Rain Storms

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.