Page 10 of Returning the Runner

I grinned. He grinned back. And then the grin faded into something else, something open and wanting that he didn’t try to hide. I watched his gaze drop to my mouth and come back up, and the air between us went taut as a wire.

Butterflies took flight inside my belly.

We had dinner at one of the ship’s nicer restaurants that evening, a cozy place with an amazing menu, a solid wine list, and a sunset pouring through the windows like the ocean was on fire. Hanson wore a charcoal-gray button-down that made his eyes look almost silver, and I tried not to think about the last time I’d sat across a candlelit table from someone and felt this kind of electricity, these kinds of sparks.

It had been him. Twenty-five years ago at a restaurant in Seattle because Forestville was too small and too close. He’d taken me out for dinner for my birthday, and when he’d reached across the table and touched my wrist, I’d felt it in every nerve I had.

He reached across the table now. Not my wrist, but my hand. His fingers laced through mine, deliberate and unhesitating, right there on top of the white tablecloth where anyone could see.

“I notice what you’re doing,” I said quietly.

“What am I doing?”

“Being visible.”

His fingers tightened around mine. “I’m done hiding, Porter.”

Something hot and fierce rose in my chest. I stood, still holding his hand, and he looked up at me with a question on his face.

“Come here,” I said.

He stood. I pulled him toward me—or maybe he came on his own, I couldn’t tell—and I kissed him. Right there in the restaurant, in the amber light, in full view of everyone and no one because the only person who mattered was already against my mouth.

His lips were warm and slightly chapped, and he tasted like wine. He returned the kiss with a small, quiet, broken sound in the back of his throat that went through me like a current. His hand came up to the side of my face, fingers sliding into my beard, and I felt him shake, a tremor in those precise, controlled hands.

I pulled back far enough to see his face. His eyes were closed. His lashes were wet. “Hey,” I murmured.

He opened his eyes. Gray and bright and completely defenseless. “Hi,” he whispered.

“Took you long enough.”

He laughed—a watery, wrecked, beautiful laugh—and kissed me again.

6

HANSON

We barely made it to my cabin.

We’d left the restaurant in a blur—Porter’s hand in mine through the corridor, the elevator, another corridor—stopping twice because one of us pulled the other against a wall and we couldn’t stop kissing each other. His mouth on mine, his hands on my waist, the solid warmth of him pressing me into the bulkhead while a group of guys wolf-whistled past us. I didn’t care who saw. I wanted everyone to see.

Keycard. Door. The click of the lock behind us and then the small, dim quiet of the cabin, just the hum of the ship and the sound of our breathing.

Porter cradled my face in both hands and looked at me. Those brown eyes, dark in the low light, searched mine with an intensity that made my skin feel too thin. “Are you sure this is what you want? There’s no pressure, Hanson. None.”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

He kissed me. Slower this time, deliberate, thorough, like he had all the time in the world and intended to use it. His beard rasped against my jaw, and I shuddered. I’d never been with a man with a beard, and the friction of it—rough and soft at the same time—was doing something to my nerve endings that I hadn’t anticipated.

I pulled at his button-down, and he stepped back long enough to tug it over his head. And there he was. Broad and solid, dark hair scattered across his chest, thicker at the center and trailing to below his navel. His body was exactly what I’d expected yet nothing I was prepared for—not sculpted, not young, just real. Strong and lived-in and warm.

I put my hands on his chest and felt his heartbeat under my palms—steady, like everything about him. He inhaled sharply at the contact and his stomach muscles tightened. “Your turn.”

I unbuttoned my shirt. Porter’s eyes tracked my fingers, and when I shrugged it off, his gaze moved over me in a way that made me want to cover myself. I was lean where he was broad. Pale where he was tan. I knew what I looked like—stripped down, too thin, every tension line and sharp angle on display.

“Don’t,” Porter said quietly.

“Don’t what?”