Hobbled (18 page)

Luke didn’t bother biting his lip to prevent a gasp. He simply gasped. It was a happy gasp, too, don’t think it wasn’t.

Moments later, Danny and Luke were both gasping and gulping for air. The bed was squeaking as if a flock of bats were trapped in the mattress. Both boys moaned and writhed around while Granger stood in the doorway with his head cocked sideways, wondering what the hell was going on.

Danny and Luke came within moments of each other, swallowing it down like ice cream and savoring every drop. When the shudders and groans and gasps and cries had finally quieted down between the two of them, they fell happily into each other’s arms and pulled each other close.

Danny pressed his lips into Luke’s ginger hair and the words he had been afraid to say just fell out into the air. He didn’t even know they were coming.

“I love you, Luke. Jesus. I love you so much.”

Luke tensed in his arms.

When Danny realized what he had said, his first reaction was to wonder why he didn’t feel afraid that he had spoken the words. His second reaction was to wonder what Luke had thought of them. It was Luke’s silence that suddenly made him a little worried. Good God, what had he done?

He gripped Luke’s shoulders and pushed him far enough away to look into his eyes. What he saw there made Danny’s heart do a somersault. It was a somersault of relief.

Luke’s face was still flushed from sex. He had tears in his cornflower-blue eyes, but he was smiling at the same time. As Danny watched, one of those tears spilled out over Luke’s strawberry-blond eyelashes and skittered down his freckled cheek.

Without thinking about it, Danny flicked out his tongue and licked the tear away. It was delicious.

Danny took a deep breath, and said, “If you don’t say something in the next five seconds, I’m going to implode.”

“Don’t do that,” Luke said.

“Why?”

“Because I love you too.”

“You do?”

“Hell, yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought maybe you should say it first. After all, I was the one who seduced a virgin. I figured the second move was up to you. I think you just took it.”

“I think I did. So what are we going to do about it?”

Luke gave that question about three seconds of thought time. “I think maybe what we have to do is figure out a way to stay together. Permanently. We have to tell our dads, lay it all out in the open, and then whatever they say, we stay together anyway. I’m not leaving you for nothing.”

“A teacher once told me that double negatives are wrong. Just plain wrong,” Danny said with a grin. “But everything else you just said was absolutely
right
. That’s exactly what we’ll do. So that means—what? We’re lovers?”

“I ache just thinking about you, Danny. I don’t think we can be anything
but
lovers.”

“I ache thinking about you too.”

“I love you, Danny.”

“I love you too.”

“I really love the way you come.”

“I really love the way
you
come.”

Luke grinned. “I’m glad DeVon and Bradley aren’t around to hear us now, or they’d be puking on their tennis shoes.”

They both laughed.

They quieted down and continued to stare into each other’s eyes. Then Luke ducked his head to press his lips into the hollow of Danny’s throat. His hands splayed out against Danny’s warm back and pulled him close. They both smiled and closed their eyes, Luke’s lips on Danny’s throat, Danny’s lips in Luke’s hair.

“We can do this,” Luke said, his voice muffled by the hard lump of Danny’s Adam’s apple bobbing around against his mouth. “I know we can. We’re adults. Our dads will just have to accept it.”

“They’ll accept it. I know they will.”

And as if the mere mention of their fathers set wheels in motion elsewhere in the world, at that very moment, their two telephones rang: Danny’s landline, and Luke’s as well, the cord of which still trailed up the side of Danny’s house and through Danny’s bedroom window from the house next door.

“Well, shit,” they said in unison.

Luke and Danny scrambled around to answer their respective phones. When they had the receivers in their hands, they sat on opposite sides of the bed, backs to each other, all hunched over.

Luke reached behind him and clasped Danny’s hand.

That simple act made Danny’s heart flutter happily.

Smiling a fearless smile, Danny said, “Hello. Pop?”

S
URE
enough, it was Danny’s dad on the phone. Judging by snippets he could hear of Luke’s conversation on the other side of the bed, it was
his
dad on the phone too. Wow, Danny thought. Was this a coincidence, or what, that they would both call at the very same moment? Their two fathers must be psychically connected.

Danny could sense his own dad smiling over the phone. It was another psychic connection, this one between father and son, and it always sort of surprised Danny when he felt it.

“Well, Danny, you sound more chipper every time we talk. I think you’re getting used to living alone. Not missing your old dad so much anymore, are you?”

Danny laughed. “You’re not so old. And I’ve been busy. But I miss you. When you coming home?” Danny tried to ignore the sinking feeling that invaded his gut when he asked that question. God forgive him, he didn’t want his dad to come home at all. Not yet anyway. And thinking that thought, he grasped Luke’s fingers a little tighter.

“It’ll be another week,” his dad said. “Think you can survive that long without me?”

“I’ll manage,” Danny said, before he could stop himself.

And his dad chortled. “I thought you might.”

“I cleaned the pool,” Danny said, unable to think of any other news flash with which to wow the man. Well, he
could
think of another news flash
,
but he was pretty sure his dad would shit bricks if Danny told him point blank he had just taken a lover, and that lover was a man, and they were bound and determined to live together whether their parents liked it or not. Seemed a little too intense for a casual phone conversation. Besides, it would probably get his dad on a plane for San Diego in five minutes flat, and that was the last thing Danny wanted.

“You been listening to the news?” his dad asked, suddenly serious.

“Sometimes,” Danny said. “Why?”

“There was another murder last night. At least they think there was. Another young man is missing. They haven’t found his body yet, but if they do, that’ll be the sixth one.
Six.
I hope you’re keeping the doors locked and all that.”

“Sure, Pop. House is always locked up tighter than a drum.” Danny looked across the room at his own naked reflection in the dresser mirror and rolled his eyes. That was a lie. Half the time, all the windows were wide open. It was a thousand degrees outside. Why wouldn’t they be?

The lie seemed to appease his dad. “Well, good. Keep it that way. At least until they catch this guy. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Don’t worry,” Danny said. “I’ll be careful.”

Somewhere just out of reach, an errant thought was jiggling Danny’s brain. What the hell was it? Something to do with those damn kids. DeVon and Bradley. Then
that
thought was interrupted when Luke lay back, and with his own phone still to his ear, rested his face against Danny’s bare hip. Danny looked down and stroked Luke’s hair. They smiled at each other. While Luke was listening to whatever the heck his dad was talking about, he craned his neck around and kissed Danny’s thigh.

Danny snapped back to the present. “I’m sorry, Dad. What did you say?”

“I asked how you’re getting along with the new neighbor boy. What did you say his name was? Luke?”

Simply hearing Luke’s name from a mouth other than his own made Danny’s heart flutter. Holy smokes. If that wasn’t love, what was?

“We’re getting along great. It’s just a shame I’m hog-tied to this frigging house. I could help him unpack all those boxes he brought with him if I could hop the hedge without summoning a SWAT team and a pack of German shepherd K-9 commandos and fourteen sharpshooters armed with flash grenades.”

Luke made a thumbs-up sign and stuck it smack in Danny’s face, indicating a little help
would
be nice. At the same time, Danny’s dad gave a good-natured groan. “Yes. Well, we all know who’s responsible for
that
little fly in the ointment.”

Danny’s groan sounded a lot like his dad’s. Heredity at work. He good-naturedly slapped Luke’s hand away, and said, “I know. I know. Is this my cue to apologize
again
?”

His dad laughed. “No, Son. I’m sorry. I promised myself I wouldn’t nag you about that whole ‘upended ice machine and broken leg and hamburgers flying out the window’ episode of your life, but sometimes you make it too easy not to throw it back in your face. I’ll try to do better.”

“Good,” Danny said, and meant it.

His dad tried to atone by dragging the conversation back to safer territory. “So it sounds like you and Luke are really hitting it off.”

Danny looked down at Luke’s fingers wrapped around his sleeping cock. “You might say that.”

“That’s good, Son. I’m glad. Everybody needs a friend.”

Danny’s mouth took off running before Danny could stop it. “Umm. Remember when you said you had something important we needed to talk about? Well, I might have something important to talk about with you too.”

His dad sounded more leery than intrigued. “And what would that be?”

Danny grinned. “I’ll wait until we’re together. Once you’ve showed me your secret, then I’ll show you mine.”

“Well, that’s cruel. You enjoy making me worry, don’t you?”

Danny’s grin widened. “I live for it.”

His dad laughed. “Don’t I know it. All right. The minute I get back to town, we’ll sit down and shake out all our dirty laundry. Deal?”

“Deal.”

One last time, before they said their good-byes, his dad reminded Danny to keep the doors and windows locked. “I know you’re young and think nothing really bad can ever happen to you, but remember, all those other young guys probably thought the same thing. And now they’re gone. So be careful.”

And again something niggled Danny’s memory banks. “I promise, Dad. Honest.”

Softly, the phone went dead in Danny’s hand. He set it in the cradle and laid back on the bed, pressing his face to Luke’s thigh, just as Luke was still doing to him. He wrapped his arms around Luke’s legs and buried his face in them. Luke’s knees lay hard against his forehead. Danny kissed first one hairy thigh, then the other, while he listened to Luke’s conversation with his own dad.

“Yeah, I miss my car,” Luke was saying. “But that’s okay. I’m finding other stuff to occupy my time.”

You certainly are,
Danny thought.

Danny could hear the drone of Luke’s dad’s voice carrying through the phone, but he couldn’t make out the man’s words. Idly, Danny wondered what Luke’s dad looked like. Danny wondered if his own dad would make friends with the man after he found out he was gay. His dad had never been homophobic before, or never seemed to be anyway. Danny prayed to God he wouldn’t start acting like a rabid, hate-spewing, Bible-thumping nitwit now. Especially with what Danny was about to tell him about himself.

Then that niggling thought that had been driving him nuts finally coalesced into a definitive memory in Danny’s head. When it did, he bolted upright on the edge of the bed, causing Luke to give him a questioning look. But since he was still on the phone with his dad, Luke didn’t say anything. He merely gave Danny’s dick a reassuring squeeze, as if to calm him down.

Danny loved that little squeeze, but even that wasn’t enough to take his mind off what he had just remembered.

“There’s going to be another murder on the news tonight,” Bradley had said. “Just you watch.”

And according to Danny’s dad—
damned if there wasn’t.

Again Danny stared across the room at his naked reflection in the dresser mirror. He was still sitting at the edge of his bed. Luke’s naked body was still sprawled out beside him. Luke’s warm, comforting hand still cradled Danny’s dick. It seemed funny to Danny that everything in his head had suddenly changed, while here in the bedroom nothing had changed at all.

My God, Danny thought. Could those stupid kids actually know what they’re talking about? And if Danny really thought they did, what should he do about it? Call the cops?

The minute Danny considered that option, he knew he couldn’t do it. His dad might get into a world of trouble if the judge found out he had gone out of town and left Danny on his own. He remembered his dad reassuring the judge he would always be around to watch over Danny while he was under house arrest. Not two hours after that, his dad had learned he had to go out of town. Danny talked him into going anyway, promising he would do nothing to get the cops over here so they would find out his dad was gone. Reluctantly, his father agreed to go.

If Danny saw a dead body lying in his backyard, he might recant on that promise and call the cops. But for an idea as goofy as this one, he wasn’t about to.

He did want to talk to those kids, though.

He looked through the bedroom window. The sky was darkening. The sun had dropped behind the rooftops across the street more than fifteen minutes ago. Night was setting in. He wouldn’t see DeVon and Bradley until tomorrow, and only then if they actually dropped by on their own. He couldn’t go looking for them because he was under house arrest and wasn’t sure where they lived anyway. He couldn’t look them up in the phone book because he didn’t know their last names.

Well, so be it. He would just have to wait until tomorrow. Hopefully, they’d be around. They were always popping up when you least expected. Until they did, it would give Danny time to think about it all. To figure out what it was he wanted to do exactly. If anything.

He looked down at Luke lying there beside him, so beautiful, making Danny feel so loved. It seemed funny that somewhere just outside the walls surrounding them, people were actually dying at the hands of a killer. Inside these walls, life was perfect.
Luke
was perfect.