Tuition & Temptation

A Sterling Hearts Novel
by Chase Power

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Pairing: MM
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno
Tropes: Age Gap, Best Friend’s Dad, Forced Proximity, Forbidden, Secret Relationship, Class Difference

His best friend’s father. Forbidden. Irresistible. One secret that could destroy everything.

Leo Vance is broke, exhausted, and one eviction notice away from losing everything. When his best friend Chase offers him a spare room in his father’s penthouse, Leo has no choice but to accept. It’s just temporary. Just survival. He’ll keep his head down, finish his architecture degree, and pretend he belongs in a world of marble floors and million-dollar views.

Then he meets Julian Sterling.

At forty-eight, Julian is everything Leo shouldn’t want: older, wealthier, emotionally unavailable—and his best friend’s estranged father. But there’s something about the silver-haired CEO that Leo can’t ignore. The way Julian looks at his work with genuine interest. The way he sees Leo when no one else does. The way he touches Leo like he’s something precious.

What starts as stolen glances becomes secret encounters. What should stay physical becomes terrifyingly real. And when their relationship is discovered, Leo and Julian must decide: walk away from each other, or fight for a love that could cost them everything.

Tuition & Temptation is a 28,000-word MM romance featuring an age gap, forbidden love, forced proximity, a silver fox CEO who falls first, a broke student who makes him feel alive, and a guaranteed happily ever after. First in the Sterling Hearts series.

🔥 Tropes You’ll Love 🔥

Content Notes

This book contains explicit MM sexual content including praise kink, size difference dynamics, and age gap elements. Additional content includes: financial hardship, parental death (mother, historical), family conflict, and emotional scenes. Reader discretion advised. 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️

Read Chapter One Free

Chapter One

The eviction notice had been taped to my door like a love letter from the universe, if the universe hated me personally and wanted to make sure I knew it.

Fourteen days to vacate.

I read it three times, standing in the hallway of my building with my backpack digging into my shoulder and the smell of someone’s burnt microwave dinner drifting from 4B. Fourteen days. As if I had anywhere to go. As if I had savings, or family, or any of the safety nets that normal people seemed to have woven into their lives like it was easy.

My roommate had bailed three weeks ago. Tyler, with his trust fund and his “gap year energy” and his complete inability to understand that some of us couldn’t just decide to move to Portland because the vibes were better there. He’d left me with his half of the rent, his collection of dead succulents, and a passive-aggressive note about how he hoped I’d “find my path.”

My path, apparently, led to homelessness.

I unlocked the door and stepped into the apartment that wouldn’t be mine for much longer. It was small—a converted one-bedroom that the landlord had split into two, which meant my “room” was technically a glorified closet with a window. But it was mine. It had been mine for two years.

I sat down on my bed—a mattress on the floor because I’d never been able to afford a frame—and pulled out my phone. The screen was cracked in the corner from when I’d dropped it rushing between my campus job and studio last month. I opened my banking app anyway, as if the numbers might have magically changed.

They hadn’t.

$47.23.

* * *

Keep reading to discover what happens when Leo moves into Julian Sterling’s penthouse…

🔥 Exclusive Bonus Content 🔥

Want the scene that was TOO HOT for Amazon?

Get the exclusive extended scene from three months after the epilogue—complete with Julian’s corner office, the CEO desk, and everything Leo wanted to do to his silver fox since that first night in the kitchen.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is this book part of a series?

Tuition & Temptation is the first book in the Sterling Hearts series but is a complete standalone with an HEA (happily ever after). No cliffhangers! Future books may feature other characters from the Sterling world.

How spicy is this book?

🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ — This is a 5/5 heat level book with explicit MM content. Features include age gap dynamics, praise kink elements, size difference, possessive dirty talk, and enough steam to fog up every window in Julian’s penthouse.

Is there a happily ever after?

Yes! Leo and Julian get their HEA complete with moving in together (neutral territory), Leo’s professional success, and Chase slowly coming around. No cliffhangers.

What’s the age gap?

Leo is 21 (almost 22), Julian is 48. The 27-year age gap is significant and acknowledged in the story—both characters grapple with what it means and how others might perceive it.