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He’d phrased the question in an intentionally low-stakes way.
Like it was just a friendly tour and had nothing else riding on it.
“Yes.” Derek twisted to face Dylan, opening his eyes for the first time in an hour. “Yes. Absolutely.”
Dylan tilted his mouth to let Derek kiss him. “Sounds good.”
Dylan thought Derek had fallen back asleep until he shifted beneath him.
“My dad used to sketch plans for houses.” The words were slightly louder than a whisper.
“Was he an architect?”
“No.” Derek traced lines up and down the back of Dylan’s arm. “He wanted to go back to school for it, but he and my mom had me so young—she was eighteen and he was twenty-two—he stuck with the engineering thing so he could help her pay for her school. But I remember this one plan for a house.”
“What was it like?”
“Stone front, but sort of like a sprawling cottage. Five bedrooms, so my grandparents could come stay someday. A little library with a fireplace because he said the way American houses have unused living rooms was stupid. Open kitchen. Big dining room. A detached garage where he could tinker.”
“He sounds like a dreamer.”
“Yeah.” Derek’s hand rested on Dylan’s diaphragm, lifting with each of Dylan’s slow breaths. “Every time Olive made me take one of those wacky Cosmo quizzes, I’d always pick the one that ended up showing that my ideal date was sex at home in front of a fire on a bearskin rug.” A sleepy laugh.
“Bearskin rug doesn’t sound very ethical.”
“The nineties were dark times. Remember?”
Chuckling, Dylan coaxed Derek’s mouth into another one of those slow, deep kisses. “Sounds like you would’ve made a great hobbit.”
Derek’s laughter quaked beneath Dylan. “I thought you liked hobbits.” He traced the Elvish across Dylan’s ribs, even though he couldn’t see it from his position. It was like he’d already memorized where it was.
Dylan’s skin pebbled in response. “I do.”
Derek’s mouth pursed together and then parted. “That’s convenient then.”
Could Dylan really sleep like this?
Wrapped up in a goddamn delicious-smelling man who’d just fucked him and then sucked him until he saw stars? A man who had invited him to a family event and would be coming to see Dylan’s house in a few weeks?
Turned out, yeah, he could.
Chapter 40
They had been sitting in Derek’s mom’s driveway for at least five minutes, and Dylan was beginning to be genuinely concerned by both Derek’s mental state and the structural integrity of the ancient-looking steering column on Derek’s vintage car. Derek’s knuckles blanched around the wheel.
Dylan undid his seatbelt. “So… are you excited to meet Bruce?”
Something softened in Derek’s forehead, but his grip didn’t relax. “For the last time, this is not a bit. We’re not going to do this every time my mom’s husband comes up.”
“But… think he’ll let me drive his car?” Dylan glanced around as if he were searching for the Batmobile.
“Well, on his website there’s a photo of a bright-yellow commercial van with pictures of furry wild animals on the side—so still probably not.”
“Are you saying I’m a bad driver? That’s mean.”
“You’re the one who’s mean. For the last time, his name is not Bruce Wayne. It’s Ken Goh, and that fucker asked my mother to marry him after two dates.”
“Right… so since they’re married, does that mean we can ask him about the whole cave thing or just skip right over that to see if he has a cockney-accented butler?”