The Frat Brat by Nico Jaye

Short story from Don’t Read in the closet

GoodReads Presents:  http://www.mmromancegroup.com/?p=276845

frat bratBlurb
Kyle Fenton’s nickname around his fraternity house may as well be “Shameless Flirt.” Out and proud to his frat, he’s more than happy to live up to that reputation, especially when new frat brother Daisuke “Dice” Keto moves in. However, Dice’s reaction to Kyle’s antics is cryptic at best, leaving Kyle frustrated in more ways than one. Will a lost bet–and a sexy rendezvous with a “Secret Admirer”–clarify the situation?

Author’s Note: Royalties from the sale of this book will be donated to the Human Rights Campaign, a civil rights organization focusing on LGBTQ equality.

*****

Dear Author,
I am taking part of a punishment… scratch that, I’m being forced in this punishment. We, the seniors, placed a bet with the juniors of our fraternity to see who could raise the most money. Guess who lost? Now, each senior is placed in a separate room where our supposed punishment will happen. Walking into my assigned room, I notice two unusual things: a blindfold and a note that says “Sit down and put the blindfold on. —Secret Admirer”

Photo Description:
A black-and-white close-up of an attractive young man wearing a dark blindfold. His expression is stoic— not fearful, but also not excited. He isn’t wearing a shirt, and, based on the upper chest area that is visible, he’s muscular and fit.

This story was written as a part of the M/M Romance Group’s “Love is an Open Road” event. Group members were asked to write a story prompt inspired by a photo of their choice. Authors of the group selected a photo and prompt that spoke to them and wrote a short story.

This story may contain sexually explicit content and is intended for adult readers. It may contain content that is disagreeable or distressing to some readers. The M/M Romance Group strongly recommends that each reader review the General Information section before each story for story tags as well as for content warnings

Review

For those of you who don’t spend a lot of time on GoodReads or in the M/M Romance Group (I recommend you do!) – these are short stories written by both well-known and new authors based on pictures that have been submitted with intriguing story ideas. The authors take off from there and then the end results are published (For Free!) on the Group’s page.

This story had some excellent moments: the sexual tension, the willingness to explore one’s sexuality, the brief but hot smexy times, the potential for interesting MCs.
However, there just wasn’t enough time spent with the MCs to really develop much of any connection to them beyond the sexual so I wasn’t very invested in their liason.
Kyle and Dice are fraternity brothers in a competition and when Kyle loses, Dice is placed in charge of his “punishment”. Before this, Kyle had been madly flirting with Dice, but thinking that Dice was straight. Dice, too, was thinking he was straight and not sure how to take Kyle’s shenanigans.
What didn’t make sense to me:
Why would Kyle flirt so shamelessly if he had a no-sex-with-frat-brothers policy?
Why would Dice mistake anything about Kyle’s flirting as anything other than sexual attraction?
When sent to do a “punishment” why do a blindfold then immediately tell him who you are?
Why spend precious page time going over the week’s near misses and detailing Kyle’s conquests if you are trying to build up some attachment between the two MCs?

I think, had this been given more time to become a more fleshed out piece it really could have been a really nice GFY story and maybe the author will expand this one day.

That being said – it was a fun piece to read and I did enjoy it, even if I didn’t love it.

3.75 of 5 hearts

4

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