Page 122 of Checking Out the Librarian

Jonathan lowered his sunglasses to the tip of his nose and looked up at him. Connor could swear his eyes looked like starlight, glimmering in the shadow of his hat brim. The jokes and banter backed up inside his throat like a clogged drain.

He lacked the words to tell Jonathan how much seeing him meant. He’d gone three days without Jonathan, woken up alone three times in a row, and he didn’t know if he could do it again. Pawsley got Jonathan’s fingertips on his head, but Connor needed reassuring words or a soothing touch, too.

He turned away to hide his face from Jonathan, but he forgot that meant Trixie and the rest of the lurking smirkers could see him. Shit. “We’re too loud.”

“I brought you something. Well, it’s for Ribby.” Jonathan set the chair on the pavement and opened his bag.

“Let me get that.” He was glad unbagging and unfolding the spectator chair gave his hands a task.

“It’s a towel with Kitten’s scent all over it, so you can train Ribby to sit calmly when he smells Kitten. That’s what the videos said.”

He opened his mouth to ask Jonathan to keep it until after the game, but nothing came out. Well, a croak came out. A fucking croak.

He cleared his throat and tried again. “Can I kiss you? In front of Pawsley?”

Jonathan dropped his glasses onto the seat of the chair and rolled his eyes.

“May I, you fucker?”

Jonathan huffed air so loudly out his nose, Connor wanted to grab him and mash their faces together right here, but he hadn’t answered yet.

“For the record, that wasn’t why I rolled my eyes. I’m not that much of an asshole.”

Connor raised his eyebrows and fought to contain his laughter. Jonathan looked so cranky.

“Fine. I am.” Jonathan sighed. “But also for the record—and you may as well engrave this on a bronze plaque—when I’m standing here wanting to be in your arms, saying kiss me with my eyes, just kiss me. Do I need a fan to send covert messages with like this is a ballroom? Get on with it.”

After that speech, he needed to do this right.

He removed Jonathan’s bucket hat, folded it in half, and tucked it between his thighs. Then he lightly placed his hands, which hopefully weren’t noticeably dirty, on both sides of Jonathan’s head and tipped his face at the perfect angle.

They looked at each other for a moment. Jonathan licked his lips. His nose was so cute, scrunched just like Pawsley’s, and his eyes glistened with something Connor wanted to see all the time, even if neither of them could give it a name.

He lowered his mouth to Jonathan’s. Closed lips at first, that was enough. The feel of soft lips under his, the yielding and the presence, that was enough. They only touched with Connor’s hands and their lips, that was all, but it was so much. Connor let his mouth gently bracket Jonathan’s top lip. The tiniest touch of his tongue.

Under his palm, he felt the hinges of Jonathan’s jaw loosen, inviting him to take this deeper, and he wanted so much more. But they couldn’t, not here, not now, not with a game to play. He pulled away.

Jonathan sank back onto his feet with a little oomph.

“Let me help you with your things?” He was quiet. He didn’t want to broadcast this moment to the rest of the world.

Jonathan nodded. “I should sit where’s it’s quieter for Kitten.”

Connor picked the chair up from the pavement and walked fifteen feet past the dugout entrance. He didn’t want to talk, but he needed to get back into his game headspace, and out of the zone where nothing but Jonathan’s lips mattered. “I can’t believe you came and you brought Pawsley.”

“I missed⁠—"

Jonathan had spoken quietly, but somehow every person on the team had hearing like a kid at nap-time, because half of them were heckling, and the other half were trying to stop the hecklers, and that left Jonathan mute and Connor definitely in the throw balls hard at people headspace.

“Them.” Jonathan raised his voice. “I missed all of them.”

Connor narrowed his eyes. “You were going to say it. You were.”

Jonathan stared back, one eyebrow in an architecturally perfect curve. His hair had fallen smoothly into place after their kiss. His white shirts stayed white, even after a day of work. His shoes didn’t get black scuffs across the toes, as if he floated above the ground. His hair stayed the way he wanted it.

The need to mess him up, to make Jonathan dirty, drove Connor wild.

He heard Trixie call his name in the batting order.