Page 28 of Rune’s Solace

I shoved the helmet onto my head before my brain could get any more helpful.

Super glad for the visor.

My face was doing things.

“Get on behind me. Feet on the pegs, there and there. And you’re going to have to hold on.” He glanced back, and for just a second the smooth cracked and there was something careful in it, something that knew exactly what he was asking of me and hated to ask it. “I’ll take it slow. I’ve got you. You just hold on.”

I’ve got you. Brenda’s exact words to me in the trees. The words you say to somebody who’s about to fall.

I got on behind him.

And for the first minute I kept the inch. That was what I’d promised Brenda where Rune was concerned—not one inch more—and I took it literally, sitting stiff behind him with my hands barely touching his sides and that little strip of space between us like I could somehow hold it there for twenty miles. I could do this. I could keep the inch, get off the bike at the other end, and never admit how much work it had taken not to close it myself.

Then he pulled out onto the road, and physics ended the argument.

The bike surged, the world tilted and my inch disappeared, because apparently motorcycles didn’t care about promises made to Brenda. I grabbed him, both arms going around his middle, hands fisting in the front of his cut, my chest hitting his back and my thighs tight along his, every part of me I’d spent months keeping away from him suddenly pressed against the man I’d sworn I was done with.

Rune went completely still.

Only for a second, but I felt it. Felt his body lock under mine before he let out one slow breath and settled the bike beneath us.

Then my brain caught up with the rest of me.

Oh.

This was worse than I’d thought.

He was warm. That was the first stupid thing I noticed. Warm and solid everywhere I touched him, his stomach hard beneath my arms, his back broad enough that I couldn’t see much past his shoulders, and I could feel every breath he took. Every small shift of muscle when he changed gears. The movement of his body under mine when he leaned us into a curve and brought us back out again.

My body remembered him. Not the heartbreak, apparently, because that would’ve been useful.

The kiss.

I waited for the panic.

Because this should’ve done it. A man between my knees, m body against his, his size everywhere, no real way to move away without throwing myself off a motorcycle doing fifty down a county road. There were about six different things happening that should’ve had every alarm I owned screaming.

Nothing.

My shoulders came down. My jaw loosened. Somewhere along that first stretch of road I stopped holding my body stiff against his and shifted closer without even meaning to.

That scared me enough that I almost pulled back. Because the awful truth was that being against Rune felt good. Not just safe. Good. Those were two very different problems.

I pressed my forehead against the back of his shoulder before I realized I’d done it and stayed there for one stupid second, helmet resting against him, his body moving underneath me with every breath. There was something so nice about it that it hurt, just letting all that solid Rune hold the world steady for a minute instead of doing it myself.

Then I caught myself and lifted my head.

My arms stayed exactly where they were.

He rode like he’d promised. Slow, for a biker, smooth through the curves and easy on the throttle, no sudden anything, and when a truck came the other way and shoved a wall of wind at us, Rune moved the bike over without so much as a twitch. I felt all of it because there was no way not to feel him now: the heat coming through his shirt and cut, the muscles in his stomach tightening when the road curved, the way his thighs shifted against mine when he changed position.

I should not have been noticing his thighs.

That seemed important.

I noticed them anyway.

At the next stop sign his hand left the bar. It came down over mine where they were fisted in the front of his cut and just covered them, one big warm hand over both of mine.