Page 11 of Checking Out the Librarian

“That’s one of my favorite ingredients.”

“Great.” Connor leaned across the bar, inserted his shoulders into the bartender’s line of vision, then lifted his cocktail to the man working the other side. With a tip up of his head and one raised finger, he ordered another.

That move was hot, and not for the inexperienced. The ease of it set off a flutter in his stomach, and suddenly Jonathan was recalibrating.

Connor turned back to him. “I had to look it up, but I read that St. Germain is like ketchup for bartenders.”

“Do not ruin this for me. Do. Not.”

By this point Connor had shifted on his stool so that his body was perpendicular to the bar, his right elbow resting next to his cocktail glass, one leg hitched on the crossbar of his stool and the other braced on the floor. Jonathan eased into the opening, close enough to notice that Connor had showered with something woodsy, which fit him better than a musk or a spicy scent would.

His tousled hair looked slightly damp, as if he’d used a dryer but then become impatient and quit. He appeared to have used a product to push his curls off his forehead, but nothing slick or stiff, because his hair looked softly springy in the way that white people’s sometimes did. Jonathan’s own half-Korean hair could do glossy, smooth, or silky; he could use product for spikiness, texture or control; but the one thing his hair couldn’t do was that particular type of fluffy.

The drink arrived, and he lifted the narrow stem of the glass and took a sip without looking away. “Delicious.”

“Glad I chose wisely.” Connor’s grin made Jonathan think he meant he liked more than just the cocktail, and his gaze dropped, as if he was taking in Jonathan’s outfit.

He could almost feel the touch of the other man’s eyes on the mesh shoulder panels of his black button-front shirt. Solid black fabric covered the restaurant-verboten parts of his chest, but the rest was openwork that revealed his shoulders, collarbone and his lower ribs. He was showing skin but fully covered, like his more daring skating costumes from the past.

Pairing the shirt with wide-legged white pants and a few tasteful silver and onyx rings made the ensemble less like a goth club look, and more like a semi-formal piece casually mixed with streetwear.

“Have you been here before?” Connor finally asked.

He shook his head. “It’s not really my neighborhood.” By about a hundred miles, give or take. “But I read the reviews and thought it would be a welcoming place for us to meet.”

“Thank you.” Connor fished the cherry out of his glass. The stem disappeared between his finger and thumb, and then he popped the cherry in his mouth and pulled the stripped stem back out through his lips.

If that wasn’t foreplay then Jonathan needed to go back to school. Connor’s neck was big enough that his Adam’s apple wasn’t particularly pronounced except when he swallowed, and even then, the muscle that popped in the neck opening of his button-up shirt and the blond chest hair that peeked out stole the attention. Jonathan liked all of it.

The host arrived to say their table was ready.

Connor looked at him, and for a moment his eyes had a brief look of pleading. “We are going to eat?”

Jonathan leaned close to whisper in his ear before the taller man could stand from the stool. “Despite Dan Savage’s advice to fuck first because a meal makes you too tired for good sex, I’m willing to risk dinner.”

Connor made an odd choking noise in his throat and nose. “I only meant, you weren’t ditching me?”

He froze.

He’d been wrong and made a stupid comment based on a stupider assumption that sounded so dumb when he replayed it in his head. Everything that came out of his mouth was a mistake. No wonder he’d never had a boyfriend who wasn’t a lying piece of excrement.

Stop.

He sucked air through his nose, trying to breathe deeply and yet quietly to achieve a reset. Of course, Connor smelled nice in a wildly wholesome way. And Connor wanted to get to know him better, he must, because he wanted to continue to dinner.

Only a tiny moment had passed. Jonathan was still leaning close to the other man’s ear, far too close to burying his face in the fluffy hair or maybe chasing that woodsy scent down the side of Connor’s neck just to see whether it was stronger under his collar. But he was in danger of making things weird, so he had to shake off this frozen state and skate through, his only choice.

“You’re not, are you? Ditching me?” Connor’s voice cracked.

He let his lips brush the edge of Connor’s ear, then whispered, “Definitely not.”

He dropped his hand to Connor’s massive thigh, squeezed to emphasize his point, then left to follow the host. Because he strongly suspected Connor watched his ass, he added a bit of sashay as he moved to the table for two set in the middle of one of the window bays. The table looked like reclaimed wood, its scuffs and age marks covered by heavy coats of new varnish until it gleamed in the discreet overhead lighting and warmly reflected the collection of taper candles the server lit as he, predictably, described the concept of sharing appetizers.

After they were seated and each had menus in front of them, thankfully none of that QR code nonsense, Connor broke the silence.

“I’m not really as dull as I sounded in the lobby,” he muttered. “It was a long day after a long week, and I needed a shower and coffee to remember how to be an adult.”

Connor was cute when he winced, crinkling one cheek and half his mouth and making a pouty theatrical moue, which really shouldn’t look charming on a guy his size, but most definitely worked. Jonathan hadn’t known that he could have a thing for large bumbling jocks, perhaps because nothing in his prior twenty-six-point-nine years had given him much intimate exposure to the type, but Connor was rapidly broadening Jonathan’s horizons.