Free Training Rain by A. S. Fenichel Page B

make of you, Jess. You’re not like the
men I’ve known.”
    “I’m going to take that as a compliment.” He kissed the tip
of her nose.
    “What is it you want from me?”
    He shook his head. “I just want you to not run away.
I can practically feel you getting ready to bolt and run far enough that you
think I won’t find you.”
    She laughed, but there was no humor behind the sound. “I
have a feeling you would find me no matter how far I ran.”
    One side of his mouth pulled up. “You make me sound like a
stalker, cher . What I want to be is your lover.”
    “I don’t see how that could work. You’re going your way and
the Psi Alliance will likely send me in another. Why don’t we just call this
night what it is? A release of pent-up emotion and stress.” She pulled the
blanket tighter around herself and sat on the couch. Yas made his way over and
curled onto the floor at her feet.
    He was losing her. His heart actually hurt, but he couldn’t
think of anything more to say to change her mind. “I hate that you’re
minimizing what this is.”
    “While you are making sex between two people grandiose.
Jess, I’ll grant you, it was great sex, the best of my life, but it was just
one night. You’re the one who laid down the rules. You said you were turning my
case over to some other agent.”
    Had he used those cold, heartless words? It sounded like
him. He didn’t get involved with women beyond the physical. So why did
everything she said twist his gut into knots and make him want to shake her? “I
can’t protect you. You’re a distraction for me. Can’t you understand that I
don’t want to leave you, but I also don’t want to get you killed?”
    “That just sounds as if you’re a man making an excuse for
leaving me.”
    Was it? Was she right? He grabbed another blanket from the
back of the couch and covered himself before sitting down. “You said that
Adianca rescued you. What did you mean?”
    Rain’s eyes stayed focused on the dwindling fire. Jess got
up and added a few extra logs, and waited for them to catch.
    He had almost given up on her responding. Her voice was even
and so low it hummed in the dark room and sent its vibration directly to his
soul. “My mother left when I was a child. My father did the best he could, but
I was a wild teenager. I got into some trouble and Adianca came to the house to
speak to me. I listened, but her words made no difference. I was angry. A year
later, my father died in a car wreck. It took them three days to find me and
tell me that my only family was gone and I was truly alone in the world. By
that time his body had been cremated. I never got the chance to see him or say
goodbye. The house was foreclosed on a few months later since I went right back
to my friends in the street.
    “The day I turned eighteen Adianca showed up and told me it
was time to go. I never even questioned her. I got in the truck with nothing
but the clothes on my back and a dead heart. She brought me to Nevada and began
my education in the ways of the medicine woman and she made me finish school.”
    He tried to visualize the woman next to him as a street kid
with no direction, but he couldn’t equate the two. “You must have been pretty
tough even then to have survived in the street.”
    She turned fierce eyes on him. “I gave my body in return for
food and anything else I needed. I whored myself out for some drugs or booze. I
didn’t even like getting high and I sure as hell didn’t enjoy the sex. I just
didn’t want to go home and admit I’d been wrong.”
    “I’m sorry, cher .”
    She turned back to the fire. The light glinted on a tear
that rolled down her cheek. “Now you can take me down from the pedestal you
seem determined to keep me on. You can see I’m just a prostitute who managed to
get away.”
    His brain was exploding with questions, none of which he
could ask her. She was too upset and there were other more important issues to
sort out. “You’re wrong,