Island Song excerpt by Alan Chin

This new edition of Island Song, the debut novel by Alan Chin, has been rewritten — converting it from present tense into past tense, tightening up the prose, and given a different ending (the one originally intended.) The author believes this edition is far superior to the original. You, the reader, decide!

After watching his lover’s long and painful slide into death, there is no peace for Garrett Davidson. Grief eats at him. In a desperate bid to survive, he flees to a secluded Hawaiian refuge. There he intends to write a memoir about his relationship with Marc, hoping the process will bring closure, restore his sanity, and kick-start a career in writing. 

He meets a captivating island native, Songoree, who offers promises of enlightenment and spiritual healing—but Garrett can only achieve it by abandoning his personal history. Can Garrett endure an excruciating journey that will tear him to pieces, wreak havoc among his friends, and break his despairing heart? Is it possible to attain fulfillment, even love, by surrendering everything you cherish? To survive, Garrett must find the answers.

Island Song
Dreamspinner Press (February 11, 2011)
ISBN-10: 1615817042
ISBN-13: 978-1615817047

Excerpt:

Garrett slept through the night undisturbed until light bled through the open window. With the growing light came the dream. Within the universe surrounded by his skull, he relived an experience that he and Marc had had several years earlier while scuba diving off the coast of Baja, Mexico.

They swam in a blue-green world thirty feet below the surface in the Sea of Cortez. Garrett loved to swim facing up so he could watch their bubbles float away, mingling together as they raced to the surface. It seemed magical.

The freedom of weightlessness brought a joy so intense it was agonizing.

They darted around the hull of a sunken freighter like sea otters until a giant manta ray glided up from beneath them, serene and graceful. The manta spanned fifteen feet across, dark gray on top and virgin white on the underside. It flew up to and around them, performing a slow-motion ballet.

Caught in a vise of fear and awe, Garrett’s hair prickled while an electric charge ran from his brain to his testicles. He had never been that close to any creature so large or so incredibly beautiful.

Marc, the bold one, kicked his legs and glided to the ray’s back. He grabbed hold with both hands near the eyes and began to soar away, riding the ray like a magic carpet. Garrett struggled to catch them and soon both divers rode the creature, performing unimaginable acrobatics.

The giant saucer winged its way into a school of squid, thousands of glistening milky bodies with flowing tails. The vision was electrifying. Garrett knew that he would never again experience such magnificence until death took him, and in the water, as on his bed, he smiled, grateful for the experience being given to him.

He ascended, floating on the edge of consciousness. His hand reached for his crotch and he began to rub. This part of the dream always reminded him of gliding in an ocean of semen, the squid looked so similar to sperm weaving their way to the one destination that would make them whole and fulfilled. The image never failed to excite him.

see original excerpt: September 22, 2008

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Stallers: More Tales of Time Square Cuties excerpts by Mykola Dementiuk

Mykola Dementiuk’s Stallers: More Tales of Times Square Cuties is a collection of stories of certain men who used to stand around in certain locations in Times Square in the old days where they knew they could always find another horny man and instant semiprivacy just a door away in which to act out their desires. These stories capture “when Times Square was all about sex, drugs, and cold spit … the just-burgeoning hardcore movie houses and girlie show of Times Square in the 1960s. It’s vivid. Harsh, real and yes, erotic, in a stomach-churning way. Genuine whoreporn from a time when things were not talked about, at all, in the twilight zone.”(Susie Bright)

Stallers: More Tales of Times Square Cuties
Renaissance Ebooks, Sizzler Editions (2011)

Excerpt: Just Like A Woman

It was Friday night and for decades this area of peepshows and dirty movies, loud bars and dangerous side streets, was synonymous with sex and cheap thrills. It was the place to come to get laid or blown or even watch a skin-flick while jerking yourself off. The purpose and logic, the thrill and enticement of the area was just that: sex, cheap and dirty and quick. On any night, the street scene was often the same: a red-faced geezer hurrying towards some dark side-street hallway with a young boy trailing behind him; nervous men in business suits skulking into dirty-movie houses or speeding out of porno bookshops with magazine-crammed paper bags tucked under their arms; ragged old whores roosting atop garbage cans and displaying flabby tits and busted-toothed grins to cars and passersby and sometimes actually negotiating a price with them. On the street, a young boy could lose his virginity to a manipulative wasted cunt as easily as to a scheming diseased dick up his ass. You took your chances when you got to Times Square, and you got what paid for; and more often then not, it was exactly what you were after anyway.

Excerpt: The Wet Skirt

The tip of her penis peeped out of her panties as she preened herself in the ladies' room of the Pix porno theater. She had left the bathroom door ajar but the steady parade of hand-jobbers and cock-suckers moving towards the men's room at the opposite end of the lounge barely even glanced in her direction and she slid out of her wet skirt and draped it over a stall door to dry.

She looked in the mirror above the wash basins and licked off a smudge of lipstick from her front teeth. As soon as my skirt dries she thought, I'll get out of here. Maybe go to the Bryant or to Grant's Bar where the other transvestites hung out. She knew it was a mistake to come to the Pix dressed as she was. The cock-suckers were after cock in pants, not in a skirt – and just moments ago she had sat in the balcony, crossing and re-crossing her legs, showing off her thighs, puffing up her bosom, and flitting her tongue, as in the seats around her dark figures groped at other legs in pants, bobbed heads on un-zippered laps, and totally ignored her sitting alone and waiting to give it away.

Excerpt: Soft Core

But she was not the sole reason I kept returning to the Pix. The majority of porno-houses on the block had made a swift transition from soft panty porn to hard core reality of the late 60s with exaggerated visuals and extreme close-ups of outspread vaginas, bloated cocks and stretched ass-holes, while the Pix, and its neighbor across the street, the Bryant theater, with their passé films of girls in panties and bras intimating at intercourse and hinting at fellatio, remained a sort of demure haven of soft core in the casual and ready hard fuck world along 42nd street and attracted a different shuffling clientele more interested in sucking each other off than in looking at the screen, whether it displayed covered asses or outspread panties crotches. At the Cinema 42, Caeser's Harem, Globe Sex World, the camera lens focused on interior visuals of lubricated vaginal and anal walls of some faceless woman, probing and lingering over every glistening vein and blown up gelatinous lump, while the Pix and Bryant still trembled at a bare thigh above a dark nylon mesh or the contour of a large breast pulsing out of a tight bra cup. There's definitely something to be said for the mystery and hint of early soft core porn: it treated the woman as an object to be desired, craved, and lusted after, a hint of stocking as something shocking, something heady but out of reach, a dream, a quest, a possibility, rather than a pliant immobile cadaver to be disemboweled, dissected, and discarded. "Open you ass, you cunt!" the director cries. "That's a wrap! Lunch!"

Excerpt: Pursuit

I had followed the young man from store front to store front, from movie alcoves to arcade windows and still he remained a few feet ahead of me, abruptly withdrawing each time I drew near, though not to deftly as he could have easily have lost me in the thick 42nd Street crowd. It was a tease and we both knew it.

I had spotted him coming out of Bryant Park and moving to the Pix movie house where he studied the girlie stills outside, then darted across the street and looked at the similar Bryant theater display. Though his park exit troubled me since there had been an increase in beatings, muggings, and faggot rip-offs that summer, not only in the park but the entire Times Square area by bully-hoods leading-on horny old queers, but he didn't quite fit the image of the lure-boy to bait me into some dark alley. Still, I'd better warn him to be wary of the park.

Excerpt: 18 Today

I had forgotten what it was like to be underage and trying to enter a sex theater, though the reminders of age were everywhere, plastered in between and around the arcade displays of big-breasted sex-starved bimbos as if hung there by some spiteful teaser: Sex-Sex-Sex-No-One-Under-18-Admitted! On one display the prohibitive words even appeared in a giant comic-strip bubble coming out of a giant bimbo's mouth: Sorry, boys, I need a MAN…No One under 18 Admitted.

I approached behind him and glared at the fat ticket seller: always in the same dandruff-sprinkled black dress; always the same stern eyes judging, deeming; always the same pursed red lips admonishing, No Drinking! No Sleeping! No Loitering in the Men's Room! while passing over an entry stub. I'm certain that here was the composer and designer of the Under 18 signs.

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Suspicious Diagnosis excerpts by Jardonn Smith

From Suspicious Diagnosis by Jardonn Smith, two excerpts from A True Ring, one of the five tales in the book. In these excerpts, an apprentice trainer in the big-time Chicago pro wrestling circuit is sent to the small-time Tulsa circuit for a special assignment. Hope you like old-time pro wrestling from the 1960's!



Suspicious Diagnosis
Create Space (October, 2010)
ISBN: 978-1453856079


Excerpt 1:

First time I ever saw Marshall Strendlehocker live and in person, he was doing inverted push-ups. Those are the kind executed from a hand-stand. He was shirtless. Working out in a gym on the fringes of downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma. He did fifty. A seemingly hard to believe accomplishment, but not for an athlete the caliber of a then-twenty-something Marshall Strendlehocker .

I'd seen him before in a photograph.

Spring of 1965, Mr. Jack Monroe summoned me to his smoke-fogged Chicago office and plopped down a newspaper clipping on his desk. "Son," he growled with spit-saturated cigar tweezered between his fingers. "Take a look at your first big project."

In black and white, a newspaper clipping of a youthful man, so vibrant, and oh, so masculine in his wrestling singlet and ankle-high boots. The caption read: Marshall Strendlehocker completes his collegiate run at Oklahoma University. Compiling a career mark of 56-0, the 165-pound Strendlehocker shattered all national records with 41 pins, including 22 straight on his way to four consecutive state championships.

"When was this?" I asked.

"March of '63"

"I remember reading about him, I think. Where is he now?"

"Working the Tulsa circuit."

"Bart O'Connor's league?"

"Yep. O'Connor sent me film from some of their matches. Said I should take a look at this guy. So, shall we?"

Jack had projector and screen permanently set up in his office, and he pulled the drapes, ran the film. A compilation on Super 8 mm. Snippets of one man, our subject. Film quality was shit -- from long distance, colors dull, images watery and humans stretched buffoonishly tall, like whoever'd shot the movies used bad film or a defective camera. The wrestling, however, was superb. Marshall Strendlehocker as a pro wore light-colored trunks with white boots middle-calf. He moved with cat-like quickness, securing his opponents into pain-inducing holds that forced their submission within seconds. These were complete matches. None lasted more than a minute. Didn't matter if he wrestled men near to his size, or behemoths towering above him, the result was always the same.

After five minutes of watching the film, I asked Jack, "So, he's been pro since leaving OU?"

"No. Since first of this year."

"Really? He's this good after four months?"

"So says O'Connor."

"What'd he do in between?"

"Preparing for the '64 Olympics."

"I watched most of the U.S. wrestlers there. Don't remember any Marshall Strendlehocker, and based on this I'm sure I would've..."

"He made the team, but injured his shoulder a couple weeks before they left for Tokyo, so they replaced him."

"Aw, tough luck. Well, obviously he can wrestle, but his matches are boring. And that name! Geez..."

"Precisely. O'Connor says the guy refuses to mix it up. No fists. No kicks. No showmanship. He insists upon wrestling collegiate style. A purist."

"Why doesn't Mr. O'Connor tell his employee to play the game or hit the road?"

"Because the guy has a following in Oklahoma and draws a pretty good crowd."

On the screen, Marshall stood ready to take on a 300-pound tub of guts, but the size difference changed nothing. In one move, Marshall had the monster on the mat, on his belly and howling from the pain of a reverse ankle lock. "Who the hell would pay money to watch this?" I scoffed, as the fat guy submitted, match over. "His bouts are finished before he even breaks a sweat. He ought to at least give them some doubt as to the outcome. Pretend like he's in trouble for awhile. Let the other guy..."

"Jimmy, my boy," Jack Monroe relit his stogie. "It's good to see you've figured out your assignment."

"I'm listening."

He shut off the projector, opened the drapes and returned to his desk. "Get down there to Tulsa and make this Strendle-whatever..."

"Strendlehocker," I helped him.

"Right, change that god damn name for starters, and then get him with the program. Obviously, he's got skills the likes of which I've never seen. I need you to mold him into something exciting. Teach him the meaning of the word drama. Got it?"

"Yes, sir, Mr. Monroe."

He opened a drawer, took out an envelope and tossed it onto his desk. "There's some traveling cash. O'Connor's expecting you. We're both needing somebody to turn this hard-headed monkey into a money-making whiz-kid. Can you do it?"

"Mr. Monroe, there's no way some countrified Okie's going to outsmart me."

"Good. You've got my phone numbers. Keep me up to speed on what's happening."

"Yes, sir."

Rather boastful of me, for sure, but that's what my boss wanted to hear, and so I set myself up for potential disaster. No worries. This was my big break, or I should say, my big BIG break. The first was finagling my way into Jack Monroe's National Wrestling League to begin with, but now, if I could somehow take this guy's undeniable athletic skills and develop him into an heroic character for all to adore, Marshall Strendlehocker's road to the bright lights and lucrative contracts was paved and waiting for him, and I'd be sitting pretty as well.

A six-hundred-mile road trip from Chicago to Tulsa gave me no thrills. It did, however, give me time for plotting and reflection. It'd been ten years since I wrote my first letter to Mr. Monroe's NWL. Didn't give salutations to anybody in particular, as I recall. Just a "Dear sirs" greeting, and the gist of my argument was this:

I am Jimmy Dolan. I am twelve years old and I like to watch your wrestling program on the television. The referees should stop getting in the way of the camera so I can see what the wrestlers are doing.

I planned to end my letter there, but my dad suggested I add another bit, one of which he'd heard me complain numerous times:

Please tell Max Malone to change his hair. He should shave his head or get his hair buzzed or a crew cut. His hair is parted by his left ear. When he wrestles his hair hangs down on his left shoulder and his head is bald. He is a good wrestler, but he looks funny and he shouldn't. Please make him cut his hair or take the scissors and cut it for him.
Yours truly,
Jimmy Dolan.

Imagine my shock when the very next broadcast gave me a Max Malone with buzzed hair, while the referees, instead of dropping to the mat for a close-up view of wrestlers intertwined by limb-bending holds, for the most part stayed on their feet and out of camera shot. An even bigger surprise came in the Wednesday mail. A letter from Mr. Jack Monroe himself, handwritten, thanking me for my ideas and inviting me to send more if I had any.

Cousins, you better believe I had plenty and fully intended to share every one of them -- plot lines, characterizations for good guys and bad. Of course, the public wasn't supposed to think there were plot lines, but I knew better. These were early days of television, and the Saturday night broadcasts of matches at Chicago's National Guard Armory Arena were wildly popular. Jack Monroe was one of the first to see the potential of this new medium, and his Chicago circuit quickly became the Mecca for all professional wrestlers out in the hinterlands. Think of it! Jack Monroe, owner of the National Wrestling League, wanted me, this little twelve-year-old punk from Wheaton, Illinois, to feed him scenarios for his big-time wrestling show.

Fortunately, my father, a working-class-nobody, was smart enough to also see into the future -- mine. Upon reading Mr. Monroe's letter, he said, "Now, Jimmy, keep some things to yourself. Just feed him enough to keep your foot in the door, and then, when you're old enough, if you decide this is something you'd like to do, Jack Monroe will hire you lickety-split. Meanwhile, there's no use giving away all your ideas for free. Right?"

"Right as rain, pop!" and that is exactly how I played it. Once I'd graduated high school, Jack Monroe put me on his payroll. Not only that, he sent me to college, sort of. More on that later.

Anyway, here I was, a twenty-two-year-old, up-and-comer given his first chance to take a proven, bonafide athlete, pluck him out of podunk and groom him for my boss. Turn him into something spectacular. A hero. An icon. All I had to do was convince Marshall Strendlehocker I knew more about it than he did. My being two years younger than he was wouldn't make it any easier.

* * * * *

Excerpt 2 (same year, motel room in Blackwell, Oklahoma, Marshall's name is now Dick Hodges)

One thing Dick Hodges recognized was that his success depended upon his villainous opponent's ability to convincingly play the part, and for his villains to be men he could trust. So, like Charlie Wills, Bill Couch was treated first to dinner, and then to my hands. Rubbing down first Dick, and then Bill certainly was exhausting, but because I'm a kind-hearted soul, and because I knew it would make Dick happy, I told him to go get Chief Charlie Muk-nuk Wills and I'd work him over again, too.

Oh, me! Oh, my! Four men in various states of undress inside Dick's motel room. Such a perfect scenario for a quartet of man-sex. Right? Sorry. My designs on those two men were more sinister than that. Besides, unlike Dick, they both kept their underwear on and I couldn't tell if they were sporting woodies or not. Hopefully not, because if either of them were they certainly didn't leave an impression.

Well, enough of that. With a satisfied Bill shirtless and wearing trousers while relaxing in a chair, Dick laying on his bed in white briefs, and Charlie, also in white briefs, atop my table with his backside beneath my fingers, I schemed. "Hey, Bill, both you and Charlie come from communist countries. Right?"

"Uh, Dmitri and Muk-nuk do, I guess. Is Mongolia commie?"

Charlie fielded it. "Part of China, I think."

My knuckles pressed lines along Charlie's spine. "I think so, too. Maybe you two should be comrades."

"Partners?" queried Bill.

"Not in the ring, necessarily, but you both enter the gym like you're buddies. Bart can announce the wrestler's name, say, Chief Muk-nuk, accompanied by Dmitri Smirnov. Chief wrestles while Dmitri hangs out at ringside, or the other way around."

Charlie caught on. "Oh, I get it. Interfering from the outside when the referee's not looking."

"Precisely!" I treated him to some calf-squeezes. "Make it to where Dick's taking on two men, or at least one and a half men."

Dick jumped to his feet with fists clenched. "Which one of you commie bastards wants to take me on first? Come on, you swine. I'll hammer the both of ya's."

Bill stood, assumed his Rooshky sneer with his chest thrust forward. "You Americans. Think you are so high and mighty. We will destroy you!"

"That's perfect, Bill," I urged. "But give it an accent. Ve vill destroy you."

Bill and Dick excitedly worked on dialogue as I coaxed Charlie to roll over for his front-side rub. Once Bill got accustomed to substituting V's for W's, the three men talked out wrestling scenarios until I'd finished with Charlie.

Rolling off the table, he offered another thought. "How's about I change the Chief Muk-nuk to something more Chinese?"

One step ahead of him, I'd already thought of one. "How about Shanghai Charlie?"

He loved it. We all loved it, and as Charlie dressed, Dick closed the meeting. "Let's tell Bart first thing in the morning. Work out our routine as soon as we're set up in Ponca City."

"Sounds good, Dick." Bill waited for Charlie, and they both left together.

With my table folded up for travel, towels tossed into my laundry sack, I prepared to follow them. "Well, guess I'll call it a night. See you in the..."

"Where do you think you're going?" Dick closed and locked the door, cruelly dropped his briefs.

"I'm going to my room, Dick. Sorry."

"What are you scared of?" He moved toward me, grabbed me, poked my thigh with his boner. "Let's do some sixty-ninin'."

"Come on, now. You know it's too risky. Can't you wait until we get back to Tulsa?"

"Why? Nobody can see us. The door's locked. Curtain's drawn."

"What about the rooms next to us? What if they hear us?"

"Your dick in my mouth? Mine in your mouth? How much noise can we make?" He raised my arms, lifted my singlet undershirt up and off and tossed to the floor. "Damn, Jimmy. Your thinking is all upside-down on this." His hands clutched my shoulder blades. He pulled my chest to his and pecked my forehead with his lips. "Nobody will ever know a damned thing unless one of us tells them." He shoved me onto the bed. "And I will never talk." He reached toward the ceiling. "They can stretch me on the rack." He spread his feet apart, clasped his hands together overhead and angled his arms back, chest and belly forward. "They can beat me with fists. Whip me with leather, but nothing they do will ever break me."

My gym shorts, undershorts, shoes and socks were gone in fifteen seconds. "Give me that thing." My hand clutched his pecker and I tugged, indicating he should get horizontal with me. I forced him flat on his back. "I want you on that rack, mister." I stretched his arms toward the mattress corners, did the same with his legs. "You will talk, Dick Hodges, but only to me."

For nearly an hour I kissed and licked and slobbered all over him, and I do mean every inch, from the soles of his feet to the tips of his fingers. By the time I finally got around to positioning myself so I could suck his dick from above while he sucked mine from below, we both were so primed we didn't have time to make any noises or think about how good it felt or how much we enjoyed being together -- or how much we meant to each other.

What can be said? When the man of your dreams feels the same about you as you do him, talking about it plays no part. Nothing can stop it. Dick didn't start out as the man of my dreams. He made himself so. Ours was an incremental bonding which progressed at a pace of its own choosing. Baby steps.

Credit Dick Hodges with another barrier broken. Mine. My worries. My concerns. My useless fears. What will others think? Who gives a shit? Let them think what they want. Let them suspect to their heart's content. They will never know a damned thing unless we tell them, a credo which has served us well throughout each and every day of our forty-five years together.

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Bermuda Heat excerpt by P A Brown

Bermuda Heat by P A Brown,#4 in the L.A Series

A letter. A secret. A tragedy. David's mother told him his father died when he was born. His mother lied.

David Eric Laine always believed his father had died in Vietnam before his birth. His mother remarried and he was adopted by his stepfather and grew up knowing Graham Laine as his only father. Forty years later, a letter arrives and David finds out everything he thought was a lie.

Bermuda Heat
MLRPress (February 2011)
ISBN:978-1-60820-160-0(print)
ISBN:978-1-60820-161-7(ebook)

Excerpt:

Chapter One

Saturday, 9:20 am, Rigali Avenue, Atwater Village, Los Angeles

The brown Ford squealed when it failed to take the corner at sixty. Instead it threw up streamers of dust as it bounced across a gravel verge into an empty parking lot. Martinez cursed as his partner, LAPD homicide detective David Eric Laine took the same path, their unmarked Crown Vic blowing out whatever shocks might have been left in the aged vehicle when they screeched onto the lot after the fleeing Ford. Martinez reported their twenty and called for backup, then hung on as David maneuvered ever closer to the other car's rusted out bumper.

David ignored everything but the Ford and the two Pinoy boys they'd been closing in on for days. Since somebody stomped a Temple Street Trese boy to death and put all the Asians on edge, ready to stomp back, it was paramount they be stopped. David and Martinez were working with the local gang cops to try to stop it before it got bloody.

They'd spotted Sokun, the leader of the Pinoy's at a liquor store on Brunswick five minutes ago, the chase had been on. David figured they would try and double back, make a break for Rigali. But then a whoop and a new cloud of dust announced their backup had arrived. A black and white roared in, lights and siren on full code three.

What Sokun did next startled David. Instead of braking and coming around, the brown piece of crap's laboring engine roared, tires spat gravel and the car lunged forward. The fence protecting this section of concrete river was old and worn through years of neglect and abuse. Twisted by the elements and vandals, repaired repeatedlly, it inclined at a fifty degree angle, sagging as though tired of trying to hold out the world.

The Ford slammed into it at a good twenty miles per and snapped off the single metal pole pole, puncturing the radiator and killing the engine. There was a tortured shriek of metal on metal, sparks flew from underneath the battered vehicle. The engine rattled to a stop.

Both doors flew open. Sokun and his passenger bailed. The passenger, who David hadn't been able to ID, headed north. Sokun scrambled over the battered remnants of fence and vanished over the lip of the cement trough.

"Oh, tell me he did not just do that," David muttered.

Martinez growled what might have been a reply before he too was out the door and hot on the trail of the passenger, along with a young, female uni. David bolted after Sokun. The other uni followed.

David always figured he was in shape. He ran nearly every day with Sergeant, the Doberman he and Chris had adopted three years ago. Legs pumping, he slowed only long enough to clamber over the chain link and he was off, half skidding, half running down the angled concrete wall, avoiding chunks of broken wall, hot on Sokun's ass.

It was long after the last winter rain. The bed of the river was little more than a few scummy patches of rainbow hued water and scattered weeds that had broken through the concrete and clung to life amid the detritus of a city. He dodged a shopping cart, abandoned with a broken front wheel. A black garbage bag split open, spilled its reeking contents down the slope. A pair of fat gulls took flight when Sokun raced toward them. They squawked and protested as they flew south toward the distant smog-shrouded basin.

Ahead of him and losing ground fast, Sokun clearly didn't do any recreational running. He stumbled over broken concrete and his leather loafers were not designed for top speed flight. David closed the distance between them. Behind him the uni was gaining ground.

"Stop, asshole!"

Not surprisingly, the asshole in questions ignored his orders.

David came up on Sokun's left side. The Cambodian gang leader threw one wild-eyed look over his shoulder and tried to dodge right. David body checked him and the two of them went down. An elbow caught David's chin and he kneed Sokun's kidney, missed and caught him square in the groin. The younger man folded with a groan and rolled onto his side, holding his bruised crotch in both hands. At least until David wrenched them behind him and cuffed him. The uniformed cop arrived seconds later and stood over the downed pair, one hand on his duty weapon, his other on his baton.

David sat on his haunches, his butt resting against Sokun's legs. His arms over his knees, panting as he stared across at the graffiti tagged wall on the other side of the river.

"I'm getting too old for this," he muttered as Martinez appeared at the top of the concrete wall, his own prisoner looking as worse for the wear as David felt.

The uni pulled Sokun to his feet as David rose and dusted his linen pants off. "Get him out of here," he said and climbed up to join Martinez. He watched the two uniformed officers, one who barely looked old enough to be out of middle school lead their prisoner away and shook his head.

Sokun cursed in Cambodian and English.

"Either they're getting younger or I'm getting old."

Martinez clapped him on the back. "It ain't us, ese."

"God, I hope not." David scrubbed his hand through his shaggy hair. Together they trudged back to their Crown. He threw a glance back at the Ford, doors still open, water leaking out from underneath.

Martinez grunted as he eyed the messed up Ford. "Well, look at it this way. At least the asshole didn't try to make a run for it down there in that." He stared balefully down the concrete slope. "That would have been a real circus."

"More like the Indy 500. Better call a tow truck." David shook his head and did his best not to think about it. "Get a warrant for that thing, too."

He put his hand on the still warm hood of their city-owned junk heap. He climbed in behind the wheel. "Might be time to trade this thing in, too. Call the motor pool. See if we can't get this one put out to pasture." He slotted the key in and fired it up. It grunted but fired on the first try. Barely. He met his partner's gaze. "Ever think it might be time to hang it up yourself?"

"What? And give up all the excitement? Not to mention the respect and love we get."

"You left out the fabulous pay check."

"I guess I did kind of forget that. Come on. Let's go down and book these mutts. At least earn some of those big bucks."

A second black and white rolled onto the lot and Sokun was loaded into it. The two shops rolled back out onto Rigali, followed by David and his grinning partner.

"Another fine day on the force."

"Hey," Martinez said. "We'll look back on this someday and remember all the fun we had."

http://www.pabrown.com/bheat.htm
http://www.mlrbooks.com/ShowAuthorBooks.php?list=_ABKLIST26&author=P.A.!Brown
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P'tit Cadeau excerpt by Anel Viz

In P'tit Cadeau by Anel Viz, Ben Brooks, an American art professor on a painting sabbatical in the south of France, befriends Jean-Yves, his landlady's brother, a shy young man whom the locals consider simple minded because he is “different” and who becomes his principal model. Ben undertakes to build his self-confidence and prepare him to live independently.

P’tit Cadeau
Silver Publishing (February, 2011)
ISBN: 978-1-920468-58-3 ebook
ISBN: 978-1456552435 print

Except (from chapter 8)

[Situation: Ben, who spent a year in Italy as an undergraduate, takes Jean-Yves there on a short trip. They will separate in Rome. Jean-Yves has to get back to his job; Ben will visit Sicily.]

To me Italy meant Florence, the Uffizi and the Pitti, the frescoes in the churches, so that's where we went. We planned to stay a week, then Jean-Yves would return to his job and I'd head south. I wanted to see Sicily. He'd take the key to the apartment to pick up his belongings, and he'd leave it with our friend the grocer.

But first we spent a day in Genoa. I wanted to paint the huge panorama of its modern port from Righi. The tourist office in the station booked us a hotel for one night. The owner, a surly man I took an immediate dislike to, warned us we'd be sharing a letto matrimoniale and offered to provide a bundling board. At first I didn't understand what he meant. He explained, and I brushed it aside, making a joke. "I trust my friend implicitly."

The man leered at us and said, "The question is whether he trusts you too much."

I didn't have to pretend to be offended. He ignored my reaction, gave us the key, and forgot about the barrier.

Jean-Yves rode the funicular with me to see the view then I sent him to explore the former palazzi of Genoa's ancient families. He'd seen me paint hundreds of times. I asked later what he thought of them, and he asked why they allowed the plaster to peel off the walls when they took such good care of the paintings and the furniture.

After over three weeks with a bathtub, he was happy we had a shower.

"Why's it next to the bed instead of in the corner? And why doesn't it face the center of the room?"

"Lord knows."

He got undressed and stepped into the stall. A minute or so later he opened the curtain and said, "It doesn't work."

He'd been using the wrong cord. "You've just pulled the emergency alarm," I told him.

"About ten times," he added.

The surly owner came bursting into the room to see what was wrong. Jean-Yves hurriedly drew the curtain in front of him. Luckily, I was fully dressed. "He thought that rope was the water," I said.

"I'll see for myself. I'm responsible for what happens in my hotel."

He flung the curtain aside to reveal a full frontal exposure of Jean-Yves, who turned beet red and quickly covered his privates with both hands. The owner began firing questions at him in rapid Italian, while he stared back at him, confused, intimidated and mortified.

"He doesn't understand a word you're saying," I explained.

That he'd made a mistake was perfectly obvious, but instead of leaving us alone, the man grabbed him by the arm, turned him 'round, and, ignoring or pretending to ignore my friend's cock, gave him a long lecture on how to use the shower, pointing to the signs next to the cords and reading them at the top of his lungs. Then he stormed out and slammed the door behind him, leaving Jean-Yves in tears and me laughing uncontrollably.

"What's so funny?"

"I wish I'd painted that scene."

"I don't think I like Italians."

Our experience in Genoa had made me uncertain how the Italians would view two men sleeping together. The hotel in Florence gave us a twin room. When he saw the two beds, Jean-Yves was disappointed we wouldn't have a letto matrimoniale.

"I'm not asking for one," I told him. We can use one for making love and the other for sleeping. That way they'll both be unmade in the morning."

The maid must have thought one of us was a very restless sleeper.

Two days of trudging through the Uffizi Galleries, where the canvases cover the walls from floor to ceiling, one hanging on top of the other, reminded Jean-Yves of what he'd learned in the Musée Fabre: that he had little taste for Renaissance painting.

"Isn't there anything in this town I'd like?" he asked.

"What about the Medici tombs?"

"Too dark."

So I took him to the Accademia.

He'd seen plenty of Davids. Florence has more copies of that gay icon, most of them pocket size, than there are Eiffel Towers in Paris. They've also placed a couple of full-size copies in open spaces, which they try unsuccessfully to keep clean of bird droppings, and others nearly as large as the original in places like hotel lobbies, plus photographs in shop windows, in guidebooks and on postcards, every detail from every angle. None has as powerful an effect as Michelangelo's marble. It seems to breathe; the others are statues. In the natural light of the Accademia one sees an iridescent young man of gigantic stature, every part of him perfect, every muscle, every sinew, every curve a source of wonder. Another nude placed alongside it would beg for clothes. Jean-Yves was awestruck.

Another thing happened in Florence. I finally talked him into fucking me. He went about it very tentatively, so I got no physical pleasure from it, but it was a start, and mentally gratifying. I'd have enjoyed it more if he hadn't kept asking if he was hurting me.

"I'll let you know if it hurts. Just fuck me, will you?"

"It doesn't feel right."

"Trust me. It will when you get used to the idea."

* * * *

Our week in Florence was ending. Jean-Yves had looked troubled since we arrived, and his anxiety seemed to grow every day.

"We've had a wonderful time," I told him, "but you have a job to get back to."

"I want to see Rome," he said. "If I call my boss I bet he'll let me have another day or two. Then he won't have to pay me overtime for the extra hours."

"If he says okay I don't mind stopping two days in Rome on my way to Sicily. It will be easy enough to redo my tickets."

I listened to his half of the conversation as he spoke on his cell phone — his greeting, his hesitant question, his effusive thanks. "He's all right with it," he told me, as if I didn't know already.

On the way to Rome he sat huddled in the corner of the compartment, looking out the window, saying nothing, as if he were afraid of me.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

"Something's the matter. Out with it."

"No, honest."

He turned back to the window. He was stammering, so I knew it wasn't true. He'd tell me when he was ready.

He kept it up for another hour.

"You know you'll tell me eventually."

He answered hoarsely, almost inaudibly. "I lied to you."

"About what?"

"I didn't call my boss. I was pretending to speak to him."

"Why? Well, there's no harm done. You can call from Rome. I'm sure you were right. He'll let you come back later."

"I quit."

"You what?"

"I quit my job. Long ago."

"Why? No, you don't have to tell me. So you could stay with me. Christ Almighty, Jean-Yves! You're impossible! You're worse than a child!"

"You're angry."

"You're damn right I'm angry! What made you do such a thing? No, don't tell me. I know exactly what you're up to, and I could strangle you for being so sneaky about it."

"I'm sorry."

"Some good it does me! Some good it does you, for God's sake!"

There were tears in his eyes. I was torn between my anger at him, my anger at myself, my exasperation over the whole situation, and feeling sorry for him.

"If you'd only told me when you got to Antibes we could have been looking for a job for you. I'd have let you stay with me. Now what the fuck are we going to do?"

I turned away from him and sulked. The people sharing our compartment had witnessed the whole scene and were embarrassed. Jean-Yves looked so upset and forlorn that one of them, a middle-aged woman, said something to comfort him.

"Comprends pas."

"Francese." That was all she got out of what he said.

Rome was the last stop. I had half a mind to leave him there and go straight on to Sicily.

"I don't have to come with you if you don't want me around," he said. "I have the money to get back. It's just that… Can I stay in your apartment while I figure out what to do? I have no place to go. I promise I'll be gone before—"

"Come with me and I'll buy you a ticket to Sicily. Just don't say anything to me, okay? I'm still furious, and I need to think this through."

http://anelviz.blogspot.com

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Sno Ho/Life in Fusion excerpts by Ethan Day

Sno Ho

In Sno Ho by Ethan Day, Boone Daniels seems to have trouble finishing things. Along with the half dozen or so novels he's started, only to abandon mid-way through, his love life could be best described as a series of drive-by's.

Boone has spent the past week staying at a ski-lodge in the tiny mountain town of Summit City. He's been using his time alone to write while waiting for his boyfriend to join him for their anniversary.

What happens to Boone when he winds up dumped on the eve of his one-year anniversary and ends up at a bar having one too many cocktails? Wade Walker.

Sno Ho
MLR Press (October, 2010)
ISBN:978-1-60820-248-5(ebook)

Excerpt:

“Christ that was…” Wade fell to the floor next to me, rolling onto his back while trying to catch his breath.

I was in a similar state, on my back covered in both of our cum. We were both sweating, and I felt a chill as the cool air began to mix with my sweat-soaked body. Goose pimples ran amuck as I leaned up on my elbows and looked over my chest and stomach. “Yeah…it was. I can’t even imagine how much cum you blew the first time. You could’ve drowned me with this shit.”

Wade let out a deep laugh. “Remind me to sexually insult you every day.”

I lay back down, and smacked him in the side as I spied a muffin on the floor just out of reach. I was instantly starving and reached out for it, my middle finger grazing it.

“Please tell me you aren’t seriously going to eat that?” Wade asked. “It’s been on the floor!”

I was just about to curse him and his buckets of sperm which I was trying to keep from running off of me and onto the floor as my finger caught the edge of the muffin top, rolling it close enough for me to snatch it. “Five second rule, dude!” I tossed one of my legs over his and nudged him with it to keep quiet.

Wade stretched his arm out, allowing me to prop my head up on it as I tore off a chunk of the muffin. Wade shook his head at me. “That’s been there longer than five seconds.”

I smiled and laughed a little as I popped it into my mouth. “Five seconds to me, I just noticed it.” I tore off another chunk and held it up to see if he wanted some.

“No thanks,” he pushed my arm away. “I don’t do white flour.”

“Oh Jesus, please tell me you aren’t one of those food Nazis!”

“That shit will kill you.”

I fake cried, letting my body go into full faux racking sobs. “Why God…why?”

“You already hate me, so what’s the difference?”

I let out a gasp. “After all the dirty, dirty things I just let you do to me?” I raised my voice up to sound all girlie. “My daddy warned me about boys like you!” I tore off another chuck of muffin and stared down at my chest. I shrugged and dabbed the muffin in the cum and popped it in my mouth.

“I can’t believe you just did that!”

“Yeah,” I snarled up my lip, “didn’t quite think that one through all the way.”

He laughed and I felt his hand land on the leg that I’d tossed over his. “That’s the best you got?”

“What?” I shrugged. “I was craving sweet and salty and it was right there in front of me. Like everything that had happened today had led up to this moment when I discovered that cum and banana muffin were an irresistible combo.”

“Man, you talk fast.” He squeezed my thigh and laughed, his hand inching a bit toward my crotch. “That mouth of yours should be considered a moving violation.”

“Me?” I asked innocently, swallowing another morsel. I smiled realizing I wasn’t stressed out or angry or feeling all weird and icky about Wade any longer. “That’s ’cause I say twice as much as the average individual.” It was as if the double header of fucking had rid me of my angst. “Gotta get it all out there in the time allotted.” I decided it was the fact I couldn’t remember the sex that had had me all weirded out.

“You’re a little scary,” Wade said, his chest still heaving up and down as he tried to get his wind back.

“Coming from the man who’s afraid of white flour and likes to fake ski?”

“Excuse me?” He said, lifting his head off the floor. “Fake what?”

“Skiing.” I popped in the last bit of muffin. “First of all it’s a stupid sport, and secondly you’re not even doing it the right way.”

Wade rolled onto his side and looked at me like I’d just turned into an alien. “Well, thank God you’re here to set us all straight on this matter. Please, enlighten me.”

“As for the right way, well that would be on water…as God intended.” I felt a slight stiffness in my chest as he looked into my eyes. “And…can you really explain stupidity?” Shit…the ick is coming back!

“Skiing on water is for pussies!” He poked me in the side, causing me to giggle. He seemed to take note that I was indeed ticklish as he arched his eyebrows at me. Then he stood up and walked across the floor to his clothes. “I can’t believe you’d even think that water skiing required even one tenth of the skill that real skiing does.”

“Fine,” I said sitting up on my elbows. “But my way has us half naked, baking in the hot sun and all oiled up—smelling of cocoa buttery goodness.” I watched, slightly confused by the fact I was a little sad to see him pull on his underwear. “With your way, we’re wearing more layers than an onion, and dealing with bitter-ass cold temperatures that cause unwanted shrinkage.”

“I don’t really have to worry about shrinkage.” Wade stood staring at me, holding his pants in one hand as he grabbed his crotch with the other. “I’m not completely sure,” he started as he shoved a long leg into his pants, “but I think you might actually run risk of being stoned to death uttering such blasphemy in this neck of the woods.”

I frowned and shrugged as he zipped up and bent over to grab his shirts. I began to feel odd lying naked on the floor…completely covered in cold semen. “I’m sorry…did I not mention the cocoa buttery goodness?”

“I guess that means you won’t be continuing with your lessons.”

“Eh,” I shrugged. “They are paid for.”

He laughed, then stared at me blankly. I swallowed, again finding it difficult to breathe. I could tell he was trying to work something out in his head, I could practically see the wheels turning, but I had no clue what it could be.

“Have dinner with me?”

“Um,” I felt my face flush as he pulled on his shirts. “How about you get me a towel or something?” I pointed to my chest.

He smiled and looked full of wickedness, much like he’d been before, when I showed up for my first ski lesson. “Have dinner with me, and I’ll get you a towel.”

I laughed with a snort. “Like you’d really leave me like this.”

He shot me a no-bull shit, I-most-certainly-can-and-will look.

“Oh come on! I totally got you a paper towel after I shot all over you earlier!” I really didn’t want to try making it to the shower while attempting to not leave a trail of cum in my wake, and with the amount of it on me, which while already getting a little crispy looking around the edges, I most certainly would.

“Dinner buys you a nice warm fluffy damp towel.”

“You fucking prick!”

“Ah, ah!” Wade shook his finger at me. “Insults not included.”

I was instantly irritated and Wade seemed to thoroughly enjoy witnessing the transformation as that evil smile returned. He finished putting on his boots and stood up, heading for his parka.

“Last chance, Sparky.”

“Fine!” I hated that smirk on his face. The fact that he’d won and he knew it, was going to eat at me all afternoon.

I opened my mouth to tell him off and he held up a hand and called back as he went round the corner into the bath. “If you can’t say anything nice…”

I rolled my eyes, listening to the shower turn on. I lay there, tapping my fingers on the hardwoods making a mental note to never again allow myself to be the cum repository. Wade entered the room again, towel in hand. He smiled down at me, seeming to enjoy towering over me. I wanted to kick him in the nuts and make a grab for the towel.

Wade glanced over me, his eyes getting all squinty as if he could sense what I was thinking. “You’re not a very nice boy.” He laughed down at me as I impatiently held out my hand.

Hi pot, I thought. “There will be no sex included with this dinner.” I looked at him seriously. “I doubt my ass could handle it again, anyway.” Take that, I thought. You might be able to twist my arm into dinner but this little boy’s closing up the barn doors.

He grinned like he didn’t believe a damn thing that I’d just said and dropped the towel onto me. It was warm and damp, and it felt good covering my bare skin.

Wade turned and headed for the door. “I guess you can fuck me, then,” Wade called back as he opened the door.

“You wish, you little shit!”

I felt my jaws clench as he let out a deep rolling laugh, closing the door before I could tell him what I’d really like to shove up his ass. I noticed the steam coming out of the bathroom door from the shower he’d left running for me, as I wiped myself off. I rolled up the towel when I was done and stood up to head for the shower. Stupid ass man-wall!

As I rounded the corner into the bath I wondered, “What the hell am I going to wear?”

*************************************************************************************

Life in Fusion – the sequel to Sno Ho (Warning: possible spoiler alert to Sno Ho!!)

In Ethan Day’s Life in Fusion, aspiring author, Boone Daniels, always figured love would be as easy as he was. Fresh off his whirlwind, winter wonderland romance with ski-god and would-be boyfriend, Wade Walker - Boone was certain that saying goodbye had been the hardest part.

He'd survived the unconventional way in which they came together, proven himself somewhat worthy to Wade's hometown of Summit City, and felt certain the self-imposed, six month boy-buffer would prove one thing - their fate was to be forever entwined.

Once real life settled in, Boone suffered the realization that no one ever actually said love was easy and that even after you fall, you can still break. As their two worlds collided, he began to understand that if he could navigate the landscape of life in fusion, he just might get that happily-ever-after...after all.

Life in Fusion
MLR Press (November, 2010)
ISBN:978-1-60820-236-2(print)
978-1-60820-237-9(ebook)


Excerpt:

As I meandered down the creaking wooden steps I was struck by the fact Wade hadn’t come upstairs to molest me. It was obvious he had an evening planned considering the lit candles burning throughout the living room and kitchen. But still, normally we’d have already had each other naked and in the midst of another sexathon. As I cleared the last few steps, I smiled at my commentary of what was supposedly normal behavior for a three and half week old relationship.

“Cause we’ve been together so long we’ve already settled into a routine?”

He had the TV cabinet open, his huge ass LCD exposed as if we were going to be watching something. The lights were dimmed and Wade had music going in the background, a female singer was belting away, and while she sounded familiar to me I couldn’t quite place her. A small stack of DVDs and one giant remote control were sitting out on the coffee table. The logs popped and crackled in the open fireplace and the soft hum of the fan blowing the heat out into the room, created a constant stream of white noise in the background.

“Who’s the chick singing?” I asked, smiling as he glanced up at me. Wade somehow managed to be adorably sexy. You just wanted to pinch his cheeks when he grinned—both sets of them.

“Rosemary Clooney,” Wade said, tapping his fingers on the countertop, keeping beat with the music. “She was my mom’s favorite.”

I nodded, thinking I should hug him or something despite feeling awkward about doing so.

“All settled in?” Wade asked as he crossed the kitchen and went into the pantry.

“Yes sir, I am indeed.” I strode around the island and waited until he came back out, carrying a box of microwave popcorn. “I guess, though I’m a little surprised you didn’t come upstairs and settle yourself inside me.”

Wade grinned, obviously enjoying the imagery. “Since I was wrongfully accused of flying all the way to Albuquerque for a booty call last week...” Wade fired a he-done-me-wrong look my way. “I figured tonight we could try going without it and have a movie night.”

“No sex?”

“Nada,” Wade said, freeing the bag of popcorn from its plastic wrapper before tossing it in the microwave.

“Not even after the movie?”

Wade shrugged as if he hadn’t thought that far in advance.

“It’s happened already.” I walked in a circle and tossed my arms up into the air.

“What’s happened?”

I sighed, leaning against the counter as if it were the only thing holding me up. “Our heat has evaporated—the desire is already gone. You can’t even pretend to want me.”

The corner of Wade’s mouth began to curl up. “You’re the one who insisted on a six-month trial period to see if there was anything of substance under the sex.”

The corn began popping as the microwave hummed.

I scowled at him, but decided not to give him the satisfaction of addressing the issue he was now attempting to wield like a weapon from his smart-ass arsenal.

I reached back with both hands, turning as I groped my own ass. “My butt has lost its youthful bounce—the once perky mounds, now so sad.” I squeezed as Wade watched, eyes plastered to my ass. “I’ve caught a case of the saggy butt.”

“Your ass looks fine,” Wade said as the microwave dinged.

I took a few steps, stumbling as if I might faint. “Just fine!”

“Wow, you are so needy with the compliments.” Wade shook his head as he pulled out the bag of popcorn. “It’s a smokin’ hot, damn near irresistible ass that I wanna sink my cock into every time I lay eyes on it. Happy now?”

I grinned, faux preening as I said in my girlie voice, “Oh Wade, I do declare—what a silvery, sweet tongue you have.”

“Wouldn’t mind sinking that into your ass either,” Wade added, tossing in a second bag of popcorn and punching in the time after closing the door.

“Now I feel loved.” I sighed, laughing as he reached over, poking me in the side.

Wade snatched the already popped bag off the counter and opened it, dumping the contents into a large bowl.

“What’s with the teeny, tiny bags of corn, dude?” I asked.

Wade glanced at the empty bag and shrugged before wadding it up into a ball. “So much for size not mattering.”

“Said the abominable snowman,” I added.

Wade pulled up his shirt, looking down at his mouthwatering six-pack. “That some sort of crack about my abs?”

“Seriously dude.” I reached over, patting his tummy. “You’re huge, like a hairless Yeti.”

“Why are cursing at me in Yiddish?” Wade opened the microwave removing the second bag, which he dropped onto the counter after burning his fingers.

“Your hand is bigger than that bag.”

“It’s the snack size.”

“For who— the lollipop guild?”

“I’m usually just popping for one.”

“And now there are two to pop for.” I stared off into space looking all dreamy-eyed. “I’m your bigger-bag-boy?”

“A very tiresome bigger bag boy.” Wade dumped the second bag into the bowl and frowned.

“I hope I’m not just an excuse…you…you’re not using me merely to justify the bigger bag right?” I gasped, placing my hand over my heart. “Oh my god, I’m your bag-hag, aren’t I?”

Wade smiled at me. “Is that enough or should I pop another one?”

“I couldn’t possibly eat. I’m still reeling from the shock.”

He picked up the box of popcorn and smacked me in the shoulder with it. He then nodded pointing to the box. “See how much trouble you are. It clearly states the individual size bag pops in half the time of the three and half ounce bag.”

“Well duh—it’s a smaller bag.” I snatched the box out of his hand. “They actually listed that as a selling feature?”

“You’ve cost me an extra ninety seconds.”

“Not even hitched yet and already sucking the life out of you.” I shook my head as I read the box. “There’s actually a marketing department out there who thought it necessary to point out a smaller bag will pop in less time?”

“Looks that way.” Wade snatched the box back. “I should pop one more, right?”

“That is so sad,” I said, completely ignoring him. “And who are these lazy people whose lives are so inconvenienced that they can’t waste an extra minute waiting for a bag of popcorn?”

Wade removed another pouch from its clear plastic film and tossed it into the microwave. “What I must have done in a past life to deserve you?”

I marveled at the way he could artfully word things so they could go either way, being compliment or insult. I opened my mouth to speak and Wade shoved several pieces of buttery goodness into my mouth in an obvious hope it would silence me as I continued to rant.

I snatched the box away from him, holding it up as if I was Susie Homemaker, giving my testimonial. “Now I can solve world peace thanks to all the time I’ll save no longer waiting for my popcorn.”

“You’re deranged, you know that?”

“Well yeah…but in that hot and sexy Mickey Rourke before-the-drugs-and-alcohol kinda way, right?”

“Will you go wait on the couch please?” Wade asked, leaning over and giving me a peck on the cheek.

I pooched out my lip, trying to look wounded as I said in my best backwoods southern accent. “But it…it’s Shake-n-Bake, and I helped.”

“Go.” Wade pointed toward the sofa.

“You’re mean.” I headed into the living room.

“Grab us a couple of beers on your way in there,” Wade said as the bell sounded that the last bag had finished popping.

“Don’t think you can get me drunk and take advantage of me.” I smiled, hoping that was his plan, not that he needed the alcohol to do it. I sauntered over to the fridge to do his bidding.

“Like I need liquor to do that.” Wade snickered under his breath.

ethan@ethanday.com
www.ethanday.com

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http://www.mlrbooks.com/ShowBook.php?book=EDFUSION
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Breathe excerpt by Sloan Parker

In the novel Breathe by Sloan Parker, Lincoln McCaw has lost everything -- his home, his job, his partner -- after he caused a fatal accident. A year later, he's drowning the guilt and despair in whiskey, but he needs to move on. His sister and her kids are counting on him. Then he meets a man who ignites a passion Lincoln thought he’d never find. Too bad one night is all they can have together. Now he needs to figure out how to turn away from the only person who makes him feel alive…before whoever is sending him threats decides Lincoln needs to suffer more than he already has.

Jay Miller is surrounded by grief and misery until he finally gives in to all those years of sexual fantasies about being with another guy. Realizing he’s ended up in the arms of the man who caused his wife’s accident, he tries to pull away. But how can he give up a friendship he needs more than anything -- a friendship and a love that could save him? He may not have time to make the choice before someone else destroys it all.

Breathe
Loose-Id (2010)
ISBN: 978-1-60737-890-7

EXCERPT

Hope you found some peace in jail. You never will again.

Lincoln McCaw read the note one last time and crushed the paper in his fist. The bus jerked forward as it came to a stop. No need to check. He was home. The smell of hog manure from the surrounding farmlands and the burning steel of his hometown’s only manufacturing plant filtered in through the crack in the window one seat over. Funny how he couldn’t feel the coolness of the winter air hissing in through that crack.

Maybe he never would again.

He stuffed the wadded-up note into his duffel bag, stood, and headed to the front of the bus. The jail wasn’t far from Edgefield, but he hadn’t wanted Nancy waiting for him outside. Who knew what sort of people lurked outside a jailhouse.

He laughed at that. Who was he afraid of? Men like him?

Six months in the county jail. His fellow inmates and the deputies probably thought he was the worst of the lot. He’d spent more days there than most of the guys who came and went. Some spent less time at the state pen.

But the jail was behind him now. It was over. Wasn’t it?

Not according to the latest “love letter” he had tucked in his bag.

He stepped off the bus. The driver shut the door and pulled away as soon as Lincoln’s boots hit the pavement. Not surprising. Most didn’t want to stick around the three-stoplight town. But Lincoln did. He had a lot of reasons to be there. A lot of reasons he’d never leave.

Clear plastic walls surrounded the bus stop bench, cracked on all three sides and coated in a slime no amount of scrubbing with the industrial strength cleaner they’d used at the jail would remove. No one would wait inside the enclosure, no matter how desperate they were for a bus out of Edgefield.

He checked anyway. Splinters covered the faded wood of the bench. If anyone sat there, they’d get an ass full of tiny wooden daggers. Not the best way to ride the bus. Edgefield was so damn inconsequential nobody at the Metro Transit Authority probably gave a shit about the upkeep on the small-town stop that made up the farthest point of the outlying community bus route.

Home sweet home.
“Lincoln!” Nancy crossed the parking lot behind the bench, waving her arms through the air, a smile spread across her face. She quickened her stride. He did the same and hugged her when they met. The warm embrace reminded him of their mom, reminded him one person in the world loved him. She squeezed tighter.

“Nance, I can’t breathe.”

“Oh sorry.” She released him and stepped back. She wore a brown and orange waitress uniform and those heavy-duty shoes nurses wore, designed for support and long-wearing comfort. Hers were dingy, nowhere close to the white they must’ve started out as, and were on their last leg. They wouldn’t provide much support or comfort. Her disheveled dark hair fell from the ponytail in several places, and she had a hint of makeup smudged under and over her eyes. Exhausted. His baby sister was working herself to death.

Despite that, her eyes shone at him. The smile was also a reminder of their mom. Nancy had always taken after their mother in a physical way. Whereas he looked more like their dad with skin tone and features that gave a nod to their Iroquois heritage.

“Just missed you,” she said.

“Missed you too.”

“I wish you would’ve let me visit. Was it bad?”

“Nah. It was okay.” No need to tell her about the gray food that smelled of dish soap, the foul stench from the unwashed inmates he shared space with, the lack of privacy, the endless hard surfaces of metal bars and concrete floors, or the countless cracks about his short-lived racing career from the two good ol’ boys who’d recognized him.

He’d hated every minute of his time there.

And he deserved far worse.

“Come on. I parked over here.” She tilted her head to the left and pointed to the vehicle she’d driven. His black pickup. The damn thing looked huge in the empty lot.

He missed the truck. He also hated the hell out of it. Like it was the truck’s fault.

Nancy had parked next to the County Cooler, an ice-cream stand run by the Drakes, the elderly couple who’d owned the place since Lincoln had been a kid. Every winter they boarded up the stand and headed south to visit their grandkids in Texas. When the place closed, it always had the look of a shack you’d see Bo and Luke Duke plow the General Lee through as Rosco P. Coltrane chased them down. In Lincoln’s day, local teens needing a dry place to hold their beerfest orgy sneaked in during the long winter months while the Drakes were out of town.

An open window near the garbage bin was missing several slats of wood. Lincoln smirked. Same window he’d used when he first had sex with Tommy Vanderline during their sophomore year of high school. Nice to know some things never changed.

“You wanna drive?” Nancy asked.

His smirk vanished. “No.” He yanked open the passenger-side door, tossed in his bag, and sat.

Then again--sometimes everything changed.

Nancy slid into the driver’s side and wrenched the seat forward until her feet touched the pedals. “Sorry. I thought you might want to. You haven’t tried it out since it came back from the body shop.”

He leaned his elbow on the armrest of the door and stared out the side window. “Can’t. Restricted to work privileges. There and back. That’s it.”

They drove in silence, the darkness surrounding them in the cab, the sound of the truck’s heater filling the void of unasked questions until he couldn’t stand not knowing.

“Did he hit you again?”

He would’ve missed her slight nod if it weren’t for the dim display of the dashboard. She turned away from him as though checking the side street traffic at the next intersection.

“You didn’t call the cops?”

“I should have,” she said.

“Fuck, yes, you should have.” Lincoln stabbed at the door lock with two fingers. Lock. Unlock. Lock. Unlock. He took a deep breath and let off on the button. She didn’t need him being an ass. “When did he come back?”

“The Friday after you left.”

“How long did he stay?”

“Until a couple of weeks ago.”

“Jesus, Nance!”

“I needed--I couldn’t afford the hospital bills without him, or her medicine without his insurance.”

“Well, now you can. Soon as I get a new job.” He’d take care of her like he should’ve been doing for the past six months. If he had been there, Mel wouldn’t have had a chance to hurt her again. “Is he gone for good?”

She didn’t answer.

“Why not?”

“He left some of his stuff.”

“You let me know the minute he shows up.” He’d remind the asshole that family looks after their own. “The kids okay? Did he--”

“No!” Her tone was defensive, and she threw him an angry look before she focused on the deserted street ahead. He shouldn’t have asked. She wouldn’t let anyone hurt her kids.

When she spoke again, her voice was under control, more conversational. “Could you stay with Davy and Jessica tomorrow after school? Adam has basketball practice.” Softer she added, “They’ve been home alone a lot lately.”

He stared out the window into the darkness and said, “I’ll be there.”

A block from Nancy’s, they pulled up to a stop sign next to the Late Night Paradise Plaza--home to the only all-night gas station and carryout in town, a movie rental shop, and Sonny’s Tavern.

Lincoln sat taller. “Can we make a stop? I need smokes.”

“Lincoln…”

“I’ll quit again. Just need a pack to get me through the transition.”

She sighed and turned into the plaza’s drive.

The neon signs advertising an ATM machine, lottery tickets, and beer had him shielding his eyes with the back of his hand. There were no neon lights in jail. Sounded like the title of a country music song. Something his fans would have blasted from their car stereos as they drove in on race night. He reached for the truck’s door handle, but her voice stopped him.

“No smoking around the kids, okay?”

He opened the door and said, “You know I won’t.”

“Or in the house,” Nancy called through the side window as he strode for the store.

Lincoln waved an okay sign her way and opened the door to the carryout. A young man passed by the front of the store, hands shoved inside his pockets, head down as if he had to watch his every step. Lincoln froze in the doorway.

Great-looking guy. Nice body.

The kid headed for Sonny’s Tavern.

Great ass too.

Fuck. Lincoln had been away too long. Not a good idea--gawking at straight guys on the streets of Edgefield. But…the kid had stopped, hand on Sonny’s front door, replicating Lincoln’s frozen stance. He was staring at Lincoln, his mouth parted, his eyes conveying a hunger Lincoln knew all too well.

The door to Sonny’s burst outward, almost smacking the kid in the forehead, and two guys exited. The kid moved out of their way, then slipped inside, his gaze on his feet again.

Lincoln’s body screamed at him to follow. He ignored it and entered the carryout.

What was that look? Something?

It didn’t matter.

He passed by the front counter with the smokes and found what he’d really wanted--a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He grabbed two for good measure.

* * * * *

“Jay, did you hear me?”

The front door of Sonny’s Tavern flew open, and cold winter air blasted in.

Another man might have chosen a stool farther from the entrance. Not Jay Miller. The cold didn’t bother him. Why would it? He was already numb.

“They let the bastard out today.” His dad’s voice cut through the haze of alcohol. “Six months and now he’s…” He trailed off.

Jay dropped the beer he’d been nursing for the last fifteen minutes onto the bar. The bottle clanked and rocked, foam building, drops of the precious liquid spilling. He didn’t bother rescuing it. He’d just order another as soon as his dad left, like he planned to do for the next couple of hours.

“Your mother’s still going on about frying his ass, and he gets out the day before…” His dad cut off midsentence again. Maybe he always did that. Usually Jay’s mom was there to continue on.

“Today?” Jay asked.

The look his dad gave him was comical--if anything could make him laugh again--as if his dad thought he was mentally deficient in some way. Maybe he was. How much did you have to drink before the brain cells died off?

“He’s probably already back in town.”

In Edgefield? How long until Jay found himself face-to-face with the man? He nodded. That was all he could manage. Six months in jail and the man who killed his wife was getting his life back. He’d be working and living and loving. And Katie was turning to dust in the ground. Jay would never have his life back. He’d never have anything.

The door swung open again, and a pair of giggles floated in with whoever entered the bar. What the hell were they so happy about?

He had to get out of there. Get away. Escape all of it.

“Why don’t you come stay at our place tonight?” his dad said. “You can sleep in your old room. Then we’ll all visit the cemetery tomorrow.”

The restroom. Maybe if he didn’t come out right away his dad would get a clue.

Jay stood, and the weight of his body proved too much for his unsure legs. He sank onto the bar stool. The beers--which he drank fast and barely tasted--had hit him hard, but news of Lincoln McCaw’s fate had finished the job. It was over.

Except it wasn’t. It never would be.

His dad put a hand on his back. “Hey, Sonny, get us a cup of coffee?”

“Sure,” the bartender said. When he returned with the coffee mug, he added, “He’s had a few.”

“I imagine so.” Jay’s dad pushed the coffee closer.

The smell of it churned Jay’s stomach. Nothing smelled good anymore. Nothing tasted good either. What had he last eaten? And when? Probably why the beer wasn’t settling too good.

His dad was talking again. Didn’t he get it? The last thing in the world Jay wanted to do was give up the beer and face that McCaw was done with his punishment.

“You should come tomorrow,” his dad said. “It might give you closure.”

Closure? There wasn’t enough beer for that.

There was one thing that would give Jay closure. Finally confronting McCaw, looking the man in the eyes, making him understand how much he took from the world, making Lincoln McCaw suffer.

That’d be closure.

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