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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Rain

  Copyright © 2015 by Taryn Kincaid

  ISBN: 978-1-61333-848-3

  Cover art by Syneca Featherstone

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC

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  www.decadentpublishing.com

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  Also by Taryn Kincaid

  Sleepy Hollow

  Lightning

  Thunder

  Frost

  Blizzard

  Heat Wave

  In From the Cold

  Wolf’s Song

  Dedication

  To my dad, who called me “princess” but didn’t need me to remain one. And to my mom, who by example showed me women could be whatever they chose to be. Thank you for reading me all those stories. Miss you every day.

  Rain

  By

  Taryn Kincaid

  A Beyond Fairy Tales

  Adaptation of Grimms’ “Little Brier-Rose”

  Better Known as “Sleeping Beauty”

  Chapter One

  “Brierly.”

  She hunched her shoulder in an effort to escape the huge male hand shaking her and tried to burrow back into the depths of sleep. After so many nightmarish days and restless nights, she’d missed countless hours and had much to make up for. If only she could. Sleep, ever elusive. And, at this moment, she wanted nothing more.

  “Come on, Sandrina. You’ve caught enough zzzzzs. Wake up, soldier.”

  Her name was Rosina, Rosina Brierly. She had to keep reminding herself because of origins so hazy very few people knew her real name anymore. The large males with whom she traveled called her many things as the whim struck them. They liked nicknames. Sandrina had stuck because, they said, she seemed more at home in the desert than they did.

  Their vocabulary and teasing sometimes perplexed her. Catching zzzzzs, they called those trips into deepest slumber, conjuring images of one of them grasping the lowercase letters in his fist and knocking himself out with them. She snatched those zzzzzs when she could, as did the men. Her hard-bitten companions might be the biggest and toughest males she’d ever encountered, but the same subterranean forays into unconsciousness occasionally seized them all when their bodies simply could go no farther.

  “Damn it, princess. Wake the fuck up.” Another jolting shake. Rougher. But the deep, familiar voice, strong as the man it belonged to, soothed her in some odd way, making sleep delicious and safe, giving her a sense of security certain and profound enough to let her remain in the twilight place between dreamland and the fully conscious state. The voice might rise and fall, like sand dunes shifting in the wind, but most often it rang with the authoritative clarity of the dark end of the spectrum, rarely light like his companions’ voices.

  They joked a lot, the other soldiers. Even in the face of death. Especially in the face of death. But not this one. No nonsense. Did he imagine he’d split his stern face apart with a smile if he attempted one?

  They liked ribbing her, the other men said. Another curious word. Their benign jabs had nothing to do with the bones that stood out on her torso when she hungered, as she nearly always did, nor the sculpted waves dominating the well-defined chests of the troops. Nor did ribbing have to do with those tasty meat delicacies, slathered with sauce, which they roasted over grills and gnawed on with such gusto when supply shipments arrived at their outposts. Or when they managed to locate elusive game while out on the maneuvers that took them far from their barracks and camps. And the scavengers, well—

  “Sandy. Come on, baby.”

  Another shake. They called her Sandy because she preferred to sleep in the soft sand beneath the stars and clear night sky, instead of in their suffocating tents with them.

  An obstinate wave of defiance rippled through her now. This particular man rarely called her Sandy, and she did not like it from him. Worse still, she did not like him calling her baby. She did not want him thinking of her as a child.

  “Brierly,” she muttered, only half awake, still clutching at the remnants of fleeing sleep. “Rosina Brierly. I am a woman, and you are not my father.”

  “Jesus.” The word blasted from his mouth, an explosive denial of any familial relationship between them. “I know that, princess.” He took a breath, apparently summoning patience. “Brierly. Rosina. Let’s go, damn it.”

  She’d been named for a flower. But none of them had ever seen a rose, she suspected. The only roses she knew of had been embroidered on her lacy drawers and camisoles years ago, when she’d been but a slip of a girl. She’d never known who had performed that painstaking needlework. But artistry it had been. After her underthings had been reduced to frayed rags, she’d snipped a few of the red silk flowers, reluctant to give them up. Mysteriously, a silver locket had appeared among her things, placed amidst the small pile of delicate flowers. Had the piece had been made to collect and contain them? She still wore the tiny red roses in the pendant around her neck.

  Rosina had never seen a live rose either. But gazing upon the small scarlet knots in her locket always comforted her. They sparked tiny embers of hope that chased the despair most often enveloping her, enveloping the world. Hope, such a rare commodity in these days of war and want. She raised a hand to brush at the pendant around her neck. The gesture elicited an impatient growl from the man beside her.

  Once an ancient, traveling peddler, Nicodemus had tried to buy the memento from her, the odd little man’s eyes alight with avarice—and something more. The gleam reflected equal parts shock, mystery, and greed. When she refused to give up her necklace, though desperate for the money he’d offered, the gray-bearded, gnome-like man had shown her pictures of long-gone flowers in an illustrated book so magnificent it stole her breath away. He’d identified the beautiful regal rose for her, once so plentiful in many places and now no more.

  Then he’d taken her under his wing for a short time and a short distance, finally leading her here, to live among the warriors.

  “They’ll feed you,” he’d said. “Shelter you. Take care of you better than I can.”

  “I need no
one to care for me.”

  “Do you not?” The stunted man’s eyes crinkled, and the corners of his mouth quirked, the signs of his amusement all but hidden by his voluminous beard.

  She could not argue. Food had grown so much harder to come by. Danger everywhere. Even the slashing rain falling from the sky cut her delicate skin to ribbons, as lethal to her as sharpened razor blades, another rare commodity.

  “’Tis where you belong…at this time,” Nicodemus had said. “Where you must be now. One of them will save you. And you will rescue him.”

  The words had puzzled her, as so much did. So many gaps in her history. In the history of the world, for that matter. Instead of explaining, Nicodemus had only befuddled her, dropping strange hints and cryptic phrases like seeds in a vast wasteland he nevertheless expected to one day take root and grow.

  The last vestiges of unconsciousness evaporated around her with the warrior’s insistent jostling before she was ready to give up sleep’s comforting embrace.

  Groaning, she tried to pull the fast-fading remnants of slumber around her like a cloak. A good dream, this time, not a nightmare. Warm. Safe. Green. Of a time when grasses and trees and flowers covered the Earth, and animals big and small ranged across plains and jungles, mountains and marshlands, before there was so much sand and sun and deadly rain, fit only for the hardiest of briars and brambles. Of a time and place long gone, except in her subconscious, a place she only revisited when her fatigue shut her body down and she was unable to go a step farther. She did not wish to wake. Not yet.

  And she did not want to leave the embrace of the fantasy male in her drowsing erotic visions. The major. Handsome and strong. So different than in reality. So charming. So…romantic. With a smile like a ray of golden light splintering the clouds. So unlike the large, unyielding devil whose hand wrapped around her shoulder now. Major Clay Worthington. She knew his voice. She knew his touch. Even if only when her eyes closed.

  Is he the one supposed to take care of me? The one I will rescue?

  When she slept, she encountered a man who looked at her with eyes much softer than those hard, fierce orbs Major Worthington trained her way during waking hours. His eyes warmed then, a bright and liquid blue, as she imagined the sea must be, or had been once—and heated, too, the way his men’s were when she first rose in the morning, their lusty, covetous stares raking over her until she squirmed with unease.

  Does the major ever feel lust? Does he covet a woman’s touch? He never gave any sign he did. Too aloof and austere, too remote from the simple emotions of mere mortal men.

  He shook her again. “Wake up, princess. The rain will come soon.”

  The men looked forward to the rain. They hated the relentless sun blasting down upon them, as if they thought it would incinerate what was left of the earth beneath their boots, baking the soft sand into badlands as hard as concrete. They’d strip off their T-shirts and boots, their combat fatigues, and sometimes even their camouflage boxer shorts, and dance and play, naked or nearly so, in the slanting gray soup, laughing, tossing round balls or throwing saucer-shaped plastic discs to each other.

  For her, the showers had the opposite effect. The stinging rain sliced into her sensitive skin like acid, raising blisters and sores, sometimes bloodying her.

  She did not know why the major called her princess. Perhaps he didn’t know either. Whatever royalty once walked the earth had long gone, fled underground or died in battle or simply disappeared. The war engulfed every human on the planet, every inch of land, and had waged so long she doubted anyone remembered anymore. Well, maybe Nicodemus. At least he sometimes hinted he did in the stories he told. And she had seen him whisper into the major’s ear, unknown things that made the major pale beneath his weathered tan.

  Major Worthington did not treat her like a princess, though, except when she slumbered, when he knelt before her in her fantasy world, his head bowed, his fist over his heart, laying his sword at her feet and claiming the role of knight. Her hero. Her champion. When she awoke, he remained one of the elite warrior breed roaming the planet, bristling with weapons like the soldiers he led. He treated her as the translator she was to him, sometimes barking orders to her as if she were one of his men, only occasionally seeking her counsel.

  She came fully awake as he jerked her up from the ground and yanked her toward him. The glare of the setting sun broadsided her, hurting her eyes. Why was he so insistent about the impending rain? No clouds yet darkened the sky, although the hour sped toward evening dusk now. But no hint of shadow yet blotted the horizon.

  “I can smell it,” he muttered, in answer to her unspoken question.

  She would bow to his greater knowledge in this. He was seldom wrong. Experience etched his sun-bronzed face. He’d managed to keep his men alive, keep her alive, despite all odds. Strong, capable, and competent. A difficult man who seemed unaware of his worth.

  He studied her with alert, intelligent eyes that always seemed to take in more than other men did, to see inside her sometimes, ferreting out secrets she didn’t even know she had.

  By the thorn, he is easy on the eye. Handsome, in a hard, rugged, day-old growth-of-beard sort of way.

  Tearing her gaze from him, she scanned the heavens and frowned. She tried his patience not moving with more alacrity and braced herself for another jolting shake. Instead of flapping her about like a rag doll, he wrapped his thick arms around her for the most fleeting of moments, clamping his hands to her back and pulling her into him, settling her head against his broad, tautly muscled chest. Through his T-shirt, his thunderous heartbeat pounded. Was she imagining the steady drumming grew faster? Or the light touch of his bristly chin on the top of her head? The brush of firm lips in her hair?

  Rosina strained to look up at him and sighed. The man stood so beastly tall, she could not decipher his expression. He held her in place a second more. His nostrils flared, and he took a sharp breath, drawing her scent deep into his lungs. Or perhaps she only wished to believe so silly a thing. She could never arouse such a man. He’d never succumb to the fragrance of a woman, no matter how erotic. Especially not a woman as ordinary as she. Maybe he only sniffed the air for another whiff of the coming rain.

  Then he released her quickly, nearly pushing her aside, making up for the extra second he’d held her, as if she’d burned him.

  “Awake now, soldier?” he growled.

  “I’m not one of your men, Major,” she reminded him.

  “No. And thank the thorn you’re not.”

  “I’m not a soldier.”

  He looked away from her. Did her image so hurt his eyes? He patted down his body, ensuring his weapons were cocked, loaded, and within easy reach. The lethal metal-on-metal thunk as he a slammed a magazine home in the handle of an automatic pistol made her wince. She scrunched her eyes shut for a second and then glared at him. Guns and ammunition were something of a scarcity…but the man before never seemed to go unarmed. He fairly bristled with devices of death.

  “We’re all soldiers, princess.” Bending, he transferred a dagger from his boot to a leather sheath strapped on his belt loop. She shuddered at the display of deadly instruments, clearly designed to prove he’d guarantee her safety…and to keep her at a distance.

  A buzz of irritation shot through her. “Damn it. Why do you call me that? Princess?”

  He shrugged, unwilling or unable to explain or even carry on a conversation. Sometimes she lost all patience with him, the brief flares of annoyance completely out of character for her. Only the major brought forth the sharper edge of her personality, born of her frustration with him.

  Grasping her hand, he scrambled toward the camp, pulling her after him. His touch sent sizzling rockets of flame blasting through her.

  “You can sleep inside my tent, if you must sleep.” He shook his head, his frown forbidding.

  “How could I refuse so gracious an invitation, Major Worthington?” Sarcasm, so unlike her.

  His jaw set in a harsh, rigi
d line, showing his disappointment in her, his eyes sharp and wintry like chips of frost.

  By the thorn! She never tired of looking at the man, despite the many streaks of grime and sweat layering his face or his aggressive and formidable stance. Even his grim manner drew her, his grave demeanor somehow extraordinarily attractive.

  His face set in stern, austere lines emphasized strong features and the sharp, masculine planes of his bone structure. Sometimes it seemed he was all cheekbones, jawline, and brow…until she stared into the arresting eyes that erased any thoughts she had…including her own name. Eyes framed by excessively long, sooty lashes that would be pretty on a man less flinty and somber. Such silly lashes. After the rain came, or when he emerged from a quickly snatched shower rigged from the scarce water they collected, their inky fringe stood in wet spikes—and had so lethal an effect on her they weakened her knees. Like when she forgot herself and gazed too long upon his firm, full lips—the only part of him that seemed made of flesh rather than stone—a part begging to be tasted.

  His hair was the color of wet sand, duskier after the cruel, relentless rain. He wore it clipped close to his scalp, as all the soldiers did. When it grew longer, threads of gold became more evident. She longed to run her hands across the top of the cropped brush, to test whether the stiff, tawny bristles were wiry, as they appeared, or soft, as she suspected. Tawny, like a lion’s. She’d never seen one of the big beasts except in Nicodemus’ illustrated book, the one with the pictures of roses. King of the jungle, the animal had been called. But the major reminded her of the creature. And something regal and kingly about him went beyond his military bearing.

  A fat drop of rain splattered with a jarring ping onto the helmet he’d tucked under one arm. He’d been right. Of course he had. He usually was.