I should not be here.

The air is heavy on the lakefront. Storm's on the way. It makes my chest heavy, my spine damp.

Music drifts over the grass, escaping from the lounge behind me. Blues. It makes my mind crave something I will not name.

He waits under the tree, a live oak that has managed to hang on when all around it have long since died. His face is in a shadow. I can't hear him breathing yet. I think about turning around, going to my car. Anywhere but to him.

"Just about gave up on you," he says.

I watch the tip of his cigarette glow hotly red then dim. I cannot see the smoke he blows out between soft lips.

"Story of my life," I say.

"What's that?"

"That I end up with the patient one."

"You say that like it's a bad thing. You into bad things, love?"

"I'm into you, aren't I?"

"Are you?"

"I should go."

"Story of my life," he mutters.

"What's that?"

"That I end up with the ones afraid of who I can be for them."

"I am not afraid. Not of you."

"Yes, you are. I can hear your heart racing from here, love."

"No, you can't."

This is when he acts.

And when he acts, he does it with finesse, speed, conviction.

He has yanked me in and shoved me back against the bark of the tree so quickly I forget to breathe.

I can hear him breathing.

It is raspy, uncoordinated.

For the briefest moment, my future hangs in the balance along with his. And then we are touching. I stroke his cheek with the back of my fingers, marveling that I ever hesitated to be here. He touches my breast, cupping it over my shirt, kneading it.

His thumb slides over my breast firmly until it edges between the buttons of my blouse, until it is over my heart. "Thump. Thump. Thumpity thump," he whispers in a voice that feathers down inside me as he mimics my heartbeat.

As he mouths the final 'thump,' his lips are against mine. I pull him in, to where our tongues can touch and taste. I would climb inside the echo of the 'thump.' 

He drags himself out of the kiss only to shove his mouth over my ear, to pant there in reaction to my hand pawing the front of his jeans. And then he says, hoarsely, "I can smell you. The way you want me. I'm tired of second chances. I want you and I want you now."

The sharp roll of thunder in the near distance seems an echo to my own need of him. Damn him for this. For being this man. For forcing me to know how much I want him and not just for this - this insane night.

I press my face into the side of his neck as we grope each other. I'm too old for this. Too weak. Too ready to fall in love with a man who makes me laugh and who I have never had.

"Not like this," he says, taking his wet mouth from my exposed nipple.

"I can't hear you."

"My car is just over..."

"Shut up. Shut up now."

"Christ..."

"Just fuck me. Please."

"No."

"No?"

He licks my nipple and then pulls my bra back into place. I feel the wetness from him soak the bra's lining. It makes me shiver. His hands cup my face. I am looking in his eyes.

"Listen to me. I'm not going to accept that. Maybe I would have once - hell, I did once. But not anymore."

"You sound so bitter," I whisper. "Am I really that bad?"

"If you want me, you have to work for it. That's it - I could fancy it up a bit, but that's it."

"What about me?"

"I've worked to get you. I have earned the right to you. Now you earn the right to me."

He slips my hand away from his crotch. I twine my fingers in his.

"Come into the light," I says softly, tugging on his hand, leading him slowly out of the shadow of the old oak, to where a lonely streetlamp throws out weak rays of yellowish orange.

His head is down now, looking at our hands, at our twined fingers. I tug on his chin until he looks at me. But I have to tilt his head up until I can see the streetlamp's reflection in his eyes.

"What are you looking for?" he asks. His voice is not easy. His eyes are troubled.

"For you."

"I'm right here, love, no mysteries there."

"Whoever it is that you're thinking about, I'm not her. You know that, right?"

"I know only one thing - I want more than you're willing to give me of you."

"Where's your car?"

He sighs and looks off, toward the water and the storm that is gaining on us. "It isn't going to be that easy. Not this time. Not with you. I won't be..."

"Whatever woman ever thought you were easy was an idiot. I'm in love with you."

"Then why..."

"Because I'm not so easy either. Isn't that what you said?"

He has the grace to purse his lips, to give me that subtle head bob that says he knows he shouldn't have said that because he knew I'd remember it at just the exact wrong moment. Like now.

"But I still love you. It just scares the hell out of me."

"Then you aren't in love."

"My God, you can be so exasperating."

I drop his hand and step away. My car key is in my pocket. My fingers wrap around it and I am decided now. To hell with him. To hell with love. I don't need it. I'm fine without the complications, the shit, the agony.

"That's it? Giving up already?"

"Fuck you."

"That's all you wanted tonight? For me to fuck you?"

"Everything is so finite with you. Damn you. You want total and abject commitment out of me or I'm worth nothing to you."

"Too right. Too damn right."

I am too angry to make sense. I stand there, silent, in a deadly staring contest with him, under a streetlamp, on a lakeshore, with a storm inches away and coming in like Satan is on a warpath.

Over his shoulder, I see lightning flash in a horizontal streak. The thunder that follows makes me jump, it comes so quick and loud. The entire sky seems to roil and echo with it.

It must be the thunder that makes me move, for I turn on my heel before the echoing ends and I am running for my car. I feel the electricity of lighting and then see the flash of another bolt just as I reach my car.

Fumbling with my key, I am overwhelmed by the next roaring clap of resounding thunder. The sky is heavy, waiting on release.

His arm wraps around my waist and he drags me from my car door. I kick back at him as he lifts me. My struggles do no good against his strength and determination. No one can hear me, not even him, as I scream at him. Not when I am competing against this thundering, booming sky.

He carries me away from my car, turning before the oak, to stride into a parking area with only three cars left. I recognize his as one of them. The first fat drop from the sky slaps into my forehead as I hear his remote release make the car lights blip once in response.

There is a moment of relative quiet. The moment before the heavens open. When he sets me down in this moment, I realize I had stopped struggling. He opens the back door, looks at me. My hand is on his arm.

A group of three rain drops hit me, one after other, a portent of what is about to be unleashed.

I shove him. He gives way. I shove again and he falls into the open door, dragging me with him before rolling me under him on the seat as he twists to pull the door shut behind us.

At just that moment, a sheet of horrific rain slams into the car, driven by cold air madly seeking the hot currents north of us. Inside the car, the noise is deafening and it rocks in reaction to the squall that buffets it.

My hands are in his hair, pulling on him, forcing his mouth over mine. His groin grinds into mine; I grind back. We cannot hear each other; we can only react to the physical. I am crying. He is shoving his shirt over his head. My mouth finds his nipple and I suck, tongue, bite.

Now we are both struggling to sit up, to shove apart, to pull at our own clothes, to get them off. To come back together, mouths open, skin seeking skin. Turning, twisting, me under him, my mouth wanting to taste his cock, warm it, be awed by being so intimate with it at last. His mouth kisses between my legs, slowly drawing down from my inner thighs, nipping just enough to make me jump, until his tongue slides inside me and he sucks at the same time.

Lightning snaps the air. I come with a blinding flash. Thunder deafens the air around us. He thrusts his cock into my mouth, rocking slightly, needing more. His need makes me come again.

My fingers tighten on his warm cock, feeling the pulse there. He moves then, sitting up abruptly as he guides himself out of my throat, past my teeth and lips. He uses brute strength to pull me up over where he sits on the car seat, to straddle him.

I hesitate, my hands on his shoulders. I feel his hands, pressing into my hips, insistent. If I do this, I am never going to recover from this man if he leaves me.

He opens his eyes and stares into mine. A bolt of lightning suddenly reflects deep inside his eyes and I think I see his soul. And it is open, waiting on me, waiting for me. Wanting me to jump in and claim it.

He is large, and so hard that it hurts to be stretched as I slowly descend over him. Thunder booms and I shake but it is not the thunder but him that causes this. He nods, absent minded, his jaw tightening in reaction to my slow pace and his unwillingness to hurry me, to hurry us.

When he is at last fully seated inside me, he wipes tears from my face. His own face softens in response to my reaction to what's happening.

"Fight for me," he says in the pause between the next bolt of lighting and its following boom of thunder.

"I don't want to be without you in my life."

He wraps strong arms around me, presses me into his chest. Cradles me for the longest moment before slowly thrusting up inside me. My sobs give way, they are choked off as my head falls back and I rock against his action - and give in.

It is the only way I could ever fight for him: to show him that I want what he thinks I don't want. I want him and I want him to stay with me and if I have to use sex to do it, then I will. No pretenses.

But I wish he'd stay for love of me.

I know I have to ask him. I know he needs to hear the request, the seduction, the passion. He needs to know I won't hold back any more. Because he doesn't want to hold back and he will if I give him half a chance. He is like no man I've ever known - uncompromising and giving and complex and suspicious and willing to believe with all his heart.

My fingers trail along the contours of his shoulders. I follow them with my mouth. He shivers under me, groans, says something unintelligible, thrusts harder in reaction to the way I'm sliding down hard so my clit rubs roughly over the hair at the base of his cock. It drives me insane, the feeling of it when I am so sensitized there.

His finger is playing around, sliding toward my crack, as if sneaking in on virgin territory. I squirm and then gasp when he touches lightly there, at the opening. He kisses in on my neck before rasping over my skin with his teeth. I squirm harder as his assault intensifies. He murmurs against my throat in a dark voice. He is in total control and I ride him as he wants, his rhythm, squirming when he wants more action.

I brace my hands against the top of the roof, seeking leverage. I feel the pelting of the rain there as it strikes the metal above us. I am stretched out, thrusting down, fighting him as he forces me back up with his own thrusts. I know I'm crying out his name, cursing him, cursing God for how fucking good this feels, how badly I want to come.

He crushes me inside his hold, yanking me down, making me feel small and possessed - a feeling I fucking love because he is a big strong man and it is turns me on.

When I come, it's as he's talking dirty, telling me how wet I am, how tight my cunt is, how he's going to make me come for him. But as soon as I'm coming, as soon as I'm beyond hope, as soon as I'm scared at the intensity of it, he's holding me right up to him. He's got his mouth just at my ear and he is telling me how much he wants me, how I could crush him if I let him down, how his heart doesn't have it in him anymore if I'm not going to love him back.

And this is why, when he comes, I am the one holding him. The one talking in his ear, the one saying he has to stay with me, he has to love me, he has to, he just does, because I want to be the one he takes a chance on.

It takes a while for our breathing to go from ragged and strained to calm and deep. Our arms are wrapped around each other; our heads are snuggled in each other's neck. The rain is still an insistent drum beat on the car but the wind has softened and the thunder is distant now. The storm is finally moving away.

"Look how we've frosted the windows," I say softly.

"All that heat," he says. 

"I want you in my life."

"I want to be there."

"Where do we go from here?"

"My hotel?"

I chuckle. He follows suit.

"You're always pressing your luck, Thorne."

"Someone has to."

"What am I going to do with you now?"

"Hold tight, 'cuz you're about to find out..."