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  Boy, was that a lie. And the way Luke shot one eyebrow up into his hairline, even he seemed to know it.

  Danny then proceeded to make matters worse by asking, “So which room is yours? I’ll take special care not to look through those windows. No, sir. Wouldn’t want to see anything inappropriate. Not me. Uh-uh.”

  Luke smiled a smile that made Danny blush from his kneecaps all the way up to his ears. There was a lot of knowledge in that smile. And it was sexy as hell. “My room will be the one with all the curtains open,” Luke said.

  “Ah,” Danny said, and his dick gave another jerk. And while that was happening, the air in the room changed again. Wow. This was the most testosterone-laden meal Danny had ever eaten. It even topped the breakfast they had shared that morning.

  The testosterone meter climbed yet again when Luke’s two knees came together and squeezed one of Danny’s.

  Danny gave a tiny gasp, but Luke acted like he didn’t hear it. Or at least Danny thought Luke was acting like he didn’t hear it. What the hell was going on here?

  “Good pizza,” Luke said, and Danny lost his train of thought. Luke’s two knees relaxed around his own, but Danny could still feel the pressure of them. Could still feel the hair on Luke’s legs scraping against the hair on his own. Lord, that felt good.

  Two minutes later, they had resumed stuffing themselves, and one would think there had never been any testosterone in the room at all. Danny was almost relieved. Well, no, he wasn’t.

  Suddenly, the house began to shake, and what sounded like a herd of buffalo came stampeding down the staircase, across the foyer, and through the living room. Something crashed to the floor just outside the kitchen door, and Danny was pretty sure it was the crappy ceramic statue his dad loved so much of the fat little Buddha holding his hands above his head. Damn. His dad would have a fit.

  On the heels of the crashing Buddha, Frederick came flying through the kitchen door like he had been shot from a cannon. His hair was all puffed up, making him the size of three Fredericks instead of one. Granger flew through the door right behind him, snapping, snarling, and obviously having the time of his life. His front end looked positively homicidal, but his tail end was wagging happily, making him look schizophrenic as hell. Or at least of two minds concerning his current enterprise of tormenting the cat.

  The cat wasn’t of two minds at all. He hated every minute of it. And where the hell did this goddamn dog come from anyway?

  Neither Danny nor Luke moved as the two creatures thundered past. They simply sat there, chewing, as the battle went screaming by.

  No doubt about it, Granger, schizo or not, seemed to be winning. Frederick was in full retreat.

  Forty toenails clattered across the kitchen floor as the animals hurled themselves across the room and flung themselves through the back door, hissing, spitting, growling, and snapping. As soon as they were gone, Luke and Danny calmly resumed eating as if nothing had happened.

  “So do you have a car?” Luke asked, when the racket of Granger and Frederick’s epic battle had faded in the distance.

  Danny nodded. Again he blushed. “Yeah. A Gremlin. Don’t ask.”

  Luke laughed. “Don’t be embarrassed. I’ve got a Pinto. Neither one of us is exactly driving Motor Trend’s Car of the Year. My dad bought me mine. You?”

  “Yeah. But it’s off limits right now.”

  “Because of the thing?” Luke asked, indicating the ankle monitor blinking green at their feet.

  “Yeah,” Danny said. “Because of the thing.”

  Luke gave a commiserating nod. “My car’s back in Tucson. Dad’s going to tow it out with him when he comes. Right now all I have to drive is that gigantic fucking truck in the driveway. Imagine going out for hamburgers in that thing. Probably won’t even fit in a drive-thru lane.”

  “So what are you going to do for two weeks then? Just hang around the house? Arrange the furniture? Do inappropriate shit in your room?”

  And they both laughed. But while they were laughing, Luke gave Danny another long, searing look. There was a happy sparkle in his eyes. The two little commas at the corners of his mouth were bigger now, more like parentheses. Deep ones. He was grinning. “Probably,” he said. “since there’s nothing I like better than doing inappropriate shit in my room.”

  “Me, too,” Danny said, before he could stop himself. There was no doubt in his mind they were both talking about the same thing. Spanking the monkey.

  And Danny’s dick gave another lurch.

  They stared at each other for a second, both seeming to know exactly what the other was thinking. But reality intervened.

  Looking reluctant, but determined, Luke pushed his plate away. “I’m stuffed. Listen, my dad’s supposed to be calling me pretty soon, so if you don’t mind I think I’ll scoot off home. I wonder if I could trouble you for that bucket of water we talked about earlier.”

  Danny nodded. “Sure. And I’ll hook up the hose and leave the end of it by the hedge so you can get more water anytime you want.”

  “Then I won’t be bothering you,” Luke said.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  A look of such wounded misery crossed Danny’s face that Luke reached across the table and patted his arm. After he finished patting, he left his hand laying there, comfortably nestled in the hair on Danny’s forearm. Danny looked down at it.

  “I was kidding,” Luke said.

  And Danny nodded. “Oh.”

  “See you tomorrow?” Luke asked.

  “Sure,” Danny answered. “See you tomorrow.” And he dredged up a smile. “I’ll look forward to it.”

  “Me too.”

  And with that, Luke was gone. Danny heard him yelling for Granger to stop tormenting the cat and come on home. Then Danny heard Granger give a happy yip.

  Danny clumped around the kitchen in the already too-silent house, cleaning up the mess he and Luke had left after eating everything in the fridge. Pretty soon Frederick came stalking through the back door. He looked like he had been groomed with an electric mixer. To say he wasn’t happy would have been understating things considerably. He was royally pissed off, is what he was.

  Frederick gave Danny a hateful look, then cast a surly glare at his cat dish, which the damn dog had been eating from and which now had dog cooties all over it. At least that was what Frederick looked like he was thinking.

  When Danny grinned at him, it was the last straw. Frederick spat, then marched through the kitchen door and headed for the stairs, tail high, flashing his ass in Danny’s face. He was off to lick his wounds. And probably plot revenge.

  “Lighten up!” Danny screamed, as Frederick disappeared through the door. Then to himself, he muttered, “Stupid cat.”

  EXACTLY four hours later, Danny stood in his darkened bedroom with a raging hard-on. He had a firm grip on that hard-on with one hand, while the other hand had a firm grip on the binoculars he was holding to his eyes. He was so turned on, his legs were shaking.

  Across the yard, and over the top of the moving van parked in the driveway next door, Danny watched as Luke peeled off his clothes and flung them across what was apparently his brand-new room. A newly erected bed sat in the middle of the room, sheetless, the mattress new, still wrapped in plastic. There were curtains on Luke’s window but they were the curtains that had always been there, even when the house was vacant. They were pushed wide open now, the room well lit.

  Naked as a jaybird, Luke was the most beautiful thing Danny had ever seen. Danny held his breath when Luke stepped around the edge of the bed and moved closer to the window. He walked like a god, Danny thought. His limbs were pale and perfectly formed. His body strong. As Luke moved, his cock swayed gently in the patch of reddish pubic hair it nestled in. There was a grace to the way Luke crossed the room and to the way his cock swayed as he walked that made Danny’s heart ache. Flaccid, as it was now, Luke’s cock was beautiful. Unthreatening. Danny longed to see it hard. Hard and hungry. He wondered how unthreaten
ing it would be then.

  Watching, and thinking these thoughts, Danny gave his cock a gentle stroking. He shivered when the head of his dick brushed the cool window glass.

  Danny was so rapt by the beauty of what he was watching, he failed to notice when Luke stopped directly in front of his bedroom window and peered outside. It was only when Luke cupped his hands around the side of his face and leaned in toward the glass to better see through the darkness that Danny realized his peril.

  Could Luke see him?

  Quickly, Danny stepped back away from the window, moving deeper into the shadows of his unlit room. When he finally got the nerve to take another peek in Luke’s direction, he was surprised to find Luke was gone.

  Luke’s room was empty.

  Danny looked down and realized his hands were shaking.

  Chapter 5

  LESS than a minute later, Danny’s doorbell rang.

  Danny tugged on his shorts, then grabbed a baggy dress shirt out of his closet and pulled that on too. He had to do something to camouflage the hard-on making his shorts balloon out in front like a pup tent. What if it was old Mrs. Trumball asking to borrow a cup of gin? Wouldn’t want to scare her to death.

  Danny awkwardly plodded down the stairs to the front door, making an unholy racket on the stairs with his cast. He expected to open the door to find some jackass Jehovah’s Witness spouting Bible verses, or some Girl Scout maybe, looking all hopeful and trying to unload a trunkful of Lemon Snickereens, or whatever the fuck they were. Although it was a little late in the evening for Girl Scouts to be roaming around trying to earn merit badges. A little late for Jehovah’s Witnesses too. But Danny wasn’t exactly thinking straight, since all the blood that usually sloshed around in his brainpan had pretty much migrated south to his pecker. He supposed it was a miracle he could think at all.

  When he pulled open the front door, the last thing Danny expected to see standing on his front porch was Luke. But there he was. Oddly enough, he was once again wearing the clothes Danny had just watched him remove not more than five minutes earlier.

  Luke’s beautiful grin was back, and he was aiming it directly at Danny’s startled face.

  “If you want to watch me undress,” Luke said. “We can do it a lot closer than from one house to the next.”

  Danny’s heart gave a jump. “I—I—”

  “Mind if I come in?” Luke asked with an easy grin.

  “I—I—”

  Luke gave his head a little nod, as if he wasn’t surprised by Danny’s stammering. Disappointed maybe, but not surprised.

  “In that case,” he said, “I’ll just undress right here.” And with that, Luke pulled his muscle shirt over his head and dropped it at his feet.

  When Luke hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his shorts and prepared to push them downward, all the while staring directly into Danny’s widening eyes, Danny finally got a grasp on what the hell was going on. Without thinking too much about what he was doing, he reached out and grabbed Luke’s arm to yank him through the doorway and out of view of any neighbors who might be snooping around, eyeballing his front porch. “Are you nuts?”

  Luke giggled as Danny closed the front door behind them. “Are you?” Luke asked. “I’m not the one with the binoculars. Spying on the new guy next door and all.”

  Danny could feel his ears burning like maybe they were going to burst into flames. It was all he could do to get the words out, but he finally did. “You—you saw me?”

  “Clear as day,” Luke smiled. And oddly enough it was a pretty normal smile. The guy didn’t seem mad or anything. Just maybe… amused. “The streetlight is aimed right at the side of your house, you know. I even saw your hard-on.” Luke gazed down at Danny’s crotch, hidden now under the baggy shirt.

  Most of the blood had left Danny’s crotch, by this time, and was making a beeline north, traveling back to his head. He could feel it surging into his cheeks. “You did?”

  “Yep,” Luke said, dragging his eyes back up to Danny’s face. “I liked seeing it too.”

  Again, Danny said, “You did?” His voice was softer this time, soft and breathless, even though his heart was banging away beneath his ribs as if a blacksmith were pounding on it with a ten-pound hammer. As shocked and embarrassed as he was, Danny could still not stop his eyes from sliding away from Luke’s handsome face to contemplate that heavenly body below. And with Luke’s shirt crumpled on the floor at their feet, Danny had an excellent view.

  He gazed at Luke’s wide, pale shoulders. At the sprinkling of blond hair scattered across Luke’s chest between those two perfect nipples. Danny stared appreciatively at the shadows of a pretty good six-pack delineating Luke’s abs. It was all he could do not to sigh as he studied another patch of blond hair, just verging on red, which trailed its way down from Luke’s tight little belly button and disappeared beneath the waistband of his shorts. Those shorts were bright yellow and looked to be a couple of sizes too big. They were hanging on Luke’s hips by the skin of their teeth. Beneath the baggy yellow shorts, Luke’s legs were bare. They were as fuzzy and beautiful as they had been that afternoon when Danny first laid eyes on them. They were without a doubt the sexiest legs Danny had ever seen in his life. Luke wasn’t even wearing flip-flops, Danny noticed. He seemed to enjoy going barefoot. Just like Danny did.

  And if what Luke said was true, he seemed to enjoy looking at other naked guys just as much as Danny did, too. Danny had to take a minute to wrap his head around that thought. But when he did, a smile began to creep across his face.

  “Did you say you liked seeing me?” Danny asked, forcing his eyes back to Luke’s face.

  “Yeah. I did.” Luke’s hand was mindlessly stroking the hair on his own chest. His eyes were locked on Danny’s, and for a moment, Danny felt like the air was being sucked out of the room. “You’re beautiful,” Luke added in a whisper.

  “No, you’re beautiful.”

  “You have a beautiful dick.”

  “No, you—” But Danny couldn’t say it. Not yet. Although he sure as hell wanted to. After all, Luke did have a beautiful dick, whether he said it or not. In fact, since he’d gotten a glimpse of Luke’s dick in the binoculars earlier, it was about the only thing taking up space in Danny’s head. That and the fact he was about as embarrassed as he had ever been in his life, but even that didn’t bother him much. Not compared to the memory of Luke’s dick.

  Luke smirked, but it wasn’t a mean smirk. More of a resigned smirk. Like maybe he was wondering what Danny was thinking. “I figure we’ve both got it bad.”

  “Got what?” Danny asked. Then he knew. “Oh.”

  Luke reached out and touched Danny’s cheek. Danny could feel that simple touch burn all the way down to his jawbone.

  “Tell me, Danny. Just tell me. Be upfront. Do you want me?”

  Danny’s heart could be heard all over the house, or he imagined it could. Talk about tell-tale hearts. “Yeah, Luke, I do. I want you more than anything. But—”

  “But?”

  And Danny let go. Eighteen years of frustration and longing and uncertainty came pouring out. He couldn’t have stopped it if he wanted to. His mouth was a runaway train barreling down the tracks. And even Danny knew it was heading for a cliff. There was no happy destination on this particular rail line. At least he didn’t think there was. It only went to hell and back. Or so he thought.

  “I’ve never done anything like this before in my life, Luke. I’ve never been with a guy, you know, that way. I’ve got all these big plans about coming out and declaring to the world that I’m gay but I keep chickening out when it comes to doing something about it. It was hard back in Indiana in that little farming community I grew up in. You should hear the way they talk about gay people. Like they are pond scum. Perverts. Creepoids who’ll steal your kids and have their way with them. I never once heard the word ‘gay’. They don’t call people like me gay back there. They call people like me queers and cocksuckers and faggots and homos and, and,
a million other names. And it’s not even the words they use that’re so terrible, it’s the way they use them. The way they say them. And it’s because of those words that I’ve spent my whole life hiding from what I really am. Even hiding it from myself, I guess. Scared to death I’d find myself in exactly the position I find myself in right now. And now that I’m here, now that I’m in that position and the truth is out, the only thing I want to do is—is—”

  Danny stumbled to a halt, stunned to find he had tears burning his eyes. They hadn’t fallen yet, but they were about to. Jesus, that wasn’t supposed to happen. He hadn’t meant to let everything go like that. He actually felt drained. Drained, but good.

  Luke stepped closer. So close Danny could smell the mouthwash on his breath.

  “Is what, Danny? What is it you want to do?”

  Danny sucked up a big blob of snot that was threatening to dribble out of his nose. After just spilling his guts like that, the last thing he wanted to do was cry. That would sure be the icing on the cake, wouldn’t it? Luke must already think he was a whiny, immature moron.

  But he wasn’t looking like he thought that, Danny noticed. He was looking—concerned. Wonder of wonders, Luke was looking like he actually understood.

  Danny gasped when Luke took another step closer and folded him in his arms. Gently. Comfortingly. There was nothing sexual about it. Nothing—intense. It was merely something a friend would do. A friend doing what he could to make another friend feel better. It was a good thing to do. A kind thing.

  Danny closed his eyes when he felt Luke’s bare arms slide around him, when he felt Luke’s hands pressed softly to his back. Bending his head, Danny lowered his face into the crook of Luke’s neck. He inhaled Luke’s clean scent and gave a tiny shudder to feel the simple warmth of the man this close. Luke was making a shushing sound as he held him, and Danny closed his eyes, still embarrassed, but comforted too. And he found himself accepting the comforting. It was as if he had waited for it so long, needed it so long, and suddenly, here it was. Offered. Just like that.