You May Have Met Him Read online

  You May Have Met Him

  Sebastian Carter

  Amelia Clarke

  Devyn Morgan

  Debrah Deumont

  Beau Bishop

  Amanda Young

  Sebastian Carter

  Contents

  Just One Night

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  Fireworks

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Friends Like You

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Positive Reinforcement

  Positive Reinforcement

  Taboo Desires

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Hot Pursuit

  Chris

  Matt

  Chris

  Matt

  Chris

  Matt

  About the Authors

  About Amelia Clarke

  Also by Amelia Clarke:

  About Amanda Young

  About Debrah Deumont

  About Beau Bishop

  About Sebastian Carter

  Copyright © 2016 by Sebastian Carter

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Sebastian Carter, Chicago, IL.

  * * *

  The books included in this volume belong to their original authors and are reproduced here with the express permission of those authors.

  Just One Night

  Sebastian Carter

  Prologue

  Theo

  When Theo got home, he found Reid, his ex-fiancé, in bed with his new boyfriend.

  They both saw Theo at the same time. He stood in the doorway in a moment of shock and anger, and the new boyfriend buried his face into Reid’s neck and giggled. Reid stood up naked from the bed, grabbed a white, pressed Oxford from the back of a chair and put it on while his new lover lay disheveled in the bed that Theo and Reid once shared.

  “Hey, Theo,” the lover said. His name was something like Lance or Larry. Theo met him at a Christmas party for Reid’s law firm. “Sorry.” He reached over and grabbed his phone from the nightstand.

  Theo ignored him. He only glared at Reid.

  Coming home was something that Theo had put off for as long as possible. He browsed the magazine rack in a bookstore near his train stop. He stood in line at a coffee shop and ordered a latte. He even stopped to listen to a mediocre street performer playing a guitar and singing blues songs, even though he wasn't very good. Theo had just been to the gym, and he smelled of sweat. His hair was damp with it, and he still wore the thin workout shorts and a tank top that got him more than a few longing stares from strangers on his extended walk-around. All he really wanted was to take a shower.

  But Reid had messaged him to say he had an early dinner with clients. He thought at the time he might avoid him altogether.

  He never expected this. It turned out he was right to stay away for so long.

  He stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets. Theo knew this should piss him off. When it came down to it, sure, he was pissed off. He should slam doors and push Reid’s boy toy up against the wall while he threatened to kick his ass on the way out the front door. He should want to cry, but the crying had already happened.

  He’d been pissed off for weeks now, and it took more energy out of him than he was willing to spare.

  Really, seeing them like this made Theo feel small, powerless. Reid had his special way of doing that. It was one thing to know Reid was cheating—and he’d known for a few weeks now. It was another to actually see it on display on top of the unmade bed. But he thought maybe Reid would have the courtesy not to do it in the bed that they shared—at least until after he moved out next week. It was three weeks ago now that Reid had served him with an eviction notice.

  Yes, an actual notice. Their entire relationship was reduced to a notice dripping in cold legalese that boiled down to You have thirty days to vacate the premises, after two years together and an engagement that Theo had sprung on him in May of last year.

  Theo got the news that Reid was fucking his new assistant a month before that. In retrospect, he probably should have suspected something was up when Reid didn’t immediately try to serve him with a prenuptial agreement. Reid was a lawyer. Everything happened on paper and in a legally sound way. But instead of the prenup, Theo got an official eviction that left him scrambling to find a new place to live—and scraping for the money needed to make such a move.

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t be home,” Theo said to Reid. God, he sounded weak.

  Reid stood at the armoire. He still wore no pants beneath the white button-up shirt. There was a time when the sight of this man dressed—or not dressed—in this way would stand his cock up straight to tap on his stomach and demand attention. And Reid used to react the same way.

  Those times left them both behind, a lost history.

  “We didn’t expect to be here,” Reid said. “Client meeting didn't take as long as we thought.” He worked at the cuff links on his shirt. Finally, he looked at Theo, the gray eyes that used to tease his heartbeat and quicken his breath, they were different.

  Indifferent.

  He went into the closet. Lance or Larry glanced up from his phone at Theo. Then Reid emerged with a suit that he laid out on the foot of the bed. The navy blue suit with the pinstripes that Theo remembered him wearing the night they went out for seafood and shared oysters on the half shell, Reid whispering in Theo’s ear that they were an aphrodisiac, and they spent most of that night proving it.

  Reid fixed Theo with a stare as he unclipped the pants from the hanger and pulled them on. “Is there something you need?”

  He felt stupid still standing there, watching them. “I have to get ready for work,” Theo said.

  Reid sneered and shook his head as he tucked his shirttails into the waist of his pants. “You mean your,” and Reid made air quotes, “campus copy-shop job?”

  Lance or Larry strode by Theo, naked without apology, and he went into the bathroom and closed the door. Theo could hear him peeing and humming to himself.

  Theo only glared at Reid. He did, in fact, have a campus job. A student job. He was still a student after seven years at it. Two days a week, he sat in the copy room on DePaul’s Lincoln Park campus and made copies for students who were always in a rush to turn a paper into whatever class they’d put off until the last minute. It was a job that made him miserable, a job that was beneath him.

  But Theo had a new second job, one nearly as boring as the copy shop but that required less clothing. He stood for four-hour shifts in front of a clothing store, Bartleby & Hitch, one of those hip shops that sold a lot of the same clothes you
could buy at a thrift store, but for seriously jacked-up prices. His job was to stand there, shirtless, and greet customers.

  And he thought that the copy-room job was beneath him.

  He didn’t mind the attention. It was a lot of teenage girls running up to him in giggles and dares and taking selfies. Every now and then, someone would ask about something in the store, but most days, it was nothing more than standing out in the mall, his skin made to goose flesh by the air conditioning while he tried his best not to look too bored. He told people it was a modeling job. He needed the money. He took the job for that reason only after Reid gave him notice.

  When Lance or Larry came out of the bathroom again, he looked between Theo and Reid, and he moved between them to grab his pants from the floor. Theo stripped off his shirt and tossed it on the floor. Reid’s eyes were on him as he walked toward the bathroom, but he was pretty sure Reid wasn’t watching him out of any rekindled desire.

  “Do you have to leave that on the floor?”

  “I’ll get it later.” Theo didn’t even turn back to look at Reid as he went into the bathroom.

  “Are all strippers this messy?”

  Theo turned to shoot Reid an angry face. Reid didn’t return his stare. And that was that. Theo was dismissed.

  Fucking asshole.

  But he said nothing. He didn’t want to give Reid the satisfaction. That had become the norm for their conversations of late, so often that Theo had grown a kind of armor against it.

  As Theo stood at the counter in their en-suite bathroom, Reid appeared in the doorway, now fully dressed, tucked, and buttoned up. “You will be out by next Wednesday, right? We’ll be home by then.”

  Theo stared at him in the mirror. “I said I would be.”

  Reid nodded, his mouth a thin, severe line that reminded Theo too much of his father. Had he ever felt any sort of love for this man? But even as he fielded that question in his head, he knew that he had. It was there, early in their relationship. It was still there in the stab of pain in his heart that he tried so hard to ignore. With practice, ignoring it was getting easier.

  “Why? Is Larry moving in?” Theo turned to the shower and set the water to hot.

  “His name is Lane, and that’s really no longer any of your business, is it?” Reid said. “And you’re not sleeping around now?”

  Theo faced him. “Unlike you, I gave us a chance before testing my options.”

  “We talked about this, Theo. We haven’t been a real couple for six months now.”

  “Believe me, I’m aware.”

  Reid shrugged. “Then I don’t see a problem.”

  Theo crossed his arms as he stood there half-naked. He felt even more exposed than that. Somehow, Theo seemed to surround himself with men who needled ways to turn him into something lesser. He used to see Reid as a man in control, a man with power. Back then, it was a turn-on. Now it was just an annoyance.

  “I have to shower,” Theo said.

  Reid turned. “We’ll be gone when you get out.” He said over his shoulder, “I’ll be gone the rest of this weekend, so we won’t have this again. Please do us both a favor and stick to your word about Wednesday.”

  Theo slammed the bathroom door. Fuck him.

  After work, he didn’t want to go back to his apartment. It wasn’t his apartment anymore. Not really. Instead, he went to Boystown where he walked into a bar, a typical type of gay bar with a heavy music beat and guys gyrating on the dance floor.

  Guys stood in groups with their friends, not talking much because the music made conversation next to impossible. It was a place where introductions were shouted, guys leaning in to guys to say a name and offer a handshake that held on a little long. And still more said hello without words but by dancing up against a willing stranger.

  The air was smoky from the fog machine over the dance floor billowing a powdery haze down upon everyone and the guys vaping with electronic cigarettes as they stood in crowds, their chins tilted up to blow out smoggy fumes while swirling their drinks.

  Then there were the guys like him, the ones that moved through the crowds and gathers, guys on their own and looking. That’s what he was doing, make no mistake. Carousing. He was here for one thing—to let loose the tension from earlier. And it would happen. It always did.

  His shirt was open far enough to give a view of what his body had to offer—the light spread of dark-brown chest hair and the valley between the hard planes of his pectoral muscles. And the eyes of the guys passing him said they liked that peek from beneath the cotton fabric. It was an advertisement. He puffed his chest out like a promise: This is what you could have. A couple guys he passed bought in, and they reached out to touch with a coaxing growl in their throat. But they didn’t meet Theo’s standards. He waved their hands away with a forced smile and shooed them on their way.

  He wanted someone good, someone that might be a hot mistake.

  Most guys would see him as out of their league. He was used to this too. He considered it a good thing. A way to weed them out before they even approached. Then, there were those troll types who tried out of sheer desperation and that slim off-chance that a guy like him might be desperate enough to get his dick sucked, and their mouth, wet and willing, would be exactly the thing to do the trick. Those guys bought him drinks and sidled up to him with a leering smile and forward hands as if the drink entitled them to a free squeeze. Theo was definitely here to get his dick sucked, but not from them. He thanked them for the drinks, pushed away their hands, and walked on. Sometimes they cussed at him, but most of the time, they liked to watch him go, their faces filled with longing and lust. He didn’t blame them. He had a nice ass. He had pictures of it on Instagram with thousands of Likes and a ton of reposts on Tumblr. Guys had pictures of his naked torso and rock-hard abs posted to their virtual walls with captions such as “Goals!”

  Finally, his gaze landed on a guy on the dance floor. He was a little shorter than Theo’s 6’2”, and he moved well. Sensual, and Theo liked watching him from where he leaned against the bar.

  Another man moved in close enough that Theo could smell his sour breath. “Buy you a drink, gorgeous?”

  Theo ignored the guy who approached him, and he took a long sip of the drink he already had in his hand. He only had eyes for the dancer.

  The dancer had dark hair, and he had shed his shirt so that his well-formed pecs glistened in the lights that rolled and shot over the crowd. Guys like this one didn’t need shirts. He aroused Theo unbutton his own shirt the rest of the way and take it off to hang it from a belt loop on the back of his pants, and he strode onto the dance floor to move into his target’s field of view. That was all it took. As soon as the guy realized Theo watched him, he lifted his arms and bumped his hips in Theo’s direction until they stood well within each other’s personal space.

  Theo closed the gap, moving his crotch close enough to touch the dancer’s. The dancer put both his hands on Theo’s chest, and he moved them over to give Theo’s nipples a little squeeze. Just enough to move a little more blood to his dick, and he answered that squeeze by pushing his stiffening cock into the dancer’s thigh.

  The dancer grinned up at Theo, and a hand slid down Theo’s body to the front of his jeans where he gave Theo’s trapped cock a caress that left Theo’s mouth hanging open.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Theo yelled to him over the grinding beat of the music.

  The guy nodded, and he started off the dance floor, grabbing a hold of Theo’s hand to lead him along. Theo let himself be led.

  Once they were outside the bar, the guy bumped into Theo, still holding onto his hand. He wore a broad smile on his face. “Chip,” he said. “How are you?”

  “I’m great,” Theo said, returning a smile of his own. “Now, that is. Name’s Theo.” He slipped a hand behind Chip’s back and into the waistband of his jeans. “You were hot on the dance floor.”

  “You’re hot on and off the dance floor,” Chip said.

  Chip m
oved in close as they walked. He put a hand on Theo’s abs. “Jesus,” he said as he slid his hand over Theo’s skin and into the valleys created by the mound of his abdominal muscles. They were on the streets in Boystown. A lot of guys on the streets here walked arm in arm. None of them looked as good as Theo and Chip, but that only meant a lot of eyes were on him. And Theo liked the eyes that traveled over his body now bathed in the yellow-orange lights from the street lamps above.

  A passer-by grinned as he approached. “All right, now,” he said, and he stopped to stare at them as they walked by.

  The night air was warm. Chip’s skin up against his as they walked was like a firebrand pressed the length of his upper arm, a hot hand caressing the small of his back.

  “We can go back to my place,” Chip said.

  But Theo turned Chip into an alleyway where there was a small, dark alcove. It smelled dark and seedy, and to his surprise, not choked with the odor of urine. It fit the moment. “I don’t know if I can wait that long,” Theo said. He turned Chip around and pushed him up against the greasy, stained wall. There was something about being out, being in the open. Theo like the chance somebody could walk up on them to see it all. It turned him on, and his hard cock let that fact be known. He grabbed at Chip’s pants and pulled the top button open as he kissed Chip deep, pushing his tongue into his mouth to taste him.

  Chip’s hands worked their way down Theo’s body and slipped it inside his denim jeans, and he took a hold of Theo’s cock.

  “Jesus,” Chip said again when he pulled away. “There’s nothing small about you, is there?”

  “Why don’t you take a look?” Theo leaned back so that Chip could better get to the front of his pants.

  Chip opened the front of Theo’s jeans, and Theo hadn’t bothered to wear any underwear tonight. His cock sprang out into the night air. “Oh hell yeah,” Chip said, and he took hold of Theo’s hard dick and gave it a few good strokes that caused Theo’s breath to shudder.