Adrian jerked his shoulder sharply, trying to break free, but Lucas's grip only tightened, his fingers digging deep into the fabric of the jacket.

"Let me go and get out of this room. Right now." Adrian's voice rang with icy, extreme tension.

"No," Lucas shook his head, and something wild and uncontrollable flashed in his darkened eyes.

He didn't let Adrian finish his sentence. His hands shot to the man's waist, his fingers clenching the shirt fabric tightly, and with one sharp, commanding tug, he pulled him toward him, erasing the last few centimeters of space between their bodies.

Their lips met with a hungry sound. The kiss was rough, devoid of any tenderness, salty from fresh tears and steeped in sticky despair. Lucas kissed as if trying to tear Adrian's very soul from his body, penetrating deeper, demanding an immediate response. His tongue sought entry insistently, and his teeth lightly scraped Adrian's lower lip, leaving behind a burning tingle.

Adrian tried to tense his muscles to push him away, but his body betrayed him, responding to the familiar warmth. Instead of resisting, his fingers dug into Lucas's shoulders of their own accord, pulling him even closer, and his hips instinctively moved forward, though they never quite touched. Between them flared the very spark they had both so diligently tried not to ignite.
When Lucas pulled his lips away, they were still connected by a thin thread of saliva.

Their foreheads touched with a dull thud. The air in the room grew thick and scorching. Both of their breaths faltered, turning into heavy, ragged exhalations that burned the skin at arm's length. Lucas's chest heaved convulsively, and his thumbs slowly, almost hypnotically, stroked Adrian's cheekbones, smearing the moisture.

"Maybe deep down I really do regret that I started making you jealous back then," Lucas whispered. His voice dropped to a hoarse, velvety register, and his hot breath scorched the corner of Adrian's lips. He looked straight into the man's dilated, darkened pupils, savoring the tiny crack in his icy mask. "You can't deny that there really was an animal passion between us, Professor."

Adrian exhaled slowly, his gaze sliding over Lucas's face, and a bitter, mocking smirk appeared on his lips.

"Don't make me laugh."

"Really?"

Gently pulling the man's head back by his hair, Lucas began showering his neck with light, inviting kisses. When even that seemed insufficient, he began licking it. The man's neck grew so wet that saliva dripped beneath his collar, soaking it and everything beneath it.

"I want to fuck you, Professor."

"You're so emotionally unstable, ugh! I was just recently… mnh, stop it, I was "your"… ugh, whore."

Just as Lucas was about to touch the bulge in the man's pants, a sharp electronic beep cut through the air. It was definitely the sound of a key card being swiped through the lock. The door unlocked with a loud click and began to open slowly.

Adrian's reaction was instantaneous. He forcefully pushed Lucas away from him. An insurmountable distance arose between them. Adrian immediately turned sideways to face the newcomer, hiding his erection.

"Calm your little buddy down," Adrian said quietly to Lucas.

"Are you kidding me?" Lucas seemed to have been stabbed right in the heart, but he quickly sat down on the bed and covered his cock with a pillow.

Adrian's fingers flew convulsively to his face. He roughly ran the back of his hand over his lips, wiping away the remnants of someone else's moisture, and then tugged at his shirt collar, trying to hide his flushed, treacherously red and damp neck. It was the desperate gesture of a man backed into a corner, trying to erase the evidence of his weakness.

Standing in the doorway was Professor Day, who lived with Adrian. In one hand he clutched a cup of cold coffee from the hotel vending machine; in the other, a folder of papers. His face expressed sincere, genuine astonishment at the sight of this scene: a disheveled, heavily breathing student and an unnaturally tense, pale colleague.

"Adrian?" Day began, slightly flustered, shifting his gaze from one to the other. "I thought you were still at the coffee shop. What's going on?"

Adrian stood up straight, instantly putting on the mask of the flawless, icy professional. But his voice, despite his best efforts to sound calm, betrayed him with a slight tremor on a single syllable:

"I'm Professor Wayne, don't forget, we're standing next to a student," Adrian corrected him, without even looking at his colleague. "A small problem has arisen."

He took a small step to the side, completely shielding Lucas with his body

"Lucas hasn't been feeling well since the Olympics," Adrian continued in the same even tone, uttering this pathetic lie with a stony face. "He has a severe headache and his temperature is rising. I simply invited him into our room because I happened to have some aspirin with me."

Humiliation burned Lucas from within. This absurd, pathetic improvisation about "pills" destroyed everything fragile and real that had just existed between them, turning their passion into some kind of shameful secret.

And why does he say the word "little" so often!

He shot Adrian a quick glance, full of panic and searing resentment.

"Thanks for your help, Professor. I'm going to lie down."

He spun on his heels and practically ran out into the hallway, slamming the door behind him so hard that a vibrating tremor ran through the walls of the room.