Art of Love (Valley Boys Book 1)

by Vicki Tharp

  He recognized some of the students from previous classes. One by one, he read down the list of names that the registrar’s office had given him and checked them off when the students answered.

  “Roman Reed?” Demetri glanced around the room. “No Roman?”

  The students shook their heads. He made a mark by the name and continued down the list. Then came a flash of movement in the narrow rectangle window in the door, and someone fumbled with the handle. The door always seemed to stick. Five years of repair requests to the maintenance department hadn’t helped.

  The door burst open, and a student stumbled in, his backpack falling from his shoulder and slapping on the ground. “Excuse me. Sorry, I—”

  The student glanced Demetri’s way. Demetri’s heart derailed and slammed into his ribs so hard he heard himself grunt. Even from twenty feet away, those green eyes floored him. The man’s wide smile equally as deadly.

  Demetri tore his eyes away and stared down at the list of names. Letters jumbled together, and for a minute, he thought he’d lost the ability to read. The man stood there a moment before catching himself and picking up his backpack. He slalomed through the chairs to find an empty seat in the front row.

  Clearing his throat, Demetri said, “You don’t look like an Emily to me. You must be Roman?”

  “Roman Reed,” the man confirmed.

  “I’m glad that you found us.”

  Roman grinned. “Same.”

  In a weird way, the next two hours crawled by. At the same time, class was over way too fast. Demetri finished the class by rote, going through the introductory material on autopilot, only once hearing a student giggle when Demetri’s eyes fell on Roman and lingered there.

  Fuck, he was in trouble.

  He’d have to talk to the registrar’s office and see if he could get Roman transferred out of his class. He couldn’t spend the whole semester unable to speak full sentences without catching Roman’s eye or thinking about a dark alley and a delicious dick and faltering.

  When class ended, the students packed their belongings and filed out the door.

  “Mr. Reed,” Demetri said before the object of a few of his jack-off sessions could leave. “If I could have a word.”

  You want more than a word.

  But that wasn’t going to happen.

  Couldn’t happen.

  Demetri had messed around with some of his live models in the past, that was true. But everything had been consensual. And those models hadn’t been students.

  Demetri had lines he wouldn’t cross. Besides, it being wrong to date a student, he refused to be that old cliché about the professor fucking his students.

  Closing the door behind the last of his students, Demetri turned to Roman and got straight to the point. “What happened the other night can’t happen again.”

  “I get it.”

  “And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anybody about...” Demetri motioned between the two of them.

  “I hadn’t planned to. But to be fair, you were the one who kept staring at me during class and losing your train of thought, so if anyone catches on, I don’t think you can blame me.”

  “Fuck,” Demetri muttered as he rubbed at his forehead, trying to fend off the rager of a headache he had brewing.

  “If you ask me, it was kind of adorable.”

  Demetri scowled, and Roman laughed.

  But then again, Roman didn’t have a possible tenure he could lose.

  Demetri swallowed hard and opened the door a crack. “I think we’re done here.”

  Instead of walking through, Roman put a hand on the door and closed it. The latch clicking home sounded like a shot. Roman had a couple of inches on Demetri and about thirty pounds of pure muscle. Roman leaned in, ducking his head. Demetri knew what was coming. He felt it in the breath he held. He felt it in his bones. In his groin.

  He should have stepped aside. He should have made excuses, made an escape, something, anything besides lifting his mouth to Roman’s and meeting him halfway. Roman stepped into him, his body pressing Demetri against the door, his hard-on pressing into Demetri’s hip.

  Demetri should stop. He really should.

  Roman broke the kiss, leaning away enough so he could see Demetri’s face. “You know, I tried to convince myself that what happened in that alley, what I felt, was an aberration. That it was nothing more than a hot guy on a hot night in a dark alley doing what two horny guys do, but... fuck. There’s something about you, I—”

  Someone bumped into the door. The handle jiggled. Roman and Demetri took a step back. A petite woman with short, spiky red hair and black yoga pants came into the room, glancing pointedly between the two of them.

  “Oh, hey, it’s you,” she said. “Roman, right?”

  Heat rushed up Demetri’s neck. “You two know each other?”

  “She was in one of my sociology classes this morning.”

  The woman grinned and stuck out her hand to Demetri. “I’m Emily. I was supposed to be in your two o’clock class.”

  “I’ll catch you later, professor,” Roman said with a wicked grin.

  Demetri gave him a casual nod as if Emily hadn’t almost walked in on them sucking on each other’s tongues.

  What else might she have caught you two sucking if she’d been five minutes later?

  Demetri didn’t answer that.

  “Sorry,” Emily said, “I’m a transfer student. I got turned around and couldn’t find the room and went all the way back to the registrar’s office thinking there was a mistake on my schedule and had to wait there and then find out it was right and—”

  Her sentences ran together. Despite her yoga pants and her spiked hair, he knew an overeager student when he met one. They were the type who finished their work on the day it was assigned and came back looking for extra credit.

  They were also the type of student whose worst nightmare was missing a class.

  “Take a breath,” Demetri said. “You didn’t miss anything important.”

  She followed him to his desk, and he handed her a syllabus.

  “Sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  “I’m sure it won’t.”

  She started backing out of the room, the hint of a knowing smile on her face. “I’ll see you Wednesday.”

  He waved goodbye and watched her retreat, wondering what she had seen or what she thought she had seen when Demetri’s back had been pressed against the door’s narrow window. He could guess by her grin what she suspected.

  In all the art rooms in all the colleges, Roman had to walk into his.

  Having Roman in his class all semester wouldn’t work.

  With no other classes on the schedule for the day, Demetri locked up his room and went in search of a solution to his emerging problem.

  Demetri knocked on the open door of the office next to his. The art department had been relegated to one of the older buildings on campus. The offices were compact, and the new five-story Engineering and Physics building next door cast them in the shadows.

  Lydia Wise glanced up from her computer, her red readers at the end of her nose. She smiled that warm and friendly smile she was known for. She’d had tenure at the college since Demetri was in middle school, but they’d become fast friends.

  “Come in, come in.” She scooted between her desk and the wall of shelves stuffed with books, photos, and whatnot, and met him with a hug. “How did your first day go?”

  Demetri chuckled. “You sound like my dad back in elementary school. How was your day? How many boys and girls in your class?”

  “Oh, poo,” she said, waving her hand at him. “You know what I meant.”

  She sat on the edge of her desk, the light shining through her silver hair like a halo.

  “Can I talk to you a minute?”

  Her smile faded. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing that I hope you can’t help me fix.”

  She removed her glasses and let them dangle from a multicolored cord ar
ound her neck. “Close the door.”

  He did and took the only chair on his side of the desk as she went around to hers. He opened his mouth to speak, but she held up one hand for him to wait.

  She pulled out her bottom drawer. Demetri heard glass clacking together, and she came up with two glasses and a bottle of the finest bourbon he’d ever tasted. She poured them each a finger and passed him a glass. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “I have a favor to ask.”

  “Anything.”

  “I have this student. I was hoping we could get him transferred into your class.”

  She raised her chin and appraised him down the length of her slim nose, her old eyes warm, but shrewd. “It’s the first day of the semester. Surely he’s not that big of a problem already. And if he’s that bad, I’m not sure I want him either.”

  “It’s not that he’s bad. It’s just...”

  How did he tell his friend that he wanted to lock his classroom and fuck one of his students against the wall?

  Maybe not in those exact words, asshole.

  “Ah,” she said after scrutinizing him. “He’s a problem for you.”

  Demetri tossed the bourbon to the back of his throat and swallowed, but he knew it wasn’t nearly enough to give him the courage to say what he needed to say. He’d have to power through and spill it. “He trips all my wires. I have zero defenses when it comes to him. I don’t want it coming back to haunt me.”

  “All in one two-hour class?”

  Demetri considered lying, but Lydia was his closest work friend. If he couldn’t tell her, he couldn’t tell anybody.

  Keep your fucking mouth shut.

  But he couldn’t go the whole semester with Roman sitting in the front row of his class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

  “We had an... encounter,” was the word Demetri finally settled on. “Before school started. I had no idea who he was or that he’d end up in my class.”

  Lydia didn’t even raise a brow. Despite looking like someone’s sweet little old grandmother—which she was—she’d been a bit of a hippie in her day. “Of course, you didn’t.”

  “Anyway,” Demetri wouldn’t go into any more detail than that. He did have some discretion, “I need him out.”

  “I wish I could help, but my emergency sabbatical was approved and—”

  “Wait, why is this the first I’m hearing about this?”

  “It’s unexpected. My Hal was diagnosed with cancer. I’m taking time off to be with him.”

  “Oh, Lydia. I’m so sorry.”

  He went to hug her, but she put up a staying hand, her eyes going red and filling with tears.

  “He’s going to be okay,” she said, her voice shaking. She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue and cleared her throat. “Maybe Janet can take him in her class.”

  Demetri shook his head. “She’s only doing 100 level classes this semester.”

  “Well, fuck,” Lydia said, drawing a chuckle of understanding from Demetri. She didn’t cuss often but didn’t hold back when needed.

  “Yeah. Thanks, anyway. And give my best to Hal. If you need anything—”

  She nodded and swallowed hard, her voice barely above a whisper when she spoke. “I know.”

  Demetri left Lydia’s office, not even bothering to return to his before heading home for the day. His only hope was that Roman would have mercy on him and agree to drop the class.

  Saturday morning, Roman sat at his kitchen table, a plate of bacon and eggs in front of him. He still couldn’t believe Grant had offered him the job, and today was the first workday at the Center’s community site. He had to meet early with Grant to go over the plans for the day before they’d head over to start work. He filled his belly, having no idea when he’d get a chance to eat next.

  A key fumbled in the front door lock, and Roman glanced over his shoulder as Moses stumbled through the door. He hadn’t seen his roommate except in passing the whole week. It wasn’t that Moses was a bad student, it was that he was trying to squeeze every last drop of fun out of the few days that remained before his classes kicked in in earnest and he had to buckle down and study.

  “You’re up early,” Moses said as he came into the kitchen, swiped a piece of bacon off Roman’s plate, and tore off a chunk with his teeth. Moses turned a light shade of green and dropped the piece of bacon with the bite torn out of it back on Roman’s plate. “That’s going to make me puke.”

  “Maybe if you’d put something in your body besides booze and dick for the past week, the food wouldn’t turn your stomach.”

  “The dick had nothing to do with it,” Moses said as he went for a cup of coffee instead. “But the alcohol undoubtedly does.”

  He dropped into the seat across from Roman and hugged his mug of coffee to him like it was a life ring from the Coast Guard. Roman’s nose wrinkled when he got a whiff of his roomie.

  “Have you been lying in a gutter all night?”

  “It was more of a back lane than a gutter, and we were at the club until it closed at two, so I couldn’t have passed out there more than an hour or so.”

  “Look at me.” When Moses’ heavy-lidded, bloodshot eyes sort of focused on him, Roman said, “You’ve got to slow down. You’re going to either get yourself arrested or killed.”

  Moses gripped his head and groaned. “I know. Monday. I’m done. Promise.”

  “Mmm hmm.” He’d believe that when he saw it. Maybe rooming with his old friend hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

  “How are your classes?” Moses asked though Roman couldn’t tell if he was trying to fill the awkward silence or if he truly wanted to know.

  “You know that guy from last Saturday?”

  Moses squinted, his eyes even more unfocused as he mentally flipped through his alcohol, drug, and sex-infused haze of the past week. Then his eyes widened. “Oh, spice boy.”

  “Spicy. And yeah. Him. Turns out, his name is Demetri Stavros.”

  Moses thought for a minute. It looked painful. “Isn’t he—”

  “My art professor.”

  “—related to that porn director.”

  “What?” They both said at the same time.

  “You go first,” Moses said. He took another sip of coffee. By the grimace on his face and the burp he held back, it wasn’t sitting much better than the bacon had.

  “Demetri Stavros, the provider of the best blowjob I’ve ever had, is my art professor.”

  Moses threw his head back and laughed. Then he pressed his palms into his temples and groaned. “Shit, don’t make me laugh.”

  “Who did you say he was?”

  Moses made a give it here motion with his hand. “Phone.”

  Roman keyed in his code and handed it over. Moses punched around on it until something loaded. “I thought that was him.”

  Moses handed the phone back, and Roman flicked through the search results. “He’s the cousin of Niko Stavros? Black Stallion Studios? That Niko?”

  “They’re well known in the valley,” Moses said. “But you’d have had no way of knowing that.”

  “Well, I’d heard of Black Stallion Studios. But the rest, I had no clue.” Not that it mattered. Roman shoveled his now cold scrambled eggs into his mouth, none of the flavor registering.

  “I would have thought that having him as your professor would have made you happy. You get to see him again and—”

  “First day, he held me after class and flat-out told me nothing else was going to happen.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said sure... and then I backed him up against the door and kissed him.”

  Moses held his hand up for a fist bump, but Roman left him hanging.

  “And ever since then, he’ll barely look at me in class. I’m in the first fucking row, and it’s like a cloak of invisibility has wrapped around me.”

  “Maybe you need to back him up against the wall and show him what little Roman can do for him.”

  Roman rolled his
eyes. “You don’t get it. He wants nothing to do with me.”

  “You can’t give up. Not that easily.”

  “I’m not forcing a guy to be with me who doesn’t want me around. There are plenty of other guys out there.”

  Unfortunately, none of them had snagged Roman’s heart the way the professor had.

  “I gotta go. I’ve got a long day ahead of me. Sober up. Then you can come by and help.” Roman shoved his remaining breakfast Moses’ way.

  “Volunteer?” Moses glanced up at him, pure horror on his face. He crossed his fingers in front of him and hissed. “Back, evil one.”

  Chuckling, Roman said, “That’s what I figured.”

  Roman hopped in his car and threaded his way through traffic. That early on a Saturday morning, it wasn’t too hellish. He parked and used the key Grant had given him earlier in the week to let himself into the Center. He headed for the break room and the coffee he knew Grant would have brewing in there.

  He turned the corner and came up short at the sight of Demetri sitting at the table in shorts and an old paint-stained T-shirt, his hair still mussed up from sleep as he sucked on a mug of coffee.

  Grant turned away from the coffee maker, a fresh mug in his hand. “Oh, hey.” He handed the mug to Roman. “Meet Demetri. He volunteered to help with the project.”

  “Yeah,” Demetri said, conspicuously avoiding eye contact. “We’ve met.”

  Grant glanced between the two of them, the air in the room thick with a vibe Roman couldn’t even begin to describe, though Grant picked up on it right away.

  “Is there going to be a problem?” Grant asked.

  “Not for me.” Demetri watched as Roman took the chair directly across from him, putting himself in Demetri’s direct line of sight.

  Roman’s gaze flicked Demetri’s way and then landed on Grant. “No. Everything is copacetic.”

  “Great.” Grant filled his mug, claiming the chair at the head of the table. He pulled some papers out of a manila folder and splayed them out on the table. “Let’s get started then.”

  Grant had several lists of items to be tackled. Roman had driven by the lot earlier in the week. They had to accomplish a lot before the kids could get involved.