Steady Rain Read online

  Suncoast Society

  Steady Rain

  When a hurricane takes Jessica’s home, gives her a new dog, and forces her return to Florida, she’s determined to focus on herself and definitely isn’t looking for a relationship after her cheating ex shredded her trust. Enter Tristan and Kyle, and the two hunky Doms soon work their way under her skin.

  Tristan and Kyle were friends and roommates first, and run a rope group together, but the attraction between them finally boils over into more. Still, they’re possibly open to a third if they meet the right woman. That’s when Jessica drops into their lives.

  When their kinky and vanilla lives merge in an unexpected way, outside forces at play threaten to destroy their happiness before they even have a chance to explore their new dynamic together. Between meddling exes and painful pasts, it all combines to create an emotionally explosive situation that might leave all three of their hearts shattered if they can’t find a solution together.

  Genre: BDSM, Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre

  Length: 82,783 words

  STEADY RAIN

  Suncoast Society

  Tymber Dalton

  

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  STEADY RAIN

  Copyright © 2018 by Tymber Dalton

  ISBN: 978-1-64010-997-1

  First Publication: February 2018

  Cover design by Harris Channing

  All art and logo copyright © 2018 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

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  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  DEDICATION

  For Hubby, because I couldn’t do this without him. And for Sir, He knows why.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Tymber Dalton is the wild-child alter-ego of author Lesli Richardson. She lives in the Tampa Bay region of Florida with her husband (aka “The World’s Best Husband™”) and too many pets. Active in the BDSM lifestyle, the two-time EPIC award winner and part-time Viking shield-maiden loves to shoot skeet and play D&D with her friends. She’s also the bestselling author of over one hundred and thirty books, including The Reluctant Dom, The Denim Dom, Cardinal’s Rule, the Suncoast Society series, the Love Slave for Two series, the Triple Trouble series, the Coffeeshop Coven series, the Good Will Ghost Hunting series, the Drunk Monkeys series, and many more.

  She loves to hear from readers! Please feel free to drop by her website and sign up for her newsletter to keep abreast of the latest news, views, snarkage, and releases. You can also find all of her Siren-BookStrand releases under all four of her pen names on her author page on the BookStrand site.

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  For all titles by Tymber Dalton, please visit

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  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  Purson Gibraltar drops in once more from the Good Will Ghost Hunting series. He also appeared in A Clean Sweep (Suncoast Society 8). Mark, Josh, Ted, and Essie are also introduced in that book. Kel and Mal’s feature book is His Canvas (Suncoast Society 10) but they make appearances in several others.

  While the books in the Suncoast Society series are standalone works which may be read independently of each other, the recommended reading order to avoid spoilers and to not miss any backstory information is as follows:

  1. Safe Harbor

  2. Domme by Default

  3. Cardinal’s Rule

  4. The Reluctant Dom

  5. The Denim Dom

  6. Pinch Me

  7. Broken Toy

  8. A Clean Sweep

  9. A Roll of the Dice

  10. His Canvas

  11. A Lovely Shade of Ouch

  12. Crafty Bastards

  13. A Merry Little Kinkmas

  14. Sapiosexual

  15. A Very Kinky Valentine’s Day

  16. Things Made Right

  17. Click

  18. Spank or Treat

  19. A Turn of the Screwed

  20. Chains

  21. Kinko de Mayo

  22. Broken Arrow

  23. Out of the Spotlight

  24. Friends Like These

  25. Vicious Carousel

  26. Hot Sauce

  27. Open Doors

  28. One Ring

  29. Vulnerable

  30. The Strength of the Pack

  31. Initiative

  32. Impact

  33. Liability

  34. Switchy

  35. Rhymes With Orange

  36. Beware Falling Ice

  37. Beware Falling Rocks

  38. Dangerous Curves Ahead

  39. Two Against Nature

  40. Home at Last

  41. A Kinkmas Carol

  42. Ask DNA

  43. Time Out of Mind

  44. Happy Valenkink’s Day

  45. Splendid Isolation

  46. Similar to Rain

  47. Happy Spank Patrick’s Day

  48. Fire in the Hole

  49. Pretzel Logic

  50. This Moody Bastard

  51. Walk Between the Raindrops

  52. Rub Me Raw

  53. Any World That I’m Welcome To

  54. Heartache Spoken Here

  55. Roll With the Punches

  56. See You Sometime

  57. Borderline

  58. A Case of You

  59. Reconsider Me

  60. Never Too Late for Love

  61. Blues Beach

  62. Happy Spanksgiving

  63. Our Gravity

  64. Friends in Common

  65. Almost Gothic

  66. Empty-Handed Heart

  67. Steady Rain

  Some of the characters in this book appear in or are featured in previous books in the Suncoast Society series. All titles available from Siren-BookStrand.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Author's Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

 
Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Landmarks

  STEADY RAIN

  Suncoast Society

  TYMBER DALTON

  Copyright © 2018

  Chapter One

  If Jessica remembered nothing else about that day—not the steady, incessant rain, not the chilly breeze, not the eerie lack of usual, everyday sounds of traffic and life in general, which were replaced by the sounds of heavy equipment and outboard motors—she would always remember her first sight of that black dog.

  Terrified, the young dog, who looked to be Lab, or at least a Lab mix, clung to the man in the boat, front legs wrapped around the guy’s neck as the man held him like you’d carry a child.

  Jessica ran up to the water’s edge, which currently lapped along what was usually a street. In the face of the pressing emergency, she’d managed to shove her nausea and other stress-related symptoms aside and focus on the here and now. With several other people, she held the boat steady as the passengers climbed out while bystanders tried to assist the mostly elderly passengers, who looked stunned, shaken.

  The man passed the dog off to Jessica. She felt it tremble, soaked through to the skin. He was deceptively light for his size and she realized it was due to how thin he was—borderline emaciated, every bone clearly felt beneath her fingers.

  The man lifted one of the elderly women out of the boat and carried her past the water and to where the street was relatively dry, Jessica following.

  “What’s his name?” she asked, trying to bite her tongue over the dog’s condition.

  “Don’t know.”

  “He’s not yours?”

  The man turned. “No. We took him from two guys pushing a paddleboard about a mile back. They rescued him from a backyard and asked if we’d take him out of the flood zone. He was treading water. Asshole owners left him chained up. He was probably close to drowning. The two guys cut his collar off him because it was leather and they couldn’t get it off him.”

  She backed away and tried to set the dog down, but he whimpered and scrabbled to stay in her arms, his nails sliding against her rain slicker. So she straightened and hiked him up a little to get a better grip, propping him on her hip, like she might a child.

  He wore a haunted look, echoing her own soul’s current status.

  “Hey, boy. It’s okay. Boy?” She couldn’t really tell from this angle.

  She walked back down the block to where her truck was parked and managed to get the topper unlocked and open and the tailgate down so she could set him on it for a better look. He let her do that, but licked her cheek as if thanking her for not putting him down on the ground.

  A quick peek showed yes, he was a boy. Neutered, but a boy. And now that she could run her hands over him, she realized he was definitely way too bony for his size.

  “Hey, buddy.” She had an old towel in the back—it seemed like all she did this week was go through clothes and towels—and used it to dry him off as best she could.

  Another face lick.

  There was no way she was getting in to her place today. Everyone coming out had already warned her the waters were still too high for even her truck, and she didn’t want to tie up a boat or other resources being used to actually rescue people.

  She cradled the dog’s head in her hands and stared into his brown eyes, and that’s what finally broke her down. She threw her arms around him, hugging him, holding him as she sobbed into his fur.

  * * * *

  It took her an hour to find a vet clinic that was open and had electricity and running water and could slide her in for a walk-in appointment. The dog didn’t have a microchip. When she told them the circumstances, including she wasn’t doing so great on finances herself and had lost her home, but she didn’t want to turn the dog in to Animal Services and risk him being euthanized or, worse, returned to asshole owners who’d almost let him drown, the head vet overheard her.

  He ordered one of the techs to prep a full series of shots, including a rabies tag, and a microchip, along with a heartworm and fecal test and dewormer, all for fifty bucks.

  More reason for Jessica to cry as she sat on the exam room floor with her new dog huddled in her lap.

  At least this time it was tears of gratitude.

  And, for the first time in days, her nausea had finally faded.

  That’s something, at least.

  Brenda had tried to joke—again—that maybe she was pregnant, except Jess was no stranger to these stress symptoms. She’d had them countless times as a kid, and another serious bout of them when she’d left Brad. Still, she’d taken one back then just to shut Brenda up.

  Plus you had to actually have sex to get pregnant, and since it’d been over sixteen months since she’d done that, she felt pretty certain that wasn’t the cause this time.

  Even letting Brenda take her to get her hair cut a couple of days ago—she’d had her long, reddish hair dramatically chopped off in a pixie cut that she wasn’t sure if she was regretting yet or not—hadn’t been able to do more than distract her while she’d been sitting in the chair.

  She actually felt…numb, in some ways. Air in, air out. Water and food and using the bathroom. Forcing herself through the past few days in a fog. Sure, she was luckier than most, because she’d had a friend who insisted she ride out the hurricane with her, afraid Jessica’s trailer wouldn’t survive the storm.

  It’d made it through the storm just fine, but the floodwaters that appeared immediately after were a different matter.

  Jess had made several trips back and forth in the days before the storm’s landfall, moving irreplaceable keepsakes and photography equipment and filling Brenda’s garage with her shit. She was currently using Brenda’s daughter’s room, since her daughter was at college.

  At least the most expensive of Jessica’s shit was in a high and dry neighborhood, safe from the unexpected floodwaters. She had furniture and clothes and kitchen stuff underwater. Some of the clothes might be salvageable after washing. The pots and pans and other kitchen stuff could be washed.

  But it was what little she had left and dammit, she wanted it, even though she had renter’s insurance.

  Thank you, Brenda.

  The dog turned out to be healthy, other than fleas, hookworms, and being at least fifteen pounds underweight for his size. They estimated he was maybe a year old, based on his teeth.

  One of the techs dug through a backroom stash and came up with a matching collar and leash for him that Jess could keep.

  “What do you want to name him?” the tech filling out the forms asked. “We need it for the rabies certificate and the microchip paperwork.”

  Jess sniffled as she stared at the dog. “Well, this is another fine mess I’ve gotten myself into, so I guess I’ll call him Stanley.”

  “Huh?”

  She sighed. “Never mind. Old Laurel and Hardy reference.” She kissed the top of his head. “Stanley.” She spelled it for her.

  “If you want to give him a bath, I’ll set you up in our grooming room.”

  “That’d be awesome, thanks.”

  An hour later, a clean, dry, dewormed, microchipped, collared, tagged, and newly named Stanley sat in her passenger seat and watched the scenery go by. She stopped at a pet store on the way back to Brenda’s house and bought a bag of dog food for him, the same brand Brenda fed hers, as well as a Kong and a couple of inexpensive toys for him.

  I…guess I have a dog now.

  She h
adn’t had a dog in years. She’d wanted to get one, but Brad had always put his foot down because he claimed he was allergic…and because he turned out to be a selfish asshole.

  Mostly it was because he was a selfish asshole.

  While being a hurricane refugee on the outskirts of Houston wasn’t exactly the best time to adopt a dog, she supposed there were worse times.

  For Stanley, it apparently couldn’t be a better time.

  Every time she had to stop at intersections, since most of the traffic lights in that part of the area weren’t working, he’d look over at her with an expression she took to be gratitude.

  Sure, this complicated her fucking life to the max, but at least for now, she knew they both had a temporary home.

  What she’d do once she got past filing insurance paperwork remained to be seen.

  At least they’d had power at Brenda’s throughout the storm, due to a whole-house generator they’d installed after the last bad storm, when they went without power for over two weeks. This time, Brenda’s neighborhood had been in the dark for only a day before it was restored.

  Brenda did a double-take when Jess walked in with Stanley. “Holy hell, where’d he come from?” Her two dogs, a sheltie mix and a golden retriever, ran over and eagerly greeted the new addition. Stanley backed away, head down and tail tucked as the two older and energetic dogs sniffed him over. A moment later, they must have pronounced him good, because Topper, the sheltie, ran off and came back with a tug toy, dropping it in front of the black Lab to play with him.

  “It’s…” Jess started crying again. “It’s a loooong story.”

  “Did you get into your place?”

  “No. Everyone says our neighborhood is still too flooded. Not even with my truck.”

  “So…where’d pupper come from?”