Feb 17

New Release Blitz: The Weight of Living by M.A. Hinkle (Excerpt & Giveaway)

Title:  The Weight of Living

Series: Cherrywood Grove, Book Three

Author: M.A. Hinkle

Publisher:  NineStar Press

Release Date: February 17, 2020

Heat Level: 1 – No Sex

Pairing: Female/Female

Length: 79500

Genre: Contemporary, LGBTQIA+, contemporary, lesbian, trans, artists, caterer/chef, photographer/wedding photographer, teenagers, family drama, crazy weddings, Sailor Moon nerdiness, millennial angst, interracial/intercultural

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Synopsis

When she arrives in Cherrywood Grove for a working vacation, shy photographer Trisha Ivy expects to kick back and relax, enjoying her last summer of freedom before turning into a real adult with a mortgage and a nine-to-five. After all, her real life is back in Chicago with her best friend Bella, not a sleepy small town. But Trisha keeps running into beautiful, confident Gabi Gonzalez, a caterer working all the same weddings…and she’s the daughter of Trisha’s favorite local TV star. Trisha can’t resist getting to know her. After all, she’s only in town for the summer, and Gabi is straight. What harm could it do?

Gabi Gonzalez has spent most of her life trying to escape Cherrywood Grove and find something bigger and better. During an internship in Milwaukee, she thought she’d finally found it. But after her father’s sudden death, she returns home and tries to squeeze back into the same childhood roles: kid sister, cool aunt, tireless worker. She’s just resigned herself to going through the motions when she meets Trisha, someone who finally sees Gabi for her own self instead of putting her in a box. Can Gabi open up to Trisha about what she really wants before Trisha leaves town for good?

Excerpt

The Weight of Living
M.A. Hinkle © 2020
All Rights Reserved

June
2015, Three Months Before: The Time Gabi Was a Grumpy Tomatillo

Gabi had expected Soledad to laugh when she came in the room, and she was not disappointed. “What is your outfit?” Soledad asked, putting her hands on her hips. “I didn’t even know you owned a dress.”

Gabi busied herself rolling up the sleeves of her cardigan. She had short-sleeved ones, but none of them had been washed recently, so they smelled musty like the closet at her parents’ house. When she left for her internship, she’d only brought blazers. “I own several, as it happens. You remember how I used to dress. This is for business.”

Soledad glanced at her own outfit—a bright, short-sleeved button-down and her favorite gold chain. Gabi would have called it a self-conscious look if she didn’t know Soledad so well. “Well, sorry, I thought this was a TV show, not a board meeting.”

The twist to her voice was surprisingly nervous, and Gabi glanced at her again. “You don’t have to change. You look great.”

The idea of Soledad looking anything but great—except maybe elbow deep in week-old fryer grease—was unfathomable. Soledad’s hair was always sleek and freshly gelled; her shirts were always bright as jewels against her brown skin.

But she still didn’t relax; she was twisting the gold chain between her fingers, a gesture usually reserved for long talks on the phone with her latest girlfriend.

“You look fine,” Gabi repeated. “I have to dress this way to make my parents happy. You saw how my mom reacted when she noticed my short hair.” She affected a high-pitched voice, which sounded nothing like her mother but made the point. “‘Ay, mija, tu pelo! What did you do to yourself?’”

Soledad winced. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to remember.”

“She didn’t mean it.” Though Gabi’s mother certainly had. Gabi’s hair hadn’t been shorter than shoulder-length since a classmate rubbed gum in it in kindergarten. “Anyway, it’s too late to change, so they can’t say anything even if they want to.”

Gabi’s parents wouldn’t say a word. From the moment they laid eyes on Soledad, they had adored her. They’d spent the whole weekend hanging on her every word and laughing hysterically at her jokes.

Gabi clapped Soledad on the back. Touching her so casually seemed strange, but no stranger than Soledad’s nerves. She hadn’t even blinked when one of the guys in their internship group nearly cut off a finger slicing ham. “Come on, chill. This really isn’t a big deal.”

“Easy for you to say.” Soledad let Gabi nudge her toward the kitchen anyway. Today, they were filming in the big industrial kitchen on campus, which Gabi had hoped would put Soledad at ease, but no dice. “You’ve been on TV since you were, like, five.”

“Six.”

Soledad shot her a look, but before she could tell Gabi off, Gabi’s father Carlos swept into the room. As usual, several members of the crew trailed him trying to get his attention, but Carlos ignored them, making a beeline for Gabi’s side. He gave her a loud smacking kiss on the cheek, and Gabi dutifully rolled her eyes. She’d missed it since she’d been away for almost a year now, but her dad would get a big head if she let him know.

“There’s my girl. Or one of them, anyway.” He turned to Soledad. “I’m outnumbered, and it only keeps getting worse. I prayed and prayed Soledad would have a boy, but alas. Oh well. There’s always you, Gabi.”

“Not planning on kids, Dad,” said Gabi.

He draped an arm around her shoulders. “You haven’t met the right man yet, mija. I thought I would be a bachelor forever too, but here I am.”

Soledad snorted, and Gabi’s father wagged a finger at her. “Your opinion does not count, Señorita Rivera! Although when Sarah’s old enough, I will appreciate your help vetting her choice of woman.”

Gabi caught Soledad’s eye, both of them startled. Sarah was only seventeen, and their internship was nearly over. They hadn’t discussed the future, but it probably didn’t involve either of them hanging out in Cherrywood Grove.

Before Gabi had to figure out how to drop any bombshells on her father, Sarah popped up at his elbow. “Abuelo, I’ve already had three girlfriends.”

“Si, si, mijita, I know, but high school does not count.”

Sarah puffed up, a sure sign she was going to lecture all of them on exactly how serious she could be. And also, probably ageism or something. Gabi would have to step in. She loved watching Sarah unleash herself, and so did Carlos, but they were on a tight schedule today.

“Sarah, you said yourself you broke up with them because they weren’t mature enough for you.”

Sarah’s shoulders relaxed. “It’s true, I suppose. But Abuelo’s right about your boyfriends, Gabi. They were all garbage.”

Soledad did nothing to hide her smirk. Gabi pretended not to notice.

Carlos let go of Gabi, but only so he could pull Sarah to his side instead. “Now, have you got notes for me, hmm?”

“Yep.” Sarah held up her binder, labeled Talk of the Town in her impeccable handwriting. “Although I still couldn’t decide on one part. I know you said you didn’t like this line—” She flipped through the pages until she found one highlighted in blue. “—but I couldn’t think of a better substitute. Yours doesn’t roll off the tongue.”

“Ah! Lucky for us, our resident tiebreaker is here!” He reached out for Gabi again, holding one girl in each arm.

Soledad caught Gabi’s eye, her hand covering her mouth to hide a laugh.

Gabi made a face at her to indicate, I will deal with you later. To her father, she said, “Okay, okay, let me see.”

Her father passed her the binder. The line in question was a scientific explanation about egg proteins. Sarah’s version involved the actual names; Carlos’s was more simplistic. He never liked to go into too much detail in case it lost people’s attention. But his was patronizingly vague.

“Sarah’s is better,” Gabi declared. “But ditch the scientific terms. Call them proteins. We can put a graphic up with their proper names in a post if it’ll bother you so much.”

“It will,” said Sarah, though not as sharply as usual since she’d won the argument. “Don’t go anywhere, Abuelo. I have more notes.”

Gabi took the chance to duck out from under her father’s arm. Soledad was clearly still ill at ease, which would make for a stiff and uninteresting performance. And Gabi was the resident problem-solver, after all.

“Good, good, let’s talk.” Carlos touched Gabi’s elbow before she managed to slip away completely. “Oh, Gabriela, your sister was looking for you.”

Gabi waited until Carlos walked away, an arm still around Sarah’s shoulders, before letting out a disgusted sigh. “Of course she is.”

“Rosa’s pretty cool.” Soledad was only trying to tweak Gabi’s nose, but Gabi could never resist the bait.

“And beautiful and talented and blah blah blah.” Gabi adjusted the sleeves of her cardigan again, already sliding down. She’d forgotten how fussy feminine clothes were. “You only like her because you think she’s hot.”

“And you’re only cranky because she’s older than you and can challenge your authority.”

“Don’t you start rubbing in the age difference. My parents are bad enough. I can only handle being called their little surprise so many times in one week. And you wonder why I needed a break.”

Gabi shooed Soledad out the door over to the prep area, where Gabi’s sister, Rosa, was bent over a row of papier-mâché tomatillos painted with faces. Despite the barely dry paint, she was wearing a far fancier dress than Gabi’s, tied with a sash at her waist emphasizing her curves. If Gabi wore a similar dress, she’d look flat as a board. Or like Frankenstein’s monster.

Soledad tilted her head. “Are these supposed to be your family?” she asked, picking up one with Carlos’s distinctive broad nose.

“Oh, of course! And there’s you over here.” Rosa picked up one tucked behind the others with Soledad’s dimple in her left cheek. “You can take it home after the shoot if you’d like. A little memento. Otherwise, it’ll end up lost in Papá’s house somewhere. He’s less organized than I am.”

Gabi found her own. “Why am I frowning?”

“You’re unripe, obviously. Papá wanted some models to demonstrate how to shop for fresh tomatillos. See, he’s bruised, and Mamá is overripe.”

“You have way too much fun with this stuff.”

“Are you kidding me? She’s living the dream.” Soledad gently replaced her tomatillo next to Gabi’s. “Hell yeah I’m taking my mini-me home.”

“We’ll have to find a safe spot so your roommates don’t trash her.” Gabi poked Rosa’s arm. “Now what did you want me for?”

“What did I want you for?” Rosa tapped her cheek and then brightened. “Ah. Yes. Carry this, please? I’d ask one of the tech guys to help, but something always ends up broken.” She pointed at a box of miscellaneous props. “Also, it’s your turn to hide the armadillo. Several times over, but we’ll let it slide.”

“Can I do it?” Soledad asked, picking through the box. “It’s my favorite part.” She found it near the bottom and held it up, grinning. It was one of Rosa’s first props for the show and thus a little worse for wear, but it still worked.

“You have to be sneaky. Dad keeps his eyes peeled better than you’d think.” Gabi started to pick up the prop box, but her sleeves had slipped down again. She growled and shrugged off her cardigan.

“Bare arms? The scandal!” Soledad winked at her.

“I’m simply glad she’s wearing real clothes again,” said Rosa absently, picking up a tiny paintbrush to touch up a detail on Carlos’s tomatillo. “I have no idea where you got the outfit you arrived in, mi amor, but it should have been burned.”

Gabi caught Soledad’s eye and mouthed, I told you so. She grabbed the box. “Stop messing with those. We’ll need them sooner than you think.”

“All right, all right.” Rosa stepped back. “I’ll be there in a moment.”

“If you aren’t on set in five, I’m sending one of the tech guys here.”

Rosa flapped a hand at her, already inspecting another tomatillo to doubtless make a minuscule change no one else would notice, even in HD.

Rolling her eyes, Gabi nodded at the doorway, and Soledad headed out first, though she lingered in the hallway instead of walking right back into the kitchen.

“Getting cold feet after all?” Gabi asked, though she could never imagine Soledad intimidated. Then again, she’d never imagined her nervous either. “Say the word and you can leave. It’s not going to mess anything up.”

“Don’t be silly. This is awesome. It’s—” Soledad traced the swirling patterns painted on the armadillo, her expression thoughtful. When she spoke, her voice had softened. “You’re lucky, you know? I wasn’t sure what to think when you invited me to visit, but your family’s as good as it looks from the outside. It’s pretty cool. You’re so much less awkward here.”

Gabi adjusted her grip on the box, unsure what to say. She and Soledad rarely discussed personal topics. She wasn’t even sure why she’d invited Soledad to come visit during their break. Soledad was the only one without family to visit over the holidays, yes, but she’d been excited for the break from her roommates. Her own parents were nothing to write home about.

“I guess,” Gabi said, when the silence threatened to turn strange between them. It happened sometimes, both of them holding their breath for no reason Gabi could make sense of. “I’ve never thought about it.”

Soledad’s expression didn’t change. “I’m not surprised. It makes you even luckier.” As fast as it came, her mood passed, and she lifted her head, flashing Gabi one of her signature cocky grins. “It’s your job to distract your papá while I hide this.”

Gabi grinned back. “I see how it is. I’m always stuck playing the sidekick.”

“Damn straight you are.”

When they got back to the main filming area, Carlos had apparently decided on the finalized version of the script and settled on a good area to film the intro. Sarah waved them over to the corner, out of frame.

“Are we interrupting something?” Soledad whispered. She’d gone tense again, and now it was too late to do anything to loosen her up. Oh well. Most of the guests were bad on camera too.

“He’s not started yet. Trust me, you’ll know when.” Gabi sat in a folding chair beside Sarah; Soledad turned hers around and propped her arms on the back, as was her way.

“They’re only testing the acoustics in this room right now,” Sarah said, making notes in a different, rainbow-colored binder. “It’ll be a while before anything interesting happens.”

Still, they all quieted when someone called for silence, and the cameraman counted down like they were truly filming. Soledad leaned forward in her chair, mouthing the words along with Carlos: “¡Hola! I’m Carlos Gonzalez, and you’re not, coming to you live from the greatest kitchen in the world.”

They had recently tweaked the intro for this episode, and Gabi ought to have paid attention. Yet she found herself watching Soledad, her eyes bright with excitement, and when Carlos forgot a line and the whole crew broke up in laughter, Gabi realized she hadn’t heard a word he said.

Purchase

NineStar Press | Amazon | Smashwords | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

Meet the Author

M.A. Hinkle swears a lot and makes jokes at inappropriate times, so she writes about characters who do the same thing. She’s also worked as an editor and proofreader for the last eight years, critiquing everything from graduate school applications to romance novels.

Website | Facebook | Twitter

Giveaway



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Feb 17

New Release Blitz: Behind the Sun, Above the Moon by Ziggy Schutz, Paige S. Allen, Brooklyn Ray, J.S. Fields, S.R. Jones, Alex Harrow, Emmet Nahil, Sara Codair, Anna Zabo (Excerpt & Giveaway)

Title:  Behind the Sun, Above the Moon

Author: Ziggy Schutz, Paige S. Allen, Brooklyn Ray, J.S. Fields, S.R. Jones, Alex Harrow, Emmet Nahil, Sara Codair, Anna Zabo

Publisher:  NineStar Press

Release Date: February 17, 2020

Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex

Pairing: M/NB, F/NB

Length: 91300

Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy, LGBT, contemporary, fantasy, science fiction, trans, nonbinary, magic, short stories

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Synopsis

A Queer anthology inspired by magic and the cosmos, a vast and beautiful place where planets, stars, comets—entire galaxies, even—live without borders, specifications or binaries. Stories span science fiction, science fantasy, contemporary, fabulism and magical realism, and celebrate Non-binary and Transgender characters.

twice-spent comet by Ziggy Schutz

From Dusk to Dying Sun by Paige S. Allen

Lost/Found by Brooklyn Ray

Awry with Dandelions by J.S. Fields

The Far Touch by S.R. Jones

Ink and Stars by Alex Harrow

Horologium by Emmet Nahil

Death Marked by Sara Codair

Weave the Dark, Weave the Light by Anna Zabo

Excerpt

twice-spent comet
On an isolated asteroid, Fer serves out their sentence with a found family of ramshackle criminals. Life takes an exciting turn when they befriend Ophelia, a beautiful humanoid creature with a tail like a comet.

From Dusk to Dying Sun
Jay Morrison almost believes the rumors of magic and mischief haunting the US-50. But their partner, Luis Inoa, has made a career guarding the dusty Nevada trails. According to him, the only scary things on the highway are the silences, until a group of tourists break open the sun and disappear into a fiery blaze.

Lost/Found
When Hollis Griffin, a lonely sex worker living in Venice Beach, forms an unlikely friendship with a fallen star, she begins to face the truth about her life, her past, and what the future holds.

Awry with Dandelions
For thirty seconds every night, a disembodied specter named Mette visits with Orin who has long since written the ghost woman off as a recurring dream. But when Mette suggests meeting in real life, Orin’s inner world turns out to be more substantial than imaginary, and xie embarks on a journey to discover the truth of Mette and their strange connection.

The Far Touch
A long-standing coven of witches trek to their sacred space and accidentally discover life on another planet when their Solstice celebration interferes with a lone practitioner.

Ink and Stars
Locked in a contract to steal their ex-lovers ship, Chaz Neoma comes face to face with consequences, lost partnership, and the chance at a future, after discovering they aren’t the last Weaver in the universe.

Horologium
In the far reaches of the Horologium Supercluster, an astronaux is stranded alone on a long-distance astral ship where they’re visited by three apparitions, telling stories of ancestors who traveled space before them. Coeie must decide whether to follow the ghosts of the past, or forge their own path through the cosmos.

Death Marked
As chief security officer in the Lunar Guard, Enzi is in charge of the security for their sister’s coming of age ceremony. A fragile relationship with their family doesn’t make keeping Ulsa safe any easier, and neither does a group of pesky drones or a hidden plot to overthrow their sister’s place in the family.

Weave the Dark, Weave the Light
On a crisp night, Ari, a supposed elemental witch, meets Jonathan Aster, a powerful being they desperately want to understand. As they explore an intense, intimate and passionate relationship, Ari unearths long-hidden mysteries about themself and their magic.

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NineStar Press | Amazon | Smashwords | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

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Feb 10

New Release Blitz: No Parking by Valentine Wheeler (Excerpt & Giveaway)

Title:  No Parking

Author: Valentine Wheeler

Publisher:  NineStar Press

Release Date: February 10, 2020

Heat Level: 2 – Fade to Black Sex

Pairing: Female/Female

Length: 63300

Genre: Contemporary, LGBT, bisexual, asexual, bakery, restaurant, chef, small-town politics, older MCs, interracial, family drama

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Synopsis

When Marianne Windmere’s bakery customers begin complaining that her parking lot is always full, she assumes it must be customers for the new restaurant next door. She’s never met her neighbor, and with the parking lot situation, she has no interest in doing so. But when a snowstorm knocks out the power and traps both women in the building overnight, sparks fly—until the next morning, when the buried argument comes to a head.

Can they find a way to reclaim the magic of that night? And as decades-old secrets about the history of the town and Marianne’s family come to light, can they work together to save both their businesses?

Excerpt

No Parking
Valentine Wheeler © 2020
All Rights Reserved

The travel mug banged against the counter. Marianne jumped. “Jesus, Kevin! I didn’t hear you come in.”

“It’s full again.” Kevin crossed his arms and glared. “The parking lot back there.” He made a show of glancing around the nearly empty bakery, eyes pausing on Zeke in the corner, mug in his hands and laptop open as usual, big red headphones covering his ears. He crossed his arms. “Why do you pay that kid if all he does is ignore you? And the customers?”

“You’re in a mood this morning.” Marianne pushed herself off the stool and grabbed his aluminum coffee mug. Her ex-husband was still an attractive man fifteen years after their divorce, and she couldn’t work up the energy to be annoyed at him for it anymore. “If you want to go next door and complain about the cars, go ahead.” She filled his mug with hazelnut coffee, added an espresso shot, capped it, and handed it back. “It’s not like our customers are beating down the doors for spots right now.”

“I did go next door,” Kevin grumbled, taking the cup. “It wasn’t productive.” Now it was him avoiding her gaze.

The parking lot issue wasn’t a new one—it had been a problem for a few months—and on a busy day Marianne would be filled with a low-level simmering rage as customer after customer complained about it. Still, she wasn’t going to tell Kevin that. Their relationship had improved in the years since their divorce but not quite that much.

“Not productive?” she pressed.

He sipped his coffee to cover the slight flush in his pale cheeks and didn’t answer.

“She threw you out, didn’t she?” Marianne’s estimation of her neighbor and nemesis rose a notch. “You tried to yell at her, and she didn’t take it.”

“I was very polite!”

“Hm.” Marianne put her hands on her hips and considered the man she’d spent nearly twenty-five years married to. He could be charming when he wanted to be—the whole silver fox, sparkling blue eyes and white teeth politician thing—though he never tried it with her anymore. Many women had found him suave and attractive during their marriage and probably still did. But when he wanted something from someone with no interest in what he was peddling? Politeness wasn’t his style. Generally, once charm had failed, he whined worse than any of their three kids had as toddlers. She’d learned that plenty during their marriage, and again during the divorce. “I’m sure you were.”

“I can talk to Bruce and Andrea,” said Kevin. “Just because I’m retired—”

“No need to get the city council involved, Kevin. I’ll handle my own property, thanks.” She glanced at the clock on the wall, its tarnished brass pendulum swinging below the cracked glass. “Aren’t you going to be late for your train?” He was still showing up at transit meetings in the city every other week since he had been appointed to the regional transit board as community representative now that he wasn’t an elected official. Kevin had a habit of holding onto things too tightly and refusing to let them go.

Kevin glanced down at his watch and swore. “Yeah. Shit.” He took another long gulp of coffee and leaned over the counter to kiss Marianne’s cheek. “Thanks. Who knew retirement could be so busy?” He turned to hurry out the door and then stopped and glanced back over his shoulder. “You be good, all right? Don’t work too hard.”

Marianne rolled her eyes and shooed him out with a towel.

Purchase

NineStar Press | Amazon | Smashwords | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

Meet the Author

Valentine is a latecomer to writing, though she’s always been a passionate reader. Through fanfiction she found her way to an incredible community of writers who’ve taught her to love making stories.

When she isn’t writing, she’s making bad puns, yelling about television, or playing with her small child.

Her life’s ambition is to eat the cuisine of every single country. You can find Valentine on Twitter.

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Feb 10

New Release Blitz: IM by Rick R. Reed (Excerpt & Giveaway)

Title:  IM

Author: Rick R. Reed

Publisher:  NineStar Press

Release Date: February 10, 2020

Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex

Pairing: No Romance, Male/Male

Length: 91600

Genre: Contemporary

WARNINGS: Graphic depictions of violence and mutilation, murder, pedophilia, scene of underage rape –

TAGS: LGBT, law enforcement, online dating, thriller, contemporary

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Synopsis

One by one, he’s killing them. Lurking in the digital underworld of Men4HookUpNow.com, he lures, seduces, charms, reaching out through instant messages to the unwary. They invite him over. He’s just another trick. Harmless. They’re dead wrong.

When the first bloody body surfaces, openly gay Chicago Police Department detective Ed Comparetto is called in to investigate. Sickened by the butchered mess of one of his brothers left on display in a bathtub, he seeks relief outside where the young man who discovered the body waits to tell him the story of how he found his friend. But who is this witness…and did he play a bigger part in the murder than he’s letting on?

Comparetto is on a journey to discover the truth, a truth that he needs to discover before he loses his career, his boyfriend, his sanity…his life. Because in this killer’s world, IM doesn’t stand for instant message…it stands for instant murder.

Excerpt

IM
Rick R. Reed © 2020
All Rights Reserved

Chapter One
When Tony logged on to the Men4HookUpNow website, he didn’t know this would be the last time he would type in his screen name and password, the last time he would scroll through thumbnail-sized pictures of men in various states of undress, or the last time he would read an instant message.

Tony didn’t know that logging on to Men4HookUpNow.com would be one of the last things he would do.

Ever.

The simple blue-and-white instant message box was a blank canvas, containing only a list of provocative screen names: musclestud, pnpjock, pozpup4u… And any one of these screen names could spring to life by sending Tony an instant message or, as everyone called them, an IM. Anyone could arrive within its simple frame: a college football player, a construction worker, a truck driver, or just a man in tight jeans and engineer boots.

There was a pinging sound, and a message appeared on the screen. Tony leaned forward to see who had come to call.

And whoosh, a real man came through cyberspace, delivered like a gift. The box held only one word, “Hi,” yet Tony felt its author could see through his monitor, see him there in his living room wearing only a pair of boxer shorts, see the porno playing on his TV screen.

“Come on, man,” Tony whispered, fingers poised above the keyboard. “Hi? Can’t you do better than that?” He wanted someone with a bit more personality this languid August night, so he hit the Delete key and banished the guy into limbo, where someone else might take his “Hi” with a little more encouragement. Tony began a scroll through the “Available Now” guys, reading the inane descriptions (“Let this hot, beefy muscle boy serve you. I’m six two, red hair, green eyes, former All-American football player;” “Aggressive bottom looking for well-endowed top men. I’m into just about everything except for scat, and I know how to take orders;” “Looking to party with a hot stud;” “Straight-appearing and acting;” “Negative… UB2”) and stopping if one of the thumbnails caught his eye, especially if the guy had the courage to show his face.

Tony idly stroked himself as the images paraded past. He asked himself why he was bothering with going online. For Christ’s sake, here it was, Saturday night. Couldn’t he throw on some jeans and head down to Halsted Street? At least in a bar, he would know for sure what the guy looked like if they decided to hook up, rather than seeing a cock shot and hoping the guy had a nice face or trusting a face pic a decade old. This way, all he had to work with was exaggeration, living in a world where “stocky” and “football-player build” meant fat, where thirty-eight-year-olds tried to pass as twenty-nine, where any bald guy could lay claim to looking like Bruce Willis, where average meant so hideous you might as well hide under a rock.

The instant message box popped up.

“Hey, what’s up?”

Well, at least better than “Hi.”

Tony keyed in: “Just real horny. Looking to hook up.” If the horny part weren’t so true, Tony wouldn’t have been able to keep himself from laughing. Trying to put a macho façade on his typed words, trying to make himself sound like he had an eighth-grade education made him feel idiotic. A queer Stanley Kowalski.

“Know what you mean, dude.”

So the guy was playing the macho game with him.

“So, man, what do you look like?”

“Twenty-four. Black. Blue. Nice lean muscular build, work out about three or four times a week. Nicely defined pecs. Good tan. Hairy chest. Eight inches cut, real thick. You?”

Tony felt himself transported. It was like the guy got into his head, reading the ingredients for his perfect fantasy man. His dick started to rise with anticipation, and he found his hand moving up and down the length of it, almost of its own accord. He clicked on the guy’s screen name on the instant messenger list, jock4play, and was disappointed to see no pictures in his profile. Still, if the description was accurate… Tony typed in: “Yeah, I’m twenty-eight. I’ve got dark blond hair, green eyes, moustache, goatee. Smooth swimmer’s build. Work out a lot too. Um. Got about seven, cut, shaved balls. Check out my pics.”

“You a top or bottom?” There wasn’t even a pause, so Tony wondered if the guy had bothered to look.

“Pretty open. I like it all. Very versatile. How about you? What are you into?”

“I’m a top, dude. Lookin’ for a good bottom boy.”

“I can do that.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure. Whereabouts are you, man?”

“North Side.”

“Yeah, me too. I’m in Rogers Park, Touhy and Ashland.”

“I’m not too far from you.”

Tony swallowed his common sense as the image of his fantasy man took over. “You wanna come over?”

“You like to party?”

“Yeah.” Tony loved little more than getting high and getting down. “Tina’s here.” Tony eyed the little glass pipe, its bottom crusted with black residue and white powder. His nerves—right along with his libido—were in overdrive.

“Poppers?”

“Got ’em.”

“Hmmm. I could be interested.”

Tony looked briefly at the TV, where a hairy-chested drill sergeant had a lithe blond “private” bent over his desk. He wanted to get things moving, so he typed: “You wanna call me?”

“Sure. Number?”

“My cell is 555-7654. Call me right back. Okay?” Was that too pushy? Many times they never bothered to call. Many times they said they would show up and never did. But once in a while, it all came together.

His cell chirped. He flipped it open. “Hey.”

“What’s goin’ on, dude?”

“God, I just need some dick. You interested in hookin’ up, man?”

“The sooner the better.”

“Got somethin’ to write with?” And Tony got busy, giving precise directions to his apartment.

Precise directions to a stranger.

After he hung up, Tony felt flushed, a deep burning radiating from chest to face. His heart pounded as if he had just done a big hit of poppers. God, the guy sounded incredible! He suddenly knew why he was doing this as opposed to going out to a bar. When the site worked, it worked. There was no bullshit, no game playing. No eye contact for an hour, no fumbling for something to say and then sounding like a dork. When it worked with the site, it was simply two lusting men getting together and pleasuring each other. They didn’t need to say a word. Then why not a bathhouse? Tony asked himself, wandering around the apartment, folding up newspapers and throwing magazines in the wicker basket he stored them in. He remembered Man Universe and the last time he was there. It was okay, he guessed; there wasn’t the usual amount of bullshit. He thought with a grin of the open doors and the guys lying within, naked on their stomachs, the white moons of their asses a focal point, the bottles of lube and poppers on the little tables beside the beds. But the bathhouse lacked one thing the Men4HookUpNow offered: the element of surprise. Having someone show up after making an online connection, there was always that breathless moment when you opened the door to see what you were getting. Even if you had seen photos, it was always a crapshoot. A grab bag. And that’s what made it so exciting. The gamble made the rewards all the sweeter. And, hey, if you lost one time, you just said “Sorry,” closed the door, and got back online.

There was no shortage of hot guys online.

Or at least adequate ones.

Tony glanced at himself as he passed the mirror in his dining room, grateful he had worked out earlier in the day, grateful for the fact that he never had to exaggerate. His blond hair was buzzed, and his muscles had good definition. His lips were slightly pouty, giving his face an aura of innocence defiled… Details in his face combined to form a very pleasing contradiction: sleazy and at the same time babyish, childlike.

Tony never lacked for admirers.

And sometimes he wished he did. He thought of him, the asshole who was always around, the one who, after three dates, couldn’t handle his request to be just friends.

But think of that another time! A party was coming up. And Tony wanted to make sure this party was of the all-night variety.

He headed for the kitchen to take the poppers out of the freezer. He held the little brown glass bottle up to the light and shook it. It was about at the halfway point, certainly enough to see him through the evening.

In the bedroom, he placed a couple of towels on the nightstand, along with a bottle of Wet. At the portable CD player, he put in Delirium—great fuck music—and he made sure the votive candles were adequate enough to burn for the hours he planned on taking with this guy, if he was as good as he sounded.

Tony turned to the mirror once more, running his hand through the blond spikes, making them stand on end. He flexed his biceps and was pleased at the image the mirror threw back.

He reached in his dresser drawer, pulled out his metal cock ring, and slid it over his dick and balls. He strapped a metal band with studs around his right arm “Perfect,” he whispered to his grinning reflection.

Blood pounded in his ears. A line of sweat formed at his hairline and under his arms.

He couldn’t wait.

The buzzer sounded.

Tony walked slowly to the intercom box in the front hallway, not wanting to appear too eager. Desperation was never pretty.

It sounded once more before he placed his hand on the Talk button. “Yeah?”

“It’s your buddy from online.”

Tony pressed the button marked Door and then the one marked Listen so he could hear the guy coming in. He hoped he wouldn’t be disappointed.

It was hard to tell, but the guy’s voice didn’t sound quite as deep as he thought it had when the guy called his cell. Perhaps the intercom was just distorting his voice a bit.

But there was something else. No, it couldn’t be…but the voice had a familiar cast to it. Tony wondered when the day would come when he ran into someone he knew from Men4HookUpNow.

Perhaps the day was today.

But the familiarity of the voice didn’t have pleasant associations.

Imagination. Tony, bud, you’re imagining things.

Anyway, there was no time to think about that now, not with the guy tapping on his door.

Tony peered through the peephole.

And saw nothing.

He didn’t like that. But the guy was probably standing to the left or right of the hole, that’s all. Good sense deserted Tony, usurped by lust.

He opened the door, and the color drained from his face. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Purchase

NineStar Press | Amazon | Smashwords | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

Meet the Author

Real Men. True Love.

Rick R. Reed draws inspiration from the lives of gay men to craft stories that quicken the heartbeat, engage emotions, and keep the pages turning. Although he dabbles in horror, dark suspense, and comedy, his attention always returns to the power of love. He’s the award-winning and bestselling author of more than fifty works of published fiction and is forever at work on yet another book. Lambda Literary has called him: “A writer that doesn’t disappoint…” You can find him at www.rickrreedreality.blogspot.com. Rick lives in Palm Springs, CA, with his beloved husband, Bruce, and their fierce Chihuahua/Shiba Inu mix, Kodi.

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Feb 10

New Release Blitz: A Touch of Danger by Elaine White (Excerpt & Giveaway)

Title:  A Touch of Danger

Series: Surviving Vihaan, Book One

Author: Elaine White

Publisher:  NineStar Press

Release Date: February 10, 2020

Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 66400

Genre: Paranormal, LGBTQIA+, action/adventure, Alpha males, bonded, big cat shifters, college, spying, law enforcement

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Synopsis

Drew’s life sucks. Saving money to escape his homophobic family is one thing, but his only paying gig at the moment is playing his father’s “only gay in the village” plus-one to every LGBT friendly business event.

Then his brother comes up with a plan. Sheffield needs someone to go undercover for his police investigation. Drew has all the qualifications: he’s gay, he has experience with exotic animals, and he’s college-aged. And he’s easily bought.

Going undercover to solve the mystery of a college campus smuggling ring was never in his plans. Neither was hot, perfect, house captain Rylee. The inside jokes about cats, animal prints, and talk of a place called Vihaan that forbids same-sex relationships, are just the tip of the suspicious iceberg.

Little does Drew know that he’s about to expose more than an illegal smuggling operation. The truth could be more lethal than he could imagine. And, despite it all, it might be his own secret past that kills him before the truth can be unveiled.

Excerpt

A Touch of Danger
Elaine White © 2020
All Rights Reserved

Chapter One
“Care to run it by me again?” Drew rubbed his jaw, trying to stifle his laughter while his brother prowled the small office.

“We think they’re smuggling exotic animals,” Sheffield explained, with a drawn-out sigh.

“Through a fraternity house?”

“Yes.” His brother glared, as though he was the crazy one for questioning this “case” he’d been asked to consult on.

Drew took a slow, steady breath and asked, “You know this, how?” He was trying not to sound judgemental, but he wasn’t buying this story. What the hell would a bunch of fraternity brothers want with exotic animals? He paused…the idea conjured uncomfortable images. He hoped there was no “bear pit” with the animals or dubious sexual practices. He had a weak stomach and didn’t want any part of that kind of investigation.

Still, his brother was the big bad cop in the family. Drew was the runt; the unworthy second son. Abandoned to do whatever he wanted with his life because he was already a disappointment. There wasn’t much he could do to lower his position in the family. But he was no cop, no action man, and no Sherlock Holmes. He knew nothing about solving a case or how to look for evidence of “foul play”. And he was allergic to certain animals.

“We’ve had reports of wild animals on the grounds. When we sent an officer to investigate, he was attacked by a large cat. When we tried to run the names and identities of those living in the house, we came up with nothing. These people don’t exist,” Sheffield explained, shaking his head as he paced the length of the tiny room. “We sent in another man, undercover, to grab whatever DNA he could get his hands on. What he brought back…well, the hair came back feline. Exotic cats—a panther, a lion, and a cheetah.” Now Drew was getting the heebie-jeebies. He wasn’t sure he wanted anything to do with exotic cats. He wasn’t allergic to cats, which meant he would need to try harder to wiggle out of this. “I’m not a cop.” And this was getting weirder by the second.

“No, which will work for us. The last few cops we’ve sent in undercover have been caught quickly. These guys are smart and professional.” The heavy stare Sheffield levelled made Drew want to shrink. But he wasn’t a five-year-old anymore. “You are a college kid looking for somewhere to belong. It will be tough. They’re private and secretive. They barely socialise outside their group of friends, and they don’t date outside the house.”

“Seriously?” Raising his hands, Drew asked for a pause as he considered those words. This job went beyond weird and into the downright kinky. “You mean—”

Sheffield nodded, a grin spreading across his lips. “They’re gay, bi or trans. They call themselves the LGBT House of Acceptance,” he revealed. Arching an amused eyebrow while pretending not to find it hilarious.

“Nice name,” Drew scoffed, knowing what Sheffield was implying.

“This isn’t anything to laugh about. These guys are serious illegal traders, and we need to shut them down,” he argued. The growl could have been funny if it wasn’t for the fact he was being used.

“Let me get this straight, brother of mine. You suggested me for this because I’m gay, right?” he asked, getting straight to the point.

“It helps.”

“Yeah. You! It won’t help me much.”

Sheffield waved off his concerns and sneered in his usual dismissive manner. “You’re a hermit. This will be good for you,” he claimed. Drew knew he didn’t give a shit whether it was good for him. Sheffield was like their dad—he thought being gay was a choice Drew made when he turned sixteen and came out to the family. A choice made to piss off everyone and gain attention because the almighty big brother had been accepted into the Police Academy. Fuck them. He wasn’t as narcissistic as his family.

“I happen to like being a hermit.”

“Will you do it? Because I need to tell my supervisor, and then we need to fit you for a wire. You’ll be going in tonight.” Sheffield stopped his pacing to level Drew with an intimidating stare which hadn’t worked since he was ten.

Nothing like short notice.

“No wire,” he decided.

“Excuse me?” He growled—fucking growled!—and Drew wanted badly to do a fist pump, in victory.

“You said these guys are smart? Professional? They’ll spot a wire. They’ll probably cavity search me,” he teased, wiggling his eyebrows. Sheffield was practically pimping his brother out to criminals. Not like he’d turn down a good frisking if the company was good-looking. “Let me handle it. I’ll get your evidence and report back in a week. This Saturday.”

Hell, he was being paid. He’d dress in a monkey suit and do the hula if they asked. Maybe he could use the cash to get out of this shit hole?

Sheffield raked both hands through his short dark hair. “The boss won’t like this,” he complained, in a quiet, unsure voice.

Rising from his seat, Drew tried hard not to smile. “Yeah, well he’s not done a great job so far, has he? We’ll try it my way, and, if it doesn’t work, we’ll do it your way,” he offered.

He was going to get what he could out of this. Out of this town and well away from his family. Sheffield was bearable in small doses, but the rest of his family were vipers snapping at his heels. Each one determined to ignore and berate him when he needed them. Ready to jump on board and use him for their own means when they needed a boost.

Doing this, for a bit of cash, was like when he’d attended an LGBT fundraiser with his dad a year ago, in return for a year’s worth of college tuition. As long as it got him away from his family, he had no dignity and no pride.

Not a shred.

Purchase

NineStar Press | Amazon | Smashwords | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

Meet the Author

Elaine White is the author of multi-genre MM romance, celebrating ‘love is love’ and offering diversity in both genre and character within her stories.

Growing up in a small town and fighting cancer in her early teens taught her that life is short and dreams should be pursued. She lives vicariously through her independent, and often hellion characters, exploring all possibilities within the romantic universe.

The Winner of two Watty Awards – Collector’s Dream (An Unpredictable Life) and Hidden Gem (Faithfully) – and an Honourable Mention in 2016’s Rainbow Awards (A Royal Craving) Elaine is a self-professed geek, reading addict, and a romantic at heart.

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Feb 03

New Release Blitz: The Perils of Intimacy by Rick R. Reed (Excerpt & Giveaway)

Title:  The Perils of Intimacy

Author: Rick R. Reed

Publisher:  NineStar Press

Release Date: February 3, 2020

Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 63300

Genre: Contemporary, LGBTQIA+, contemporary, addiction, recovery, office worker, waiter, instalove, romance

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Synopsis

Mark believes he’s meeting Jimmy for the first time in the diner where he works, but he’s wrong. Mark has no recollection of their original encounter because the wholesome Jimmy of today couldn’t be more different than he was two years ago. Back then, Jimmy sported multiple piercings and facial hair. He was painfully skinny—and a meth addict. The drug transformed him into a lying, conniving thief.

Mark doesn’t associate the memory of a hookup gone wrong with this fresh-faced twenty-something… but Jimmy knows. Can Mark see Jimmy for the man he is now and not the addict he was? The answers depend on whether true love holds enough light to shine through the darkness of past mistakes.

Excerpt

The Perils of Intimacy
Rick R. Reed © 2020
All Rights Reserved

JIMMY

In romance novels, they call it meet-cute. If you’re not familiar with the term or even with romance novels for that matter, let me explain. Meet-cute is how our two protagonists, our star-crossed lovers, if you will, first encounter the other. It might involve an embarrassing moment, or some great coincidence, or something like a setup, or a blind date that goes horribly wrong and does not bode well for the future. See…it’s like there’s that day where everything changes, often in a funny way, and our two love interests begin their journey toward love.

You might look at how Marc Kelly and I met as a meet-cute experience. It went something like this:

Even though I’m a smart guy, at least I think so, I’ve never really had much in the way of education. High school diploma was about it. I always hated school and never did very well in it, which is why I currently wait tables at a little diner in the lower Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle. I’ve been at Becky’s Diner a few years now, since I managed to get my life back in order. And I have to admit I like it. Becky’s is the kind of place alcoholics end up at 5:00 a.m. for an eye-opener and, if their stomachs can handle it, maybe a couple of greasy fried eggs and some bacon. It’s the kind of joint that’s been in Queen Anne since the Depression and still looks like it—scuffed black-and-white tile floors, dark walls, red leatherette booths, and stools at the counter, many of them patched with duct tape. On the other side of the joint is a bar that’s even darker—the drinks are strong, and we get a lot of regulars. The pinball machine over there pretty much goes untouched. Same with the TV, which is always tuned to some twenty-four-hours news crap with the sound turned off. No one watches it. Everyone’s too busy nursing their drinks. Anyway, I wait tables in the diner part.

And I find myself digressing away from my meet-cute. Maybe that’s because it wasn’t really a meet-cute, but it makes for a good story. And that’s what romances are all about, right? Good stories? At least on paper…

Anyhoo, about two weeks ago, this one guy comes in about seven, seven thirty. That day there hasn’t been much of a breakfast rush—we’re busier on the weekends—and I’m chilling behind the counter, checking Facebook on my phone. Marc, as I’d later find out his name, walks in, observes the Seat Yourself sign, and does just that—in the last booth at the rear. Right away, I see the guy is old school, as he spreads out an edition—paper, no less!—of the Seattle Times. He looks around expectantly.

I wipe my hands on my apron and approach, my order pad in hand.

I give him my trademark grin, the one I hope will coax big tips out of even the stingiest customers. “Hey there… mornin’! What are you in the mood for?”

He looks me up and down, a little smile twitching. I pick up on the gaydar, the attraction, and pause a little mentally because two things strike me almost simultaneously.

One: This guy is a good bit older than my twenty-three, maybe even by as much as fifteen or twenty years, but he’s a hottie. DILF! His salt-and-pepper hair is full, nicely cut, side part, with more salt than pepper. He sports—rocks—a little goatee that’s all salt. It perfectly frames cupid’s bow lips. How’s that for romance talk? But it’s his eyes that floor me—so dark the pupils just about get lost in them. They grip me. They hold me. They make me wanna quiver.

Two: There’s something about this dude that rings a bell. Not so much in the lust department, although that’s definitely there in spades, but in the area of “Have we met before?” Because, yeah, he looks familiar. I just couldn’t place him—at least not then.

We hold the look for a couple of seconds longer than the average waiter and customer would, and I can put my finger on this dance—it’s called flirting. Gives me the warm and fuzzies inside, except for that nagging feeling that I know him from somewhere.

And when you have a past like mine, you want to be careful with shit like that. Because I’ve not always been the best person, to say the least. Anyway, that’s something I’ve learned not to dwell on.

Can’t undo the past!

All that stuff took, like, thirty seconds to go down. The guy speaks, “I’ll have coffee and a cinnamon roll.”

I pull a pencil from behind my ear. Not sure I’ll need it, but just in case. “We’re all out of cinnamon rolls,” I say.

He grins, flips a page in the Times. Doesn’t look up at me as he says, “Okay, then. I’ll have tea.” He flips another page. “And a cinnamon roll.”

I chuckle. “We’re all out of cinnamon rolls.”

He nods and looks like he’s taking what I just put down to heart. “Okay, uh, how about a glass of milk and…a cinnamon roll.”

I shake my head. “Dude, I just told you—we’re all out of cinnamon rolls. Sold out during the breakfast rush. But I’ll tell you a little trade secret.” I lean close to his ear and notice a very nice aroma coming off him—something tangy, piney, and manly. “The cinnamon rolls come from the QFC off Mercer. You can buy a four-pack for what you pay for one here.”

“Okay,” he says, looking into my eyes with those killer dark eyes. Those lashes! Man! “Just bring me a cinnamon roll.”

I shake my head and then tuck the pencil back behind my ear. I start to head away, saying over my shoulder as I go, “You let me know when you’re ready.”

I can’t decide if the guy is a cornball, a total asshole, or incredibly charming. He’s probably a little of all three. And I feel a little flutter in my heart that tells me our little meet-cute encounter, which I’ve come to learn he lifted from some old public television kid’s show, means he has his hooks in me.

Smitten.

And yet there’s that nagging feeling I’ve met him somewhere before…and a darkness hides behind the notion that contradicts the fluttery feeling I get when I look at this hunk. In fact, that nagging recognition makes me a little sick.

It’ll come to me. Or it won’t. And something inside, a self-protective part maybe, hopes for the latter. They say ignorance is bliss, right?

He calls after me, “You do poached eggs? Runny?”

I turn. “We do anything. Two?”

He holds up two fingers and nods. “With coffee, no toast, no potatoes, fruit on the side if you got it.”

I jot down the order. “No cinnamon roll?”

He just laughs and begins reading the paper.

When is a meet-cute not a meet-cute?

When you’ve met before.

And my gut drops a couple of inches as I remember where I met him before.

I don’t want to go there. That was a different time. A different me. And there was nothing cute about it.

But I remember this guy because I felt something for him then. And I feel something for him now.

And it could never work.

Could it?

I watch from the corner of my eye as Cinnamon Roll, as I’ve dubbed him, downs his low-carb breakfast. How someone can eat poached eggs without any toast is beyond me, but it takes all kinds.

“You got a thing for him or what?” Matilda Blake, the other server on duty, whispers to me. She pauses just behind me with three plates balanced on two arms. I smell pancakes, bacon, and the sage aroma of sausage.

I turn a little to grin. “What?”

“Ah, don’t play innocent with me, Mister. I could see the lust in your eyes from fifty paces.”

I shrug. “Guilty. Maybe. A little.”

She laughs, and it’s a sound like a bell tinkling. Matilda doesn’t even reach five feet and probably doesn’t top ninety pounds, but she’s a workhorse like you wouldn’t believe. She has short, spiked blonde hair and numerous tattoos. On the weekends she plays in an all-girl metal band called Two Spirit. And in my head, I call her Tinker Bell, because that’s who she looks like to me. She takes off to serve her customers, but not without prompting me to “Go over and talk to him.”

I busy myself filling ketchup bottles and the salt and pepper shakers I’ve removed from empty tables, but I keep an eye on Cinnamon Roll. His food is gone and the newspaper’s been abandoned and he’s staring off into space. I shudder because I wonder if he’s recognized me and is thinking about our last encounter, a little over two years ago, at his place on Dexter Avenue.

But no, that couldn’t be possible, could it? I’m a different person now, inside and out. Back then I was twenty, twenty-five pounds lighter than my current one hundred and sixty-five. I had a septum piercing like Ferdinand the Bull. My hair, which is now cut high and tight and is reddish brown, was long back then, bleached blond, dirty, and tangled up in dreadlocks that reached down almost to my waist. My skin had, I’m sure, a pasty and unhealthy pallor.

That person doesn’t even exist anymore, and even though it’s only been two years, I look completely different today. He’s probably just thinking about his day or something.

Right?

I walk over to his table, a little nervous that he’d come to and look at me with an accusing glare. There’d be a scene. And maybe I’d end up getting fired or something. Thinking back to what I did to him, I deserve it.

But when I approach his table, all he does is smile. And that smile melts my heart. It did back then too. Just not enough to keep me from my desperate and dark ways.

“You need anything else?”

He looks down at his paper and back up at me. A blush rises to his cheeks, and I gotta say it—there’s nothing more adorable than this face staring up at me right now. He looks like he wants to say something, but all that comes out is “The check? I gotta get to work. If I don’t get out of here and on the bus, I’m going to be late.”

“Oh?” I cock my head. “What do you do?”

“You don’t want to know. Government contracts. Health care. Downtown. Websites, e-mail, so-called social media from a health-care perspective. Writing boring newsletters.” He laughs. “Not the astronaut I thought I’d be back in kindergarten.”

“Yeah. Well, I always dreamed I’d work in a diner. And look at me. Dreams do come true!” I tap my chest. “Living proof!” We stare at one another for a moment. My heart pounds for a variety of reasons, both sublime and shameful. “I’ll get your check.”

I turn and go to total up his modest bill. My hands are shaking just a tiny bit. There’s this dark shadow of shame hanging over me that I try my best to banish. I remind myself that shadows are made by light and that I should direct my thoughts toward the light, not the darkness.

I look over at him once more. He’s staring off into space again, and I take note of his clothes—the blue-and-white checked button-down shirt, the navy cardigan, the jeans with the rip in the knee of the left leg, the awesome wing tips, maroon and navy. He looks hipster professional. In the two years since I’ve seen him, he’s hardly changed a bit. A little grayer maybe, but essentially the same guy. I get a quick vision of a big black leather headboard, framed in dark wood. A box on the dresser containing valuables…

His name comes to me in full. Marc Kelly. Simple. Solid. Like him. A good guy who never deserved what I gave him.

I should leave him alone. I know I should. No good can come from this.

A little voice inside reminds me I’m a changed person, one who loves himself, and I shouldn’t beat myself up anymore. I should forgive myself and believe I’m deserving, especially now, of a man like this.

Still, it’s with a lot of qualms that I write, near the bottom of his eighteen dollars and sixty-five cents total, Jimmy Kilpatrick (206) 555-9407. I pause for a moment, thinking I should tear this ticket up and write a new one.

No. I put one foot in front of the other, walk over to him, and set it in front of him. “You can pay up front. Thanks for stopping by.”

I hurry away before he even has a chance to look down at the check or up at me. I head right through the kitchen and out the back door, where I stand outside by the dumpster in gray and drizzly February air and light up a smoke with shaking hands.

I think I have to release my wishes, to let them float away on the gray plume I exhale. I need to have faith—I remind myself—that everything will unfold just the way it should.

Purchase

NineStar Press | Amazon | Smashwords | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

Meet the Author

Real Men. True Love.

Rick R. Reed draws inspiration from the lives of gay men to craft stories that quicken the heartbeat, engage emotions, and keep the pages turning. Although he dabbles in horror, dark suspense, and comedy, his attention always returns to the power of love. He’s the award-winning and bestselling author of more than fifty works of published fiction and is forever at work on yet another book. Lambda Literary has called him: “A writer that doesn’t disappoint…” You can find him at www.rickrreedreality.blogspot.com. Rick lives in Palm Springs, CA, with his beloved husband, Bruce, and their fierce Chihuahua/Shiba Inu mix, Kodi.

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Feb 03

New Release Blitz: To the Flame by A.E. Ross (Excerpt & Giveaway)

Title:  To the Flame

Author: A.E. Ross

Publisher:  NineStar Press

Release Date: February 3, 2020

Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex

Pairing: M/NB

Length: 20900

Genre: Paranormal, LGBTQIA+, nonbinary, mythical creatures/cryptids, college, psychic ability, paranormal

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Synopsis

Seattle boy Emerson Oakley is about to find that the strangest thing about his first year at West Virginia’s Vance University isn’t the neighbor in the next dorm over, who ghosts him after one kiss. It’s the fact that he keeps having his life saved by a stranger who seems to know about each accident before it happens.

Morrie Crisp, whose moth-person powers finally emerged at the most inconvenient time, is just trying to figure out how to deal with their crush on the boy next door, and all the different ways they’ve seen him die.

As Emerson tries to get to the bottom of who his pre-cog savior could be, his relationship with Morrie becomes extra complicated as their undeniable attraction to one another becomes a liability to both. Even as Morrie struggles to keep Emerson safe, Emerson is intent on igniting the fire between them, into which Morrie is naturally drawn.

What is a reasonable response to falling in love when the world itself is without reason? Unfortunately, neither one of them has any idea.

Excerpt

To the Flame
A.E. Ross © 2020
All Rights Reserved

Emerson

October 7th, 2019

With the sound of the school radio’s late-night show in his ears, Emerson Oakley pulled his wool-lined jacket more tightly around his broad frame and threw dirty looks at any shadows he passed, mean-mugging at would-be creatures waiting out there in the dark. Overhead, the campus clock chimed midnight, its toll reaching long and deep into the West Virginia night. Emerson clutched a stack of textbooks tightly under one arm, his free hand gripping the strap of his rucksack. By October, the school’s grounds had become a world of swirling fog. Frost was just beginning to lick at the blades of grass sitting neatly in between the cobbled walkways. The paths crisscrossed campus like a foursquare game. Just last month they had been full of hacky-sacking upperclassmen.

As a born and bred Seattle boy, Emerson was used to the sparkling mist that filled Puget Sound in spring, but the autumn weather in Appalachia was a different phenomenon altogether. It hung low, filling his nose and throat with damp cold as he made his way back to his dorm beneath flicking streetlights. His fingers were beginning to numb just a few steps in.

A loud crack rang out behind Emerson, causing him to jump a couple inches in surprise before turning around to see dazzling colors light up the sky. Some freshmen were letting off fireworks, probably to celebrate their newfound freedom to make bad decisions. The illegal rainbow starbursts snapped and popped in the sky over the astronomy building.

After reaching into his pocket, Emerson turned up the volume on his phone, letting the pop-punk singer’s smooth voice drown out any more unwanted jumpscare fodder. The song began to fade out as he crossed out of the quad and into the parking lot. His dorm was just on the other side of the empty gray stretch of pavement, and he could already see the golden glow from his next-door-neighbor’s room. He couldn’t hear the pounding bass that they loved to blast from morning to night, but he’d be in range soon enough. There was a reason he spent every night studying in the library instead of his dorm room. He didn’t know too much about the kid next door, but there were two things he knew for sure: they went by Morrie, and they fucking loved EDM turned up to 11.

“You’re listening to WVUX 69.1, The Voice of Vance. That was local band Rubric with their latest hit, ‘Risk Reward.’” The late-night host jumped in with perfect timing, his tone smooth as silk. As he continued with a recap of the week’s news, something flickered at the edge of Emerson’s vision. As he snapped his neck to the right, his breath caught in his throat. For a split second, he was certain he saw a dark shape on the roof of the nearest dorm building. The three-story brick building, Gryphon House, happened to be one of the earliest built on campus and was probably haunted, or at least that’s what the orientation tour guide had said. Of course, the guide was a bored junior, so he easily could have been making it up. Emerson was sure he had glimpsed…something. The large dark shape with flickering edges, host to two glowing red orbs that, ideally, were not eyes—or were eyes the better option?

Biting his chapped lip, Emerson turned away and kept walking, trying to focus on the words coming from his earbuds. “So, if you want to use the pool, you’re just going to have to wait until it’s been emptied and disinfected…for your own good. Oh, and one more thing—Emerson Oakley, watch your step,” the voice said just before another indie-punk hit began to play, coming in strong with the snare.

Emerson jerked his head up so hard his neck wrenched painfully. Scanning the empty parking lot, he took two nervous steps back. Just then, another colorful crack rent the sky above him, followed by a low whistle. It was the sound of a snapped power line slicing through the air and landing half-submerged in the puddle where he had been standing one second earlier.

Eyes wide, Emerson put a hand to his chest, a tight rush of anxiety beginning to cloud his brain in a familiar way. Music still pounding in his ears, he stared at the small sparks coming off the black wire. If he hadn’t taken those two steps back, he’d be fried. Panic rising in his throat, he let his logical pre-med brain take over and called campus security to let them know about the potential danger before continuing on to his dorm. This time, the music in his ears was drowned out by his own heartbeat as he swiped his key card and hustled up the stairs to the third floor.

Once he got into his room, the thump of his chest was drowned out by the heavy bass of Morrie’s EDM playlist. He basically knew the track listing by heart at this point. In a way, it was a comfort as he tried to get a grip on what had just happened. It was strange enough to get a cryptic warning from the college radio station, but he was certain that the warning had come seconds before the fireworks had actually hit the power line, assuming that was what had caused it to snap and swing into the puddle at his feet. How they could have called that shot, he had no idea. Emerson was pretty sure that the radio station was on the other side of campus.

He wriggled out of his heavy coat and flannel then stripped down to a sweat-soaked tee and gray boxer-briefs. It was hard not to think about what had just happened. He could have been deep-fried, his body burnt up and smelling like the hot dogs that the power company used to electrocute as an elementary school safety demonstration. Emerson ran his hands over his whole body just to make sure it was still there. He had always been barrel-chested with a soft, round stomach. Okay, he could admit he had a bit of an apple bottom as well, but he loved his body. If he had gotten his body fried up in a freak firework accident…well, he’d be dead and pretty upset about it. Sitting down on his worn forest-green patchwork quilt, he tried to sync his breathing to the rave beats from next door the way he’d learned in therapy.

Inhale.

Hold.

Exhale.

Hold.

He lay back on his bed and repeated that routine for several minutes until the fight-or-flight feeling flowed out of him and a reasonable calm remained. After grabbing his towel and toiletries, Emerson slipped out his door and down the hall to the bathroom. He did his best thinking in the shower, and boy, did he need a second to decompress.

The most important thing about the dorm bathroom was not to focus on the floor. If you did, it was over. All kinds of weird shit got caught in the grout that lined the beige tiles between cleanings, and it was honestly better if you could just keep your head on a swivel and ignore it altogether.

The second-most-important thing about the dorm bathroom was not to focus on anybody else either. To be fair, that had been Emerson’s modus operandi in every shared shower room he’d ever used: junior-high gym class, JV football, the YMCA pool. But it was especially vital now that he was in a university with all-gender facilities. He was proud of Vance Uni for living in the twenty-first century, and the last thing he wanted to do was make anyone feel weird or unwanted. That said, the scene was deserted, so he turned the water on as hot as it could go and divested himself of his earthly garments. The good burn of too-hot water relaxed his shoulder muscles, despite the shitty water pressure.

With a clear head, he convinced himself that there was surely a reasonable explanation for the DJ’s timely omen. Though, even if there was, it still didn’t do anything to ease his mind about the strange shape atop Gryphon House, which was still stuck in his mind.

After fluffing his hair dry and slinging a towel around his waist, Emerson made his way back down the hall to his room, just in time to cross paths with the Ghost of Electronica. Morrie was trying to unlock their door with a slice of pizza in one hand and a two-liter of soda wedged under their armpit. Emerson walked past and avoided glancing directly at Morrie, feeling irritated that they left their music playing even when they weren’t in the dang room. Or at least, that’s what he told himself. Certainly, his animosity for Morrie was all about the volume of their music and absolutely not about the way they:

1. Wore those tight black skinny jeans with the knee-baring holes, and
2. Hadn’t spoken to him once since that kiss during Orientation Week.

Obviously, neither of those things factored into the equation at all, and it was definitely not true that either of those two things ever made it harder to sleep than the pounding of a drum machine.

Purchase

NineStar Press | Amazon | Smashwords | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

Meet the Author

A.E. Ross lives in Vancouver, B.C. with one very grumpy raincloud of a cat. When not writing fiction, they can be found producing and story-editing children’s cartoons, as well as producing & hosting podcasts like The XX Files Podcast. Their other works have appeared on Cartoon Network, Disney Channel and Netflix (and have been widely panned by 12-year-olds on 4Chan) but the projects they are most passionate about feature LGBTQIA+ characters across a variety genres.

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Feb 03

New Release Blitz: The Empires of Luxor City by Sasha Hope (Excerpt & Giveaway)

Title:  The Empires of Luxor City

Author: Sasha Hope

Publisher:  NineStar Press

Release Date: February 3, 2020

Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 77400

Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy, LGBT, futuristic, crime/thriller, family-drama, urban fantasy, alpha/omega, gangsters, criminal underworld, reunited, crossdressing, hurt/comfort

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Synopsis

In the aftermath of his father’s funeral, Dom Wesa, the new Alpha of Luxor City’s Central Empire, stumbles upon an Omega in desperate need of help. The Omega, Lin Vasiliev, wakes to find he’s been taken into Dom’s home to be rehabilitated. Dom thinks the young addict may have information about the illicit drug trade going on in his Empire. He gets Lin sober to question him only to discover that Lin is new in town and ignorant of Luxor’s laws.

Dom and Lin are both suspicious of each other at first for their own reasons, but as that wariness wears away a deep attraction develops between them. Dom dotes on Lin, leaving the once stone-broke Omega bathed in finery he never could have imagined. They start planning for Lin’s upcoming heat, when they will be driven together by their kindling bond and strong compatibility as an Alpha and Omega pair. However, in the midst of their swelling romance, Luxor’s most notorious Alpha reappears sparking a gang war that threatens to turn the entire city into a battleground.

Excerpt

The Empires of Luxor City
Sasha Hope © 2020
All Rights Reserved

There had never been fewer tears shed at a funeral.

It was strange. Crowds had wailed at funerals for worse men, but not a single soul in Luxor City wept for Malik Wesa, a business magnate who’d left behind a wife and two sons. They just stood there, all of them staring straight ahead with cold black eyes as the funeral director rolled the old man’s coffin into the crematory. Visible through a tiny char-stained window, the man who’d once been their leader burned down to ash and bone until there was nothing left of him but dust.

Shaking the image from his mind, Dom Wesa walked out through a wrought-iron fence and left the inner-city funeral home. He buried his hands deep in the pockets of his overcoat and made his way back across the busy city streets toward his office on the east side of town.

A chill rolled off the water near the docks as the year moved into fall. Dom originally drove to the funeral home with the rest of the family, but he couldn’t bear to spend another second with them even if it meant enduring the icy wind.

When a family member dies, all too often they are given a whole new life story. This was a universal truth Dom struggled to wrap his head around. There weren’t any tears at his father’s funeral, but there were enough artificial words of kindness to make him grit his teeth and bite his tongue until his eyes watered.

They all loved to mention how hard things would be for Dom with his father gone; how much weight would now fall on his shoulders.

Dom wanted to laugh. He’d been running this town without his old man’s help for ages. The death of the man he had stopped calling father a long time ago wouldn’t change a thing in his day-to-day life; it just made his position more official. Dom was now the eldest Alpha of the Wesa family, one of the great crime families in Luxor City, the capital of New America.

Decades back, when the government’s power over New America first started to crumble, the gangs of Luxor City went to war, fighting for control over the expansive city’s lucrative ports. As Dom walked through the streets, he passed the remnants of that conflict in the form of bullet holes etched into brick walls that lined the sidewalks and boulevards. Luxor hadn’t always been a haven of prosperity. These wounds were stark reminders that they should not let war tear their city apart again. They’d been preserved during reconstruction.

After years of brutality and gangland warfare, the dust finally settled over the metropolitan battleground. Only three factions were left in a city divided by chaos. They brokered a peace treaty, a deal that divided Luxor into three Empires, each ruled firmly by the Alpha heads of the surviving crime families: Wesa in the Center, Faraji in the North, and Sun in the South.

Dom Wesa was the sole Alpha heir to the Central Empire, a great strip of land stretching from the high-rises along the city’s eastern ports all the way to the cliffs on the western coast. Their portion of city was the smallest, but the Center also included the West Island, the final stretch of green pasture and woodland in Luxor, a place where only the wealthiest families could afford acreage.

Sila Wesa, the family’s Omega matriarch, still maintained an estate there. She would probably return home once the ladder-climbing mourners all left her in peace. As an Omega, she was expected to stay home and mourn her Alpha’s death for at least a year. Dom hated thinking of her returning to that vast hollow estate, but she wouldn’t be alone. She had his younger brother, Atsadi, with her.

Maybe they could be happy there now, but Dom couldn’t stand the place.

He made his way to his portside office, the private sanctuary where he conducted the family business, far removed from his father’s offices across from the luxury hotels and nightclubs downtown. It was an old-fashioned Deco-style building, relatively small compared to Luxor’s expansive high-rises, but taller than the nearby brownstone residences lining the old dock’s edge.

Dom entered through the public hall and took the stairs to his office instead of his private elevator. He couldn’t stand still, not even for a minute, not until he got a drink in him.

His office took up most of the fifth floor. A large window lined the street-facing wall, giving him a view of his docks and businesses as well as the swaying blue horizon of the Pacific Ocean.

Ships pulled in and out, always coming and going. The ports were the center of all business in Luxor. They had been around since the city’s foundation and wrapped around the entire coastline, enclosing Luxor in a circle of docks extending out into the water like a sea urchin’s spikes. It was a well-known fact that he who controlled the ports, controlled the trade, and he who controlled the trade, controlled the city.

Dom was fond of the old portside architecture. He had always been keen on the brutalist, Deco styles of ancient cities. He even decorated his office to match with polished wood and geometric patterns of gold emblazoned on black surfaces.

Inside the familiar space he’d made his own, he poured himself a glass of whisky from a decanter on his side table. He took a good long swig before taking a seat in the plush leather chair behind his mahogany desk.

Sighing heavily, he closed his eyes until a quiet thud on his desk drew them open again.

A thin newssheet folded down the middle sat in the center of his desk. Images flashed across its holographic surface. Dom recognized himself, his brother, and his mother in more than one. Fucking paparazzi.

The Luxor City Times headline read: Death of Malik Wesa leaves Central Empire in hands of son, Dominik.

Dom stared at the paper with a deadpan expression. Unblinking, he took another sip of his drink.

“Somehow I figured you’d be back in the office today.”

Dom’s gaze shifted in the direction of the voice.

His right-hand woman, Isa Saqui, stood over his desk smirking down at him.

Isa had been Dom’s eyes and ears ever since terminal illness took his old man out of power and put Dom in charge. She was an Alpha, a member of the dominant sex, like everyone in his inner circle. Isa stood tall, a muscular and imposing woman with angular bone structure casting dramatic shadows over her olive skin. Her long hair was tied in an intricate brunette braid that fell over one shoulder.

Dom turned away from her and picked up the newssheet. Without giving it another glance, he tossed it back across the desk toward her.

“The headline is hilarious,” he muttered before taking another drink.

Isa chuckled as she snatched the thin device back up.

“Isn’t it?” she said as she examined the article. “I mean, it’s not even news. Your old man hadn’t been running shit for years.”

Dom huffed.

It was true. Even before his father’s illness, Dom had been in charge, but Malik’s stint in the hospital had truly put him in power. In under a year, he’d earned the city’s respect and made vast alterations throughout the Central Empire to counter his father’s ineffective rule. Dom had always been in control; nothing would change now Malik Wesa was gone.

“We shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” Dom said, smiling around the rim of his glass.

“Then let’s talk business.” Isa grinned like a shark. “Because I haven’t got anything good to say about the old bastard. How was his funeral, by the way?”

Dom simply shrugged in response. “Let’s talk business.”

With another snort of a laugh, Isa pulled out her phone and started going over a list of the day’s imports. The ships had come in on time, and their guys on the docks were already warehousing their “product,” storing it until it could be shipped throughout Luxor.

“So, we finally received those luxury cars we’ve been waiting for, two weeks late, but that’s the Southern trade route for you. Same shipment had a few crates of unprocessed opium—”

Dom cut in with gritted teeth, “Make sure that goes straight to the labs. Apart from heat suppressants, I don’t want to see that shit on my streets.”

“Already done.” Isa hardly even glanced up from her phone. “The independent Omegas of Luxor are already thanking you. You truly are a hero, Dom, providing them with suppressants and saving them from their dreaded heats. Less mating means more working. Off your backs and on your feet. That can be your campaign slogan.”

Dom eyed Isa, trying to gauge her level of sarcasm before gesturing for her to carry on with a short huff of amusement.

“What else?”

“Firearms from the mainland,” Isa said before listing off the models and manufacturers. “About half of this shipment is being sold to the Sun family in the south. They’ve got an underground trade problem on their hands.”

In the south of Luxor City, the Sun family controlled the majority of the city’s ports, but only imported from the Second Continent, across the western seas. This made them an excellent trading partner for Dom whose eastern ports shipped to and from New America. Whenever the Southern Empire wanted products from the New American mainland, Dom was their man, and when he needed Second Continent shipments, he knew just who to ask.

“All right.” Dom stood from his chair, rubbing his hands together. “The agent from the Sun family will want to see the guns before we truck them over. I’ll call—” Dom stopped abruptly when a terse shout erupted from the streets below, loud enough to resonate through the glass window and into his fifth-floor office.

“What the hell was that?” Isa asked with a furrowed brow.

Dom walked over to glare out of the window. They were right above the lobby, so a glance down offered a clear view of the ground below.

Across the street, a young man stumbled along the sidewalk. Even from the distance, Dom could tell there was something off about him. He swayed with each step, unable to keep to a straight line and using one hand to balance himself against the wall of the opposite building to keep from falling over.

He disappeared into an alleyway, followed closely by another man. This much larger man was the one shouting furiously as he marched into the narrow passage after the boy.

Dom turned from the window and grabbed his coat. Without a backward glance, he stormed out of his office.

“Dom? Hey! What the hell was that?” Isa repeated as he passed. She tried calling after him again, but he was already out of the door.

Purchase

NineStar Press | Amazon | Smashwords | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

Meet the Author

Sasha Hope is a lover of story, art and design based in Canada. As a writer and an artist, she enjoys having the opportunity to create new characters and build new worlds for readers to explore. Having studied linguistics and a myriad of languages from a young age, she is passionate about including characters of different backgrounds in her work. Whether the setting is fantasy or reality, she believes that a diverse cast with diverse languages and cultures is a wonderful thing.

Crafting stories that embrace MM romance and erotica is her modus operandi. When she is not creating new worlds she is travelling this one looking for inspiration or enjoying her career in the videogame industry.

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Tour Schedule

2/10 Mirrigold Mutterings and Musings

2/11 Bayou Book Junkie

2/12 I Love Books and Stuff Blog

2/13 Love Bytes

2/14 Boy Meets Boy Reviews

2/17 Wicked Faerie’s Tales and Reviews

2/18 Matt Doyle Media

2/19 Velvet Panic

2/20 Valerie Ullmer | Romance Author

2/21 The Faerie Review

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Jan 30

Book Blitz: Better Than Beginnings, A Better Than Good Short Story Collection by Lane Hayes (Excerpt & Giveaway)

Title:  Better Than Beginnings, A Better Than Good Short Story Collection

Series: Better Than Stories, 5

Author: Lane Hayes

Publisher: Lane Hayes

Release Date: January 30, 2020

Heat Level: 4 – Lots of Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 105000

Genre: Romance, Bisexual, Established Couple, MM Romance, White Collar, Gay romance

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Synopsis

Matt Sullivan knows he met someone special the night he spots the sexy man on the dance floor. However, he doesn’t know his life is about to change forever. First of all, Matt is straight. Okay, maybe not, but he doesn’t think falling in love and spending the rest of his life with a hotheaded, unapologetically fabulous diva is an option.

Aaron Mendez is confident, smart, and very comfortable in his skin. He knows what he wants and isn’t afraid to go for it. And though he might have reservations about falling for someone newly out of the closet, no one has ever looked at Aaron the way Matt does.

Navigating a relationship has its challenges, but both Matt and Aaron are willing to deal with difficult parents, holiday blues, and learning curves. They know their happy ever after is worth fighting for and that true love is better than good.

*This collection of short stories follows the lives of Matt and Aaron from my first novel, Better Than Good. The end of one chapter is the beginning of a whole new story from ordinary everyday life to an engagement, a wedding, and more. This collection is dedicated to Matt and Aaron fans and those who believe that the real love story happens after the first “I love you”.

Excerpt

Better Than Candy from Better Than Beginnings, A Better Than Good Short Story Collection

Aaron gave me the silent treatment for a while, and I have to admit I didn’t mind the quiet. For an hour anyway. Then I did mind.

“Come on. You can’t not talk to me all day.”

“Oh, so now you want to talk?” he huffed.

“Yeah. Let’s talk. Come closer so I can touch you too. I’ll be good.” I perched on one of the stools at the island in our kitchen and swiveled to face the hockey game on the flat-screen across the room.

“I don’t trust you,” he grumbled, crossing his arms and glaring at me.

“Come on. I’ll behave. Give me a kiss. Please?” I gave him my best “You can trust me” look.

Aaron sighed dramatically before shuffling over to stand between my thighs. Directly in the way of the hockey game.

“Are you going to make it up to me? Or are you going to watch the Steelers?”

“Okay, funny guy, let’s start with a little re-education. The Steelers are a football team.” I pulled him into my arms and squeezed him tightly, burrowing my chin into his shoulder and blowing raspberries on his neck. “Sadly, their season is over, but thankfully it’s basketball and hockey season now. You’re currently blocking a hockey game, but not my Penguins, so I’ll let you off the hook.”

“Excuse me?” he huffed irritably.

“You heard me. If you’d like to take some time to make up for my hour in hell, I will more than gladly join you…on the sofa, in the bedroom, or even in that green guest bathroom with the cool new towels we just bought. What’s it gonna be?” I held him even tighter and tickled his sides.

He laughed, his eyes twinkling with restored humor as he stepped out of my reach and peeled off his T-shirt.

“First of all, the color is eucalyptus, not green. Hockey and basketball are only marginally better than football and…” He furrowed his brow when I smacked his ass for sheer blasphemy. “And, you are making up with me. Not the other way around. You behaved like a five-year-old. I had no idea you were such a brat.”

“You promised not to torture me, but you did anyway. Even that lady at the store agreed you should have gone alone,” I singsonged.

He stepped between my thighs and rested his arms over my shoulders.

“She called you my husband. That was kind of funny.”

“Yeah.” I kissed his nose and pulled him closer to squeeze his ass.

“It didn’t freak you out?”

“Nope. And you wanna know why?”

“Hmm?”

“ ’Cause I’m gonna marry you someday.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do. You’re my person. And even though I can think of about ten other things I’d rather do with you, going shopping wasn’t the worst ’cause I still got to be with you.”

Aaron bit his bottom lip and nodded. “Oh, that was good, Matty. I almost can’t remember why I’m mad at you.”

“You’re not mad. You love me. You just don’t know it yet.” I scooped him over my shoulder in a fireman’s hold before he could protest. “No more talking. You have some making up to do.”

I carried him into our bedroom and tossed him onto the bed before kicking off my shoes and pulling my sweater over my head. Aaron undressed quickly, then folded the duvet back and got on all fours in the middle of the bed. I gulped when he shook his ass in invitation. Fuck, he was sexy. I stepped out of my jeans and boxer briefs in a hurry and immediately reached for my cock. I was so hard it hurt. I approached the bed and kneeled behind him, running my fingers along his spine and over the curve of his hips.

Aaron turned to give me a seductive look. “What are you waiting for?”

“Sometimes I can’t believe I’m here with you.”

He frowned before straightening and scooting toward me, wrapping his arms around my neck. “But here we are. And I think this is the way it’s supposed to be,” he whispered.

I brushed my lips over his and closed my eyes for a moment. “Mine.”

Purchase at Amazon

BETTER THAN GOOD is on sale for just 99 cents. Available HERE.

Other books in the Better Than series. Get them all HERE!

Meet the Author

Lane Hayes is grateful to finally be doing what she loves best. Writing full-time! It’s no secret Lane loves a good romance novel. An avid reader from an early age, she has always been drawn to well-told love story with beautifully written characters. These days she prefers the leading roles to both be men. Lane discovered the M/M genre a few years ago and was instantly hooked. Her debut novel was a 2013 Rainbow Award finalist and subsequent books have received Honorable Mentions, and were winners in the 2016, 2017, and 2018-2019 Rainbow Awards. She loves red wine, chocolate and travel (in no particular order). Lane lives in Southern California with her amazing husband in a newly empty nest.

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Jan 27

New Release Blitz: Soul Burn by Brenda Murphy and Megan Hart (Excerpt & Giveaway)

Title:  Soul Burn

Author: Brenda Murphy and Megan Hart

Publisher:  NineStar Press

Release Date: January 27, 2020

Heat Level: 4 – Lots of Sex

Pairing: Female/Female

Length: 66700

Genre: Contemporary Paranormal, LGBT, Contemporary, paranormal, interracial, erotic romance, BDSM, shifter, wolf, pain play, screenwriter, author, pro domme

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Synopsis

A mistress, a werewolf, a screenwriter and a shapeshifter walk into your heart in these two sexy paranormal stories of love and redemption.

Shifting Flames by Brenda Murphy
The Fire Inside by Megan Hart

Excerpt

Shifting Flames by Brenda Murphy

Shunned screenwriter Eve Perez has something to prove. Shut out of the industry after a scandal, she’s ready to do whatever it takes to climb back to the top, even if it means working with notoriously difficult author Celeste Quon.

Reclusive best-selling author Celeste Quon is adored by a generation of fans, but would they love her if they knew her truth? Under pressure from her fans, Celeste agrees to bring her best-selling novel to the screen but on her terms.

After a freak spring snowstorm strands Eve at Celeste’s home she discovers Celeste’s incredible secret. Amid their fiery attraction should she let their relationship burn out, or surrender to the flames of their desire?

The Fire Inside by Megan Hart

For Clara, crafting pain into pleasure is her job. For Selena, it’s her salvation. When submissive Selena hires Clara as her Domina, it seems like the best of business arrangements. But when their emotions infiltrate what was meant to be only professional, both women are rocked by the possibilities that their relationship might be changing into something… more.

Selena has given her submission to Clara for months, but faced with the idea of giving her heart, she runs. Loving Clara means revealing her secret, the one that sent her seeking pain in the first place, and it’s a risk Selena can’t take.

Clara, confused and terrified by the glimpse she had of Selena’s true self, can’t keep herself from wanting more. And, as Selena’s Miss, she’s not afraid to demand she be given the chance to take it. Snowed in at Clara’s mountain cabin, the women must face the truth about themselves and about each other.

Can true love grow from a business relationship, and can it conquer even the darkest of fears?

Purchase

NineStar Press | Amazon | Smashwords | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

Meet the Authors

Brenda Murphy writes short fiction and novels. She loves tattoos and sideshows, and yes, those are her monkeys. When she is not swilling gallons of hot tea and writing, she wrangles two kids, two dogs, and one unrepentant parrot. She writes about life, books, and writing on her blog Writing While Distracted.

Blog | Website | Facebook

Megan Hart writes books. Some of them use bad words, but most of the other words are okay. Some of them hit bestseller lists and win awards and some don’t, but that’s the way it goes. She can’t live without music, the internet, or the ocean, but she and soda have achieved an amicable uncoupling. She loathes the feeling of corduroy or velvet, and modern art leaves her cold. She writes a little bit of everything from horror to romance, though she’s best known for writing steamy fiction that sometimes makes you cry.

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