by Daryl Banner
I saw everything.
And that’s when the voice came from behind me. “See something you like, baby boy?”
I must have jumped so high, my head could’ve hit the ceiling. I spun around, fumbled with the fat envelope in my hand, and it dropped to the feet of Dante, who stood over me like a towering block of intimidating muscle and beauty.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to, uh—” I swallowed and gave yet another glance at the scene. I saw a tripod with a camera. I saw giant bulbs and photography gear. I saw—“I’m just here to, uh …” I knelt down to fetch the envelope from Dante’s feet, which felt strangely and suddenly submissive, causing me to flush like a cherry. “To pay the rent,” I finished, handing him the envelope.
To my surprise, Dante smirked, amused. “You aren’t like the others,” he then said.
I was so taken by his sudden change of tone, I only squeaked out the words, “Others …?”
“And you were right about the teenager,” he then added as he popped open the envelope and quickly thumbed through the money, counting it in the space of five seconds. “The kid’s got an eye.”
“He does,” I reluctantly agreed.
Dante nodded slowly, and then upon turning away, said, “Now you have yourself a nice day,” and went back to his room.
I left the basement feeling a mix of satisfaction and bewilderment. There was a lot left of Dante to figure out, and I wasn’t about to presume to know all his secrets with just one glimpse at his toy room.
“So what are you two?” asks Brett suddenly, yanking me out of that memory of my encounter with Dante. “Boyfriends? Dating? Fuck buddies? I mean, we all know you’re doing it,” he adds as he shoves an elbow into my side, sitting by us on the couch. “It’s written all over your faces.”
Alan and I give each other a look. “Hmm. I’d say we’re probably fuck buddies when I get off of a shift at Aubergines in uniform,” I reason.
“Definitely,” Alan agrees astutely. “But on the weekdays after your internship … we’re dating.”
“Dating,” I affirm, then run a hand through his hair and put a kiss on his full plush lips. “But when we’re all alone …”
“… whether in this place, or mine …” he adds.
“… we’re boyfriends all the way.” I put another kiss on his lips, which turns into another, and then another.
Brett, who can’t even leave us alone to have an innocent make-out session, throws an arm around both of us somehow, squeezing us against him like a pair of squishy teddy bears. “I fucking love my roommate and his man!” he cries, then tries to get Lex and Omar in on it, too. “Can you guys get enough of these two?!”
“Yep,” decides Lex with a smirk. “Already at my limit,” agrees Omar as well, still thumbing the remote at the TV.
After Brett’s phone dings with a text and he hops off the couch to go check it, I find myself staring into the face of my man, Alan Wales, whom I am so proud to call my boyfriend.
I don’t know if I’ll someday be working full-time for his father at Wales Weekly, but whether or not I’m hired at the end of the summer, I know that at least I have the incredibly kindhearted and smart-as-a-whip Alan by my side, and that’s worth everything to me.
My parents already know about him, and they can’t wait to meet him. I’m sure one of these long weekends, I’ll finally muster up enough courage to invite Alan out to Kansas and see what my world is like. I already told him I bet he wouldn’t last three days. He only smirked, nipped at my ear, and said, “Oh, you’re on, Kansas boy.”
I hope he slips with that L-word again soon.
Because if he doesn’t, I just might.
“Holy fuck!” cries Brett from the kitchen.
All of us turn at once. “What is it?” I ask him, alarmed. “Is something wrong?”
His phone dangling limply in his hand, he peels his eyes off the screen and gawps at us. “It’s Skylar! From my frat! He just texted me, and he’s … he’s gonna be …” He points at his phone, out of breath. “Skylar’s coming into town! He wants to see me!”
Lex slaps a hand to his face. “Oh, here we go.”
To Be Continued …
WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE BOYS?
Did you enjoy Connor?
Here are a few exciting things that may be in store for the boys in the next installment of Boys & Toys: “Brett”
∙ Brett’s fun, party-boy, easygoing world is flipped upside-down with the surprise arrival of his big college crush from his fraternity days.
∙ Connor and Alan continue exploring their happy promising relationship—despite a bump or two.
∙ Dante has a troubling encounter at the gym.
∙ Zak deals with a peculiar stalker at Aubergines.
Keep scrolling for an excerpt from the first season of Boys & Toys: “Caysen’s Catch”!
OTHER WORKS
BY DARYL BANNER
Best-selling Stand-Alone Male/Male Romance
∙ Bromosexual
∙ Hard For My Boss
“Spruce, Texas” Male/Male Romance Series
(sassy, sweet & steamy small-town M/M love stories set in Spruce, Texas)
∙ Football Sundae
∙ Born Again Sinner
∙ Heteroflexible
∙ Wrangled
“Bad Boys & Rebels” Male/Male Romance Stand-Alones
∙ Getting Lucky
∙ Raising Hell
∙ My Bad Ex-Boyfriend
“Boys & Toys: Season 1” Male/Male Romance Series
(a series of fun & sexy novellas centered around four gay best friends who get into all sorts of trouble in the big city)
∙ Caysen’s Catch
∙ Wade’s Workout
∙ Dean’s Dare
∙ Garret’s Game
“The Brazen Boys” Male/Male Romance Series of Stand-Alones
(stand-alone novellas filled of sexual exploration, coming of age, and romantic adventures)
∙ Dorm Game
∙ On The Edge
∙ Owned By The Freshman
∙ Dog Tags
∙ Commando (Dog Tags 2)
∙ All Yours Tonight
∙ Straight Up
∙ Houseboy Rules
∙ Slippery When Wet
A College Obsession Romance Series
(a new adult college romance series)
∙ Read My Lips
∙ Beneath The Skin
∙ With These Hands
∙ Through Their Eyes: Five Years Later
The Beautiful Dead Saga
(a post-apocalyptic fantasy saga)
∙ The Beautiful Dead
∙ Dead Of Winter
∙ Almost Alive
∙ The Whispers
∙ Winter’s Doom
∙ Deathless (coming soon)
The OUTLIER Series
(an epic dystopia saga in six large multi-perspective novels)
∙ Rebellion
∙ Legacy
∙ Reign Of Madness
∙ Beyond Oblivion
∙ Weapons Of Atlas (coming soon)
∙ Gifts Of The Goddess (coming soon)
Kings & Queens (an OUTLIER companion novella series)
∙ The Slum Queen
∙ The Twice King
∙ Queen Of Wrath (coming soon)
CAYSEN’S CATCH EXCERPT
11:57 PM.
The city is alive with music, clubbers, and partiers. Laughter, car horns, and cab-hailing fill the streets. And in an inner city high rise apartment, Caysen finishes up with a friend … in his bed.
CAYSEN
One thing you can absolutely never predict is where my underwear will be at the end of the day.
A body stirs in the sheets next to me.
“Wow,” he breathes. “Just … Just wow …”
“I know, right?” I peel off the condom, tie it in a knot, then squint an eye as I flick it at the waste bin. Score!
“I came so hard, I think I
bruised my balls.”
I let out one dry chuckle as I glance around for my boxer-briefs, which I’m certain I kicked off somewhere around here. “I don’t think that’s how it works,” I tease, hopping off the bed.
He rolls over and shoots me a look, his upside-down face hanging playfully over the edge of the bed. “And you know all about the body, huh?”
“They don’t pay me the big bucks at the gym just to look pretty,” I throw back lightly, then take a glance around the front of the bed.
“You’re so hot. I mean, how do you even get a butt that sculpted? And your wide, muscled back that tapers perfectly toward it … And your round, big, muscled shoulders …”
“Eighty percent diet and a fuck-lot of lifting.” I step over my jeans and crouch down, looking.
He flips back over and sits up at once. “So do you hook up with all your clients?”
“Just the special ones.” I come out from the other side of the bed with a blue and white sock.
“Bet you tell your un-special clients that, too.”
I flash him a smile, then lift my hands in mock surrender. “You got me!”
“Not that I’m in a hurry for you to put them back on, as I’m rather enjoying the show, but if you’re looking for your underwear … they’re right there.” He points.
I follow his finger to the long dresser that sits under my mounted 52-inch LCD. And there they are, my shiny black boxer-briefs, hanging on the edge of a small wooden picture frame.
And in the photograph hugged by that wooden picture frame, two beaming young collegiate faces smile back. One’s mine. The other …
My gaze lingers on that photograph, as if I can feel the excitement that swelled in my heart that day only a handful of years ago when the pair of us graduated from Leadstone College. He didn’t want to throw his hat, too afraid he’d lose it.
The memory has me smiling.
“Is that your …? Oh.” He slaps a hand to his face. “Your boyfriend? Is that your boyfriend? Oh God, am I just a … a lay? Am I a mistress now?”
I pluck my underwear off the picture, my gaze lingering on it a moment as I slowly pull them on. “Wade,” I answer. “He’s my best friend.”
“Oh … best friend? Hmm. Is he straight?”
My life would be a hell of a lot easier if he was. I turn to him. “It’s getting late,” I point out, “and I have a new client in the morning. So …”
“Oh … Oh, okay.” After a second of biting his lip, he hops off the bed and, with uncertainty, starts to get dressed. “The old please-get-out-now thing. We had our fun, it’s all good, I know the drill. I’d just hoped we might hang out a tiny bit, maybe throw on a movie, but …” He sighs as he slaps a hand to his head and peers around my room. “I think I’m missing a sock.”
My phone buzzes on the dresser next to me. I pick it up, give a look at the screen, then smirk. It’s like he can read my mind.
WADE
“Oh my God. Caysen?” I hiss into the phone. “Are you there? Dude, you’ll never guess why I’m calling.”
Caysen snorts from the line. “Did you stick it in the wrong hole?”
“Close. I …” I glance over my shoulder at the back of the bathroom door and my lucky striped pastel-rainbow towel hanging from it, which I got ten years ago at Pride when I first came out. “I have a visitor. Right now. It’s the director. Of the show I auditioned for. The off-off-Broadway one.”
“Why are you whispering?”
“He’s on my couch. He says he wanted to talk to me about the lead role. The lead role, Caysen!”
“Uh … at midnight?”
“Okay, yes, I know it isn’t conventional, but he wanted to ‘discuss it’ and happened to be in the area. That can only be good news, right? Maybe I made call-backs! Maybe I might get the part!”
“Wade, you know they call it ‘casting couch’ for a reason, right?”
“It’s not like that! He’s really well known in the community. People respect him.” I catch my own gaze in the mirror. “Oh fuck, was my hair doing that the whole time??” I quickly push up a few rebel bangs off my forehead, sweeping them upward where they belong. “Anyway, what should I do? Should I play it cool? This could be the show, Cays. The one that breaks me into the scene.”
“I’m pretty sure he just wants to fuck you.”
I roll my eyes. “Always fucking and boys and toys with you.”
“Hey, you’re the one calling me shamefully from your bathroom.”
“I’m n—! Wait, how can you tell?”
“The echo. Listen, I’ve got company, and—”
“Ooh? At midnight?” I taunt, throwing his own words back at him.
“Ah, you know me.” Then he mocks me right back. “Boys and toys.”
“He doesn’t just want to fuck me, Caysen.”
“The more you say it, the less you believe it.”
“My audition made him smile.” I give another glance back at the door, then shrink against the wall by the mirror, afraid even my whispers are too loud. “I’m the only one who did that! But … if I accept this role—assuming I am being offered it—I’ll miss Dean’s party, since the show opens that same weekend. Also, it’d be a crazy lot of lines and nightly rehearsals and tons of hard work …”
“Don’t do it, Wade. Not every smile is nice.”
“Shit, why’d I call your ass again? I’ve kept him waiting long enough. Gotta go,” I sing to him in a tiny, tiny voice before hanging up.
Then I stare at my reflection and bite my lip. I try a smile in the mirror, flashing myself my most charming. I have a nice smile, and I’m a nice guy.
Caysen’s so wrong. A smile reveals everything about a person. I’m an actor. Half my training is about nuance and specificity and the dozen things a simple smile can reveal.
And I know that my director is a nice guy with integrity.
And … really tight pants.
And also maybe a shirt that’s unbuttoned about two buttons too far to be decent.
Three buttons.
You’re letting Caysen get to you.
Click here to continue reading “Caysen’s Catch”!
Table of Contents
CONNOR CHAPTER LIST
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
[ THE KANSAS BOY ]
1
2
3
4
[ THE OTHER SIDE OF TOWN ]
5
6
7
8
[ THE CHANCE ENCOUNTER ]
9
10
11
12
13
14
[ THE VERY BAD IDEA ]
15
16
17
[ THE TRUTH ]
18
19
20
[ CONNOR’S EPILOGUE ]
EPILOGUE
WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE BOYS?
OTHER WORKS BY DARYL BANNER
CAYSEN’S CATCH EXCERPT