Say It Again, Sir
MM Contemporary Romance
by Jace Wilder
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Pairing: MM
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno
Tropes: Praise Kink, Age Gap, Teacher/Student, Grumpy/Sunshine, Touch Starved, He Falls First, Only Soft For Him
He came for discipline. He stayed for the praise.
Nico Vale is a shy, diligent 24-year-old who has spent most of his life feeling like the least impressive person in the room. When he signs up for private vocal coaching on impulse, he expects to learn how to sing. He does not expect the instructor.
Adrian Cross is 39, exacting, and impossible to impress. He doesn’t waste words. He doesn’t give praise lightly. And when he corrects Nico’s posture, his breathing, his everything — with a voice so steady it feels like a hand on his spine — Nico discovers that being told what to do by this specific man is rewiring him from the inside out.
What begins as twice-weekly vocal lessons becomes something neither of them planned: a high-heat MM romance built on authority, trust, and the devastating power of a single word — good — delivered by someone who means it.
But Adrian has spent a decade keeping everyone at arm’s length, and Nico has spent a lifetime performing for people who never noticed. When the arrangement outgrows the walls Adrian built for it, they’ll have to decide whether what they have is a lesson plan with benefits — or something that deserves a name.
You’ll love this book if you enjoy:
✅ Praise kink as the central erotic and emotional engine
✅ Older/younger with a genuine authority dynamic
✅ A grumpy instructor who’s only soft for one person
✅ Touch-starved MC who melts under attention
✅ Slow burn that EXPLODES (🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ — graphic, explicit, emotional)
✅ “Say it again, sir” energy on every page
✅ HEA guaranteed
⚠️ Content Warning: This novel contains explicit sexual content (graphic MM scenes including praise kink, D/s dynamics, and authority play), strong language, and depictions of emotional vulnerability. Intended for readers 18+.
📖 Read Chapter One Free
Not sure yet? Read the full first chapter right here.
Chapter One
Nico was five minutes early and already considering leaving.
He stood on the sidewalk outside the brownstone with his hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets, staring at the brass number beside the door like it might change if he looked long enough. The building was narrow and old in the way that meant expensive — dark brick, tall windows, a wrought-iron railing along the front steps that had been repainted recently enough to still look sharp. A small plaque near the buzzer read Cross Vocal Studio — By Appointment Only.
By appointment only. Like it was a surgeon’s office. Like you needed to be vetted before someone would teach you to sing.
Nico had filled out the intake form online three days ago at two in the morning, slightly drunk on cheap wine and entirely drunk on the impulse that had seized him at the open mic night in the arts district. He’d gone alone because Mara had bailed, sat in the back with a beer he barely touched, and watched six people get on a small stage and use their voices like they meant it. Most of them were fine. One of them was extraordinary — a woman with a shaved head and a voice like smoke and honey who made the whole room go still. And when she’d finished, Nico had felt something crack open in his chest that he’d been keeping sealed since he was seventeen and his mother had told him, gently, that maybe choir wasn’t really his thing.
The flyer had been pinned to the corkboard by the bar. Private vocal instruction. All levels. Serious inquiries only.
He’d typed “serious” in the goals field of the intake form and then stared at the word for a full minute before hitting submit.
Now he was here. On a Tuesday afternoon in October, with the trees on the block going amber and the air carrying that specific autumnal bite that made everything feel like a beginning or an ending, and he was seriously considering walking the six blocks back to his apartment and pretending this had never happened.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. Mara.
Did you go??
He typed back: I’m outside.
GO INSIDE, COWARD.
He almost smiled. Then he climbed the steps and pressed the buzzer.
The door opened on a hallway that smelled like coffee and cedar, and Nico’s first thought was that it felt like walking into someone’s living room. Warm wood floors, soft overhead lighting, a coatrack by the door that held a single dark jacket. A narrow staircase climbed to the left — to what he assumed was the apartment upstairs — and straight ahead, a door stood open into a room that stopped his breath for a second.
The studio was beautiful. Not in a flashy way, not like a recording space with chrome and glass, but in the way that a library is beautiful — everything in its right place, everything chosen with intention. The walls were paneled in some kind of dark acoustic wood, warm-toned and close. Soundproofing panels in muted charcoal lined the upper walls. A baby grand piano sat in the far corner, its lid propped open, its black surface gleaming under a pendant light. A music stand. A single stool. A low shelf of books and sheet music. One tall window, curtained in linen, letting in just enough afternoon light to make the room glow without glaring.
It was a room built for two voices and nothing else. Intimate in a way that made Nico’s stomach tighten before he understood why.
“You’re early.”
Nico turned. The voice came from the staircase — low, unhurried, with a resonance that suggested the man attached to it had spent years learning exactly how sound moved through a room. Footsteps on the stairs, and then Adrian Cross appeared in the hallway and Nico forgot every single thing he’d rehearsed on the walk over.
He was tall. That was the first thing — maybe six-two, with a lean build that suggested discipline rather than vanity. Dark hair shot through with silver at the temples, kept short on the sides and just long enough on top to look deliberate. A jaw that could have been drawn with a ruler. Gray-green eyes that found Nico’s and held them with the casual precision of someone who was used to being the most commanding presence in any room.
He looked like he’d never been uncertain about a single thing in his life. He looked like the kind of man who could tell you everything you were doing wrong and make you grateful for the correction.
Nico swallowed.
Want to keep reading? The full novel is available now.
🔥 Want an EXCLUSIVE Bonus Chapter?
One Year — A scene TOO HOT for Amazon
It’s their one-year anniversary. Nico has written his first song — and it’s about Adrian. He performs it privately in the studio. And when the last note fades… the celebration begins. Piano bench sex, reversed praise, and the filthiest, most emotional bonus chapter in the series.
More from Jace Wilder
Browse all Jace Wilder books.
Say It Again, Sir
He came for discipline. He stayed for the praise.
Best Man, Better Lover
He's standing at the altar for the wrong person. His best man already knows how to wreck him.
Off Camera, On Knees
Every rehearsal ends with his name on someone's lips. The problem is — it stopped being rehearsal weeks ago.
Sugar, Skates & Second Chances
The contract was supposed to be business. The safe word was supposed to be a formality.
The Sugar Lease
He signed a lease. He didn't sign up to fall in love.
The Escort Upstairs
A shy artist becomes obsessed with the escort who lives upstairs — until he realizes every filthy story the man tells clients is actually about him.
Never Miss a Release
Get new release alerts, exclusive bonus content, and reader-only giveaways.