Page 208 of Checking Out the Librarian

“You and me.” Jonathan stroked from the base of Connor’s neck out, toward his shoulders, down his upper arms, his hands as gentle as a leaf falling on a deck. “Watch us.”

He felt loose and dizzy. The candle smelled like pine and vanilla and now that smelled like sex.

“You’re strong, Connor. These arms are strong.” The hands changed direction, went back to his shoulders, squeezing and stroking. “You take care of people with these arms. You make them feel good. You make me feel good.”

He wasn’t sure which sensations were coming from Jonathan’s touch and which were figments of the web of words Jonathan was weaving around him.

Both of Jonathan’s palms came to rest on Connor’s left pectoral. “Your heart is so good, Connor.”

He couldn’t even see a hint of Jonathan’s expression. He wanted, no, needed, to see him.

“Your heart believes the best.” Jonathan pressed and Connor could swear that he heard the combined beats in his ears and it sounded like love you love you, but that must be fantasy. Jonathan said he was strong, but his knees were weak, too wobbly to support him, and he tilted forward to brace his hands on the cabinet.

For a moment he was falling into a different room, the old room, the old table, shards in the reflection and a bad taste in his throat. Something echoed in his head, a distant noise of glass that his brain knew wasn’t real even as his heart spiked, but then he bent forward enough for the mirror to reveal Jonathan.

“Look at me.”

Jonathan was here, only Jonathan. Glossy dark hair. Pretty pink lips. That lower lip like a plushie, so full, so soft.

“Keep looking at us.” Jonathan’s face was a set of flushed cheeks and flattened eyebrows, a man with a goal that he was going to stroke out of Connor’s skin. “I’m here. I’m with you. Say it. Say it, Connor. We’re here.”

Connor would be every prize in every fair booth, if Jonathan promised to step up and always look at him like that, like he was the thing to be won. He shuddered. “We’re here.”

“This is our space, Connor. Ours.”

The word ended with Jonathan’s hard look, the closest his mouth ever got to thinning out and being severe, the look that made Connor pant with the need to feel Jonathan bite him or something equally silly but was so fucking hot that it almost scared him and also made him leak.

“Say it. This is ours.”

“Ours.” The word sounded so good. He was a mess for this man. “This is ours.”

Jonathan pushed his thumbs into the muscles at the base of Connor’s spine, making him arch and reveal his neck. He was flushed pink and red all the way down past the edge of the mirror.

Firm fingers now, not ticklish ones, kneaded up and down his back until his feet melded into the floor and his palms flattened hard on the cabinet, but at the same time his spine went soft and kept him upright only by a miracle.

Each stroke of Jonathan’s hands made his hips push toward the empty space in front of him. He needed to find something there. Something had to touch him, and that something was Jonathan, was always Jonathan, was always going to be Jonathan.

Moving slowly, carefully, and letting Connor watch, Jonathan slid a hand from Connor’s back, under his arm and around his chest, until it spread across Connor’s clavicle. That midnight blue polish snapped against his skin.

This hand, these fingers, this touch, they were everything.

For a moment they both breathed. Waited.

Jonathan’s fingers rose and fell in response to Connor’s chest moving, the motion hypnotically small but visible.

Then Jonathan moved.

Connor didn’t know if he would have been able to feel the ghost touch if he hadn’t been watching, but Jonathan let his fingertips trail down, so light, too light, crossing his sternum and following the center line of his chest to the trail of hair, and below what Connor could see. But his brain filled in the parts he couldn’t see, so he knew Jonathan’s hand had reached his waistband and this time he wouldn’t stop.

Connor would melt or collapse if he did. Probably also if he didn’t.

Jonathan disappeared from behind him, but it wasn’t away, oh fuck yeah, it wasn’t away, it was down.

He was on the floor slipping between Connor’s legs and tugging on Connor’s shorts, because he could move like water, and shit this better be a strong dresser.

He was good and Jonathan was very good and this was going to be so good.

Cool air on his cock did nothing to lessen his need. He lifted a foot and shook his leg and then the other and his shorts were gone, and in less than a moment, his cock was in Jonathan’s beautiful hand.