Page 29 of Rune’s Solace

My breath caught.

Rune didn’t turn around. Didn’t say anything. His thumb moved once across my knuckles, so small I could’ve convinced myself it hadn’t happened if every nerve in my hand hadn’t immediately reported it to the rest of me.

Then he pulled away and his hand went back to the bar.

I could’ve moved mine. I didn’t. Worse, I spent the next five minutes hoping he’d do it again. He didn’t. Which was probably good, but it didn’t feel good.

Twenty minutes. By the time we crossed the marsh, the sun was gone and the wind had turned cool, and I was still wrapped around the man who’d broken my heart in front of the entire club, holding him like none of that had happened. Like I hadn’t spent weeks trying to get over him. Like my body had already figured out something the rest of me was still too angry to admit.

Right then, Rune was where I felt safest.

The gate came up too soon and not soon enough. He slowed us through it, brought us around by the clubhouse, set his boots down and idled and I had to make myself let go, had to peel my own arms off him one at a time like they’d forgotten they belonged to me, and I got off on legs that didn’t feel like mine and pulled off the helmet and could not, would not, look at him.

“Amy,” he said softly.

“Thank you for the ride.” Businesslike. Or trying to be. I shoved the helmet at him without meeting his eyes. “Somebody can get my car tomorrow.”

“Amy — ”

But I was already walking, fast, toward the clubhouse door, to Brenda, anywhere that wasn’t six inches from him, and behind me he didn’t call again, he let me go, he always let me go, it was the one thing he was bent on doing.

I got inside and stood in the hall with my back against the wall, Rune’s helmet smell somehow still stuck in my hair and the heat of him still on the front of me, and my heart was beating hard enough that I pressed my palm against it like that might settle anything.

The safest I’d felt in months, maybe ever, was those twenty minutes with my arms around Gavin Boone on the back of his motorcycle, which was deeply inconvenient considering I was still furious with him and had every intention of staying that way.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I DIDN’T SLEEP, and I didn’t try very hard to, because sleeping meant letting go of the last of her off my back and I wasn’t ready to do that yet.

Sat out front of the cabin most of the night with a whiskey I poured and never touched, ice melting down till there wasn’t anything left but warm brown water in the glass. Garden black. Woods blacker. Her arms still locked around my middle where they sure as hell weren’t anymore, and every time I shut my eyes I got another piece of it, her chest against my back, her thighs tight to mine, those hands fisted in the front of my cut when I pulled us onto the road. The weight of her helmet against my shoulder. That second at the compound when I’d stopped the bike and she hadn’t let go yet.

That one was gonna kill me.

Twenty minutes. That’s all it was. Twenty minutes with a girl holding on because her car shit the bed and there wasn’t another way home. I’ve done things in this life that should’ve cost me years of sleep and slept fine afterward. Put men down. Patched brothers up while they bled through my hands. Buried people I loved and got up the next morning because there was work needing done.

Amy Dawson held on to me for twenty minutes and I sat awake till the damn birds started.

Pathetic.

Wasn’t just having her against me, though that was bad enough. First time she grabbed me, every damn muscle I had locked up. Couldn’t help it. Those arms went around my waist and her body hit mine, soft everywhere I wasn’t, and for about half a second I forgot there was a road under us. Had to get my head right before I got us both killed, so I breathed, put my eyes where they belonged, and rode.

Then about a mile past the bridge, something changed.

She quit fighting me.

Not fighting me. She hadn’t been doing that. Fighting herself. Holding her body back like she could keep one inch between us on a moving bike through pure stubbornness, and Christ knew she’d tried. Then the inch went away. Her hands loosened in my cut. Her arms went soft around me. Her weight heavy against my back instead of holding away from it, and a second later that helmet came down against my shoulder.

I damn near missed a gear.

She stayed there. That was the part I couldn’t get past. Amy relaxed against me. I felt the exact second it happened. Amy didn’t ask for it. Didn’t even know she was giving it. Her body just decided I wasn’t the thing she needed to guard against and leaned into mine like it remembered something the rest of her was still too pissed off to admit.

Fuck.

Then there was the stop sign.

Should’ve kept both hands on the bars. Didn’t need to touch her. She was holding on fine. But I looked down and saw those hands twisted up in my cut and put mine over them before I could talk myself out of it.

One touch.