The First Door: Men of Café Seuil, #0.5

By KP Maxwell

A dark alley. A mysterious door. An offer he can't refuse.

Damien Lambert has dropped out of law school. He finds himself running away to Portland, Oregon, after leaving his life in Seattle behind. He has nothing lined up, too much debt to think about, and nothing to look forward to.

After a drunken night out with an old acquaintance, Damien stumbles upon a mysterious door in a dark alleyway. What does he have to lose? But when he walks through it, he ends up somewhere entirely unexpected...

The First Door is a steamy prequel novella to the Men of Café Seuil series. If you're looking for a sexy M/M novella with a dash of magic and a pinch of spice, then come meet the Men of Café Seuil today!

Author Note: Previously published in 2020 as The First Door. This is the second edition. It has been completely revised and expanded with three additional chapters and includes a brand new character not included in the previous edition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bronze Owl Press
• Release date: Dec 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9781951676148

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Damien Lambert had been in law school for over a year now, and he could not continue for even a single week longer.

In his first year, he had scraped and clawed his way to second in his class at a prestigious university in Seattle, Washington. His parents were… well, not disappointed exactly, but also not as thrilled as Damien had been when he found out the ranking. And by the various barbed comments he’d gotten since then, he could tell that his mother simply didn’t understand why Damien wasn’t first in his class.

Damien had never actually been all that good at studying, though. All he knew how to do was work harder than everyone else, and it had gotten him this far in life until finally it stopped working. He finally found people who were way smarter than he was, and he could just not keep up with only twenty-four hours in the day.

His roommate, Bobbi, never failed to beat him out in everything, and she spent about half as much time as him doing it. She spent the other half of her time trying to cajole Damien out to nightclubs or to do fun things in the city as if he had such a luxury. And he couldn’t even hate her for it because she was also his best friend.

This year, Damien was already falling too far behind, though. It was only the beginning of October, and he was starting to realize there would be no way for him to even maintain second place. And besides, did he even want to become a lawyer? Some small voice in the back of his head said, no. No, he really didn’t.

So now he was standing in the middle of a shitty little one-bedroom apartment in Southeast Portland, Oregon, with two black gym bags at his feet.

And he was running away.

More specifically – he was bumming a couch off of a friend he hadn’t talked to since they went to the same stuffy all-boys high school in the same rural Wisconsin town all those years ago. Ethan Schmidt was the only one of his former soccer teammates who picked up his panicked phone call this morning when Damien decided to pack a bag and leave Seattle.

Damien had felt extremely lucky that Ethan now lived in Portland, both an easy bus trip away and also nowhere near his hometown. There was simply no way he was going back to Wisconsin, where he’d have to face his parents. He definitely hadn’t called them yet. He wasn’t even sure how he was going to break the news to them.

No, he needed some space right now. Some time to think about what he was going to do.

He had always followed the plans his mother had set out for him – valedictorian and captain of the soccer team in high school, then off to college with a combined athletic and academic scholarship which had been nearly impossible to maintain, and finally, the cherry on the cake – law school. He knew she was so proud of him despite his only being second place that his mind filled with sheer panic at the thought of how she was going to react when she found out that he was going to drop out entirely. Not to mention the student loans. Law school was not cheap.

Damien definitely needed some breathing room. But it was starting to look like he wasn’t going to get any of that if he stayed here.

Damien had just walked through the door of Ethan’s apartment only to find him half-lounging on the couch as he watched some trashy reality show about wealthy househusbands and filled the small one-bedroom apartment with pot smoke. The building was nice enough that Ethan had given him a keycode for entry, but the inside of the apartment looked like Ethan hadn’t cleaned it since he moved in.

Dishes covered nearly every surface of the small kitchen’s counters and piled into the sink as well. There were a few miscellaneous clothing items strewn in strange places – some piled into a corner, another small collection on top of one of the bar stools at the kitchen’s island, and a wad of what looked like clothing that had been hastily shoved under the couch. What little furniture there was looked worse for wear, even by a broke college student’s standards. The couch, especially, had definitely seen better days.

Damien was pretty sure he was supposed to be sleeping on that couch later that night, which somehow made the whole situation worse.

So, you like… dropped out of law school? Rough, man, Ethan said unhelpfully, by way of greeting. He didn’t even bother to get up off the couch. You can chill here as long as you want. He made a broad gesture at the refrigerator. Feel free to eat whatever you find in there.

Damien gaped at his old friend, unable to form a reply. Ethan was nearly unrecognizable from the teammate he knew from high school soccer. His once short, perfectly styled blond hair had grown out to his shoulders, and it looked like he hadn’t washed it in a few days. He seemed a bit taller, as well, although it was hard to tell from his current slouching position on the couch, and he seemed much thinner, like he had less muscle definition than he used to.

Damien nodded blandly and left his gym bags where he had dropped them. He made his way over to the fridge half out of some morbid curiosity and half out of hunger. The handle was sticky, and that was almost enough to deter him, but he was pretty hungry. He hadn’t even taken the time to eat before he left Seattle this