Monday, June 25, 2012

Cooper's Hawk excerpt by Victor J Banis


This story is kind of exciting for me because I had been through a difficult period in my life, and this was my first new story in over a year. VJB

Cooper's Hawk is Victor J Banis' first new story in over a year, after having been through a difficult period in his life.  Banis asks if love is truly eternal, what lasts beyond the grave -- and what form might it take?


Mike Patterson loses his life-long partner, Adam Cooper---and soon thereafter, a hawk appears and seems to hang around with him. Is the hawk a message from Adam, from beyond the grave -- or might it be Adam himself, come back to offer solace. A bittersweet tale that will resonate with all who love deeply, a story of the sharpness of grief, the pain of loss -- and, ultimately, a story of never ending love.


Cooper's Hawk
MLR Press (June 21, 2012)
ISBN: 978-1-60820-701-5
Excerpt:

It is now 4 days, 2 hours and 58 minutes since my life ended.

Well, okay, I’m being dramatic, my life didn’t exactly end, if you want to be technical about it – just the stuff that mattered. That all ended when Adam died. The rest are just days – 4 of them, and 3 hours, now, and about 1 minute.

“Daddy,” Alma Jean – she’s my oldest girl - said, “do you want me to fix you some pancakes? You must be hungry.”

“No,” I told her, “I’m not hungry.”

“You haven’t eaten anything all day,” her sister Elizabeth said. She always backs Alma Jean up in any discussion involving other people, though the two of them fight with one another like cats and dogs otherwise.

“Daddy’s not hungry. Let him alone.”  That was James, Adam’s oldest boy—his oldest surviving boy of the three he had. Lester didn’t come back from Afghanistan. That is to say, he did, but not upright. Oh, I remember how broken up Adam was over that, I thought he would plain jump in that hole with his son.

My son, also, of course, just not in the same way. His boys always called me Daddy, too, same as my girls called Adam—Or, Daddy Adam and Daddy Mike, to avoid confusion. We used to joke in the beginning about maybe his and mine would end up hitched, and we laughed because there were only two of my girls and he had three sons then, so someone was going to get the short stick. That was before Afghanistan. After that, the numbers matched, even if the kids didn’t. Course, they were just little ones when we got married. By the time they were old enough to think about things like that, they had gotten used to brothers and sisters, and it wouldn’t have seemed right.

When I say married, I don’t mean in the way they mean it today, the way they write about in the papers and talk about on the news. It was a long time ago. Things were different. There was no preacher waving his hands over us, and no wine glass smashed underfoot. Those are the externals. We were married just the same, in our hearts. Internal, I liked to say. And eternal.

Lord, I hope I was right about that eternal part. How I would love to think that one day Adam and I will meet up again. “In a land that knows no parting,” as Willie puts it. I hope Willie is right too. I think my heart could stand all the excitement of getting back together, but I don’t think it could take another parting. I’m not sure yet that it will take this one. God Almighty, how you can miss a man. If that’s all just a bunch of fairy tales, Lord, don’t let me find out, please. I’ll settle for the blackness of eternal night, anything but not seeing him again. You want to know what Heaven means to me? That’s it, right there – the rest of eternity with Adam’s arm about my shoulder, the way he used to do, standing by me. If I can’t have that, you can keep the wings and harps and the rest of the stuff, that’s fine by me. Got no use for them without him. Got no use for any of it, to tell the truth. There or here.

Alma Jean is on me again about the pancakes. “Alma Jean, honey, a mess of pancakes would taste awful good about now,” I tell her. I know she’s hurting too, and cooking is how she handles the hurt. I can always feed them to the dog, after she’s gone home.

I went out to the porch after they were gone. Adam and me had loved to sit out here, about this time of day, when the sun was dying, slipping down into the gray of dusk. I sat in the usual rocker, the smaller of the two because Adam, that giant of a man, had required the big one, and the smaller one fit me just fine. The way our bodies had fitted together all those years, his big, powerful one and my little reedy one, that seemed as if they had been designed to suit one another.

I closed my eyes, but the image of Adam pasted itself on my closed eyelids and I could not bear the pain that stabbed through me at the sight. My eyes flicked open, and I saw the hawk.

My first thought was, the chickens, but the chickens had already found their way into the coop, instinctively taking themselves out of the night, content to wait for me to come and close the door on any errant foxes—or hawks, though a hawk wasn’t likely to come into the coop, they were more likely to swoop down on you unexpectedly and carry you off you knew not where. In my experience, love was like that too, though I’d never heard love compared to a hawk.

Anyway, the hawk didn’t seem to have any interest in the coop, or the chicken run. He was just up there, soaring. The way we had used to cruise the drive-in when I was a kid, Diggy Holman and me, back and forth, back and forth, endlessly, trying to get ourselves noticed. The hawk banked and swooped and came lower than a hawk should, with a person sitting there in a rocker, not knowing how friendly that person might feel toward a hawk. Especially a person who kept chickens. Chicken people weren’t as a rule hospitable to visiting hawks.

Then, as if he knew he’d finally been noticed, his presence accounted for, he winged his way upward, flew over the house, and was gone. I waited, watching the sky, scanning back and forth, until the sky had grown dark and the stars were blinking back at me.

The hawk didn’t come back.

# # #

Not until morning.

Adam Junior—who we had always called Junior, to avoid confusion with his father, had driven up from Florida for the funeral, and since he was leaving the following day, he’d come to take his other father to breakfast. We came out of the house, me balancing carefully on my new walker, still getting used to it, heading for Junior’s fancy Buick, and I looked toward the barnyard fence, and there was the hawk sitting atop it, staring at me.

“Look,” I said, pointing. “There. A hawk.”

“Where?” Junior asked, and looked, but the hawk lifted off the fence then, like a rocket sailing into the sky, so fast you could hardly track him.

“Did you see him?” I asked.

“Just a glimpse. What do you think he was, a redtail?”

I had to think about that a minute. “No, he wasn’t a redtail. Nothing I’ve seen before, I don’t think.”

“Well, he’s probably got his eye on the chickens,” Junior said, opening his car door for me. “I better borrow Darrel’s shotgun and come over later. We don’t want him carrying off one of your leghorns. Plus, once they get the taste, you’ll never get rid of him, he’ll be hanging around every day, him and his whole family.”

“No,” I said, looking over my shoulder as we started down the drive, trying to catch another glimpse of the bird, “No, I’ll take care of it. You know Darrel. He’ll want to come over and do the shooting himself, and next thing I won’t have any glass in the windows. He’s a good boy, but a lousy shot.”

We had our breakfast—I made a show of eating, though I hadn’t much appetite these days, but I did it for Junior’s sake. We stopped to gas up his car and at the nursery, where I got a box of flowers, pansies, which I told him I was going to plant in the yard. He asked me where else I wanted to go, and I told him home.

Where I really wanted to go was to the cemetery, which was where I intended to plant the pansies, but I wanted to do that on my own. I waited in the house until Junior had driven away, and then I took the flowers and my walker, and put them in the back of my truck, and climbed in behind the wheel, and fired up the motor, which was noisy and smoky, but had always gotten me where I needed to go.

Alma Jean and Darrel lived just across the field, and I knew one of them—Alma Jean, certainly—would hear the truck start up and wonder where I was going. So I put it in gear and started off in a hurry, and sure enough, I hadn’t gotten half way down the drive before she was out of her trailer, in her front yard, watching me go, with a disapproving scowl that I could make out even in the distance, and which I pretended not to see.

I was almost to the cemetery, keeping my speed to a safe and steady thirty miles per hour, when I saw, just out of the corner of my eye, something fly by the window. I thought it was a bird, but I’d never known a bird to fly around a moving truck so close like that. I decided I was just spooked. More than likely, it was seeing that hawk the day before.

Now that I thought of the hawk, though, I tried again to think what kind of a hawk it was. Mostly, you got the red tailed hawks here, but this hadn’t been a redtail, I was sure of that. It was too small, for one thing, and the color wasn’t right. But it wasn’t any kind I knew either.

I parked along the road outside the cemetery and got the walker out of the back of the truck, along with the box of flowers. I was still getting used to the walker, but the truth was, my hip hadn’t been good for a long time and it was worse now, and I didn’t fancy falling over and not being able to get up, waiting for someone to come along and find me, if they ever did. This wasn’t a popular visiting spot, this old cemetery. Nobody used it anymore, and even the preacher had been a bit reluctant about burying Adam here, but we had the plot, had had for years, enough room for me right next to him, and all the kids, too, except something would have to be done about their kids, we weren’t all going to fit unless someone got stacked atop someone else. I didn’t know if they permitted that, but I kind of doubted it. One thing I was sure of, though, I wasn’t going to be around to worry about it.

I let myself in the gate, using the walker with the box of flowers carefully balanced on its front bar, and went slowly in the direction of the fresh grave, the walker’s legs sinking into the damp grass, so I had to go slow and cautious.

I saw before I even got there that they had the headstone up, which was pretty quick, but that wasn’t what surprised me. Sitting atop the headstone was the hawk—well, a hawk, anyway, although it looked like the same one to me. The hawk watched my approach with a yellow-tinted eye, until I was so close I could almost have reached out and petted him. Then, just like that, he flew off, circled overhead once or twice, and disappeared into the distance in the direction of home. My home, anyway. I had no idea where his was, but it seemed as if they might be in the same neighborhood.

“Well, if you’re wanting to hang out together, I guess that’d be okay,” I said aloud. “I’d like that better than my daughters yammering, to tell the truth. You don’t have to keep running off, though.” If the hawk heard me, he gave no sign of it. In another minute, he was gone.

I turned my attention back to the gravesite, and my eyes went to the headstone, and just like that, it clicked in my mind. “Adam Cooper,” the carving on the stone read, and below that the dates of his birth and his death.

“Cooper,” I said aloud. “A Cooper’s Hawk.” I laughed for the first time in days. “You’re a Cooper’s Hawk,” I yelled after him, although the bird had long since vanished. He probably didn’t need me to tell him who he was anyway.

# # #

Junior came by soon after I had gotten home. I expect Alma Jean had told him about my driving off, and he was the one designated to be sure that I was okay and hadn’t gotten hauled off to jail for driving without a license. My last one had expired twenty years ago. I didn’t even bother trying to renew. Who’d be fool enough to give me one?

I was glad to see Junior, though. I was excited about the hawk, and I wanted to share my discovery with someone else.

“That hawk we saw this morning, that’s a Cooper’s hawk,” I told him.

“Daddy…now, you’re just making that up, about the name, ain’t you?”

“No, no, it is, really, a Cooper’s Hawk, let me show you a picture.” I got out the encyclopedia, the C volume. I’d already marked the page with a piece torn out of Sunday’s newspaper, and I opened right to it, and showed him. “See.”

He squinted and looked at the picture, moved a bit to one side and then to the other, looking at it like the picture was going to change if he moved around.

“It didn’t exactly look like this,” he said, kind of embarrassed. I knew what he was thinking. The old man is getting a little fruity. That’s what they think, all the kids, but Junior was uncomfortable with my knowing that’s how they feel. “Course I didn’t get but a glimpse.”

“It’s a young one,” I tell him. “A male. They’re smaller than the females, it says here. And the coloration is lighter when they’re young, plus the eyes are yellow, and his were. They turn red as he gets older.”

“Cooper, huh?” he looked at the picture again, and then at me, sort of half-grinning, but his eyes serious. “So what are you trying to say, Daddy? You think this hawk is Daddy Adam, come back to you somehow?”

“I think it’s a Cooper’s Hawk,” I told him.

I know what the kids have been saying, I heard them whispering the day of the funeral, like they thought I couldn’t hear them, when I was pretending to be asleep. They’re wondering if it’s okay for me to be alone, if I might be “losing it” the way Elizabeth put it.

Hell, I’d already lost it, lost everything that mattered. But I didn’t want them fussing over me and I didn’t want anyone staying with me like a baby sitter, which was one of the things they’d been debating, and I sure didn’t want them carting me off to some home where I’d be side by side with old farts wetting their pants and women drooling on themselves, which Elizabeth had suggested. The home part, not the drooling.

To purchase direct from MLR Press, click http://www.mlrbooks.com/Bookstore.php?bookid=VJBCHAWK
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Monday, June 18, 2012

The Best Christmas Ever excerpt by Anel Viz

In The Best Christmas Ever by Anel Viz, Brandon wasn't entirely comfortable about his relationship with Donnie, his simple-minded live-in lover for whom every Christmas is "the best Christmas ever". What was a mature, independent person like himself doing sexually involved with a childish and mildly retarded man?


According to one reviewer, "The dual insights -- author and protagonist -- and the way these eventually meld make this a fascinating study of an interesting couple."

The Best Christmas Ever
Silver Publishing (December 5, 2011)
ISBN: 9781920502416

Excerpt:

They had met during the holidays, a day or two after Christmas, watching children sled down the big hill in the park. Brandon liked watching kids play. It made him nostalgic for his own not especially happy childhood. The man standing next to him, though, seemed almost jealous of them, as if he wished he could join in the game.

"Looks like fun, doesn't it?" Brandon had said.

"It is fun!"

"You go sledding?"

"I would if I had kids. Grownups don't go sledding by themselves."

"Why not?"

"People would laugh at me."

"What if they do? That's their problem." Then, on an impulse, Brandon said, "I will if you will."

"What? Go sledding?" Brandon nodded. "But we don't have sleds."

"There's a toy store half a block from the park."

"Yeah, I know the one you mean."

"We can buy sleds there. You know, those round plastic trays. They can't cost that much."

The man looked at him, unable to tell if he were serious or joking. Then his face lit up. "Let's do it!" He could hardly contain his excitement.

"I'm Brandon."

"I'm Donnie."

Donnie became very voluble on their walk to the store. His talk was all about children's games, not work or sports or the other things men talk about with other men. It was only natural, given the circumstances. Brandon had no reason to suspect Donnie's childishness was anything but a grown man in a silly mood. He found it engaging.

Two hours of going up and down the hill left them soaked to the skin and frozen to the bone. Donnie was shivering. His cheeks were pinker than Santa's and his nose was running.

"We'd better stop now or we'll come down with pneumonia," Brandon said.

"Just once more…" he pleaded. Like a little boy begging for permission.

"Go ahead if you want. I've had enough."

"You'll wait for me, though, won't you? Just once. I promise."

"Okay. I'll wait."

They walked together to the edge of the park. "You take the subway too?" Donnie asked.

"No, I live just a couple of blocks away." Then a thought occurred to him. "Do you have a long ride?"

"About forty-five minutes."

"But you're all wet! Look, why don't you come over to my place?" It must have been his day for doing things on the spur of the moment.

"Your place?"

"Sure, why not? I'll throw your clothes in the dryer, we can have some hot coffee to warm up—"

"I like hot chocolate more."

"Okay then, hot chocolate. How about it?"

Donnie hesitated. "Gee, I don't know…"

"You won't be imposing."

"All right," he said, less enthusiastically than he had agreed to the sledding. He seemed almost distrustful.

Brandon wondered if the man had caught on he was gay. Hardly anyone ever did. In any case, it wasn't why he had asked Donnie home. Nothing could have been further from his thoughts.

http://bookworld.editme.com/AnelViz

To buy, click https://spsilverpublishing.com/product_book_info/glbt-contemporary-c-53_54/products_id/669/?zenid=22e4bb8caa365e5f14813cccda844e12

Monday, June 11, 2012

Memory of Darkness excerpt by P.A. Brown

In P.A. Brown’s Memory of Darkness, Johnny Wager is a 42-year-old street hustler, small time burglar and reformed car thief (well, mostly reformed). He's an ex-con who finds himself in the middle of a war between powerful adversaries that has disastrous consequences for a lot of people.


In his search for justice, Wager has a host of allies and foes, his disapproving son, the Los Angeles Sheriff's deputy, a six-foot-five black drag queen from New Orleans who wears four inch Jimmy Choos, her five-foot-five Puerto Rican boyfriend, an ex-Marine porno film maker, the Armenian mob and an incontinent Bassett Hound called Columbo.

Johnny is a bad boy, which may be why the author loves him more than most. You wouldn't want to invite him home because he might steal the silver, but sit down in a bar with him, and you know you'd have one hell of a time. Columbo is, of course, named after one of the author’s favorite TV detectives.

Romance Junkie says, ‘Johnny is a fun character and I found him surprisingly likable. He has a sarcastic sense of humor and I really enjoyed his observations on the people around him and his situation ... This novel is also filled with some of the most unique and intriguing characters I have ever come across. Hyacinth in particular felt very real to me and I wished I could meet her. Tyler’s dog Columbo made me laugh.”

Rick Reed says, “P.A. Brown is one of those writers who should be as famous as P. Cornwell, if there were any justice in the world. The author of a whole series of competent, well-researched, and catch-your-breath suspenseful thrillers all centered around the seamy (and gay) underbelly of Los Angeles, Brown's oeuvre is one that should be embraced by anyone who loves a seamlessly plotted thriller with characters that are anything but typical. Brown writes lean, muscled prose and captures the male viewpoint so effortlessly that one wonders how she does it.”

In this excerpt, Johnny is in Griffith Park trying to find a way to go into hiding and meets an unexpected savior.

Memory of Darkness
Amber Quill Press, Llc/Amber Allure (September 16, 2009)
ISBN: 978-1-60272-570-6 (ebook)
978-1-60272-841-7 (Paperback

Excerpt:

Dusk was settling in, throwing dirty shadows over the uneven ground. I found refuge on a knife-scarred and graffitied picnic table and watched people leaving the park. A rusted out Pinto rattled by, heading into the park, thirty screaming tweakers hanging out of every portal, leaving a trail of rap obscenities hanging in the fading light. They were too stoned to notice me. The night life was arriving. Soon the park would be alive with a new kind of wildlife.

I kicked off the table and prepared to hike back to Los Feliz where I hoped to pick up a ride into the Valley. With any luck I could get lost there.

I heard him before I saw him. Rather, I heard his dog, snuffling and groaning like life itself was a hardship. It sounded big. When it finally came through the brush it turned out to be a gray-muzzled Bassett Hound shuffling through the ground cover, nose down, huge ears dragging through the dirt.

I faded back into the dense brush behind the picnic table just as the dog's owner came around the bend in the road. He was a tall, lanky man, maybe six foot. His hair was wispy and thinning on top. It was a ginger color. He was clean-shaven. From this distance I couldn't make out the color of his eyes.

He didn't see me.

But his dog did. It shuffled unerringly toward my hiding place, briefly lifting its face toward me, its rheumy eyes staring directly into mine. It circled my frozen legs. Then it cocked its right leg and sent a stream of warm urine over my ankle.

I yelled and jumped back, stumbling and falling on my ass. The dog sat, its massive jaws opening in a canine grin.

Before I could climb to my feet and get out of there, Lanky found us. I scrambled back, shaking piss off my pant leg. My sockless foot inside my high-tops was damp. I grimaced at the sensation.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry. He's never done anything like that before. I'm sorry, so sorry... He's not usually so aggressive."

Both of us looked down at the dog, now lying in a swoon on the cracked earth under a deodar cedar. It snored softly, exhausted from all the energy it had expended.

"Nice to know I can inspire him," I muttered, wanting to split. Needing to find a washroom so I could clean up. "Listen I have to -- "

"No, no, don't go," Lanky said. "Let me make it up to you."

A light bulb flared in my head. I might be on to something here. I'd taken care of my car, now I had to take care of me. I had to lay down a bigger sob story.

"Damn, I was supposed to be meeting my friend for dinner down on the Boulevard." I shook my leg as though I could shake off the piss, hoping he wouldn't see any of the stains on my jacket. They might take a bit more explanation. Fortunately the fading light helped in my defense. I tried another gambit, blinked my baby blues at him and leaned slightly toward him, inviting. I was heartened to see his own eyes -- a nice hazel, I noticed -- darken appreciably. All right, Mary, I had a live one here. Maybe he was doing a bit more than just walking his dog.

I smiled. "I'm Johnny. Johnny Wager." I stuck my hand out.

He took it in a surprisingly strong grip. "Tyler" he said. Tyler Rogers." He looked down affectionately at the dog. "This is Columbo."

Now my first desire had been to drop kick Fido into the next county, but I learned long ago that dog people are usually gaga over their pets and the way to their hearts -- or wallets or dicks -- was through their dogs. I reached down and patted the slobbering thing's head, thankful it didn't try to return the favor.

"Nice dog," I said with all the sincerity my forty years of hustling had taught me to fake.

"Yes, he is. He's smart as a whip and has tons of personality."

I studied the motionless animal and thought he had about as much personality as a door stop, but what did I know? Maybe the thing was a veritable doggy Einstein under that wrinkled brow and slobbering jowls.

"I can tell."

"You own dogs, Johnny?"

I could tell he liked saying my name. I nodded sadly. "Used to. He... passed two months ago. We used to come up here to walk. He loved chasing squirrels." Or was it rabbits you found in Griffith Park?

"What kind was he?"

I scrambled through my brain for some kind of plausible answer. Neither Jolene nor I had been much into pets, and my mother... well, forget her. Her idea of an animal in the house was one of her biker bears. Like the asshole who diddled little Johnny whenever Mommy was out of the house collecting her welfare check. That one had lasted six long months until Mommy caught him drinking her booze.

"Lassie," I said.

"Oh, a collie. Nice dogs. Lot of brushing though, didn't you find?"

"Yeah, lots," I agreed and stepped closer to him. He developed an all-too-familiar tension. I didn't need to look to know his basket was swelling. I kept smiling. "Say, maybe I can come back to your place to clean up. You can tell me all about Columbo."

His tension increased and I knew what he wanted. But caution warred with lust. I had to tip the balance. "I'd love to talk about dogs...I miss Lassie so much."

His doubt melted away and he gestured back up the road toward Western Canyon Road. "I'm parked there." He slapped his thigh and called, "Columbo, come on boy. Time to go home."

Columbo rolled ponderously to his feet and eyed my dry pant leg with keen interest. I stepped adroitly away at the same time following Tyler up the curving road to where a silver BMW sat in the shade of a sycamore tree. Or what would have been shade before the sun went down. Now it was just a massive ghostly trunk.

http://www.pabrown.com/mod.htm
http://www.pabrown.com/modreviews.htm

To purchase, click http://www.amberquill.com/AmberAllure/MemoryDarkness.html

or

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Monday, June 4, 2012

False Evidence excerpt by Jon Michaelsen


In Jon Michaelsen’s False Evidence, obsession and lust can lead to murder.

What begins as a cursory glance at the high-rise apartment opposite soon becomes something much darker and far more dangerous. For bored accountant Kevin Mitchell, lusting after gorgeous, muscular, Tony, in the adjacent building, builds into a life changing obsession.

When Tony shows up at Kevin's apartment, bloody and bruised, Kevin offers him instant refuge…and a place in his bed. However, all is not what it seems and the police draw a different conclusion in their hunt for a violent killer.

Will Kevin's plea of false evidence save him from the horror of a life behind bars?

False Evidence
loveyoudivine Alterotica (May 16, 2012)
ASIN: B00845KX7I

Excerpt:

Kevin's fantasy drew him in more and more. His days at the office began to drag along and often left him exhausted and miserable by the end of the workday. He stopped going out to lunch with Alice, choosing instead to pack a bite to eat in order to end his day at work earlier. His evenings alone and awake ran on to well after midnight. Sleep, when it came, became fits of restlessness until it was time to get up and head to the office. He spent any spare time he had peering out the windows hoping to catch a glimpse of the stranger across the way, always craving just one more look to satisfy his unquenchable thirst before calling it a night.

Within the week, Kevin had purchased a camera and tripod. Five days later, he added a telephoto lens and other items. Before long, he'd amassed a stellar collection of photographs capturing the images of an abstracted, young man in his prime and oblivious to the attention he'd reaped from a neighboring high-rise.

The quest for satisfaction consumed Kevin; he all but ignored his responsibilities at work and at home. His actions became irresponsible, even voyeuristic, and ignited desires that he didn't know he possessed. His boss expressed dissatisfaction with his tardiness and increasing mistakes, but he made excuses for his lack of focus. Friends calling his home found nothing but an answer machine and returned calls never happened. He even gave Alice the cold shoulder when she voiced concern, but Kevin didn't care. He slipped deeper and deeper into a compulsion he didn't see, convinced all the while he could stop the spying on his neighbor at any time.

* * * *

By early May, Kevin had settled into a routine of spying on the man of his dreams, laying out a daily ritual of surveillance that played against a backdrop of reality. He knew when to catch the guy working out with free-weights in his bedroom, sunbathing on the terrace, or even when the dude might pass before the windows after taking a shower.

So it came as somewhat of a shock when the blinds across the street began opening and closing at irregular intervals and the lights in the apartment burned well into the evening hours two nights in a row. Mr. Adonis roamed freely throughout the penthouse, more frequently without a stitch of clothing on his body. Kevin surmised the man's companion had gone away for a while on a business trip, or perhaps to visit relatives.

Whatever the case, the idea and new-found impudence to introduce himself to the young man prevailed and Kevin took time off work. He cleaned his home from top to bottom and stowed the camera equipment away. He spent the next few days sunning on the terrace, hoping to catch the guy's attention, moving the floral canopy out of the way to create a clear view. Kevin's body was lean and tight, but not as muscular as he was tall. More endowed than most, he filled the tiny swimsuit he sported in hopes of catching the stranger's attention.

On the third day, Kevin finally received the acknowledgement from the man he'd hoped for. A subtle nod, soon led to a flirtatious smile and movement of the man's mouth; unable to hear his words, Kevin smiled and raised his hands palms skyward. The guy pointed down toward the street, an invitation that Kevin accepted with an upright thumb...

http://www.jonmichaelsen.net/
To purchase, click http://tinyurl.com/FalseEvidence-AmazonKindle