Rain Storms

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."