Kings of Hearts (An M/M/M Romance Novel)

by Candice Blake

  “I guess I forgot to eat,” he said, clutching his stomach.

  “We were in the study for so long that I hadn’t realized what time it was. Shall we eat?”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” Adrian said.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I had been so focused in my study.

  Chapter Seven

  Adrian

  “Wake up, Adrian,” the professor called out from downstairs. “You’re going to be late for class.”

  I put a pillow over my face to drown out his voice and the light coming in through the window. I remembered why I hated school, it was because I had to commit to actually showing up, on time.

  “Let’s go,” he called out again, this time he was at the door, already in a white button up, and his usual brown framed glasses. “I set some clothes out for you to wear, and breakfast is waiting for you downstairs.”

  I wasn’t used to this kind of treatment at Dominic’s club.

  I rolled out of bed and put on the clothes he set out. I looked so nerdy in the oxford shirt he wanted me to wear. I was reluctant to even try it on when we went shopping to buy clothes that’d be suitable for me to wear as a teaching assistant, whatever that meant.

  I brushed my teeth quickly, and fixed my hair and headed down to meet him.

  The professor was transferring the plate of eggs and bacon into a container.

  “You can eat this in the car,” he said.

  “I can’t believe you made breakfast for me…thanks,” I said.

  “Didn’t your parents do the same growing up?”

  I thought back to the last time I saw my parents before I went to university.

  “They were always so busy with work that they never had time for me growing up,” I said. “So naturally, I had to do everything myself.”

  “Well, you better get used to it. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And if you want to be a good teaching assistant, you’ll have to be in tip-top shape.”

  He walked around the kitchen island and handed me a cup of coffee. “Chug it,” he said.

  He ruffled my hair, and I jerked my head away. I was a bit pissed off that he messed up the ten seconds of work it took for me to get it right.

  We headed to the front of his house, and the professor set his alarm system. Then we walked into the garage.

  I was amazed. In front of me were two beautiful cars--white Ferraris. One was a current model that I had never even seen before. The other looked retro like it had been preserved for many years.

  “Which one do you want to ride in today?” He asked.

  “Let’s go with this one,” I said, pointing to the beautiful futuristic car.

  I hopped into the passenger seat and ran my hands along the delicate detailing inside. The car still had that new car smell.

  “I had no idea you’d have such sweet cars,” I said.

  The professor scoffed as if he’d heard that before. “What? Just because I’m a professor doesn’t mean I can’t flex once in a while?”

  He accelerated the white Ferrari to prove his point, and my body pushed back against the seat from the speed.

  My heart pounded as we drove down the empty stretch of road. It gave me one of those adrenaline rushes that I got when I was bluffing a good hand in poker.

  I glanced over and looked at the professor, who had a smirk on his face.

  He had one hand on the top of his steering wheel, his biceps flexing, with the wedding band still on his finger. He bit his lip every time he accelerated and I could smell his strong scent of musk every time he did.

  I felt safe in his car. Though I never expected him to drive a car like that, it made sense to me after I saw how strong and powerful he looked in the driver’s seat.

  “Tell me a bit about yourself,” Sawyer said. “You have a girlfriend? Boyfriend?” Sawyer asked.

  “Nope, I have enough trouble taking care of myself, let alone somebody else,” I said.

  It was the half-truth. I was still figuring out my sexuality.

  I had dabbled in relationships with girls in high school but it was never fulfilling for me.

  “Not many people ask that question like that,” I said. “Asking if I have a girlfriend, followed by boyfriend.”

  “You never know nowadays. I guess it’s because I’m a prof and most kids in universities are pretty liberal.”

  “Do you think there’s anything wrong with being gay?” I asked, looking at the professor.

  His eyes were focused on the road. “Not at all, love is love, and you should be able to love whoever you want.”

  I had never been able to talk to someone older than me who was understanding like that.

  Hell, even with Dominic, I never really felt comfortable talking about relationship stuff. It was all about poker.

  We arrived at the campus that I thought I’d never have to go back to.

  It was a beautiful campus. Overgrown trees, glass and concrete buildings. Scattered between the modern buildings were magnificent stone fortresses that had been converted into residences and classrooms.

  Eager students with backpacks were walking briskly to class.

  The professor must have noticed the worried look on my face because he had reached over to squeeze my thigh. His warm and large hands massaged my leg for a brief second. “You’ll be alright, buddy. I believe in you.”

  I didn’t remember the last time I had been touched so lovingly.

  Though his firm grip felt a bit possessive, his words felt sincere.

  I believe in you.

  It played in my head over and over in his deep voice. I couldn’t help but smile as we parked and walked into the Mathematics building.

  I followed Sawyer, his dress shoes clicking on the concrete floors.

  It took two of my steps for every stride he took because he was so tall. He waved to other professors as he walked by, and they bowed their heads to him.

  His posture commanded respect and attention, and I tried to mimic it, but it felt awkward, especially in the clothes that I wasn’t used to wearing.

  We stepped into the lecture hall and were immediately met with the eyes of a few hundred students. I swallowed the lump in my throat. God, they all looked so much older than me.

  I sat down in one of the empty chairs in the front row, and the professor walked up on stage. He put his briefcase behind the podium. He organized his notes on the stand.

  “Good morning, everyone,” Sawyer said, addressing the lecture hall. “I’d like to introduce everyone to our new teaching assistant for this class. Adrian will be joining us for the rest of the semester. I will send out an email later this week to provide his contact information.”

  He gestured for me to stand up, and my palms started to sweat. I stood up from my seat slowly and turned around, waving at everyone, then sat down again quickly.

  I felt like a fraud, a first-year dropout, being a teaching assistant for third-year students.

  The professor was wrong about me, I wasn’t capable of doing it. I was only going to disappoint him like I did everyone else in my life.

  I watched Sawyer start his lecture on Differential Geometry.

  He didn’t need a microphone in the lecture hall, he projected his deep voice so that everyone could hear him. There wasn’t even one mistake or stutter in his lecture.

  Everything was eloquently presented. His writing on the whiteboard was almost computer-like in how neat it looked.

  I could see other students put all their attention on him.

  I understood why other people respected him so much. It was because Sawyer had dedicated his whole life to his love for math, which was something I couldn’t do myself.

  I sat uncomfortably in my seat, shifting from side to side in the cramped chair.

  There was a reason why I left, I hated doing one thing for a long period of time.

  Even in online poker, I was used to having four games open at once. Playing live was hard for me because it required foc
used attention on one game.

  The professor shot me glances once in a while, probably noticing how fidgety I was.

  I hated how I was supposed to be an example for the class. I tried my best to stay still until the class was over.

  By the end, I was ready to leave, but then a student approached me with a notebook in her hand.

  “Excuse me, your name is Adrian, right?”

  I nodded at the blonde girl. “Yeah.”

  “Can you help me with a problem I have with the last set of practice questions?”

  I adjusted the collar of my shirt. “I can try.”

  She showed me the question written down in her notebook, and the equations she tried to get to the answer.

  I looked at it and tried to figure out where she went wrong. “You forgot to carry this number into the new formula,” I said, noticing her mistake immediately.

  She looked at the part I was referring to, and then smiled. “Wow, thanks, I would have never found that.”

  I pulled a tight smile on my face. From my periphery, I could see Sawyer’s eyes on me. He was talking to a group of students who were crowding around him.

  When I looked over at him, he had a proud smile on his face.

  Still, I knew he had no idea that I wasn’t the person he thought I was. There was part of me that wanted to prove to him how wrong he was. I didn’t have the kind of drive needed to be in an environment like this.

  The remaining students, keeners, waited their turn to talk to Sawyer until there was no one left in there except him and me.

  “What did you think of that?” He asked, rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt, to show his hairy forearms.

  “It was alright, harder than I thought,” I said.

  “What was hard about it?”

  “Sitting still.”

  “I noticed, well it’ll get easier, and I saw that you even got some attention from a girl in the class.”

  “What? I was helping her with a question,” I said.

  “You sure about that? Cute blonde girl asking for your help on a math problem. Sounds like the start of a budding romance,” he teased.

  His deep voice echoed in the large hall.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  The professor sat down on the edge of the stage, directly across from the front row seat that I was in.

  Our eyes met without saying anything, and I was feeling so many emotions that I’d never felt before.

  It was confusing because I had so much respect for him, and he had been so kind to take me in and give me a job as a teaching assistant. But I couldn’t help but think about how powerful he’d looked in his white Ferrari, and during his lecture on stage.

  Was it because I wanted to be him? Or was it because I wanted him?

  When I realized that I had been stuck in a thinking daze, I looked away shyly and felt my cheeks heat up.

  The professor walked up to me with a smirk. He paused when was close, his bulge was at eye level, and I could feel the heat coming from his body.

  The smell of his musk was powerful.

  I looked up at him, unsure of how to feel. My heart started beating quickly from all the sensations I was feeling.

  “You did a good job,” he said, reaching down and squeezing me on the shoulder.

  “Th…thanks,” I said.

  “Come on, I’ll show you my office. We’ll probably be spending a lot of time there during office hours for my research.”

  I couldn’t help but wonder if the professor was testing me.

  He was hard to read, and it was obvious that he could remain stoic from when he played poker in the past.

  I stood up and adjusted the bulge in my pants when he wasn’t looking and followed him.

  I wondered if he had me figured out, even though I had no idea who I was myself.

  Chapter Eight

  Sawyer

  I was driving home from a meeting. On the way home, I’d picked up some rotisserie chicken, which I found out was Adrian’s favorite.

  When I stepped inside my house, most of the lights were turned off except for the one in the kitchen and Adrian’s room upstairs.

  “Adrian?” I called out. “I have a surprise for you.”

  I put the takeout on the kitchen counter, and I walked upstairs.

  I expected him to be in my study working on the research. But when I got up there, I noticed that the lights were off in the study. I could smell a sweet scent as I made my way closer to Adrian’s room, where only his lamp was turned on.

  The closer I got, the more I could hear sounds coming from his room. I was confused about what it was, so I walked closer, and I could hear the sounds of men moaning.

  I poked my head from the door into Adrian’s room, and there was a laptop on his bed, playing gay porn.

  Adrian was on the bed, naked.

  He couldn’t see me as he was stroking himself. I quickly looked away, feeling embarrassed by what I was watching. But I couldn’t help but bring my eyes back to the strapping young man on the bed, with lean muscle, pleasuring himself.

  I felt pressure in my pants, and when I looked down, I was hard.

  I wasn’t sure if it was because I was aroused from watching him, or if it was because of how fast my heart was racing.

  He stroked himself faster, the mattress creaking under the weight of his body.

  I wanted to head back downstairs and pretend like I hadn’t seen any of that. But I couldn’t, there was something about what was happening that was so wrong that it was hard to turn away.

  He stroked himself faster, the porn playing on the laptop got more hard-core. Then, I watched semen erupt from his cock all over the sheets that I’d washed the day before.

  The sweet scent that I smelled was so strong that it made me lick my lips.

  I was confused. I’d never been turned on by another man before. But I was starting to feel things with him that made me question everything.

  Before he opened his eyes again, I quietly walked downstairs and sat down on the couch, trying to process my emotions.

  After a while, I heard the shower running upstairs.

  There was a part of me that was so captivated by that sweet smell of Adrian’s semen. I couldn’t stop myself from going back upstairs to get more of it.

  I tried to fight the urge, knowing how wrong it was, how out of character it was for me to have accidentally seen what I did. But that couldn’t stop me from going up.

  Adrian was in the bathroom, and I heard him humming a tune in the shower.

  I walked into his bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed, taking in his sweet scent. I could see the mess of wet semen all over the white sheets.

  I looked down to see the tent I was pitching in my trousers.

  It’d been so long since I even thought about sex after my wife died that I hadn’t realized how sexually frustrated I was. I brought the sheets to my face, and could smell a hint of his sweat, but mostly the sweetness of his come.

  I closed my eyes and took it in, reaching down to adjust my hard-on in my pants.

  In my daze, I hadn’t realized that Adrian was now the one looking inside from the hallway. His body was dripping wet with nothing but a towel slung around his slender waist.

  “What…are you doing?” He asked.

  I quickly dropped the comforter in my hands, and stood up, not realizing that he’d be able to see how hard I was.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just wanted to see if I needed to wash your sheets. That’s all.”

  I could see his cheeks get red, and from the years of poker, I was good at remaining stoic.

  “Well, do they need to be washed?” He asked, walking into the room.

  I was shocked at his response. He was trying to one-up me and I wasn’t going to let him.

  “Yes, I’m thinking you should start taking on some more responsibility around here. I’ll show you how to use the washing machine.”

  Adrian cast his eyes
down to my bulge, as he made his way into the room to the dresser.

  He turned and dropped his towel on the floor revealing his toned ass and back.

  Did he know that I had watched him get off?

  He reached into the dresser and pulled out a pair of underwear that he put on. Then he turned back around to face me.

  “I…want you to know that we have doors in this house and that you’re welcome to use them.”

  “I’m not used to closing doors in the place I used to live. But I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.

  I could feel myself leak pre-come in my pants.

  What was this young man doing to me?

  “I brought home chicken from your favorite restaurant on the way home,” I said. “I’ll meet you downstairs in the kitchen.”

  He nodded and I left his room, making a point to close the door to his room.

  I was sure that he wanted me to catch him in the act of pleasuring himself. He was trying to test me to see what I would do.

  Like the poker player he was, he was trying to see what my move was, and I wasn’t going to let him win. Sure, he won that hand, but he was not going to win the game.

  A few moments later, he came down, wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants. I handed him the plate of food that I prepared for him.

  *****

  It’d been a week since the incident in Adrian’s room. We didn’t talk about it, but it was definitely in the back of both our minds.

  It was late in the evening. I was just coming from the airport after a trip to present a lecture at another university. I was exhausted, and I was having one of those days where I just wanted to go back to the comfort of my home.

  When I pulled up, I noticed that all the lights in my place were turned on, and I could hear the muffled sounds of music. I pulled into my driveway and walked up the front steps into my home where I noticed that the door was unlocked.

  I was horrified to see that there was a party going on in my house. Some of them were my students. They were holding drinks in their hand, expensive crystal wine glasses that even I didn’t drink out of.

  I shook my head in disbelief, and I walked through the crowds of people.