Surviving Raine (Surviving Raine 1)

“I know.” Her finger moved up my neck and over my jaw until she was cupping my cheek. “But when you hold me like this, I feel extra safe, like nothing could possibly happen to me.”

“That’s the way it is,” I said nonchalantly, “and I might never let you go, so you should be good forever.”

She giggled and snuggled against my chest.

“So it’s official; you only want me for my body,” I surmised, knowing it would get a rise out of her and wanting to keep her nicely distracted from the wind outside, which was picking up again.

“Bastian! Of course not!”

“I don’t know…if my arms and my dick are the best parts…”

“That’s not what I said!” Raine defended. I laughed out loud and hugged her a little tighter. “My favorite thing about you is your incredible will to survive.”

“Well, I had to learn a lot of that shit for the tournaments.”

“I didn’t mean knowing how to find food and water.” Raine shook her head, tickling my chin with her hair. “I mean everything you have been through – even when you were a little boy. You always came through it when I think a lot of people would have given up.”

“Not in my nature, I guess.” I shrugged. It wasn’t a matter of getting through it. I tried to find ways of forgetting it. “There’s a lot more to you than there is to me.”

“Oh, really?” Raine questioned. “Like what?”

“Well, there’s your tits…oh, and your ass…I love your ass…”

She smacked me on the chest.

The rain was literally pouring out of the sky in huge sheets now. The collection area in the back of the shelter was full and overflowing. I kept talking to keep her distracted from the weather.

“I like the way you look at me,” I said seriously. “Sometimes when you do, your eyes light up, and I think maybe I could be lucky enough for you to care about a fucked up asshole like me.

“That’s love, you know,” Raine said with a smile. “I see it in your eyes when you look at me, too.”

“It’s easy to love you,” I said, running my hand down her side and over her hip and then back up to her shoulder. “At least, it was once I stopped fighting it.”

“You did fight it,” she acknowledged. “What made you stop?”

“Your…acceptance of me,” I said. “That’s really my favorite thing about you. I don’t know why you put up with my shit, but I’m glad you do.”

“You aren’t that hard to accept, Bastian.” Her hand reached up into my hair. “You were very…trying in the beginning. A lot of that was the alcohol in your system, I think. Considering how much stress you were under, I can understand why you behaved that way. I know my dad would become quite a bear sometimes when his job would stress him out.”

“I don’t think I can just blame it on stress,” I huffed. “I mean, it’s not like I wouldn’t have been like that if you had met me at a bar or something.”

“I bet you could be very charming when you want to be.”

“Yeah, but I would just be hoping to get my dick in you. If you didn’t seem like the type to put out, I would have found someone who would do it for money instead.”

“Bastian!”

“It’s true.”

“You’re just trying to make it di

fficult for me to argue with you about it.”

“There’s no argument,” I insisted. “Are you fucking blind to all the crappy shit I’ve done to you? I scared you half to death when you were taking a bath, I bitched at you constantly when my leg was healing, I fucking hit you…”

“Please don’t bring that up again.” Raine closed her eyes and shook her head a bit. Every time she tried to tell me I wasn’t such a bad guy, I’d bring that little tidbit up. At some point, though, she needed to see what I was. She seemed to want to believe I was some kind of fucking hero. I wasn’t.

“All the shit I’ve done, Raine.” I stopped a moment and took a deep breath. “I’m a…a…murderer, for fuck’s sake. Sometimes I can’t comprehend why you would let me even touch you.”