27. Using That Word #2
He lifted Jonathan and felt those limber thighs wrap his waist while he suckled the base of Jonathan’s neck just above the collar of that silly shirt that flipped up at the hem.
Shouldn’t have left the house. Then they would already be naked.
“Ah, fuck, we can’t.” Jonathan’s words, murmured somewhere near Connor’s head, were firm despite the quiet. “Too public.”
He shuddered. They couldn’t keep going, not here.
“Put me down.” Jonathan’s voice had the same aching need Connor felt.
He let Jonathan slide the length of his body. Through his nylon shorts, he could feel the rough denim fabric, the hard button at Jonathan’s waistband, then the roll of Jonathan’s T-shirt where it bunched as he lowered to the ground.
They broke apart, heaving like they’d been trail running, a thing which Connor had tried and hated and which Jonathan would also…
Actually, Connor didn’t know if Jonathan would like or hate trail running.
His boyfriend—he was going to flog the fuck out of that word now—thrived on some painfully surprising shit like cycling.
Maybe he would enjoy being a trail runner, like a hunting coyote in the dark, lean and low. Yeah, maybe.
If Jonathan was a shifter, then Jonathan could be his Alpha, he and Ribby and Pawsley would be Jonathan’s pack.
Standing this close on the trail, he thought he could see a pin-point reflection of himself in Jonathan’s eyes, really just his white T-shirt and no details, but he let himself fall into the dark pupils.
The scent of pine needles was strong, and it was easy to let the sound of the river fill his mind.
His Alpha wanted him, always. All he had to do was drop to the ground, on his hands and knees, and his Alpha would cover him from behind.
His eyes fluttered closed and he saw Jonathan running in the woods, dark and shadowy like that night in Portland, but with longer hair, hair falling over his face so that all Connor saw was his body twisting in and out of shadows as he came to Connor in the woods.
He trembled and whimpered, waiting, but it was his Alpha coming, so it would be okay.
He could feel teeth. Scraping his neck. On his shoulder.
Oh, fuck. This was not helping with the stopping what they shouldn’t do here.
“Connor.” Jonathan had wrapped himself around Connor from behind, which felt so good. “I’m here.”
“Yeah.”
Jonathan stroked a hand up and down Connor’s sternum. It was nice. “Now that we have established that I like you, no, I super-duper like you, and we have that middle school talk out of the way, what’s really going on?”
Jonathan was shorter, so his head rested right between Connor’s shoulders, but his arms reached tightly around and crossed in the middle of Connor’s chest. It was calming, like how Connor imagined Ribby felt in his thunder shirt.
And not having to see Jonathan’s face further loosened the knot inside Connor’s chest.
“What was bothering you, when we started the hike.” Jonathan used his even, smooth voice, not the rising inflected one. This was the one that made Connor’s head feel heavier, like it wanted to fall forward. It made it easier to talk.
“The All-Star break started today.” He knew Jonathan wouldn’t understand that, because when they’d talked about their dating experiences, he hadn’t told him that there was a guy who showed up sometimes, then disappeared, let alone that the guy was the exact thing he knew made Jonathan most insecure, a jock.
Maybe he’d committed an error.
It hadn’t been lying, not precisely, because he and Tony had never dated, no matter what Connor had wanted or pretended. They’d played ball together and fooled around, off and on, nothing more.
For eight years.
“Is that baseball?” Jonathan’s voice rose with disbelief. “Baseball has you—”
“A baseball player.” Jonathan’s arms tightened, so he stared at the diagram they had drawn beside the trail. Ribby had smudged half the circles, but it was engraved inside his body. They had enough marks in the center to make it work. “Sort of an ex.”
Jonathan’s arms loosened and suddenly there was space between Connor’s back and his boyfriend’s chest and then he understood how his comment could have been misconstrued.
Panic made him reach up and clamp Jonathan’s arms before the other man could drop them away.
“He’s an ex, definitely ex, I haven’t seen him or texted since probably February before pitchers and catchers reported.” That came out wrong, or at least not perfectly accurate, but he couldn’t stop to correct himself.
“He always ditches me during the season. The sort of ex comment was because he was only sort of a boyfriend. Actually not at all a boyfriend.” He had a real standard of comparison now. “But he’s very much out of my life.”
Connor knew a part of Jonathan was always prepared to be dumped or cheated on, and he understood why.
The first day in the library when he’d seen Connor with Lauren and her daughter and immediately assumed the worst hadn’t been an aberration, and Connor wondered if maybe that was a factor behind why Jonathan came to all the softball games, too. He struggled with trust.
That meant Connor had to be painfully open with details. He took a deep breath, which let him feel the band of Jonathan’s arms.
“We used to play together. In college.”
“Here?” Jonathan’s voice was as thin as grass blades.
“He was a year ahead of me, and the starting catcher. He’s in the closet and I’m not. Wasn’t, even then.”
Jonathan’s weight leaning on his back helped him find the start and end of his sentences, but he hadn’t said anything.
“He left for the minors and then he got called up, so we never had time at school to be anything. Only Hank knows about me and him, because he was my roommate.”
Connor realized that he was explaining the past, but not why in the present he was such a fucking mess. “He always shows up when he comes home to Portland for All Star Break. That’s all it is. Texts about how I’m the only guy he’s ever—I tell him I’m busy but then he shows up like I’m a—like a—”
Like I’m a cut of meat on a menu.
“How long has he been doing that to you?”