The Heat Professor (Nerds Who Knot Book 4)

by Amy Bellows

The woman’s eyes widen as they fall on me. “Who are you?” She turns to Tatum. “Who is he? I thought you had a boyfriend.”

  He has a boyfriend? What is he doing arching his neck for me? Or inviting me into his bed?

  Tatum swallows hard. “He broke up with me, remember? Three years ago. When you had your accident. He… he couldn’t handle it all.”

  Tatum’s mother leans against the doorframe. “My accident? That was three years ago?”

  “Yes. You have short-term memory loss. Everything’s okay. We’re doing okay. Go back to bed, all right?”

  She nods blankly and wanders off, shutting the door behind her.

  Everything finally fits together. The place in the trailer park. The bare room. The cam show. His mother’s memory. My knot shrinks as I realize Tatum’s situation. And here I am, making it worse.

  No wonder he wanted someone to take care of him.

  “Please get off of me.” Tatum’s voice is lifeless and cold.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Get off of me!”

  I roll to the side, and he springs off the bed, pulling his jeans on.

  “If there’s anything I can do to help. If you need money—”

  He shakes his head. “No. This one’s free, Professor. Now get the fuck out of my house.”

  The condom on my dick is torn. Is Tatum on birth control? I scan his room. A jar of Lycinate sits by the books: heat suppressants. The cheapest, most toxic kind you can buy. They shouldn’t even be legal. Is Tatum taking those?

  If he’s the primary caretaker of his mother, how long has it been since he had a heat?

  “Are you done feeling sorry for me yet? Get your clothes on and leave.”

  He’s right. None of this is my business. But I can’t help but feel responsible now. He took my knot. I want to get him out of this bare room and into my bed so he can stop taking horrible medication and have a decent heat. Does he know Lycinate can corrode his brain and his stomach?

  I tuck the broken condom inside my pants pocket so he doesn’t have to explain it to his mother later and pull on my clothes one by one. By the time I’m finished, Tatum is nearly vibrating with anger. I follow him out into the hall and into a front room where an old TV blares. The flooring is cracked down the center, and the couch in their living room is patched up with duct tape.

  His mother, now wearing a threadbare robe, stands and walks up to me. She’s more timid than she was before—clearly shaken from the information Tatum told her. “I’m sorry. We’ve probably met, but I don’t remember. Are you Tatum’s new boyfriend?”

  Tatum closes his eyes and covers the crook of his neck with his hand. It’s still puffy from my mouth. Clearly, the idea of his mother meeting a one-night stand is mortifying. I don’t blame him. He said she had short-term memory loss, didn’t he?

  “Yes, I am. My name is Damien Ringdal. I’m a history professor at Grayson University.” I hold out my hand to her.

  She grins at Tatum and shakes it. “Professor, huh? I’m sorry for interrupting the two of you. I wouldn’t mind if you spent the night. Tatum’s a grown man now.”

  Tatum lets out a ragged breath. “He isn’t going to stay the night, Mom. He’s… busy.”

  “Ah, well, it was nice meeting you.”

  “You as well.”

  As I walk out, it feels like I’m leaving my heart in that old, beat-up trailer.

  Tatum slams the door behind me.

  13

  Damien

  My omega mother attacks her windowsill with a hammer. Hemingway backs away from her with obvious trepidation.

  “Whoa! What are you doing?”

  She whacks the windowsill again, where I now see the crooked nail she’s hammering home. “We can’t have you escaping out the window.”

  “Escaping out the window? This room is on the second story. I have a heat latch, not a death wish.”

  “When I was a teenager, I climbed out of a second story to sneak out with your alpha mother. She was quite handsome back then. It was totally worth the torn sheets and stern lecture from your omega grandpa.”

  My omega mother escaped out of a second story window with a bedsheet? That’s so dangerous and sweet. But she doesn’t need to worry about me doing the same. Even if I managed to escape, Tatum would never let me in his house again, and I don’t blame him.

  “Mom, I think as long as I’m staying with you, I’ll be fine. I just don’t want to go back home until I’ve found a mate.”

  She slams the hammer down one more time. “There, that should do it. And stop telling me you’ll be fine. You just had sex with one of your students, so I don’t want to hear it. You’re out of control, and until you’ve made bonding arrangements with an omega, you’ll be staying in this room under lock and key unless I have time to watch over you.” I open my mouth, but she lifts her chin and glares at me. “Don’t argue with me on this. You won’t win.”

  I drove here straight from Tatum’s house. Both of my mothers were asleep, so I slept in the car until the lights came on in their house. I need help. Clearly, I can’t do this alone.

  She walks toward the door. Hemingway and I follow her, but she shuts it in our faces. The lock slides home on the other side of the door.

  “Mom? I thought we were going to get my stuff. Mom?”

  “Try to get out.”

  Seriously? Who does she think I am? Houdini?

  “The door is locked, and the window is nailed shut. It’s okay. I can’t get out.”

  “I stole your phone, and I’m going to dial the number of someone random. Jessie. Dialing now.”

  Damn it. Jessie is an old client.

  “Don’t! I’m not supposed to contact my clients after their heat is over!” I bang on the door and try to twist the knob.

  “Oh, hello. No, this is Damien’s omega mother.”

  Oh my God. I’m going to kill her.

  “Mom! Let me out of here!”

  “Oh, he’s fine. He’s just got himself into a pickle, and I’m calling you to annoy him.” Her voice is smug. Why did I let her get involved with this? And when did she learn to pick a pocket? I didn’t even notice my phone was missing.

  The door has a simple lock you can jimmy with the end of a coat hanger. I slide the bedroom closet open, grab the hanger from one of my alpha mother’s old suits, and bend the wire until I can use it as a makeshift key.

  “Well, essentially, I’m trying to entice him to escape from the room I’ve locked him in, and I think calls to random contacts on his phone will be motivating to him. Especially if I start telling you embarrassing stories from his childhood. We could start with the times I caught him jacking off as a teenager. Especially the year he turned thirteen. Whew. He was brazen that year.”

  I push the coat hanger in the lock, but no matter what angle I push it in, the knob won’t turn. Hemingway watches me hopefully.

  “We were camping as a family, and I guess he couldn’t wait three days to get off because—”

  If I can’t unlock it, maybe I can force it open. I rattle the knob, throwing my weight into it.

  “There was a telltale collection of white goop on a neighboring tree one morning. He tried to blame his older sister, who had presented as an alpha earlier that year and already had a full-sized dick, but in his lust-crazed state, he must have brushed his nether regions against the poison ivy next to the tree because he was a very itchy boy.”

  It’s no use. I rest my back against the door. “I can’t get out, okay? I really can’t get out.”

  The lock slides open, and I almost fall back as she opens the door. She hands me the phone. It’s off.

  “You hung up on him?” I ask.

  She folds her arms and shifts her weight onto one leg. “You really think I’d call one of your clients and tell him the poison ivy masturbation story?”

  Yes, I do. But it’s probably good she doesn’t know that. I don’t want to give her any ideas.

  “Of course not.”

  �
�Well, I will if you try to escape. I put Jessie’s contact info in my phone.”

  Right. This is why I got her involved—because she’s going to make it impossible for me to hurt someone else the way I hurt Tatum. If only there was some way to make it up to him.

  “We best go get your stuff. I know you think I sit around all day and stare at my computer screen, and that’s technically true. But I stare at my computer screen with a purpose. We’re going to drop by your house to get some of your belongings, including your laptop, so you can stare at your computer screen with a purpose next to me. You are going to join every dating website known to mankind, and I’m going to set you up on a few chaperoned dates as well. We’ll get this taken care of.”

  How am I supposed to find a mate when my heart is still back in the trailer park, lying next to a man whose mattress rests on a bare floor?

  As I head outside with my mother and into my car, I’m not thinking about how I’m going to fix this, but how I’m going to convince that beautiful man to forgive me.

  At this point, I’m not sure I can.

  14

  Tatum

  I spend the next day in my pajamas watching TV with my mom. Damien’s class was cancelled, so the only thing I had to blow off was my internship. After what happened last night, I can’t face Damien, so I simply don’t go. Because that will be awesome for my career.

  Too bad my last fuck is officially gone.

  “Seinfield is one of the best shows ever,” I say.

  My mother nods. She’s been staring at my puffy eyes again, which means she forgot the explanation I gave her earlier. Last time I tried to tell her I had allergies. She didn’t completely buy it, so I’m going to say I watched Titanic this time. She’ll probably believe that.

  “It’s really all about Kramer. He’s the one that makes it.” She’s told me this before, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

  My phone dings. It’s the specific alert I gave to CamBoys.net. Usually, I only do shows on Thursday or Sunday night. However, my clients can request private chats. They pay by the minute, and I’m pretty expensive, so I don’t have a lot of requests. The camboys who gave me advice when I started out told me that if my private chats were too cheap, they’d be more popular than my shows, and I’d end up working a lot more hours for less money.

  I tell my mom I’m going to change into something warmer and head back into my room. Once I have the door closed and locked, I bring up the app. “Professor” requested a private chat in one hour.

  Is he serious? Why on earth would I talk to him after what he did last night?

  Then I see the amount he’s offering. Twenty dollars a minute, more than double my usual rate.

  Good Christ. He tipped me over a thousand dollars during last night’s show. Is he really going to pay me twenty dollars a minute to talk with him? If I keep him online for ten minutes, that will be two hundred dollars. Combined with the money I earned from last night’s show, I could completely catch up on the gas, power, and phone bills. If I do reasonably well on my Thursday and Sunday night shows, I’ll have enough to get caught up on the mortgage too. Then I could focus on saving for my heat.

  Ten minutes with Damien. I can handle ten minutes, can’t I? He probably wants to double check I’m not going to tell anyone. And if I can keep him on for longer, every minute will get me that much closer to stopping those suppressants once and for all.

  I guess I need to find Mom’s concealer and cover up these puffy eyes. Before I can think better of it, I accept Damien’s offer and head out into the front room.

  “I’m gonna study out in the shed for a bit,” I lie.

  She smiles and sips at her tea. “Okay.”

  Later tonight, we’ll go on our daily walk, which is often the only time she leaves the house. I should take better care of her, but sometimes it’s hard to take her places without a car.

  After I finish my degree, I’ll make more money, and we’ll have more options. I could even take her to a daytime care facility. They’re outrageously expensive, but maybe we could splurge a few days a week.

  If I can get through the next few months, everything will be okay.

  It doesn’t take much concealer to hide the evidence of last night’s crying session. After I change out of my pajamas and tousle my hair a bit, I look fine. That’s right, Damien Ringdal. I don’t need you. If you want to spend an outrageous amount of money to talk to me, I’ll let you. But last night was nothing more than bad casual sex.

  I square my shoulders and march out the back door to the slippery pathway that leads to the shed. Once I get inside, I flip on the space heater. The computer takes a while to boot up, so I get that started too. While I wait, I hop back and forth on each of my feet to keep warm. Two and a half months until graduation. That’s nothing. I’ve made it this far. A hot professor with a heat latch isn’t going to stop me now.

  Five minutes until show time.

  I go through my regular routine of stretching and breathing slow, even though I’m not going to be contorting my body into any interesting positions today. It helps calm me down. When your livelihood depends on a bunch of guys liking you enough to tip, getting in front of the camera can be nerve-racking. Once I get into my groove, I always enjoy myself, but sometimes finding that headspace is difficult. There are nights I don’t feel particularly sexy or social. It doesn’t matter. The show must go on.

  That’s how it has to be with Damien too.

  Just as his private chat is scheduled to start, my computer finishes loading, and a notification pops up on my screen. It’s “Professor.” Usually, the camera portion of the chat is only one-way. I don’t accept two-way cam chats. But tonight is an exception. I click on it, and Damien fills my screen, wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Seeing him dressed so casually feels intimate.

  “Tatum. Thank you for speaking with me. I wanted to apologize—”

  “What do you want to see tonight?” I’m just messing around with him. I have no intention of making this conversation sexual, but it stops him cold.

  “I just wanted to talk—”

  “You hired a camboy. So here I am. Tell me what you want, Professor.” Maybe I’m laying it on a bit thick. I don’t care. He deserves it.

  He takes in a deep breath. “Okay. Honestly, I wanted to talk with you about that anyway.”

  What does that mean? The confusion must be obvious on my face because Damien continues. “I’m staying with my mothers until I make bonding arrangements with my future mate. I also won’t be teaching for the rest of the semester or volunteering at the SLASW. So if you don’t want to see me again, you don’t have to. It’s totally up to you.”

  I shouldn’t feel a sense of loss. He was awful last night. And yet the idea of never seeing Damien Ringdal again seems strange.

  “In the meantime, I’ll be meeting as many omegas as possible in with the hope I can find someone who is a good fit for me.”

  What does this have to do with me? Does he want me to be his sexual release while he courts these other omegas? Because that’s fucked up.

  “The reality is I’ve only spoken with you in the classroom and last night. Even though I sucked on your scent gland, I don’t know how you take your coffee, what your favorite band is, or what TV shows you like. All I know is you’re very intelligent, and when my inner alpha became desperate to find a mate, he wanted you. After relying on him so heavily throughout the years with my heat companion work, I’ve learned to trust him. He’s rarely wrong. So, if you’ll let me, I’d like to get to know you better, Tatum. I’ll pay for the privilege, of course. Twenty dollars a minute. That’s only fair after what I’ve put you through. And it will all be online. I couldn’t get to your place if I tried, I assure you. I’m under a very secure house arrest via my omega mother. I want to try to do this right. Or as right as I can, under the circumstances.”

  I think Damien is forgetting a few very important things.

  “To what end? It’s not like we’re going to
bond. You would be fired from both of your jobs.”

  He smiles stiffly. “I’d have to resign, yes. That’s true. But I can’t be a heat companion anymore anyway. No matter what I do, I have to start over again. I didn’t go into teaching because it was my true passion. It was simply a way to advocate for sex workers.”

  I can’t imagine Professor Ringdal not teaching anymore. Who would cover the courses on the history of sex work? No one, I realize. That was his specialization, and if he left the university, his unique knowledge would leave with him. That would be such a loss for the students, and a loss for sex workers too.

  With a heavy heart, I have to accept that the world needs Damien Ringdal a lot more than I ever could.

  “You can’t stop teaching because of me. What you teach is too important. And you’re a good professor.”

  He lowers his head and looks at his hands. “I’d rather be a good man than a good professor. I already told the dean about my indiscretion. He’s going to talk to the board this week. He said they might show lenience because of my heat latch, but it’s hard to say. I didn’t mention your name, of course.”

  I don’t know how to respond. He could have gotten away with it. No one ever had to know. I can’t help but look at last night differently now. All of the guilt. All of the apologies. Even when Damien was overwhelmed by his heat latch, he still made it good for me.

  Omegas do plenty of irrational things during their heat, and we don’t blame them. Can I forgive Damien for what he did last night? Will it be possible to trust him again? I’m not sure.

  “Does Abbie know?” I ask.

  He nods. “I had to tell her. I’ve been suspended from volunteer work at the SLASW indefinitely. Of course, she understands none of it was your fault.”

  What does Abbie think of me now? I’m sure fucking your superiors is against the rules in any job.

  “Damien, I don’t think this would work anyway. My mom… she’s never going to get better, and I’m her only child.”

  He doesn’t say anything for a moment. I curse myself. How many times do I need to be rejected by him in twenty-four hours before I stop coming back for more?