Page 44 of Checking Out the Librarian

While Jonathan stared at him for another long moment, he didn’t let go of Connor’s head.

He knew he blushed, and he wanted to press his face into the top of Jonathan’s thigh, or whip the shirt fabric across his cheeks, but he couldn’t, not while Jonathan immobilized him.

His mouth was dry. He heard his own raspy breaths coming in and out and tried to wet his lips.

Jonathan’s eyes almost cut him with their glittery hardness. “I’m going to give you what you want, Connor. But you have to agree.”

“I do.” His voice sounded rusty.

“If you don’t want something, don’t do it. You’re bigger than me. You can do whatever you want, you don’t have to do what I say.”

He nodded.

“You understand? Say it. Say you’re bigger and you can stop anytime you want.”

“Yes. I’m bigger and I can”—his tongue felt too bulky for his mouth, so he swallowed—“I can stop anytime.” His shorts constricted his flexed thighs while he slid his hands higher on Jonathan’s legs, past the bony knee joints, along his tight lateral quad muscles, to the edge of the soft clinging briefs. Through all of that, he didn’t look away from Jonathan, and Jonathan didn’t look away from him. “I want.”

Jonathan’s eyes drifted closed when his head tilted back, thrusting his hips closer. “I do, too.”

Connor couldn’t miss that Jonathan was already hard under his briefs, and he felt the answer under his own shorts, but for this moment he was here to serve. Jonathan wouldn’t laugh at him if he said that. “Tell me what to do.”

Jonathan’s lips curved but didn’t reveal his teeth. It was the look of a difficult man, and made Connor want to roll to his back and offer himself, but he stayed on his knees and waited.

“Remove my briefs.”

He lifted the shirt. It was his, of course. He recognized it, but its linen contours belonged to another time and place, a life of lawn parties and balls and beautiful men that were hidden and then revealed.

Behind that veil, he glimpsed Jonathan’s covered cock and a dark circle of wetness on his briefs and knew that Jonathan wanted this as much as he did. The knowledge made his fingers fumble at Jonathan’s waistband. His skin was hot and taut under Connor’s fingers when he paused to trace the band.

He wanted to watch as he pulled the briefs down, but Jonathan twitched the sides of the shirt over Connor’s forearms, blocking the view. Without visual cues, he slowed his motions. Lowered the briefs, down the firm thighs, past the dip above Jonathan’s knees, over the spheres of kneecap and bone, to Jonathan’s calves.

With grace and balance, Jonathan stepped out of the fabric.

Connor carefully folded them into a square and set them aside. He settled his hands on his own knees and waited, breathing deeply

So nice. So yummy. He could smell Jonathan’s musk mixed with the lingering citrus from yesterday and his own laundry soap.

“Touch my legs.”

He eased his hand under the shirt and trailed his fingers up Jonathan’s thigh, so warm and smooth where his muscles flexed and contracted, to the crease where his leg met his torso. The groove there exerted a gravity-strength pull, and he traced its length again and again, each pass taking him closer to the patch of dark hair he could picture easily after their nights together.

Jonathan should order him to suck his cock. He needed direction, or else he was going to overstep his bounds, he was going to forget his place, he was going to get in trouble.

He eased his thumb close enough to nudge the base of Jonathan’s shaft.

“Stop.”

Connor froze, suspended between two needs.

“Did I tell you to touch me there?”

He shook his head, ashamed he’d presumed to touch his lordship without permission.

“Answer out loud.”

“Nooo.” Would Jonathan take his cock away? He would never. It would be wrong.

“Put your hands behind your back, Connor.”