Page 92 of Checking Out the Librarian

“Biker boots work too. Just different.” He looked at Jonathan’s chest. “Maybe with jeans and a ripped shirt? Or…” Connor focused on his own hands, looking at the spread palms and the thick fingers.

Jonathan knew those callouses felt scratchy but also reassuring, the competent hands of a man who could do anything he tried.

“Maybe a shirt I can rip?”

Prickles rushed up and down Jonathan’s arms, and he shuddered as if he were a gothic heroine. He wanted that, wanted Connor to pull the clothes off him, wanted to hear that sound and feel Connor all over him. “This is possible.”

Time stretched and they didn’t move. Someone should move, but he felt so precariously balanced.

“One more.” Connor reached for the small box, and Jonathan’s momentary twinge that he might fall off the couch was unfounded, because Connor managed to return and offer the little box.

It weighed nothing, but his hand trembled and he fumbled with the tape, fingers that could wield a mascara wand with precision reduced to bungling. Connor’s mitt-sized hands had achieved this wrapping, and Jonathan couldn’t even open it. He could hear his breathing louder than it should be, but Connor, usually loud, was as quiet as if he’d expired.

With the edges of the dark blue velvet box revealed, Jonathan looked across at Connor. “Breathe.”

He whooshed out and in again. “Right. Thanks. So, ah, if you don’t like this, I can take it back. It’s no big deal. I can do whatever. Whatever you want.”

He laid his hand on Connor’s thigh and squeezed. Velvet boxes were always jewelry, and no one since his grandmother had given him jewelry. People had given him clothes, although never clothes that had as much meaning attached as the blouse, and Connor hadn’t even hesitated to tell Jonathan why. And yet the jewelry had Connor on spin cycle.

He opened the hinged lid. Inside, there was a silver stick pin resting in soft cotton fluff. The head of the pin consisted of silver strands twisted and looped like delicate ropes around a smoothly rounded black onyx center. He touched it carefully with the tip of one finger, then lifted it into his palm. He couldn’t look away from the wink of light in the depths of the dark stone. It felt like it wanted to share a secret. This jewelry was meant to accompany the bow on the blouse or be displayed on a jacket lapel, and it was exceedingly fucking tasteful.

“Let me see it. On you.”

He shook his head. “I’m too dirty.”

“Shower.” Connor sniffed his armpit. “I need one too.”

Jonathan started to carefully wrap the blouse back in the tissue paper.

“The buttons on the black shirt, the night we met, those were onyx too, weren’t they?”

His fingers stopped responding to his commands. This man saw every detail of him. Saw, and remembered. He needed to say something.

Connor sat next to him, vibrating and waiting.

He must say something.

He nestled the pin back into the bed of fluff inside the tiny box, gathered the box with the blouse, and stood. “Upstairs. Now.”

20

PLEASE, YOUR GRACE

Connor led the way, fingers trailing along the stair banister as if he had to touch everything he passed. He might also be humming, but quietly.

Jonathan left the blouse and the jewelry box on the bed, and herded Connor into the bathroom. “Start the shower for me.”

“Yes.” The word sounded like a soft blanket wrapping around them.

While Connor followed his command, Jonathan dropped his shirt and pants on the floor, something he’d never done here, and wouldn’t normally do, but he wanted to know what was happening in Connor’s imagination.

The way Connor immediately bent and reached for the clothes, with a small smile and a little puff of sound that fell somewhere between surprised and happy, gave him the sense that perhaps Connor was pretending to be a valet. The type of man who would kneel at a duke’s feet.

He watched Connor fold the clothes and place them in the hamper. Eyes downcast, his long sandy eyelashes seemed to almost brush his cheeks.

I took them off of you, he’d said.

When Jonathan pressed his fingertips into the cool tile of the counter and balanced on one leg, silently lifting a foot, Connor knelt and removed Jonathan’s sock. He settled quietly on his heels and waited for Jonathan to switch positions, then removed the other. Each motion was slow and focused, as careful and precise as if he were writing a poem with the fleeting touches of his fingers across Jonathan’s skin. He seemed to have dropped into a different place.