Find Me Series (Book 3): Finding Hope

by Trish Marie Dawson

  Even though I clapped a hand around my mouth while remembering what we’d done, the sound roused Drake from behind me. He didn’t say anything, but his arm moved around until his hand found one of mine and he held it to my chest, and tucked his knees up against the back of my thighs, bringing himself even closer. We stayed that way until the goose-bumps on our bodies had us trembling.

  “It’s freezing,” I whispered.

  To help, he shifted us forward, resting more on my back than his side, as if trying to cover me with his own body heat. The gesture was a sweet one and I found myself smiling again. We rested this way on the sofa for another minute, but the cold was too much for even Drake to handle. With a quick kiss to the back of my neck, he climbed over me and hopped onto the tile floor.

  “What are you doing?” I laughed at him, enjoying the view of his backside as he bounced from one foot to the other.

  “Damn, it’s cold!”

  “I know…come back over here.”

  “It’s fucking cold!” He rushed from box to box, tearing into each one, and cursing after digging through them.

  “What are you looking for?” I had found my shirt, and pulled it on quickly, but Drake stopped bouncing long enough to point at me with a serious expression on his face.

  “Don’t get dressed,” he said, “…not yet.”

  “What am I supposed to do, sit here and freeze to death?” I didn’t remove the shirt, but I stopped dressing and pulled my arms back through the sleeves and wrapped them around my bare knees, using the thin fabric as a mini-blanket.

  He rushed over to the window and slammed it shut, then pulled the curtains closed, obscuring almost all of the left-over light from the stormy day. And then he bounced out of the room, grabbing at his feet like he was walking on ice. I heard him bound up the stairs, cursing with each step. There was a rumbling sound as boxes were slid across the floor above the kitchen, then Drake’s voice calling out in relief.

  “If you’re talking to me, I can’t hear you!” I yelled toward the staircase.

  A few seconds later he ran back down the steps wrapped in a large comforter. Without a word, he jumped over the couch, nearly landing on me and then yanked me to my feet, spinning me into the fabric.

  “Where are you taking me?” I grinned as we neared the staircase.

  With the open window we had let in enough frigid air to turn the marbled floor painfully cold. But the stairs were carpeted. I let Drake pull me up the steps and into the hall, turning once into a large room full of boxes and an unmade King-size bed. He sat me on the edge, tucked the comforter around me and crossed the room to where half a dozen boxes had been torn open. I waved the lingering dust from the air, but no matter how vigorously I wiped my hand on the blanket, it didn’t feel clean.

  “Here,” Drake said, reaching into a box and pulling out an armful of bedding. He threw the lot at me and I grabbed for it, laughing when one of the sheets opened up and fell off my lap. I had to untangle myself from the comforter to scoop it up and toss it onto the mattress. Another blanket came sailing through the air and I spread it out over the bed as well. Just as I was attempting to tuck the corners down, Drake came up behind me and tossed me onto the bed and we rolled over until our fronts met. He tugged on the comforter until it was draped around us both and pulled my stretched-out shirt off in one deft yank.

  “You won’t need this,” he said in a gruff voice. It was sexy. Really, really sexy.

  “No?”

  “Nope.”

  The light in his eyes, what little was visible in the fading glow of the storming day, was different. The same intensity that I’d come to see in Drake was still there, but something fragile was trying to break free behind it. For a moment I could see his layers. The hard façade he’d put up was pulling back, showing something new. In that moment, when his lips found mine again, I wanted desperately to see what was below the harder surface I’d gotten so familiar with.

  He pressed into me, nuzzling my neck, nibbling my ear, saying things with the kind of seductive voice that makes women weak in the knees. As thick as his facial stubble was, the hairs were soft and inviting, and every time he dragged his chin across my skin, I couldn’t help but cry out. The sensations made my nerves tingle, and turned the heat up between my legs.

  “We’re going to miss our ride,” he said, while planting tiny kisses down the inside of my thighs.

  I bit my lower lip when his mouth reached my knee, and upon discovering how ticklish I was there, Drake nibbled and licked my skin until I begged for him to stop. In my attempt to escape, I nearly kicked him off the bed, taking the blanket with him. Our laughter, followed by moans of pleasure and cries of ecstasy filled the house with life that afternoon. Something the structure hadn’t felt before. And the walls absorbed our energy, sending back to us a feeling of comfort. Of safety. Like a home was supposed to.

  We made love. We had sex. We screwed each other senseless. And it felt more than satisfying. It felt…perfect. By the time midnight rolled around, we were close to exhaustion and famished.

  “Think we should eat something?” he asked, while twirling a section of my hair around his fingers.

  I groaned at the thought of filling my stomach. “Was there enough downstairs? Because I don’t want to go outside to the truck and grab our bags.”

  He looked over the bed at the window. “In that mess, me either. There’s a couple cans and bottles in the kitchen, but not a lot. Wanna bet it will be caviar and bratwurst?” he joked.

  “Ugh, gross.” The thought of eating fish eggs did unpleasant things to my insides.

  “I’d eat dirt right now.”

  “That’s it. I’m never kissing you again.”

  “Is that a threat?” He pulled me upright, wrapped an arm around my neck and hit me with a kiss so intense it stole my breath. Knowing very well he’d left me temporarily incapacitated, he launched off the bed, wrapped himself in a blanket and left the room, taking the stairs down two at a time.

  With a sigh, I flopped backwards, letting my eyes adjust to the dark room. It was sex. That was all. We weren’t in love. Neither of us wanted that. We just…needed someone. We needed to feel something besides the all too familiar hollowness that consumed us from the inside out. That’s what I told myself. That’s how I rationalized what I’d done with Drake when I thought of Connor. Everyone needed sex every once in a while. Especially when you had nothing else.

  “Are you coming down here?” he yelled from the bottom of the stair case.

  “Not for caviar!” I yelled back.

  With reluctance, I got up and cocooned myself in the comforter and tip-toed across the room, being careful to not trip on the stairs where he waited patiently on the last step, looking flushed from love-making. His lower lip was rosy-red, just a shade brighter than his cheeks from nibbling. And the glint in his eye sparkled like a star in the clear night sky.

  After reaching the bottom, he gathered me up in his blanket and held me to his bare chest. With my fingers, I traced the scars that were scattered across his skin, drawing lazy circles around his nipples, and walked them up to his neck, then his jaw where they quickly found his full mouth. “Forget food. I’d rather have another course of you,” I said.

  Like young lovers who can’t get enough of each other, we didn’t leave the stairway for another hour.

  * * *

  “It’s not…completely horrible,” I said, doing my best to keep from gagging. I put another dried seaweed chip in my mouth and pushed the small container over to Drake.

  He winced. “I don’t think I can.”

  “You dipped your finger into that funky spicy mustard. Twice. You can eat seaweed.”

  He shook his head. “No, I really don’t think I can. I’m not a fish.”

  I laughed. “You don’t have to be. Besides, we need the protein.”

  “I’ll stick to the jar of Nutella, thank you very much.” He pulled an unopened jar across the tiled counter and made a move to open it.r />
  “Don’t you dare!” I lectured, pushing it back to the center of the kitchen island. “You promised you would save the good stuff for last. If all you eat is Nutella and mustard, you’ll be sick as a dog later.”

  He sat back on the stool, taking in our spread. It wasn’t much. A large bottle of sparkling water, a small jar of fancy sweet pickles, and several more jars of exotic mustards with names I couldn’t pronounce. There was salad vinegar, the Nutella, the package of dried seaweed, a small container of capers, gluten-free crackers that were so stale they practically dissolved in your hand, moldy cookies, chocolate-flavored soy protein bars that had melted in their packaging many times over, Bloody Mary mix, and one half-empty jar of Kalamata olives. Well, there had been two, but we ate one of the jars almost immediately.

  I took a cautious sip of the sparkling water and winced.

  Drake nodded. “Yeah, this is a strange meal. But we’ve had worse, right?” He smiled at me and I crossed my legs, uncrossed them, and crossed them again. I knew we were going to have a hard time getting out of the house if he kept devouring me with his eyes every time I looked up.

  “True,” I said, nibbling on a tiny chunk of bumpy green food. I hated sweet pickles. And the combination of them mixing with the olives, dried seaweed and sparkling water in my stomach wasn’t sitting well. But we had to eat something…or at the very least…we needed something more to drink. Keel was the only one with water, and neither of us knew where he’d gone off to.

  “Well, I definitely can’t do the seaweed,” Drake finally said, pushing the package back into the center of the pile.

  I shifted on the stool and watched him across from me, poking through the food, pushing aside the things he didn’t want to eat, which was pretty much everything. His rugged face was solemn, his broad shoulders hunched, as if he was five years old and not allowed to leave the table until he ate his asparagus.

  “Okay, fine,” I said, giving in to his pout. “Open the damn Nutella.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Dawn was a few short hours away and our bellies were as full as they were going to get. Wrapped up in our blankets and nothing else, we left the kitchen counter a mess and moved through the living room again, bumping into the few pieces of furniture that occupied the space. A table, a lone chair, and the sofa. I kicked my toes on all of them. Being in a strange house at night was unnerving, but it was something we had all grown used to since being out on the road. Familiarity with our surroundings was a thing of the past.

  “Why is it so damn cold?” I complained, wishing I’d put my socks on after getting out of bed.

  “I don’t hear the rain anymore. Do you?” Drake asked.

  We both moved toward the closest window and pushed open the thick curtains, gasping in surprise. The ground was completely covered in snow. And swirls of it were still falling in droves. Nothing but a white blanket stretched out around us. Except for the large lump in the center of the road two houses down the street, it was totally flat.

  “Is that Keel’s truck?” I asked, shocked.

  “Well, look at that. I guess he got stuck in the storm, too. He must be somewhere around here.” Drake placed the back of his hand against the glass and snatched it away. “Freezing.”

  “Snow usually is,” I laughed.

  He sighed deeply and scratched at his dirty-blonde head of hair, fluffing the ends up in every direction. It looked adorable. Bedroom hair on a man did things to me, and I had to take in a deep breath to keep the mood from shifting to a sexual one again. “Know what this means?” he asked with his husky voice. My thoughts of returning to the bedroom were quickly overpowering everything else.

  I shook my head, still staring up at his hair.

  Drake took me by the elbow and led me toward the sofa, tugging on my comforter as he did. “This means we aren’t going anywhere any time soon, so I have you all to myself. Again.”

  Neither of us wanted to take it slow. We knew the other’s body enough by then, that after the kissing turned to sucking, and the nibbling turned to biting, we skipped the slower act of love making and had full blown, dirty sex. The kind that leaves you panting, sweating, screaming with pleasure, and hurting a little bit afterwards. The kind I’d had maybe only three times in my entire life; sex that goes from the couch to the floor, to the wall, to the table, and breaks all things breakable in the process.

  It was the kind of sex I could have every day for the rest of my life. It purged all the ugly from the world and left me feeling whole. Who wouldn’t want that?

  * * *

  Inside the room, only one candle was lit. The glow reached barely across the wide bed, casting shadows in all directions. They jumped and danced every time I breathed next to the flame. I wiggled my fingers over the purple tip of the fire and then set my hand down on the bedside table, rubbing the smooth wooden grain with my thumb.

  “You’re awake?”

  A strong hand with rough calluses rolled me back toward the center of the bed, where Fin lay under the thin sheet. With a smile, his mouth came down on mine and sucked gently on the corner of my lip.

  “Yes,” I managed to say, before he pulled my body onto his. Sitting upright, straddling his hips, I felt the nudge of his erection and smiled down at his bearded face.

  The movements came naturally – the sliding and grinding motions of intercourse – but as I felt the burn in my lower abdomen, and the tingling between my legs preparing to explode, another set of hands came from behind me, sliding up my sides and cupping each breast. Connor began to suck at my neck, using his tongue to tickle my spine. And I threw my head back, crying into the night from pleasure, crying for Fin and Connor…

  * * *

  “Riley?”

  I jerked upright, flailing as I did so and smacked Drake accidentally in the face. “Oh...oh my God,” I said, wiping the sweat off my brow.

  He shifted, and I scrambled off his naked body. “Oh my God.” It really was all I could say. I’d not dreamed about Fin in some time. And never had Fin and Connor been together like…well, like that. The fact that it happened when I was sleeping in the arms of another man mortified me.

  “You okay?” he asked. He sat up and covered my shoulders with one of our blankets. The sky outside had changed. There was just enough light to see around the room, but not enough to show off my flushed, embarrassed face.

  “Yes,” I muttered. “Just a dream.”

  “A bad one?” His face took on a sympathetic shape and he reached up and pushed a section of hair behind one of my ears.

  I raised a shoulder to dismiss his question. No. Not a bad one, I thought. But sure as hell confusing. I didn’t want to answer with a lie, so instead I let myself fall back into his arms. For the next hour, we watched the world outside the window lighten, and when dawn had come and gone, we rose and hobbled across the room to peer through the glass. Much of the snow on Keel’s truck was still there, but the sides were visible again.

  “It stopped but the drifts have got to be a few feet deep. It might be a while before that thing can move. Look at the wind. Wow.” There was an edge of concern in Drake’s voice. And I didn’t have to guess why. We had no water. Unless we gathered up snow and used the three remaining logs to melt it over the fireplace. We were trapped in an unfinished housing community nearly two driving hours from the Ark. And that was in good weather. I imagined Kris and the others were worried about us. Especially if the storm had made it their way.

  “It was so warm and dry last week, and now…snow? Isn’t it early?”

  Drake’s arm went around my shoulder, and he pulled me into his side. “Yeah, I was wondering about that last night. What do you think will happen to the gardens at the Ark?”

  I shrugged. “Same thing that happens to any garden, I guess. Hopefully they were able to get the covers up.” I pictured the fall bounty frozen solid, Fern running around trying to save what she could.

  “Sewing needles,” I blurted.

  “Huh?” Drake look
ed down at me as if I’d gone mad.

  “Fern wanted me to pick up sewing needles. Sewing machine needles.”

  He laughed. “Well, that was random.”

  My mouth turned up in a crooked grin. “She’s going to know the moment she sees us.”

  “Know what?”

  “About this…about last night. She has some sort of weird sixth sense going on. She’ll know.”

  “Does that bother you?” Drake asked. He was looking out the window, staring at a fixed point in space.

  I chewed over my answer carefully before speaking. “No, why would it?”

  “Thought it might make you feel weird. I don’t know…guess I assumed you wouldn’t want anyone to know.”

  My laugh surprised him. “Drake, this isn’t the same world it used to be. We aren’t held by the same conventions – traditions – morals, even. We’re adults. We had sex. It was great…so great that I’ve no doubt we’ll do it again. I don’t give a shit what other people might think about that.”

  He didn’t answer, but his arm slid off my shoulder and his hand found mine, squeezing it. The air whistled at the window, pushing its way around the seams, trying to find a way in where it could bite us with its frosty teeth.

  “Don’t fall in love with me,” he teased.

  “Yeah, you don’t want to fall in love with me either. I’m damaged goods.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  We smiled at each other. But it was the guarded, hidden kind of smile. We’d acknowledged our relationship status as simply practical, not an emotional one. But even with that unsaid rule lingering between us, the fact remained that sex was never not emotional.

  “Let’s get dressed, warm up…maybe try and find something else to eat…” I said.