Chance of Rain by Amber Lin Page A

her inside.
    “Er, no. I know it’s weird, but I don’t have one.” The sad truth was, she’d never seen a need. She spent all day in the diner. “Can I use yours?”
    His eyebrow lifted. “I don’t have one either. I usually pick up a disposable when I’m stateside, but ever since... Well, I don’t expect too many phone calls.”
    What a pair they made, both of them stuck in the past. No cell phones or any of the other flat-screened electronic devices. He flipped on the TV, but it fuzzed despairingly before he turned it back off.
    “So I’m stranded here.” She frowned. “An abandoned farmhouse, a woman forced off the road by a storm—you know, this could be the start of a horror movie.”
    “In broad daylight?”
    “That’s the twist.”
    He looked skeptical. “Listen, if you really need to get to town, I can probably get you there on the tractor. It’ll take the better part of the day, and we’ll likely get pretty muddy, but it ought to get us through, unless the water’s really high.”
    She bit her lip, thinking of Gram and the nursing home in Austin. They were most likely too far away to be affected, and well equipped with generators anyway. Still, if Gram called... But she wouldn’t call. Not when she didn’t even remember who Natalie was.
    Since her parents’ car crash, for as long as Natalie could remember, her grandmother had been an unwavering source of support. Even after a long day working in her diner, Gram had always been quick to supply a hug, a few profanity-laced words of encouragement and, once, a shot of whiskey in her junior year of high school after Natalie had been publicly dumped by Sawyer.
    Gram got older and Natalie took over more shifts at the diner, then all of them. College plans fell to the wayside, but that was how it should be: family helping family. Even the Alzheimer’s diagnosis hadn’t shaken her sense of purpose. Gram had been her caretaker most of her life. Natalie would return the favor.
    Except it had been more than forgetfulness, more than agitation. There were fights, every night. Her grandmother hadn’t been herself, Natalie understood that, but the insults and threats still hit their mark. Then Gram begun throwing things, scratching, hitting.
    Natalie had thought she was successfully hiding the bruises until the sheriff sat her boyfriend down for a talk about southern hospitality—a fancy way of saying Joe had confronted him about it. Said boyfriend didn’t take the accusation lightly and, to her regret, fists were thrown. The truth had come out, and the people in town had stepped forward with their love and support and whiskey. She had enrolled Gram in the nearest dementia care facility with a full-time nursing staff—almost sixty miles away.
    And now Natalie was here in Sawyer’s kitchen, unable to care for Gram, unable to care for Gram’s business. She sat down heavily in a kitchen chair. “I hope the diner’s okay.”
    Unlike last night, his powerful body was relaxed, at rest, but even now his gaze was watchful. “You may have lost a few windows. Insurance should cover the damage, but they won’t come out while utilities are down, and I’m guessing most of the town is a mess. We must have slept through the worst of it.”
    Right, sleeping.
    Guiltily she remembered waking up in the dark and feeling him, hard as stone, against her leg. That couldn’t be comfortable. Morning wood, sure, but in the middle of the night? That couldn’t be healthy. She was really just the Good Samaritan of bedmates, then, for slipping it into her mouth, again and again, until he climaxed and groaned her name.
    She remembered also, with an ache between her thighs, waking up again with him behind her, his cock inside her, everything rough and dirty and not polite at all, and how she’d loved it, how hard she’d come, crying out “oh, God.”
    His eyes had darkened, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “Well, what’ll it be?”
    From behind again