Darkest Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

Madras eye. These were guys who spent so much time in hats with mosquito veils they sometimes came home with nets tattooed on their faces.
    Not tonight. Penguin suits and gowns with endless trains filled the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria, the gauzy fabrics of lady’s dresses swooshing into the aisles like different colored mists. One set of brown female eyes at a nearby table was full of anguish.
    Oh boy. A protest. It took Rain a second to realize the woman was upset because he had stepped on her train, dislodging an evening’s worth of soil. It clung to the gauze in a zigzag pattern, still bearing the design of Rain’s boot sole, making a mockery of the delicate design on the fabric.
    You can’t take the dirt out of the field worker, he thought as he patted Marty Boland’s back, meeting the woman’s eye over Boland’s shoulder and mouthing, ‘sorry’. Everywhere he went women lost it, for one reason or another: orgasms, jealousy, competitiveness, zigzag deposits of patterned boot dirt. They licked their lips at his biceps, spoke in awe of his book sales, raged at his supposed sexism, and then… parted their legs like curtains. Strange, beautiful creatures. He was always in trouble and always fighting them off anyway.
    â€œGo, Rain.” Marty Boland released him and he tore up the steps two at a time, earning thunderous applause and squeals from the tipsy crowd. How were the nominees taking it? He caught a glimpse of Annie Childs on the screen, clapping calmly. She was the only one who did not look a bit tight-mouthed at her loss. She was taking it well.
    Strange creatures indeed. Annie Childs was the one Rain had hurt the most. If anyone should be upset about being bested by Rain Mistern, it was her. And of all Rain’s competitors, she was the most competitive , sweating away at her peer-reviewed studies almost as much as she did on the popular stuff. She would hate to have missed out on the Award for Contribution to Popular Understanding of Anthropology.
    And the way I ignored her after the sex on Sivu . Rain pushed the thought out of his mind. It was definitely a bad habit of his.
    â€œThanks.” Rain took the award from the presenter, Mandy Paulson, a lovely Oxford associate professor he had slept with more than once, and caught her smirk just before she stepped aside.
    Not the time to look down on popularization, Mandy. I’ve looked down on you while you worked me with your sweet lips. And the stories I told the guys were very popular. “I’d like to thank all of you,” he said to the crowd, raising the award and enjoying the whoops and squeals. He saw with relief that Mandy was smiling too, and winked. Fucking her had been so hot he’d rolled into campus the next morning and scored fresh tenure. The after-sex glow makes a great impression . “I’d like to thank all of you. I have worked with most of the people in this room, and I know that your knowledge is reaching wider audiences all the time. In fact,” Rain tapped the trophy, “this award belongs to all of you. Anthropology is a very collaborative field, and the work that we do together–the knowledge that we share–is what makes it so rich.”
    â€œCollaborative,” someone snarked at the front, miming a vulgar gesture. Oh, very mature. Rain ignored that reference to the fact that he had slept with most of the women above associate lecturer level at the top twenty universities in the US.
    â€œYes, a collaborative field. A field that is as robust as it is because we compare impressions, and foster one another’s understanding. When the field started to take shape in the time of Margaret Mead, debate raged about whether it is even possible to objectively observe a primitive culture. Field notes that made it back to England varied so widely in their impressions of the same tribes that people laughed at them. Men studying primitive women told you