After the Rain (The Twisted Fate Series Book 1) (6 page)

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.

“I can give you a jacket to cover yourself a bit more, if you want,” he suggested, pulling one out of his bag.

“Sure, that would be good.”

A few minutes later, once Marcus was showered, dressed and ready to go, they left in search of dinner. As they walked to the door, Marcus noticed that she was barefoot. “You can’t go down without any shoes on.”

“Well I’m not wearing
those
,” she turned and pointed to the rather offensive Perspex things, which actually had glitter in the eight-inch heel. “And my sandals are drenched.”

“This is a five-star hotel, you can’t go barefoot,” Marcus insisted. What would people think if he went traipsing into the dining room with a shoeless woman?

“Fine,” she said, slipping on the shoes and the jacket that Marcus had given her. It was almost longer than the dress and she buttoned it up.

As she walked (sort of hobbled) down the corridor in front of him, Marcus realized that he’d made a huge mistake: wearing the jacket made the whole thing worse, because now she just looked like she was naked underneath it, especially with those heels.

Stormy pressed the button for the elevator, and they waited in silence again. When they weren’t arguing, they seemed to have absolutely nothing to say to each other. The elevator door finally opened with a
ting
and they stepped inside.

But as the door closed again, sexual energy reared its ugly head once more, and suddenly the heat inside the small confined space was overwhelming. It must have had something to do with their close proximity and this strange magnetic energy that Stormy seemed to radiate. In an ideal world, Marcus would maintain a ten-meter distance from her at all times – anything closer felt downright dangerous. Marcus moved to the other side of the elevator (it was the best he could do, bar climbing out the trapdoor on the ceiling and sitting on the roof) and rested his back against the wall, staring at his feet. If he looked up at her, he didn’t know what might happen.

Don’t look at her
, don’t look at her
… he repeated it like a mantra.

And then more disaster struck, if that was even possible: the lights flickered and then went off, plunging them into darkness, and the elevator stopped with an unpleasant grinding, thudding, moaning sound.

“What’s happening?” Stormy’s panicky voice rang out through the darkness.

“Power failure probably, must be the storm.” Suddenly Marcus felt a hand come out and touch him – she had made her way over to his side of the elevator.

“Small spaces freak me out.” She sounded genuinely frightened.

“We’ll be out in no time, don’t worry.”

But he
was
worried, not because they might be stuck in there, but because of what might happen between them in the darkness. Her hand was on his chest, and he felt a burning sensation where her palm rested against him.

This was the worst thing that could have happened to them under the circumstances. Maybe her stupid stars were actually right: a grounded flight, a lost bag, stripper clothes and now stuck in an elevator. It was just one disaster after another.

But despite everything, he was aching for her. And for the first time in his life (well, apart from that incident on the plane), it felt like he was out of totally control. He slipped his hand over hers.

What was he doing?

Their fingers intertwined and suddenly he felt her body pressing up against him in the darkness.

What the hell was
he doing?

He slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer, and she let out a breathy moan.
He felt her other hand come up and brush against his neck, and he leaned forward, looking for her lips…

7

Wham
-bam-thank-you-ma’am

It was frantic. It was wild. It was crazy, mad, furious, ridiculous and most of all, it seemed totally out of their control –
again
. Like puppets being controlled by horny teenage boys.

All feelings of panic and fear were forgotten as Stormy felt Marcus’s lips seeking hers. Her back came into contact with the wall with a thud as he pinned her to it. In the darkness, her other senses seemed heightened, which just made the whole experience that much more wild. His touch was intense and hot, and the woody smell of his aftershave was inebriating. He tasted like toothpaste, and she could just make out a slight salty taste coming from the tiny beads of sweat that were gathering on them both.

Stormy reached up and ripped his shirt off, and for the first time, ran her hands over his bare body. Yes, he was muscular and hard as a fricking rock, just as she’d imagined. He picked her up and pushed her higher against the wall. She dug her nails into his back and pulled him closer, wrapping her legs around his waist. Stormy somehow wiggled out of her jacket and within seconds Marcus responded by frantically pulling at her halter neck straps, untying them to expose her upper body.

There was much panting, and moaning, and whimpering and whining as she felt Marcus run his tongue over her body, down the side of her rib cage, across her stomach. Only one thought penetrated Stormy’s dizzy mind as he bit at her earlobe: she wasn’t wearing underwear. Hers had been wet from the rain, and the others in the suitcase…
well,
she would hardly class those as underwear.

And Marcus was running his hand up her inner thigh now – he was about to find out! She trembled with anticipation as his hand worked its way higher and higher.

“Ooops,” she breathed as she felt Marcus right there, and then heard the loud moan that came out of his mouth when he realized.

Everything was clumsy in the dark, which made the whole experience so much hotter. It gave it an urgency that made them giddy. They both fumbled hungrily with each other, completely lost in the moment.

So lost that neither of them registered that the lift had finally started moving again!

So lost that they didn’t notice the lights had come back on.

And so bloody lost that they didn’t hear the doors go
ting!

“AAAAHHH!” A high-pitched scream rang out behind them and they turned. Stormy was still topless, Marcus was shirtless, and his pants were undone and lurking somewhere around his ankles – she wasn’t even sure how that had happened. And suddenly, they had an audience!

An elderly couple clung to each other in terror and a mother rushed away with her teenage son – who had the biggest smile plastered across his face.

“What’s wrong?” Suddenly the hotel security guard and manager appeared, obviously drawn by the loud screaming.

Stormy felt Marcus’s arm come up and cover her breasts, which she felt was oddly touching.

The manager looked at them in blatant disapproval for a few seconds before opening his mouth. “OUT!” he screamed, pointing at the door of the hotel lobby.

Marcus stepped forward, placing himself in front of her protectively. “I’m sorry, I can explain.” Stormy could hear from the tone of his voice just how mortified he was.

“There is noting to explain here.” The manager stuck a finger out and pointed at Stormy. “We do not welcome
her kind
in here, and we kindly ask that you to leave this hotel immediately.”

Stormy felt her temper flare and stepped around Marcus, causing the jacket to fall to the floor. Not caring that she was still topless, she placed her hands on her hips in a defiant pose. The elderly man started coughing loudly and his wife hurried him off to a nearby chair, clucking indignantly as the guy looked like he was about to have a coronary.

“What does that mean?
My
kind
?” she asked aggressively.

The manager looked Stormy up and down with contempt. “Working girls.”

“Hey, hey!” Marcus stepped forward again as Stormy spluttered furiously. “She is not a prostitute! This is defamation of character.”

The manager glared at them for a moment, before speaking in a strangely calm tone. “And this is public indecency. You have five minutes to get your things and get out before I call the police.”

“Wait, let’s just talk about this,” Marcus tried to reason with him. “There is a storm and all the hotels are booked up, and…”

“You should have thought about that before you engaged in solicitation, sir,” the manager replied coolly.

“I’m
not
a hooker!” Stormy screamed at the man so loudly that people started to gather around the elevator to gawk at them. This just infuriated him further – Stormy saw the color rising rapidly in his cheeks, and the vein in his forehead looked like it was about to explode.

“OUT!” the manager shouted back. “Or I will have security drag you out!”

“Okay,” Marcus threw his arms in the air. “We’ll leave, just give us a few minutes to get out bags.”

Five minutes later, Stormy and Marcus were standing outside the hotel in the pouring rain, clutching onto their bags.

Stormy wasn’t thinking about being kicked out of a fancy hotel for public indecency, or being mistaken for a hooker. Like before, all she could think about was what had just happened. She could still feel the sting of his hands on her body. The wetness of his mouth on her stomach and the burning trail his fingertips left when they climbed up her skirt. Suddenly, despite the cold outside, she felt blazing hot.

No! No! No!
How?
Marcus couldn’t believe he’d done that. Again. And in an elevator! If those doors hadn’t opened when they did, he might have actually fucked her. Yes, he would have. Definitely.

He could still taste her, even as the wind and rain whipped against his skin. Marcus wasn’t sure what his next move should be, so he simply stood in shocked silence as the rain washed over him – hopefully washing her scent away, too. Stormy seemed to be doing the same. They must have looked like a real pair of lunatics, he thought, standing in the rain, doing nothing.

It took him a few moments to snap back to reality and realize what a literal shit storm they were now in: no taxis in the vicinity, and a full-blown monsoon about to hit in all its glory. The only thing Marcus could think of was that they needed to take shelter somewhere, or find a hotel and hope that they would have a room. He reached into his jeans and pulled out his cell phone. Shit, it was wet and wouldn’t turn on. Talk about bad luck –
nothing
seemed to be going right today.

“Is your phone dry? I want to look for the nearest hotel,” Marcus turned to Stormy, raising his voice against the wind and finally breaking the silence between them.

“How will you find a hotel on my phone?”

Marcus looked at her as if to say,
duh
. “Google maps, the internet.”

Stormy shook her head and shouted through the rain, “I don’t have the internet on my phone.”

“What?” He couldn’t have heard her right.

Stormy reached into her bag and pulled out a giant, brick-shaped creature with an aerial that had been sellotaped together. Marcus took it and stared down at it with a mixture of disdain and curiosity. Not only was it shockingly primitive, but she’d also stuck rainbow stickers all over it, and was that…
yes,
a feather had been glued to the top of the aerial.
Why?
He’d never seen anything like it in his life.

“
This
is your phone? Your
current
phone?” Marcus tried to shelter it from the rain and squinted down at the screen. It was still working, but not for long – it looked about a hundred years past its expiry date. Suddenly, a loud bolt of lightening lit up the sky. The sound of the thunder was deafening, like an atom bomb exploding next to them, and the ground felt like it shook.

Marcus instinctively jumped and Stormy screamed.

“We have to go!” Marcus grabbed her by the arm and started pulling her away.

“Where?”

“I don’t know. We have to find shelter.”

They ran across the road, splashing through deep puddles as they went.

“I told you! I
told
you! Not a good day to travel!” Stormy shouted over the rain. “We’re doomed! We’re so doomed right now! We’re going to die in this storm, or drown in a giant puddle, or –”

“And I told
you
, I don’t believe in that stuff!” Marcus screamed back, his eyes looking from left to right, trying to find them shelter.

Ten minutes later, Marcus and Stormy were standing in the reception of a small, filthy looking, one-star motel (he was sure they’d received that star by accident). It had been the nearest place to take shelter – unfortunately. They were drenched and Stormy was covered in mud from tripping, breaking a Perspex heel and falling into a puddle. Marcus had been forced to carry her the rest of the way. He hadn’t wanted to be in such close proximity with her body since their latest
incident
, but he’d had no choice. She’d been as light as a feather, and with her in his arms like that, seemingly so fragile and vulnerable, his desire to find shelter and protect them – her – had only intensified.

Marcus looked around the reception area, utterly disgusted. He wasn’t accustomed to this level of…
he couldn’t quite find
the words
… this level of filthy cheapness.This was a roadside dive. He saw the irony of it all, of course: kicked out of their fancy hotel accused of solicitation, and then landing up in a motel that probably charged by the hour and had condoms on the bedside tables. But as long as it had hot water and something to sleep on, he was fine. At this stage, all they needed was shelter from the storm.

The room was nothing like the previous one. It was small, dark, damp and dingy. The bathroom was pokey, with a shower that was so small, you could barely fit into it. There was a small, solitary bed pushed up against a wall of peeling pink paint. The carpets were filthy and the curtains stained and tattered, and it looked like rats had nibbled on the bottom of them. There was a suspicious-looking stain on the duvet, and he didn’t want to know what the guys from CSI would find if they came in with that light that illuminated bodily fluids. But it was (marginally) better than being blown away in a monsoon. They probably wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway – the sound of the storm outside was unbelievably loud and quite frankly, a little disconcerting. Marcus was unsettled by the fact that he even felt unsettled in the first place, and the more he thought about it, the more unsettled he became…
fuck,
this was not like him.

They both threw their bags down on the floor, dripping large puddles of water onto the carpet. Not that it mattered – it needed a wash anyway. Marcus walked over to the grimy window and looked out. The wind was picking up, causing the palms to bend to snapping point. He hoped they’d be okay in there. He moved away from the window and turned around.

And came face-to-face with a completely naked Stormy.

“We need to have sex! Now!” she declared in a matter-of-fact tone that caught him off guard.

“What?” he spluttered.

“We need to have sex and just get this thing out of our systems.”

Marcus could barely think straight as he gazed at her in absolute awe. She was better than he’d ever imagined, could ever imagine. Her skin was a pale white, her body petite yet soft at the same time. She had a small birthmark below one of her breasts, which he hadn’t noticed before. He had to smile to himself, because it was almost heart-shaped. How totally and utterly Stormy – even her birthmarks were cute.

“So?” she prompted, snapping Marcus back to reality. “Are we going to do this or what?”

“Do you really think that will work?” he finally managed to utter as he forced himself to pry his eyes away from her body.

“Yes. We just need to shag each other and then all this sexual tension will disappear and we can go back to not liking each other and not groping in public.”

Marcus wanted nothing more than to “shag her” (who
said
that these days?), but he wasn’t so sure this was the best solution to their problem. “What if we have sex and then want to have it again?”

Stormy shook her head. “No, that won’t happen. I’ve got this whole thing figured out.”

“Figured what out?”

“Why this thing between us keeps happening.”

“Okay,” Marcus folded his arms. “I’m all ears.”

“So… I’m probably very different from anyone you’ve ever been with, and you’re totally different from anyone
I’ve
ever been with. So I think a lot of this
…
tension
is just curiosity, as well as the astrological thing. But if we do it, we’ll totally satisfy that curiosity and then it can all go back to normal. And we can not like each other again.”

Marcus thought about it; maybe she was right. She was like a little exotic creature. A sweet that he’d never tasted before but somehow had a craving for. A treat that was wrapped up in brightly-colored paper with a bow around it. He felt like a kid at Easter with that first chocolate – desperate to rip off the paper and dive in face first.