Darkest Love (5 page)

A lilting Gershwin piece filled the Guastavino's space as Rain slid the chain around her neck. Annie felt her heart hammering and renewed energy blazing through her body. It felt like a part of her had been returned. “Thank you.”

“No probs.”

She stared wordlessly into his eyes, feeling perspective return. She was a fool for worrying about Rain's opinion of her, or trying to gauge his interest all the time. He was a man devoted to his work: a writer and adventurer. He cared enough about her to honor his word about practical stuff–like her necklace–and that was all she really needed.

I've got to stop ruining everything with my stupid insecurities.
“How was Sivu after I left?”

Rain paused. Annie saw a softening in his eyes as he registered the Gershwin.

He loves it too.
Crap, why did they have to have everything in common? Right down to their shared regrets that Annie was fast. “It really does set the tone for the way a man feels about you,” he had said a couple of years ago, the first time Annie jumped into bed with him. She'd reasoned after that that there was no going back so she may as well just enjoy his body when she felt like it.

“Good,” Rain said, answering her question. “It got even hotter after you left. And I made, shall we say…” He stuffed his hands territorially in his pockets.“…an interesting discovery.”

“Oh?” Annie was intrigued.

Rain smiled as Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue hit a crescendo, drowning out the chatter of the anthropologists. She tried to read his face but got nowhere.

Annie glanced around. The rest of the chatterers had dropped back, talking among themselves. Women swayed softly to Gershwin and men took occasional looks at her and Rain. A few ogled Lily, too, in her tight dress. “No one is listening,” Annie said. She grabbed Lily's arm, pulling them all in together. “Tell us.”

Rain locked his thumb and index finger together and zipped them across his mouth.

“Rain Mistern, you are telling me! We did all our journalling together. It was basically a joint study.”

“I considered telling you for that reason. I do appreciate working with you.” Rain rocked back and forth, hands still in his pocket, lips amused and eyes sparkling. It was infuriating, especially when he let the silence linger on.

“Tell me!”

“I am tempted.” He scratched his chin. “I only made my mysterious discovery…” He winked. “…because I snuck in during a Kaamo ritual. To try to get your necklace.”

“Wow.”

“The Kaamo themselves would say that is a sign. That this is actually
your
discovery.”

“They certainly would!”

“I'm glad you agree.”

“I think you should definitely listen to them.”

Rain threw his head back and laughed, so gorgeously and heartily the Gershwin shufflers turned to stare. Annie felt Lily's arm tighten as she processed the lovely spectacle.

“That is rich coming from you, Annie Childs,” Rain said, a new dimple popping up next to his happy lips. “You are the one who chides me for writing from the tribal point of view.”

“Do I?”

“You have an amazingly selective memory.”

Annie knew what he meant. She was always calling him on his style. “Oh, that non-scientific tone in your work has got to go. But when it comes to cosmic issues, you should listen to the Kaamo. Listen to the experts.”

Rain raised an eyebrow. “Cosmic issues?”

Annie paused, biting her bottom lip as she thought about how to explain this. Lily was very distracting; she was watching the exchange with the attentive eyes of a courtroom transcriber. “This necklace is special,” Annie said finally.

“Special?”

“It has a lot of power.” Annie fingered it, remembering the day her grandmother had given it to her. “That is why it found its way to the Kaamo. It is a totem, and thus fits into their culture. Not in the west. I am not surprised it found its way to them.”

Rain stared at her. He was trying to decide if she was serious, Annie supposed.
I definitely don't usually talk like that
. “Thank you for getting it back, Rain,” she added.

Then, as Lily's mouth was opening to make her first contribution in minutes, a
Eureka!
thought struck Annie like lightning:

“Oh my God,” she cried, hand locking around the sapphire pendant so hard the chain slit her neck. “You found out what Sola is!”

Rain's silence was all the confirmation Annie needed. She dropped the sapphire and seized his elbow instead, leaping so high hors d'oeuvres nibblers turned to stare from the other side of the room. “Rain! Rain! Rain!”

“Shhhhh,” he hissed.

“If you don't tell me right now you are mincemeat.” Annie squeezed the rock-hard bicep so firmly Rain's lips twitched.

His eyes darted back between the women, lingering on Lily. After a moment, Annie got the message.

“Lil, do you mind leaving us for a moment?” she said.

“I have no idea what you're talking about anyway.” Lily took off, winding around pillars and through the clusters of people stuffing their faces with catering snacks.

Rain and Annie were alone.

* * * *

“Sola is not what we thought,” Rain said.

“It's not a totem?” Annie whispered. Annie and Rain had heard that word over and over again: Sola. Sola, Sola, Sola! It was the obsession of the Kaamo. Every time Annie eavesdropped on women dyeing skins, or men sharpening their spears by the river, she heard that word.

Not even Paulo the guide, who was on Sivu because of the ease with which he picked up South Pacific languages, had been able to explain what it meant. Whatever ‘Sola' was, it was sacred. It was so drenched in meaning and majesty that the Kaamo spoke about it only in hushed tones. Annie had not seen the proud, aggressive people speak of anything else with such reverence–not even the feats of their warriors. Asking about Sola had earned Annie outraged looks and subjections to stony silences. It even got her banished from a few huts.

“Sola,” Rain murmured. “Sola is their goddess.”

Annie's shoulders slumped in disappointment.

“That's it?”

“Yes.”

“That's what we expected,” Annie squeaked. “A goddess or maybe a very powerful totem. Like my sapphire.”

“There's a bit of a twist. Annie,” Rain said. “Sola is a woman.”

Annie listened, mouth dropping open, as Rain told the story. Twenty years ago, on the night their oldest tribeswoman died, a storm hit Sivu. It was so powerful the lightning zaps kept the Kaamo awake.

“They barely dared to glance out at the sky. The whole horizon lit up like it was midday. Then when the sun was about to rise, and the rain was dying down, a baby was born. They called her Sola.”

Annie covered her mouth in horror as Rain described the slaughter that had followed. All the baby Kaamo girls born since the last orange moon were slaughtered: their feet were bound with grass to a rock each and the babies were dropped into the river. “Sola, the tribe reasoned, would not have any competitors.”

The baby girl was now a woman. A woman so beautiful that Rain was not allowed to glimpse her.

“Did you try?” Annie asked, knowing his style. He loved to sneak into near-sacred places and take a peek at the scene, even if it meant scaling limestone cliffs or risking a tribesman's spear through his head.

“I circled around her dwelling. She resides in a granite cave network on the far north of the island, near the Pushtu volcano. I was getting close, and then I thought I heard a rumble and made my escape.”

Annie laughed. “I think the volcano is inactive, Rain.”

“Kaamo belief is that the displeased Sola could send the water-fire down again if she wished.”

“Water-fire?”

“Lava.”

Annie shook her head. “This research is making a superstitious man of you.”

“Perhaps.” He rubbed his eyes. “But I also thought I heard drums. Of tribesmen. You know, coming to kill me. The heat makes you a bit crazy.”

“Sure does.” Annie whispered, remembering her perilous strangling in the river. Why did she trust this sneaky, work-obsessed man so much? She had trusted him with her life.

One opening of his fist and he could have dropped me to the bottom of the river. Like a Kaamo baby girl.
Annie shivered at the thought.

“I'm going back there. I'm going to find out more.”

“Rain, don't risk anything. And…”

“And?”

Annie raised her chin, aware that her eyes were probably flashing in excitement. “And book my ticket as well.”

Rain's grin popped out as a happy new Vivaldi scherzo filled the room. He raised his palm to give Annie a high-five.

* * * *

“Rain, I'll spill my drink. Back off!”

Rain muttered something. “Back off from that body? No waaaay.”

Annie was sure it was that, or something along those lines. She wanted to cry. The conversation had been going well, filling with plans of all the things she and Rain would do on Sivu: rock-gathering and hiking and painting native ferns. Then as she felt her heart might burst with happiness, her smile break her face open and her eyes catch fire from the hot sight of Rain Mistern…it happened.

Mandy Paulson walked over. Her hips sashayed in her evening gown and her wine glass teetered in her hand, looking as if it was going to spill the sparkly martini it was holding right down her cleavage.
Her AMAZING cleavage.
There were acres of it; her neckline was breathtaking.

“Darling,” Rain had said, cupping the glass in his hand and fixing the liquid with his eyes, as if he could steady it with a gaze. “Watch that spritzer. It is dangerously close to your chest decorations.”

“I'm not wearing a chest decoration. I'm not wearing a necklace,” Mandy said coyly, fingering her bare throat. Annie wanted to punch her.

It was all downhill from there. Now they were giggling in a near-cuddle, Rain examining the olive in Mandy's glass, eye line shooting through the glass and onto her body. Mandy's back was arched. Her waist was tiny and her buttocks smooth in her velvety navy-blue dress. She had a figure like a guitar: little and curved and nipped in at all the right places.

Her breasts!
Wow…
She was thrusting them forward so the wine glass stem pointed down her cleavage, like a penis preparing to enter the gap and start pumping. Rain was staring right in there.

How could he not look, really?

You have the best tits I've ever seen
, Rain had told Annie in bed once, squeezing a generous DD cup and licking her nipple so luxuriantly the tingle went straight between the thighs. The memory popped up, unbidden, easing the sting of his appreciation for Mandy Paulson.

You have to learn to share this man.
“I'm going to go find Lily, Rainoid.”

“Good thinking. She may have downed a few secret spritzers while you weren't looking.” Rain was aware of Lily's sneaky personality and passive-aggression. Back when Rain and Annie used to sleep together regularly she had always failed to pass his booty call messages along. It was Lily's way to avoid having to deal with Annie's tears, and to try to nudge her friend towards a healthy emotional state. It also meant Annie stayed clear-headed enough to help move Lily's furniture.

“Indeed. She probably has.”

Mandy was staring at Annie, her mouth open in a lip-glossed O shape. The casual way she watched was irksome. Annie gave her a wink and ‘click-click' from the side of her mouth–
casual as hell
–then swept away, sipping her drink and smiling at another colleague who was waiting to talk to her.

Marty Boland put his hand on her waist
. That could have gone worse,
Annie thought. She suppressed the tears that tried to rise in her eyes as Marty grilled her about Sivu plant life and Kaamo iconography. Over Boland's shoulder Lily was waiting, holding a mini-quiche and ready to calm her flustered friend if she needed it.

“Mmmm.” Rain had slept with Mandy before but he didn't recall her moves being so sultry.

She rolled off his body and dropped her head in the crook of his arm. Rain smiled at the ceiling; the morning after getting some was always good.

He remembered the words of a guy from school: “Prom is the best night to get it. The chicks have spent like, months planning to look good in their dresses and they want the validation, if you know what I mean. They're thirsty and ready to lap it up. Validation and cum! Oh, yeah.”

Was there truth in that? Last night as he'd rolled Mandy's dress down he'd suppressed a smile. So much corsetry! And snippets of celebrity tape she didn't quite manage to hide in her armpits.

No matter…
The tape came off with one rip and a roll of her fingers when she thought he wasn't looking. Her body was stunning. Her skin was flushed all over with arousal and she was ready for a roll around in his bed. Her moves were slow and snake-like. She was one of those women who are always aware that the man is looking; they never completely relax.

Probably didn't come
, Rain thought. Oh well–the views had been great. He had exploded between her legs and massaged her clit dutifully until she rolled off him, never quite giving in to the moment.

Would she be up for something naughtier?
Rain didn't spring his kinkier side on a woman until he'd slept with her at least three times. And he always asked first. He didn't want horrified dates bleating to his colleagues and sullying his reputation.

Or running out in horror while I'm still hard.
That would just be annoying.

“Would you like some breakfast, Rain?”

He turned to her with a grin, planting a kiss on her cheek and wrinkling his nose at the makeup still caked there. They had collapsed into bed as soon as they reached Rain's loft, she unbuckling his pants, he covering her mango-flavored lips with tipsy, passionate kisses. Rain had left the bed only once more to turn on the bulbs of the magnificent chandelier that hung fifteen meters above them, on the ceiling.