Earth-Bound: a fated mates gay romance by Hope Bennett

Author:Hope Bennett [Bennett, Hope]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20: Joe

After work, I washed up and headed down to the café to get some dinner. And if I’d taken particular care to make sure I looked respectable and was wearing my best shirt, then who could blame me? I wanted to impress Terrund, and I hadn’t done much to do that yet. My ‘best shirt’ was actually just my newest plaid shirt but at least it was clean and didn’t have any holes in it yet.

My stomach fluttered as I pushed open the door to the café and my eyes honed in on Terrund, sitting at a table with four other people. As they all looked up at me, I got a prickling sensation along the back of my neck.

Terrund smiled at me. “Joe! Come and sit with us.”

I looked at his table. It was full.

He stood and hurried over to me. For a second, I thought he was going to greet me with a kiss and I wasn’t sure what to do about it. I’d never been with someone long enough to have them do that. I didn’t think anyone had ever been that pleased to see me.

I didn’t get that kiss. What I got was Terrund smiling up at me and two people either side of me, grinning like cats about to toy with a mouse. And, yes, I was the mouse in this scenario.

“Who’s this?” asked one of them.

“How does he know our Terrund?” asked the other.

Randall shouted from the kitchen, “Is that Joe?”

I called back, “Yeah, it is.”

Randall shouted, “Leave him alone, you two. He’s here for dinner. He can sit with Terrund.”

I was glad Randall had said that because I’d come up blank with how I was going to arrange for that to happen. It meant the two strangers muttered and backed off reluctantly, and Terrund led me to the next table along and pulled out a chair for me to sit. I sat, utterly confused as to what was going on.

Terrund sat opposite me and I tried not to stare at him. His jaw was strong and I knew from experience that his body was compact and strong underneath those clothes, but I couldn’t think about that right now or I’d get hard in front of all these strangers. Somehow, though, Terrund looked ethereal. Pretty, almost.

I’d been staring too long and he smiled at me. “Have you had a good afternoon?”

“Yeah,” I said, and then couldn’t think of a single other thing to say.

Across the room, a familiar face peered at me. It was Professor Anthony Beckinsale, the one who’d been going to clear the house. He asked, “Are you two…?” and then, apparently, he couldn’t think of a way to finish that statement, either.

“We’re friends,” I said, and willed myself not to blush. Just friends, I reminded myself. Just friends who sometimes rubbed up against each other until they came. Nothing to see here.

There was a snort of disbelief from one of the others but Anthony nodded and said, “Sure.”

He could have at least tried to sound as though he believed it.

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