AN: I would like to take a moment to recommend the revamped version of Knights on the Blacktop which you will find posted in The Fast and The Furious section. It was good the first time around and I promise it's even better now. Go check it out and feel free to leave a review!
Thank you to all the people who are still with this story and leaving feedback. Reviews are always welcome, even when they're totally pointless and asinine. Just to be clear, I know to a list of 3 who you are, don't care what you do or say or who you impersonate next and I won't be going anywhere any time soon, so really all you're managing is amusing me and wasting your own time. But as its your time to waste, fill your boots :D
The Funeral of a Good Girl
By – TempestRaces
Chapter 67 – Of Stormy Nights and Driving Rain
Vince stood at the water's edge. Was he seriously going to wade out there and get her? Or was he going to just call her name and make her come to him? Would she come, or push out farther if confronted by him? Fuck it, I better go get her, he thought with a sigh. The answer was obvious if you knew her at all. She'd refuse to come in or go out further. He bent down, started to untie his boots. That done, he pulled them off, and his socks for good measure, stuffing them down inside his shoes. No sense ruining his boots and his pants, he figured with a shrug. He briefly thought about taking his jeans off too, but it was too much work. He waded into the surf, cussing softly under his breath at the sting of the cold water.
He made his way out behind her, figuring she'd hear him coming a mile away, sloshing through the waves. The sound of the crashing water and howling wind must have been enough to cover the noise he was making however, because she never let on she knew he was there, that she was no longer alone.
He stood there behind her as the rain started, watched the drops pepper her face, spiking her lashes and running in rivulets down her wet cheeks.
"You ever gonna say anything, or just stand there like a dumbass all night?"
There went his idea she didn't know he was there. "When did you know I was here?"
"When you sloshed through the surf like a two tonne elephant."
"What if I wasn't me? What if it was someone else? You wouldn't even have a half second head start."
"I knew it was you."
"How? How could you have known it was just me?"
She shrugged. "I did."
"How could you have?"
"I just did. What do you want?"
"You to smarten up and get the fuck outta the water in the middle of a lightning storm, for starters."
"Not lightning yet."
"Maybe not yet, but it's gonna."
"I know." She always knew. She could feel it. Smell it long before it ever really started. From the first drop of rain, before, if a storm was going to include a light show, she knew.
Maybe it was because she'd been born in the middle of a terrible storm. Maybe it was her overly acute sense of smell—secretly how she'd known it was Vince sneaking up behind her—she didn't really know the why's. She moved to slide her cell phone out of her back pocket.
"What are you doing?"
She finally opened her eyes, turned to face him. "What do you think? I'm calling Leon for a ride home." She knew she used Leon to get her own back at him just a little. Jesse was too easy. She knew that Vince didn't see any competition in Jesse.
"I'm right here. I'll take you home." Her eyes reflected the weather, and the water. More green than blue and more grey than green, they reminded of clouds and ocean.
"You say that like I have any intention of getting in a closed in space with you."
"You know, I never said any of that stuff. You said it all."
"Oh? And what gave me that idea?" She watched as he disordered his shaggy hair with an agitated hand. "I don't think you can claim you never said anything. Racer Attitude Barbie?"
He cringed. "I said something stupid. I wasn't thinking."
"Again."
"Again," he agreed.
"Fine, let's get outta here." She was too tired, too wet and too weary to argue with him anymore. And it was too late to drag Leon out of the house into a storm and into the middle of a storm of an entirely different sort just over her not wanting to take a twenty minute car ride with Vince. She started around him for the shore, sloshing through the water as she waded in. She heard him following on her heels, his larger feet kicking up more water than hers.
After stopping to snatch up his boots, he matched his pace to hers across the wet sand, a map of dimpled impressions from the pounding rain giving it an uncommon texture under their feet as they walked across the ribbons of sand the waves had made, and then revealed as the last high tide had receded. Twin footprints marked path from waves to shore, one set more narrow with a higher arch, the other larger and flat, clearly male and female, yet showing a stride of equal length, even as the female pair walked around the worst clumps of sea vegetation and the male walked right through. And both were before long washed away by the rain and surf.
They reached the car and paused at the nose. "We're going to drag half a beach worth of sand and seaweed into the car." Vince tried to make it more statement than complaint. He wasn't sure how well he succeeded, but he didn't want her to think he was complaining about driving her home, no matter how much sand came with her.
"You have towels or a sheet or something in the trunk?"
"No, why would I?" He looked at her like she was crazy.
"In case you end up at the beach, and require a towel."
"My trunk is full of stereo equipment."
"Still woulda had room for a towel," Tempest mumbled.
"One towel wouldn't get us very far anyway. We'd need about three just to dry your hair. Never mind the fact that both of us are soaked, and at least to the thighs with salt water and sand." And they were only getting wetter, he had to note, standing in the rain in the dark parking lot.
If he was that concerned about sand in his car, she certainly wasn't going to add to the mess, and have to hear about it later. She'd walk til she could catch another bus. She walked around him, and started down the road.
"Where you going?" he asked even as he caught her hand to stop her walk.
"Bus. I doubt the city of L.A. cares how much sand I drag onto a bus."
He rolled his eyes, glad she couldn't see him doing so in the dark. "I didn't say anything about the sand to imply I was upset you were going to be dragging it into the car. I have just as much on me." He wanted to be angry that she took his words so out of context. But given what he'd said to her an hour previous was much worse, and she hadn't taken it as far out of context as he'd led her to believe, he held his tongue.
She looked back over her shoulder at him as wind blew a tree sideways and let a street light illuminate their faces. She was clearly still upset, and confused, and he knew it was his fault, again. He tugged her backwards with the grip he still had on her wrist. He knew he must have caught her unaware for a moment, as she fell back into him with a slightly startled exhale. Before she could struggle to get away he wrapped an arm around her waist to hold her steady and used the other to gather her wet hair into a tail behind her head so he could lick up the side of her neck. "You're covered in salt water."
She closed her eyes tightly, telling herself it was against the pounding rain, not allowing it to be as some measure of defence against what he was doing to her senses with actions as simple as standing behind her in a dark parking lot and taking a taste of her skin, when she was more covered now than she'd been likely since her arrival, in her undershirt and jeans.
Wondering what had her eyes pressed so tightly shut, whether it was desire, or the complete lack of, Vince wasn't sure what to do with her from where he found himself. Was she waiting for him to take this further, or wishing he would release her and let her walk around his car and get into the dry interior. Deciding with the amount he'd pushed his luck already in one evening, a little push more wouldn't hurt anyone. He leaned over her shoulder again and ran his tongue along the outter rim of her ear, ending with a soft scrape of his teeth across her earlobe. He took it as a good sign when she leaned back into him willingly, rather than standing stiffly where he'd tipped her with his well timed tug.
Tempest had no idea what she was doing. What she was thinking, allowing him to have his hands and mouth on her body again, after what he'd said to her in the bar? After what that implied about how he saw her, why he was still with her. She could only hope that it was based on some instinct she had that he was just rebelling against feeling as strongly for her as she did for him.
"You fit into both places. With Bryce and at home, and it bothered me, because I don't want you to. I don't want you to fit in. Not into my whole life." He didn't know where the words came from, but for once he didn't regret admitting to his feelings on a subject. He had to take what he had said in the bar back, and she deserved to know what had driven him to say something so harsh and untrue.
"How can I fit into your life? I don't fit into my own! And the day after tomorrow I'm going to have to go home and try to make me fit into my own world all over again." She sighed.
Maybe because he simply wanted to, and maybe to stop any further reminders of how soon they would be separated by two countries, when she reminded them both out loud how soon their time would come to an end, he tipped his head down, tilted hers to the side and tipped her chin up to kiss her. Maybe because she also didn't want to think about her departure any further she met him half way, her lips parting under his to allow him to deepen the contact, a hand sliding across the side of her face to tangle in her wet hair and hold her gently in position.
After a moment she turned to face him, pressing against him fully and twining her arms around his neck. She figured once a girl reached a certain level of stupid, another little bit wouldn't change much. She wasn't sure if allowing things to carry on after she felt his hands under her shirt wasn't more than a little stupid, but she still didn't call a stop to what they were doing, whatever it was. Before she knew it her shirt was in a wet pile on the hood of the maxima and cold rain water was pinging against her bare skin. She still didn't break away, call a halt. More the fool her, she wanted this more than she wanted to be smart.
He pulled his own t-shirt off, and it joined hers in a wet pile on the hood of his car. The rain lashed at them both, but if she was aware of it, he certainly wasn't. Grabbing her with both hands, he lifted her up onto the hood, sitting her on his car near the front edge, her feet dangling in front of the bumper.
She took grip of his wet hair and pulled his head down, putting his lips back against hers.
He pushed her back onto the hood, followed her down, never breaking contact but running wet hands up her body.
She echoed the gesture, nails grazing his skin in her haste. It was foolish, and foolhardy and she didn't care, didn't even realize at the time she was setting herself up for another fall. All that mattered was the contrast of cold, wet metal at her back, and scalding hot male on top of her, highlighted all around by the lashing of the rain on them both. Neither noticed, and had either stopped to think about the rain, they might have wondered why it wasn't sizzling off their overheated skin in billows of steam.
Thunder cracked, lightning flashed, and in the brief flashes in the inky darkness, human skin took on a delicate cast of blue. The wind and crashing waves carried away the sounds they were making almost frantically in the otherwise dark night, until all was quiet and still but the thunderous ruckus nature was creating.
And surrounded by the most elemental of situations, wind, water, sand, and even fire he was ashamed. Cliché as it was, she was the four watchtowers and in his own need to control an uncontrollable situation he constantly disregarded the magic of her for his own piece of mind. And he still wasn't able to find any. She was a witch, full of black magic, and he had no talisman against her, didn't want one.
He stood, took a moment to admire the look of her skin as lightning hit the water and made her glow against the ink of his car in the dark night. Then he held a hand down to her, to help her to her feet. After a second of watching her try to work her sodden denims back up her legs, he busted up laughing and it broke the mood of being alone in a room made of rain. Brought them both back to reality, and she joined him in laughter.
"I'd love to know what you think I'm going to do about this?" she tried to be serious.
He picked his tee shirt up off the hood, and rung it out like a wet dish towel before handing it over to her. "This should fit you like a dress."
"And you're going to do what then?"
He shrugged. "My jeans aren't as tight." He waited until she'd worked her way into the sodden cotton shirt with a shiver before dragging her around to the passenger side door. "Now go get in the car before you get sick."