🔥 Bonus Chapter: Private Tutoring — The Pop Quiz

An exclusive scene from Booked Solid by My Tutor — too hot for Amazon.

The MCAT flashcards were a prop.

Ethan knew it. Cassian knew it. The entire apartment — the two mugs, the three plants, the second pillow, the growing evidence of a life shared rather than solitary — knew it. But the fiction was part of the foreplay, and they’d both committed to the bit.

“The rules are simple,” Ethan said, settling onto the kitchen counter with the flashcard stack in his hand and a grin that would have gotten him expelled from any institution that still believed in decorum. “You ask me questions. If I get the answer right, I get a point. If I get it wrong, you get a point.”

“And the stakes?” Cassian was leaning against the opposite counter, arms crossed, glasses on. He’d come home from the lab twenty minutes ago and hadn’t changed yet — still in his button-down with the sleeves pushed up, still ink-stained at the fingertips, still looking like a man who could ruin your GPA and your composure in the same sentence.

“First to five points gets to be in charge for the rest of the night. Full control. The other person does whatever they’re told.”

Cassian’s eyebrow rose. “You’re proposing a competition for sexual dominance based on biochemistry knowledge.”

“I’m proposing an incentive structure. You taught me that.”

“I taught you enzyme kinetics.”

“Same energy.”

He uncrossed his arms. Took the flashcards from Ethan’s hand. Their fingers touched during the transfer and neither of them pretended not to notice.

“First question,” Cassian said, flipping the top card. “Name the three stop codons.”

“UAA, UAG, UGA.”

“Correct. One-zero.”

“Too easy. Harder.”

Cassian’s eyes darkened. “Careful what you ask for.” He flipped another card. “Describe the mechanism by which aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase ensures fidelity during translation.”

Ethan answered. Correctly. In detail. While sitting on the kitchen counter in Cassian’s henley and nothing else from the waist down except boxer briefs, because he’d decided that wardrobe was part of the incentive structure and Cassian hadn’t objected.

Two-zero.

Cassian set the flashcards down. “You’re not playing fair.”

“I’m playing to win. You taught me that too.”

“I didn’t teach you to weaponize your thighs.”

“That was self-taught.”

Cassian crossed the kitchen. Stood between Ethan’s knees. Picked up the next card with one hand and placed his other hand on Ethan’s bare thigh — high, warm, his thumb tracing the inner seam of muscle.

“What enzyme catalyzes the committed step in glycolysis?”

The thumb moved. Slow circle. Ethan’s breath shortened.

“Phosphofructokinase-1. PFK-1. Catalyzes the phosphorylation of fructose-6-phosphate to fructose-1,6-bisphosphate. Allosterically activated by AMP, inhibited by ATP and citrate.” His voice was steady. Barely. “Three-zero.”

Cassian’s hand slid higher. His fingers traced the elastic edge of Ethan’s boxer briefs, feather-light. He flipped the next card.

“Describe the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation and its clinical application in arterial blood gas analysis.”

His hand slipped under the fabric. Ethan’s abs clenched. His thighs tightened around Cassian’s hips.

“pH equals pKa plus log of conjugate base over acid,” Ethan managed, his voice thinning. Cassian’s hand wrapped around him, warm and deliberate. “Clinically it’s used to determine whether acidosis or alkalosis is respiratory or metabolic in — fuck, Cass — in origin.”

“Is that your final answer?” Cassian murmured against his ear, hand moving with slow, precise rhythm.

“Four-zero,” Ethan breathed. “One more and I win.”

Cassian pulled back. Removed his hand. Set the flashcards aside entirely.

“Last question. No card. I’m going off-script.”

He stepped between Ethan’s legs. Put both hands on the counter, framing Ethan’s hips. Leaned in until their faces were inches apart.

“What’s the mechanism by which repeated paired stimulation of a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus produces a conditioned response?”

“That’s not biochemistry. That’s psychology.”

“The MCAT covers behavioral sciences. Answer the question.”

“Classical conditioning. The neutral stimulus — in this case, the word ‘good’ — is repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus — your mouth, your hands, the sound of your voice when I get an answer right — until the neutral stimulus alone produces the conditioned response.”

“Which is?”

“I get hard every time someone says ‘good’ in an academic context and it’s ruining my life.”

Cassian laughed. The real laugh. Then he leaned in and whispered, right against Ethan’s mouth: “Good.”

Ethan grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him in and kissed him so hard the flashcards scattered off the counter.

“Five-zero,” Ethan said against his mouth. “I win. You’re mine tonight.”

“I’m yours every night.”

“Tonight you’re mine specifically.”

He pushed Cassian backward. Through the kitchen, down the hall, into the bedroom that was theirs now — two pillows, three plants, a nightstand where wire-rimmed glasses lived beside a water glass.

Ethan pulled Cassian’s shirt open. Buttons, not torn — they’d moved past the frantic stage into something more deliberate. He pushed the shirt off Cassian’s shoulders, traced the scar on his wrist, kissed the hollow of his throat.

“Lie down,” Ethan said.

Cassian lay down. On his back. Looking up at Ethan with gray eyes that held no mask, no composure, no clinical distance. Just trust and want and the quiet willingness of a man who had learned to let someone take care of him.

Ethan straddled him. Pulled the henley over his own head. Pressed his hands flat on Cassian’s chest.

“You know what I love about you?” Ethan said, leaning down, mouth against Cassian’s ear.

“My allosteric regulation research?”

“Your everything.” He kissed below Cassian’s ear. His jaw. The corner of his mouth. “Your stupid glasses. Your ink-stained fingers. The way you cook pasta like it’s a lab protocol. The way you say my name.”

“Ethan.”

“Just like that.”

He kissed down Cassian’s body. Slowly. Taking his time because he’d won the game and the prize was this: the chance to worship this man without a clock or a locked door or a single reason to stop.

He undid Cassian’s belt. Pulled his pants down. Took him in his mouth with focused attention, and Cassian’s hand went to his hair — not guiding, not directing, just holding on — and the sound he made was Ethan’s name, said like a prayer.

Ethan brought him close. Then stopped. Climbed up his body. Pressed their foreheads together.

“I want you inside me,” Ethan said.

Cassian’s hands framed his face. “Always.”

They moved together. No performance. No power dynamic. No arrangement or compensation. Just the rhythm they’d built — their rhythm, specific and practiced and still capable of surprise — and the sounds they made were honest and unhurried and full.

Cassian pressed into him slowly, his hands on Ethan’s hips, his eyes on Ethan’s face. They’d learned each other’s bodies with the thoroughness of scientists and the tenderness of people in love, and the combination was devastating every time.

Ethan rode him. Controlled the pace. Set the rhythm. And Cassian let him, watching from below with those gray eyes that had seen him failing and drowning and fighting and succeeding and had never, not once, looked away.

“You’re everything,” Cassian said. The words he’d first spoken in this bed, months ago. He said them now with the easy certainty of a man who had run the experiment enough times to trust the result. “You’re everything, Ethan.”

“Say it again.”

“You’re everything.”

“Again.”

“You’re—”

He came. Mid-word, mid-sentence, mid-declaration. Ethan followed, with Cassian’s hand on him and Cassian’s voice in his ears and the absolute, bone-deep certainty that he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

After. Tangled. Breathing. The plant on the nightstand casting a small green shadow in the lamplight.

“I got every question right,” Ethan said.

“You did.”

“I’m going to ace the MCAT.”

“I know.”

“And then medical school.”

“Or marine biology.”

Ethan lifted his head from Cassian’s chest. “You remembered that?”

“I remember everything about you. The whales. The blue whale poster. The ocean you dreamed about before someone told you it wasn’t practical.”

“You think I should study the ocean?”

“I think you should study whatever makes you look the way you look when you talk about deep-sea biology documentaries at 11 PM on a Tuesday.”

Ethan pressed his face into Cassian’s chest and felt the laugh before he heard it — the vibration, the warmth, the sound of a man who had learned to be happy and was still surprised by it every time.

“I love you,” Ethan said.

“I love you too.” No rehearsal. No precision. Just the truth, easy and warm, the simplest mechanism in the world.

On the windowsill, three small plants reached toward the light.

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