Lost Along the Way (13 page)

How was I feeling? Terrified, yet excited. Liberated, yet unnerved. I felt as if I’d never see the world the same way again. I’d certainly never see
him
the same way again. I wasn’t sure how I’d ever looked at him and not seen how bright and pure and strong he really was. And how in the world had I missed the emotion in his eyes when he looked at me? How had I never seen what he really felt?

His brow wrinkled in concern. “Danny,” he said, reaching for me. “Are you all right?”

“I’ve never felt better.” And I took his outstretched hand. I pulled him toward me.

And I kissed him.

God, it was like the whole world clicked into place. Like the tornado had ceased and I’d finally landed back home. Like all of his planets and stars and supernatural signs had come into alignment, pointing us here, to this time and place. To this house. This moment. This kiss. I’d taken the long road—the hard road—but I’d finally arrived at the only place I was ever meant to be.

He broke our kiss without letting me go, staring up into my eyes with something close to desperation. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

He blinked. He might even have been fighting tears. “Oh.” A simple sound. A single syllable. And yet it held more emotion than any song. Relief and surrender and joy. Confirmation he wanted this as much as I did. He put his arms around my neck and pulled me down, kissing me as if he never intended to let me go. As if he’d been waiting for this moment since the moment we’d met. I loved the way his rough whiskers rubbed against my lips, and the way he seemed to melt as my tongue touched his. He was a bundle of contradictions. So strong and yet so vulnerable. So sure and yet so trusting. So independent and yet now waiting for me to guide the way.

I nudged him backward, and he went willingly onto the bed, pulling me down after him. We kissed harder, both of us breathless, both of us desperate to touch flesh, pulling at each other’s clothes until we were finally skin to skin for the first time.

I stopped and sat up to admire him. He looked exactly as he had in my shower—tattoos on his shoulders and biceps, dark hair covering his chest and stomach, his erection emerging from a thick tangle of it at his groin. I didn’t have to look to know he’d have a crescent-shaped birthmark on his right butt cheek. Whatever that shower had been—hallucination, dream, or some kind of shared vision—I no longer doubted its accuracy.

“You’re gorgeous,” I said, leaning forward to kiss him again. I slid my hand down his stomach to finger the dense curls below. I couldn’t believe how much that hair turned me on. “You’re so perfect, I can hardly decide where to begin.”

“Anywhere you like.”

I ran a finger up the length of his cock. “Here?”

“Oh Jesus,” he moaned. “Yeah, that’d do.”

I moved my hand lower to cup his testes as I had in our fevered shower dream, squeezing him gently as we kissed. “Or here?”

“Ohhh,” he breathed against my lips, more than a sigh, less than a moan, exactly as I’d known he would, and my heart leapt. Something deep in my groin leapt too—a surge of arousal that took my breath away.

But unlike the crazy shower incident, this was real.

I broke our kiss to meet his gaze.

“Please tell me there’s a condom in your wallet.”

His eyes widened comically. “You don’t have any?”

“If there are any left in my room, which I doubt, they’d be twenty years old.”

“Shit.” He bit his lip, thinking. “I’d run home, but I’m afraid you’ll change your mind by the time I get back.”

I laughed. “Not a chance. But don’t worry about it.” I squeezed his scrotum again—not hard, but enough to see his eyes drift shut with pleasure and his back arch as he begged wordlessly for more. Enough to hear that soft sound he made. “We’ll save it for next time.”

“Next time,” he breathed in awe, arching into my touch. “God, Danny. I’ve wanted this for so long, I can hardly believe it’s happening at all. I’ve dreamed about this moment so many times….”

His words touched me, echoing some knowledge buried deep in my heart, and although I didn’t take my hand away, I stilled my caresses until he opened his eyes and met my gaze.

“Really?”

He held me tighter. “Don’t you know how I feel about you?”

His words filled me with happiness. “I’m starting to see.”

He smiled. “But somehow whenever I imagined this happening, we always had raincoats handy.”

I laughed and brushed my lips over his. “For the record, I think we’ll have a lot of
next
times
.”

He put his hand against my cheek and kissed me harder, his breath shaky and uneven. “Don’t lie to me, Danny. Whatever this is, I’ll take it. But please don’t tell me it’s something it isn’t.”

“I’m not lying. I feel like this is where I was always meant to be.”

“Here?”

“With you.”

He closed his eyes, trembling. “Jesus, don’t make me cry now, or we’ll never get to the good stuff.”

I laughed, suddenly torn between pleasure and tenderness, but he pulled me against him and kissed me urgently, making his preference clear, and when I resumed my motions, rolling his testicles gently between my fingers, he made the soft sound that had haunted my dreams since the day of the shower. It wasn’t long before we’d left behind any hint of tears in pursuit of sheer pleasure.

It was wonderfully erotic, yet strangely surreal. Brand new, and yet utterly familiar. It was as if my hands already recognized the contours of his body. As if my brain already knew the things he liked best. And yet, I was floored at my own response to him. At how desperate I was to have more of him. I couldn't get over how good it felt to touch him—just to explore his broad, strong body with my hands. On one hand, I regretted our lack of condoms. I remembered all too clearly from the shower how good it felt to be inside him. I wanted that again. And when I thought about that tangle of hair at his entrance—about how it would look and feel when my cock pushed through it—I nearly lost control.

Yes, I wanted to make love to him as I had in my dream, and yet, at the same time, I was glad for this excuse to slow down. I was grateful for the chance to look into his eyes as I touched him. I was moved almost to tears by what I found there.

But patience be damned, I knew what I wanted. I wanted to touch that most intimate part of him. I moved my hand lower, past his scrotum, toward the deep chasm between his muscular cheeks. He moaned deep in his throat and raised his knees, urging me to seek farther.

It was all the invitation I needed.

I stopped just long enough to grease my fingers with a bit of the lotion I’d found earlier, then I followed that tantalizing trail of hair south, past his perineum, up the valley between his buttocks, seeking his rim. My arousal surged when I found it. The timbre of his moan deepened as I fingered him, exploring that circle of muscle, massaging it gently until he was ready, then opening him up, pushing just past his rim.

“Danny,” he panted, his hand tightening around my erection. “Oh Jesus.”

And finally, I penetrated fully, pushing deep inside.

He cried out, his voice ragged and urgent, and then we were both rocking, both gasping, holding each other tight as our passion grew. He was completely lost in his ecstasy, and I loved every minute of it. Every sound he made. Every desperate moan. I loved the feel of him as he writhed around my fingers.

He continued caressing me with one hand. He hooked the other behind my neck and pulled me close, so we were nose-to-nose, our eyes locked. “Don’t stop,” he pleaded. And I didn’t. I couldn’t have if I’d wanted to. I was lost in the bliss of his hand stroking me, the smell of our shared sex, the feel of his body tight around my fingers, his frantic cries and the wild bucking of his hips. And through it all, his eyes remained locked on mine, full of something so profound—both a question and an answer—that I never wanted to look away.

“Danny,” he moaned as I reached deeper to find that sweet spot inside of him. He gasped in shock and surprise when I found it. His back arched, and he cried out again as he at last found his climax at my hands.

And I found mine.

Our shared euphoria fired through us, gushing out of us, leaving us both breathless and limp. Leaving us both trembling. He pulled me closer and kissed me, whispering my name like some kind of prayer.

Just that—hearing my name on his lips—made me rejoice.

Eventually, when I could move again, I sat up and dug a handful of handkerchiefs from the box. We made a half-assed effort to clean up before he pulled me down again into his arms, kissing my forehead, and I lay there, drowsy and at peace, sated and filled with a quiet, intense happiness, listening contentedly to the sound of his heartbeat, knowing it was a sound I’d never grow tired of hearing.

“Danny,” he asked quietly, “will there still be a next time?”

“Definitely,” I assured him. “Lots and lots of next times.”

E
VENTUALLY
,
CONTENTEDNESS
gave way to hunger. We cleaned up more thoroughly before getting dressed and then wandered into the kitchen in search of sustenance. Landon made pancakes while I fried bacon, and we washed it down with tall glasses of milk, taking it in turns to stare at each other until the other one caught us at it, at which point we’d both smile and quickly look away.

Afterward we filled the kitchen sink with suds and stood side by side to wash the dishes. We worked in comfortable silence at first, with only the clink of dishes and the whir of his sculpture on the front lawn as music, but watching out the window as his metal birds twirled in the failing light made me think of where he’d been all day.

“How did your booth at Jubilee Days go?” I asked as I handed him a plate to dry.

“Ugh,” he moaned. “Don’t ask.”

His tone surprised me. He was normally so cheerful and optimistic. It was strange to hear a note of hopelessness in his voice. “That bad?”

He sighed heavily. “It’s hard to say. It was only the first day and….”

“What?”

“I don’t know. This always happens. I sign up, but then I sit there for hours at a time while people wander past, barely noticing. And those who do take notice rarely buy anything.” He shrugged, still drying the same plate, clearly lost in thought, and I stopped washing rather than interrupt him by handing him a second one. “It’s demoralizing. Every year I say I won’t put myself through it again.”

“But then you do?”

“It feels like a chance I have to take. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I usually make a few sales, so by the time they send out the vendor registration forms, I’m back to seeing it as a good opportunity rather than a waste of time. But Jubilee Days always tries my faith.” He set the plate aside at last. “There’s good news, though.”

I didn’t have to look at him to know he was smiling. “Oh?”

He glanced at me flirtatiously, causing my stomach to do some kind of backflip. “I think it’s safe to say recent developments will be enough to distract me from my lack of sales at Jubilee Days.”

I laughed and handed him the next plate. “Glad to hear it.”

We washed for a minute in silence before he spoke again. “Danny?”

“Yes.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“I just wonder…. Well, I don’t want you to think I’m complaining, because I’m not. But… why now? I mean, I’ve been in lo—” He stopped short and redirected quickly. “—
infatuated
with you for a long time.”

“I had no idea. Not until….” When? I couldn’t even have said for sure. “Recently.” I handed him a dripping glass. “You never acted on it.”

“How could I? You were with Chase. And even if you didn’t seem particularly happy, you didn’t exactly seem
unhappy
either. And I didn’t want to be the one to mess it all up. And every week my horoscope said to be patient. Not to rush things. And Lulu told me to be steady. To offer friendship, and that was easy because I’m crazy about you. But… now I’m worried.”

“Because it seems sudden?”

“I worry it’s not real.”

“You think I’m on the rebound.”

“Oh, shit,” he groaned. “I hadn’t even thought of that, to be honest.”

“Then what?”

“I wonder if it….” He took a deep breath and blurted it out. “I worry it’s all because of the bread.”

I was so stunned I dropped the glass I was holding into the murky dishwater. I turned to face him. “The bread?”

“Because I swear to you, I never meant for that to happen.”

“So, you’re telling me the bread—”

“Yes.”

“It caused the—”

“Yes.”

“But—”

“I’m sorry.”

I tapped my fingers on the side of the sink, thinking. “Granny B?”

He hesitated, then jerked his head into a tense nod.

“But I checked the cookbook. There was nothing like that in there.”

“I ripped that page out before I gave it to you.”

“And you’re worried this”—I indicated the space between us—“is because of a couple of pieces of bread.”

He finally turned to face me, twisting the dishtowel tight between his hands. His words came out slow, as if each one caused him pain. “I’ve actually baked you a lot of bread.”

I took a step backward, stunned. “What do you mean?”

“I started out with one of her recipes. This zucchini bread for inspiring passion. But then I started experimenting. Adding in bits from some of the cookie recipes. And then….” He stopped, gnawing his bottom lip, looking completely miserable. “I never meant for you to eat any of it. I’d forgotten it was even in my kitchen that day until it was too late.”

“You tried to stop me from eating it.”

His laugh was dry and sarcastic. “Not hard enough, obviously. You were damn determined.”

“I was hungry!”

“Well, in all honesty, I wasn’t exactly inclined to knock it out of your hand. But still… I’m sorry if I caused trouble with Chase. I really am. That was never my intention.”

He looked so ashamed and apologetic I found myself smiling. “It wasn’t you. Nothing that happened between Chase and me was your fault.”

“Are you telling me the truth?”