Driving Rain: A Rain Chaser Novel

by Sierra Dean

  “Everyone is taken care of. Leo and Sawyer weren’t anywhere near the lobby, and that man is a lot more responsible than you give him credit for. They’re already back at your hotel, and I’m sure she called her mom.”

  We made our way outside, and the warm night air smelled of dust and gasoline, but even that was better than the antiseptic stink of the hospital. I knew, deep down, the chemical reek meant the place was clean, but that smell would only ever make me think of death. Hospitals did not leave me with any warm, fuzzy feelings.

  We took a cab back to the hotel. She offered to come to my room with me, but I insisted I was fine. The doctors didn’t think I was concussed. Sawyer was safe with Leo for the night, and truthfully I just needed a little time to be alone with my thoughts.

  I stepped through the doorway, kicking off my boots and shedding my jacket before the door was even closed behind me.

  The living room lamp snapped on, and I shrieked, grabbing one of my boots and hurling it across the room.

  Cade deflected it easily. “What are you doing?”

  “What am I doing? You’re the one skulking in my bedroom. You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you.”

  “You don’t have a gun with you.” He got up, collecting the boot from where it had fallen, and crossed the room until he was standing only inches from me. He took my chin roughly between his thumb and forefinger and tilted it up so he could see the damage better.

  Turning my head slightly to the right, he narrowed his eyes at the stitches as if they had personally offended him.

  “You’re hurt.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You have stitches.”

  “It’s hardly the first time.” I wanted to remind him that a few months earlier I’d had a collapsed lung, so by contrast this was basically no worse than a skinned knee, but perhaps that wasn’t the best tactic. I’m not dead, but remember that other time I almost died? Yeah, maybe not so much.

  “What were you thinking?”

  “What was I…? What are you talking about?” For the first time since I came in, I noticed that his eyes were almost black, and a cloud of anger hung around him. He was pissed, I just couldn’t figure out why he was pissed at me.

  “You could have been killed.”

  “I wasn’t.” I still didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “Sunny told me what you did. How you jumped in front of her.”

  Hold up. He was mad at me because I’d protected my sister? Um, no, sir, step off that high horse.

  “I don’t remember any of it.”

  “Stupid.”

  This rankled me further, and I tried to pull myself up taller to make myself more physically imposing. I wanted to do anything that might help him realize he was talking like a crazy person. An asshole crazy person.

  “You could have died,” he reminded me.

  “So could she. Which of those options do you think would have bothered me more?”

  He ran his hands through his hair and paced the area in front of me with barely contained aggression. I imagined he wanted to punch a wall really badly right then. His whole body seemed to shimmer with anger.

  This, by extension, made me angry as well. Who did he think he was getting mad at me for protecting Sunny? “You tell me what you would have done?” I snapped. “Someone you love is in danger, and you’re standing right there, and it’s in your power to do something. I don’t think you’d just stand idly by and watch them get hurt.” I poked my finger into his chest fairly hard on this last line.

  “I don’t know what I’d do, because I wasn’t there. And the person I would want to save decided to jump in front of the godsdamned blast.” His stare was so icy and intense I almost missed the words he was saying.

  When my brain caught up and finally understood what he was so mad about, I made a little Oh sound.

  The idiot wasn’t mad at me, not really. He was mad at himself because he hadn’t been there to protect me. It was sweet, in a chauvinistic kind of way.

  “I’m fine,” I whispered.

  His expression fell then, all the rage evaporating, replaced with an anguish so deep it made my soul hurt. “What if you hadn’t been, Tallulah? What if something had happened to you? What if…?”

  There were so many what ifs he could end that sentence with, and I saw in his expression he’d spent the last several hours imagining each and every one of them.

  Forty-seven missed calls. That was what Sunny had said. He’d called my phone almost fifty times after the explosion before he found out I was okay.

  I tried to imagine what each of those unanswered calls had done to him, and I couldn’t stomach it.

  “I’m fine,” I said again.

  Cade grabbed me by both arms and dragged me against him, clinging to me in the fiercest hug imaginable. Every strain and bruise on my body protested being touched, but in spite of my own discomfort I could sense how badly he needed to hold me right then.

  Then I understood how badly I needed it.

  I wrapped my arms around his neck, squeezing. I breathed in his scent, that clean, masculine aroma that brought memories of our shared nights on the road flooding back. His arms were muscular and warm, and his body fit so perfectly against mine I thought we might have become one person. Burying my face in his neck, I placed a soft, gentle kiss at the base of his jaw.

  We were undone by that one kiss.

  The air around us became unfathomably hot. Suddenly clothing was too constrictive, too much to bear. Everywhere his hands went, from my arms, down my back, over my ribs, up to my breasts, he burned a fingertip trail into my skin.

  I pulled back, breathless.

  I’d never had a hug this dangerous before.

  When he met my gaze, he hesitated a fraction of a second. He asked something in that look, and the answer was written all over my face. Yes, yes, yes.

  His lips met mine, and it was like lightning crackling inside me. My whole body sparked to life. First he kissed me gently, imploringly, his lips learning the curves and outlines of my own. He was letting me taste him, letting me know him, and most of all he was giving us both enough time to come to our senses.

  Problem was, I didn’t want to come to my senses.

  I wanted to dive senselessly into this man and emerge on the other side forever changed.

  I opened my mouth and licked his lower lip, inviting him in. The kiss stopped being sweet. His tongue met mine, and it was electric. My body shuddered convulsively from the unexpected delight of that one teasing taste. I clung to him, my fingernails digging into the buttery-soft material of his incredibly expensive shirt.

  I traced the outline of his chest muscles as I steered him back into the bedroom, guiding him until his legs hit the end of the bed and he dropped down onto it.

  With us temporarily broken apart, I could see just how hungry he was. His eyes, so angry only minutes before, were shining. There was a desperation on his face that made me feel powerful and desired. I had the control to make this man lose his mind with need. I’d gloat, but he had the same power over me.

  All I wanted was to give him what he needed. What we both needed.

  I could practically feel his gaze touching me as he looked me up and down.

  I had never felt so beautiful. Not in that gown I’d worn for the lightning show. Not ever before. He looked at me as if there was no one else in the world he wanted to see. Like he would be perfectly content if I was the last thing he ever saw.

  I touched his face, tracing my thumbs over his cheeks, running a finger over his once-broken nose. I leaned in and kissed it. I kissed the apple of each cheek, kissed the deep furrow in his brow. I kissed his chin, all the while deftly avoiding his mouth.

  His hands went to my waist, and as I mapped his face with my lips, he pulled me onto his lap. I didn’t resist. Once I settled there, I felt the heaviness of his erection pinned between us. He and I groaned at the same time.

  I kissed him then, and not gently. My kiss was all an
xious need and devouring heat. I wanted to melt myself into chocolate and fill his mouth. I wanted to kiss every secret inch of him.

  He pushed his fingers under my shirt, and in an instant it was gone, which I only noticed because I had to break away from the kiss, gasping for air, as he pulled it off me. My fingers worked each pearlescent button on his shirt, undoing him like a knot. Finally he was bare, and I stopped kissing him to get a better look.

  The tattoos that covered both his arms were exposed for the first time since I’d been here. Each one was a memorial, a reminder of someone he’d hurt in the process of doing his job. Cade wasn’t big on forgiving himself for things. I wondered what would have happened if I’d died today. Would he have shouldered that blame? Would he have added a little storm cloud to the array?

  I must have looked distracted, tracing the outline of each secret symbol with my fingernails, because he growled at me, twisting my head back towards him until his mouth met mine and I was lost to his kisses once again.

  So this was what it felt like to be alive. I didn’t think I’d ever been so centered in a moment before. Each touch, each sound, each movement was uniting us in ways I’d never thought possible, and we weren’t even naked yet. This felt so right I couldn’t imagine why it was forbidden.

  I didn’t care, either.

  Soon we were both naked, though I couldn’t have said how our pants came off, it just happened too fast. Cade laid me back on the bed, his fingers tracing my face. I bit the pad of his thumb.

  “I’ve imagined you like this for such a long time,” he said quietly, almost like the words were coming to him out of a dream. He looked over me, touching my breasts, my ribs, his fingers moving lower, lower, lower until oh.

  I let out a gasp, and he smiled mercilessly while stroking me slowly. Oh, gods, the perfection of this was staggering.

  “I thought you hated me,” I confessed.

  “Because I was unkind to you?” He smirked a little, and his fingers continued to work. The world around us had gone hazy. “That was self-preservation.”

  “If that was self-preservation, what is this?” I decided it was time to go stroke for stroke with him and took hold of his hardness, matching each cruel curl of his fingers until we were both panting.

  “This is drowning.”

  His fingers withdrew, and he knocked mine away, and then he was inside me in one glorious rock of the hips. My body stretched for him, yielded to him. I let him shape me, so that I would only fit him and no one else.

  There would never be anyone else.

  He found a rhythm, my hips lifting to meet it, and he wrapped his arms around me as he moved, so our bodies were locked together and his face was just above mine. I didn’t dare close my eyes, even as the tempo pushed me maddeningly close to the edge.

  As he brought me right to the brink, my feverish breaths telling him all he needed to know, he kissed me again, with both our eyes open, and I gasped into his mouth while my body fell to pieces.

  It was the same sensation as being struck by lightning. I was exploding into atoms and then rebuilt anew. But this was a different kind of agony. This wasn’t pain at all, but it was so delicious it hurt in its own way. It hurt my chest, knowing what a rare jewel of a moment this was and how badly I would yearn for this once it was gone.

  He followed me, his whole body tensing, then shivering.

  If this was drowning, we were drowning together.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  I awoke around three in the morning with a choking panic clawing at my chest. I had fallen asleep, and Cade would have left to save us both the risk of being caught.

  My hands reached out, expecting nothing but cool sheets and an empty space beside me.

  Instead, I touched hard muscle and warm skin.

  My heart stuttered.

  He had stayed. He was still here with me.

  I wanted to shake him awake and yell at him for being so stupid, and I wanted to kiss every inch of him for not going while I was asleep.

  I curled against his back, skin to skin, and looped my leg over his, so I was as close to him as I could conceivably be right then. Placing a kiss at the back of his neck, I let myself bask in the glow of him.

  He had stayed.

  We had spent hours exploring each other, learning each other, destroying each other. We’d filled the night with as much passion as we conceivably could, because we had no way of knowing when we’d have another opportunity to meet like this.

  I hadn’t forgotten just how against the rules this was, or how much trouble we could get into if we were discovered. If anyone knew about us, we’d never be allowed to see each other again. In all likelihood one of us would be forced into permanent temple life with someone else being pushed into our cleric role.

  That someone would probably be me.

  Still, I had no regrets. I wouldn’t have traded this one night with him for anything. It meant the world to me to have seen the look in his eyes when he knew what was going to happen, when he knew I wouldn’t say no.

  We had fit together so perfectly I couldn’t conceive of anything more beautiful than that.

  How could I regret perfection?

  “Cade?” I whispered it against his ear, so soft it was barely a sound at all.

  He didn’t stir, didn’t make a single grunt of acknowledgment. His breathing was quiet and even.

  Then, because I wanted to hear it out loud, and it might be the only opportunity I’d have to say it in his presence, I said, “I think I love you.”

  It sounded right.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  When I got up in the morning, Cade was gone.

  It was enough that for part of the night he had slept beside me. For him to stay right through until morning was much too dangerous, no matter how lovely it would have been to see the sunlight kissing his skin or to have one more tangle in the sheets.

  I had to believe we’d have another chance to do this.

  But even if we didn’t, I could survive a lot with just the memory of this one night.

  I showered, and slipped on my clean jeans, since the pair I’d worn the previous day was still coated with dust. Topping the outfit off with a pale-gray off-the-shoulder sweatshirt, I made my way down to the lobby to convene with the rest of the group for breakfast.

  Cade didn’t join us, and it was probably for the best because I doubted I could school my features well enough to keep the others from guessing what had happened.

  Sunny already seemed to be wearing a knowing smirk, but there was no way she could imagine the full breadth of my night with Cade. Her mind seemed to stop at kissing. She’d asked me about Prescott once, many years earlier, and in awed tones had said, “Did you kiss him?”

  Uh, yeah. I kissed him on the penis a little.

  She’d been so shocked by kissing I hadn’t had the heart to tell her what had really happened. I think Sunny still believed I was as temple pure as she was, and if that’s how she chose to imagine me, all the power to her. At least someone thought I was innocent.

  I didn’t want to ruin the illusion by telling her just how far off the path I had strayed.

  Sawyer was bouncing out of her skin to talk to me. “What happened?”

  “Car bomb,” I said.

  “Duh, I saw the news. I mean what happened to you?”

  I pointed to my stitches. “It’s not that bad. It doesn’t even hurt anymore. I got hit by some glass, that’s all.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Indeed.”

  Sunny looked as if she wanted to poke at my wound a little more, but restrained herself, thank the gods. We ordered our food and ate in silence. It was only when I was on my second cup of coffee that I realized I had no idea what the plan was for the day.

  “Are they moving the remaining convention events?” I asked.

  Leo and Sunny shared an uneasy glance, then Leo said, “You didn’t watch the news last night?”

  I shook my head, setting down my k
nife and fork. “I got back from the hospital and got right into bed.” This wasn’t a lie. I did go straight to bed. I just happened to have a fair amount of very steamy sex in that bed before I slept.

  At no point had I considered turning on the news.

  “The convention staff and the hotel are writing it off as an ‘unfortunate’ incident designed to upset the flow of events. They’re claiming that because no one was seriously injured, it was just to distract from the convention and throw things off course before the big public addresses today.” Sunny tried to smile hopefully, but it looked almost pained.

  “What does that mean?” I demanded.

  Leo cleared his throat. “It means they spent all night cleaning up the Luxor and replacing the front doors. It means they’re planning to go ahead with today’s events as if nothing happened.”

  No, that couldn’t be right. I know Imelda had balked at the idea of canceling the convention, but surely she was smart enough to know we couldn’t continue as if everything was okay.

  What would they have done if someone had been killed? Would they charge ahead pretending it was hunky-dory?

  Actually, knowing Imelda, I imagined that was precisely what she would do. Nothing to see here, folks, please ignore the dismembered bodies and step this way.

  Nothing could make the gods seem weak.

  The convention would go on because it needed to appear as if we hadn’t flinched.

  I couldn’t begin to imagine how pissed off that would make the killer. I had to believe he thought the previous day’s explosion would be enough to make his point. He probably thought he’d get a bigger bang for his buck, take at least a couple clerics out, and shut down the convention.

  Instead, we were laughing in his face, erasing any sign of what he’d done, and carrying on like it was business as usual.

  Why was I the only person who saw how dangerous this was?

  “They’ve tripled security,” Sunny offered. “And I heard someone saying the local police would have a perimeter around the hotel. Everyone will be checked before entering. I think it’s safe.”