Just One Night

By Sebastian Carter

A hot body will only take him so far...

Theo Cooper wants to find his place in life. Despite his confident facade he's full of uncertainty. A homophobic father and a cheating ex have shaken his self-worth and he's desperate to scrape some cash together to get away from it all.

Self-doubt is holding him back...

Elliot James is smart and too socially awkward to meet a man. His best friend, wealthy socialite Brianna LaFontaine is the only person he's felt safe to come out to. Despite her best efforts to push him out of his comfort zone, Elliot has remained firmly planted behind his computer screen, evading any chance at finding love.

When a mutual friend pushes them together...

Brianna offers Theo an intriguing proposition to help him out of his financial mess: bring shy Elliott out of his shell and give him a night of passion to remember. An easy fix and fast solution to his money problems. 

But this is not so simple a transaction. 

Is it possible to fall in love after Just One Night?

Just One Night is a steamy gay romance with a happily-ever-after ending and no cliffhangers.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sebastian Carter
• Release date: May 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393193357

Sebastian Carter

Sebastian Carter escaped Dallas, Texas years ago to study at DePaul University. Once there, he managed to earn a pretentious sounding degree, acquire a Yorkie Poo named Bailey, and fall in love with Chicago. Although it's given him plenty of fodder for his books, Sebastian doesn't miss his previous life as a flight attendant. Writing novels about men falling in love with other men is much more fulfilling... and with the added bonus of a guaranteed happily-ever-after. Sebastian Carter also writes urban fantasy under the pen name Seb L. Carter

Book preview

Chapter 1

Theo

When Theo got home, he found his ex-fiancé, Reid, 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.

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.

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.

There was always a chance he might bump into Reid. They did both still share the apartment, and Reid texted in the afternoon to say he had an early dinner with clients in an effort, Theo assumed, to make sure they could escape one another unseen.

So, coming home was something Theo had put off for as long as possible. Instead of his usual routine, spending the afternoon on the couch in front of the TV before work, he browsed the magazine rack in a bookstore near his train stop and stood in line at a coffee shop to order a latte. He stopped to listen to a street performer playing guitar and singing blues songs, even though he wasn't very good. And, he went to the gym. All so he might avoid a moment like this.

Theo never expected this.

Now 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.

He stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets. This should piss him 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. And, when it came down to it, sure, he was pissed off.

But 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 a special way of making him feel that way like he had some asshole superpower. It was one thing to know Reid was cheating—and he’d known for a few weeks now—but it was another to actually see it on display on top of their unmade bed. He thought maybe Reid would have the courtesy not to screw his boy toy in the bed they once shared—at least not until after he moved out next week. Three weeks ago, Reid told him he had to leave. Theo got the news that Reid was fucking his new assistant a month before that. He served him with an eviction notice.

Yes, an actual notice.

Their entire relationship was reduced to a notarized piece of paper 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. 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 Theo’s cock up straight to tap on his stomach and demand attention. And Reid used to react the same way.

Those times were long gone, 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.

Reid went into the closet. Lance or Larry glanced up from his phone at Theo, barely bothering to be embarrassed that he was still naked in the bed as he tapped out something on his phone. 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 when they were in the Hamptons visiting his parents. Reid whispered 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? Or is it your new modeling gig?

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 bad as the copy shop but that required less clothing. He answered an ad for art models. At least that’s what the ad said. Turned out, the place was a cocktail hour venue for artists of any level, and he was hired to stand naked while groups of bachelorette party girls pretended to draw him as they swilled down bottles of wine and cheap drinks made with well liquor.

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

He didn’t mind the attention at first. Most of the women were fine. Some of them even drew a picture. But it happened often enough in the short time he’d worked there that the ladies, after a few drinks, wanted to turn their party into a hands-on experience. Management wasn’t too eager to step between him and a paying customer, so the last few hours of his shifts were usually spent swatting hands away while pretending he enjoyed it.

He simply told people it was a modeling job. He needed the money, and the pay was almost $200 a night plus any tips. He took the job 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 wadded 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 he had. It was there, early in their relationship. It was still there in the stab of pain in his heart 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. He peered down his nose at Theo. 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 managed to surround himself with men who turned 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 with a heavy music beat and guys gyrating on the dance floor.

Guys stood together in groups with their friends. No one talked. The music made conversation next to impossible. It was a place where introductions were shouted, guys leaning in close to other guys to say a name and offer a handshake that held on a little long. And still more said hello by wordlessly dancing and grinding up against a willing stranger. The language spoken here was physical more than verbal.

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

Then there were the guys like him, the ones who moved through the mostly male gatherings, 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 to forget the indignities of being pawed at by boozy would-be artists.

But he’d sacrificed some of his swagger to his bastard ex after being locked down for two years in a relationship he pinned with too much hope. Now that he was on his own again, he had a tug of nerves and uncertainty. Luckily this was an old scene. The faces were different, yet the situations were always the same. It was like riding a bike.

Theo hid these insecurities behind a shirt open 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. The open gawk from 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 grin and a mouthed offer unheard over the pounding beat. But they weren’t it, they weren’t what he was looking for. He waved their hands away with a forced smile and shooed them on their way.

He wanted someone good. What he needed tonight was a hot mistake.

Somebody bought Theo a drink, a guy who reminded him of a B-movie villain or a used-car salesman. He had a leering smile and a black-leather strap over one of his biceps. The drink was, more or less thrust into his hand as the guy leaned in to yell over the music how Theo looked thirsty. Not that thirsty. He left the drink on the bar and the guy cussing something at him from behind. Maybe Theo was out of practice, but he wasn’t stupid. Tonight might end up in a strange bed, but he was going to go of his own free will, not because some slimy guy slipped a drug into a cocktail.

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 movements yet entirely masculine as he slid a hand over his glistening stomach and taut abdomen down to the waistband of his jeans. Theo liked watching him from where he leaned against the bar.

The dancer had dark hair and no shirt. The lights that shot and rolled over the dance floor seemed made for him, casting him in flashes of blue and red in a way that only accentuated the best of what he had to offer. Shadows cast beneath the ridges of his strong chest and picked up on the peaks of his abs. Hot and sexy. Guys like this one didn’t need shirts. He aroused Theo to 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. He strode onto the dance floor to move into the dancer’s field of view. Theo gravitated as he grooved, close enough for the guy to realize Theo watched him. The guy returned a smile, 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 gave Theo’s nipples a little squeeze. Theo answered 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, his tongue wetting his bottom lip.

And that was pretty much all it took. See, that wasn’t so difficult.

Theo liked to think that the sexy guy paying him attention now would make Reid insanely jealous. But when the guy gave Theo’s dick another squeeze, he no longer gave a shit what Reid thought.

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, by way of introduction. How are you?

I’m great, Theo said, returning a smile of his own. Now, anyway. Name’s Theo. He

Reviews for Just One Night

[Amy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very enjoyable read. For the length of the book the characters were well fleshed out. I liked that it was stand alone with a nice happy ending.

[Isabel Coria · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Super cute book really liked the main characters wow fantastic the way they fell in love