Rain Shadow

by Tess Oliver

  I took hold of the dresser with one hand, spread my legs slightly and then I reached down between my legs. I stroked my throbbing clit and pushed my ass out farther with each stroke. I was slick with need and what I needed was Luke.

  His footsteps pounded the wood plank floor, and my head spun as he neared me. Heat radiated from his body, and I could hear every breath he took. The zipper on his fly buzzed and he reached for the condom. He hadn’t touched me yet, but I continued to massage my pussy with my fingertips in eager anticipation.

  He leaned his mouth next to my ear. “Do you know what you do to me, Evangeline?” His tongue traced along my earlobe.

  I pushed my ass out farther, but he still hadn’t put his hands on me. “God, Luke, this is torture. Touch me, damn it. Fuck me before I die from wanting you.”

  He pushed his mouth lightly against my ear. “Do you really want me?”

  “Yes,” I said breathlessly. I pulled my hand from between my legs, but he grabbed hold of my wrist and pressed it back again.

  “No, don’t stop. I’m so fucking turned on watching you—” His control dissolved. He wrapped his hand in my hair and tugged it so that my head dropped back some. Then he wrapped it around his wrist and held it tightly as he grasped my hip with the other hand. His grip was rough, almost punishing, and I wanted him desperately.

  Luke tilted my ass out and pushed his hard cock deep inside my waiting pussy. I cried out in relief as he filled me again and again. He pulled my hair slightly and held me with a vice grip as he pushed deeper inside of me. His fingers nearly bruised my flesh as he yanked me against him.

  I clutched the dresser to keep from collapsing to the ground and then we moved faster, slamming rhythmically into each other. He groaned in climax just as my pussy clenched around him. My entire body shuddered in his grasp. His touch gentled as he pulled me back against his hard chest.

  “I can’t tell you how badly I needed that, how badly I needed you when I walked over here,” he said quietly.

  I spun around and faced him. “Did my grandfather do something?”

  He shook his head. “Let’s not bring him up. I’ve got you naked in my arms, and that’s the only damn thing I need.” He took my hand and walked me to the bed. We stretched out on the quilt, and I turned my back to him and he pulled me into his arms. Even after what we’d just done, there was an icy tension surrounding him.

  I took hold of his hand and pulled his arm tighter around me. His chest pressed against my back, and he kissed my shoulder. The light kiss had a touch of hopelessness to it.

  “What’s wrong, Luke? I mean other than all the obvious stuff. What’s the old man up to now?” He didn’t answer. “Uh, I’ve lived with him my whole life. Nothing you can say will shock me.”

  “Has he always been in the arms dealing business?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer. Sometimes I worried that Luke would become so repulsed by my grandfather that he would decide to have nothing to do with me either. I had to remind myself that all of this was an act on his part. He wasn’t truly a part of my sordid world. To me he was a new world, a world I was much more suited for. “He’s done some pretty shady stuff for money. Drugs, guns, prostitutes. I try to pretend it’s not happening. Otherwise I’ll end up like my mom.”

  The silence that followed was thick with questions, his and mine. He started with his and I hadn’t expected it. At least not yet.

  “If you had to choose, Angel, if you had to choose between staying here with him or leaving with me . . .?

  My throat felt dry. Losing Luke would be unbearable, but leaving here was close to impossible. “I wish it was that simple. My grandfather wouldn’t just let me walk out of here with a ‘come back and see us soon’. It would be dangerous for both of us.”

  “I’d keep you safe. I’d never let anything happen to you.”

  “My grandfather has a lot of enemies out there.” Whenever I talked out loud about my situation, about the ugly lot in life I’d been handed, it sounded worse than ever.

  “I’m not talking about leaving here and then coming back to visit—” His words dropped off. They’d been cryptic at first and then he laid it out bare. “If you leave with me, you won’t ever see him again. I never want to lose you, Angel. But I won’t give up my freedom, and I won’t be a part of his world.”

  I lifted his arm up off of me. I could feel his body tense as I sat up on the edge of the bed. My eyes ached with tears. The harsh quiet in the room made my head hurt. But the funny thing about it all was that I’d gone through this same scenario in my mind at least a dozen times.

  “Aunt Gracie wanted to bake some apple pies,” I said lightly as if both of us weren’t wearing the weight of this around our hearts. “I told her I’d help.”

  He didn’t say a word. I couldn’t look at him. I needed to think this out without seeing his face, that face that had already been etched into my memory. I pulled on my shorts. My fingers trembled as I put on my bra, knowing full well that he watched every move. But I couldn’t stop the shaking. My grandfather was evil, he was twisted, but he and Gracie were all I had. I’d been in his care since I was a baby. With the exception of a few years with my grandmother and my unstable mom, it had always been him. The man on the bed, the man who’d taken hold of my soul almost immediately, was still very much a stranger. He’d told me scattered details of his life, but I really didn’t know much else about him. Except that he stirred every emotion inside of me. Except that since I’d met him I couldn’t stand to be without him. Except that I spent every waking minute and even minutes asleep thinking about him.

  I could still feel his gaze on me as I slid on my shoes. In the distance some motorcycles rumbled into the compound, and Ripper barked at something. But my cabin was as still as a winter night on the tundra. I’d gone through this in my head. And more than once. I hadn’t expected him to ask it yet, but I’d gone through this. It had caught me off guard, but, deep down, I knew the answer was already there.

  I reached for the doorknob and turned it. Then I looked over at him. His gray eyes were flat with anguish again, and my chest ached at the sight. “I choose you,” I said quietly, and walked out the door.

  ***

  Aunt Gracie’s face was scrunched up as she rolled out the pie dough. It wasn’t out of concentration, and it was a look I’d seen far too often lately.

  “Aunt Gracie, does your head hurt again?”

  “Bad headache, Angel. But I promised Dad some pie.” She swiped a finger across her forehead to push back a strand of hair and left a white streak of flour on her skin. Aunt Gracie had difficulty with most things, even communicating, but when it came to cooking and baking she was pure genius. There were other people like her in the world, people who could barely function in society but who excelled at one thing, as if all the switches in their brains had been dimmed except one. And that one switch had received all of the power. She loved to cook and spent most of her day in the kitchen.

  I walked into the back room and grabbed the blood pressure monitor from the cabinet. Gracie’s headaches had become more intense and more frequent, and it worried me.

  “Aunt Gracie, let me take your blood pressure.”

  She cringed when she saw the cuff. “That thing squeezes too hard. I hate that thing.”

  “I know, Gracie, but it only squeezes hard for a little while. I want to make sure you’re feeling all right. Please?”

  She let go of the rolling pin. “I guess, but I don’t like that thing.” I pushed up her sleeve and wrapped the cuff around her arm. The buzz of the motor made Aunt Gracie tense.

  “Relax, it won’t hurt you.” I wondered if I should take my own blood pressure. Those last moments in the cabin still had hold of me. Coward that I was, I hadn’t stuck around for Luke’s reaction.

  And then as if he’d felt me thinking about him, the door to the kitchen opened and he walked in. He was as striking dressed as he was naked. The thrift store jeans and t-shirts I’d bought him had fit p
erfectly. I’d touched and held him enough to know exactly the sizes he needed. I had everything about Luke memorized.

  Gracie leaned toward me. “It’s the looker.”

  “It sure is.” The cuff relaxed, and I checked the numbers. They were too high. Of course it might have been because ‘the looker’ had walked in right then. “Gracie, I want you to go in and rest. I’ll finish the pies, all right. Your blood pressure is too high. That’s why your head hurts. Grandpa has to take you to the doctor this week.”

  She shook her head. “No doctor, Angel.” The mention of a doctor was a mistake. It would only upset her more. She was terrified of them. “All right but you have to rest. I’m going to shut the blinds so that it’s quiet and dark in there. Then you close your eyes and rest.”

  It was always hard to get Gracie to leave the kitchen, but I sensed that the ache in her head made it easier for her to comply. She stood from the stool. “Don’t forget the cinnamon.”

  “I won’t.” I followed her into the backroom and pulled the shades down to block out any sunlight. She stretched out on the futon and went to turn on the television. I took the remote from her hand. She pushed out her bottom lip like a small pouting child.

  “No television. It will make your head hurt more. Rest.”

  She sighed in disappointment, but stretched out on the futon and closed her eyes. Getting Grandpa to take her to the doctor would be as tough as getting her to go, but this couldn’t be ignored anymore. She needed medication to control her blood pressure and soon.

  The worry must have shown on my face as I walked back into the kitchen and closed Gracie’s door behind me.

  “Is she all right?” Luke asked.

  I shook my head. “Her blood pressure is too high. She needs to see a doctor,” I smiled thinking about his nickname for me. “I mean a real doctor.”

  “Will your grandfather take her?”

  “Will Aunt Gracie go is the real question.” I washed my hands and surveyed the counter. “At least she has the pie dough rolled out.” I spoke casually as if we hadn’t just had a life changing discussion, as if I hadn’t basically just told him that I would give up my whole existence and my family to be with him. I picked up the bowl of apples. He circled behind the counter. He took the bowl from my hand and put it back down. He gazed at me in that way that went directly into my chest and grabbed my heart. Then, without a word, he took hold of my arms, pulled me to him and lowered his mouth to mine. His kiss was long and deep and held all the emotion that had swirled through my room just moments before. It was sealed now. There was nothing anyone, not even my crazy grandfather, could do to pull us apart.

  He lifted his face and looked at the clutter on the counter. “I can help. I used to help my mom make pies for the holidays.”

  I smiled at that notion. “That is so fucking cute. I can just see you now.”

  “Hey, I rolled a mean pie crust. Of course, it looked as if a blizzard of white flour had blown through the kitchen once I was done, but the pies looked good.”

  “Great. You can put the dough in the pie pans, and I’ll peel the apples.” I picked up an apple and dragged the peeler across its surface. “You’ve never said much about your family.” I lowered the fruit and stared over at him. “Holy shit, I’ve been a selfish ninny. They must be frantic about you. I can’t believe I just thought about that.”

  He pressed the pie dough into the pan and shook his head. “You haven’t thought about it because I haven’t brought it up. I just have two brothers, and yeah, they’re probably freaking out. My dad died of a heart attack a few years back, and my mom,” he stopped and seemed to get lost in a distant memory. There was that horrible sorrow again. “My mom died when I was a kid, just like yours.” He crimped the sides of the pie like a true baker. “My dad taught me how to shoot a gun, but my mom taught me how to bake pies . . .among other things.”

  “What did your dad do that made him so good with a gun?” It was an innocent and logical enough question, but it had startled him.

  “Uh, he was in business. He just liked shooting at the target range for a hobby,” he said quickly as if he’d just come up with it.

  “That’s all right, Luke. You don’t have to talk about this. I’m being too nosy.”

  “No, that’s fine. I don’t mind.” He finished one pie plate and went on to the next. A faraway look glimmered in his eyes. “I wasn’t there when my mom died, like you were, but I remember every detail of that awful day.” He finished the crust and sat on Gracie’s stool. “I was at school in my fourth grade classroom. My twin brother, Seth,” he paused, “and Dex were in the same class. Dex was always there. We were inseparable.” Bringing up Dex had thrown him off his stride. He stared down at his flour covered fingers, and I waited for him to come back to the present. Several times a day he would fade back to the horrible day when Dex had died, but I’d found that if I waited quietly without saying anything, he would surface from the darkness again. He picked up a piece of spare dough and rolled it in his fingertips. “Mrs. Henry, the school principal, walked into our classroom. With her long, sharp nose, skinny legs and seemingly endless supply of pink sweaters, she’d earned the nickname Flamingo from the students. She always wore that pink sweater. Always. Even if it was ninety degrees, she’d have that pink sweater on. The only time you saw the elusive white starched blouse beneath was when you got called into the principal’s office. Once you were summoned to sit in the chair across from her desk, the chair the office staff had called the Gage chair because my older brother Gage had spent so much time there, that’s when she’d take off that fucking pink sweater and hang it politely on the back of her chair. That day she came into the room without the sweater, and her face matched her white blouse. We all quieted down as we always did whenever she walked into the room. She leaned over and whispered something into my teacher’s ear. My teacher, Mrs. Fremont, reached back and grabbed the edge of her desk for support. Then she looked across the room at me. ‘Luke and Seth, Mrs. Henry needs to speak with you,’ she’d said shakily. Nothing about her voice or expression seemed like the woman who’d just taught us how to reduce fractions ten minutes earlier. The school hallway stretched on endlessly, and every scenario went through my head, but never the scenario that met us in the principal’s office. Gage was balled up in the chair crying so hard he looked close to puking. My brother Gage never cried. Never.” Luke swiped a finger absently through the film of flour on the counter.

  “‘Is Dad dead?’ Seth had found the courage to ask first. Gage looked to Mrs. Henry for help. Mrs. Henry sat down at her desk as if she needed the support of her chair. ‘Boys, I’m afraid I have some terrible news,’ she’d said quietly. ‘I called your mom to come take Gage home for the day. On the drive here, she was in an accident’. Right then the door to the principal’s office burst open. My dad stumbled inside looking as if someone had reached into his chest and ripped out his heart.”

  Luke looked up and stared out at the window as if he was imagining his own neighborhood. “Just three corners from the school, and a half mile from our house, a cement truck ran a stop sign, killing our mom.” He turned back to me. “Gage always blamed himself. If he hadn’t gotten in trouble for fighting on the playground, our mom wouldn’t have been driving through that intersection. My brother, who’d already found more than his share of trouble, became too much for my dad to raise on his own. He sent Gage up north to live on my grandfather’s ranch. He never came back. He still lives up there.”

  “And Seth?” I asked. “He’s your twin?”

  “Yeah, fraternal. We’re nothing alike. Seth and I shared a womb, but that is where the similarity ends. He has my mom’s light brown hair and blue eyes, and I inherited my dad’s black hair and gray eyes. Seth takes everything in stride, and I take everything personally.”

  I smiled. “Sounds like your dad had his hands full.” There was one more question that I’d avoided and with good reason. “Was there anyone else special in your life?”

/>   He stopped as if he needed to think about it. For a moment, I worried that there had been. He sensed my concern and seemed to pause longer just to tease me.

  “No one,” he said finally. My shoulders relaxed in relief.

  I’d finished the monotonous task of apple peeling and coring. Luke watched me as I chopped up the fruit and tossed it into a bowl with sugar and cinnamon. We piled the mixture into the two pie crusts and slid them into the oven.

  “Want something to drink?” I asked. “There’s some soda in the fridge. I’m just going to look in on Gracie and then we can sit out on the porch while we wait for the pies to bake.”

  “Sounds good.”

  I handed him a cold drink, peeked silently in back to make sure Gracie was sleeping and followed him out onto the porch.

  Gracie’s orange tabby cat, Whiskers, hopped into my lap the second I sat down. I rubbed his ears, and he responded with a loud purr. I pressed the cold soda can against my forehead. “I didn’t realize how hot it was today until we stepped out of that kitchen.” I seemed to be mastering the art of small talk, and I knew my main motive for chatting about the darn weather was to avoid anything heavier. I’d told him, unquestionably, that I wanted to stay with him no matter what happened. But there were so many paths this whole thing could take, it was too hard to think about for now. I would be happy just continuing as we were, alone most of the time and left to do what we liked. But the conversation about his family had reminded me that he hadn’t been placed on this earth solely for me.

  “Luke,” I said quietly, “I know you need to get back to your life again.”

  He reached over and took my hand. “We need to get back to it,” he amended. “I’ll figure something out, Angel. Not sure what yet, but yeah, I need to get out of here soon.” He grew quiet. There was something much more he hadn’t told me yet. Something that weighed heavily on his mind every time we talked about the reality of our situation. I held my breath hoping that he’d decided to let go of the secret, but he remained silent.