a touch of make-up, and his long blonde hair was loose and wavy, curling around his face and hanging down his back, just past his shoulders. Even though I was pretty sure every article of his clothing came out of a women's department, it was still the most masculine outfit I'd ever seen him wearing. "You look beautiful, Minx," I told him, honestly. "I'd love to skip it and stay here and mess you up some."

"But?"

"But I told Dylan that I would go," I admitted. "This account is important to him. You don't have to go but I'd like it if you did."

"Does Dylan know about us?" he asked, suspiciously.

"Yes," I replied. "He's not thrilled but he's an adult. He'll be fine."

"Then I'll go," he grinned. "I'm dying to meet your heartthrob."

I smirked at him. "He makes something on me throb, but I'm pretty sure it's a little lower than my heart."

I changed clothes into something more comparable to what Ryan was wearing, black jeans and a silver button down, and we headed out to the restaurant.

"Greek?" Ryan asked when we pulled into the parking lot.

"Yes. Is that ok?"

"It's fine," he said with a small frown. "I haven't had Greek food since Tony passed. He was Greek and we ate it a lot."

"I'm sorry," I grimaced. "Do you want to bow out?"

"No," he shook his head. "I can do this. It's not so bad. It's been over a year. It's time to get over it."

"Are you sure?" I asked. He didn't look very confident.

"Yes." He gave me a sad smile. "They're good memories."

We were the last to arrive, and the others were already at a long table, set for eight. Sheldon introduced us to Steve, his partner, and Edward, his lawyer. I introduced Ryan to the table. Dylan schooled his features into that dishearteningly blank look that I had seen only the once before. 

"I know you," Sheldon said to Ryan after we were seated. "You're Tony Augustus's boy."

Ryan startled in surprise. "Yes. Have we met?"

Sheldon shook his head with a sad smile. "Steve and I were at the funeral. I saw you there but we weren't introduced."

"Thank you for coming," Ryan replied. "Where do you know Tony from?"

"We went to school together," Sheldon explained. "I've known Tony almost my whole life. I'm very sorry for your loss. Tony was one of the good ones."

"Yes he was," Ryan agreed. "I miss him."

"And now you're dating our Rain," Sheldon added. "What a small world."

"Dating?" Ryan giggled. "No. Rain and I are very good friends. We've known each other for almost eight years."

Sheldon cocked an eyebrow but didn't gainsay the statement. "So then you know our Eric too?"

"No," Ryan explained. "I was with Tony while Rain was with Eric. We didn't cross paths again until recently."

Mr. Weston cleared his throat. "So about your project..."

"Don't stress, Al," Sheldon replied in a bored tone of voice. "I'm going to sign the papers. You and Edward can work out the details of the contract."

At that, the party seemed to split into two groups with the business men at one end and the gay boys at the other. Only Steve seemed to have any interest in following both conversations. Ryan and Sheldon hit it off, and only Steve and I appeared to take any notice of Mr. Weston and Sheldon's lawyer taking their leave after concluding their business. Mostly I noticed because Dylan got up and moved into the empty chair next to me. He reached under the tablecloth and ran his palm up my thigh.

"I'm feeling overdressed," Dylan announced, glancing around the table. With Steve and Sheldon both in black shirts and pants, Dylan was the only one left at the table in a suit. He stood and signaled a waiter to take away the extra table while he shed his suit coat and draped it over the back of the chair. He loosened his tie and top buttons and sat back down with his elbows on the table. "Now that the stuffed shirts have left, where were we?"

Sheldon chuckled a bit. "I thought you were one of them."

"God, I hope not!" Dylan laughed.

Ryan held out his hand to Dylan. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you. I've heard a lot about you."

Dylan took his hand but didn't shake it. Instead he bent over and bussed the back of it. "It's a pleasure to meet you too. You're far from what I expected."

Ryan tittered a bit at Dylan's charm. "Is that good thing or a bad thing?"

"It's a good thing," Dylan assured him. 

Sheldon quietly watched the whole exchange. "There's something here that I'm not getting."

Ryan explained, "Dylan is Rain's... What are you guys, exactly?"

"Boyfriend," Dylan supplied.

"Lover," I corrected. "The boyfriend part is still under consideration."

"Not for me," Dylan replied, staring deeply into my eyes.

"Oh yeah," Sheldon moaned. "I'm definitely signing that contract as soon as Edward gets it ready."

Steve laughed. "Leave it to you to find the one openly gay architect in the city of Dallas."

"Hush you," Sheldon admonished his partner. "I'm sure there are others."

"How long have you guys been together?" I asked them. "I didn't meet you, but you were there at Reverchon that night." 

Steve nodded. "We've been together for twenty-five years."

"Wow!" I exclaimed. "How do you do it?"

Steve chuckled. "I have no idea."

"I'm the only one that will put up with him," Sheldon supplied.

"Oh yes, you diva," Steve teased. "I'm tough to handle."




Rain Storms Ch. 02



"I'm not a diva," Sheldon argued. "I just know what I want."

"You know what everyone wants," Steve corrected.

They were snipping at each other but they were both grinning. There was blatantly a lot of love there, and it was comforting to know that it's possible to find someone like that. I wanted that kind of love in my life. I was tossing around the possibility of Dylan being that man for me when something Sheldon said broke through my reverie.

"Now, if you can just get my favorite artist to sign onto the deal, I'll be in hog heaven."

I groaned inwardly. Did he mean who I thought he did?

"Who's the artist?" Dylan asked. "I'll get to work on it on Monday."

Sheldon looked right at me when he answered, "Eric Unger."

Everyone turned to me. I had four sets of eyes drilling holes in me when I put my head down on the table. 

I was on the floor, under the receptionist's desk, when I heard her take a sharp breath. Holly had been leaning back against the wall behind her desk while I checked her cabling, but when I looked up at her gasp, she was standing straight up with a seductive smirk on her face.

"I have a two o'clock." I heard the unmistakable sultry rumble of the voice that never failed to make my spine tingle and other parts of my body sit up and take notice. I cursed under my breath. 

"And your name?" Holly purred and leaned over the desk, I'm sure, exposing her ample cleavage to him. I wondered if he looked, felt a twinge of jealousy, and brutally stamped those feelings into the ground.

"Eric Unger."

"Oh yes, Mr. Unger," she purred some more and I had the urge to do something mean to her legs. "They will be just a moment but I can show you to the conference room. Right this way. Would you like... something... while you wait?"

Ok. She was going to take him to the conference room. I could just hide under the desk until he was securely behind the door. Of course, the fact that she was blatantly offering him sex made me want to jump up and strangle her. Especially when I heard the deep rumble of his chuckle. "If I think of anything I need, you'll be the first I call on."

"Hey, Rain," Jason called. "Whatever you did it's working. It's pinging now."

"Rain?" Eric echoed.

Well, fuck. "Not anymore," I said as I crawled out from under the desk with a nicked network cable. "The cable is damaged, Jase," I explained. "Can you grab some CAT? Three feet should do."

"What happened to it?" he asked. 

I bent the cable at the slice. "Looks like it got cut."

Jason took the cord and glared at it. "This is the third one."

Jason and I both turned to Holly. She colored slightly. "I might have stepped on it." Stepping on it wouldn't have caused the damage. She had to have been cutting them intentionally. She was cute, if you went for the Cowboys Cheerleader look, but not very bright.

"Rain?" Eric repeated.

Jason and I both looked up at Eric. 

"Is that...?" Jason whispered loudly enough for everyone to hear.

"Yes," I replied in a normal speaking voice.

"He's really tall," he whispered just as loudly. 

I rolled my eyes. "Smooth, Jase," I grumbled. "Why don't you go replace the cable?"

"Oh yeah," he said. "Sure."

"What are you doing here, Rain?" Eric asked.

"Working," I replied curtly and walked past him toward the server room.

"You work here?" he asked, following me.

I turned to face him.

"Ah. Mr. Unger," Dylan interrupted upon walking out of his office further down the hall. "I see you've met our network guru."

Eric ignored Dylan. "Rain?"

"Thank you, Rain," Dylan continued. "I'll show Mr. Unger to the conference room. Right this way, please."

Eric didn't budge. He didn't even look at Dylan. He just kept looking at me with his stormy gray eyes filled with sorrow.

"Go have your meeting, Eric," I said gently. "I have work to do."

It wasn't even ten minutes later when I looked up to a rap on the server room door. I rolled the chair over and opened it to admit Eric.

"I took a blood test," he told me. "Will you talk to me again when the results come back and I have proof?"

I glanced at Jason behind me. He was openly staring at Eric. I glared at him until he noticed and went back to work. "That's not the problem, Eric."

"Then what is?" he asked.

I sighed. "This is neither the time nor the place. I'm working here."

"You name the time and place, Rain," Eric offered. "I'll be there."

"You want to talk now?" I snapped. "That's rich."

"Rain, please. I'm trying."

He sounded so melancholy that I didn't have the heart to bitch at him anymore. "Call me when you get the results. Maybe we can talk then."

He smiled but it didn't reach the sadness in his eyes. "Thank you."

I nodded and turned back to the console. He stood at the door silently for a few minutes, watching me work, before he left. I waited until I was sure that he'd be gone before I left the room and went straight for Dylan's office.

"You asshole," I snarled. "You could have warned me."

"We can't do this here," he replied. "I will be happy to talk to you but after work, ok?"

"Fine. Fuck it." I stormed out of his office and back to the server room.

"That was your ex?" Jason finally found his voice.

I huffed.

"He's..." His voice trailed off.

"Tall?" I suggested. "Intense? Gorgeous?"

"In love with you," Jason replied. "I was going to say that he's so obviously in love with you. The way he looks at you... I would kill to have someone look at me like that."

After work, I went straight to Dylan's house. I didn't go home and change first. I didn't even call. I just showed up on his doorstep, pissed.

"Rain, come in." 

"What the fuck was that?" I snarled. "You should have told me that he was coming."

"If I had known that having Eric at the office would get you back into my house, I would have done it a week ago," he smirked.

I gaped at him. "Are you trying to be funny? This is so not funny, Dylan!"

He sobered up. "It was business, Rain. Nothing else."

"Bullshit!" I shouted. "You intentionally blindsided me! If it was just business then there was absolutely no reason not to warn me."

"If I had told you ahead of time then you would have hidden in the server room," he replied calmly.

"Well of course I would have!"

"I didn't want that. I wanted things to play out naturally."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" I shouted.

"Do you know how long it took him to agree to my proposal? Two minutes. I hadn't even finished explaining the project. He would have agreed to anything just to get out of my office and back to you."

"He would have agreed to the job anyway, Dylan. He likes Sheldon. Don't lie to me. This wasn't about business at all. You wanted to see how I would react to him. This was some sort of test. Admit it."

"That's not what it was at all." 

"You're so full of shit. You purposefully put us in the same room to see if we were going to fuck or fight. You treated us both like shit. You hurt both of us for no valid fucking reason. I have told you over and over how toxic we are but you can't accept it. For some unknown reason, you seem to think that I'm going to run back into his arms the second that I lay eyes on him. What you did, that was just fucking cruel."

"I'm sorry, Rain," he sighed. "It wasn't like that at all. It was just business."

"You keep telling yourself that," I snapped. "Maybe someday you'll believe it, because to me, it's a waste of air. You could have gotten him on the project without having to ambush us. But I'll tell you this for free; the second that he finds out that I ever let you touch me, he's out. He'll never finish a single thing for your project so you might want to find yourself a backup artist now."

"Rain, wait!" he called as I walked out.

"No!" I shouted back. "I can't even look at you right now."

I stood under the soothing spray of the showerhead long enough for my skin to prune but it didn't alleviate my turmoil. The phone was ringing when I stepped out and I answered it.

"Hello."

"Rain?" Ryan's voice comforted me more than the water had. "What's wrong?"

"How can you tell something's wrong from 'hello'?"

"You answered the phone," he explained. "You never answer the phone."

"If you thought I wasn't going to answer then why did you call?"

"You always call back," he replied. "What's wrong? Do I need to come over?"

"Aren't you working tonight?"

"I work every night," he said. "You're more important."

"No, I'm not," I argued. "What you're doing for Tony and his son, that's more important."

"Tell me what happened, Babe," he urged.

"I'm just tired of the games, Minx." I sighed and glanced up at the ceiling. "I'm just tired."

"What games?"

I took a deep breath and slowly let it out. "I don't think this thing with Dylan is going to work."

"Shit," he breathed. "I'm coming over."

"Do you know that you're naked?" he asked when I opened the door.

"Yeah." I glanced down. "Sorry. I'll put something on."

"Don't worry about it," he smirked. "I've seen you naked before. Besides, it's your house. It's your prerogative to be naked if you feel like it."

He followed me into the bedroom and watched as I slipped on a pair of shorts. "What happened with Dylan?" 

I sank down to the floor and he sat on the edge of the bed. The bed was high enough that his feet didn't quiet reach the floor.

I reached out and skipped my fingers over the bas-relief of the chest beside me. "Have you ever looked at this?"

"Not really," he said. "What's in it?"

"Toys," I told him.

"It's a toy box?"

"The adult kind of toys," I explained. "Dildos, vibrators, cock rings, restraints, a collar, a couple of floggers, a paddle..."

Ryan smirked. "So they were right about you and your proclivities."

I shrugged. "I guess. What's in it isn't important though. It's the piece itself that's important."

He hopped off the bed to get a closer look. "When I've been in here, I haven't been paying attention to the furniture." He studied the erotic scene carved into the top of the chest lid. "Holy shit. This is you. Is this Eric?"

"Yes. I forget that you've never met him." I flattened my palm over the image on the front of the chest. "Eric made this for me when I first moved in with him."

"I can't believe that I never saw this," he said. "This is..."

"Pornographic?" I offered. The chest was three foot by two foot and had a graphically rendered carving of Eric and me in a different sexual position on each side.

"Beautiful," he corrected and ran his fingers over the top. He squatted down to examine the scenes on the front and sides of the chest. "Is there one on the back too?"

"Yes," I replied. "Spooning."

"Can I see?"

"Yes." I slid the chest away from the wall so he could look at the back. The image on the top was of us in a standard missionary position. The front of the chest showed us in Eric's favorite position, horizontal, back to front. The right side of the chest had me in his lap, riding him, face to face. The left side image was my favorite. We were both on our knees, facing forward. He was behind me with his mouth on my neck and his arms wrapped around me. "When I first met him, his work was very violent, bloody. After this, his stuff became far more sexual. There were still times when he would do something that was just plain gory; but, for the most part, his work was sensual and erotic."

"He fell in love," Ryan suggested.

"I know that he loves me. I love him so much, Ryan. It tears me up inside that we just can't seem to be together. He can never tell me what he's thinking or feeling and I'm not a mind reader. I can't seem to do anything right for him because he won't tell me what he needs or wants. He's not getting whatever it is that he needs and so he goes elsewhere for it. He cheated on me but it's not about sex. There was never a lack of that. It's something emotional that he's feeling the lack of that makes him step out and I don't know how to make it right."

He nodded. "You're not communicating."

"Not effectively," I agreed. "We just end up screaming at each other. I know that I'm not good enough for him. I know that. I can't make him happy. I know it's me. I just don't know what to do about it. There's something wrong with me that I can't figure out how to provide what he needs. I don't know how this happened. I used to be so tolerant. I used to be able to accept him the way he was. It's not even about him cheating on me. All this started way before that. I don't know what happened to me. I'm the failure. Me. We used to just fit together but something got broken or twisted in me and I can't seem to make it work anymore."

"There's nothing wrong with you, Rain," Ryan argued. "Relationships are hard. Communication is important and you guys don't do it."

"It's not his fault. He's closed off and distant because his parents didn't pay any attention to him, so he doesn't know how to open up," I explained. "I'm not saying it's their fault that he won't talk to me. I just mean that it's the way he was raised. He doesn't know any other way to be and I know that. I should be able to understand. I should be able to help him."

"It's not your fault either, Rain."

"Everything hurts," I said. "Seeing him hurts so much. I just get so angry and out of control every time I'm with him. Not being with him hurts even more. It's killing me. Every night, I come home to an empty apartment and it hurts. I go to bed without him and it hurts. I literally feel like pieces of me are dying inside every day that we're not together. If he's feeling even a small portion of the amount of pain that I am, I don't know how he's surviving it. He isn't like us, Ryan. He never lived on the streets. He never had to cope with the constant terror and the fight just to stay alive. He was never raped or beaten. He's not tough like us. He's hurting and I don't know how to fix it."

"God, Rain. It's not your responsibility to fix everything for him. He's an adult. He is just as much in this mess as you are."

"Dylan brought Eric into the office today and he didn't warn me. He intentionally set us up to run into each other."

"What?" Ryan exclaimed. "Why would he do that? He knows how volatile the situation is, right?"

I nodded. "I don't know why he did it. He says it was just business but I don't believe that. I think he wanted to see how we'd react to each other. I think he was preforming some sick kind of experiment."

"Is it possible that it was just business?" he asked. "Did he gain anything from it?"

I nodded. "He thinks so but I know better. He thinks that Eric agreed to work on the project just to be close to me. Eric would have agreed to work on the project as soon as he found out it was for Sheldon. So the only thing that he really accomplished was hurting me and Eric. I'm afraid that Dylan isn't the person that I think he is. He either intentionally set his lover up to get hurt just for shits and giggles, or he did it for business. Either way, I don't think I can be with him anymore. Even if it was exactly like he said, then he callously put his client's whims before his lover's needs."

"He doesn't know Eric like you do. Maybe he honestly thought he couldn't get Eric's cooperation without the incentive," Ryan suggested, playing the Devil's advocate.

"Then he should have talked to me. He might not know Eric but he knows that I do. I could have helped him get Eric onboard without anyone getting hurt," I argued. "Besides, now Eric knows that I know Dylan. He'll be on the lookout for anything unusual. If Eric finds out that I had sex with Dylan, he'll go ballistic. He won't work for him. Not even if Dylan sues him. There's nothing the courts can do to force an artist to create. He won't do it."

Ryan frowned. "So I guess Dylan shot himself in the foot."

"Exactly."

"Did Eric sign a contract?" he asked.

"I don't know," I admitted.

"Maybe you should warn Eric," he suggested.

"Warn him?"

"Yes. Let him know that he's being played. Tell him to protect himself."

"How can I do that without betraying Dylan or hurting Eric?" I asked. 

"Call him and tell him to be very careful about committing to anything. You don't have to explain why." 

I shook my head. "I can't. You don't know what it's like talking to him. I lose control of myself. We'd end up fighting and hurting each other."

"Then I'll talk to him," he offered.

"Why? You don't even know him."

"No," he replied. "But I care about you. If Eric gets hurt, it will hurt you too, and I don't want that to happen."

I stared at him, dumbfounded that he would do such a thing for me. "You're a really good person, Ryan. It's too bad that you're not in love with me."

He giggled. "I'm half in love with your cock, if that counts."

I laughed. "I take it back. You're a slut," I said and stuck my tongue out at him. 

He laughed. "Don't point that thing at me unless you plan on using it."

I had to have a drink, or four, before I worked up the nerve to dial Eric's phone number. While I was bolstering myself with liquid courage, we went over everything Ryan was going to say. I wanted to do this. I felt like Eric had a right to know. I was just scared.

Once I had a good buzz going, I dialed and handed Ryan the phone. 

"Oh God, Baby. I'm so glad you called," Eric answered. Obviously he'd gotten Caller ID since I'd moved out. 

"It's not Rain. This is Ryan. I'm calling from his phone."

"Ryan?" The menace in Eric's voice was perfectly clear from my position on the couch, approximately two feet away from Ryan.

"I'm Rain's friend," Ryan explained.

"Why are you calling?" he asked. "Is he in trouble?"

"No," Ryan replied. "Did you sign anything today?"

"Sign anything?" Eric asked. "At GWG? No. Why?"

"Rain doesn't really work there. He's on a short term contract that ends next week," Ryan told him.

"Who the fuck are you and why does this have anything to do with you?" Eric snarled.

"I'm Rain's friend," Ryan explained again. "I just want you to be careful before you make any commitments. Be very sure of what you're agreeing to."

"This is for Sheldon," Eric bit back.

"I know," Ryan replied, nonplussed. "I met him. He's cool. We all had dinner together. Just... the firm is not Sheldon and they may not have your best interests at heart."

"I didn't just fall off of the turnip truck." Eric was getting more annoyed by the second. It was time for Ryan to end the call. 

"No. I know," Ryan replied. "It's just... If you're in anywhere near as bad of shape as Rain is, you might do something without thinking about it. Just don't make any commitments without bringing your lawyer, ok?"

"Just how stupid do you think I am?"

"I don't think you're stupid at all," Ryan assured him. "But I do think that you might be hurting. Rain seems to think that you hung the moon. And I don't want to have to pick up the pieces when he falls apart because you were too distracted to protect yourself. I need to go. Just think about what I said. Bye."

He hung up the phone and fanned his face. 

"I know," I groaned. "He's so fucking sexy."

"Did I do ok?" he asked. "It was so weird. He acted just like you said he would. Almost word for word."

"You did great," I grinned. "Now he's going to call Sheldon to find out about you and, with any luck, Sheldon will take care of him. I hope so anyway. He did before."

"What if Sheldon tells him that you're dating Dylan?" 

"Then, hopefully, Sheldon will be as gentle as possible. Eric will know everything and be able to make an informed decision. And I'll expect a bat-shit crazy Eric to show up at the office on a rampage. Then he'll go into a severe depression and Irish will scream at me."

"Jesus Christ," Ryan swore. "Drama."

"Yeah," I replied with a frown.

I must have drank myself into a stupor because I was jolted awake and I didn't know why until I heard voices from the living room.




Rain Storms Ch. 02



"Who the fuck are you?" Eric snarled.

"Ryan. You must be Eric."

"Are you fucking my Rain?" Eric accused.

"Jesus Christ!" Ryan snapped. "Do I look like a fucking top to you?"

That gave Eric pause. "Where is he?"

"He's sleeping. Hey! Wait!" Ryan exclaimed. "I don't know if I should let you in."

I smirked at the image in my head. Eric was nearly two feet taller than Ryan. Ryan probably came up to his belly button. There was no way Ryan could stop Eric from doing whatever the fuck he wanted but it didn't keep Ryan from standing up to him. 

"It's ok, Ryan," I called out. "Let him in."

Seconds later, I felt the bed dip down as Eric crawled onto it. He grabbed me and manhandled me into the little spoon. "Is it true, Baby?" he murmured. "Are you fucking him? Have I lost you forever? Have I destroyed us?"

I knew he didn't mean Ryan. "What time is it, Eric?"

"One." My timing had been off by at least seven hours.

"I'm going to go," Ryan called from the bedroom doorway. "You guys need to talk."

"Don't go, Minx," I begged. "We can't talk. We don't know how. Besides, I'm tired. Come back to bed."

Ryan giggled. "I don't think there's room."

"Sure there is," I argued. "You're tiny. Eric will scoot over. Come back to bed."

"You're a freak, you know that?" Ryan snickered but walked over to my side of the bed. 

"I know but you love me anyway." I held up the covers and Ryan stepped out of the shorts he was wearing, my shorts, I noticed, and crawled back in bed. I tugged Ryan's body into mine so now I was playing the middle spoon. Eric softly growled his displeasure at the situation. "Don't be an ass, Eric. If anyone is leaving, it's you. Do you want to stay in bed with us or not?"

Instead of a verbal response, he snuggled up to me tighter and kissed the crown of my head.

I drifted back to sleep sandwiched in between the person that I loved and the man that I was in love with. I had never been more content in my life.

When my alarm went off, there wasn't a damn thing that I could do about it. It was on the other side of Eric's body. I opened my eyes to find Ryan awake and facing me. 

"You're still here," I smiled.

"Yeah," he grinned. "I didn't know if I should leave you alone with him."

"He wouldn't hurt me but I'm glad that you stayed."

"Based on your toy collection, he hurts you all the time," he replied with a frown.

"That's consensual, Minx."

He shrugged. "Things get carried away. Happens all the time."

I kissed him on the nose. "I love you."

He smiled. "I love you too."

"That's the first time we've said that."

"I know." He wrinkled his nose. "He's fucking sexy."

I chuckled. "I know."

"He's fucking annoyed," Eric grumbled. "What the fuck is that noise?"

"It's my alarm, Dickhead. It's behind you. Turn it off." 

Eric released his grip on me and rolled. He slapped the clock a few times until the beeping stopped. Then he rolled back and snuggled into me again.

"He probably just snoozed it," I smirked.

"Doesn't he know how to work an alarm clock?" he teased.

"No," I replied. "He has an amazing internal clock. He doesn't even own any clocks."

"Weird," Ryan replied.

"We've got nine minutes, Minx. Whatever shall we do with them?"

He looked shocked and then giggled. "You should probably get up and get ready for work."

"I'm up already," I murmured and tugged his little body flush with mine.

I kissed him and he pulled away. "Ew," he said. "Morning breath."

"Mine or yours?" I smirked.

"Mine," he replied. "Yours isn't bad. You don't snore."

"Good to know," I grinned. "You do and it's adorable."

He grimaced. 

"I don't care. Kiss me anyway."

I pinned him down and took possession of his mouth, eliminating his choice. He responded after a few seconds. I didn't forget that Eric was in bed with us, I was just tired of constantly worrying about, and trying to riddle out, his feelings. If he had a problem, he'd have to tell me.

He didn't let go of me but he relaxed his grip enough to allow me maneuverability. I used it to my advantage. I pulled Ryan further under my body and slipped my hand between his legs. He parted and raised them for me instinctually. I rubbed circles around his entrance but didn't try to penetrate him.

"I want inside you, Ryan," I purred.

"For eight minutes?" he groaned.

I groaned out my frustration. "No. That's not enough time. It will have to wait." I kissed him and wiggled my way out of Eric's embrace, over Ryan's body, and off of the bed. I walked toward the bathroom, turning off the alarm clock on the way.

"You said that you weren't fucking him." Eric's voice was soft but I could still hear it clearly.

"I've never fucked anyone in my life," Ryan responded.

"Semantics, Squirt," Eric replied.

"Really?" Ryan retorted. "Would it still be just semantics if I asked you if you let Rain fuck you?"

Eric scoffed, "That's not the same thing."

"It's exactly the same thing," Ryan responded. "And don't call me squirt."

I turned on the shower to drown out the sound of their argument. I trusted Ryan not to hurt Eric too badly, emotionally, and I trusted Eric not to hurt Ryan at all, physically. As the reverse was completely impossible, I had nothing to worry about. I was just going to let them work it out on their own. When I came back into the bedroom, only Ryan was on the bed. But he was fully dressed.

"Did he leave?" I asked, drying myself off.

He shook his head. "He went outside to smoke. He shouldn't do that. It's what killed Tony."

"I know, Minx. He doesn't do it all the time. He's a pretty light smoker unless he's stressed out. Which, I imagine, has been a lot recently."

"Do you want me to go make coffee?" he offered.

"If you like. Did you argue the whole time I was showering?" I asked, digging through my closet.

"Not the whole time," he assured me. "I see what you mean, though. He's hurting. You can see it in his eyes. He needs to just let it out. Why can't he do that?"

"He once told me that he didn't talk about himself because he felt like people were just looking for something to judge him about or ways to hurt him. He doesn't like to feel vulnerable."

"He's already hurting," Ryan pointed out. "He should trust you more."

"I do trust him," Eric interrupted. "I trust him with my whole being; body, heart, and soul."

Ryan turned to Eric. "Then talk to him."

"I don't know how," Eric admitted. "Everything I say comes out wrong. I can't make myself understood. We both get frustrated and we fight. I'm tired of fighting."

"Is this better, Eric?" Ryan asked. "Are you happy? You're going to lose him if you can't figure this out."

"What do you care?" Eric groused. "You'd rather keep him for yourself anyway."

"Don't do that," Ryan said gently. "I'm not the problem here. I am not your enemy. Rain and I are friends. I love him and I want him to be happy. He is in love with you and believes with all his heart that you two would be happy together if you could just communicate. You said yourself that you want to stop fighting. Find a better way."

"See! That!" I exclaimed. "Why can't I do that? Why can't I respond with logic and compassion when he gets all snarly?"

"Because you're emotional and sensitive. He trips all of your triggers and you can't help but respond with passion. You are both very passionate men. Maybe you guys should find a shrink."

Eric and I both shook our heads. A psychiatrist was impossible.

"I can't talk to him," Eric argued. "I certainly can't talk to someone I don't even know."

Ryan sighed dramatically. "I'm going to go make coffee."

"I made it already," Eric replied.

"Then I'm going to go drink some coffee."

After Ryan left the room, Eric asked, "Is it true? Are you fucking that Granger guy?"

I arched my eyebrow at him.

He rolled his eyes and scoffed. "Is he fucking you? Are you lovers?"

I sat on the edge of the bed to put my socks and shoes on. "Don't ask me questions if you don't really want the answer."

"I'll take that as a yes," he croaked. "I had hoped that, with the little show you put on this morning, Sheldon was wrong."

"Ryan and I are just friends."

"Friends with benefits," he corrected. "I know better than anyone how difficult it is for you to develop friendships, Baby. I would never try stand in the way of a friendship for you. But it drives me crazy that you touch him and you won't touch me."

"Do you want me to fuck you too, Eric?" I drawled, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

He ignored the question. "How many people are you having sex with, Baby?"

"Less than you," I retorted.

He sat down on the bed next to me. "I'm not having sex with anyone, Rain."

It was my turn to scoff. "You don't expect me to believe that do you?"

"Not really. No," he sighed. "It's the truth though. I haven't been with anyone in a long time."

"What's a long time for you, Eric?" I snapped. "A day? A week?"

"You're the last person that I had sex with."

That pissed me off. "Don't insult my intelligence by lying to me! You and I both know that's an outright fucking lie!" I shouted. "I fucking walked in on you!"

He sighed, "You're right. THAT was the last person that I had sex with. Except that I didn't finish. So I don't know if it counts."

"You had your dick in her, Eric. It fucking counts."

"That being the case, I've had my dick in my hand a lot. So I guess the last person that I had sex with was me," he half smirked.

"Don't try to be cute, Eric," I griped. "You didn't go two days without sex the whole time that we were together. And that was only if you were so wrapped up in your work that you got lost. Don't expect me to believe that you've suddenly been celibate for six months."

"I don't expect you to believe it, Rain," he told me. "But it's the truth. You just don't understand and I can't seem to make you. I don't want to be with anyone else. I've even tried. It's pointless. I can't. All I can think of, all I desire, is you. I haven't even had sex with Irish. Nothing and no one else feels right."

"Then why did you cheat on me?"

He covered his face with his hands and groaned, "I don't know. I don't fucking know." He dropped his hands into his lap and turned to lock his gaze with mine. "I don't know, Baby. I don't know what I was thinking or why. I'm sorry. I wish I could take it back. I wish I could undo all the mistakes that I made. I have fucked up, and fucked over, everyone that I have ever cared about. I just don't know why."

"Hey." Ryan stuck his head in the doorway. "I have to go. I have a nine o'clock that I postponed from last night."

I glanced at the clock. I no longer had time for coffee. "Shit," I groused. "I have to go too."

"Do you want me to turn off the coffee pot?" Ryan asked.

"Please," I replied. "Thank you for last night and everything. Call me later." 

He nodded and blew me a kiss.

"Eric? I want to keep talking to you but I have to go to work," I explained. "This has been good. It's a good start. You were doing really well. I'm sorry that I'm cutting you off when you're on a roll. Can we try this again?"

"Yes," he frowned. "I have to go too. I was supposed to meet with my lawyer about the GWG contract."

"Are you still going to do it?"

"Fuck no!" he barked. "I have a meeting scheduled with Granger at two. I feel like punching the douchebag in the face for touching you."

"Please don't do that," I begged. "I do care about him."

Eric snarled and I stood up and kissed him. "I'm not in love with him, Eric."

He brought his fingers up to his lips in surprise and gently touched spot that I had kissed. His stormy gray eyes filled with moisture that threatened to spill over but didn't.

"Thank you," he whispered, reverently.

"Thank you for talking to me," I smiled. "I know how hard this was for you."

I waited all morning to see if Dylan was going to tell me that Eric was due in the office. He didn't. I don't know why I was surprised, but I was. After the blow up the day before, I expected him to be a tad more considerate of my feelings. I was disappointed. I didn't get angry about it, just resolute. Dylan and I were simply not compatible. He was just as horrid at relationships as Eric, only in a totally different way. Eric was all action and no talk. Dylan was all talk and no follow-through. Really the perfect guy for me was Ryan. He had no problem telling me how he felt and he always kept his promises. I could have been happy with Ryan except for the matter of the fact that we weren't in love with each other. 

At fifteen 'til two, I went to the reception area under the guise of working on her terminal. I was leaning on the desk beside her when Eric walked in a few minutes later with his lawyer. I smiled at him and his return smile could have powered the building. 

"Marry me," he blurted out.

"What?" Holly tittered and blushed.

The ditz thought he was talking to her and I had to bite my tongue to refrain from laughing. "I can't marry you, Goof. It's not legal."

"We'll move to Denmark. We can get married there," he insisted.

"Legal union, Eric," his lawyer corrected, dryly. "It's not marriage."

"Close enough," Eric brushed him off.

I did laugh then. "Do they even speak English in Denmark?"

"Dutch, I think," Eric said.

"Danish," the lawyer supplied, rolling his eyes. I had never met Eric's lawyer, and I didn't even know his name, but I decided right then that I liked him.

"Do you gentlemen know each other?" Holly asked. We all ignored her. Could she not remember back as far as the day before? 

"I'll get married when I can take my vows in the language that I speak and in the country that I live in," I said.

Eric pouted. "How about a long engagement then?"

"You're a dork," I laughed. "Go to your meeting. And be nice!"

"Holly?" Dylan came strolling down the hall. "Has Mr. Unger... Oh. Good afternoon, Mr. Unger."

"Granger." Eric's barely controlled rage was evident in his eyes but his voice was carefully modulated as to not be threatening. I wondered how long he'd practiced that particular skill. "This is my attorney, Stephen Harlow."

"It's a pleasure to meet you." Dylan shook Mr. Harlow's hand and extended his hand to Eric, only to be ignored. I knew why. Eric wasn't overly fond of being touched by anyone that he wasn't intimate with, but there was no way that he'd intentionally touch someone that he had hostile feelings toward. He was big and intimidating. He had a great deal of strength in him, he was full of fire, and, as Ryan had said, passion. He could very easily hurt someone by accident so he didn't take the risk.

From the look on Dylan's face, and the glance that he shot me, he didn't understand. I just shook my head in incredulity. Dylan had really screwed up by not using his resources. He had a veritable fount of inside information on Eric and he blew it for no discernable reason. 

Their meeting was short and I missed Eric's departure. I was walking by Dylan's open office door at half past two and he called out to me.

"Close the door," he requested after I stepped into his office.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

I closed the door but didn't move closer to him.

"Do you want to tell me what just happened here?" he asked.

"I'm sorry," I said, innocently. "Is there a problem with your computer?"

"No there isn't. I mean with your boyfriend. Would you like to explain what that was all about?"

"If you mean Eric, he's my ex-boyfriend, and I wasn't in here so I can't answer your question," I told him. "I'm also pretty sure that this does not fall under my contracted job duties, and therefore, by your own guidelines, we cannot be having this discussion right now. Can this wait until after work?"

"Damnit, Rain. You know very well what I'm talking about. Just answer the damn question."

"Here's what I know, Dylan. If you wanted to know the ins and outs, whys and hows, of Eric Unger, you should have asked me. You should not have contrived to put us in the ring together like some sort of glorified cock fight for your amusement. If it backfired on you, you can't say that I didn't warn you. I'm going back to work. If you would like to continue this discussion, we can do so after work."

The phone was ringing as I walked in the door. I grabbed it and plopped my sweaty ass on the couch with my mail. 

"Hello?"

"You're home!" Ryan exclaimed.

"Hey, Minx," I grinned. "How was your day?"

"Good. Busy. How was yours?" he rushed though. "I was worried when you didn't return my calls."

"I was at the gym," I explained. "I just walked in. I haven't even had time to check the messages."

"Ok. Well, ignore the ones from me."

"You were worried?"

"Yeah, well... I left you guys alone."

"He wouldn't hurt me. I promise. You never have to worry about that."

"I know you said that but..." He sighed. "It's probably just my issues. It's just... he's big."

For some reason, the knowledge that he was worried about my safety made me rock hard. "Come over," I purred. "We have some unfinished business."

"Are you serious?"

"Of course, Minx. Why wouldn't I be?"

"I kinda thought that you were just doing that for his benefit."

"I would never use you like that, Ryan," I promised. "I'm sorry that I led you to believe that. I'm really sorry that I left you worked up and unsatisfied. I aim to fix that."

"Hmm. Sounds wonderful but I can't. I'm working tonight."

I braced the receiver on my shoulder and started sorting through and opening my mail. I hadn't picked it up the day before and there was more of it than I had expected. "What is it that you do every night?"

"I'm trying to get Tony's businesses in order," he explained. "And I'm having to learn how to manage everything."

"So you're taking classes?"

"In a way," he replied. "More like tutoring. I have a business manager and an accountant and a lawyer that I meet with. They are all teaching me different aspects of business. I'm also spending some time in the stores to see how they're being run."

"Well shit!" I exclaimed as I read the letter in my hand. 

"What?"

"I've been turned down for the apartment that I applied for," I said. "That never happened before. It's the only place that I applied and my lease is up at the end of the month. I have nowhere to go. Fuck."

"Why were you turned down?"

"It says that I don't have enough credit history," I told him. "I don't have any credit, actually. And I've only been working for my company for a year. This sucks. I guess I know what I'll be doing Saturday."

"You have a credit card," he replied. "You use it at the bar."

"It's in Eric's name," I explained. "Everything is in Eric's name. My car, my apartment, everything. The card has my name on it, and I pay the bills, but it's just a secondary card. The account is in his name."

"Didn't you have student loans?" he asked. "That's gotta be credit."

"No," I sighed. "Eric paid for my schooling. I feel like a suddenly divorced housewife with no name of her own." I tossed the letter across the room in frustration.

He giggled. "That's what you are, Babe. Don't worry. It'll get better."

"Come over," I urged. "Make me feel better."

"I thought you wanted to make me feel good," he teased.

He made me grin. "I do. That will make me feel astounding." 

"I wish I could," he sighed. "I'll be working late tonight, and I have to be back at it in the morning."

"I could come there," I suggested. "Then you wouldn't have to get up so freaking early."

"Umm..."

"Do you not want me to know where you live, Ryan?"

"No. It's not that." He hesitated. "I don't mind you knowing. It's just... It's Tony's house."

"Say no more, Minx. I understand."

"Do you?" he asked. "Because I don't. It's been over a year. Fuck it. Come over."

"No."




Rain Storms Ch. 02



"No?" he echoed. "Why not?"

"Because you're not ready," I explained. "I don't want you to be uneasy. Don't push yourself, Minx. You'll know when you're ready and I'll still be here when you are. You're comfortable being here and I'm fine with that."

"Sometimes you're too sweet for words," he groaned. "I'll come by after I get done. It'll probably be late, after ten. Is that ok?"

"Sure," I smiled. "I'll just nap until you get here."

"Oh?" he responded with a teasing lilt to his voice. "Planning on a late night?"

"Oh yes," I crooned. "Very, very late." There was a harsh beep in my ear. "There's a call on the other line," I told him.

"Get it," he said. "I have to go anyway. I'll see you later."

"Later." I switched over. "Hello?"

"Rain?" Dylan greeted me. "Are you coming over?"

"Not tonight."

"I thought we were going to talk about what happened."

"Not tonight, Dylan. I have plans."

"With Eric?" he accused.

"No. With Ryan."

He was silent while he digested the information. His voice was laced with sadness when he finally responded. "You would rather spend the night with Ryan than me?"

"I'm not going to be arguing with Ryan. He hasn't hurt me. I've had a rough couple of days. I just want to relax and have some fun with no pressure and no stress. You and I can get together tomorrow night."

"Rain, I... I miss you. I'm sorry that I hurt you. It was stupid and petty and... You're not the only one hurting here. Please come over."

"Tomorrow, Dylan. I'll come over tomorrow."

The phone rang twice while I was in the shower. I checked the messages when I got out. There were a few from Ryan, he really had been worried about me, one from a telemarketer, and one from Eric. I finished drying off and then did something that I hadn't done in six months. I called Eric back.

"Rain?" he answered.

"Yeah. It's me."

"Holy fuck," he breathed. "Wait! Wait. Don't... Just... Hold on a sec." I could hear shuffling and the music in the background suddenly switched off. Everything got quiet and I thought I could almost hear him breathing. "Baby," he crooned. "I'm so glad that you called. Thank you." He wasn't trying to saturate his voice with sensuality. That was just the way that he normally sounded. He was a highly charged sexual being and his voice reflected that, especially if he was emotional.

"You left a message," I reminded him. "I was returning your call."

"Yes but..." He paused. "Thank you. Have dinner with me. I... Please."

"Not tonight," I said. "I have plans."

"I thought we could try again," he suggested. "You know, the talking thing."

"I'd like that, Eric. But not tonight."

"Because you have plans?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Can I ask who with?"

"Ryan," I informed him.

"Oh." The melancholy was evident in his voice, even in just the one word.

"I haven't had a good day, Eric," I told him. "I need to be with someone who doesn't stress me out. I do want to talk with you. I think we made a good start this morning. I just need some time to work some stuff out of my own."

"What kind of stuff, Baby?"

"I'm going to be homeless at the end of the month."

"Why?"

"Because my lease is up and I don't have enough credit to get another place."

"Rain, you know I won't let that happen. All you have to do is tell me what you want and I will take care of it."

"I want to be self-sufficient, Eric. I want to be able to do this on my own. You can't give me that."

"Rain..." He paused. He was dying to tell me to just come home but he knew it would start a fight. "The offer is there if you need it," he said instead. "It's open-ended."

I wasn't sure if he meant the offer to help me get a place, or the unspoken one to move back in with him, but I was grateful either way. "Thank you. I'll let you know if I do. I'm going to go now. I'll call you in a couple of days."

"Wait! Baby I... I love you, Rain."

"I love you too, Eric."

By the time the latch engaged on the door, Dylan was already kissing me senseless. I could smell and taste the bourbon strongly on his breath and his kisses affected me the same way they always did, weak knees and body trembling. "Shouldn't we talk first?" I gasped out when his lips traveled down to my neck.

"No. God please no," he husked. "I'm so scared," he whispered in my ear. "I'm so horribly afraid that once you've said what you've come to say, there won't be an after. Not for us."

"Dylan," I moaned softly. 

"Please don't talk, Rain," he begged. "Let me keep my hope alive. Just for one night. Please."

He kissed his way down my smooth torso, unbuttoning my shirt as he went. His tongue and teeth unerringly searched out and homed in on all the spots that drove me wild and mindless. He got on his knees, sucking the top of my hip bone, marking me, while he opened and parted the front of my pants. He ran his tongue down my iliac furrow as he pushed my pants and underwear down my thighs. 

My head slammed back into the door, and my fingernails scratched for purchase on the wood grain, as he swallowed my entire length down his throat. If I'd have the slightest ability for cognitive reasoning at the moment, I would have stopped him. He was breaking his own rule. He wasn't being safe.

"Oh fuck," I moaned and panted. "I'm going to... I'm going..."

He pulled his mouth off of me but continued to jack my turgid cock while he watched my face. "That's right, Lover. Come for me."

Then he wrapped his talented mouth around my cockhead and slipped his saliva slicked fingers between my legs. He gently pushed his finger inside me and it was my undoing. White light flashed on the backs of my closed eyelids and it felt like some vital part of me was ripped out of my body and deposited into the warm, wet recesses of his skilled and eager mouth.

He stood up, sliding his fully clothed body against my disheveled, but temporarily satiated, one. He captured my lips, sharing my now slightly bourbon flavored essence with me until there were no remnants left. "You shouldn't have done that," I told him when I regained the ability to think and speak. "It's not safe."

"Rain." My name fell from his lips like a prayer. "If this is our last time together, I'm not going to spend the rest of my life regretting that I never got to taste you." He entwined the fingers of one hand through mine and caressed my face with his other. "All of you." He kissed me again. "Come on." He tugged me toward his bedroom, tripping and stumbling over the pants that had, unbeknownst to me, pooled around my ankles.

He stripped us both and laid us across his massive bed, kissing and caressing my body the entire time. I didn't eke out a single word of protest when he pushed my legs up and drew the flat of his wicked tongue over my entrance. It had been so long since anyone had rimmed me that I simply reveled in the spine tingling sensations of his slick and probing muscle. I was writhing and moaning under his ministrations, and when he stopped licking me, I groaned out my objections loudly.

"Fuck," he husked. "Should have been doing that the whole time."

"Don't stop," I gasped. "So close."

"Need you, Lover," he grunted while hurriedly sheathing and lubing his throbbing cock. "Need to be inside you."

He gripped the backs of my knees and watched with rapt fascination as he breached my hole and slowly sank to the depths inside me. As before, the expected pain was just not present. He stretched me, and it burned, but the pleasure of being filled far outweighed the slight discomfort. I didn't need the pause that he gave me to adjust. It was like his cock was built for the sole purpose of fucking my ass. I rocked my hips up to encourage him to move.

His eyes shot up and locked with mine. A smile broke out on his face. "Patience, Beautiful," he chuckled. "You feel so fucking amazing. I want this to last."

He slowly pulled halfway out and then back in. The second time, he pulled all the way out and reapplied lube before pushing back in. He was driving me crazy and a whimper tore out of my throat.

"Are you needy?" he husked.

"Yes," I groaned. "Please."

He, finally, started thrusting his hips in a steady rhythm. It was slow and deep and it made my eyes roll back in my head in bliss. After a few minutes, he shifted and my body reacted with a violent spasm as he slammed into my prostate.

"Yes," he hissed. "Is that the spot?" he asked, repeating the same move and eliciting the same reaction from my body.

"Yes," I moaned. "More. Right. Fucking. There."

"Oh yeah." He repeatedly drilled the spot. "Gonna make you come now, Lover. Then we're gonna keep going and make you come again."

"Oh fuck." I clutched at the sheets as he let go of one thigh and got a firm grip on my weeping cock. He began stroking my dick in concert with the pounding that he was giving my sweet spot. I couldn't survive. I wasn't built to withstand such glorious torment. My orgasm burned a path through my body and spattered my stomach with stripes of white.

He milked me through the throes and then pulled out of me. He waited until I was watching him before he licked every drop of my seed off my stomach and visibly swallowed. After I was clean, he crawled up my body until we were eye to eye then he pushed back inside me. I arched up to meet his thrust.

"Fuck, Rain," he breathed once he was buried to the hilt. "You are so gorgeous." He kissed me hard and undulated his body, plunging deep inside me in wave after wave. He made love to me with his hands, his mouth, and his cock. It was passion and pleasure. At no point did he ever use the punishing rhythm I had known him to employ before, and at no time did he inflict any pain on me. He kept his promise about making me come again and he joined me soon afterward.

I was half lying on top of him, my back to his front, and he had his arms wrapped around me as if he was afraid that I might be stolen. I was somewhere between awake and asleep. I was trying to stay awake but it was a losing battle. We had been going at it for a couple of hours and I was exhausted.

"I'm so sorry, Rain," he whispered as I drifted in and out of consciousness. "I should have kept my big mouth closed in the beginning and claimed you for myself. I could have had you this whole time. I should have treated you like you deserved. I should have come out for you. I should have trusted you with my heart. I never, ever, should have hurt you..."

I'm sure there was more. I wanted desperately to hear what he had to say but the sandman had other ideas.

I awoke to discover that we had changed roles. I was holding him. He was still on his back but I was facing him with my body mostly draped over his. I had one arm under his head and the other around his chest. I wondered if he had been having nightmares and I had attempted to comfort him in my sleep. I didn't move. I didn't want to wake him and I was very comfortable. Dylan didn't produce the kind of heat that Eric did. Over the years, I had become tolerant of Eric's body heat but I had never become comfortable with it. Except in the winter. I was very appreciative of it in the winter.

I let my mind contemplate that, drifting the way it does when you're not really fully awake. I speculated as to the possibility of body hair playing a role. Neither Eric nor I had any significant body hair. Dylan had plenty. The night that I had slept between Ryan and Eric, I had been quite comfortable. But Eric had stayed fully dressed. Ryan and I had both been nude. Thoughts of Ryan being nude brought up memories of exploring every inch of his wonderfully reactive naked body. Images of Ryan crying out his pleasure as I worked over his body had me hard and dripping pre-cum on Dylan's hip. And that was the condition he found me in when he chose to wake at that moment.

"Hmm." He rolled us over so that he was on top and wrapped his fingers around my swollen shaft. "Yes," he hissed as my breath hitched sharply. "We're going to be very late to work."

We walked in to the office together, even though we had taken separate cars. 

"It's ten o'clock," Mr. Weston scowled at Dylan.

"Is it?" Dylan asked, innocently. "I had a problem with my system at home this morning. I needed Rain to help me get it resolved."

The expression on Mr. Weston's face relayed loudly and clearly that he wasn't buying it for a second. "See that it doesn't happen again."

"You're late," Jason pointed out needlessly as I dropped my case on the floor of the server room.

"Yes," I sighed. "I am."

"Are you ok?" he asked. "Did you get hurt?"

"No," I replied. "I'm fine. Just late."

"Because you're like, never late," he explained. "And you're kinda walking funny."

I whipped around and squinted at him.

"What?" he asked.

I glared at him and then put my fist on my hip and arched an eyebrow at him. It took him more than a minute to do the math.

"Oh." His face bloomed bright red. "Umm... Well, fuck." 

"Exactly," I said.

Jason shut his mouth and wouldn't meet my eyes for the rest of the day.



Rain Storms Ch. 03



A few weeks later, I was still smarting over the fact that I'd been forced to get Eric's help to rent an apartment. It was in my name but he'd had to co-sign for it. Which, I guess, was progress. Ryan kept trying to reassure me that it was, anyway. Eric and Ryan had both helped me move. Well, Eric helped me move; Ryan supervised. Eric and I weren't back together but we had managed to have five or six really halfway decent conversations. We'd also had at least twice that many nasty fights. Ryan assured me that was progress too. 

My new apartment wasn't in Plano, but it was in Richardson, which was the next town over and only a few minutes away from Dylan's house. When Eric discovered that fact, by inadvertently finding out that his parents knew Dylan when he mentioned the firm to them, Eric was none too pleased. It was actually the basis for quite a few of those aforementioned fights, even though I hadn't spoken to Dylan since I had changed jobsites. Dylan and I never did have the breakup conversation but we seemed to mutually accept that it was over the morning we had been late to work. The last week that I worked at his office, we only spoke about issues relating to my job and even those conversations were strained. We weren't compatible and we both knew it. He couldn't be the man that I needed him to be, and I couldn't live with the man that he was. It appeared to be the story of my life. I still missed him. I regretted that I had lost him as a friend but I understood. The attraction between us was too strong, the sex was too good, and the emotions were too powerful for us to just be friends.

And I was back to being celibate. Well, not exactly. Most people would consider my sex life to be very active. Ryan still had never invited me to his house, but he spent several nights a week in my bed. Ryan was getting what he needed. Unfortunately, I wasn't. I'm positive that he would have been more than willing to help me out via the employment of a variety of choices in my toy box. I never asked. I knew, from experience, that using dildos just made me hunger for the real thing. They would make me come, and come hard, but left me feeling hollow. I needed warm flesh inside me, a real body over me, and the pleasure of my lover to feel satisfied. 

It was the second day of the second job that I had been assigned since leaving GWG and my lackey was late. His name was Todd, and he was a little bit of a slacker, but he was also a genius so I worked around his inherent laziness. At ten after nine, there was a knock on the server room door.

"It's about time you got..." I stalled out when I opened the door to Jason. "You're not Todd."

"Jas. On," he pointed to himself and slowly enunciated his name as if he was speaking to an imbecile.

"Ass. Hole," I retorted in the same tone of voice. "What are you doing here?"

"It's good to see you too," he replied sarcastically and then shrugged. "Roman called me an hour ago and told me to report to you here. That's all I know."

"Well, shit," I sighed. "Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that you're here. I just don't know what happened to Todd. Pop a squat. I'm going to call Roman."

Jason sat in the chair normally occupied by his predecessor while I called our boss's direct number.

"This is Roman," he answered.

"This is Rain," I mocked.

He didn't rise to the bait. "What's up Rain?" He usually had a sense of humor so something was definitely wrong.

"Jason just showed up on my site."

"Yeah. I sent him."

"What happened to Todd?"

Roman sighed. "We let him go."

"You could have told me," I replied. "Why?"

"I shouldn't tell you but... He was sleeping with the client."

I was shocked. For more than one reason. There was the obvious one, of course, and then there was the fact that there were no women at the current jobsite, and Todd was, most assuredly, not gay. "What client?"

"Rachel Tulen," he named the executive secretary on the last job. "We knew about it weeks ago but we didn't have anyone to replace him with until Jason could be pulled."

Roman misinterpreted my silence as reproach and got snippy. "I'm running a networking business not a brothel. I didn't think you'd care since you seemed to like Jason. If you're unhappy with it you can come in after work tonight and we can talk about it."

"I'm fine, Roman," I assured him. "I'm just surprised. I didn't see or hear anything inappropriate."

"Mr. Selznick sure did," Roman replied, his voice still hostile. "The office was wired. You would think that a computer geek would know to turn off the security camera before bending the secretary over her boss's desk."

"You would think," I agreed.

"I need to get back to work. Are we done here or do I need to stay late and expect you?"

"We're done," I assured him. "Jason is great. I'm glad to have him."

"Good. Later."

I stared at the phone on the table after we'd hung up, thinking how close I had come to being Todd. Or, possibly, Rachel.

I went straight home after work and stripped down immediately. I had spent the day crawling around in the ceiling and was covered in God knows what. I turned on the shower to let the water warm up when there was a knock on the door. Grabbing a towel, I wrapped it around my waist and answered the door.

My jaw nearly hit the ground and I forgot to breathe. Eric stood on my doorstep looking like a fantasy made flesh. His hair was pulled back in a single braid down his back. He was wearing an exquisitely tailored, charcoal gray, three-piece suit with a black, brocaded, banded collar, narrow lapels, and matching vest. Under that, he wore a silver shirt and charcoal gray tie, tied in a Windsor knot. The entire ensemble appeared to be silk and I caught myself reaching out to touch it.

"Ho. Ly. Shit," I moaned.

"My sentiments exactly," he smirked and pointedly glanced down at the obscene tent in my towel.

"Fuck," I groaned under my breath and turned around to adjust the towel, trapping my erection against my belly. Once secure, I turned back. 

"I'm sorry for just dropping in," he said. "I was in the neighborhood and thought that you might care to have dinner with me."

"You were in the neighborhood?" I asked, suspiciously. "Dressed like that?"

"Yes," he replied. "I had court today."

"Court?" I asked.

"The paternity hearing," he reminded me. "Can I come in?"

"Oh! Shit! Yes." I stood aside and let him in. As he walked by me, I looked. I couldn't help it. Unfortunately, the jacket was long enough to obscure his ass. When he turned suddenly, I was caught staring. The jacket, being open, did nothing to hide his prodigious arousal. My eyes slowly traveled up his body to find him smirking at me. "Umm. Yeah. How'd it go?"

He shrugged off the question. "Dog and pony show. Strictly for posterity. I was eliminated as a potential father the second they typed my blood, weeks ago."

"What? How?"

"The kid is Rh-negative. My blood type is B-positive. The doctor told me that only way to get a negative Rh-factor is to have two negative parents," he explained. "We didn't even have to wait for the DNA results but the court made us."

"Why didn't you tell me that?" I snarled. 

He held up his hands in surrender. "Please don't get mad. I don't want to fight. I didn't know that I was supposed to tell you that. I told you that the kid wasn't mine. I didn't think you'd want to keep hearing it."

I took a deep breath and counted to ten in my head. Was I overreacting? Probably. Was I going on the offensive for no reason? No. This was important. He should have told me. I let out my breath and tried to reply calmly. "This is exactly the kind of thing that you should be telling me, Eric. This is the kind of thing that partners share. That was relevant news. You should have told me."

"I'm sorry." He dropped his hands. "I'm trying, Rain. This... It didn't seem important to me because I knew that I wasn't the father. I knew that I didn't fuck her. I thought that you didn't want to hear about it anymore. I should have taken into account that you didn't really believe me and you needed the proof."

"I know that you're trying, Eric," I sighed. "I'm sorry that I jumped down your throat."

"Baby, please hear me," he pleaded. "I have never lied to you. I have fucked up in a lot of ways but that isn't one of them. I know that you don't trust me, and I understand, but I need you to know, I have never lied to you."

I just barely managed to stop myself from screaming out all the myriad of ways that he'd betrayed me. I counted to twenty and, when that wasn't enough, tried fifty. He'd never lied to me. He'd cheated on me, kept things from me, broken promises right and left, but he was right. I couldn't think of a single time that he'd ever intentionally told me an untruth, as he saw it. His version of the truth may not match up with mine, and he most definitely omitted things, but not selectively. If he spoke of it at all, he told the whole truth, as far as he was concerned.

"And Baby..." he added. "You really need to put some clothes on. You're insanely hot when you're mad and I haven't touched you in eight months. I am losing what little bit of sanity that I have left right now."

"I'm sorry," I replied, justifiably shamed. "I was about to take a shower." 

"Oh fuck," Eric groaned and closed his eyes. "Please tell me that I can join you."

The sexy, husky rumble of his voice made me instantly, painfully hard again. "No Eric," I replied, contrary to every screaming atom in my body. "Sex muddies the water for us. We're doing better. I don't want to mess it up."

He opened his eyes and nodded. His gaze was full of hope and love and need. 

"Besides," I grinned. "You'd have to take off that gorgeous suit."

"Baby, I will shred this suit if you'll let me touch you," he growled.

"Please don't," I smiled. "I love it. And I thought you offered me dinner."

He sighed wistfully, "Fine. Go get your hot, sexy body wet and slick with soap..." He slowed down and trailed off. The thoughts in his head had set him off. His body tensed, his jaw locked, his breath shortened, and his eyes filled with raw lust. He looked like he was seconds from pouncing on me.

"Maybe you should wait outside," I suggested. "Have a cigarette or something."

It took him a few seconds to get a grip on himself. The whole time I was chanting, 'Don't run. Don't run.' in my head. The worst thing you can do when confronted by a predator is to run. It stirs up their natural inclination to chase. The problem was that I couldn't seem to convince myself that being caught by him was a bad thing. I stood as still as possible while my heart pounded and my dick throbbed until he nodded again and walked out the front door. My body sagged but I didn't know if it was in relief or disappointment. 

I took a quick but thorough shower, and dried my hair, but then spent more time in my closet than I had in the bathroom. Over the years with Eric, I had become something of a clothes hound but nowhere in the league of Eric. In the past year, I had bought nothing but work clothes and very casual clothes. I had plenty of very nice business professional and business casual suits, but nothing that would match his level of Gothic elegance. I was getting a little frustrated when I spied a suit bag pushed in the far back corner of my walk-in closet and smiled. 

I dressed carefully, enjoying the smooth feel of the silk against my skin. I had bought the suit on impulse right after Eric and I had split up. I had it tailored and had never worn it. It had never even come out of the tailor's bag. I added a vest, shirt, and tie, all silk, from other pieces of my collection, to complete the ensemble. I stepped out the door in time to catch Eric grinding out a cigarette under his heel. He looked up at me and froze. I had taken a page from Ryan's playbook. Everything I had on, head to toe, was pure, snow white.

He swallowed, hard. "Are you sure that you don't want to change your mind about the Denmark idea?"

I laughed and shook my head. "Not today."

"But you'll wear that when we do?" he asked.

I smiled at him and changed the subject. "Do you know what you want to eat?"

"Fuck yes," he husked, leering at me.

"Food, Eric," I chuckled. "I'm hungry."

"If I promise not to push, muss you up, or take it too far, will you let me kiss you?" His voice was calm and level but his stormy gray eyes were rife with emotion.

"Yes," I whispered.

He immediately stepped into my personal space. His body was barely a hair's breadth from mine but we weren't actually touching. He was so much taller than me that I had to crane my neck back to maintain eye contact.

"Yes?" he breathed.

"Yes," I repeated.

He lowered his head and raised his hands. His lips hovered a mere millimeter above mine and his hands stopped just short of touching my head. "Say my name, Rain," he whispered, his warm breath caressing my face.

"Eric," I moaned.

He dropped his head a fraction of an inch until his lips came in contact with mine. He stayed like that, not moving, only the barest, feather-light touch of skin against skin, for what seemed like an eternity. With a shudder and a moan, he cupped the back of my head and the small of my back, pulling my body into his, as he ravaged my mouth. This was the Eric that I knew and loved. An inferno raged through me. I could hear the conflagration, and feel the heat of the blaze, that threatened to consume my very soul.

I have no idea how long we stood there, trying desperately to merge our bodies into one being, before we were interrupted by my neighbor.

"Jesus Christ, that's fucking hot." The voice hardly registered over the roaring in my ears.

Eric, never quite as affected by our kisses as I was, reluctantly broke away. I whimpered at the loss but gained enough of my mental faculties to realize that, at some point, I had wrapped my arms around his neck. I tried to tug him back down to me and he resisted, forcing me to open my eyes. His face was inches above mine, staring deeply into my eyes. His pupils were blown wide, refuting the idea that he wasn't just as enflamed as I was. "We have company," he husked, not letting go of me but relaxing his grip on my body a smidgeon.

Eric glanced down at our feet and my gaze followed his. There was a fat, little, light-brown dog, with large, pointed ears, and a white snout and underbelly, looking up at us. Once acknowledged, little dog wagged its stubby tail and, I swear, it smiled. "Do you think it cares?" I asked.

"No," Eric smirked. "But you might." He removed his hand from the back of my head and pointed behind me.

I turned to see a young woman near the front door of the apartment that shared a patio with mine. I stepped out of our embrace in surprise.

"Don't stop on my account," she smirked. "You guys look like the most erotic wedding cake topper, ever." She gave a small wave and leaned back against the door frame. "I'm Sharon and that's Cujo." She indicated the dog.

"Cujo?" I grinned.

"I wanted a Saint Bernard but I ended up with a Corgi," she grinned.

Sharon was around 5'6 with long, dark-blonde hair, pulled up in a high pony tail. She was slightly heavier than popular fashion allowed, with a cute button nose and glasses. She was wearing denim overalls and a lime-green t-shirt. She was also barefoot and spattered with paint.

"I'm Rain and this is Eric."

"Rain?" she asked. "Seriously?"

"Yes," I smirked. "I guess I'm your neighbor."

"Weird." She scrunched up her face. "I thought it was that little, tow-headed guy that I see leaving in the mornings."

The noise that came out of Eric was distinctly feral.

Sharon's eyes opened wide in shock. "Oh fuck. Did I just stick my foot in my mouth?"

"No," I chuckled. "Don't mind Eric. He gets surly if he doesn't get fed at regular intervals. That's my friend Ryan. He doesn't live here but he's here a lot."

"Baby," Eric urged. "Let's go."

I glared at Eric playfully. "We're going to go before Grumpy here starts wondering what Corgi tastes like," I joked. "It was nice meeting you."

"You too." She waved and called her dog back into her apartment.

Eric took me to a little hole-in-the-wall Italian place that had the best carbonara I had ever put in my mouth. Eric had veal and a glass of red wine. I had never developed an appreciation for wine, especially red, as it tended to give me headaches, but Eric was very fond of it. We shared an enormous serving of tiramisu. We kept the conversation light and casual. He told lighthearted stories about people that we both knew, that he still spent time with, and I told funny stories about Jason and Todd. It was, by far, the best evening that Eric and I had spent together in two years.

The second that we got back to my apartment, Eric gently but insistently pinned me to the wall with his body. "Let me in, Rain," he murmured.

"You're already inside."

"No, Baby." He caressed my face and bent his mouth to my ear. "Let me IN," he breathed.

"Eric," I groaned. "You promised that you wouldn't push."

"That was before." He kissed my neck. "All bets are off now."

"Eric," I whined, fighting to keep my resolve from crumbling. "Please don't do this."

"Fuck!" he snarled and pushed away from me. There was something about the sound of whining that flipped his psycho switch. He had an extremely adverse reaction to the noise and I had learned that back when he was first paying me for sex. In my emotional state, I had neglected to temper the whine from my voice, causing Eric to begin pacing and shouting. "Why the fuck not? Make me understand, Rain! Why won't you let me touch you?"

"Things were going so well. Please don't make it bad," I begged.

"How is this bad, Baby? How?" His voice had returned to a normal level but now it was laced with sorrow. He stopped pacing and turned to face me with a dejected expression. "I just want to love you."

"It complicates things," I tried to explain. 

"How?" he pleaded. "Tell me how. I'm trying to respect your boundaries but I don't understand them. Sex was never bad for us. It didn't confuse things. You need me to talk to you. You need me to open up and let you in my head. I get that. I do. But I have needs too. I need to be able to show you how I feel. I need to be able to make love to you, Baby."

"I don't want to lose myself in you again."

"What the hell are you talking about?" he demanded. "You never lost yourself in me before. You were always the strong and independent one. You never needed me like I need you."

"What do you mean? I relied on you for everything," I argued.

"No you didn't," he replied. "All I ever gave you, all you ever needed from me, was opportunity. You did everything on your own. You have always been a whole person, Rain. I'm the one. Me. I can't function without you. You make me fucking insane with need. I can't think or breathe without you. All I feel is pain. I can't go another eight months, Rain. I just can't."

"I can't go back to what we were," I said. "I won't survive being hurt like that again."

"I'm not asking that," he said softly. "I'm not trying to take you away from your life. I'm not even asking you to give up anything or anyone. I'm not trying to get you to move back in. I want that but I know we aren't there. I know that I have a ways to go before you'll trust me. I never, ever, wanted to hurt you and I'm doing everything I know how to see that it never happens again. I just want to love you, Baby." He moved back against me and tilted my face up. "Please let me love you."

When he kissed me, every objection I had dissolved. We needed this. We completed each other. He believed that I was a whole person without him but I knew better. I was only a whole person with him. He felt it when my body relaxed in surrender. I felt his entire body vibrate when he moaned at my acceptance. He broke the kiss long enough to stoop and scoop me up, bridal style, to carry me to the bedroom.




Rain Storms Ch. 03



We stripped each other slowly, as if we had all the time in the world. In this, we were of an accord. Three-piece suits have so many layers. Each and every article of clothing that fell by the wayside, co-mingling with its brethren on my bedroom floor, ratcheted up my level of arousal. The first to go was the tie securing his tresses in a plait. I unwound the braid so I could revel in the glory that was Eric's four long feet of hair. The soft wave left behind from the tightness of the weave was somehow even sexier than his normally arrow-straight locks. I didn't attempt to ponder the reasoning behind that. I couldn't have if I wanted to. I couldn't think at all. I was overwhelmed by the all-consuming desire to take him into my body and keep him there, in any and every way possible.

I had been fighting and resisting him for so long that it had almost become ingrained in me. I let it all go. I wanted this. I wanted him. I had never stopped wanting him. Eric had always been a vocal lover, which I adore, but I am just as moved by his nonverbal noises. His mouth never left my skin so the sounds coming from him were primal and animalistic. Regardless, I understood him perfectly. I felt exactly the same way.

We had been lovers for so long that we knew everything there was to know about each other's bodies. He knew exactly how to play me like a finely tuned instrument. I knew which buttons to push to bring him to the brink and back. We used our hands and our mouths to coerce each other into a mad frenzy. And, when we joined, even with as much time as he'd spent preparing me with his fingers and mouth, and gentle as he was when he burrowed his way inside me, I screamed out in pain and ecstasy. Through the red haze of searing pain, my body was wracked with spasms as I painted our torsos with my seed.

"Yes," he moaned. "Come for me, Baby. So fucking beautiful."

He moved inside me with deliberately slow and shallow thrusts, milking me through my orgasm, before he plunged deep, picking up speed. "Fuck, Baby," he husked. "You're so... You feel so... Oh fuck. I can't. I'm gonna..."

The tempo of his lovemaking increased and he buried his face into my neck and latched on, sucking the skin into his mouth. Muffled by the skin of my neck, his cry was still very loud in my ear as his back violently arched and his body shuttered with his release. When he took my mouth again, I didn't taste the distinct metallic twang of blood. He hadn't broken skin.

"I'm so sorry, Baby," he panted. "That was so fast. I'll make it better in a minute. I promise. I'm sorry. I couldn't stop it."

"Eric." I cupped his face to make him stop apologizing. "It was wonderful." I pointedly looked down at the mess I had made between our still connected bodies. "Clearly."

"I'll do better," he insisted. "You deserve better. It's just been so long and I love you so much."

"I love you too." I grimaced at the pain in my side as feeling started to return to the parts of my body that weren't directly involved in our conjoining. "Up for a second. There's something stabbing me."

He raised his body slightly so I could fish the plastic bottle of lube out from under me, wondering how it had gotten there. Eric gazed at my body with a hungry look in his eyes. He kissed my neck then moved down my chest. As he did, his cock slid out of my channel, which made me groan. It was followed by a rush of warm, viscous fluid.

Eric had begun cleaning the evidence of my passion off my body with his tongue as the proof of his slowly leaked from my wrecked hole. "Fuck," I groaned. "Condoms, Eric. You didn't use a condom."

His eyes locked with mine and he brought his head up, ceasing licking me. "I don't want anything between us, Rain. Ever."

"It's not safe," I scolded.

"I'm clean, Baby," he swore. "I've been poked, prodded, examined, and bled. I have a clean bill of health. I promise. And I haven't been with anyone in eight months."

"But I have!" I exclaimed. "I'm the risk! I don't want to give you anything!"

His expression softened. "Rain," he sighed. "You're it for me. I'm never going to love anyone else. I'd willingly share anything you might be carrying. I'd die for you, Baby. As horrible as this disease is, I'd gladly accept it if it means that I get to love you."

"But I couldn't live with that!" I argued. "I couldn't stand the fact that I had hurt you, made you sick." I grabbed his face roughly and kissed him. "I love you, you idiot. I don't want to risk you. As sweet and romantic as what you said is, it's also stupid."

"What do you propose we do about it?" he asked. "Never really touch each other? Never taste each other? No. That's not acceptable. I want you to come in my mouth. I want to swallow your load and rim you and fill you with my cum. I can't stand the idea that we have to keep a layer of plastic between us. Besides, even if we did, it would all be shot to hell the second you beg for me to bite you. I won't deny either of us that pleasure and you know it."

I sighed. He was right and I did know it. It had been a very long time since I had felt his teeth in me and the mention of it alone had caused a rush of adrenaline through my system. I would eventually want him to draw blood. Probably sooner rather than later. He rolled off me and padded to the bathroom while I stewed. He came back with a warm, damp cloth and tenderly wiped my body down.

"I wanted to lick it off you, but, in deference to your unease..." he said with a teasing smirk. "I'll wait until you have settled all this in your head before I do that, ok?"

"I need to get tested again," I told him. "It won't be one hundred percent accurate but I'll do it anyway. They'll have to lock me in a nut house if I have to wait five months for any sort of reassurance."

"Five?" His gaze shifted from my body to my face. 

"Ryan is clean, for sure. He hasn't been with anyone else in a year. Dylan is the only unknown and it's been over a month."

"You could ask him to get tested," he suggested. "That might make you feel better."

"I'd have to talk to him for that," I replied. "You don't really want that, do you?"

He didn't respond but the expression on his face spoke volumes.

I left work early the next day to go to the doctor for a blood draw. I made it home at about the time I normally would have been getting off work. As I got out of my car, I nearly tripped over a little brown dog.

"Hey Cujo," I smiled and reached down to pet him. It was probably a mistake because, when I stood back up, the dog bounced and circled around my legs, nearly tripping me, the entire walk to my front door. I was his new best friend.

"Cujo! Leave the poor man alone!" Sharon scolded. She was dressed pretty much the same as she had been the day before. Her shirt was hot pink this time and, if possible, there was even more paint on her.

"Twice in two days," I grinned at her. "We have to stop meeting like this. People will talk."

She grinned back. "Jealous boyfriend?"

I chuckled. "Something like that." 

"You're home early," she said. "I try to take him out before normal people get home from work. He gets a little excited by people."

"Ah," I nodded. "That explains why I've never seen you before."

"I'm a bit of a homebody," she replied. "Cujo's the social one."

"You seem fairly social to me," I replied, unlocking my door.

She smiled. "Thanks."

"See you later." I smiled and waved.

I went inside and checked my messages. There were a couple from Ryan so I called him back. 

"What happened yesterday?" he asked. "I was getting worried."

"Eric came by," I told him.

"Oh? How'd that go?"

"Good," I replied. "He took me to dinner and then he spent the night. It was good. Really good."

"I'm happy for you," he said but he didn't sound happy. "So you're back together?"

"No," I chuckled. "Sex, even really amazing sex, does not solve our problems. It's what I want, eventually. You already know that. But it's a long road and it would be disastrous to try to rush it. But it does give me hope that it's where we're headed."

"Well, I'm really happy for you," he repeated. "Look, I've got to go. I'm going to be really busy tonight so I'll talk to you tomorrow. Ok?"

"Ryan? Are you upset?" I asked.

"No," he replied. "I'm just distracted."

"I love you, Ryan," I said. "That's not going to change. I'm not going anywhere. No matter what happens with Eric down the road, I still want you in my life. And, as long as you want to be there, in my bed."

He sighed. "I love you too, Rain. I'll talk to you tomorrow, ok?"

After we hung up, I went to take a shower and change into some comfortable clothes. I was poking around in the kitchen, trying to decide what to make for dinner, when Eric called.

"Hey Baby," he purred. "Where do you want to go for dinner?"

"I'm going to stay home." 

"That sounds good too."

"No, Eric," I replied. "I'm going to stay home alone."

"Why, Baby? Are you upset with me?"

"Not at all," I assured him. "I just can't see you tonight."

"Do you have other plans?" he asked, quietly.

"No." 

"Then I don't understand. You'd rather do nothing than see me?"

"No. I want to see you. I want to see you so badly that it hurts. That's why I can't," I explained. "It's too easy to fall back into a bad place, Eric. We need to take this slowly so that doesn't happen."

"I won't make the same mistakes, Rain. I promise. I'm trying so hard."

"I know, my love. But you're not the only one that made mistakes. I have stuff to work on too."

"What do you mean?" he argued. "You didn't fuck us up."

"You weren't in this alone, Eric. We both screwed up. Your mistakes were just more dramatic." I smirked, "When you fuck up, you do it loudly."

"Yeah I do," he chuckled. "So I can't see you tonight?"

"Not tonight," I responded. "Soon, though. This weekend at the latest."

"This is Wednesday, Rain," he pointed out. "Two nights without you in my arms is too many. One night is too many."

"Slow down, Kemosabe," I chuckled. "I'm going to miss you too. But I would rather miss you now than destroy any future that we have by rushing things, right?"

"I'm in this for the long haul, Rain," he replied softly. "As in, forever. As long as you both shall live."

"Then give it some time," I insisted. "It's worth the wait to do this right, don't you think?"

"Yes."

I was left with the decision of what to do for dinner. It was hard to cook for one person and it wasn't much fun. I knew that the choice to slow things down with Eric was the right one. I needed to continue thinking with my brain and not my heart or my cock... or ass, whatever. Everything just got so messed up when I was around him. I got so emotional and crazed. It was important to step back and tread carefully. That didn't resolve the problem of what to do for dinner. Then I had an idea.

"Hey Rain. What's up?" Sharon asked as she opened her door, pushing up her glasses.

"I was wondering if you'd like to have dinner with me."

Her mouth dropped open in surprise. "Me?" she squeaked. 

"Oh God," I backtracked. "I'm so bad at this. I meant as friends. Not a date. It's just that I was in the mood to cook and I hate cooking for one person. I thought you might be in the mood to eat."

She just stood there, blinking at me. 

"I'm not a bad cook," I assured her. "I won't poison you or anything."

"What about your boyfriend?" she asked.

"Which one? Ryan or Eric?"

"You have two boyfriends?"

"No. I don't have any boyfriends," I replied, confusing her. "It's a long story but the sum of it is that neither one is coming over tonight. So what do you say? Are you in the mood to eat?"

She smiled. "I'm always in the mood to eat. Let me change into something with less paint on it and I'll come over."

I smiled. "Ok. You can bring Cujo if you like. My place is puppy proof."

Having said that, I darted around my apartment while she changed at hers, just to make sure there was nothing lying around that I didn't want Cujo chewing on. Luckily, I kept a fairly clean apartment so there was nothing on the floor. 

She was quick. She knocked on my door within minutes. She had changed into jeans and a bright blue t-shirt with Eeyore on it and had taken her hair down. She cleaned up nice and I couldn't fail to notice that she wasn't as heavy as her baggy overalls had led me to believe. She was actually quite cute and buxom, and I imagined that she could be a knockout with a little bit more effort.

"No Cujo?" I asked when she stepped inside without the little dog.

She shook her head. "He had dinner already. This is nice," she said, looking around my living room.

I laughed. All of my apartments had only the barest essentials and absolutely no personality whatsoever. "It's boring as fuck. You don't have to be nice to me."

She grinned. "It could use some flair." She followed me into the kitchen. "I admit that I expected something different from a gay man who dresses like you do."

"I've never really gotten into the whole decorating thing," I told her. "I'm more function over form. Do you have any food allergies or aversions?" I asked.

She shook her head. "Nothing spicy. I don't like spicy."

"That's ok," I grinned. "I can't handle spicy today anyway."

"Are you feeling ok?" She seemed concerned. "Upset stomach?"

"Um. No." I could feel the heat staining my skin. "I'm fine."

"Oh." She started laughing. "Nevermind. I get it. Or... you know. You got it."

"Oh geeze."

She kept laughing and I kept blushing. "I should have realized with all the noise last night."

"Noise?" I asked.

"Um. Yeah." She snickered and mimicked me, "Fuck me hard, Eric. Oh yes. Oh fuck..."

"Ho. Ly. Shit." I gaped at her. "You could hear that?"

"Oh yeah," she smirked. "Our bedrooms do share a wall. Don't worry about it though. He's much louder than you. It's just that his voice is deeper and it's harder to make out words."

She was so casual about it that I was forgetting to be embarrassed. "Most of his noises aren't actual words," I chuckled.

"So he's not your boyfriend, huh?" 

I pulled out some chicken and started throwing together a stir-fry, without the peppers. "No. He's my ex-boyfriend. The other guy, Ryan, he's a good friend. My best friend."

"Wow. I've never been that... affectionate with my exes," she said. "Can I help?"

"Not really," I replied to her offer. "It's a one person job. You can pour some drinks, if you like."

She moved around my kitchen as if she owned the place. She didn't ask where anything was and she seemed to find everything without having to look twice. She didn't even need instructions on how to make a White Russian, but she did make it quite a bit stronger than I normally drink them.

"Your kitchen is setup just like mine," she explained to the puzzled look on my face. "It's really the only logical way to setup this kitchen, I guess."

"Makes sense." I turned back to the stove. "What do you do for a living?"

"Part time secretary. I only work enough to support my habits."

"Habits?"

"Eating, feeding the dog, paying rent, that kind of thing," she smirked. "I'm a starving artist. Someday I hope to be a world famous artist."

I nodded. "That explains the paint. Do you ever sell anything?"

"Sometimes," she grinned. "I'm really quite good. I just haven't been discovered."

I chuckled. "Seeing as most artists only become famous posthumously, count your blessings."

"Ah. A cynic, I see," she grinned.

"Oh no. I'm very supportive of the arts, in my own way."

She glanced around my apartment with its various shades of beige. "I see that."

I laughed. "No, really. Eric is an artist."

"Really?"

I nodded. "He rarely paints. Sculptures, mostly. All kinds of mediums. He's very good."

"Does he sell?" she asked.

"Yes. Almost everything. Except for the stuff that he trashes part way through because he's unhappy with it."

"That's the benefit to being a painter," she smiled. "I can just paint over it." 

"He only paints on commission."

"Can I ask you a personal question?" 

"Sure," I smirked. "You probably already know more about me than I care to think about."

"So you're sleeping with both of them?"

"I guess so, yes. Not at the same time," I said. "Although, that would be pretty hot."

"Yeah it would," she smirked. 

I let that image float around in my mind for a while then sighed. "It would never work. They barely tolerate each other."

"So how does that work? I mean... I thought you were a top but the things that I heard last night would indicate otherwise."

"I guess I'd call myself a versatile bottom. Ryan is strictly a bottom and Eric is a top. I like both but I prefer to bottom."

"They're so different from each other. It's hard to believe that anyone would be interested in both of them."

"They're like polar opposites," I agreed. "Not just in appearance. Ryan is logical and methodical. Eric is emotional and temperamental. Ryan is sweet and caring and Eric is domineering and gruff. They bring out totally different sides of me. I'm completely, head-over-heels, in love with Eric, but we have a hard time being together. I could be very happy with Ryan but he doesn't want that. He wants to be friends."

She smirked. "He sounds more than a little friendly when he spends the night."

"I'm so buying you some earplugs," I teased.

She stuck out her bottom lip in a pout. "Don't do that. I'm living vicariously through your inherent sluttiness."

I laughed. "I guess I am a slut. I've never been a slut before. So what about you? I don't hear any tell-tale noises from your side of the wall."

"Don't remind me," she frowned. "I've been single far too long. My ex was a total loser. He expected me to support him while he went out and partied and fucked around. I tossed his ass out."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"No worries." She waved her hand in dismissal. "The sex wasn't great anyway. It was like he only cared about getting himself off."

"That's lame," I grimaced. "The whole point of being the dominant partner is what you're doing for your lover. Otherwise, you might as well just be jacking off."

She laughed, "I love you."

I smirked. "Don't let Eric hear you say that. He'll flip his shit."

Her mouth opened in shock. "Over a girl?" 

"Oh yeah," I drawled. "He hates the idea that anyone else ever touches me. But a woman? He goes psycho. I don't know why it's worse but it is. He can't handle even the thought of me being with a woman."

"Weird."

"Yeah it is," I agreed wholeheartedly. "Especially since he thought sleeping with women wasn't cheating on me."

"Holy crap!" she exclaimed. "He's bi?"

I pointed a wooden spoon at her. "Back off, hussy. He's mine."

She giggled. "Looks like he's not the only jealous one."

I grinned at her. "I don't know how he identifies. He's attracted to women but he's in love with me. I'm the only guy that he's ever been with."

"Have you been with women too?" she asked. "I mean, is he mad jealous for a reason?"

"I didn't cheat on him, but yes, I've slept with women. I like women. I just prefer men."

"What about Ryan?" 

I laughed. "I don't think Ryan would have a clue what to do with a woman. It's a loss for womankind. Ryan would make some woman very happy if he had the slightest interest in being with one. He's a wonderful person; dedicated, loving, nurturing, honorable, honest, generous, reliable. All of that, and he's beautiful too."

"Wow!" she exclaimed. "You really love him too."

I nodded. "He also gives an unbelievable blowjob."

She gasped and then got a fit of the giggles. "Just had to blow the nice guy image out of the water, didn't you?"

I smirked and shrugged. "Couldn't have you thinking I was all sentimental and shit."

I plated the food and carried it out to the couch. This apartment did have an area that would be considered a dining room but I still didn't have a table. I had setup my computer desk in that area so I still ate all my meals at the coffee table.




Rain Storms Ch. 03



"This is good!" she effused.

I smirked. "You sound surprised. I told you that I could cook."

"Everybody thinks they can cook. Just like everybody thinks they can drive."

"Point," I grinned. "Eric taught me to cook."

She laughed. "All that sex appeal and he can cook too?"

"He can. He doesn't like doing it. He'd rather eat out," I said. "That's not true. He likes to cook, he just doesn't like the mess it creates. He's fastidious about being clean. He lives in this big warehouse that is also his workshop. You should see it when he's working wood or stone. Anything that kicks up dust. He covers everything in these big plastic sheets. It's a riot. It's like living in a haunted house."

"How long have you guys been together?" she asked between bites.

"We met over eight years ago but we didn't get serious for a year."

"Eight years," she repeated. "It's hard to fathom that you've been involved with an artist for eight years and you don't have a single piece of his work."

I nodded while chewing. "I do. Just not in here. When I moved out, I brought a piece with me. He made it for me so..."

"Can I see it?"

"Umm. Yes?"

"You're not sure?" She arched her eyebrow.

"It's just that it's a little..."

"Personal?" she suggested.

"Erotic," I supplied. "But personal too."

"All art is erotic."

"Yes. But this is erotic in that it's art, but the subject matter is also erotic," I explained.

"Ah," she nodded. "I'm fine with it, but if it bothers you then say no. I won't be offended, just disappointed. But I'll live."

I sighed. "It's fine. You can see it. It's in my bedroom." I set my plate down.

She put her hand on my knee. "Eat," she insisted. "If you decide that you're comfortable with it when you're finished, then I'd love to see it. If you don't, then I'll understand."

I nodded and picked back up my plate. The only person that had seen the box, other than me and Eric, was Ryan. It hadn't seemed like a big deal to me to let Ryan see it, but we were intimate. I wasn't sure how I felt about letting a virtual stranger see something so personal to me. But then, she had basically been a third party to all of my sexcapades for the month that I had been living there, so I couldn't really keep thinking of her as a stranger. Sharon and I had been intimate in a very strange way for quite some time, even if I hadn't known about it.

After we finished eating, I cleaned the kitchen while she made another drink for each of us, then I led her to the bedroom. I stopped at the doorway and let her continue on. I silently pointed to the box.

"It's a hope chest!" she exclaimed, crossing the room to get a better look.

"A what?"

"A hope chest," she repeated while kneeling down in front of it. "That's what it's called. They were where girls stored all the things that they collected during their lives in hopes of using them when they married." Her voice had taken on a distant and distracted quality while she lovingly ran her fingers over the carved top.

"I didn't know that," I admitted. "I've always called it a toy box."

"Toy boxes have flat lids," she explained, still with that faraway sound to her voice. "This has a fitted lid. It's a chest."

She examined the image on the top and then moved to the front and the sides. I was getting more and more embarrassed the longer it went on. It felt like she was dissecting and placing judgment on the love between me and Eric, and it was unnerving. 

"This is stunning," she breathed. "Eric carved this? This is amazing work. It's so detailed. I had no idea that he was this talented. Is this accurate or artistic license?"

She had her fingertips rested on the side that displayed me in full frontal, fully erect in all my glory. My face heated as the blood rushed to it. It hadn't even occurred to me that my body was completely exposed like that until her fingers brushed against the very true to life depiction of my arousal.

"It's... umm..." 

She smirked at me. "I'm teasing you. Don't get so flustered." She went back to examining the chest, thankfully, no longer tormenting me. She slid it away from the wall to see the back side and then plopped down on the floor in front of it. "I'm not this good."

Eric was an exceptional artist. I knew that. But I hadn't meant to upset her by showing her the piece. I moved in to the bedroom and plopped down on the edge of the firm mattress. She looked up at my sharp intake of breath.

"Are you ok?" she asked, concern etched on her face.

"I'm fine," I assured her. "I just forgot to be careful."

She arched her eyebrow at me in an unspoken question. I hesitated but decided to hell with it. "You know all that 'Harder! Harder!' stuff? That should have been 'Please me gentle with me'."

She snickered. "Does Eric do gentle?"

"Oh yes," I nodded. "He loves gentle almost as much as he loves rough. He's got so much more control than I have. I'm usually the one that ends up begging for it."

She smirked at me and shifted her attention back to the chest. "Look at this." She reached out and caressed the faces in the wood. "You can see the love there. It's unreal to me how some people can look at this and think this is sick or wrong. This is love. Did he do this from photographs?"

"No. He did sketches. He did maybe a hundred of them before he decided on five."

She shook her head in incredulity. "He's amazing. I can see his influences too in the expressions on the faces and the lines of the bodies."

"Eric told me that being influenced by another artist is fine but outright mimicry is intolerable."

"Well, this is pretty close to mimicry," she said. 

I frowned. "Don't let Eric hear you say that. He'd be devastated."

"I'm not an expert on sculpture or anything, but I took this class over the winter on modern artists, and there was one of the artists featured whose work was just like this. I remember him because the instructor named his periods after emotions. Painters usually get colors, the blue period, the yellow period. This guy got things like sorrow and pain and love. This is straight from the love period. Except for the fact that his subjects were all hetero couples."

"I promise you that was all Eric," I replied with a slightly defensive tone. "I watched him do every bit of that. He wasn't copying anyone."

"Oh, I didn't mean that," she rushed to explain. "I'm sure it's his work. The skill and talent in the carving alone is astounding. I just meant that he's obviously heavily influenced by Unger in the subject matter. It's gorgeous and I wish I had this much talent."

It took me a second to realize what she had said. When it sank in, I started laughing. 

"What?" she asked, confused.

"God. You had me so worried," I chuckled. 

"About what?" 

"Eric," I chuckled. "You don't know what he does to work he thinks is too much like someone else's."

"I'm sorry," she frowned. "I wasn't trying to upset anyone. It's just very similar."

"It's identical," I replied with a grin.

She nodded. "It is."

"It should be." 

"What?" She was very confused. 

I decided to let her off the hook. "It IS Unger. Eric Unger."

Her mouth dropped open in shock. "You're fucking with me."

"I'm pretty sure that we aren't fucking," I teased.

"Your Eric is E. Unger? Seriously?"

"Serious as a heart attack," I promised. "That piece is signed on the bottom."

"Holy shit!" She smacked her forehead with her hand. "I'm such an idiot. I knew he was local. I mean, the class was on local artists, but I never thought... Wow. I'm a moron."

"What the hell class is this?" I asked, chuckling. "I'm sure Eric would love to take it."

"It's a continuing education class at the community college," she explained. "I just took it for fun."

"I'll be sure to mention it to him." I smiled.

"He's really Eric Unger?" she asked. "That's so cool. He's a pretty big deal around here. Like I said, I'm not an expert on sculpture or anything, but he's about as famous as an artist can get and still be alive."

"He's always been a big deal to me." I grinned. "But don't go getting all star struck. He's still just a person. He's got his issues just like everyone else."

"Still," she replied. "It's pretty cool."

"You know what?" I smirked. "We should tell him." I jumped up and the vodka that I had consumed hit my head. I got a little woozy for a second but went in and grabbed the phone. I plopped back down on the bed and winced automatically but it didn't really hurt. Alcohol, the great anesthetic.

"Are you really calling him?"

"Sure." I shrugged while dialing. "Why not?"

"Rain?" Eric answered.

"Hey Sexy," I purred. "What are you doing?"

"Sexy?" I could hear the humor in his voice. "Are you drunk, Baby?"

"A little bit, yeah," I admitted.

"Nice," he drawled. "Want me to come over?"

"Oh yeah," I husked. "But no."

"Well damn," he sighed.

"So I'm sitting here in my bedroom with my neighbor..." Eric's growl rumbled through the phone line and I giggled. "Not like that, Goof. You remember my neighbor, Sharon?"

"The one with the eagle bait?"

"Yes," I grinned. "She's a painter and she makes really potent drinks."

"How much have you and Sharon had to drink, Baby?"

"Just a couple," I told him. "Hush. Let me finish my story. You'll like this."

"Ok. Go."

"So I was showing her my toy box. It's called a hope chest, did you know that?"

"Yes."

"You let me call it a toy box all these years."

"I thought it was appropriate considering what's in it," he argued.

"Ok. So anyway, turns out she took a class a few months ago about you."

"A what?" Eric asked.

"A class."

"You're not telling it right," Sharon chided. "Give me the phone."

She took the receiver from me without waiting for my objection. "I took a class at the community college on prominent local artists and you were featured in it. Rain thought you'd be amused."

I laid the top half of my body across the bed, with my legs dangling over the edge, while they talked. The drinks were stronger than I had thought and my head was spinning a little. I had eaten so I didn't think I should have been that affected by two drinks. 

"He wants to talk to you." Sharon stuck the phone in my face and I took it.

"Baby?"

"I'm here." My voice was slurring a little, even to my own ears. "Don't you think that's funny?"

"Are you ok, Baby?" He was worried. His voice got sharper when he was worried.

"I'm fine," I tried to reassure him. 

"I'm coming over," he stated. 

"You don't have to," I told him. "I'm fine."

"You're drunk and alone with a stranger in your bedroom. I'm coming over. I'll be there soon."

"No, Eric. I'm fine," I insisted to no avail. He had already hung up.

"What's wrong?" Sharon asked.

"He's coming over," I said as I let the handset drop onto the mattress beside my head.

She giggled, "Awesome." Then she noticed my expression. "What's wrong? You don't want him to come over?"

"Not really," I replied. "I mean... I do. I want him all the time. It's just not healthy. We have a hard time being together. We fight a lot."

She nodded. "Artists are like that. We wear our emotions on our sleeves."

"I get that," I told her. "I understand that he feels things deeper than other people. I just don't understand why he won't or can't share those feelings with me. He can't vocalize what's going on in his head and it causes major problems between us."

She was silent for a few minutes, pensive. "Hey Rain? I know it's none of my business, and we just met and all, but maybe you're not paying attention."

"What do you mean?" My head was swimming and I was trying to keep my dinner down. I hated throwing up and I was concentrating really hard on trying to make sure that didn't happen.

"I mean..." She pointed to the chest. "Maybe he is vocalizing in the only way he knows how and you're just not hearing him."

I tried to follow her train of thought through the foggy haze in my head but couldn't. I sat up to take a look at the chest and listed over to the side.

"Damn!" she giggled. "You're drunk. I didn't know that you were such a lightweight. I'll go get you some water."

"I'm not a lightweight!" I called after her while I slowly inched up to the top of the bed. 

She brought me some water and I just stayed flat on the bed, letting her babble. She was excited to meet Eric, even though she had already technically met him. I couldn't blame her. Eric excited me too but for a totally different reason. Or... maybe not. I gathered from the small amount of her incessant chatter that I heard, she was crushing on him hardcore. I was mostly tuning her out. I knew it was rude but I couldn't seem to get a handle on why I was so fucked up. I didn't really notice time passing but it must have because the trip from Eric's place to mine was twenty minutes on a good day but, suddenly, he was there. 

"Rain?" Eric's sultry voice affected me in ways that I knew were dangerous this soon. He crawled onto the bed with me and snuggled up tight to my side. 

"Who let you in?" I grinned at him so he knew that I was teasing.

"I let myself in. I know how to work a doorknob," he smirked. "Contrary to all indications."

"Did you meet Sharon?" I asked.

"Yes." Eric looked up at Sharon who was suddenly pretty calm in comparison to before. "Hi Sharon. How much did he drink?"

"Two White Russians," she replied. "I didn't know he was a cheap drunk."

"He's not," Eric defended my honor. "Did you eat today, Baby?"

I nodded. "I don't know why it hit me so hard but I'm doing better now."

"What happened to your arm?" Eric asked, noticing the bruise on my right arm.

"Nothing," I explained. "I went to the doctor today."

"You had a blood draw?" he asked. 

"Oh shit," I cursed as it dawned on me. "I forgot."

"You can't drink after you have blood taken, Baby."

"I know, Eric," I sighed. "I forgot. It was stupid."

"How much blood did they take?" he asked, running his finger lightly over the bruise.

"Enough for a full work-up," I told him. 

"I brought him some water but he wouldn't drink it," Sharon tattled on me.

"Come on, Baby." Eric lifted me into a sitting position, leaning back against his chest for support. He handed me the glass of water. "Drink this, Rain."

I took a sip. "Come on guys," I sighed. "I've been far more fucked up than this. What's the big deal?"

"It's just scary when someone gets like that on two drinks, Rain," Sharon supplied. "It's not normal."

I couldn't argue with the logic. I would have been freaked out if it had been someone else. "You didn't have to come, Eric. I would have been fine."

"I wanted to take care of you, Baby. I always want to take care of you."

"Besides, now that we know what the problem is, I get to talk to a famous artist about art," she smirked. "How cool is that?"

"Famous artist?" Eric smirked.

"Don't get a big head," she giggled. "That's all the hero worship you're going to get from me."

"I like it when his head gets big," I mumbled under my breath.

At least, I thought it was under my breath until both of them turned to look at me. Sharon burst out in a fit of giggles and Eric held me tighter and kissed the top of my head. I snuggled into Eric's embrace and sipped my water while we all sat on my bed and they talked. This may have been a new experience for Sharon but this kind of thing was old hat for us. There had been hundreds, if not thousands, of times that Eric would just hold me while he socialized. It had begun the very first day that we had officially been a couple and had never stopped. My state of mild inebriation lowered my defenses enough that, for the first time in years, I felt absolutely no hostility or distress being in his presence. Enveloped in his arms, scent, and sound, I felt cherished, protected, and loved. The comforting feeling of Eric's heat around me, and his deep voice rumbling through me, soon lulled me into a contented slumber.



Rain Storms Ch. 04



Due to some combination of the alcohol, blood loss, and the safety of Eric's presence, I slept hard and soundly. I woke to the screeching of my alarm clock. Eric rolled over and slapped the clock until it stopped making noise. At some point while I had been asleep, Sharon had left and Eric had stripped us both and put us to bed. Hopefully, in that order. I was incredibly well rested and, thankfully, didn't hurt at all. I turned off the alarm, showered and dressed, then went to work, leaving Eric sleeping in my bed. I didn't know what time he had gotten to sleep and I didn't want to wake him.

I was disappointed to come home to an empty apartment. I had to keep reminding myself that it was better that way. I was falling back into familiar patterns and I didn't want that. It wasn't good for either of us. I got home later than usual because I had left work early the day before. I called Ryan before I took a shower to make sure that he was still coming over. I only had a short window of time to catch him at home between the stuff he did during the day and the meetings that he took in the evening. Unfortunately, I missed him and had to leave a message. There was a knock on the door as I was getting out of the shower and I rushed to answer it with a towel around my waist.

"Wow." Sharon eyed me up and down. "I have impeccable timing."

I smirked at her and stepped aside to let her in. "Give me a second and I'll slip into something less comfortable."

"Oh, don't go to any trouble on my account," she leered at me and I laughed.

"What's that?" I asked about the foil wrapped plate she had in her hands as I went to my bedroom to put on some clothes.

"Cookies," she called out from the living room. "It's an apology for getting you shit faced and a thank you for introducing me to Eric. He said that you have a sweet tooth so I baked you some chocolate chip cookies."

I came back into the living room, dressed and laughing. "Eric told you that?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Because he's the one with a sweet tooth," I chuckled. "The man would live on cookies and ice cream if you let him."

"Oh," she pouted. "Well, I guess you can save them for him."

"Hell no!" I exclaimed. "I love chocolate chip."

Her smile lit up her face. She peeled back the foil and I snagged a handful of cookies and took them with me to the couch. I bit into an obviously fresh baked cookie and moaned in appreciation. 

"So I'm forgiven?" she asked hopefully.

"You were never to blame," I assured her. "I was just stupid."

"I still felt bad." 

"Don't," I insisted. "These are good. I can't wait to tell Eric what he missed."

She giggled. "I can make more."

"Oh no." I shook my head. "Make him sweat." 

We both looked up to the ringing of the phone. I got up to answer it.

"Rain. I'm sorry I missed your call."

"It's fine. I just wanted to make sure we were still on for tonight."

"Umm." He hesitated.

"Are you upset with me, Minx?"

"No."

"Then what is it?" I asked. "Talk to me, Ryan. Please. We can talk about anything. Don't shut me out."

He sighed. "I just don't want to interfere between you and Eric."

"Oh God, Ry. You aren't doing that. Please come over. I miss you. Eric and I will either work things out or we won't. You aren't a hindrance. I need you in my life."

"He doesn't want us seeing each other, Rain," he argued. "You know he doesn't."

"He's never asked me to stop seeing you. He knows that you make me happy. You keep me sane and I love you. I'm not willing to give you up. He may not like it but he's accepted you as a part of my life. If you don't want to see me anymore then tell me that. I'll find a way to honor your wishes. But please don't cut me out of your life because you're afraid that you're causing problems. You aren't. I swear that you aren't."

He sighed again. "I have to go, Rain. I'm going to be late."

I was terrified that I was losing him and I wasn't above begging. "Ryan, please come over tonight. We'll talk. Please."

"Ok." His voice was hesitant and reluctant but at least he'd agreed. "I'll try to be there by nine."

"Thank you."

"Sounds like your love life is falling apart," Sharon said sadly after I'd hung up the phone and plopped back down beside her.

"Feels like it too."

"I'm sorry," she said. "Is there anything that I can do?"

"Tell me how to stop it," I begged. "Tell me how to make him not leave me."

"Oh Rain," she sighed. "I'm the wrong person to ask. I'm a disaster when it comes to men. Completely. Like I should be locked up as a danger to myself and others."

I snickered. "Me too. Maybe we should both switch teams."

She giggled. "I've tried. I just can't do it. I like dick too much."

I sighed dramatically. "Me too."

So we just sat on the couch in companionable silence and stuffed our faces with cookies.

I made dinner for us again, although we didn't eat much since we'd both eaten nearly a dozen cookies a piece. She was helping me clean up and put away the leftovers when Ryan arrived. I introduced them and Sharon took her leave to go take care of Cujo.

"Cujo?" Ryan asked after she had left.

"Yes," I smirked. "He's a very scary Corgi. He will literally love you to death."

He grinned. "I love Corgis. They have little heart shaped butts. It's too cute."

"I'm pretty fond of your heart shaped butt, Minx," I murmured and took him in my arms, nuzzling his neck. He smelled so good and I really had missed him.

"My butt is not heart shaped," he argued playfully. "It's round."

"Like a bubble," I agreed and kissed him. He didn't resist but he pulled away too quickly.

"I thought we were going to talk," he said.

"Do we need to talk, Minx?" I asked. "I will spend all night convincing you how important you are to me. If you want it in words, I will do that, but I'd rather do it with body language."

"Rain," he sighed and pulled out of my arms. He walked over to the couch and perched on the edge. "I don't want to come between you and Eric. You two should be together. You're in love with him."

I nodded and joined him on the couch. "And we're trying to work it out, Ryan. But I love you too. I don't want to lose you. If you feel strongly about it, then we can stop the sexual side of our friendship, but please, please don't cut me out of your life. You're my best friend."

"You're my best friend too, Rain. I love you and I don't want to be the cause of any pain for you."

"Then don't leave me," I pleaded. "That's the only way you'd hurt me."

"You'd be ok just being friends?" he asked.

"Yes," I promised. "It's not my choice but I will respect your right to make that decision."

He sighed dramatically. "It's not what I want either."

"Then don't do this. Maybe sometime down the road it might be what's best for everyone but it's not right now."

"But it will be harder down the road!" he exclaimed.

"Possibly," I nodded. "But we can't know that. You may fall madly in love with some hot top and kick me to the curb."

He giggled, "Yeah. Right."

"It could happen," I argued teasingly. "Maybe you'll share him with me a time or two."

"Oh geeze," he smirked. "Now you're sleeping with my imaginary future boyfriend? Some friend you are!"

"You were there!" I objected. "You said it was ok!"

He gasped at me and then erupted into giggles, falling over onto his side. I pounced on him and tickled him until he cried uncle. Then I kissed him until he was moaning and panting.

"Tell me that you want me," I husked.

"I want you, Rain," he moaned.

I picked him up and carried him to bed. I lovingly stripped him and then stood up to shed my own clothes. I glanced up at the blank wall between my apartment and Sharon's, wondering if she was listening. I thought it would bother me but it didn't. It actually turned me on for some reason. I wanted her to be listening. I wanted her to hear everything I was going to do to Ryan. I wanted her to know how much pleasure I was giving him. 

"Rain?" Ryan called softly. "Are you ok?"

I looked down at the gorgeous diminutive body stretched wantonly across the bed. "Perfect," I purred. "Fucking perfect."

I crawled across the bed towards him, letting my hunger for him shine through. I tried to convey how much I needed him, how much I loved him. The blatant look of desire reflected back at me was enough to make me forget all about my eavesdropping neighbor and concentrate solely on making the beauty in my arms scream my name in ecstasy. 

When I got home from work the next day, Sharon was standing outside her apartment, without Cujo. 

"No dog?" I asked.

"He's been out already," she explained.

"Were you waiting on me?"

"Yeah," she admitted. "So you got things worked out between you and Ryan?"

I grinned and wiggled my eyebrows at her. "How'd things work out for you?" I teased.

She had the decency to look embarrassed. It was the first time that I had made her blush. She recovered much more quickly than I would have. "Let me put it this way... If you ever do seriously consider batting for the other team, I want to be first on the roster. I'd love to know if the reality lives up to the hype."

"The hype?" I smirked.

"Yeah. You sound amazing but that's easy enough to fake. I wonder if the physical is anything near as good as the audio."

That got me riled up. I knew, logically, that she was just teasing, but she had basically just accused me of being a bad lover. Suddenly, I had something to prove. It was moronic, and half of my brain was screaming at me to stop, but the other half, the dominant half, was egging me on. I dropped my case and stalked over to her side of the patio. I grabbed her by the pony tail and wrenched her head back then lowered my mouth to hers. My hands were rough and unforgiving but my mouth was as gentle as a spring mist. I kissed her softly until I felt her body relax into mine. She parted her lips for me and I took the invitation. As soon as she looped her arms around my neck, my sweet kisses turned fiery. My hands gentled, and I lovingly caressed her face and body while I plundered her mouth with my tongue.

I broke off the kiss, leaving her unsteady on her feet and gasping for air. "Nobody fakes anything in my bed, Sharon. I may bat for the other team but I can still be called on as a pinch hitter."

"Wow," she breathed. "I'm going to have to bake you a cake."

I laughed and stepped back. "Eric will be here tonight," I warned her. "If you're trying to impress him, anything sweet and coffee flavored will do."

"Coffee flavored?" 

"Tiramisu, espresso cookies, coffee ice cream, that kind of thing. He's a sucker for coffee."

She grinned. "Thanks for the tip."

I picked up my case and went into my apartment to shower and prepare for Eric's arrival and his not so gentle affections. I didn't make it to the shower. The phone was ringing before I even got in the door. 

I grabbed it up. "Hello?"

"Hey." Even with just the one word, Eric's voice sounded strange, distant and hesitant.

"Hey you."

"I was just calling to verify that you still wanted to see me tonight."

"God yes. I've been looking forward to this all day."

"Baby? Have you been drinking again?"

"No," I chuckled. "I just miss you."

"Um. Ok." There is was again. That quality in his voice that I couldn't identify.

"Is something wrong, Eric?" I asked. "Do you not want to come over?"

"No, Baby. I want that more than anything. It's just... When you didn't call me last night, I thought... I mean, I crashed your party and you didn't say goodbye..."

Was he scared? Nervous? I had never heard him like that before. This wasn't my arrogant, cocky Eric. Was this what I had reduced him to? "What are you feeling right now, Eric? I need to understand what's going on in your head."

"Baby," he groaned. "Please don't make me do this. Not right now. I'm at a payphone. Can we talk about it when I see you?"

"Where are you?"

"Around the corner," he admitted. "7-11."

I chuckled. "What were you going to do if I had been upset with you?"

"I don't have to worry about that now, right?"

"No, you don't," I agreed. "Come over."

Damn. He looked good. He was dressed casually for Eric, in a dark-red button down and black jeans, but seeing him made me practically salivate. I had to kick myself to remember that I needed him to talk to me before I pounced on him.

We sat down on the couch, not touching. He started, without any prompting from me, "I was worried." 

"About what?" I asked.

"That I had broken us," he replied. "That I had undone any good we've accomplished by pushing myself on you when you told me not to."

"You came over because you were concerned about me, Eric. I know that. I wasn't upset."

"But..."

"I didn't say goodbye because you were sleeping so peacefully and I didn't want to wake you," I explained. "I didn't call you last night because Ryan... He was trying to martyr our friendship for you."

He shook his head slightly as if to clear it. "What?"

"He thinks that he's coming between us and he doesn't want to hurt me."

"I'm sorry, Rain. That's my fault."

"It's not your fault," I told him. "He's just trying to do the right thing but he's hurting me. I don't want to lose him. I hope I got through to him, and he'll stop trying to leave me, but I don't know for sure."

"Do you want me to talk to him?" he offered.

I gaped at him in shock. "You would do that?" 

"Of course I would, Baby," he said. "I would do anything for you. I don't want you to lose him. He means a lot to you and you love him. He's your Irish."

I smiled. "Yeah he is."

"You know..." he drawled. "Ryan and Irish would probably get on, as she says, like a house on fire. They're a lot alike."

"They even kinda look alike," I giggled. 

He chuckled. "Except she's taller."

"He's more feminine."

His eyes opened wide in surprise then he started laughing. "Oh shit. He is. Personality-wise, anyhow."

"It's too bad they couldn't share clothes," I added.

Once we'd settled down from the laughing, his expression sobered. "I don't want damage us again, Rain. I'm trying so hard to change for you."

"Oh Eric," I sighed. "I don't want you to change who you are."

"You don't?" he asked, perplexed.

"God no," I swore. "I love you just the way you are. I only want you to be able to share that person with me. Stop shutting me out. Open up and talk to me."

"That's not in my nature, Rain. I don't like to talk about me."

"I know you don't, but I can only get so far by guessing. I spend so much time and effort trying to figure out how you're feeling by your work and your actions that it wears me out. And I don't guess right. It would be so much easier if you could just tell me. I'm not expecting you to start sharing your innermost feelings with the world, but it would be nice if you would trust me with them. We're worth it, don't you think?"

"Yes." He reached out and caressed my face. "Yes, Baby. I do."

I covered his hand with mine and brought both of them away from my face, entwining my fingers with his. "I'm sorry that I made you worry, or nervous, or scared. I was not upset with you. Thank you for talking to me."

He smiled. "You're welcome."

I smiled in return. "I have a reward for you."

"A reward?"

"Yes," I replied, still smiling. "Think of it as positive reinforcement. You did good. You deserve a treat."

I stood up and tugged our still joined hands. He stood and I led him out of the living room.

"What are we doing?" he asked.

"I need to take a shower."

"Are you going to let me watch?" he asked, hopefully.

"No," I smirked. "I'm going to let you help."

"Oh fuck yes," he moaned.

We played a little bit in the water, splashing each other and generally horsing around, before it got intense. He insisted on bathing me. He started at my head and washed my hair then systematically moved down my body while I stood under the spray. Eric loved water. When we lived together, the bathroom did not boast a shower stall big enough for us to shower together, so it was a rare treat for us. One we never failed to take advantage of whenever the opportunity arose. There had even been times when he would rent a hotel room in town just for the privilege of making use of a bathtub or shower. 

By the time he declared me thoroughly clean, I was leaking pre-cum like a faucet. He guided me around his kneeling form so that I was standing against the back wall and the water was raining down on him. He urged my feet apart and sucked my rigid cock into his mouth. The sensation of his lips and tongue working my length had my head spinning. I braced one hand on the wall of the shower and threaded the other through his heavy, wet hair. Just watching Eric worshiping my cock with his mouth would have been enough for me. Feeling it too was always too much. As much as I wanted to make it last forever, I could never hold out. 

He wanted to make me come and he wasn't going to give me any quarter. He hollowed out his cheeks and constantly snaked his tongue over and around my cockhead, paying special attention to my frenulum, where he knew that I was extremely sensitive. He slid his hand up the inside of my thigh and pushed two soapy fingers deep inside me, zeroing in on my sweet spot immediately. I cried out something unintelligible as a powerful orgasm slammed into me, knocking the wind out of me and my knees out from under me. Thankfully, Eric caught me before I cracked my skull on the edge of the tub.

"Fuck," he husked, holding my shuddering body tightly. "I love it when you do that."

"Nearly brain myself?" I panted.

He chuckled. "No, Baby. When you come so hard for me that you lose your fucking mind."

"I almost really lost my mind that time," I grimaced. "Splattered all over the bathroom."

"I will always catch you, Rain," he promised. "You don't have to worry. You're safe. I'll never let you fall."

"I've fallen, Eric," I told him, pushing the wet strands of hair back from his face. "I fell eight years ago and I've fallen harder every single day since then."

Eric's kiss was sweet and gentle and he conveyed what he was feeling perfectly, without words.

I mourned the loss when he pulled away. "Water's cold," he rumbled.

It occurred to me that the tank was only a twenty gallon and it had probably been cold for a long time. That's most likely why he'd turned us around. The cold water wouldn't have bothered him but I would have screeched like a banshee. He helped me upright and out of the bath.

"Your turn," I told him, attempting to drag him to the bedroom.

He resisted. "Let's feed you first, Baby. I can wait."

"Eric," I pouted. "I want you."

"I want that too, Rain," he murmured, wrapping me in a towel. "But you need to eat. We'll get lost in each other and you'll forget to eat."

This was Eric's way of telling me that he was hungry by telling me that I was. At this point, my modis operandi would be to get bitchy and snap at him. I was trying to be better for us. I counted in my head while he was towel drying my body until I was calm. "Eric." I grabbed at his hands as he was rubbing my short hair with the fluffy towel. "If you're hungry, please just say that."

I held his gaze while he pressed his lips in a firm line and struggled with his nature. "I'm hungry, Baby," he finally said. "Can we eat first? I'm not going to want to stop making love to you once we start and I have been too upset to eat for the last couple of days."

I grinned at the look of quiet desperation on his face and arched up on my tiptoes to kiss his nose so he knew that I wasn't laughing at him. "I love you so much." 

He scrunched up his nose and smirked at me. "Could you please feed me then? I'm fucking starving."

"My pleasure."

When I came out of the bedroom, in jeans and a t-shirt, Eric had slipped on his jeans and he was poking around in my fridge. Bent over like he was, with his ass in the air and his head in the fridge, I had the most unsexy thought imaginable. I winced at the thought of what all that frigid, wet hair was going to feel like slapping against his naked torso when he stood up.




Rain Storms Ch. 04



"I said that I'd cook for you," I told him.

"I'll help," he offered. 

I chuckled. "You only want to help because you won't have to clean afterwards, Goof."

He shot me a sexy, sly, little grin. "I love you."

"Oh get out of my kitchen, Charmer." I playfully shoved him out of the tiny galley kitchen. He allowed me to move him as far as the entrance before he planted his feet. 

"Kiss me," he demanded.

I looped my arms around his neck and stretched up to lock lips with him. He pulled my body flush to his with both hands on my back until he let one slide down to cup my ass.

"Forget the food," he breathed, his eyes heavy with desire, when I tried to break away.

"Food first," I insisted as there was a knock on the door. "Get the door. I'll scrounge up something to eat."

He, not too gently, smacked my ass before he went to answer the door.

I heard Sharon's voice exclaim, "Wow. Am I interrupting?"

"Rain's cooking," Eric replied.

"Oh goody! I brought desert!"

"Come in, Sharon," I called out. "We were just about to start making dinner."

She came into the kitchen with Eric following, his eyes glued to the foil covered platter she set on the kitchen counter.

"Do I want to know?" I smirked at her, indicating the platter.

"Mocha cookies," she volunteered. 

Eric moaned loudly and reached over her for the platter. "Holy fucking shit! Are you kidding me?"

"Don't eat them all!" I shouted at his rapidly retreating backside as he scurried off with the entire platter. "I'm cooking real food here!"

Sharon snickered. "What are you making?"

"Something fast, apparently," I chuckled. "Otherwise he'll have them all eaten." I pulled the uneaten casserole from the night before out of the fridge and started it reheating.

"Why is he half naked and wet?" she whispered conspiringly.

"We were in the shower."

"Should I go home?" she asked. 

"You're welcome to stay for dinner." 

"Do you want me to make drinks?" she offered.

I squinted at her. "Do you think you can make them with less toxicity this time?"

She giggled. "Sure thing, lightweight."

"I'm not a lightweight!" I whined, quietly enough that Eric couldn't overhear above the sound of the TV he'd turned on. She snickered and retrieved the glasses. "I wish I had some wine. Eric prefers wine."

"I have some merlot," she replied with a slight frown. "It's probably not what he's used to."

"Ask him," I suggested.

She got a determined look on her face, like she was shoring up her defenses, and stepped out of the kitchen. I followed behind her.

"Eric?" she started hesitantly. "I have some merlot next door. Rain thought you might prefer it to vodka. It's not anything fancy but it's not in a box or anything. I mean, we're having chicken and all but..."

Eric swallowed the bite of cookie in his mouth. "These are amazing, Sharon," he smiled. "I would love some wine, thank you."

Sharon smiled and bounced out of the apartment.

I strode over to the couch, grabbed Eric by the face, and kissed him hard, tasting the espresso and chocolate on his lips. Sure, Eric had better manners than to turn his nose up at her generous offer just because it wasn't up to his expensive standards, but that wasn't why he was being nice to her. He was doing it for me. He knew how hard it was for me to make friends. I was desperately lonely most of the time we had known each other. I just couldn't connect with people. My life had been so fucked up from birth that I simply had no common ground with normal people. I did fine with the geeks that I worked with, but we shared a love/hate relationship with all things electronic. I found it nearly impossible to bond with average people.

"What was that for?" he smirked. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining."

"You're a beautiful man, Eric Unger."

He grinned at me. "You must be rubbing off on me."

"I'd like to rub off on you," I leered suggestively.

"That's not an offer that I'm likely to refuse."

Unfortunately, Sharon came back with the wine so any rubbing would have to wait.

After Sharon left, I cleaned the kitchen while Eric spoke with Sheldon on the phone. I caught enough of the conversation to understand that Eric was still planning on doing the commission for Sheldon. He just wasn't going to work for Dylan's firm. I started the dishwasher and picked Eric's shirt up off the floor, left discarded in the hallway. I was intending to hang it up but I only made it as far as just inside the bedroom. I held the shirt up to my face and inhaled. I couldn't help it. It smelled like him and it was intoxicating. It was a masculine scent, spicy with a slight musk and a hint of sweet. I pulled off my shirt and slipped his on, sniffing the collar. His clothing wasn't as big on me as it had been when we first got together but I still looked like a kid playing dress-up in his clothes. I didn't care. It was soft and finely woven and such a deep dark red that it probably looked black in the right light. I couldn't keep my fingers or my face out of the material.

"You can have the real thing, you know. I'm right here."

I looked up to see Eric leaning one shoulder against the doorframe of the bedroom door with a sexy grin on his gorgeous face. 

I smiled at him. "I thought you were on the phone." 

"I agreed to meet him for a late lunch tomorrow in order to get off the phone. Sheldon will talk forever if you let him."

"A late lunch, you say?" I smirked. "I guess that means that you're in no hurry to get to bed."

He pushed himself off the doorframe. "Oh no. I'm ready to go to bed right now." Closing the distance between us, he threaded his fingers into the hair at the nape of my neck and yanked my head back with enough force to make me yelp. This was Eric's way of warning me that it was going to get rough. His conversation with Sheldon had brought back his jealously over my affair with Dylan. He needed to claim me as his and he wasn't in the mood to spare me any mercy. The red hot desire that spiked through my system had me panting before he'd even really touched me. "Sleep, on the other hand? I don't see any of that in either one of our foreseeable futures."

He brutally took possession of my lips and I melted into his embrace. The sound that tore from his throat at my submission was more of a triumphant howl than a moan. My responding whimper encouraged him to do exactly what I wanted him to do; rip my clothes off and throw me on the bed.

As soon as he'd yanked off his own jeans, he followed me down onto the mattress. He crawled over my body and captured my mouth again. "You'd better be ready for me, Rain," he husked against my already bruised lips. "Now's the time to speak up if you don't want this."

I almost laughed. I wanted it more than words could ever convey. All the sex that I'd had in the past year, including with Eric, had been gentle and vanilla. I wanted to be plundered, fucked, and wrecked. I wanted the sharp intensity. I wanted to blur the lines between pleasure and pain. I wanted to be held down and pounded until I couldn't think or see or breathe. And I knew that Eric would give me exactly what I needed. Instead of a verbal response, I pulled my knees up to my chest, exposing myself to him in invitation. His equally verbose reply was to slide down my body and bury his tongue in my ass. From that point on, until the sunlight snuck through the bedroom window, a vast majority of our conversation was expressed without words.

I knocked on Sharon's door a little after two the next afternoon. She stuck her nose out the door with her foot slightly raised to block Cujo's escape. She was back in her paint spattered overalls and severe pony tail.

"I'm going shopping," I told her, grinning and bouncing on the balls of my feet. "I thought you might want to come with."

"Did Eric leave?" she asked.

I nodded vigorously. "He had a meeting about a commission piece that he's working on. He'll be back tonight. We're going dancing. We haven't been dancing in ages. I love to dance. Do you dance?"

She smirked. "Jesus, you're hyper today."

I nodded enthusiastically. "Shopping?"

She giggled. "Yeah. Ok. Come on in while I change."

I stepped into her apartment for the first time. She had no furniture in her living room. Our apartments faced east, and hers was on the end, so she had two big windows that faced north. They had the generic, off-white, plastic mini-blinds that were pulled all the way open, and they were covered by thick, black-out shades that were also all the way open. I assumed, so that she could control the light. The beige carpet was covered with a tarp and she had a round dining table, scattered with paint supplies, a wooden, three-footed stool, and a huge easel. 

I checked out the canvas while she went to her bedroom to change clothes. It was obviously something she was just starting. There were splotches of greens and browns around the edges and faded charcoal lines on the parts that had no paint on them. I couldn't tell what it would become when it was finished.

She came out of the bedroom looking better than I had ever seen her. She just traded the overalls for jeans and sandals, and put on a man's oxford shirt, but she'd taken her hair down and put on a small amount of makeup. 

"Let me take Cujo out before we go. You're driving, right?"

"Yes."

"Ok." She smiled and pocketed her keys, ID, and some cash.

"So tell me about you," I encouraged when we were walking around the mall, window shopping.

"Not much to tell," she shrugged.

"Come on," I urged. "I don't know anything about you except that you never seem to leave the house. Don't you have family? Friends?"

"I leave the house," she argued. "I just do it before you. I work from seven to noon."

"And..." I prodded.

"Ok," she sighed. "I'm an orphan. My parents were killed in a car crash when I was a baby so I never knew them. I was raised by my only living relative, my father's mother. She died when I was twelve."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Don't be," she replied. "She wasn't a very nice woman. She wasn't abusive but she was cold. She did her duty and nothing else. I was shuffled between foster homes until I turned eighteen and then I was set loose on the world."

I stared at her hard for a second and then burst out laughing. Her mouth dropped open in shock. "I'm sorry." I grabbed her and hugged her. "I'm not laughing at you. Really. It's just that I was thinking that I finally made a normal friend and here I find out that you are so not normal."

She still looked off-put by my inappropriate show of mirth so I gave her the Reader's Digest version of my early life's story. She smirked. "I don't know how to make friends," she shot out as a challenge on who was more fucked up.

"Neither do I."

"I can't keep a boyfriend."

"I've only had two, ever," I retorted. "One lasted about a week."

"I use sex as a substitute for love." 

I upped the ante. "I was a prostitute."

She gaped at me. "Ok. You win."

I huffed on my fingernails and buffed them on my chest.

She giggled and smacked my arm. I laughed and dragged her into a trendy clothing store to find something to wear to whatever club Eric was taking me to.

As I stripped off my shirt to try on the first thing she'd picked out for me, she got a glimpse of my back and gasped. "What the fuck happened to you?"

I chuckled. "Eric bites."

"Holy crap," she whistled. "You like that?"

"Yeah," I admitted. "Nothing screams gay man like a love bite on the back of your shoulder."

She snorted and giggled. "You're a sick man, Rain."

I sighed wistfully, "I know."

After she'd dressed me up like a Barbie doll for an hour, I picked something and then dragged her into a women's clothing store to return the favor. She objected loudly at first but, eventually, allowed me to buy her something. She only relented because I'd, patiently, explained that I was taking her dancing with us if I had to tie her up and kidnap her.

Eric arrived on my doorstep a little before nine. He was all in black leather, pants, boots, and a vest. He was also wearing that bondage belt that he'd had since we'd first met. Just seeing him made me think two or three times about skipping the dance clubs for a more private sort of tango. There were items in my toy box that hadn't seen the light of day for a very long time and I could almost feel the ghost of the leather restraints around my wrists.

Sharon had chosen a skin tight, candy-apple red, short-sleeved shirt for me and some painted on black pants. The whole thing was spandex-y and put me on display more than I was strictly comfortable with, especially since it made my reaction to Eric in leather much more obvious. However, the appreciative look in his eyes kept me from making a last minute change. 

Out of the three of us, Sharon was the standout. I had picked the dress, and had seen it on her, but I was still shocked at her transformation. The dress was shimmery and silver, body hugging with strategic cutouts on the sides and back. She was wearing full makeup for the first time and her long hair was dressed in soft waves down her back. She'd forgone the glasses, and opted for contacts, and she looked stunning.

"I'm too fat for this," she mumbled and fidgeted with the clingy material.

"You're not fat, Girlfriend," I rebuked her. "You're voluptuous. And you look amazing."

She glanced at Eric for his opinion and he grinned and nodded. She smiled.

Eric drove us down to Oak Lawn and circled around the streets looking for a decent parking place. "We should be taking her to a straight bar," I opined. "She looks too hot to not get hit on."

"If we go to a straight club, they will kick us out for getting too touchy-feely on the dance floor," Eric pointed out. "There's no way that I'm not going to have my hands all over you."

"No straight clubs!" Sharon exclaimed from the back seat. "I'll just end up attracting some loser who expects me to dress like this all the time and bring him beer and suck his cock while he watches football!"

Eric and I looked at each other and laughed. "That sounds awesome," Eric teased. "Will you suck my cock while I watch football?"

"You don't like football," I retorted. "Or beer."

I held Sharon's hand and tugged her into the club while Eric paid the cover charge. I was paying attention to a reluctant Sharon and accidently ran smack dab into someone. I turned around to find a very familiar face blinking at me through shaggy black hair tipped with electric blue.

"Well hello," he purred with his hand on my chest.

"Jason?" I stuttered in astonishment.

"Justin," he replied.

At least, I thought that was what he said over the din of the blaring house music. "What?"

"Jus. Tin," he shouted. "Jason's my brother. And who might you be, hot stuff?" he cooed, feeling me up through the thin fabric of my shirt.

"Rain," I replied.

"Rain? Like Jason's boss?" He plastered his inebriated body against mine and snaked his arm around my waist. "Wow. Jase didn't tell me that you were so fucking sexy," he moaned in my ear and kissed the side of my neck.

"Erg," I replied, intelligibly. I hadn't been in the door for thirty seconds and this carbon copy of my co-worker was so far past hitting on me he'd entered another dimension entirely.

"Mine," Eric snarled. He reached over my shoulder and pushed Justin's lips off of me with a hand on the top of Justin's head. Then he grabbed me by the waist and jerked me out of Justin's grasp and backwards into his own. "Don't make me fuck you up, boy." 

"Oh shit! James! Get your drunk ass boyfriend before he slobbers on my boss some more!" 

I turned at the shouting voice to see the real Jason accompanied by a very buff blonde dude with the air of a Viking about him. The Norseman protectively wrapped his arms around Justin and led him off while whispering in his ear. Justin shot me one last lustful look over his shoulder and blew me a kiss.

"Jason?" I shouted over the thundering music. "What are you doing here?"

"Gay brother. Saturday night," he replied and shrugged.

I chuckled. I had definitely picked the right person at work to come out to. I introduced the group to each other and dragged Eric out to the dance floor, leaving Sharon with Jason. I kept a watchful eye on Sharon but she and Jason seemed to be getting along. I even saw them dancing a few times and I hoped that Jason did not like beer and football.

We closed the place down and took Sharon home. I really expected Jason to go home with her but he didn't. I didn't understand why but I didn't ask either. I blew it off to the probability that my expectations were skewed by my history or sexuality. From the way they hit it off, if they had been gay guys they probably would have been fucking in the bathroom.

All three of us plopped down on my couch, side by side. Two of us were more than a little intoxicated. Eric was completely sober. I snuggled up against his side and slid my hand into his open vest, rubbing his firm stomach muscles. At some point at the club, he'd lost his shirt but managed to keep the vest. Now he really was clad in nothing but leather and it was fucking sexy as hell. 

"I'm hungry," I purred.

"We could go to Denny's," Eric suggested.

I sat up and swiveled around, straddling his thighs, facing him. "No," I husked. "I'm hungry," I repeated suggestively and kissed him. He slid one hand up my back and the other into my hair, engaging immediately.

I moaned into his mouth and sucked on his tongue.

Sharon giggled, "That's so hot."

I broke the kiss and pulled back. "Yeah he is." 

I yanked off my sweaty, sticky shirt and dropped it on the floor then attacked his belt and the button on the front of his leather pants.

"What are you doing, Baby?" he chuckled.

I glanced up from my task, making eye contact, and arched my eyebrow at him.

"We have company," he added.

"She doesn't care," I said. "She'd love to have some video to go with the audio. Wouldn't you, Shar?"

"Hmm," she responded.

I finally got his fly open and stuck my hand down the front of his pants. He wasn't fully erect but his cock was hot in my hand. He grabbed my wrist before I could pull it out of its leather prison.

"Baby. Stop," he said softly.

I squinted at him. "What happened to the man who always threatened to fuck me in public?"

He stared into my eyes. "Are you doing this because you're drunk, Rain? Are you going to regret this come morning?"

"I want to suck your cock, Eric," I replied. "If she wants to watch then she can. If not, she knows how to get home from here. I think she'll be safe walking the fifteen feet to her own apartment."

He stared into my eyes, evaluating me. 

"Unless you don't want my mouth on you..." I added in the sultriest voice I could manage.

With his free hand, he pulled my head forward and kissed me passionately. He broke the kiss and whispered in my ear, "Don't hate me for this, Baby." Then he let go of my wrist and draped his arms over the backrest of the couch.

"Fuck yes," I moaned and scooted backwards off his lap. I shoved the coffee table out of my way and knelt on the floor in front of him. I reached up for the waistband of his pants and he raised up to let me slide them down his legs. He was commando and I couldn't stop the moan that vibrated through my chest as his body was revealed. 

"Holy shit!" Sharon gasped. We both ignored her.

I was too anxious to fuck with his boots so I left the pants at his ankles. He slumped down a little, scooting his ass to the edge of the cushion to give me better access. I shimmied between his knees and gripped the base of his semi. Circling my tongue around his cockhead, I tasted his sweat and musk. I moaned loudly and my eyes rolled back in my head. Fuck, he smelled and tasted so incredible. There was nothing better than the sight, scent, and flavor of Eric invading my senses. Ryan was sweet but Eric tasted like man. Like my man.




Rain Storms Ch. 04



This was my chance. With the way he was now, not completely hard, I could deep throat him properly. I didn't get a whole lot of opportunity over the years to get my mouth on him before he was fully erect. The added distraction of Sharon had granted me the special treat of being able to use all my skills on him, if only for a short while. I got him as wet as I could, as quickly as I could, and swallowed him down. 

His hips came off the couch. "Fuck!" he hissed. He gripped the back of my head and thrust deep while I worked him with my throat muscles. It only lasted for a few seconds before he swelled to proportions too big for me to handle. I tried to pull back but he held on for a second longer before reluctantly letting go. I looked up at his face while I suckled on his plump glans. He was panting and clenching his jaw, eyes glazed over, pupils completely blown. "Fuck, Baby." His voice was strained. "Did I hurt you?"

I shook my head slightly, not willing to let him out of my mouth. I waited for his jaw to relax before I set back to my task. No longer being able to get him down my throat, I concentrated on what I could take and stroked the rest with my hand. I kept that up until my jaw started aching then moved my mouth down to his sac while I jacked his cock. He was always more sensitive further down, and I knew that I could get him to come harder and faster by rimming him or worshiping his balls. 

He was writhing and cursing, and his cock and my hand were slick with his pre-cum, before I buried my nose on the underside of his saliva slicked sac and licked his perineum. He knew what I was after and he parted his knees as best as he could with his feet trapped and scooched further down the seat. The instant I laid the flat of my tongue against his hole, his curses became incoherent babbles, grunts, and moans. I didn't get to tongue fuck him for long but I never did. He was ready to blow within a few minutes. His ass was so sensitive, and such a hot spot for him, it never ceased to amaze me that he had never once even hinted that he wanted to be penetrated with anything other than my tongue. I had hopes for such, once upon a time, but had long since abandoned them. 

His body tensed up and he roared my name as he painted himself, me, and the couch with his seed. I lifted my cum stained hand and waited until he opened his eyes. Bringing the back of my hand to my mouth, I made a show of slowly licking my hand clean. It was the first time I had swallowed his cum since we started sleeping together again and he didn't miss the significance of my action. He ran his fingers through the pearly streak across his stomach and offered them to me. I wrapped my lips around his fingers and sucked them dry. He scooped up more of his jism and licked it off. I crawled up his body, straddling his hips, and aggressively kissed him, sucking his flavor off his tongue.

He cupped my ass cheeks and squeezed gently, applying a tantalizing amount of pressure to my, still clothed, butt crack. "Are you sore, Baby?" he husked.

I shook my head and he squinted one eye at me in disbelief. "A little," I admitted. "I want you to fuck me, Eric. I'll be fine."

"On that note..." Sharon interrupted. We both turned at the sound of her voice. I had totally forgotten that she was still there. "I loved the show but I don't think I can stay for the grand finale." She got off the couch and went to the front door. "You guys have fun." She winked at me and left.

"I don't want to fuck you, Rain," Eric said, brushing his fingers across my cheek bone. "I want to make love to you. None of the rough stuff tonight, Baby. Ok?"

I smiled at him. "Yeah. Ok."

Monday was a typical Monday. Part of the job that I was on involved upgrading the computers to Windows 3.1. The client saw something new and shiny and didn't concern himself with the reality of the situation. He wanted what he wanted, and it was my job to see that he got what he wanted. Jason and I spent most of the day chasing down, and attempting to resolve, all the undocumented features that the upgrade incurred. Well before the end of the day, I was ready and willing to defenestrate both the computers and the client. Unfortunately, the office was in a single story building. I confess to feeling a little nostalgic for the genius that was Todd. But, while Jason did not have the kind of insight that Todd possessed, Jason applied himself to every task. Together, we managed to muddle through. What we didn't manage to do was discuss Saturday night. It was never even mentioned.

After work, I went directly to the gym to blow off some steam. When I got home, Sharon stuck her nose out her door. "Hey! Did you see Jason today?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Ok." She started to close the door.

"Wait!" I cried and she opened it again. "You're not getting off that easy. Come talk to me. Come over and tell me what the hell is going on with you guys."

She sighed, "Ok."

We got inside and I started to strip. "So what's the deal with you and Jason?" I asked.

"What are you doing?"

"I was just at the gym. I need to shower," I explained. "You can talk while I shower."

"You didn't shower at the gym?" she asked.

"Hell no!" I exclaimed. "I go to a predominately gay gym. Getting naked there tends to have the side effect of getting myself into rather uncomfortable situations."

"So I'm just supposed to watch you get naked and shower?" she asked, incredulous.

"You don't have to watch," I huffed. "Besides, I don't have anything that you haven't seen already."

"Not true," she argued. "I haven't see you naked."

"Yes, you have," I corrected. "Immortalized in wood."

"That's not the same thing."

"Well, if I have anything that you're unfamiliar with, you're welcome to ask what it is," I teased.

She smirked and arched an eyebrow. "Do you think that your non-boyfriend is going to ok with you stripping in front of me?" 

I shrugged. "He's the one that did depictions of me naked as a jay-bird," I replied. "I'm not expecting you to jump me or anything."

"Ha!" she scoffed. "I don't think I have what it takes to satisfy you. I've seen what you like." She paused and got pensive. "Do you really take that up your ass? I mean... He's HUGE."

"Oh yes," I moaned and shed the rest of my clothes. "As often as physically possible."

She shook her head in astonishment. "I could never take that."

"Oh puleeze," I retorted. "Babies pass through there."

"Not through mine they don't!" she exclaimed. "And you're taking it up the ass!"

"It's stretchy," I said. "It takes some adjustment but it's worth it."

"Well now I understand why you don't eat spicy food," she snickered.

I rolled my eyes but couldn't prevent the grin. "Enough about my ass. You and Jason. Spill!" I demanded.

Sharon followed me into the bathroom and sat on the closed toilet lid while I showered. "Did he mention me?"

"No," I said. "But it was a bad day. We were busy."

"He called yesterday and we talked for a while. He asked me out but..."

"But what?" I asked.

"Wednesday night," she replied.

"Ok. What's wrong with that?"

"It's a weekday," she replied.

"I don't get it."

"If a guy is serious about you, he'll take you out on the weekend," she explained.

"I didn't know that there were rules," I chuckled.

"Not rules. Just guidelines."

"Maybe he doesn't know there are guidelines," I suggested. "Maybe he picked Wednesday because he didn't want to wait five whole days to see you."

She sighed loudly. "Maybe."

"You really like him, don't you?"

"We'll see," she replied, noncommittally. "Is Eric coming over tonight?"

"No. I spent all weekend with him. I need a break. I was planning on going to bed early tonight. I'd like it if Ryan came over but I don't think he will."

"Why not?" she asked. "I thought you guys made up."

"We're not fighting. He's just having a hard time with me getting involved with Eric again," I explained. "I really don't understand why. He's been encouraging it the whole time."

"Maybe he likes you more than he's willing to admit," she suggested.

"Maybe." 

"Can I ask you something personal?" she asked.

I stuck my head out from behind the shower curtain and stared at her. "Seriously?" I asked, my voice heavy with sarcasm.

She giggled, "Yeah. Ok."

I ducked back behind the curtain while she chose her words.

"How do you...? Umm. Isn't there... Well... Forget it."

"Jesus, Sharon," I huffed. "Spit it out already."

"I am dying to ask about the specifics but I don't know how to ask," she admitted.

"Like what?" I prodded. "You can ask me anything. I can't even see you so you don't have to be embarrassed."

"Doesn't it make a mess?" she asked. 

I laughed. I couldn't help it. "Honestly, yes. Sometimes. I keep myself as clean as possible but sometimes... you know, shit happens."

She barked out a laugh. "But you were licking him!"

"Oh yeah," I moaned. "I love rimming. Eric keeps himself clean too. He's almost obsessive about it. You saw him. He shaves everything and showers a lot. Often multiple times a day. I've never been worried that he won't be clean."

"And you enjoy that?" Her voice went up an octave.

"I love everything about his body," I replied. "His smell, his taste, the way he feels, looks, and sounds. Just... Everything."

"God. It must be love," she giggled. "Doesn't it hurt?"

"Yes," I chuckled. "It hurts so good."

"Oh yeah," she said. "You like pain."

"It's not that," I told her. "It hurts at first, but, when you get past that, it feels amazing. It's like my whole body is one big orgasm."

"You get off like that?" she asked. "From anal?"

"With Eric, I do," I explained. "There's just something about the way that he fills me, fucks me, that makes me come. It's only happened with one other guy. With everyone else, I need the reach around."

"I just can't imagine liking that."

"You've never had anal sex?" I asked.

"Yes," she admitted. "But I didn't like it. It hurt."

"It shouldn't hurt, Shar," I told her. "Unless he's built like Eric, of course. If it's done correctly there's a little bit of pinching and burning from the muscles stretching, but after that, it just feels good."

"Well then I must not have been doing it right because it hurt like hell. It felt like I was being ripped apart and set on fire."

"Oh geeze. I'm sorry. Whoever was topping you didn't treat you right, Girl." I frowned. "If you ever want to know, I'll be happy to tell you how it's supposed to be done so that, if you ever try it again, you'll know."

"Thanks for the offer. I'll think about it."

When I pushed back the shower curtain to reach for my towel, Sharon had a dejected expression on her face. I knew, without asking, the issue with Jason was still bothering her.

"Give it a chance," I suggested. "Give him a chance. I can't speak for what he's like in his personal life but at least you know he has a job."

She gave me a wry grin.

Sharon didn't stay for dinner so I just made myself a turkey sandwich and called Ryan. He didn't answer so I left a message. I talked to Eric for a while, too. He wasn't happy about not being able to see me but he agreed to give me some time away from him. He knew that I was scared. I took the cordless phone with me to bed, hoping that Ryan would call back. He didn't.

The phone woke me one minute before my alarm did.

"Hello?" I grumbled, my throat scratchy.

"God you sound sexy," Ryan joked.

"Good morning, Minx."

"Good morning. I'm sorry that I didn't call you last night. I got wrapped up and didn't get home until after eleven."

"S'ok," I yawned. "Just miss you."

"I miss you too. Why don't I come over tonight?"

"Really?"

"No," he said, changing his mind. "Why don't you come over here?"

He'd never invited me over. I had never even seen his house. "Are you sure, Ryan?"

"Yes," he replied. "It's time. I'm ready. I want it to be you."

"I'd love that."

"Good," he responded and I could hear the smile in his voice. "Bring work clothes. I'm expecting you to spend the night."

"Don't push yourself if you're not really ready," I warned.

"I think I am," he told me. "But if not... will you be upset?"

"No," I promised. "How about we just decide that I'm coming for dinner and we'll see where the night takes us?"

"Thank you."

"You're very welcome, Minx," I said as my alarm started blaring. 

"Time for you to shower," he stated the obvious. "Go get ready. I'll see you tonight. How's seven work for you?"

"Wonderful. I'll see you then."

Ryan lived in the well-to-do neighborhood of University Park. The homes there were older, well maintained, and often passed down through the generations. The house was a Georgian with wood floors throughout, huge rooms, and lots of windows. The interior surprised me because it was dark, which didn't fit Ryan's personality at all. The floors, the archways, and the furniture were all in a very dark wood. Even the velvet of the couch cushions was dark. The only thing that saved the house from being gloomy was the mass amount of light streaming through the French doors and windows. 

"I know." Ryan scrunched up his adorable nose at the expression on my face. "I haven't changed anything since Tony died. While he was alive, he let me redecorate the bedroom because I couldn't stand it. Everything else, I left alone."

"It's not that bad, Minx," I lied. "Just a little dark."

He giggled. "It's horrible. I just don't feel right changing it. I'm just house sitting for Gregory."

"Gregory?"

He walked over to the grand piano in the living room and picked up one of the many pictures on top of it. He glanced at it before handing it to me. "Tony's son."

The silver frame held a picture of a young, dark haired boy chasing a soccer ball. The picture was taken from some distance and I couldn't see the kid very well. "I thought he wasn't allowed to see him."

"He wasn't," Ryan replied. "That didn't prevent him from keeping tabs on him. Tony hired private investigators to watch the kid. There are pictures of him all over the house."

"Why didn't he just leave everything to him?" I mused out loud.

"He didn't want Gregory's mother getting her hands on anything," Ryan responded. "Tony was a very generous person. He would have given her the sun and the moon if she hadn't done what she did."

I set the picture back on the piano. "What did she do?"

He scowled. "She cut him off from the kid. She had restraining orders and everything. All because he was gay."

"How did this all come about anyway?"

Ryan shrugged. "Drunken mistake. He had sex with her once and she got pregnant. She found out that he was gay and made him give up his rights. The courts agreed with her that his lifestyle was a detrimental influence on a child. He tried for years. He finally gave up when he was diagnosed terminal."

"That's a very tragic story."

Ryan looked up at the sound of a soft chime. "That's my lawyer. I wasn't planning on working tonight but one of the employees at a video store was caught stealing. I apologize but I have to take this meeting. Will you be ok?"

I nodded. "Sure. Do what you have to. I'll wait."

He smiled at me. "Make yourself at home. I'll be as quick as I can."

I roamed around the house while Ryan and his lawyer were in the study behind closed doors. The kitchen was amazing. I'm almost positive that it was bigger than my whole apartment. Ryan was right about there being pictures of the kid everywhere. They hung on the walls and graced every available surface. There were also pictures of Ryan and, I assumed, Tony. There were other people, too. Tony's family was my guess as they resembled him, with dark hair and olive complexions. There weren't any pictures of anyone that I automatically assumed to be Ryan's family. It didn't surprise me as I knew that he didn't have a relationship with them. 

After he'd concluded his business, he found me peering out the French doors at the sparkling swimming pool. "Do you want to go swimming?"

"I didn't bring a suit."

He grinned. "We could swim naked."

The idea had a lot of appeal. "Maybe later," I replied.

"What would you like to do for dinner?" he asked. "I was planning to cook for you before I found out that I'd have to take a meeting. We could go out or order in."

"Whatever you want to do is fine with me, Minx. Whatever makes you most comfortable."

He nodded. "I'm fine. This is easier than I thought it would be. I vote that we order Chinese and snuggle up and watch a movie. I haven't had a lazy night in a long time."

I smiled at him. "That sounds like a plan."

After Chinese food and a chick flick, which we spent more time making out than watching, we found our way to Ryan's bedroom. It was the only room in the house that reflected Ryan's personality. The entire room, minus the dark wood floors, was done in variations of off-white and cream. The bed was high and plush, as were the pillows and bedding. It was kind of like being on a giant marshmallow.

"Thank you," Ryan sighed with his head on my chest.

"My pleasure," I chuckled, breathlessly.

"No, not that," he giggled.

"For what, Minx?"

"Everything." He turned his face to look at me. "You really helped me get to a better place and I'm thankful."

I frowned. "Why does that sound like a good-bye?"

"It's not a good-bye... exactly." He scooted off my chest and laid his head down on the pillow next to mine. "It's just time, Rain. We need to stop doing this."

"If this is about Eric-"

"It's not," he assured me. "Not completely. It's about me. I'm ready to take an active role in managing Tony's legacy and I need to concentrate on that."

"So that means that we have to stop seeing each other?" I rolled onto my side so I was facing him. 

"Not entirely," he explained. "We can stay friends, but I need to stay focused on what I'm trying to do here."

"And I'm a distraction for you?"

"Yes," he admitted. "But I'm a distraction for you too. You and Eric should be together. It's not fair to either of you for you to keep having sex with me."

"You're not causing a problem between me and Eric," I promised him.

"Maybe not," he sighed. "But you can't honestly tell me that you're putting forth all of your effort into working things out with him as long as you're keeping me on the side."

I wanted to argue with him but I couldn't. He was right. "Your friendship is keeping me sane, Ryan."

"I'm not suggesting that we stop being friends, Rain. Just the sex. I'll still be here for you. Just not in a sexual manner. I need to devote my time and energy to this business and I can't be worried all the time that I'm neglecting you. Do you understand?"

I understood. I just didn't like it. "Do you want me to go home, Minx?"

"No." He reached out and gently caressed my face. "I want us to have this last night together. But if you don't want to stay, I'll understand."

"I want to stay," I told him. 

After that night, Ryan and I saw each other once or twice a week, always at the bar. We'd have a couple of drinks and talk before he'd go back to work and I'd go home alone. After a month or so of that, the visits started to taper off. We still talked on the phone but it became less frequent as the business took up most of his time and energy. I was concerned that he was shutting himself off from emotional ties and affection but he assured me that he wasn't. He just needed to focus on the business until he got that under control. I wasn't sure that I believed him but I had no reason to doubt his word either. 

As much as Ryan believed that our involvement was keeping me from committing to Eric, I knew better. Three months after the last night I slept with Ryan, my relationship with Eric was exactly where it had been. He spent a couple of nights a week in my bed, usually on weekends. We went out on occasion and stayed in frequently. We fought more than we got along. I was starting to think that we just weren't meant to be.




Rain Storms Ch. 04



The real reason that I couldn't commit to Eric was that I knew I hadn't changed. I was in the same place I was when we first started to fall apart. I was intolerant of his inability to communicate, and without Ryan's calming influence, I was losing whatever patience I had started to develop with Eric's mood swings.

"Rain?"

I looked up from picking at my dinner at the sound of my name and found myself staring into a set of warm, cinnamon brown eyes. I smiled, "Dylan."

He returned the smile and his eyes twinkled. "How have you been?"

"Good," I lied. I was so far from good that I didn't even have a passing familiarity with it anymore. Due to some major business deals that he was trying to resolve, I hadn't spoken to Ryan all week. We kept missing each other's phone calls. It had turned into one huge, annoying game of phone tag. Eric and I had gotten into such an enormous fight the night before that I had thrown him out of my apartment. Sharon and Cujo spent most of their free time with Jason. Thankfully, at his place so I wasn't subjected to the sounds of their happiness. I was thrilled for them both but I didn't want to listen to it. Although, I suspected that the reason had more to do with the fact that Sharon had no furniture than for my benefit. Either way, the result of all that left me desperately lonely. Hence the reason I was eating dinner in a crowded restaurant just to feel less alone. It wasn't working. But he didn't need to know any of that. "How have you been?"

His eyes scanned over me and the table, taking in the setting for one. "Are you alone?"

"Yes," I replied. "Would you care to join me?"

He glanced back toward the waiting area for a moment. Then he pulled out the only other chair at the small table and sat across from me. "It's been a while."

"Yes," I grinned. "How are things at the firm?"

"Good." He smirked and added, "It's been far less exciting since you left."

I chuckled, "I imagine."

"How are things with you and..." 

"Eric?" I supplied.

He grimaced. "I was going to say Ryan."

I nodded but didn't believe him. "Ryan is very busy. I'm afraid that we don't get to talk as much as I'd like."

"You're not seeing him anymore?" he asked.

"I was never dating him, Dylan," I reminded him. "We no longer have sex, if that's what you're wanting to know. We're still friends, he's just very busy."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Are you?" I asked.

"Yes," he grinned. "I liked him. He was very pretty. Not my type but still... He seemed to care a lot about you."

I smiled sadly. "I care about him too."

His brow furrowed and he fidgeted in his seat. He spoke so quietly that I had to strain to hear him over the din of the noisy restaurant. "I honestly thought you'd be back with Eric by now."

"I know you did," I replied. "I'm sorry that I could never convince you-"

"Dylan?" We both turned to see a ruggedly handsome, dark-haired man strolling toward the table. 

"Keith." Dylan stood. "I'm sorry. I ran into a work associate. Rain Dutton, Keith Clegg. Rain installed our network in the office."

Keith offered me his hand and I shook it. I didn't stand. "Nice to meet you."

"Keith is the foreman on one of our sites," Dylan explained. I took that to mean that he was also Dylan's unacknowledged boyfriend.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Keith," I responded. "It was good seeing you again, Dylan."

Dylan nodded. "You too. Enjoy your dinner."

I watched them walk off, wondering if Keith was going to handle having a closeted lover any better than I did. 

"You left," he accused softly.

"Of course I did," I smirked. "The waitress would have been spitting nails if I had camped out at her table."

"You didn't even eat your dinner," Dylan argued. "You left because of me."

"Not entirely," I told him. "Your boyfriend is a beautiful man."

"He's not my boyfriend," he denied.

"Does he know that?" I asked. His silence was enough of an answer. "Why are you calling, Dylan?"

"Have dinner with me, Rain."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because you have a boyfriend and I'm tired of being hurt."

"I'm not going to hurt you," he insisted.

"Yes, you will," I countered. "We both know that you will. I'm not dating anymore closeted or emotionally unavailable men. I have to stop setting myself up for heartbreak. I need to be with a man who can show me AND tell me how he feels. Maybe I'm asking too much but I don't think so. There has to be one out there somewhere."

I was awake most of that night, tossing and turning. As much as I liked, and lusted after, Dylan, I wasn't in love with him. I was in love with Eric. I spent most of the night lamenting over the fact that I just couldn't make it work with Eric. It wasn't all Eric's fault. He was non-communicative but I didn't make it easier on him. He was moody and bitchy and morose and controlling but I was combative and demanding and needy. We were both at fault but at least I hadn't cheated on him.

When I finally fell asleep, I had nightmares. It wasn't my normal one of being shredded by wild animals. It was the kind where you can never reach the top of the stairs or make it to the end of a long hallway. I woke up, still in the haze of the dreams, feeling frustrated and anxious. I opened my eyes to see the hope chest and had a sudden epiphany: It wasn't anyone's fault. 

All this time, I had been focused on who was to blame. As the dream fog cleared, I realized that there was no blame. Those things that I had been faulting were parts of our personalities. It was part of us. We either loved each other as whole people or we didn't. And we did. That's what Eric had been trying to tell me all this time. 

Eric communicated through his art. When we had first gotten together, I had known that, but I had never used the knowledge effectively. I had only used it to judge his mood. I had never really listened to what he was saying. I crawled out of bed and over to the chest. Skipping my fingertips over the rough surface of the carvings, I sat on the floor and really looked at it. How many times had I stared at this and had never truly seen it? There was love there. Now that I was looking for it, it was impossible to not see. The expressions on our faces, the way he held me, the positioning of our bodies, it was clear as day. All I had ever seen was the eroticism. The tenderness and affection was so obvious that I couldn't believe that I had never noticed before. I was ashamed that Sharon had seen in a few seconds what I had been missing for years. 

Everything changed in my head in an instant. I admit to being stubborn. I get an idea stuck in my mind and I'm determined to see it through. But, now that my eyes were open, I couldn't close them again. Things were suddenly different for me. I needed to be with him. I glanced over at the clock and knew that there was no way Eric would be awake for hours. I couldn't just show up at his place either. I had no idea if he even wanted to see me. I didn't even remember what our fight had been about. I went ballistic and threw him out over something so trivial that I couldn't even remember it two days later. It was such a common occurrence that nothing about it even stood out in my mind as relevant. Stupid.

I made myself some coffee and sat on the couch trying to sort through my thoughts. My new way of seeing things wasn't going to fix all of our problems. All relationships were work. We still needed to be able to communicate better but that didn't mean that it had to be my way of communication. Instead of me trying to force him into a mold that he didn't fit maybe, just maybe, Eric could teach me to understand his way. Sharon understood it. Surely I could learn it too. 

I piddled around for as long as I could stand it before I called him. He answered on the third ring. By which I knew that he'd either been sleeping on the couch, nearly impossible for someone of his height, or he'd carried the phone upstairs. The only other option, that he hadn't been sleeping, was eliminated instantly by the gravelly sound of his voice.

"Rain?" he grumbled. "Are you ok?"

I loved his growly, scratchy, morning voice. It was even sexier than his normal voice, which was pretty damn sexy to start with. "Did I wake you?" I asked.

"Baby?"

"I want to come over."

"Why? Are you going to yell at me again?" he asked. "Because you can do that over the phone."

"Do you not want me to come to your place?" I responded. "Or do you just not want to see me at all?"

"Of course I want to see you, Baby. I always want to see you. I just don't want to fight."

"I'm not planning to start a fight," I told him. "I want to see you. I miss you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Okay then," he replied. "Come over."

When I pulled up at the gate, he was outside waiting for me, smoking a cigarette. He opened the gate for me and I pulled through and parked. He ground out his cigarette under his heel and met me at my car door. He was wearing all black, which was not unusual for him, but his hair was wet. He'd just showered.

He seemed a little trepidatious about the kind of greeting he would receive so I wrapped my arms around his neck and tugged him down for a kiss. I could feel the tension wash out of him as he moaned into my mouth, encircled me with his arms, and pulled my body flush against his larger frame. 

A slightly floral scent enveloped me in the breezeless, late morning air and I suddenly remembered what our fight had been about. Absolutely nothing. He'd shown up at my apartment with the scent of a woman's perfume still clinging to him. I had no right to confront him about it as we had no commitment of fidelity between us, so I had done the most illogical thing possible. I'd picked a fight with him over nothing and threw him out. Trust is an odd and delicate thing. We give it freely, with little reservation, until it's damaged. Once that happens, it may never be whole again. I had thought I trusted him again but, clearly, I had not.

He had exactly the same scent on him. Only now, I knew what it was.

"Did you change shampoos?" I asked, wrinkling my nose in distaste.

He grimaced. "Conditioner," he explained. "They were out of the kind I normally get so I just grabbed something. I can't stand it. It smells like..." A look of panic crossed his face. "No. Baby, I didn't. I know what you're thinking."

I grinned at him. "I'm not," I assured him. "Don't freak out. I know what it is. But you smell like a bouquet."

He winced. "I'm throwing it out. Today. Now."

I smiled up at him. "I think I can stand it long enough for another kiss."

He gave me a sly, sexy, little smirk. "Just one? I was hoping for a lot more than one. And a lot more than just kissing."

"Mmm. I may be up for a little necking. And some heavy petting."

He chuckled. "Which part of you is up and would like to be heavily petted?"

"I don't know," I teased. "Maybe you should take me inside and I'll let you discover that on your own."

He glanced back, over his shoulder, and then back at me. "It's sheeted," he frowned.

I smiled at him. He'd been working. "I don't mind. I did live through that for years."

He squinted at me. "But it drove you crazy."

I laughed. "Only if I was trying to study. It was hard to work on a computer when it was covered in plastic."

When we stepped through the sliding warehouse door, he pushed aside the plastic sheeting for me. Other than the plastic, and the work in progress, the place hadn't changed since the last time I had been there. He was, evidently, in the cleanup stage. Everything was still covered in plastic but whatever dust or debris that his work had kicked up was not in evidence. And there was a covered sculpture in the middle of the open space.

"Do you remember the maze?" I asked.

"Yeah," he smiled. "If I had known that you were coming..."

Normally, when he sheeted the place, he just covered everything with the enormous sheets of translucent plastic and hung sheets of it to protect the living areas and the door. One night, early in our relationship, while I was sleeping, he'd strung a grid of rope using the I-beams in the walls, the hooks over the door, and the spindles of the loft railing and stairway bannister. Then he'd hung the sheets of plastic over the grid in a convoluted configuration creating a maze. When I finally made it to the center, he was waiting for me wearing nothing but a smile and an erection. He took me right there, on the concrete floor, reminiscent of the times before we had lived together when he couldn't wait to be inside me long enough to make it up the stairs.

"Can I see?" I asked, indicating the tarped statue.

He hesitated. He'd never had an issue with me seeing his work before, no matter what stage it was in, and the knowledge that he might not want me to see it now was painful. He made a decision and nodded. He moved toward the statue slowly and pulled the tarp off it.

My heart lodged in my throat. It was the marble statue from the mortuary. Only it wasn't. It had changed. I moved toward it in a trance. Something about this piece, in its unfinished state, had always fascinated me. But now, I was both enthralled and devastated.

At first glance, it seemed the same. The theme hadn't changed but it was completely different. I couldn't tell if it was the same piece of marble or a totally different one. It could have been the same piece. The veining was the same but the entire piece was smaller. The previous version had stood topping eight feet but this was closer to six. It was still a demon with a figure captured in his arms. Only the demon had changed; he'd become more grotesque. The captured figure had changed too. It was no longer human. It had gained the feathery wings of an angel. The wings were mangled, broken, and crushed to the body of the angel by the demon's arms and wings. Before, when it was incomplete, I couldn't tell if the demon was kissing or biting his captive. Now it was apparent. The angel was being devoured. The only thing that saved this piece from being hideously violent was the expression of divine rapture on the face of the angel. My face.

I sure as hell did not need someone to explain this piece to me. Even though the demon was not wearing Eric's face, the meaning was painfully obvious, even to me.

I may not have needed an explanation, but I wanted one. "Is this us, Eric?" I asked. "Is this how you see us?"

The guilt and agony distorting his gorgeous face was heartrending.

I tried to gentle my voice as much as possible to keep him from feeling like he was being attacked. "It's backwards, my love. You're not the destructive one in this relationship. I am."

I walked over to him and reached up to caress his cheek and thread my fingers into his wet hair. "I've been tearing you and us apart by trying to force you into being someone you're not."

He shook his head. "You just want me to talk to you. That's not asking for too much. I'm just so fucked up that I can't do the simple thing you asked for."

"Yes, Eric," I agreed. "You do need to talk to me. But I need to learn to listen. And I haven't been. You've been trying but I haven't been letting you. That's going to stop. I want us to be together again. For real. Committed to each other. No more of this half-assed playing around. If you still want that."

He took a sharp intake of breath. "I want that more than anything, Rain."

"I'm going to do my best to try to hear what you're telling me but I need you to promise to help me. Sometimes I just don't. I'll try to stop yelling at you if you will try to explain things to me a little more."

He nodded. "I can do that, Baby. But I..."

His sentence trailed off. We'd been doing so well but this was the point at which he couldn't talk to me. I was going to have to listen harder but I needed more than I had to work with. "You what, Eric?" I urged. "Give me a little hint."

"You were seeing Ryan."

That didn't help me. Eric was trying to tell me something and I wasn't getting it. I didn't understand what Ryan had to do with us. "I'm not anymore."

"I know," he sighed. 

I was missing something. Something that Eric thought I was getting from Ryan that I wasn't getting from him. Then it hit me. "You think I'm unhappy with us because you don't bottom."

"Yes," he hissed.

"That's why you go so crazy when I think a girl is cute?"

He didn't answer but the anguish on his face told me that I was right. I had known from the very beginning of our relationship that Eric had deep-rooted concerns about his sexual prowess. I believed that I had done a good job of alleviating his unfounded fears. But it had never even crossed my mind that this may be the cause of them.

"Is that why you never asked me to stop seeing him? You thought he was giving me something that I needed to be happy?"

"Wasn't he?"

"Yes. But not what you think." I sighed. "I have never been unsatisfied with our sex life, Eric. Never. If you ever decide that you'd like to try it, I will be more than happy to do that with you. I truly believe that you would love it. But I don't ever want you to force yourself to bottom for me because you think that I need it. I don't."

"Then what was it?" he asked.

"Friendship," I explained. "Unconditional love. He was there for me on the nights that I was so torn up without you that I was literally losing my mind."

"But you were fucking him," he argued.

"Yes," I agreed. "But it was what he needed. I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy it. I did. And I would enjoy it even more if it were with you. But I don't NEED it. I NEED you."

"You need me, Baby?" Eric smirked.

"Yes. Always," I stood up on my tiptoes to kiss his lips, ignoring the cloying odor of decaying flowers. "This piece is beautiful, Eric, but it's not us. The toy box, that's us."

"Yeah?" he smiled at me.

"Yeah." I smiled coyly.

He slid his hands around my waist and pulled my body flush with his. Staring deeply into my eyes, his voice was thick with emotion, "I love you, Rain."

"I love you too, Eric."

He threaded the fingers of one hand through my hair and tilted his head down, resting his forehead against mine. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply for a minute. "I need to be sweet to you right now, Baby," he whispered. "Will you be disappointed?"

I shook my head slowly, rocking both our heads back and forth. "Take me to bed, Eric," I replied quietly. "Show me how you're feeling."

He opened his eyes and lifted his head so he could see me without being cross-eyed. "I'm scared, Rain. I'm terrified that I'm going to say or do the wrong thing and fuck all this up. That you'll leave me again."

"I'm not going to leave you again, Eric," I promised. "I can't say that we're not going to fight but I'm here. I'm in this. I'm not giving up on us again. 'Til death do us part."

He bent his head and captured my lips in a soft and gentle kiss that had my whole body tingling. Then he picked me up and carried me up the stairs. Once in bed, clothing came off slowly, piece by piece. The pace he set was slow and tender. As much as I wanted to rush things, I knew that this what was he needed. This was another form of communication for him. I hadn't always understood this. It had taken me a year to realize that he had never thought of me as a whore. Admittedly, it had taken him a while to come to terms with having feelings for another man. But as soon as he had, he'd committed himself to it, and he'd never wavered from it, shied away from it, or denied it. 

For the first time in all our years together, neither one of us zeroed in on the ways we knew to wring pleasure from each other. Instead, we found new pathways. We discovered new avenues to enjoy each other. We chose to begin our new life together with the understanding that we were both different people and treated each other as such. We learned things about ourselves and each other that we hadn't known before. It wasn't the frantic mating of new lovers and it wasn't the comfortable conjoining of those with decades together. It was both novel and commonplace. We explored each other's bodies in a way we never had before. By the time we had become lovers, we'd had sex so many times that it never seemed necessary. It seemed imperative now. 




Rain Storms Ch. 04



Eric's body was beautiful. In the years that I had known him, he'd gained a little softness, but the heavy lifting and physical exertion that he employed in his craft kept him strong and muscular. His hands were rough and calloused. His body was marred by small scars from the occasional slip of a tool or the intentional destruction of an entire piece during a fit of frustration. Even the imperfections were perfect. In the same intervening years, my body had filled out with the easy life of wealth and privilege that Eric provided me and had hardened with the frequent trips to the gym. We mutually investigated those differences in each other. 

When things got too intense, we'd back off and hold each other while we calmed down, delaying the inevitable as long as possible. Eventually, I could stand it no longer, and he allowed me to mount him. With his hands on my hips, he still controlled the speed and force of our passion, but gave me dominion over the angle and depth. Within moments, I was a blathering, drooling, mess. Only my arms, braced on his raised knees, kept me upright as my body convulsed and tremored through shockwave after shockwave. I had painted our torsos twice while his thick cock, slick with both store bought and naturally produced lubricant, continued to glide in and out me. I was rapidly climbing toward my third such explosion when the steady rhythm of his thrusts began to increase, signaling his own climax. 

He lurched up and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me back down on top of him. Then he rolled us, trapping my smaller body beneath his. Shifting his stance for balance, his hand slid easily between our bodies, wet with sweat and the proof of my pleasure. 

Taking a firm grip on my turgid cock, he murmured in my ear, "That's it, Baby. Come for me. You're so fucking beautiful, Rain. Come for me again."

Because he knew, as he always did, that I was so close. Even though I had already come twice, my orgasm slammed through me with enough force to turn the whole world inside out. 

When reality slowly returned to me, one sense at a time, Eric was braced above me on his extended arms. His only movement was the slight bobbing of his lowered head in time to the heaving of his body as he desperately attempted to catch his breath. The result of which was causing his hair to tickle my face. I tried to blow it out of my face but it was too heavy to be moved with the measly amount of air that I was able to command at the moment. He brought his head up a little to look at me which made it worse. Now there was even more of his hair in my face. I tossed my head back and forth to no good effect. If anything, my efforts exacerbated the situation. Now his hair was hanging in my face and stuck to my sweaty skin too. Eric chuckled at my dilemma. 

"Use your hands, Baby," he suggested. 

"I would if I could move," I sighed.

He laughed and pulled his hair over to one side of his head, rescuing me from further entangling myself. Then he lowered his head and kissed me to distract me from the fact that he was gently slipping his deflating cock out of me. It didn't work. I still groaned into his mouth at the empty feeling of loss. He dropped to my side and manhandled me into the spooning position that he loved so much. 

"You made a right mess of us," he teased as the cooling fluids on our bodies became tacky and caused our skin to stick together.

"Your fault," I accused in the same teasing manor.

"My pleasure," he chuckled and kissed the shell of my ear.

We dozed for a little bit, just resting, before he woke me up for round two. I honestly didn't think that I could come again, but I was wrong.

We didn't spend the entire day making love but we did spend a majority of it in bed together. For the most part, we talked. By far, our conversation focused on his art. While he had a difficult time telling me what he was thinking or feeling, he had no issues discussing his work. It was the link to his psyche and I fully intended to use it to our advantage. 

To be perfectly honest, he had come a lot further in learning to talk than I had in learning to listen. We still had a long way to go and I knew that there would be bumpy roads ahead of us. But, now that we were both making a concentrated effort, I had every confidence that we would make it work, together. 

And when I woke in the morning, with Eric's leg, arm, and half his body pinning me to the bed beneath him, drowning in the oppressive and suffocating heat that he put off, I could only smile. I was home to stay.