It's the summer break, and for the first time in his life, Mike would rather stay in the bloody classroom.<br><br>It's wedding season, and Mike is doomed to spend all summer sipping cheap champagne and pretending he likes tiny portions of posh food. From the passive-aggressive torment of Mike's mother-in-law to the insulting incredulity of his colleagues over what his mysterious husband actually looks like, Mike would voluntarily teach sex education to fourteen-year-olds for the rest of his life if it would only get him out of one more wedding. Even his husband in a kilt isn't going to save this one.<br><br>But there's nothing like watching someone else get hitched to remind him of where he's come from ... and where he's determined to go from here.

Married Ones

And now he knew Stephen a whole lot better than that evening nine years ago, Mike knew full well what hadreally gotten Stephen’s knickers off. It wasn’t the four pints in the pub, or the necking session round the back of the students’ union on the way home.


It was the moment Mike had said, “I don’t do chat-up lines. You’re fit, I’m single, fancy going backto mine?”


Not the brittle, tight one he gave his family. Not the sly smirk that had Mike popping a boner before Stephen said a word. But his smile. His proper smile. The one he’d delivered along with a couple of cold ones, fresh out of school, on the first evening of freedom this summer.


No, Mike thought as he shouldered his way into the gents’. Stephen had known from the very beginning what he was being offered. And he’d wanted every last inch of it.


And preferably, back then, down his throat.


Chapter 19