Free Hobbled by John Inman Page B

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, Dannyjumped. 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 roomchanged 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