to respond to that. He’d been nominated to be in a fraternity but he’d been too poor to afford the fees, for starters, and far too skittish to allow himself to be caught up in that kind of group dynamic. That and his complete lack of trust in people would have made him a terrible prospect and he knew, based on some of the rumors about the frat houses on his campus, that he’d have had more trouble than he would have been able to tolerate. But he understood the impetus to be part of something big and important, whatever one’s other reasons for joining might be.
“What about you?” Bennett was still speaking.
Jordan blinked. “I wasn’t much of a joiner.” He shrugged. “It felt like it would be a waste of good money, which I didn’t have, to become part of something I knew I wouldn’t be comfortable in.”
Their food arrived just then and Jordan ordered two more beers before they tucked in. The food was delicious and he hummed with pleasure at the different tastes, savory and sweet, that lingered on his tongue. They ate in silence, which pleased him as he needed the space to think about how to get the conversation away from him and onto his date. He wanted to know as much about Bennett as Bennett seemed to want to know about him.
He also watched Bennett eat, doing his best not to get caught staring. The way he pulled the food off the fork into his mouth, the way his jaw moved as he chewed, the way he licked his lips, the way he swallowed…everything he did was keeping the flame of Jordan’s interest burning hot. And in some cases, like just then when he licked his lips and then sucked beer from the bottle, instead of pouring it into the glass, his lips wrapped around the mouth of the bottle was distracting as fuck. He wanted to see those lips around the head of his cock, to chase them, to surround them with his own mouth like Bennett’s lips surrounded the bottle opening. He wanted to inhale the breath from Bennett’s mouth.
Damn, he was losing his mind! He inhaled slowly and looked back down at his own plate, willing himself to breathe away the lust that watching Bennett eat was ratcheting up. Once the plates had been cleared, Jordan realized they were on the last legs of the date. He knew some things about Bennett, who knew almost nothing about him. He had dodged most of the questions that Bennett had asked, like the one about his siblings.
“I’m an only child.” He hadn’t added the part where he’d been a foster child as well.
“Wow! I can’t imagine life without my nosy brothers.”
“It would have been nice to have had some company growing up.”
That was no less than the truth. People to call his own had been his dream but the closest he’d come to achieving that had been when he’d moved into foster care in Mrs. Salvietti’s home for his senior year of high school. She had been the kind of woman he had longed for, someone he could call ‘Mom’. And that there was the real reason he had agreed to stay in the adjoining apartment in her home and watch out for her. She and her son, his friend Rod, were the closest thing he’d had to family up to that point.
“Company can be overrated,” Bennett returned with a sly grin.
“You know what they say. The grass is always greener on the other side.”
The conversation was getting stilted, which meant Bennett would want to leave soon. However, Jordan wasn’t ready to end the date just yet. The only thing they hadn’t talked much about was Bennett’s work. Aside from discussing Bennett’s love of nighttime photo shoots, and his vision for where he’d like to be, they’d avoided the subject of work, just as they hadn’t talked much about Jordan’s job.
“Not talking shop at dinner is a cardinal rule in my house,” Bennett had informed him.
“Are we having dessert?” Jordan asked abruptly now, reluctant to end their time together. Ordering dessert would keep Bennett with him a bit longer.
“Sure. I could murder a double fudge brownie or some chocolate cake.”
Jordan rose and went to place their order. Back at the table, he passed Bennett’s brownie to him. He wasn’t much for sweet things himself, but he spooned the rich chocolate ice cream he’d ordered for himself into his mouth, loving how smooth and