Darkest Love (2 page)

“They actually look beautiful,” her best friend Lily had said, gazing at Annie's journals on the polished kitchen table, where they lay between a crystal vase and a Laura Ashley decanter. A Monet print hung on the wall behind them, adding to the atmosphere of quiet, clean comfort.

“They really do,” Lily had continued, running a palm over the spotted binder. “You can tell they have been to another world.”

Annie sighed, enjoying the sound of her emptying lungs over the parrot finch's song, and feeling soothed by those thoughts of home as well. No matter how bad Rain was making her feel, it would not last. Civilized breakfasts and soft bedding were on their way. Just a plane trip back to Australia, and modern comforts would be hers. And after that: she would see her friends again. Annie tried to tell herself that the appeal of Rain Mistern would fade after she stepped out of Arrivals and back into the bosom of the world she knew.

Maybe it wouldn't even matter if I slept with him again.
She laughed at that thought, causing the parrot finch to warble so brilliantly it seemed like confirmation.

“You agree, hey, friend?” The sky had turned orange behind the friendly crimson-breasted bird. Annie dreamed as the finch trilled and warbled. She felt happy for the undemanding company: another soul in the room.

When the sun was low in the sky, burning the horizon a brilliant reddish-orange, there was a knock on the door. Startled, Annie covered herself with a kaftan and swept the mosquito netting aside, knowing this could only be one person. The Kaamo never knocked. If they saw a halo of sun around the hut, or if the walk to Annie's door was pleasant and without incident, they took it as a sign that they should just barge in.

This had to be him.
Rain.

Her hand trembled on the door. Annie blamed her next impulse on the two shots of malt whiskey she had downed as she scribbled in her notebooks, and cursed herself for giving in to her last duty-free purchase. $50 AUD for a bottle of exceptionally fine double-malt as she flew out of Sydney to Fiji was just too good.

Duty free, you will kill me.
She pushed the door open, beaming her finest grin. “Hey, baby.”

The look of happy surprise on his face made Annie's pulse race. She gulped. She had forgotten how tender he could be, sometimes, and how much fun he was to flirt with.

“Mmm.” His eyes flashed naughtily, registering her flirtation. “Well, hello to you, too. I decided I was a bit harsh earlier. I came to see if you were enjoying this extra-hot evening.”

He strolled in, wiping streaks from his brow with a sleeve still drenched from swimming. Annie regretted dropping that ‘baby' when he opened the door. She had derailed her chance to connect with him.

It didn't come often.
I always, always do that. It's the way of the slut.
She stayed poker-faced as Rain dropped into a chair, panting from the exercise, and warbled back at the parrot finch. The air was so heavy and humid, it felt like you were walking through a lake.

“Well, we may as well go for a swim together, then,” Rain said when she voiced the thought. “I already did. Care to join me?”

He was silhouetted against the window, the backlight throwing the angles of his massive chest into focus. Annie felt the blaze building between her thighs, hot as if the scorch of the tropics was concentrating in that point between her legs. Rain watched her with a soaking lock hanging over one eye. His blue eyes were shining and satisfied in the evening light, and he held his body with a tensed power she knew well.

Annie gulped as the energy changed between them for the second time. This time it was her looking down on that poised body. She had felt what it could do. Rain was a man who held a lot inside him–his body had been built over years of releasing his aggression through sports. He was the sort of person who would burn up inside if he didn't get it out.

He smiled with such knowing sexiness that Annie's heart fluttered. The muscle in his thigh changed shape, its hard planes rearranging, as he raised a knee. Annie had a wonderful suspicion that his loins were stirring too.

“I need to fuck you,” he had hissed once, on top of her, with such aggression and need she gripped her own feet and came with an open-mouthed tremble. Starbursts filled her vision until it was white light, like the sky after an atomic bomb explosion.

Do you need me now?
Annie's own voice spoke in her head. Rain was staring at her, wrists hanging over the arms of the chair, the planes of his gorgeous arms tanned and smooth above the winding bamboo. She knew what to expect from this man.

He needs to fuck me. It doesn't mean he wants ME.

“Sure, Rain. Let's go for a swim.”

* * * *

Annie was hungry for it. She ached for a return to something she knew, for the shot of rage and pain that came along with sex with Rain Mistern.

They walked side by side on the riverbank, examining the oxbow lakes. Annie stole any chance she could to examine his face too. The stream system was definitely interesting, and worth journalling about, but her eyes couldn't stop darting up to Rain Mistern's lips and strong jaw.

Sex with him is going to destroy my career for good. If the slutty rep doesn't finish me, this inability to focus will.
Annie couldn't control it–the emotions she had for this man were too strong. Desire and rage and hate and love mixed together in a dangerous blend.

Sex with Rain Mistern—which she had been having on and off for two years now—was painful. And not just because Rain was one of those men who changed the moment it was over, cooling like a hot stone dropped in a swimming pool.

“He has…a sadistic streak,” she had explained to Lily, then cringed when a barrage of questions flooded in. People were way too interested in Rain, and any details of their trysts.

Maybe that's because he's so gorgeous
. His brows angled thoughtfully as he turned a rock over in his hands. Annie watched his lips murmuring as he examined the patterns in the sedimentary rock, and caught a few words: Clastic. Planar Splitting. Gondwana. Permian Period.

“You know what they say about people who move their lips when they think,” Annie teased.

Rain looked back as if he was startled she was still there. “Oh,” he said after a moment. His grin was so hot, Annie's cheeks flushed. “I think it's people who move their lips when they read. They're the dumb ones.”

“Ah yes. Correct, Mr. Mistern. You are even dumber, I suppose. You can't even have a
thought
without moving that mouth.” He moved as if to throw the rock at her, giving her a great view of rippled triceps spreading like a wing, then tossed it in the air instead, catching the rock back in a tanned hand.

“I'm taking this one back to New York,” he said.” The geologists will examine it. I'll get someone to date it—the lines are really clear and curved.”

He showed her, tracing a finger over the lines that bounded the sedimentary layers.

“Clear indeed,” Annie gulped. Their bodies were so close she could smell the salty male skin under his silt-drenched clothes. Power and a touch of viciousness seemed to ooze from Rain, who always held his body a little tense. He was constantly poised, constantly ready to strike or react or make a move. It was as if there was so much force and power within him he struggled to contain it. Annie knew a secret about his body: that he ripped his body with weights and pushups and lifts just so he could
sleep
at night.

He was a man on fire. It drove her
crazy.

She knew more than one secret, actually. Rain liked to release his fury and fire—his incredible energy—through sex. Sadistic, erotic, animal sex: it was another way to get him sleeping like a baby.

“Sure is. I was trying to remember that Oxford lecture about Permian volcanic activity. If you made out any of my mumbling tell me later,” he winked. “Because I'll probably forget.” His whispering was sounding more and more sensual. Annie pulled closer, relishing the power of her body to overwhelm this man, though he was made of stone and had a mind like a steel trap. The curve of her breast was right in his eye line. She watched his hand holding the rock, and saw the pulse in his wrist quicken.

One time, after he came, she had seen his heart doing the same thing: his skin had pulsed as if a creature in his chest was trying to escape.

“How have you been feeling?” asked Annie when his leer became so obvious there was really no denying it. She shifted, trying to get a look at his face–longing to see desire sparking in those blue eyes–and got a shock instead: her
own
body was so ready. The space between her thighs was slick. Pleasure rippled around her clitoris when she so much as shuffled her feet.

Rain stepped forth. He charged, really–with all the ruthlessness she knew he possessed. Annie loved that about him: he knew what he wanted. He knew when he was wanted.

Rain couldn't take it anymore. Annie's nipples were pricking through her kaftan, teasing him, daring him to come closer even as both their voices droned on about sedimentary rock. His head was filling with all the things he had done to those nipples, and wanted to do again: roll his tongue over them. Finger them as she moaned. Bite just hard enough that she screamed.

He felt his erection growing. The heat pooled at the base of his abs–it was a hunger under his stomach that nothing else could feed.
How does she do it?

He had sworn that he would not do this with Annie again.

Sex between them was like paper tearing. Sharp, furious, destructive. And the sounds from her were agonized as often as they were ecstatic. These sessions always happened despite his best efforts, taking them both to peaks of pleasure and dropping them–especially her–right back down.

A cold feeling always filled his heart in the days after. Hard as he tried he could not summon any tenderness for this woman. This pained him, because he respected her so much as a scientist.

Oh, but the sex. It was always better with slightly rough women. He examined Annie's tattoo under her sleeve, licking his lips, and let his eyes climb up her arms to the corded, slender neck that was just begging for his hands around it.

Our sex life is good; you have to admit,
she had said once. Oh yeah! A little bit nasty, just the way he liked it. He was fond of Annie as a person and respected her, but Jesus–there was nothing better than that moment when he slid between her legs. He broke through her boundaries and her face sort of looked…
fuller
, for a moment. It opened, like a bloom: lips parting, cheeks flushing, and hot fragrant breath rising. Every pump of his dick was written on that face.

He leaned in and covered her mouth with his, feeling her hands sliding to the back of his neck. The tent in his pants grew as she yielded, and the secret beast inside him gloried at the kill.

Kill.
More than one colleague had warned him that he was using Annie Childs as a chew toy.

She quivered, pressing her breasts against his chest and twirling the curl at the nape of his neck with that girlish anxiousness that drove him crazy. Rain tried to start slow, parting her lips with his own and exploring the sweet hot pockets of her mouth. But it was no good. It was she who was eager–her hand moved down to cup his dick and a low moan issued from her throat, so lusty and ready, he almost started to grind right there.

She always did it. She encouraged him to force his way in–she showed him that she was keen to play the same old game.

Rain felt his penis climbing to a whole new level of hard as she worked him through the fabric with her slender digits. “Oh babe,” she whispered.

Rain didn't reply. He stared into her eyes as she caressed him, sliding a hand up and down. Annie's eyes were full of warm submission: trusting hazel pools. Rain's bicep tensed involuntarily, pulling her closer, so abruptly that she whimpered. The sight of those eyes made him greedy for the moment when they widened in shock, taking the fullness of him.

“I need to get in,” he hissed.

Annie squeaked. The small noise came involuntarily this time–he could tell. It was born somewhere in a deep pocket in her throat. As her head fell backward Rain got another look at that neck, stretching luxuriously. The skin was covered with a smattering of freckles that he knew well.

I need to get in.

Rain swore quietly and brushed Annie's hand away, seizing his zip. She covered his hand with her own as the gold teeth ripped down. And then…
Oh boy
. Her wink was one of the sexiest he'd ever seen. She bit her own tongue, showing it to him between her teeth, then pressing just a little too hard so her nose wrinkled up in shock. What a naughty girl she was. Rain allowed the display, letting her fingers linger over his.

The first sea breeze of the evening rushed over the sand that very moment, heading in from the cool center of the lake. Rain watched Annie's hair move in the gust. She closed her eyes as the wind whistled around her head, lulling her with a gentler caress than she would ever get from him.

He smirked.

Rain popped his button through its hole and watched her head fly down. “Suck it.” His hiss was demonic.

Annie took him all the way to her throat as he worked her head, alternating a massage with fist-locked twists of her strands that were just a little too hard. He heard her squeak with every tightening of his hand on her locks and gag with every quick pump of his erection.

His sense of power was almost too great. The wide muddy river stretched out ahead of him and the sun was burning the sky with the last brilliant orange shades of the day. The sphere was disappearing over the ferns on the horizon, just a tiny segment now–as low in the sky as Annie's eager, slobbering head.

Her tongue swept along the underside of his shaft and he moaned. The sound was so urgent the whole soundscape of the lake area rose around it–the lapping of the waves and songs of the parrot finches. Rain noticed them for the first time. When Annie squeaked again, more shrill and animal than the wildest bird or mammal, he started to pump harder.