Page 42 of In Step

He nodded and held my gaze. “Okay then.” He adjusted the embrace until he was happy—much closer than we’d started last time—and then he paused. “Breathe, Kane.”

Easier said than done. Our faces were so close I could count the tiny flecks of grey in the blue eye closest to me and the margin of almost brown around his grey one. I couldn’t help but stare, my attention flicking from one to the other.

“Heterochromia, remember?” He gave me another of those liquid smiles that turned my knees to jelly.

“Or just fucking pretty,” I answered in all seriousness. And to my shock, he blushed. There and gone in a flash, but I hadn’t been mistaken.

He chuckled and murmured something about me fucking with his concentration and turned his head slightly to the side. “Ready?”

I wasn’t at all sure I was. And I absolutely wasn’t convinced that what we were doing was just dancing, either, but we were safe from prying eyes and so... “Ready,” I answered.

“We’ll start just like last time, but then once you’re in the swing of it again, I’ll teach you a couple more steps, nothing difficult, but we’ll do more than just walk tonight, all right?”

I nodded, my cheek moving alongside his, the salty menthol scent of his skin messing with my brain as we took those first steps, his leg moving between mine, my cock humming at the brush of pressure.

“Just dancing,” I whispered against the side of his head, sounding about as determined as a limp noodle.

“Just dancing,” he answered, and I didn’t have to see his face to know the huge grin that covered it.

And so we danced. A repetition of the first night, simple steps, albeit smaller and extra turns due to the constrained space. Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow. We continued until I slipped into a comfortable rhythm, and then the bastard switched it up and threw me into things called thecorte, promenade, and the fan.

I was hopeless, needing endless repetition, but Abe was patient and my awkwardness never seemed to irritate him. And step by step it started to come together in my head. The fragile connection between my brain and body began to form. Once that happened, things began to change and we started to move as one. Well, maybe one and a half. It wasn’t easy.

But Abe felt the shift as well and pulled back to grin at me. “Aha. That’s it. You’re doing great, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart?Something warm and too fucking fuzzy for words bloomed in my chest. I stole a glance at Abe who was frowning like the word had surprised him as well.

He tightened the embrace, pressing the side of his head gently against mine, and just like that I was having a moment, a sappy, uncomfortable, yearning moment. Our bodies too close to fit a single sheet of paper between. The ache in my chest, Abe’s kind words, the want, the loneliness, the emotion of the day, and the hopelessness of the hunger pouring through my veins.

I leaned back and glanced at the clock to avoid those clever eyes, shocked to see we’d been dancing for nearly an hour. But the break in rhythm proved my undoing as I promptly stumbled over Abe’s foot for the millionth time and toppled sideways, almost taking him with me. “Shit.” I flailed, reaching for the back of the couch.

“Gotcha.” His arms circled my waist and pulled me back onto my feet, my chest dragging up the length of his torso, the soft brush of our cocks zinging all the way to my balls. “Oops.” He smiled and his warm breath fanned my lips, that gentle gaze dancing so close I could almost feel the brush of his lashes.

One blink. Two. And then I was kissing him, reeling in the heady rush of his lips back on mine, the soft brush of his scruff scraping my jaw, the heat of his body fuelling the desire I’d jacked off way too many times to since he’d arrived.

He startled, froze, and almost drew away. “Are you sure—”

“Stay,” I growled, stealing my hands around his neck to keep him exactly where I wanted him. “This fucking music is driving me crazy. I give up. I’m done saying no to this, to you. You know more about me than anyone in this hole of a town. Please, just kiss me.”

He relaxed and smiled against my lips, and I nipped none too gently at his lower one until he opened and let my tongue sweep through to capture the taste I’d been craving for two days—salty perspiration, chocolate from his stash of energy bars, and something else uniquely and addictively Abe.

“Oh, Jesus,” he groaned and slammed me against the wall, our matching heights fitting our cocks together like a jigsaw puzzle. He was hard, so fucking hard as he rutted against me, his groans lost into my open mouth. And as he took the kiss from zero to nuclear in a half-second, I pictured riding that glorious cock, the image only serving to steam my eyeballs further toward oblivion. It was a dangerous thought, little more than a fantasy, but just for a second, I could almost feel it.

Abe pulled off, breathless, his forehead pressed to mine. “Jesus, what you do to me.” He shoved his hand down his sweats and adjusted himself. “Damn tights. Kane, I don’t—”

“Just keep kissing me.” I lunged forward to claim his lips again, the feel of his body electric against mine.

He moaned something unintelligible into my open mouth, then slid his hands under my arse and lifted me off the ground. I wrapped my legs around his waist and he stumble-carried me to the bed before throwing me on the covers and climbing on top of me. His fingers went straight for the waistband of my sweats, but I immediately wriggled out of his grasp.

“No,” I mumbled against his lips. “Just like this.” I ground against him, urging him on, but instead, he pulled off and frowned down at me.

“Are you okay?”

I nodded, lifting up to tug his lower lip between my teeth before letting it go. “I’m fine. I... can we just do it like this?”Please say yes.

His frown deepened for a second, and then a slow smile spread over his face and he rubbed his nose against mine. “We can do it anyway you like. But fair warning, this isn’t gonna take long.”

I grinned up at him, wriggling my hips so our dicks rubbed together and watching his eyes roll back in his head. “Thank Christ for that. I’m about to break the land speed record myself. Now, can we do this before I explode like one of those puffball mushrooms?”

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