Dean blinked twice, then twice more, before straightening.“You mean, you’ll do it?”
“I’llthinkabout doing it,” he insisted, lying through his teeth.“But you’ll need someplace to crash for the night in case I say ‘yes’.”
Dean straightened all the more, then sagged.“Oh, I hadn’t, hadn’t thought about that part.”
Sully cocked his head and flashed a surprised smile.“You hadn’t?”
Dean shook his pretty little head.“No, I...”His eyes searched the sprawling bar frantically, as if looking for an answer.“It’s spring break.I’ve got nothing going on back at school, I really, really wanted to get an answer from you and figured, since you weren’t responding to my messages, why not drive down?”
“And?”Sully nudged, the vaguest hint of anticipation making his big, thick, overflowing blue balls twitch with something he hadn’t felt in a mighty long time.Something raw and naked and hungry.Something very much like ...desire.“Then what?”
Dean hung his head.“I hadn’t quite thought that all the way through, I suppose.”
“You?”Sully chuckled.“Mr.Big Words.Mr.Righteous Indignation.Mr.Blow Up My Webform until my inbox was crammed plumb full?Didn’t think it all the way through?”
Dean shook his head.“I guess not,” he sighed.“I mean, I could drive home.But it’s three hours back to campus, then just to sleep and drive all the way back in the morning, for you to just say ‘maybe some other time’ and I’d have to drive all the way back and...”
“Come on, kid,” Sully growled, even as he stood from his creaky old barstool and slugged down the last of his lukewarm beer.
“What?Where?”Dean stood tentatively, a good five inches shorter and, judging by the way his preppy little cargo pants were about to slither off any minute, a good twenty to thirty pounds lighter, too.
“I’ve got a place over the hardware store, across the street.”
Dean had been following him, taking another tentative step away from where they’d been sitting, when he froze.Utterly.Completely.“I mean, I...We hardly know each other?”
Sully broke out laughing.“Not with me, Jesus, kid, you’re something else, you know that?”
Dean’s face literally lit up with relief.“Oh, well, but you said...”
“Iowna place,” Sully reiterated, more clearly this time, enunciating as if he was speaking another language.“Over the hardware store.Across the street.Use it for storage, mostly, but it’s clean and neat and won’t cost you much.”
Dean froze again.Damn,Sully thought, reaching for his keys.At this rate, it’d be morning before he lured the sexy little fucker out the damn door, let alone across the whole ass street!“Much?”
Sully ignored him for the moment, turning to address the three men at the bar.“Boys?”he announced with a playful grin.“Duty calls.You know the drill.Peanuts are under the bar.Y’all can have one more beer each and if, in the unlikely event, some other random stranger stumbles through the door, you have him wait for me, hear?”
The boys were too busy hootin’ and hollerin’, arguing over which one would actually stand his lazy ass up and get the next round, to notice the easy, almost protective, way Sully held the door open for Dean as he whispered through, the grateful grad student glancing up at the last minute with a most appreciative grin.
Thank heaven for small miracles,he thought to himself, nodding toward the almost hidden stairwell to the left side of Handy Dan’s Hardware across the street.
