Page 27 of A Christmas Harbor

“Yep. But a year later, when I was deep into writingMarriage of Inconvenience, I’d already lost interest inSeriously, Though.I didn’t want to even do interviews about it anymore. Which meant book-specific tattoos were probably too much of a commitment. Live and learn.” He took off his shirt and rolled away onto his side. A rustic wooden bookshelf was inked onto the back of his freckle-swept shoulder blade. The shelf held four hardbound books of different colors and thicknesses. “I add a book to the shelf whenever a new one’s published. Kinda like having a teardrop tattoo for each person you kill in prison.”

“What’ll happen when you run out of shoulder?”

“I’m not that prolific. Especially lately.”

“You never know.” He shifted closer, leaving his own pillow and sliding his arm around Paul’s bare waist. Then he went still, just holding him. Surely Paul could feel his heart pounding against the ink bookshelf.

Paul tugged David’s arm tighter and threaded their fingers together. His breath glided audibly in and out of his mouth as they lay skin to skin without speaking.

A minute passed, then another. Finally David whispered, “Do me a favor?”

“Anything.”

“Don’t pretend for me. Don’t act as though you like something I’m doing if you don’t. And don’t convince yourself you’re someone else who might like that thing if they tried.” He rested his chin at the nape of Paul’s neck. “Just be you, all the way through.”

Paul swallowed. “I told you, I don’t know who that is.”

“Maybe I can help you figure it out.”

Paul released another shallow breath, then another, then turned in David’s arms and kissed him. His lips trembled at first, then grew bolder, explored deeper. The kiss reached down inside David, brought new blood to his heart and toes and everything in between.

ChapterFour

The sheer unlikelihood ofthemdanced through Paul’s mind as David’s hands journeyed down his body.

What if the weather had convinced him to scurry back to the B&B, or never leave it in the first place? What if he’d walked into the bar five minutes later, after David had settled his tab and left? What if Martin hadn’t played Last Christmas, battering David’s fortress of solitude long enough to let down his guard and be open enough, silly enough, to talk to a stranger as strange as Paul?

That parallel universe was too sad to bear the weight of even theoretical existence. It hadn’t happened, so it couldn’t have happened. This world, the one in which they’d found each other, the one in which they were currently fumbling and fondling like a couple of teenagers, was the only world that mattered.

Now David gripped him through these softest of sweatpants, and all abstract thoughts were swamped by a rush of molten lust. Their sighs and caresses turned to gasping and grasping.

As Paul stripped off their last scraps of clothes—two woolen socks each—David’s third tattoo revealed itself, the inked chain winding around his lower calf and meeting at his ankle.

A gust of wind whistled against the hull. Paul shivered as though it had cut straight through his body.

“Electric blanket time?” David asked.

Together they dived under the covers. The warm cave was such a relief, it dispelled Paul’s momentary gloom, and he joined David’s delirious laughter.

Another long, deep kiss, this time with legs sliding, twining, every inch of bare skin greedy for every other inch it could find.

“You take the lead,” David whispered against Paul’s mouth. “Tell me what you want.”

Paul almost said,Whateveryouwant. But David had asked him not to pretend, not to sign over his desires. “Well, you did mention sucking the marrow out of life, and I know it’s just a metaphor but—”

“Roger that.” David descended beneath the covers. It wasn’t clear yet how much experience he had, but his eagerness alone made Paul’s skin shimmy with anticipation.

Slowly, so slowly, David’s mouth enveloped him in slick, unrelenting heat.

“Fuck.” Paul clutched the sides of his pillow. David was either plenty experienced or naturally talented. His tongue was doing things that made Paul’s toes curl so hard they nearly cramped. “Fuck,” he repeated, the only word his brain could find.

David murmured—in assent or delight?—and the quiver of his lips and throat made Paul gasp that last remaining word again, drawing out the sacred syllable to the end of his breath.

Over and over David took him in, each time pulling him deeper, until Paul was arching his back and raising his hips to meet him halfway. His breath quickened with David’s rhythm.

The moment he felt near the edge, he gripped David’s hair to hold him still. “Mm. Not yet.”

David made a tiny whimper of disappointment that was completely, yes, adorable. But he let go and moved up to straddle Paul’s body, hands and knees planted outside his shoulders and hips. “What can I do for you now?”

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