Surviving Raine 01 (44 page)

I fucking hated flip-flops.

Just sitting in the back of the cramped taxi, it was immediately obvious that Nick and Lindsay had something going on.  Raine’s face scrunched up a little as Lindsay wholeheartedly agreed to sit on Nick’s lap so we could all fit in one vehicle.  She didn’t seem thrilled with her friend’s obvious enjoyment in the pilot’s company, and I would have been lying to say I wasn’t intrigued as to why.  I also wanted to hold her on my lap and tell her whatever she was worried about would be all right, but I didn’t quite dare.  I hadn’t even touched her since we left the island.

The shopping area was a fucking nightmare.

It might have been a nightmare regardless of my current disposition, because trying to follow Lindsay and Raine as they sprinted through clothing rack after clothing rack was fucking exhausting.  I would have rather battled a fucking shark to the death than try to keep up with those two.  Take all of that and add my own issues, and you have what could only be described as a living hell.

For starters, guys stared at them all the fucking time.

I really, really wanted to go ballistic and throw her over my shoulder, then probably run off and hide her in the back of a cave somewhere, but I knew there wasn’t any point.  I was going to have to get used to the idea that she wasn’t going to be mine anymore.  Everything was different.  She had choices now.  At least, that’s what I kept telling myself until John Paul went and put his hands on her.

Raine had just come out of the women’s dressing room wearing a fairly short, flowing skirt with a blue and green tropical pattern on it and a tight, low cut blue shirt which showed off the tops of her tits and just about made my cock leap right off my body and start doing a little dance in the aisle.  I was stunned for a moment, but when my eyes met hers, and she was looking at me with that sweet little shy-seductive, lip-biting, sexy-as-fuck gaze, I was readying to throw myself down on my knees and tell her I’d do fucking anything if she’d just stay with me…even if it was only for a little while.  It didn’t matter how fucking unworthy I was of her, I had to do something – anything – to get her back.

Before I had the chance to say anything, John Paul came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her midsection, and pulled her back against his chest.

“Ooo…Raine girl!” he called out.  His hands rubbed against her hips.  “You are one sexy little castaway!”

“Get your fucking hands off of her!” I screamed and launched myself at him.  I grabbed both of his arms, still wrapped around Raine’s middle, with one of my hands, wrenched them up and over her head, then grabbed her with my other hand and spun her around until she was at my back.  A second later, I shoved John Paul backwards and into one of the racks of clearance items.

“What the fuck is your problem?” John Paul growled back at me.  He righted himself and took a swing at me.  I ducked, evaded his shot, and kidney punched him.  In the process I lost track of his other fist, which landed right under my jaw.  I lost my balance and had to take a couple of steps backwards to regain it.  At that point, Raine was shrieking at the top of her voice for us to stop and then started calling my name over and over again.  I felt hands on my arms – Nick trying to hold me back.  As if.  He wasn’t holding me tightly, and I didn’t find the guy particularly threatening, which was a good thing for him.  I chose to ignore the fact that he was touching me at all and yelled back at John Paul instead.

“Don’t you fucking touch her like that again!” I snarled.  Nick’s hands on my upper arms gripped a little tighter, and I let him hold me back.  The guy wasn’t scrawny by any means, but he wasn’t even close to the physical frames both John Paul and I possessed.  “I’ll fucking gut you if you touch her like that again!”

“You haven’t the slightest fucking idea what you even want, do you?”  John Paul smirked at me.  “You stupid, masochistic little troll.”

“You!”  Lindsay’s voice defied her size, and I suddenly found my arms full of clothing just as Nick let go of me – shirts, shorts, even a fucking pair of green lounge pants – and Lindsay’s hands were against my chest, shoving me backwards towards the men’s dressing rooms.  “Go try these on!”

“What the fuck?”

“Best to do what she says,” Nick’s voice called out from behind me.  “Honestly, it’s just a hell of a lot easier that way.”

I glared over the mountain of clothes in my arms at John Paul, who shrugged and took a step backwards, standing down.  He winked at me, his mouth curved up in a sly little smile.  The little fucker had done it all on purpose – just to get a rise out of me.  Well, it fucking worked.  Too taken off guard by Lindsay to do anything but listen to her, I stomped into the dressing room with whatever fucking clothes that half-sized maniac had shoved into my hands.  I ignored the bitch who tried to get me to take a little number to show just how many fucking items I was taking into the fucking dressing room, stalked all the way to the last stall, even though it didn’t look like any of them were in use, and slammed the fucking door behind me.  Before I had a chance to do anything but drop the pile of clothes on the little bench inside, the door burst open and Raine stood behind me.

“Do you want to tell me what in the hell is the matter with you?”

“I’m fucking fine,” I snarled.  “Now get the fuck out of the men’s dressing room.  What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s wrong!”  Raine yelled.  She placed her tiny hands on her hips and scowled at me.

“Nothing is fucking wrong!” I screamed back at her.  She took a step back and stood flush against the dressing room door.  “What could possibly be fucking wrong?  We’ve been rescued, for fuck’s sakes!  Obviously everything is fucking perfect!”

“That’s what I’m asking you!” Raine yelled back at me.  “Ever since John Paul and Nick landed, you’ve been snapping at everyone, and I have no idea why!”

“I don’t even know where you live!” I yelled at her.  I wasn’t sure exactly what point that was supposed to make, but I made it anyway.  “What the fuck is supposed to happen now?  You go home, that’s what happens.  You go home and I…I…fuck, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

Raine’s eyes widened, and she tried to take a step back, but she was already up against the door of the dressing room.  Her mouth opened and then closed again.  Her eyes danced around my face, probably trying to figure out what the hell she thought she saw in me in the first place.  I waited for her to tell me I could get lost because she didn’t have any more use for me and no one ever wanted me to hang around too long.  The walls around me solidified.

“You get to go home, too,” Raine said under her breath.

“I just left home.”  I didn’t mean to say it.  I never meant to tell her that.  I tore my eyes away from her, focusing on the pile of fabric that had slipped off the bench and fallen to the floor.

“You didn’t want to leave,” she said suddenly.  When I glanced back to her face, her eyes brightened with understanding.  “You wanted to stay there.”

I stared at her for a moment and then looked down to my hands, which seemed to be entertaining themselves by twiddling my fingers around.  It didn’t matter.  Staying there would have been pointless, if for no other reason than the lack of booze, smokes, and whores.

“Bastian…why?”

“You were mine there,” I said quietly.  “Making that work – I could do that.  Not now.  Now you are…everyone’s.”

“What do you mean, ‘I’m everyone’s’?”

“John Paul, Nick, Lindsay – you belong to all of them.”

“Bastian, that doesn’t even make any sense.”

“Well, you fucking asked.”

Raine sighed and closed her eyes.  I knew I didn’t make any sense – I couldn’t justify that shit to myself, let alone anyone else.  I couldn’t deny her a real life just because I was too fucked up to function around people.

“Bastian…are you jealous?”

“Jealous?” I snorted.  I wasn’t fucking jealous…was I?

“You are, aren’t you?”

“I’m not, I’m just…I just…I…I don’t want to
share
you!”

“Oh, Bastian!”  Raine let out another long, exasperated sigh.  “Going home is going to be really hard for you, isn’t it?”

“You’re my home,” I said quietly.  A big fucking knot crawled up my throat and lodged itself there.  I tried to take a deep breath, but it hurt.

“Then you know where your home is,” Raine said.  Her hand reached up and touched my cheek, and my hardened walls crumbled instantly with her touch.  She took another step closer.  “I know you’ve lost your home.  I know you’ve lost every home you’ve ever had, Bastian, but you aren’t going to lose me just because we’re in a different place.  I can still be your home.”

With her fingers tracing circular patterns over my cheek, I gazed at her and tried to understand.  She was telling me it wasn’t over.  I could still be with her.  She wasn’t telling me to go away – she was letting me stay.

“But…where would we…um…live?  I mean…would you want me to?  Live with you, I mean?”

“Yes,” Raine said definitively.  “You can stay in my house, at least for now.  We have time, Bastian.  We have time to figure out exactly what comes next.  I don’t have all the answers right now either, but I know whatever happens, I want you there with me.”

“You do?”

“Of course I do!”  Raine shook her head and laughed once, though there was no humor in the sound.  She reached up, taking my face in her hands.  “You adorable, wonderful, overreacting man.  I always want you with me.  If you don’t want to come to Ohio…well, I’ll go where you want to go, then.”

“You would?”

“Anywhere.”  Raine leaned forward and raised herself up while she pulled me down to her.  Her lips brushed mine, and all the words she had just spoken marched around in my head, creating little military formations and eventually firing a twenty-one-gun clue into my brain.

My hands found her hips, pulled her to me, and held her tight.  I opened my mouth, my tongue seeking hers.  She opened to me, kissing me harder and running her hands up into my hair.  In a complete storm of an indescribable group of feelings, I grabbed her hips, pulled her up and slammed her against the wall of the dressing room.  I didn’t stop kissing her – I just kept going while my hands found their way under the sheer skirt she had tried on.  My lips moved across her face, down her throat, then back up again.

“I like skirts,” I growled into her ear as my hand gripped her bare thigh.  Trailing up a little farther, I met with silken panties.  I gripped one side of them tightly in my fist before ripping them off.

“Bastian!  I haven’t even bought those yet!”

“I’ll replace them,” I promised.  My mouth found her neck again while my hand reached between her legs, finding her sex hot and wet.  Had there ever been a time she wasn’t ready for me?  “And I’ll tear those fuckers off, too.”

Raine’s giggle turned into a moan as I opened the front of my shorts quickly and slammed into her without warning.  Holy fucking shit, it felt like it had been days instead of hours since I had been buried inside of her.  It was home.  It was heaven.  And it was the only place I had ever truly belonged.

“I just couldn’t stand it, Raine…” I mumbled into her ear.

“What, Bastian?”

“You…not being mine.  I can’t stand the thought.  It fucking kills me to think that you’re not mine anymore.”

“I’m still yours,” Raine said, her fingers gripping the back of my head, holding my mouth to hers.  “Always yours…that hasn’t changed.”

“Everything’s changed,” I whispered into her mouth, my eyes squeezing shut against the sudden pain throughout my body.  I slammed her up against the wall, thrusting into her again and again, terrified that this might be the last time I ever touched her like this.

“Only the outside has changed,” Raine said.  She cupped my face in her hands and held me fast – forcing me to look into her eyes even as I continued to fuck her against the wall.  I don’t know how she managed to speak so coherently with me fucking her like that, but she did.  “Do I feel different inside?”

“You feel…fucking…incredible,” I growled, shoving my hips harder against her.

“Inside everything is still the same,” she told me.  “Everything I feel for you is on the inside, Bastian.  Only what’s outside has changed.  Inside, I still love you.  I’m still yours.”

I tucked my head against her shoulder, hiding my face in her hair.  One of my hands traced up her side and brushed the curve of her breast while the other gripped her ass firmly and lifted it to meet my body every time I pushed forward.

“I can’t lose you,” I cried into her hair.  “I just can’t, Raine…it would fucking kill me if I lost you.”

“I’m right here, Bastian…oh God!”

“The whole store can fucking hear you,” I growled into her ear.  “I bet they know my cock’s in you just from the way you say my name…oh, fuck…Raine!”

“Harder, Bastian…please!”

“Fuck, Raine!”  I slammed into her again, not even able to comprehend how she could put up with my caveman approach of fucking her in the men’s dressing room at a department store, let alone ask for it harder.  I wasn’t about to deny her what she asked for, but it still made me wonder what the fuck I had ever done to be worthy of her.

“Ohmygod…ohmygod…” Raine began chanting in a tiny, breathless whisper.  Her heels dug into my ass, and her fingernails nearly clawed through my skin as I kept pounding into her until I felt her stiffen and clench around me.  Not wanting to waste another moment, I let go, holding my hips tight against hers and growling low in my chest, forcing myself not to scream.

I held myself tight against her, which held her tight against the wall.

“Bastian…that was…”  Raine took in a deep breath and then let it out slowly.  “That was intense, to say the least, but I don’t understand why…”

“I’m fucking terrified, okay?” I interrupted.  “I could…wrap my head around it – around you wanting me…around all of this – when we were there, but not now, not here.  Not out here, where you have access to millions of other guys who aren’t as fucked up and worthless as I am…”

“YOU…ARE…NOT…WORTHLESS!”  Though she didn’t actually yell the words, her tone was loud and fucking clear.  The fingers she had buried in my hair tightened and pulled, twisting my head so I was looking right at her.  “You are the most wonderful, beautiful man I have ever known.  I love you, and that hasn’t changed just because there’s concrete under our feet instead of sand!”