Becoming Rain

But no Vlad.

And nothing to tie Vlad to anything beyond hearsay.

So basically, Vlad is going to get away with everything. So is Andrei, by default.

I hear a soft knock just a second before the door creaks open. Licks and Stanley tear out of my room.

“Coffee?” Rain holds up a mug.

“Yeah, sure.” I think that cold rain seeped into my bones last night. Even after a hot shower, I still woke up shivering.

“I’ll take the mutts out!” a deep male voice calls out from the living room.

“Thanks, Warner.” Rain strolls into my room and places the mug on my nightstand. “Black, right?”

I can’t help but stare into her light blue eyes. They’re lined with dark bags, telling me she didn’t sleep much. “Was that in my file, too?”

She smiles and her gaze drags over my body, stalling on the tent that my morning dick is making, before quickly turning away with a blush.

Part of me wants to tease her, just like I used to do. “What’s he doing here? Does that mean we’re not keeping up pretenses anymore?” Disappointment stirs inside me.

“I need a few hours of sleep. Otherwise, I may shoot you.” A sly grin touches her lips. “I don’t think you want that.”

“No, that would suck after all this.” Rain, with a gun. Sure, I know she’s a cop. I know she has a gun, but actually seeing her pull it last night, right before ordering me to move, made it hit home.

“What would have happened last night, if Vlad had showed up?” Vlad wasn’t waiting in the shadows to kill me. He probably hasn’t given me two seconds’ thought since the funeral. But for those five minutes between the phone call and getting home, all I could think about was keeping Rain safe. Ironic, considering she was the one with the gun, protecting me.

I’m beginning to understand that she’s been protecting me for a lot longer than last night.

“If he was armed, I would have shot him.” No hesitation.

I believe her. Something’s shifted between us since last night. I think it has more to do with me than her. I spent hours lying in bed, trying to review every moment since the day I met her. All the ways she deceived me for her case.

But doing that made me realize all the ways she also helped me. This mess with Vlad was going down one way or another. If Rain hadn’t been here, who knows where I would have ended up?

Maybe in that SUV with Rust.

In a sense, she saved me. So no, I don’t hate her.

I miss her. She’s standing a foot away from me and I miss her so damn much.

Her eyes flash. “What?”

I reach out to graze her knuckles with mine. “Thank you. I know you’re doing it for the case, but . . . what’s gonna happen now?”

With a sigh, she turns and sits down on the edge of my bed, her back to me. “They’re searching the cargo containers for any evidence. But we’re waiting on Sinclair to make the call. They may have enough to issue an arrest warrant for Vlad in Rust’s murder soon.”

“So that asshole wasn’t bluffing when he told me they had something?”

She chuckles softly. “No, he actually was. But the guy they brought in last night for the money exchange with Miller was more than happy to offer information on Rust’s murder. Apparently he knows exactly which Dumpster Vlad pitched the gun into.”

That same chest pain that flares at mentions of Rust throbs again. “That was over a week ago. The Dumpsters would have been emptied.”

“I know. The police are sifting through trash as we speak. They also have some surveillance video that they’re looking into.” She sighs. “It’s not over yet.”

“But what about this case?”

“Sometimes it takes months. Sometimes we get a lucky break.” She pauses. “And sometimes we have to just be happy with scaring people into stopping without ever being punished. There are a lot of cars on that ship and we’ve gathered a lot of names. We’ll get some arrest warrants out of this and do more surveillance, which will lead to more arrests. It’s a long process.”

“So . . . does that mean you’re going to be here until it’s all wrapped up?” Hell, three days ago I couldn’t even look at her. Now I don’t want her to leave.

“The case is going to go on for months. Maybe years. But for me . . .” She takes a deep breath. “Yeah. My part’s pretty much done.”

She’ll go back to her life as a cop. Or not, if the way she’s helped me gets her into trouble. “What’s going to happen for you?”

“I don’t know yet. They’ll send me back to D.C., for sure. Then . . . I don’t know.”

No more Rain.

My fingers curl around the hem of her T-shirt, reveling in its softness, her slender figure now striking me as so much stronger than it ever did before. “You wore this that night on the yacht.”

Her profile is so beautiful when she smiles. “You remember.”

“Of course I do.” With only slight hesitation, I slip a hand under to graze her back, letting my finger trail up along her spine, all the way up to see that she’s not wearing anything underneath. She shivers but doesn’t stop me, doesn’t say a word when I slide my hand around, letting her right breast fill it.

“Rain?”

She turns to look at me, her lips parted, her eyes burning. “Yeah?”

The front door slams shut and the sound of paws on the hardwood announce Warner’s return.