Chapter 27 Connor
Connor
There are tears in my own eyes watching Dane reconnect with his mom, feeling awkward only in that I’m not sure I should be watching, or if Martin should be watching alongside me.
“Well, gosh,” Martin mumbles. “He’s really grown up to look just like his father, hasn’t he?”
“Dane is nothing like his father.”
When the two Calvos finally separate, Dane’s head turns, and the way his eyes blink at me pulls me toward him.
“How long are you going to be in town?” Lori asks, one hand swiping tears off her face while the other stays hooked around Dane’s arm.
“I dunno,” Dane mumbles, sniffling toward his shoes and shoving his hands in the front pocket of his sweatshirt.
“Come over for dinner. Tonight or tomorrow. Any day.” She glances at me, then back to Dane. “Do you remember the mac and cheese I used to make? That was always your favorite. I can make that for you.”
After a few long moments, Dane mumbles another, “I dunno.”
“Where are you staying?”
I put my hand on Dane’s back so he knows I’m here with him. “He’s staying with me, at my folks’ place.”
She nods, glancing at me again. “Good. That’s good. You can both come over if that would be better for you. Does that sound okay, Dane? Would you want to come over if Connor comes too?”
His head shakes. “I dunno. Maybe.”
“Okay. Let me give you my number, and you can—” She twists left and right, disoriented until Martin comes to her side and delivers her the bag she’d dropped behind the van.
“Thanks, hon.” She takes it and rifles through until she has a notepad and pen in hand.
“Here’s my number,” she says while scribbling it onto the pad.
“You just call me or text me whenever you want to come over. Or we can even meet someplace else if you don’t want to come to the house. How does that sound?”
She clicks her pen, tears a scrap out of her notepad, and hands it toward Dane. When Dane doesn’t move a muscle to take the scrap from Lori’s fingers, I break the awkward tension by taking it from her myself.
“I was glad to hear from Thalia that you two were becoming friends,” Lori says while her gaze flits between us. “Connor’s a good kid.”
“He’s the best,” Dane replies, his head popping up suddenly to look my way. “We should go. Gotta finish that list.”
“It’s okay,” I tell him, not giving two shits about the list anymore.
“No, let’s go.” He takes a hand out of his pocket and pats the back of my shoulder, coaxing me along with him as he leaves Lori’s orbit.
It’s a stark difference from how readily and emotionally he clung to her just minutes before.
Maybe he sensed something he didn’t like, or maybe he’s simply too drained to endure a longer reunion.
Either way, I’m not about to dictate how Dane should react, so I follow his lead back to the store entrance.
“I hope our cart is still there,” he says.
Rubbing his back and watching his profile, I ask Dane if he’s alright, because I’m not sure what else to ask.
“I’m alright.” He gives me a small smile that looks half-forced. “Swear.”
“You don’t have to swear. If you just wanna feel what you’re feeling and not talk about it, that’s okay. But I’m here for you if you do wanna talk.”
He licks his lips and slings an arm around my shoulders as the sliding doors open for us. “I just don’t know what to say right now. I’m sorry.”
“No sorries.”
He smiles bigger, more true. “Fine. No sorries.”
We swerve to the produce department, and I catch up to our cart just before an associate in a blue apron is about to take possession of it. To him, I say sorry. To Dane, I say we can pick out the corn cobs together.
“Connor.” He slips a hand behind my head and draws my face closer to his.
We kiss in the middle of the store, between the apple troughs and the potato barrels, and it doesn’t bother me a bit that a neighbor, a friend, or someone I went to school with might see.
That they might tell someone who might tell others until the whole city knows Connor Whitlock was kissing a man in the Albertsons on Sunday.
“Alright, kid,” Dane teases as he rubs his hand through my hair, “it’s cornholin’ time.”
“That’s not—” I cut myself off to just enjoy Dane’s weirdness while we head to the corn cob bins, ready to endure a mountain of dick jokes.
After absolutely crushing Mom’s grocery list, Dane and I get everything put away at the house. My plan was to whisk Dane off on a Sac-centric adventure, but what happened at the store reminds me I didn’t bring us here to immerse Dane in my hometown, but to immerse us in home.
“I have an idea,” I tell him after sticking the last can of pumpkin filling in the pantry. “Instead of going out, why don’t we go upstairs and watch a movie.”
“That sounds nice.” He sweeps me up in his arms and squeezes me like a toothpaste tube.
This time, when we kiss, there’s a little more to it than what we could get away with in the produce department. And now that his saliva is free of contaminants, I take full advantage. By the time we pull away, Dane has kissed my lips swollen and roused my dick to a half-chub.
But my mind isn’t on sex so much as getting to lounge the afternoon away tucked against Dane’s side on the quilt Nana gave me for my twelfth birthday.
I didn’t appreciate it enough back then, but it’s one of my favorite things now.
Sort of like Dane and the sound of his laughter when a joke in The Princess Bride hits just right.
Sitting against my headboard, eyes on the TV above my dresser, my new favorite thing about this movie is getting to watch it with Dane.
His arm around me, his cheek resting on my head, and the top of his foot petting the bottom of mine through our socks.
His chest rattling against my shoulder with each of his chuckles, and his fingers playing Tic-Tac-Toe on my arm.
Eventually, his chuckles wane, and when I realize he hasn’t laughed in a while, I check in on him to find his unfocused stare on our overlapped legs. His pout softens the angles of his face, reminding me how young he is. Only a few years out of high school and no one to take care of him.
“I love you,” I whisper, brushing my nose along his jaw.
“I love you too.”
I tip my head up and bring his down so our lips match up just right, and I press a dozen smooches on him before resting back on his shoulder to watch the rest of the movie.
“Hey, come back.” He hooks my chin and tips it upward in time for his open mouth to devour me.
I moan into it, as Dane huffs warm air into my mouth and swipes at my tongue with his own.
He grabs me, rolls me, and covers my body with his own.
Movie-banter fades to the background, beneath the smacking of our mouths, the hum of our moans, and the creak of my bedframe as Dane grinds his hips into mine.
“Hold on,” he murmurs before rolling off me, snatching the remote, and pausing the movie.
Meanwhile, I’m laid out for him like an offering and gazing up at him like he’s ethereal.
Once the remote is on my nightstand, he rolls back on top of me and claims what’s his.
More kissing, more touching, more fiendish grinding.
My own movements are so timid compared to Dane’s, I feel like a pillow princess, and I don’t hate it.
Being handled by Dane is exhilarating, like I’m something to be obsessed over while I’m the one who’s obsessed.
Dane gets me hard without shedding a single piece of clothing, then he crawls down my body, trailing kisses against my shirt until he’s between my legs and running his palm along my bulge.
It jumps under his touch, yearning to be released from my pants.
But he takes his time. Not consuming me anymore, but caressing me, petting me, inching my shirt up to kiss me from hip to hip while he feels around my cock.
By the time he tugs my waistband down, my erection is beet red and glossy at the head.
Dane traces my veins with his tongue, all the way to my tip before sucking half my dick into his mouth.
He holds my base between thumb and finger while he strokes me with his lips and massages me with his tongue.
Not until he consumes every inch of me does he pull off.
Ropes of spit tether his lips to my cock until a few firm strokes break the ties.
“You taste so good,” he says, flicking his eyes up toward my face.
My hands are in his hair, smoothing down the curls while I stare in awe of him. “Do you still wanna have sex?” I ask before clamping my teeth down on my bottom lip.
Crawling up my body, Dane hovers his mouth above mine and asks, “What do you think we’re doing right now?”
I glide my hand between our bodies and palm his impressive bulge.
My stomach knots with nervous anticipation over what I want most. I worry that my lust is overshadowing the reality of what it takes to make my desires happen.
It looks so easy in gay porn—almost as easy as in straight porn—but it can’t be that easy in real life.
Not when Dane is so big, and my ass is so… virginal.
“I mean, do you, um… Do you wanna, like, fuck me?” My cheeks heat just from asking, but Dane doesn’t bat an eye.
The kiss he touches to my mouth is tender and precious, then he asks, “Is there any lube here?”
“Y—yeah. I think there’s some in the nightstand, unless my mom tossed it.”
He chuckles at that, then rolls off me to the edge of the bed and rifles through the nightstand drawers.
Without his body heat warming me up, I feel awkward spread out like a plank with my dick out. Remembering the condoms from Dane’s bedroom, I tuck myself into my pants and leave the bed to rifle through my duffel bag.
“Connie,” Dane breathes a chuckle, showing me the bottle of lube I’ve used to jerk off with periodically since eighteen. “Cherry flavored lube?”
“It was a gag gift.”
“It’s half empty.”
“It was a useful gag gift.”