Chapter 6 Connor
Connor
Since I started helping Dane out, I’ve been back on the protein shakes that ruled my life in undergrad. It’s a special blend one of my friends came up with that the entire team started drinking. It’s gross, but it doubles as a great hangover cure, so even Levi would pound them back on the regular.
I guess I don’t need to drink this shit anymore, now that Dane is probably through with me, but training together hasn’t only been helping him out.
It’s been helping me. I don’t have any practices to get to or matches to win, but even training for nothing is more fulfilling than sitting around campus or sitting around this house.
To be polite, I wait until I know everyone is awake before I kick the blender into high gear. Joselyn is at the island, scrolling through her phone and drinking one of her store-bought juice cleanse drinks, and Thalia strolls into the kitchen dressed for class before I let up on the blend button.
“Want some?” I ask her.
She laughs at that. “Being done with sports should mean being done with that shit, but I’m glad you’re taking care of yourself again.”
Was I not taking care of myself before?
Instead of answering my curious look, Thalia bypasses me for the pantry and wiggles a strawberry Pop-Tart from the box.
Artie plods into the main room in a plume of high-end cologne. His aura is naturally suffocating, triggering my anxiety as he collects documents from the dining table and filters them into his leather briefcase.
From the opposite wing of the house, a much younger and leaner version of Artie saunters through the main room with a breezy ease and a dreamlike smile as he rubs at the corners of his eyes.
In the days since he told me off, Dane must have gotten a haircut, because his wild curls are back to the handsome length they were a couple of months ago. And, as usual, he’s shirtless.
I peel the lid back off the blender, about to ask Dane if he wants some.
He’s been avoiding me since his last match.
Or, he hasn’t been going out of his way to tease me, at least. I miss that, since it’s mostly always in good fun.
Most of all, I miss working out together.
If he’s finally over his pity-party, maybe we can get back to that.
But my olive branch lodges in my throat when my eyes drift low enough to see something else Dane has done to his body since Saturday.
“Morning, family plus one,” he exclaims. “You sharing that gnarly shit, Connie?”
Connie?
“What?” The nickname is so jarring, it forces my gaze to reset. I lift my eyes high enough to catch Dane’s teeth as they rake across his bottom lip.
“You sharing?” He faces me while holding the fridge door open, and I sort of wish he’d turn around.
“Uh, yeah. You want some?”
“For sure.” He finally turns and ducks into the fridge, and I turn toward the glassware cupboard.
I’m stuck in my peripheral, grasping for cups while all my focus is on Dane.
As hard as I try to play nonchalant, my insides are raging with an emotion I can’t name.
Intrigue, but something else too. Something that makes me too nauseous to be curiosity alone, but excites me too much to be sickening.
The way he turns his body out of the fridge, Slim Jim in hand, I catch another quick glance at his torso, and I gulp.
“Oh God, Dane,” Thalia bemoans with a shake of her head.
“Dane!” Joselyn looks her stepson up and down like he’s a brand new man.
Meanwhile, I’m stunned silent. There’s a tremor in my brain as it attempts to work out if this is just one of Dane’s pranks or not. But as I stare at Dane’s chest, I swear they look real.
I’d noticed the small shape and ashen color of his nipples before. How could I not, when he’s constantly shirtless? But now that they’re bedazzled with skinny steel rings, I can’t look away.
“What?” he asks the ladies, all casual and suave.
The sound of his deep voice lifts my gaze in time to catch his little smirk before the kitchen vibrates with Artie’s resounding shout: “What the hell did you do?!”
“What?!” Dane surrenders with both hands raised.
Marching toward his son, Artie seethes, “Tell me this is a joke.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You mutilated yourself!”
Peering down at his own torso, Dane says, “Oh! You mean my piercings? Just a little something I had done for my birthday.”
“It’s not your birthday.”
“Oh yeah? When’s my birthday?”
“Take them out.”
“When’s my birthday, Dad? Simple question.”
From the opposite end of the island, Thalia scolds, “Stop being a brat, Dane. You look ridiculous.”
I’m not sure ridiculous is the word I’d use, but he definitely looks…
interesting. I’ve never seen pierced nipples outside of a porno, and even though the nipples in front of me are male, my dick doesn’t seem to care.
A series of involuntary pulses swells it into an awkward position that I can’t readily fix without anyone noticing.
“Take them out or I’ll rip them out,” Artie says.
Even when my worries should be on the dwindling space between Dane and his irate father, I’m too busy staring at those tiny glinting hoops.
Sweat percolates down my spine as I press my hips to the counter and wonder how it must have felt to have such small and delicate nipple peaks pierced like that.
“Babe, I think they look nice,” Joselyn tells Artie, putting herself between husband and stepson with the ease of someone experienced in diffusing tension. “He probably did it to impress a girl he likes.”
“Yeah, Dad. I’m just trying to impress girls,” Dane says.
“I don’t have time for this.” Artie marches toward the foyer, and the front door opens and slams moments later.
Thalia glowers at her brother. “You just love provoking people, don’t you?”
Brushing off the question, Dane sidles away from Joselyn and closer to me. His shoulder nudges mine, shocking me like an electrical current while taking it upon himself to pour my shake into the two glasses.
Thalia heads out for class, and Joselyn slips out back for a tan on the pool deck. Alone with Dane, all I can think to do is shuffle around to the other side of the island and keep my bottom half covered until my dick realizes what it’s doing and shrinks.
“I’m sorry about the other day,” Dane says, as casually as if this morning were just like any other. “I was being a baby.”
I nod, because he was, but none of that matters while I’m plotting how to leave the room without Dane noticing the tent in my pajama pants.
Knowing it’s a mistake, I lift my chin and scan Dane’s body from the waistband of his drawstring shorts to the jewelry pinching his nips into tight beads. Saliva pools in my mouth. It’s only when my eyes make it to Dane’s face that I swallow it all and ask, “Where did you go after the match?”
“Let’s just say I was blowing off steam.”
The word blowing doesn’t do my situation any good, but the insinuation adds a new feeling to the mixture brewing in my guts and lower. Blowing off steam with whom?
“With a man?” I ask.
“Well, not with a woman, obviously.” Dane’s sly tone and wicked wink tell a tale of something I really don’t need in my head.
I take a breath and consider what ought to come out of my mouth next. Clearly, Dane doesn’t need me around as much as I need him. He’s my only real friend down here, besides Thalia, but he has a whole slew of friends, teammates, and lovers to use for an ego boost.
“So…who’s the guy?” I ask. If Dane says his captain’s name, I don’t know how I’ll feel. If he says Randy’s name, I’m not sure I’ll be able to look at the guy again. As cool as Randy is, I can’t stomach the image of his long limbs tangled up with Dane’s like spaghetti.
“You don’t know him.”
“Someone you like?”
He shrugs. “Dude’s an insatiable bottom. What’s not to like?”
“I—” My mind buffers, triggering an ache behind my eyes like the beginnings of a migraine. “I don’t know what that means.”
With one full glass in his hand, Dane pushes the other toward me. “Google it.”
Instead, I grab the glass and chug a quarter of my shake before taking a breath. The tangy citrus, earthy greens, and chalky protein powder make my eyes water and my stomach lurch. Better yet, it softens my dick and jolts some sense into my head.
“Well, I’m sorry your team didn’t get the win. But that’s on the team, not you alone. You made a courageous shot. Next time, you’ll nail it.”
Suddenly pensive, Dane lifts his glass to his lips and murmurs, “Guess we’ll see,” before tossing back a few hard swallows that flex the contours of his long neck.
“Blech!” Dane gags from the shake and swipes the dribble from his chin. “Hey, you still got that dorky clipboard?”
“It’s not dorky,” I mumble, staring at the ridge of Dane’s collarbone. “It’s a normal clipboard. I got it from Staples.”
“We should plan another workout soon. As much as I hate to admit it, I think I’m actually getting better because of you, and I cannot let what happened on Saturday happen again.”
Not even the turmoil under my skin can keep the smile off my face when Dane says something like that. I’m a little proud, too, to be honest. Proud of myself for making a difference, and proud of Dane for wanting to dig in.
“Sounds good,” I tell him as he comes around the island.
Shake in one hand, he uses the other to slap my back hard enough to push a hiccup up my throat. “I’m gonna shower up,” he says while back-stepping toward the hallway. “Don’t worry. I’ll leave the door unlocked in case you wanna watch.”
The typical wink he sends me before dipping down the hall seeps into me sideways. Not even silence is comforting when my mind is this loaded, asking the same question over and over.
What the hell is an insatiable bottom?
Between classes, I’m back in the computer lab, slotting my SanDisk into the reader and opening the file folder to show everything I’ve shot in the past week, including Dane’s last match.