His Terms (Straight to Gay MM Romance First Time Bundle)

His Terms

Let me be clear about one thing: I didn't belong in McDonnell Hall.

Nobody on the football team had ever lived in McDonnell Hall.

McDonnell was where the university put the freshmen who showed up to orientation with a 4.0 and a plan to cure cancer by junior year—the honor-roll crowd, the scholarship winners, the type of freshmen who brought their own ergonomic desk chairs from home and had strong opinions about library hours.

It was the quietest building on campus—full of nerds. And that was exactly why Coach Palmer had put me there.

Punishment.

That's what this was. Not officially—officially, it was "academic intervention," a semester of structured living designed to "minimize distractions" and "prioritize my educational responsibilities."

But I'd played football long enough to know when a coach was fucking with you, and sticking me, Colton Asher—starting tight end, two-time conference offensive player of the week,

and the guy who'd caught the game-winning touchdown against Florida Atlantic on national television last November—in a dorm full of freshmen who went to bed at ten o'clock was Coach Palmer's way of saying Get your shit together or I'll make your life worse than this.

Ok, sure; my grades were bad.

I knew that.

I wasn't stupid—I just didn't care about physics or algebra or any of the classes the university required me to take before I could get to the ones that actually mattered, which were zero, because I was going to the NFL and the NFL didn't give a shit whether I could solve for X.

But the NCAA did. And the university did. And Coach Palmer did, because a starting tight end with a 1.6 GPA was a liability, and a liability didn't get to live in the nice off-campus apartment with the other starters anymore.

A liability got McDonnell Hall, a twin bed, a communal bathroom, and a roommate. And the roommate was the part I hadn't prepared for.

His name was Thomas Briley, or “Tommy.” He was a freshman, eighteen years old, and within approximately forty-five seconds of meeting him, I understood three things about the guy I'd be sharing a twelve-by-fourteen room with for the next three months.

One: he was smart. Not regular smart—the kind of smart where he'd already unpacked a bookshelf's worth of textbooks before I'd finished carrying my duffel bag through the door, and at least half of them were for classes he wasn't even taking.

Two: he was gay. Not guessing, not assuming—he told me within the first five minutes, casually, the way you'd mention your major or where you were from.

"I'm Tommy, I'm from Virginia, I'm a physics major, and I'm gay—just so you know upfront and there's no weirdness."

He'd said it with a smile that was simultaneously disarming and a little defiant, like he'd rehearsed the delivery but not the confidence behind it, and was pleasantly surprised to find it there anyway.

And three—and this was the one that kept catching me off guard in the days that followed—Tommy was, objectively and undeniably, one of the prettiest human beings I had ever seen.

I don't mean that in whatever way you're thinking.

I mean it literally. The guy looked like he'd been assembled from a checklist of features that would make a boy-band casting director weep: five-three, maybe a hundred and twenty pounds, with a slim, smooth, runner's build that had no business being on a guy.

He had sandy-blonde hair that was short but long enough to come just down to his big blue eyes that took up about forty percent of his face, rosy cheeks that flushed pink when he laughed—which was constantly—and these full, pouty lips that I genuinely could not stop noticing,

no matter how aggressively I tried to not notice them.

I’ll just come out and say it: he looked like a girl. I told him that, too, because I'm not the kind of guy who keeps observations to himself.

"You know you basically look like a girl, right?" I'd said, maybe four days into our arrangement, while he was sitting cross-legged on his bed in a pair of swim trunks so short they should've come with a warning label, FaceTiming one of his many female friends.

Tommy hadn't even looked up. "And you basically look like a refrigerator with a jaw, but I keep that to myself because some of us have manners." He’d said it with that congenial grin that was so common with the southerners on campus.

His friend on his iphone screen had cackled. And I'd walked away before he could see me almost smile at the jab. What can I say? It was well-played. Tommy didn’t back down from anything—I could respect that.

And I learned pretty quick that there would be a sort of dynamic to our living arrangement; He flirted, and I deflected.

He made comments about my body—my arms, my chest, even my ass, once, when I'd bent over to grab something from under my bed—and I responded by reminding him that I was straight, that I would always be straight,

and that no amount of doe-eyed compliments from a five-three physics major was going to change the fundamental wiring of a man who had been sleeping with women since he was sixteen, no matter how “pretty” he happened to be.

Tommy didn't seem discouraged by this. If anything, my straightness appeared to be part of the appeal, and it only seemed to make him try harder.

"It’s just that…I have a thing for straight boys—and I have a thing for jocks. So, you can see where I’m going with this," he'd told me one evening, unprompted, while painting his toenails on his bed.

Painting his toenails. I was a long way from the football locker rooms and frat keggers of the summer.

“Always have. It’s kind of my curse, I guess. Most gay guys’ curse, really.”

"Good for you," I'd said, not looking up from my phone. "But this straight jock isn't on the menu. Got it?"

"Everything's on the menu…eventually," Tommy had replied. "Some dishes just take longer to order."

I rolled my eyes and gave a quick, “Whatever. Just keep your hands to yourself or we’ll be talking about what you want on your tombstone—not on your dinner table.”

“Oh,” Tommy smiled, and gave some kind of a playful purr or growl. “He’s got claws. I like it.”

I'd stared at the wall for a solid ten seconds after that one, trying to decide if I was annoyed or impressed.

Again, the guy didn’t back down from a damn thing. I’d made a career out of running through three-hundred-pound men like they were windowpanes. I’d spent years perfecting my war paint and my game-day scowl in the mirror—anything that might give me an edge, make the guy across from me hesitate.

And here comes this twink, looking like I could break him in half, and he couldn’t have cared less. I’ve seen more fear in guys three times his size.

Go figure.