by Rachel Hanna
"You'd get a ride home because you'd be full of beer and pizza and not want to run." He looked at her, dark eyes smiling more than ever, and said, "So what about right now?"
How on Earth does he think that's winning? We'd be stranded! "I had a friend pick me up here earlier. My car's in the parking lot." OK, she had the right to be smug. Why was he still smirking? "What?"
"Keys?" he asked.
Hannah shook her head. He definitely thought he'd won some kind of contest. It was almost a shame to open the zippered pocket in her shorts and show him the keys.
It made her happy that he didn't stop grinning, even then.
The conversation turned serious before they left Mario's. One minute he was telling her about his SEAL training, making light of what sounded to Hannah like a rather awful day of training, and the next minute he'd gone back to his question about her running.
The transition was nearly seamless. She didn't even see it coming. Knox was talking about the running portions of training, and the expectation that every SEAL candidate would be able to run both fast and long.
"There's a certain amount of brute force to some of the training," he said. His elbows planted on the table, chin in his hands, he sat across from her on one of the picnic table benches Mario's found quaint. Hannah found the benches sometimes hurt her back – she liked having a chair back to lean against – but Knox didn't seem to mind. "Like the running. Someone who is fit can still not be a natural runner. But the training isn't about whether you become a real runner or run races or run any one thing. It's about all the things. Speed. Endurance. Power. Sprinting."
"Everything is like that?" It sounded unpleasant. Not everyone could do everything. "I thought there were specialists."
"There are. Just not in the physical sides like that. So we ran long, though the longest run we ever did in my group was twenty. You've got that beat."
"Yes," she said lightly, mirroring his pose on purpose. "I'm ready for my training. Sign me up."
"Can I suggest you finish the sex change first?" he asked deadpan and she threw a napkin at him. A harried looking mother with three small boys in tow, their mouths open because they'd heard him say sex, paused to glare at them both. Hannah gave them a cocky grin, but Knox looked apologetic, even if he didn't say anything.
Despite his reticence to shock small boys who overheard their conversation, he used what he'd last said as a jumping off point. "It wouldn't hurt for that wilderness training you do, either."
Hannah groaned, mentally replaying how they'd gotten to this point. Was he cheating? But no, he'd reached the automatic point where everyone lectured her and he'd done so legitimately. "Look, I'm fine. I take my keys, I take my phone, I take water and carb blocks and –"
"And water and sunscreen and good for you. What about people?"
When her friends and parents lectured her, Hannah felt anger bubbling up right away. Being treated like a small stupid child or a recalcitrant teen never agreed with her. Had on the heels of anger came laughter, because she felt absurd: embarrassed, angry, amused, appalled, and mostly as though she'd been caught out doing something wrong and needed to cover.
It kind of was that way. As long as she was fighting back against everyone getting in her face about her running – it wasn't about the running itself and she knew it – she didn't have to face the part where they were right.
What made Knox different than everyone else she couldn't have said, except maybe that their entire friendship was about running. She could deny anything she liked. When they'd first met, she'd been alone, on a trail, surrounded by foliage, without a soul around her, and having left no message with anyone about where she was going or when to expect her back.
It was hard to argue when someone called her on that being a bad idea. She had, after all, run into someone out there.
"OK, I know," she said. "I know I need to leave word with one or more friends. It's the simplest thing in the world to text someone, ask for a text in return acknowledging, and let them know all the particulars. OK?" Weak finish. What was any friend going to say? Oh, OK, so you know it's stupid. Good enough.
"But you don't. You could text all of your friends in about two minutes so it's not time. What you really need is to take someone with you."
That was so unexpected and so unfair – and downright impossible – she pulled herself upright and faced him across the table. "Gee, Einstein, I never thought of that. There must be hundreds of people who run like I do, I'll just ask one of them." Irrationally, she was becoming really angry. Made no sense. He was a new friend. He'd never had this say before. She waited and in some cases waded through it with other new friends.
There was a dangerous light in his eyes now as he said, "You should be spanked. Maybe that would drum some sense into you. How many running supply stores and athletic wear stores and outdoor stores are there in Southern California? Or San Diego alone. How many running clubs and for that matter, runners? You must see other people running. Ask some. Ask at a club. Ask at the stores. Hey, I'm buying my shoes here, got any extreme runners?"
"Like they're on sale or something?" Hannah asked. Her voice sounded closer to a snarl than she'd expected. She was smarting from being lectured by a new friend, especially a gorgeous new friend of the opposite sex. More than that, she was having a very strange reaction to what he'd said about spanking.
"Like they're out there and you could find them," he said, his voice still strident and Hannah, without thinking, responded to a comment made several comments back.
"I'd like to see you try it, anyway." That came out snarling too. …and a little bit like a challenge.
Knox, mid-lecture, stopped and stared at her.
Hannah, cringing only on the inside, continued to glare at him, hoping he'd concede whatever point it was because he didn't want to stop and ask what she was talking about. She glared at him in a Go on way.
And saw the exact minute he realized what she'd been responding to. The smile swept over his face, making his straight eyebrows seem to arch. The smile, born of very sudden lust and amusement and anger, all mixed, made her insanely grateful they weren't somewhere alone and private, sharing food at one of their apartments without anyone else there.
"Oh, darlin'," he drawled, drawing out the syllables. "So easy. I run long and hard."
She wanted to shut her eyes and let her head fall back at the innuendo in his voice. What would have made her just laugh at any other male friend, and bristle at the inappropriate from any male acquaintance, in this case made her want to respond.
"All those other runners? You can find someone."
I like to run alone, she wanted to say. Because she did. She didn't want someone with her, their footfalls breaking up the quiet of the trails, their chatter when she least expected it, frightening away an animal or a thought.
But I like to run alone was so not something she was going to say as the conversation turned to something she didn't recognize.
"So maybe I have," she shot back. "You said you run long." And hard. God, now she was blushing.
"I work long and hard, too," he said pointedly. The serious look was back. Hannah missed the flirting. "What if I can't go out with you on a day you want to run long? How often do you do that, anyway?"
As often as possible. One of the reasons she didn't text friends every time. She couldn't imagine it wouldn't come across as look at me, the runner! Crossed with the fact she thought if she kept texting people that, even though she was really going, it would become like the little girl who cried wolf or at least the little girl who cried too often, and people would ignore her. Which would be the same thing as not telling anyone to begin with.
So she didn't tell anyone to begin with.
Or was it a little boy who cried wolf?
Not the point. She faced him again. "Look, I run a lot. I can easily run a hundred fifty miles in a week and still have at least one rest day. I don't usually tell people because it sounds like bragging no matter how hard I t
ry not to sound like that. I'm not bragging. This is just what I do. You think I can find somebody dependable and who is one person or even three who's going to be up for this often enough? Do you think I have to give up every run I can't find a buddy for? Just because I'm a girl? I've been doing this for years and nothing bad has happened to me!" Panic was starting to tinge her voice, like Knox was somebody who could actually take away her running.
What he did instead was stand, closing the second pizza into the box they'd had it delivered to the table in, and move with her in tow to the door. Once they were outside in the sand and sunshine, he continued the argument like there'd been no break.
"You've got me," he said with emphasis. "I can run with you. You have to have other friends who can run at least some of the distances with you. If not, maybe you find them. Or you stick to city streets. Or you get a dog. Or – "
Hannah held up a hand. The hot fight burned high in her. She felt like she had to talk fast to get every point in and that in turn made her go slower to be understood. And because she was contrary, even to her own nature. Guiding them both to a bench in front of a Made in California store, she sat on the very edge of the wooden seat, jittering. "Those are all good points, Knox." Damn, she hated admitting that mid-argument. "But they all require me to change my life."
"So you can go on having a life? Oh, the sacrifice!"
She held her hands up against him. "Men always do this to women. It's almost unnoticeable. It's all, the only way for you to stay safe is to stay contained. Don't go out alone. Don't forget to tell everyone everything about where you're going, when you'll be back, and fully expect if something good happens along the way you'll be interrupted in the midst of it by somebody checking in on you, possibly hysterical. But that's OK, because you're a girl."
Knox still held the box of leftover pizza on one knee, keeping it balanced with one hand. He ran the other hand over his face. "Damn. I'm not saying that. I'm saying – "
"You are too! Get a dog. I don't want a dog! I like dogs, so maybe someday. But I have a tiny city apartment and the only thing that will fit in it is too small to scare anything attacking other than a mouse. I'm not afraid of mice. Never go without a partner. Come on, Knox, I run long several times a week. It's what I love. Now I can't do it if someone else balks because it's hard? No."
She surprised herself with the no. When friends cared enough to make a fuss – a surprising number did – she had always in the past honored their concern at least to the point of talking through it.
But she was finished with this.
It looked like Knox was, too. He stood, still looking stormy but his voice was calmer. "Can you at least consider some of the options? At least pick one person, ask if they mind you texting them once every hour that you're going running – "
She grinned at that. Once an hour for seven or eight hours still might grow annoying for the recipient of her texts. Plus sometimes when she ran, she went so far into her head – into The Zone, she sometimes called it – it would be easy to go two and a half or three hours before even surfacing enough to think of texting, so anyone expecting regular updates would then worry for no reason.
Knox was still throwing out suggestions. "Where you're going and when you're going? You don't have to tell them how long or when to expect you, but give them the option of checking up on you after you've been gone three or four days with a broken hip and coyotes circling you, licking their lips?"
Broken hip was definitely on purpose. More likely would be a sprained or broken ankle or a head injury from a long hard fall. Hannah let herself smile.
"I can try."
He sighed. "Now, what about pepper spray? Mace? Self defense classes."
Hannah groaned and started walking toward her car.
Chapter 3
The lecture didn't stop on the drive back to her place where his bike was. It continued as they went upstairs and got ice waters and went out on the miniscule deck and leaned on the railing, talking. In part it was serious – Knox seemed honestly concerned that Hannah would tumble off a mountainside and break her neck or disappear into an old mine shaft and never be seen again, or be abducted by unspecified bad guys. In part it wasn't serious, because he kept going off on tangents, which Hannah began to call Idiots I Have Known.
"More like Idiots I Have Had to Rescue," Knox said and Hannah demanded to know if he thought her and idiot. To which he responded that he did not, which was one of the many reasons he wanted her to stick around. "You don’t want to be a cautionary tale," he said, gesturing with the tumbler of water. "The girl who does something anybody knows better than and gets picked up and carried off by condors."
She gaped at him.
He let his eyes nearly close as he turned his head, a professor delivering a particularly salient point. "It could happen."
"So could alien abduction," she said. "But you'll forgive me if I don't worry too much about it."
"I'm serious, Hannah," he said, despite the amount of time he'd just spent being anything but serious. "I haven't known you very long, but you're special. You're talented and funny and a good friend. How dare you put yourself at risk over and over?"
"I think it's a little soon for you to be worrying about me like that," Hannah said, pushing off the railing.
"There some kind of time limit on when people get to call you a friend? Or care about you?" he asked as she started to pass him.
Hannah sighed, and lapsed back into her standard, ill-conceived argument: "I'm fine. I've been fine. I will be fine. Nothing has happened to me and nothing is going to. I'll ask Jen if she minds me texting her every time, when I leave and when I return." She spread her hands in a show of completely fake reasonableness. "Anything else?"
"Yeah," he said, his eyes dangerously bright. "I think I promised you a spanking."
The blush rose instantly on her cheeks, and her body responded in ways she considered inappropriate. Not that he could know that. "I think I said you wouldn't dare."
Something crossed his face then, an expression flickering through his eyes that didn't scare her, but left her almost trembling in its wake. Unconsciously, she licked her lips.
"Bluff. Called." In one smooth motion he bent into almost a lunge, put his shoulder against her midsection and hoisted her over his shoulder, fireman's carry style.
Hannah yelped, wind milling her arms and legs, starting to giggle. He captured her legs easily with one hand. Her arms went on flailing. She caught the doorjamb of the sliding glass door as they passed through it into the living room. It didn't even slow him down. Knox kept moving and Hannah's hands slid off the door. There was no room for leverage in her upside down position, no way to get any force behind any kind of blows, so she shoved against his back, trying to leverage herself off of him, to slide down the front of his body until her feet hit the floor and she –
Didn't know what she'd do then. Her cheeks burned. She was anxious and embarrassed – and hot. No way she wanted him to know what she felt and so she struggled until he let go of her and Hannah stepped back, surprised.
He met her eyes, ignoring the way she blushed. "You know what you're doing is too little."
Mutinous, she said nothing. She took another step back and he caught her wrist lightly. She could pull away in an instant. "It's why your argument is made to be ignored. 'I'm fine.' That's not even an attempt."
She shut her eyes, pretending if she couldn't see him, he couldn't see her. Her face burned.
"You're not even doing anything to defend yourself now." His voice held laughter.
Hannah pulled her hand away from him and covered her face.
"So let's just." He pulled her hand away from her face. "Keep you safe." He circled both wrists with his hands. "Something you might remember." He pulled her close to his lap where he sat on the edge of the couch. "That there are people who care about you." With a sharp tug he tumbled her over his lap. Hannah, embarrassed, laughing, feeling stupid and wanting it all at once, said, "No, wait!"
>
He paused, one hand on her back, keeping her across his lap, the other hand starting to gently rub across her bottom.
Crazy! This was crazy! She started to kick and he tightened his fingers on her ass. "Hannah, can you honestly say you're doing everything you can to stay safe?"
Abruptly she went still.
"Or that you don't deserve a little attention for putting someone – you – at risk?"
She whimpered, embarrassment and desire equal. "Or that you don't want this – " Hesitating over her ass, the warmth of his hand above her flesh. "—a little?"
Crazy.
His hand, long fingered, strong, calloused, well used, connected with her backside. He started fast and continued mercilessly over top of her little yellow running shorts.
Hannah shrieked. She fumbled, pushing against the floor with her hands, trying to get them back behind her, over his target. Knox just grunted, pinned her hands to the small of her back with his free hand, and tucked her kicking legs under one of his so she was stretched only over one knee.
"Do you want me to stop?"
His right hand continued to lay sharp, hard smacks on her upturned ass. Hannah made a sound even she couldn't interpret.
"People love you, Hannah. People care about you. You're very easy to care for. You have a lot of energy and spark and light and life and nobody. Wants. To see that. Harmed." Each statement underscored with a particularly hard, stinging slap to her behind.
Hannah, humiliated, furious, squirmed against him.
Hannah, excited, flushed, wanted him. Now. Right now. And she wanted him to keep doing that.
But, contrary now, unwilling to lose the argument, she pushed herself off his lap as he slowed, found herself standing on surprisingly shaky legs, glaring at him through a tangle of her own hair. Somehow she hadn't expected a real spanking. She hadn't expected it to hurt.
