A Royal Christmas Cruise (Stonewall Investigations Miami 2.50)

There was no one with a camera, thankfully. In that moment ,though, someone did cross the aisle, staring directly at me for a brief second before flitting away.

Luna. She had kept her distance from me like I asked, but of course she didn’t like having her eyes off me for very long.

Damn it. Did she see the kiss, too?

“You okay?” Shiro asked me, glancing over his shoulder.

“Yeah, why?”

“You look like you were looking for something. I was scared it was for an escape route.”

I laughed at that, sucking on my lower lip, as if that would give me the taste my body now craved. “Definitely not,” I assured him.

“Okay, good. Because running was the last thing on my mind after that kiss.”

“What was the first thing?”

Shiro’s lips quirked. “When round two would be.”

That cocky, banana-brief-wearing fucker. Already assuming round two was a sure thing.

“Now,” I answered him, pulling him by his hips into my body, my lips finding his again, only then being filled with the taste I was beginning to crave. Starting to need. His tongue pressed against my lips, parting them open, him feeling just as needy as me. I could feel his hard body push against mine. I took a step backward, stumbling, my back hitting the shelves. Nothing fell, so we continued, an endless reservoir of untapped passion fueling this out-of-control wildfire.

And then I remembered we were in public. As hard as it was (and trust me, it was fucking hard), I separated from Shiro’s lips, the both of us breathless. We looked into each other’s eyes then and shared something unspoken but powerful all the same.

This had been a collision course set in motion from the moment I spotted him standing at the security line. We had crossed time spans in the blink of an eye, in the taste of a kiss.

Shiro was no longer a stranger, even though that’s all he was five minutes ago.

“Wow,” he said. He ran a thumb across his lip, some of the gloss from our kiss wiping off.

He looked up at me, inquisitive eyes pinning me in place. I could almost see the gears turning behind them. It appeared as if he’d been hit with some kind of idea, the way his eyes narrowed and how he chewed on the inside of his lip.

It was my turn to ask, “Are you okay?”

“Better than okay,” he said, laughing, gears still spinning. “All right, so this is a really nuts idea. Like, batshit, off-the-wall kind of crazy, but follow along with me.”

I knit my brows together. “Are you about to rob me or something?”

“No, no. I’m about to potentially make a huge fool of myself is what I’m about to do. But it could… I don’t know, it could make this Christmas one for the books.” Shiro motioned around us. “Get it?”

“Mhmm,” I said, laughing. “I do.”

“Ok, because if you didn’t then I’d be worried.”

“I would be too.” More laughing. There was a pink blush that seemed to spread from his cheeks. He had me intrigued. I couldn’t imagine him doing anything that would make me think him a fool. Shiro squeezed his hands together as if he were drying a rag above a sink. “But, I don’t know, that kiss, it… shit, I think it got me drunk or something. So, okay, this cruise, it’s a kind of reunion for me and my friends. We booked it months ago, and we haven’t seen each other in years, so it’s kind of a big moment…”

The nervous smile on his face grew. He looked almost bashful to me, his butterfly lashes flicking up and down. I wasn’t sure where this was going, but I didn’t mind following Shiro to wherever he led me.

4 Shiro Brooks

One for the books? Jesus, I couldn’t think of anything better?

And still, I was allowing the word vomit to continue: “We’re all meeting up for this cruise and… well, everyone’s paired up. I’m the only one showing up single.”

Seriously. Pump the brakes on this out-of-control sleigh ride.

“And so…”

This was my chance. I could just say forget it, thank you for the kiss, and I hope to bump into you again sometime.

Instead, I spit out: “So you should be my fake boyfriend. For the cruise. Just, you know, for fun.”

Nick’s face went blank. As if he had trouble hearing what I was proposing, even though you could hear a damn pin drop and do the cha-cha across the floor with how quiet this bookstore was.

“I saw this movie last night,” I barreled on, feeling as if I had to explain myself, “and it gave me the idea. We don’t have to do any of the real boyfriend stuff. We’ll set rules. No sex and you know, other stuff…”

Nick cocked his head to the side. “What kind of other stuff?”

“Oh, so that part you want to ask about?”