Getting There Read online

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Can a broken-hearted professor be taught how to love again? Can a business-minded surfer handle the task? Can they both survive the one man willing to kill to tear them apart?

  Lucas Masterson’s life turns on its head when his long-time lover leaves him for his teaching assistant. Lucas is devastated, and the only person who seems able to help him live again is Creed Hamasaki, his brother’s best friend, who doesn’t waste any time staking his claim. But can Lucas and Creed’s love survive a return visit from Lucas’s ex who’s willing to kill to get him back? Even more so, can Lucas?

  The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Getting There

  Copyright © 2017 Deja Black

  ISBN: 978-1-4874-1236-4

  Cover art by Syneca Featherstone

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by eXtasy Books Inc or

  Devine Destinies, an imprint of eXtasy Books Inc

  Look for us online at:

  www.eXtasybooks.com or www.devinedestinies.com

  Getting There

  By

  Deja Black

  Dedication

  For my betas who open the file at any time on any day. Thank you for your insight, for the kick in the butt, and the extra push to keep going when I need it. Thank you for seeing the vision.

  Love,

  Deja

  Chapter One

  Ira’s side of the bed was cold when Lucas awoke early that morning, the day of their third anniversary. Lucas rose, brushed his teeth after showering and mulled over how unfortunate it was his lover probably slept at the office. It wasn’t the first time. Somehow, over the years, they’d moved from the passionate couple who traveled together, enjoying the adventures and laughter two men in love should have, to two men who simply shared a house. They used to wake in the morning wrapped in each other’s arms. Now? They were lucky to pass each other in the night.

  Lucas was going to change that.

  The meal he’d been preparing, along with the tickets he’d purchased for Ira’s favorite production, would go a long way to making his man happy, and hopefully, help bridge the distance that had grown between them.

  Lucas missed their closeness, but they didn’t seem to want the same things anymore. He wanted someone to settle down with, to take care of. Ira wanted Lucas out and about, dressed to impress. The passion they’d once shared, the moans and sighs late into the night, quieted, too. Lately, Lucas found satisfaction at the end of his wrist rather than beneath his lover. That wasn’t how he’d envisioned them three years ago when they’d moved in together. He’d planned to take care of Ira, show him how to be loved and to provide for his needs.

  When did I lose track of my own needs?

  Today, he was going to talk to Ira and fix what was broken.

  He was startled when he heard the door open and slam against the wall. He rushed from the kitchen to welcome Ira and stood frozen in disbelief as he watched his own teacher’s assistant, Tommy, laugh into his lover’s mouth.

  The smell of sauce burning wafted in the air. Ira, his lips curling in disgust, looked over at Lucas and his eyes flashed with distaste.

  “Lucas, what the fuck are you burning in the kitchen?” Ira stepped away from a breathless Tommy and headed for the kitchen.

  Tommy, who gently wiped his lips, grinned widely as he took in his former professor’s face.

  “Oh, Lucas. You’re home. Sorry. We were hoping to pop in and out.” The sound of pots and pans tossed about rang in the background as Tommy got himself together. He ran one hand over his tight blue dress shirt. Then he pulled at his impossibly tight jeans, the obvious intent to make the bulge in his pants more comfortable. “Don’t mind us. We won’t be long.”

  “What—,” Lucas began. He couldn’t fathom it. No way had his TA been there in front of him with his lover’s tongue down his throat, practically dry humping him. Lucas turned toward the kitchen and back to Tommy.

  “Oh, Professor Masterson. Don’t be so surprised. You didn’t think Ira was still interested in you, did you? Surely, even you are able to add up the facts.” Tommy pushed his blond hair away from his face as he shook his head. His startling blue eyes looking up at Lucas in pity. Shouting loud enough to be heard in the other room, he said, “Darling, do hurry. We have a flight to catch.”

  “Yes, love,” Ira called back from the kitchen. “Don’t want the kitchen to burn down. What is this anyway, Lucas?”

  Lucas heard himself answer, “Butternut squash and hazelnut lasagna.”

  He’d driven the day before to Ira’s family home to learn how to make the meal from Rosaline, the family cook, who’d been only too pleased to share the experience with him, even whipping together homemade bread for him to prepare along with it.

  His heart raced, the pulse loud in his own ears. Tommy, his TA, and Ira, the man he thought of as his partner for the last three years were what? Lovers? He thought back over the past few weeks and the months. When Ira was busy and unattainable. The days when Tommy couldn’t work because he needed to visit family. When Ira was busy, was he with Tommy?

  “Oh, my favorite. Pity, Rosaline loves to make this for me. Do you remember trying it, Tommy?”

  “Yes, sweetheart. We ordered it yesterday.” He turned to Lucas before adding, “Don’t really care for it myself, but we all have to make sacrifices, don’t we?”

  “Right, at Marco’s,” Ira said while he still bussed about in the kitchen.

  Yesterday. When Lucas repeatedly tried to call Ira. Last night when Ira didn’t come home.

  “Finally getting it, are you?” Tommy whispered. Lucas drew his hands into tight fists, muscles tense as he faced someone he’d trusted, someone he’d invited into his home. “All night, I rode his cock. Not once did he consider answering your calls even after he screamed my name.” To Ira, he called, “Ira, honey. Please hurry. I’ll continue chatting with Professor Masterson while you gather your things. Remember… flight?”

  “Oh, yes, Tommy, love. Hurrying.” Lucas heard Ira’s heavy footfalls move down the hallway toward the bedroom.

  “We won’t be out of town long, but Ira mentioned some items he couldn’t live without this time.” Tommy moved to the leather sofa, sat down with the same ease he’d always displayed in Lucas’s home. “Why don’t you have a seat, Professor? Let’s chat, shall we?” No longer able to stand—rather than Tommy’s invitation—Lucas sat down in the love seat across from him, numb and shaking.

  With graduation right around the corner, Lucas hadn’t seen Tomm
y in a while. Tommy was so busy with family—or so he said—he’d had little time to help Lucas finalize grades. Yet, there he sat, his pouty lips swollen from Ira’s kisses, and whisker burns from Ira’s five o’clock shadow evident on his pale skin.

  It was like awakening from a nightmare. Lucas had simply ignored all the signs, played the fool. He ran his fingers through his hair, the tips of his thumbs tracing over his ears again and again. The heel of his foot bounced as he tried to process what was happening.

  “All over me.” Tommy waved a hand over his lithe frame. “There are signs of the way he loves me, mapping every part of my skin. You don’t know what that feels like anymore, do you, professor? So many nights, he begged me to let him inside me, to let him feel what it was like to be truly pleasured? How could I resist? I opened my legs and let him sink that sweet dick of his in my ass the first night he stayed with me, and every night since.”

  Tommy leaned in conspiratorially. “Did you know he likes to suck his own cum out of my ass? What that man will do for a taste of me? Unbelievable.” Tommy settled back while Lucas heard drawers open and close, hangers shifting again and again in his and Ira’s bedroom.

  Lucas was going to be sick, the hint of bile rising in his throat.

  “I’ll share a bit of information with you, Lucas. After all, I feel like we’re family. We’ve shared the same man for a couple of years now.” Tommy smiled warmly.

  Lucas didn’t answer, quietly stood and walked to the wall, his eyes staring at a man he once trusted. Lucas’s troubled mind whirled as he processed what was happening around him.

  Tommy continued, a viper’s sting in his tone. “I’ve kept Ira more than satisfied for a long time, riding his dick like a Ferris wheel, meeting the needs you obviously can’t. Sadly, others would frown upon our relationship. So, we needed to wait until I graduated. Then we can be together forever. No more sneaking around, using his relationship with you as a cover for our own.” Tommy’s eyes were hard when he focused on Lucas, the blue almost sparkling. “It’s regrettable you didn’t know what to do to keep a real man wanting to come back home to you. Honestly, Lucas, I’d have been honored to show you a few techniques.” He licked his lips as he watched Lucas. “Still might.”

  “Fuck you. Fuck you and him,” Lucas finally bit out. Instead of trying to kill the fucking twit, wrapping his hands around Tommy’s tiny little neck and popping his head off his body like a jack in the box, Lucas left the room.

  In his bathroom mirror, Lucas faced a pale version of himself, eyes wet with unshed tears, the sounds of Ira and Tommy moving about the home in the distance.

  Sensing movement behind him, he looked up to see Ira’s steel gray eyes watching him in the mirror, assessing him. “Really, Lucas. You’ll heal. We weren’t good together. We never were. You were the wrapper everyone needed to see. No one would ever suspect Tommy was with me almost every night and during the day. Besides, Tommy filled the gap. Someone had to. You were never enough.”

  Nights when Ira kindly offered to drop Tommy off at home came to mind. Tommy’s shyness at the offer and Ira’s insistence it would be fine. All this time Ira had been cheating on him with his TA, while Tommy smiled and laughed with Lucas as they collaborated over one project or another—and pretended to respect him. The entire time Tommy was making a home for himself in the arms of Lucas’s lover.

  “There’s nothing left here I want anymore, so feel free to keep the rest. Do with it what you will. Tommy and I have a plane to catch.”

  Then, Ira and Tommy were gone.

  Lucas didn’t know when he’d made it to the bed. He’d answered a call, spoken to his sister but failed to even remember what they’d said. Too broken, he’d hung up the phone and let his head fall back to his pillow. After sending a text for students to check Blackboard for their grades, he remained under the covers, the scent of burnt garlic wafting through the room.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  “What the fuck is that smell,” a deep voice shouted through the house. Anthony’s rumble shook the walls, his deep voice hard as granite crashing along with the sounds of dishes and pans being shoved around. “Smells like some funkiness my cat threw up. Lucas, get your ass in here.”

  Anthony, Lucas’s younger brother, was not a small man. From the sound of his movements in the kitchen, he was making his presence known, loud and clear, as delicate plates and glasses met their demise.

  “Humph! Don’t need this shit anyway. Lucas, come here.” It wasn’t hard to recognize the clangs and pings of items other than food finding their way into Lucas’s trashcan.

  Lucas pulled the pillow over his head. He’d had enough. Just two days ago—on the day of his three-year anniversary—Ira not only left him, but Tommy had offered to teach him how to keep a man? No, he was staying under the covers, in the dark, where it was safe.

  Footsteps thundered his way, his brother’s gruff voice slicing through the silence. “Lucas!”

  Lucas shoved himself further under the down pillow. He heard curtains sliding along rods, and saw light peeking around the corners of the soft cotton.

  “Too dark in here. I know you heard me. I’ve got to get to work.”

  “So,” Lucas mumbled when the glaring sun assaulted his eyes as the pillow was lifted from his head. He tried to turn over and hide his face away from the brightness, but a huge hand all but pulled him out of bed.

  “Shower for you.” Long fingers carded through his thick curls and held him close. “There now.” Anthony’s arms were strong, a shelter in the storm of Lucas’s life.

  “Myra?” Lucas questioned. He breathed in the safety of his brother, the spicy scent of Anthony’s favorite cologne going a long way to soothe his trembling.

  “Yep. Seems someone told someone who spoke to someone else who called Mom who called our little sister. Of course, Myra called me after she tried speaking to you, which was a fail when she could barely understand you. And, here I am. So, let’s organize your shit and get you and me the fuck out of here. Clock’s ticking.”

  “So. Go.” Lucas made to move back to the bed only to be gripped tighter and dragged to his own shower, the scent of Mahogany Woods saturating the bathroom. The water stung his skin while hands rubbed over him, the loofah filled with scented suds. Lucas looked down, Anthony’s corded arms twisting him this way and that before rinsing him off. A towel was tossed at him before he was dried off and pushed toward the bedroom.

  “What the fuck is in this closet? They’re barely your size, and damn if they look like anything you’d wear.”

  Lucas knew what Anthony saw. Club clothes, tiny scraps of fabric Ira insisted he wear on the nights they’d gone out for an evening of fun with Ira’s friends. He’d given Ira everything, even his dignity, and had dressed like his lover’s arm-slut at night to please him.

  The only other clothes would be what he’d wear to class—ties, dress shirts, fitted slacks. Ira tried to make him into a person he could never be. Then, he’d left him for the real deal. He fell back toward the bed wanting to climb back into the sheets and forget it all.

  “No, Lucas. Not happening. Here, I’ve found pants and a shirt. It will do for now. Let’s go.”

  “Go? Where?” Lucas did not intend to go anywhere.

  “Work. From what Myra said, you sounded like you’d given up. Figured that asshole and the twit who worked for you threw you for a loop. She said it was hard to understand your words when you sounded like a wet rat who’d drowned itself in a bottle of Riesling.”

  Oh, the conversation that felt more like a dream. And, while it hadn’t been Riesling, it had been equally intoxicating. In fact, there should be a bottle or three of it laying on the floor around somewhere.

  Lucas jumped when a phone buzzed somewhere. He hadn’t plugged his phone back in last night, so it couldn’t be his. Anthony pulled his cell out of his jean pocket. Dressed casually in a plaid shirt and a pair of jeans with flip flops, he didn’t appear to be headed into work.

  A police officer
for the Charleston Police Department and former military, Anthony was professional, always. So, the fact he wasn’t wearing his uniform spoke greatly to how concerned he was about his older brother, regardless of the calm façade he wore.

  “Yeah.” Anthony paused while the speaker on the other end of the phone continued. The voice sounded animated and high-pitched with worry. Myra. Of course, it could be their mother, Cassandra. The two sounded a great deal alike. “I got him. Taking him with me. Right. House smells like crap. He looks like it, too. Don’t worry. I got it. He won’t be alone. Don’t worry now. Go to class.”

  His youngest sister was in college now finishing up her second year studying to be a veterinarian. She’d always possessed a love for animals, so it was natural she wanted to care for them. A nurturer, Myra felt it was her duty to look out for those she loved, and apparently, Lucas was at the top of that list right now.

  Heavy hands fell on his shoulders, worried dark green eyes searching his. “You seriously look like warmed over shit. But, it will have to do for now.” Anthony lifted his ball cap, bent low and kissed Lucas on his cheek. “We’ll get you sorted. Don’t worry.” Lucas noticed the handles of his Cole Haan overnight bag and his laptop case dwarfed in his younger brother’s large hand.

  “I don’t want to go with you,” Lucas pouted, his voice as weary and as exhausted as he felt.

  “Not an option,” Anthony said as he took Lucas’s elbow to lead him out.

  “I’m older than you,” Lucas grumbled when a lightweight jacket was placed on his shoulders.

  “Not arguing that,” Anthony replied while he turned to lock the door. “But, you’re mine, you’re outnumbered, and the department is waiting. So, hop your ass in the truck, and we’ll hash this out later.”

  Anthony massaged Lucas’s shoulder as he and Lucas moved toward Anthony’s monster vehicle on wheels, leaving the home he shared with Ira behind them.