After the Rain (The Twisted Fate Series Book 1)

by Unknown

  Marcus was satisfied. He didn’t want to kiss her again, but his ego dictated that she didn’t think he was a bad kisser, either.

  But it hadn’t just been a kiss. He remembered his hand on her breast and her hand… he looked down at his pants and saw that the zip was undone. Stormy followed his gaze with her eyes and went bright red.

  “Oops,” she said, clutching at her top as she realized that one of her straps had slipped down.

  What the hell had just happened?

  Oh, She’s been called so many different things over the years, since the dawn of time: Fate, Karma, Kismet, Moirai… But call Her what you like, there was no doubt that She was here, and She was working Her magic on Stormy and Marcus. Weaving Her devious little web around them.

  Trapping them.

  Pushing them.

  Pulling them.

  Twisting, turning, moving and manipulating them to Her divine will. Making them dance to the beat of Her invisible drum…

  But where would She take them exactly? Oh, where indeed… Well, that remains to be seen. But if the conjuring of a freak storm was anything to go by, this was just the start of a very bumpy ride that these two star-crossed lovers-to-be would find themselves on.

  6

  There’s no such thing as vampires

  The Jomo Kenyatta airport in Nairobi looked like a marketplace. It was packed and buzzing with activity. Dozens of planes had been grounded due to the freak storm and frightened passengers had been herded into the cramped airport terminal like cattle. Some were still green around the gills and wobbly from their landings, while others were bruised and scraped due to falling luggage, but all of them looked relieved.

  Despite the chaos, the airport was full of happy chatter. People phoning home and letting their loved ones know that they were okay, honeymooners making out, and parents hugging their children. No one cared that they had been inconvenienced; they just cared that they were still alive. The atmosphere buzzed and hummed with a happy, joyous energy.

  But Stormy felt anything but happy, and as she glanced up at Marcus, she was pretty sure that he was feeling the exact same thing. That queer look of agitation on his face that had caused his brow to furrow seemed like a dead giveaway.

  As they made their way through the cheerful commotion, Stormy felt more frightened and shocked than she had when she thought she was going to die. What had just happened? Not the plane almost plummeting from the sky thing… the other thing.The thing! Things like that didn’t happen to her. Sure, she was a spontaneous, live-for-the-moment kind of gal, but she was in no way a public-unzip-and-touch type of gal. She had never done anything like it in her life. Well, okay, maybe once – the time she and Tim had gone to the drive-in when they were 18. That had gotten pretty wild. But it was nothing compared to this!

  The world around them felt like it was moving, but time was standing still for her as her brain desperately tried to process what they’d just been through. The awkwardness was overwhelming. This was not an elephant in the room between them – it was a Boeing 747 on serious steroids. Neither of them had uttered a syllable since walking off the plane.

  Stormy stood in silence amongst the crowd. Marcus had placed himself a few meters away, watching the bags go around and around on the baggage carousel. But the chaos was unbelievable: people pushed and elbowed and grabbed. Too many bags, too many people, too much confusion. Stormy watched as Marcus grabbed his branded Loo Vuitton suitcase. Stormy scoffed loudly at the ostentatious show of wealth – again, the cost of that designer suitcase could probably feed a starving village of children for a year. There were still so many things about him that she just didn’t like.

  They continued to stand in silence for a few more minutes, until Stormy finally saw her plain black bag coming around the corner. She pulled it off, wondering vaguely why it felt heavier.

  “So now what?” Stormy finally asked, still avoiding eye contact.

  “Well,” Marcus looked at his big shiny watch – why did his watch need to be so big? And so bloody shiny. It was practically luminescent. It could blind people. “We have a wedding to get to in two-and-a-half days, and we’re stuck in a country with a monsoon in progress. I don’t think we’ll be getting out of here for a while.”

  “Do you think we’ll miss the wedding? We can’t!” The thought of missing Damien and Lilly’s wedding made Stormy feel sick – she had to be at that wedding, come hell or tall water.

  “I know, but it might not be in our control.”

  “I swear to Buddha, I knew I shouldn’t have flown today, the stars and the numbers predicted this. I knew it!” Stormy started wrapping her hair around her finger frantically. She felt like she was going to wig out at any second. She turned to Marcus, hoping for some kind of reassurance, but all he did was roll his eyes and scoff at her (there seemed to be a lot of scoffing in their interactions, Stormy noticed).

  “I don’t know how you believe in all that crap.” Marcus shook his head. “That stuff is about as real as things like aliens and vampires.”

  “What!” Stormy gasped. For someone who seemed so worldly, Marcus was woefully ill-informed. “The aliens built the pyramids. Don’t be so close-minded.”

  “And vampires?”

  “Oh, don’t be silly.” Stormy stopped twirling her hair now and faced off with him angrily. “There’s no such thing as vampires.”

  “I just don’t get you.” Marcus looked her up and down again. But this time it felt a little different, given the fact that half an hour ago he had been holding her breasts and she had unzipped him.

  “I don’t get you, either. One minute you’re kissing me and the next you’re insulting my belief system,” she spat back, feeling riled.

  “Hey,” Marcus sounded angry. “I could say the same for you . It’s ‘close-minded’ to only believe in one thing and not open your mind up to the possibility that you could be wrong, too!”

  Stormy looked at him and nodded. “Whatevs. So we still don’t really like each other even though we… you know?”

  That was the million percent question, wasn’t it: why had that happened if they didn’t see eye-to-eye at all and had nothing in common and didn’t really like each other? Stormy was generally comfortable with supernatural phenomena and the unknown, but this was too peculiar for even her to fathom.

  “Look,” Marcus finally said slowly, as if still trying to convince himself too. Which maybe he was, Stormy thought. “It was a stressful situation, we thought we were going to die. Things like that happen… I think.”

  Stormy considered this for a moment. “That’s one explanation. The other, of course, is that the stars were right – we’re just fiery-crazy sexually compatible.”

  “Well, you know what I think about star signs, so… I’ll go with the near-death experience theory.” Trust Marcus to look for the logical – and boring – explanation.

  They stood in silence for a few moments. “So now what?” Stormy asked again.

  “Well, the airline will probably put us up in a hotel for the night. But as long as we can fly out by tomorrow, we should make the wedding in time, as well as the wedding rehearsal dinner.” He checked his watch again – it seemed to be a nervous tic of his. Not surprising, really; Marcus seemed like the corporate type who was always hung up on schedules and deadlines. That probably explained his blocked throat chakras. “You stay here with the bags, and I’ll go talk to the airline people, find out what’s going on.”

  Marcus walked up to the crowded airline desk and somehow managed to elbow his way to the front of a queue of confused, stranded passengers from their flight. Stormy stood a few feet away and zoned out, her anger slowly abating as she thought back to that airplane thing… that thing!

  She had touched his… you-know-bloody-what! Through his underpants, of course, but still… How did she go from hating the way he ate his meat, to wanting to eat
him up herself?

  She watched him as he chatted to one of the desk clerks. He was really very big and broad and probably quite muscular with his shirt off. That had never appealed to her before, but now…

  He had a very generic pretty boy face, again something she would never go for; but suddenly he was the hottest guy on the planet. She was so sexually attracted to him it was almost painful. She was forced to cross her legs tightly.

  “What do you mean, you only have one room?” The sound of Marcus’s raised voice snapped her out of her daydream. Just as well, really, because she had started mentally peeling his shirt off and was ready to sink her teeth into his shoulder. She walked up to the counter to see what the commotion was all about.

  “I’m so sorry,” the desk clerk apologized, looking a little alarmed at Marcus’s sudden outburst. “It’s all we have left, and the hotels are fully booked.”

  Marcus was struck by an unfamiliar bolt of panic – he didn’t panic. What would happen if he and Stormy shared the same hotel room? Look what had happened when they’d just been sitting next to each other on the plane, surrounded by other passengers! Despite their spat at the luggage carousel, he was still feeling so hot for her it was driving him insane. Even when they were arguing with each other, he was imagining her naked. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anyone, and it was freaking him the fuck out . In fact, he wanted her especially when they were arguing. No one ever argued with him – not outside the courtroom, anyway – and now that someone was, now that she was, it was the hottest thing he’d ever seen. It caused dirty thoughts to flood his mind like never before. He wanted to do to her what he’d never done to any woman before… Although he still didn’t quite know what that was, exactly.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman behind the desk said again. “We just don’t have anything else.” Marcus glanced up at her and felt bad – she looked almost frightened.

  “Sorry, that will be fine thanks,” Marcus conceded, leaning closer to the counter so as not to give away the obvious physical reaction his body was involuntarily having to his thoughts. It was hard to have a normal conversation with the party that was happening in his pants right about now.

  The desk clerk glanced at Stormy as she approached the counter, with a strange look, almost as if she was trying to size her up. Marcus didn’t blame her, he suspected this was a common reaction Stormy elicited everywhere she went. “You’d better go now and get a taxi while you still can – the worst of the storm will be hitting soon and I don’t think cars will be allowed on the roads for much longer,” she advised them. Marcus nodded his thanks and turned away from the desk, indicating for Stormy to follow him. He noted that Stormy seemed deep in thought, and it looked like it had nothing to do with the logistic predicament they now found themselves in.

  The airport was still full of people, and Marcus had to negotiate their luggage trolley around stranded passengers who were settling onto the floor and chairs to sleep for the night. At least they had a hotel, he thought – it could be worse.

  The storm outside was severe: sheets of water were pelting down and the winds were starting to pick up. And although Marcus was not one for histrionics, he couldn’t help but think of one of those post-apocalyptic films where the world as everyone knew it is annihilated. The desk clerk was right – they needed to get to a hotel as soon as they possibly could, and luckily theirs was only a few kilometers away.

  But running from the airport to the line of taxis a few meters away was another matter entirely, and by the time they got there, they were absolutely drenched. Marcus allowed himself a quick glance over at the drenched Stormy and immediately regretted it – because now he was thinking of a wet T-shirt contest.

  It was eerily silent during the cab ride. Neither of them spoke and instead sat staring out in opposite directions as the wind whipped sheets of rain against the windows. Marcus shivered a little; it was cold and he was starting to feel very uncomfortable in his wet clothes. But minutes later, after the driver had negotiated the perilously flooded streets, they arrived at the five-start hotel, and Marcus felt a lot better when he thought about the warm shower he could soon take.

  Their room was spacious and comfortable, but only had a double bed. Marcus quickly decided that he’d sleep on the comfy-looking sofa in the corner – the more distance he could put between him and Stormy, the better. This wasn’t like him at all, but he just didn’t trust himself in her presence. He liked to think of himself as the master of cool, calm and collected; over the years, he’d learnt to control his feelings and wishes. If he didn’t, he always found himself disappointed. His tenth birthday, for example: he would’ve sacrificed every single one of his presents (which was saying a lot, since he’d gotten several Ninja Turtle action figures) to see his parents there. They’d promised they’d be there, but a few days before, some Pandas or monkeys or marmosets or whatever had been mistreated in China or Japan or Vietnam or wherever, and they were on it. No child should be without their parents on their tenth birthday. That was the day that Marcus realized he could no longer let his emotions run away with him, because if he did, nothing but hurt would follow. So he’d vowed to become the master of control. Logic would guide him, even when it came to choosing a wife and settling down. It was a rational decision that would be carefully calculated. And he would never miss his child’s tenth birthday party, that’s for sure.

  But there was something about this rainbow-haired woman that was causing him to lose his grip. And he didn’t like it. This was uncharted territory – not a comfortable position for someone who was used to dictating the rules and following the letter of the law.

  Being the gentleman that he was, he let Stormy use the bathroom first to shower and change for dinner, but a few minutes later, he heard a sudden, outraged yell.

  “Oh my Shiva!” Stormy screamed.

  “What’s going on? Are you okay?” Marcus jumped up and hovered by the door, not sure whether he should go in. Stormy might be naked, and there was no need to tempt Fate again…

  “No, I am not okay!” She stuck her head around the bathroom door. “I have a stripper’s bag!”

  Marcus blinked at her. “What do you mean?”

  “This isn’t my bag. It looks like it’s a hooker’s bag!”

  Marcus felt his look of confusion quickly turn to one of amusement. Clearly, she was blowing things out of proportion, as usual. “I am sure it’s not a hooker’s bag.”

  “I’m telling you, the woman that owns this bag twirls around on poles.”

  “I doubt it very much,” Marcus snorted.

  “Fine, if you don’t believe me, I’ll show you.”

  Stormy disappeared back into the bathroom. Marcus sat back down on the couch, caught between amusement and exasperation at her histrionics. “Stripper clothes” probably meant modern clothes, clothes that did not look like they came from a charity store in the sixties smelling of old cigarette smoke and mothballs. She was over-reacting, another thing he could add to her list of attributes.

  Only she wasn’t.

  The bathroom door opened again and Stormy walked into the room. Marcus nearly died of shock.

  She was wearing a tiny pair of bright purple hot pants. The tight fabric clung to her body; he could see the outline of everything, perfectly. They were not only short, but also low, and the top of them barely covered her. He noticed that she had a belly ring and a tiny pink star tattooed on her protruding hipbone. Her stomach was as flat as a board and her legs were short, but shapely. She was also wearing a tiny, tiny, tiny, did he mention tiny, shiny bikini number that barely covered her breasts. She twirled in a circle for him, exposing her bum that was poking out of the shorts. A small, perfectly round bum. The high Perspex heels she was wearing seemed to round the whole ensemble off nicely.

  “Um….” Marcus was speechless. It was the trashiest outfit he’d ever seen, but it was practically giving him a hard
-on from across the room.

  “See? Stripper chic. Would you like me to give you a lap dance? I could use some spare cash.”

  Marcus’s mind ran away with him, images of her on his lap, in that outfit, twirling and grinding and swirling… He crossed his legs out of sheer necessity.

  “No, No…” he swallowed hard. “No lap dance, thanks. So is there anything in that bag that would be appropriate for dinner?”

  “No! But you’re welcome to look for yourself.” Stormy pulled the bag out of the bathroom and tossed it on the bed.

  Marcus walked over and was met with lacey, barely-there crotchless numbers that were doing nothing to quell the feeling in his pants.

  “What about this?” He reached for a satin dress that seemed to be the most ‘conservative’ thing in the bag. It was shimmery red, and had no back, but it was vaguely acceptable. (Well, not really, but it did look like the item that would cover the most flesh, and he was starting to get really hungry.) “Is your other dress too wet?”

  “Soaking,” Stormy replied.

  “I could lend you a T-shirt?” he offered.

  “And wear it with what?” She pulled out another pair of lurid hot shorts and some tiny cut-off denims and waved them at him. “The bottoms in this bag are worse than the tops. I’ll go try this on.” She took the red dress from him and disappeared back into the bathroom.

  A few minutes later, she emerged in a dress that looked like a second skin. It wasn’t as short as the others, but the halter-top squeezed her small breasts into some rather impressive-looking cleavage. She turned, exposing a low-cut back that tied in the middle with a diamante string (classy) and dipped all the way to the small of her back, where he noticed another rainbow tattoo between the two perfect dimples just above her ass. She looked even sexier in this outfit than the other one. Her rainbow hair was wet and piled up on her head, and for the first time, he appreciated it. It suited her, and no one else in the world could pull it off. In some strange way, the colors made her skin seem even paler and more porcelain-looking.