Hobbled (9 page)

And uh-oh. He had a hard-on again.

To take his mind off of it, Danny started talking, even while he kept shoveling food in his mouth. It wasn’t like he couldn’t talk and eat at the same time, after all. It wasn’t a crime or anything. Like, say, flipping an ice machine onto its back and flinging two hundred dollars’ worth of hamburgers out into the street because your boss was a greedy dipshit.

“It’ll be nice to have people in the vacant house for a change. Sometimes I look down at it from my room upstairs, and it always seems sort of sad. You know? Being empty and all. If you see a crazy old lady ghost with a chrome walker and a poodle at her feet, that was the woman who lived there for about a thousand years. Lydia. That was the poodle’s name. I forget the woman’s. Old Miss Something-or-other.”

Luke nodded around a mouthful of cold pizza. “I’ll watch for her.”

“I’m terrible with names,” Danny said.

“You remembered her dog.”

“Well, yeah.”

Luke dropped his fork onto his plate with a clang and extended his hand across the table. “And I’m Luke, just in case you forgot.”

Danny laughed. He took the hand, though, and gave it a friendly shake. He wasn’t about to pass up
that
opportunity. “Don’t worry,” he said. “
You
,
I remember.”

And again, Luke sort of cocked his head to the side and gazed at Danny as if trying to decipher exactly what it was he meant by that. In the end, he must have worked it out to be a compliment, because a gentle smile spread across his face. He gave Danny’s hand a tiny squeeze before letting it go. Danny wasn’t sure, but he thought maybe the pressure that kept their knees together might have just gotten a little stronger. Danny certainly had no problem with that. No problem at all.

They resumed eating. Danny got the impression that something had just happened, but he wasn’t exactly sure what it was. Seemed promising though. It was as if the air in the room had changed. Became a little warmer, maybe. A little closer. Like maybe the house had shrunk around them, drawing them closer together. And Luke was still smiling, even if he was pounding down the food again like he hadn’t eaten in a week. That seemed promising, too.

While Danny stared at that intriguing new smile on Luke’s face, even while trying not to
look
like he was staring at it, a wily glint appeared in Luke’s eyes.

“So you can see into the house from your room, huh, Danny? I guess I’ll have to be careful what I’m doing over there then. Wouldn’t want you to catch me doing anything, you know,
inappropriate.
”

Just the
thought
of Luke doing something inappropriate made Danny’s cock twitch. And when his cock twitched, Danny
jumped. He stammered out a hasty bit of reassurance, trying to appease both Luke and his own dick at the same time. Actually, what he stammered out was a hasty bit of bullshit. Nothing more, nothing less. “Oh, now that I know someone’s living there, I won’t be checking it out anymore. Don’t worry. Heh heh. You’re inappropriate secrets are safe with me.”

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.”

E
XACTLY
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 unthreatening 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

L
ESS
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.