Club Read online
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Epilogue
Table of Contents
Club
Copyright & Credits
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Epilogue
About the Authors
Other Books by these Authors
Club
A Gay BDSM Romance
by
Alec Stark and Parker Avrile
♫♫♫
A student seeking a gay fight club uncovers a hidden world of kink.
Nick isn't just another rich kid partying away his senior year of college. He's ready to prove he's tough enough for Brayden's twisted games, if only the mysterious professor will give him half a chance.
Brayden is well aware of the rumors that follow him all over campus and beyond—rumors that are only a pale reflection of the kinky reality. Nick has no idea what he's asking for. When he learns the truth, will he decide Brayden's too hot to handle?
Copyright & Credits
All Rights Reserved
Text & Cover Design © 2017 Paris April Press
Editing by Ellison Dream
Model © artofphoto via Can Stock Photo
Bokeh Photo © tommyvideo via Pixabay under a CCO license
Except for brief passages quoted for reviews and/or recommendations in magazine, radio, or blog posts, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to anyone, any time, or any place is not intended and is merely coincidental. The cover model appears for illustration purposes only and has no relationship to any events in this story. Brief mentions of real persons, places, or products are used fictitiously and in accordance with fair use. All trademarks remain the properties of their owners.
Parker Avrile offers a free spicy bondage & role-playing story called, “The Cabin,” to new members of the Parker Avrile Reader's Group. Sign up right here for your chance to read free stories and get the latest information on our sales and new releases.
Chapter One
There might have been Jägermeister involved when I was writing that paper. That's what spell check was for.
And yet somehow Dr. Morrison didn't look all that enthused to call me into his office. “Nicholas.” Uh oh. It's never good when anybody makes a point of enunciating all three syllables of my first name. “I honestly expected something better from you after our last meeting.”
The battered wooden chair in front of his desk was hand-picked to make it uncomfortable for you to slouch, the better to force you to sit up all attentive and concerned about your shitty grades.
“Me teacher, you student,” was Morrison's message. “Sit down, shut up, and listen for a change.”
Fuck the chair. I found a way to slump with my knees spread wide and my arms hanging down. An “ask me if I give a flying” pose. I'm long and tall, so there was a lot of me to sprawl all over the place. My slightly too-shaggy hair was deliberately loose and long. The troubled genius look.
My senior thesis advisor should go for that one.
And, indeed, when I leaned back, Morrison leaned forward. He was sweating more than I was. That's because my grandfather was Nicholas Pembroke Kensington the First, and the name of the building we were sitting in was called—wait for it—the Nicholas Pembroke Kensington Building. There was a lot of silver in that hidden valley in southwest New Mexico, at least before my great-grandfather found it.
“Your final paper was supposed to be a softball. We're three weeks from graduation, and nobody wants to see you fail.”
“I honestly thought it wasn't that bad, sir.”
Projecting plenty of attitude seemed like my best shot for bluffing my way through. Morrison had nothing to gain from getting called on the carpet by the dean for flunking the son of the school's biggest benefactor. Still, even if I refused to show it, I couldn't help but be a little concerned.
What would I tell my father if I wasn't walking across that stage to pick up my diploma on June fourth? How stupid-ass would it be to flunk out as a 21-year-old senior?
Play it chilly. You're a polar bear on an iceberg. Cucumber cool and in control.
“Nic, Nic, Nic.” Morrison propped his elbows on his glossy desk and steepled his hands together before he addressed his next words to a spot on the ceiling somewhere over my head. “You know and I know this paper does not represent the best effort of a senior about to graduate from Sunderline College.”
He was calling my bluff. The chilly-ass polar bear was on a climate change iceberg that was melting out from under him.
Fuck.
I tried not to sit up a little taller, but I probably did. “If you could suggest some areas where I might make some improvements, sir, I would be happy to do some revising.”
I almost lifted a hand to wipe my longish bangs out of my eyes, but I stopped myself just in time.
Groveling is not cool. Polar bears do not grovel.
He looked down at my paper and slowly shook his head. “It's the raised expectations that lead to the crushing disappointment, I think. When I read a title like, ‘Fight Club Twenty Years Later: Is Its Vision of Masculinity Still Relevant in a World of Eternal War?’ then I expect something bold and meaty.”
Superior asshole.
Deep breaths. You are Nicholas Pembroke Kensington the Third, and he's not.
“You said you were going to interview some men actually involved in a local Fight Club. What happened to that?”
My face felt hot. I'd meant to do it. I'd wanted to do it.
Somehow, though, I hadn't been able to find the time to go through with it. That guy, that Brayden Brent, the one who was rumored to be the head of the Fight Club... There was something scary about that guy. Something unapproachable. He had a look that made me swallow hard every time I thought about introducing myself.
It wasn't just the body, although that broad body could certainly intimidate. But I put in my daily hour in the weight room too. At six foot one, I wasn't as tall as Dr. Brent, but I bet I moved a lot faster.
Maybe it was the eyes—the piercing golden eyes of an eagle. Normal men didn't possess such eyes.
“I'm giving you one more chance.” Morrison tapped a leaky ballpoint pen against the title page of my paper. Red ink, of course. Drip, drip, drip, it spread like blood in a small puddle before it began to seep into my magnum opus.
“Forget this mess. Start from scratch.” He dropped the pen to pick up the bloodied paper
with both hands. I didn't envy the person in charge of maintaining the polish on that glossy desk. “Bring me something worthy of your education. Something that surprises. You have two weeks. Go.”
The sound of the pages ripping in half followed me out of his office.
Chapter Two
I blinked in the dim interior of the kind of gym that smelled like sweat and old socks. Even the sounds were male—the harsh grunt of physical effort, the thud of a glove against flesh. My footsteps rang out on the hardwood floor, but nobody spared me a glance.
The two men in the ring wore mouth guards, boxing gloves, and an abundance of ink. I paused for a moment to consider the broad canvas of the chiseled back of the man turned away from me. It was an intricate work of art, and I couldn't make out all the elements under the gloss of sweat and motion. Something about the mountains, something about a pair of eagles clutching each other with talons locked...
The left sleeve was a dragon coiled, the right a flock of migratory hawks. I knew they were migratory, because it was the only time you saw so many hawks flying together in formation without challenging each other. What I didn't know was what it all meant.
I knew who it meant, though.
Brayden Brent. An adjunct professor who taught a class on the influence of the American blues on modern pop music—a class in music history attended by no more than twenty or twenty-five students a semester. I wasn't one of them.
And yet I knew exactly what he looked like striding across campus with his shirt sleeves casually pushed up to reveal the ink on those powerful arms. Everybody did. Six foot four, shoulders forever straining the lines of his off-the-rack jackets, dark hair clipped short to put the focus on the golden eyes. I'd seen the coil of the dragon's tail but not its fire-breathing head. I'd seen the rising kettle of hawks lifting into their thermal, but not the flock entire.
I didn't know the other man. A townie, I thought. Maybe even a semi-pro boxer from the power and speed of the blows they exchanged.
The ink on the townie's arms was random, even amateurish. The kind of scribble a bored man drilled into his own skin during an unplanned vacation from society.
None of that stuff matters in the ring. All that matters is physical power.
This is the place. This is what I'm looking for.
Townie feinted for Dr. Brent's belly before trying for an uppercut to the jaw. Brent grunted from the effort of blocking the blow.
So. Not a hella good time to interrupt the esteemed professor. It didn't really look like a good time to breathe too hard.
This is it, the real deal. This is Brayden Brent training for his Fight Club.
Brent went on the offensive with a series of punches the townie blocked almost as easily as Brent had blocked the uppercut to the jaw. Nobody was giving anything away, and nobody was landing any blows. An even match.
A lot of grunting. A lot of testing and positioning.
In an actual fight, the yahoos would already be screaming, “Stop dancing, and start hitting.”
But it took more than raw animal power to win a fight. It took brains. The ability to make and implement lightning-fast decisions. It was a sport that punished bad decisions in the most direct possible way.
For a guy who didn't fight, I knew all about it.
What did I have to say to this guy? How fucking ridiculous was I going to sound in about ten minutes?
Deep breaths. Chill. Polar bear on the iceberg.
It wasn't like I was approaching him cold. I'd talked to the boyfriend first. The ex-boyfriend. Royal Anders was in the English department, so I knew him a little better. Even took a class from him one semester. We weren't drinking buds or anything, but at a college this size, all the gay dudes tended to be aware of each other.
A year or so ago, Anders had shown up for his office hours boasting a sling and a smile. At that time, I didn't have the balls to ask him about it, but the rumors said he'd showed up at Brent's club and tried to fight. It made him cool for ten or twenty minutes, until everybody realized he was still the same guy who had a thing about George Elliot.
Now that I was a senior less than a month away from graduation, it was easier to talk to Dr. Anders, or at least it should have been. There was a little smirky smile that kept flickering across his face when he heard what I wanted to talk about.
“Fight Club, yeah?” He steepled his hands and looked at the ceiling, as if there was some god up there who shared his amusement. Professors seemed to do that a lot around me these days. “People are still spreading those rumors?”
“I guess, sir. I realize the first rule of Fight Club...”
“I fell on a slick spot on the sidewalk. You know. December? Mountains? Ice?” He was openly laughing now. Maybe I would've believed he did a little slip and slide, if not for that laugh, but he didn't even want me to believe it. “It's funny how a simple fall has elevated me to the status of campus legend. Is your paper going to be about modern urban myths?'
A campus legend in your own mind, dickweed.
He deigned to stop looking at the ceiling and instead gazed directly into my eyes. In the beat of silence, he was speaking without words, and I was getting the message.
I know something you don't know. I've tested myself in a way you haven't.
We understood each other just fine, and mainly I understood he was fucking me around because he thought I was a cream puff.
“Give me something here.” I wasn't backing down. Not this time. “I want to talk to Brayden Brent.”
“He has office hours after his class on Tuesday and Thursday. You can look it up.”
“You know I don't mean that.”
“Have you checked the gym?”
The rolling green campus of our storied college features an expensive and extensive gymnasium complete with swimming pool, sauna, and the ability to book appointments with a massage therapist and your choice of personal trainers. That's some of what your eighty thousand dollars a year tuition was paying for. I mean, don't imagine Sunderline College was any all-inclusive resort. You still had to pay for the massage therapist and the trainer out of your own funds. Not to mention the skin treatments.
“I'm there every day, me and my roommate both,” I said. “I've never run into Dr. Brent.”
“I meant his gym.” That smile again. “I can give you the address, but you might not be ready for what happens there.”
Was he suggesting that Brayden Brent would expect me to fight? Was it going to be that easy?
If I joined an actual Fight Club and got involved in an actual honest-to-god exchange of fisticuffs, I would almost have to get an automatic A. Dr. Morrison would be thrilled down to his toes. Never mind how I might feel about it. Ignore that tingle in my spine. My senior thesis was the reason—the only reason—I wanted to fight.
Or so I told myself. It had nothing to do with the idea of having Brayden Brent's eagle eyes focused entirely on me. Of throwing a punch and having it blocked and somehow Brayden had flipped me around and...
Nothing to do with anything like that. Nope. No way.
“Please don't underestimate me, sir. I'm definitely ready. I'll give you an acknowledgment in my paper if you share that information, sir.”
Anders laughed once more. “Oh, hell no. I'm only sharing this information if you make a point of leaving my name out of it.”
Ninety minutes later, I'd made my way to a shitty gym in a former strip mall in a skeevy part of town literally located on the wrong side of the abandoned railroad tracks. Some guys outside were playing a pickup game that involved much profanity. I made a point of not glancing their way as I hurried inside.
Now I did stare, unable to stop myself. The ripple of those muscles, the reach of Brayden Brent's long arms...
I must have walked closer than I meant to. Suddenly, Brayden lifted his eyes to my face, the faintest flicker of distraction. His opponent, as fast as a cobra striking, took advantage of the opening to slam him in the jaw.
Brayden, his att
ention snapped back to the task at hand, slammed the other guy back. Once, twice, three times.
The ferocity of the blows startled me. I'd been to my share of boxing matches, but somehow it didn't seem as real when it was a performance taking place in a public space. I knew people got hurt in the ring, everybody knows that, but there's always that feeling of theater. Here, behind the scenes, the smack of glove against skin was louder somehow.
That strike to Dr. Brent's jaw was going to leave a bruise.
At any minute, I was going to have to explain what the fuck I was doing here.
Suddenly, I felt silly.
This is real. He got hit. Because of me.
Did I really want to stand here and explain how I was planning to write a senior thesis about the relevance of Fight Clubs to the twenty-first century?
Suddenly, I felt kinda stupid. Kinda small.
I scurried out of the gym. “Scurry” was a shameful word, but it was the right word. Next to Brayden Brent, I was more mouse than man.
Outside, the pickup game was over, and money was exchanging hands. Again, I avoided glancing that way, but I couldn't help seeing out of the corner of my eye.
I didn't belong on this side of the tracks. Nobody looked my way when I drove off.
Chapter Three
Frats were banned at Sunderline College. So was hazing. All the more reason for my roommate James and I to be fascinated with other ways of testing ourselves.
“We should start our own Fight Club,” one of us would say over beer, and we'd tap our mugs together.
“Yeah, man, we should definitely do that.”
We didn't, though. Sunderline, a school without a football team, viewed itself as one of those elite institutions that embodied progressive ideals. I sometimes wonder how I would have made it through four years at this place without James. We were sort of a two-man throwback to the caveman era.
James, by the way, hadn't been a Jimmy since fifth grade, and he'd never been a Jim. Picture a sandy-haired giant with big teeth the eye-piercing white of polar ice, and you've got a pretty good idea of what he looks like.
He went through that bro phase of reading the Stoics and sleeping on the floor, until I pointed out I was tired of stepping on him in the morning.