Hold That Pose

By Devyn Morgan

Suave, well-traveled, and French, the 22 year old Etienne Devaux transferred to RIT for his last two years as a photography major. Even though he had traveled the world with his diplomat father and artist mother, the US is the first place where he feels truly at home. As a junior, he expected a private room, and is none too pleased to be stuck with a jock wrestler of a roommate.

John Hart studies business major on a wrestling scholarship, and is groomed to take part in his family’s papermill business. The tall, dark, and handsome roommate is an unexpected complication. He hoped for privacy. It’s bad enough to get hard while wrestling guys from all that adrenaline – and now he’ll have to watch himself even in his own room!

Except it’s impossible to hate Etienne. In fact, it’s impossible not to love him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Devyn Morgan
• Release date: Jan 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781540131720

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Hot summer air rushed out the door, hitting Etienne Duvaux right in the face with all the momentum a late, dry August could summon. He’d been warned the old RIT dorm’s air conditioning was currently on the fritz, but he sure didn’t expect his dorm room to be a hot, humid and stifling oven.

Merde. Cursing in French was safer, even this close to the US border with Canada. An ordinary shit would not have expressed his displeasure with the bleak, cinderblock room, its one pathetic window and scarred, heavy, wooden furniture. Two beds, two desks, and a built-in unit of double wardrobes indicated he’d be getting a roommate after all. This meant he’d have to compromise on turning this place habitable. He used to rent a little house when he’d been taking community college classes and working as a freelance photographer. This was not, by any means, a step up.

The institutional look of a dorm room was a whole flight of stairs down from that. His new home had about as much personality as the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, and his roommate would probably want some pop-star girlie posters.

He sighed, propped the door ajar, opened the window, and focused on the positive. He’d worked hard to be here, and now he’d get to finish his last two years of college in one of the best photography programs in the country. As long as his father worked at the French embassy in Washington, Etienne was allowed to stay in the country on a diplomatic visa. A visa he planned to turned into a student visa, and later into a green card.

His plan to stay in the US went over about as well as his plan to become a professional photographer. His parents didn’t cut him off, exactly – they just made sure he had extra hoops to jump through if he wanted to achieve his goal of living here, making a living by documenting his view of the world through the lens of his camera.

So far, the goal was within reach. Problem was, every time he got a bit closer, his parents drew a bit further away. He visited them – they never visited him. He sent them an occasional fabulous photograph – as far as he could tell, they didn’t even bother to visit his website.

It was sad, really – except he loved it here.

The air was cleaner, and when he stretched his arms far out, he could feel empty space far beyond his fingertips. Unlike his native Lille or the adopted Paris, even a small city like Rochester was a relatively empty place.

America wasn’t creepy and congested the same way Europe always struck him with its narrow, twisting streets and pavement of worn cobblestones. He could breathe free here, unencumbered by centuries of dead ancestors hovering over his shoulders. Their long-buried bones lay embedded underfoot, in forgotten catacombs, restless and needy. All that extra American space filled his lungs – and his mind – and released something special, something unexpected in his heart. A vision of beauty, snapshots of time and space he captured through his camera’s multitude of specialized lenses.

He made art. He knew it, although he had never had the hubris to call his photos that aloud. In his family, his Mamá was the artiste and his Papá was the diplomat, although he liked to call them Mom and Dad. They had accepted their new names the way they got used to him speaking English at home, albeit grudgingly.

They loved him.

Etienne grasped this one certitude of his life as he peered at the whitewashed cinder block walls and the scarred, blond pine furniture. His parents loved him so much, they didn’t insist on accompanying him to this horrid vision of a college campus, where the student riots of the 1970’s had governed the angular design of the sharp, uninviting corners of the campus buildings that had been designed to easily keep protestors at bay . They gave him freedom, letting him breathe that empty, clear air that came off Lake Erie. They let him savor settling in on his own, unaware that the temperature of his dorm room rivaled that of the Riviera, and that he wouldn’t have minded a bit of extra reassurance at this very moment.

Hey, are you my roommate?

The bright tenor resounded behind him, and Etienne stepped to the side, kicking his wheeled suitcase and coddling his oversized backpack full of camera equipment.

My room is 401, and my name is Etienne Duvaux. He scanned the boy – the amazingly gorgeous young man – that stood in the hallway with his parents in tow.

That’s your room, dear, the woman said. She tromboned the hand with a piece of paper that looked much like Etienne’s own official printout, and squinted. Yep, four-oh-one. It looks like they found you a roommate after all. She made it sound all positive and cheerful, but Etienne didn’t miss the irritated tension in his roommate’s shoulders.

I’m Etienne. It’s a pleasure to meet you. He extended his hand, leaning over it a bit just the way he’d been taught to do at his father’s functions. When their hands touched, Etienne squeezed just enough to form a strong, American handshake. John had no such restraint – he squeezed like a vice.

Etienne was taken aback, not quite suppressing a wince.

Johnny dear, mind your strength, his roommate’s mother said. Easy does it. But she didn’t look upset at her son’s strength.

Sorry, his roommate said. I’m John. John Hart. John shook his hand with fake enthusiasm. Etienne had been around politicians and their kids long enough to tell.

Well, John, Etienne said, not masking his French accent and perversely making his name sound like ‘Jean,’ I’m afraid our climate control is out of order, and I haven’t brought a fan. He’d rather die than admit that John’s handshake had overwhelmed him. It wasn’t like Etienne couldn’t squeeze hard. He could – except he wasn’t an immature asshole, and didn’t think this was a good time for dominant monkey training. This was a respected university, not a boarding school.

WHO did this guy think he was anyway? John looked up, assessing his narrow face dominated by large, round eyes above sharp cheekbones. His aquiline nose, a short beard cut to a short, disgustingly tidy scruff that stood in standing in sharp contrast to his own smooth skin. And his hair, just a bit too long, but obviously cut with an expert eye not long ago.

He was already prepared to hate the sonovabitch. Wasn’t it bad enough that he, as a junior, had to have a roommate? Why did the guy have to be so damn gorgeous? Aside from wanting space of his own, John wanted a single room because he liked his privacy. Two years of hiding his hard-ons and rubbing one out in the showers should’ve been enough – and sharing space with Etienne would make his rapid arousals extremely embarrassing. All he had wanted was a room where he could relax, and didn’t have to hide.

The last few years had been torture.

All the other wrestlers got hard too, he figured. At least, that’s what his high school coach had said that one time his teammates wouldn’t stop giving him grief over what happened in the showers. They all got hard from the adrenaline and the competition, it was perfectly normal, and nothing to be ashamed of. John learned to hope his situation was properly hidden under his athletic protector.

John had hoped he was going to grow out of it. Girls were a lot of fun. He fantasized about them, about their breasts and curves and soft, fragrant skin. He liked to talk to them and exchange phone numbers, and every so often he’d buy a girl a cup of coffee or an ice cream cone, and she’d grace him with her company.

He’d been kissed a few times, and it felt good, so he knew his body was working like it was supposed to. He got to touch the soft parts, hands sliding under soft shirts, undoing the feat of suspension engineering that was the bra. He’d ventured under the belt as well, the pinnacle of pleasure going both ways – but... but none of the girls he’d met meant more to him than being members of a mutual admiration society.

He wanted true love, a soulmate, a woman who’d match his wry humor with her wit, who’d join him in his ordained position as a head of a cardboard box company, and who’d understand that getting hard while wresting other guys was just a perfectly normal, physiological reaction to the sublime art of combat. Combat with other men, naturally.

John, his father said. You fellows decide which side of the room you want, and  then you can come downstairs and help with the luggage. He thrust the telescoping handle of a big, fuchsia suitcase into his hand.

The color had not been his choice. His mother had claimed it was the only large, wheeled suitcase on sale before his parent’s trip to Europe two years ago, and somehow, John got stuck with the awful monstrosity.

Thanks, he said, grabbing the handle. He looked the guy up and down again. Etienne, was it? What kind of a name was that? He was a bit taller and lankier than John. And he got into their room first. Fair was fair.

You choose, I was here second, John said.

Etienne shrugged. Okay. I’ll take the bed on the right.

Not the bed under the open window, which was a huge surprise. The tepid breeze that made its way through it rendered the swelter of the room bearable. Choosing a less desirable