The Buchanan Letters excerpt by Neil Plakcy

In The Buchanan Letters by Neil Plakcy, Jeff Berman, a Pennsylvania history professor, discovers correspondence between President James Buchanan and his male aide, which depicts their sexual and emotional relationship. With the help of handsome Pascal Montrouge, a disgraced New York Times reporter hungry to return to the big time, Jeff is swept away by publicity for what he has seen as an academic book, and his dreams of tenure and true love seem to be coming true. But when his life falls apart and his academic career is threatened, Jeff questions whether Pascal has only been using him—and how he can build a new life from the debris of his old one.

The Buchanan Letters
MLR Press (October 19, 2012)
ISBN: 978-1-60820-7879 (print)
ISBN: 978-1-60820-7996 (ebook)

Excerpt:

“Is this Dr. Berman?” my caller asked.

The only people who use my academic title are those who want something from me, like entrance into a closed class, or a change of grade. It’s not like I can save someone’s life or deliver a baby. “Yes,” I said hesitantly.

“My name is Pascal Montrouge, and I’m the assistant editor of the Upper Bucks supplement for the Courier-Times.”

His voice was deep, with a hint of a French accent. “I’ve been going through old press releases looking for local authors for a feature I’m working on. I was hoping to interview you about your book.”

I was flattered and relieved. Some publicity, at last, even if it was only in the local paper. “Sure. What do you want to know?”

“Can we meet, maybe have a cup of coffee, and talk about your book? I’ll need to get a photograph of you, to go with the story.”

We agreed to meet at a little country inn slash coffee shop in Washington’s Crossing, a few miles downriver from Leighville, that evening at eight. As soon as I hung up, I called Naomi. “I’m going to have my picture in the paper!” I crowed.

“Oh, no, don’t tell me the police found out about that place you go, in the woods behind the library.”

“I only went there once. And I swear to you, I didn’t do anything.”

“Ah, but did you have something done to you?”

“Do you want to find out why I’m going to be in the paper?”

“Yes, yes, tell me, or I shall surely die.”

“You’re in a snippy mood today, Naomi.”

“School is going to start again. A whole new crop of students who have no grasp of the subjunctive and whose idea of critical thought consists of the word because. So I’m understandably cranky. Tell me, my dear friend, why are you going to be in the newspaper?”

“I’m going to be interviewed about my book.”

“Congratulations! That’ll be nice. You can clip it out and send it to your father and your stepmother.”

“Well, that depends on how gay the article gets.”

“Jeffrey, you’re thirty-seven and unmarried. Don’t you think your father already knows you prefer boys to girls?”

“Sometimes I think he does, and then other times he or Evelyn will mention something about my getting married and I realize they don’t have a clue.”

“Trust me, they have a few clues. If you’re not comfortable with people knowing you’re gay, you shouldn’t have written a book about a gay president.”

“I’m comfortable with people knowing. Just not my father.”

“Fathers are people too.”

“What should I wear? This reporter wants to take a picture of me.”

Naomi has a wonderful sense of fashion, most of which she represses, and she loves to dress me. I’m like the doll she never played with as a little girl, when she was always stealing her brother’s GI Joes and staging mock battles with them in the backyard. “I’ll come over,” she said. “Give me ten minutes. And while you’re waiting, trim your eyebrows.”

“Take twenty. I’ll take a shower so I can be nice and clean for you.”

“I love it when you talk sexy to me,” she said, and hung up.

She arrived right on schedule and we settled on a pair of crisp khakis and a blue and white striped oxford cloth button-down shirt I had bought at the Brooks Brothers outlet at Franklin Mills. Though it was the middle of winter, my skin was still Mediterranean-dark, my arms and neck coated with a thin layer of dark hair, and the shirt made me look healthy and vibrant. I combed my thinning hair into place and then shellacked it down with hair spray.

Our only argument arose because I wanted to wear my new Swatch, while Naomi insisted the occasion called for my gold dress watch.

“You want to look distinguished, like a professor,” she said. “Professors don’t wear goofy sport watches.”

“Most professors we know don’t wear any watches at all. If you really want me to look academic I should dig out my loden cloth jacket with the leather elbow patches.”

“That jacket is so 1950s prep school,” she said. “If I were your wife I would give it to the Salvation Army instantly.”

“If you were my wife I would join the Salvation Army.”

We ended up on the living room floor playing Monopoly; I got hold of both Park Place and Boardwalk and bankrupted her. All in all it was a very satisfactory time.

We ate a quick pasta dinner and by 7:30 I was on the road to Washington’s Crossing. “Call me as soon as you get home and tell me how it went,” Naomi said, waving out the driver’s window of her Jeep.

I was so happy I was almost whistling as I drove south along the river. The trees were bare and snow was heaped along the edge of the road, but it could have been high summer to me. I loved driving along the river; I grew up in the middle of endless suburbs and I still could not believe that I lived so close to the country that there were cows within walking distance of my house.

I drove through the quaint downtown area of New Hope, past over-ripe hippies in sheepskin coats strolling in the early evening light. I had to stop for a crowd streaming across the street and through the parking lot of the Bucks County Playhouse, heading for a production of the musical La Cage aux Folles. When I was back in the country, I turned on the radio and relaxed in the fall of evening, passing wooden bridges over the canal that led to quaint country farmhouses.

I pulled up at the Crossing Inn a few minutes ahead of schedule and walked out to the patio behind the old stone building. The owners had constructed a beautiful little garden back there, with an arched bridge across a trickling creek where tiger lilies and black-eyed Susans grew in the summer. In the winter it was picture-perfect, with a faint dusting of snow on the branches of the pine trees.

Inside the wood-paneled lobby, empty except for a clerk behind the bar/registration desk, I chose an Adirondack chair with big cushions, stripped off my coat, gloves and scarf, and settled in next to the crackling wood fire.

As I leaned in and rubbed my hands, a deep, sexy voice behind me that matched the one I’d heard on the phone said, “I’m hoping you’re Dr. Berman.”

I turned around to see a dark-haired man, six-foot-three at least, with square shoulders and a lopsided grin, sticking his hand out to me. My heart soared and sank at the same time: he was the kind of man I fall for, the kind who is so bad for me. Someone I think will be big enough and strong enough to take care of me, but who turns out to be all Jell-O on the inside, needy and whining and no good in a street fight.

“Call me Jeff,” I said, standing and shaking his hand. “I’m always afraid when I hear people call me Dr. Berman that they’re going to expect me to resuscitate someone before the evening is out.”

He wore a long leather duster over jeans and a light blue shirt. He gave me a sly grin and held my hand for a fraction of a second too long. “Sometimes those evenings can be the best kind.”

I loved the way his “th” sounded like a “z.” Our eyes met and locked and I knew that I was in trouble. He was handsome, gay and charming, and I was depressed and horny. Like combining vodka and methamphetamine, the mix could be deadly.

He ordered a couple of beers for us, then said. “Let’s get the pictures out of the way first.” He posed me next to the stone fireplace, to give me a historical context, he said. Never mind that the inn was built in 1768 and Buchanan had lived nearly a hundred years later. “Buchanan never even came to this part of Pennsylvania, did he?” Pascal said, angling his camera and snapping shots.

“I think he must have,” I said. “He was our Senator for many years.”

“You’re probably right.”

I couldn’t help noticing how Pascal’s faded blue jeans embraced his legs and butt like a second skin, the way his raw silk shirt moved so easily as he tilted the camera, zoomed and focused. I felt like a fashion model, but instead of making love to the camera I was flirting with Pascal Montrouge.

The bartender brought over our beers, and we sat down by the fire again. Pascal’s long legs stretched out in front of him, putting his generous package into sharp relief. “How did you end up at Eastern?”

“I got my undergraduate degree in history from Penn and a Ph.D. in history from the State University of New York at Albany. After graduation I landed my first job, a one-year gig at a small private college in Illinois.” I sipped my beer. “From there I got another one-year job in Maryland, and then another in Pittsburgh. I published a couple of papers in history journals, and then lucked into a tenure-track job at Eastern.”

“What got you interested in Buchanan?”

I forced my gaze up from his crotch to his dark eyes, sparkling with humor in the firelight, and told him about finding the letters in the old oak box. “By the end of that first day my friend Naomi and I had figured out that what I’d found were love letters were between two men. It took more research to figure out that the men involved were James Buchanan and his aide.”

Pascal sputtered his beer and slammed the glass stein back down on the wooden table between us, beer frothing up over the edge in a little geyser. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You’re saying Buchanan was gay?”

“That’s the whole point of the book. You didn’t look at it, did you?”

He grinned shamefacedly. “I read the press release. All you said there was that Petitjohn was Buchanan’s aide. I thought you would tell me the rest.”

“Ah, Mr. Montrouge,” I said, wagging my finger at him. “You’re lucky not to be one of my students. I frown on that kind of sloppy research.”

“Please, call me Pascal,” he said, and our eyes locked again, and I knew that at some point I was going to end up in bed with him. I just wasn’t sure when. “Why didn’t you focus that press release on the proof you have that Buchanan was gay? That’s the real angle.”

“My editor was afraid that people would find it too controversial and that libraries and academic collections wouldn’t buy it. I complained that they were missing the market of people who would buy it because of what it’s about. But my editor told me they’d find it.”

“And have they?”

I shook my head. “Not so far as I can tell. My editor quit six months ago, and I can’t get anyone to tell me how many copies they printed, or how many have been shipped.”

“That’s publishing. Everything’s a big secret.” He ordered us a second round of beers and said, “That should be enough about the book. Now tell me something about yourself—what made you decide to be a history professor?” There was that accent again, the way he stressed the last syllable of the word rather than the first. It gave me a sensuous thrill.

“When I was in tenth grade, I fell in love. Not with a girl, or a boy, but with history. My social studies teacher assigned us to interview a family member and write an oral history. I thought it was a stupid assignment and that our family was so boring. There wouldn’t be anything for me to write.”

“Families are always interesting,” Pascal said.

“Yeah, I figured that out. My father suggested I interview my mother’s mother. My mother didn’t want me to, and of course, that made me more determined. One day after school I took the train in from Long Island to Queens, where my grandmother lived. My father gave me some money to buy her flowers, and I got her a bouquet of red tulips. She told me that her family had tulips outside her house when she was a little girl.”

I took a sip of my beer, then sat back. “All I knew of my grandmother at that point was that she had been born in the Netherlands, and come to the United States after the Second World War. She led me into her living room and I sat on an old velvet couch and turned on my tape recorder. She must have talked for the next hour without a break. I discovered that her family had moved from Amsterdam to Curaçao when she was five years old, that she had grown up there and married my grandfather when she was eighteen.”

“That’s certainly exotic,” he said. “A lot more interesting than most people on Long Island.”

“It gets better. Two years after they got married, they left for Japan. Her husband was older than she was, and he imported Japanese porcelain and textiles to Curaçao. It was cheaper for her to go to Japan with him, rather than have to keep her in a house in Curaçao for a year.”

“When was all this happening?” Pascal asked.

“They left Curaçao in 1940, and spent a year in Japan. They got on a ship in September of 1941. They docked in Batavia—that was what they called the capital of Indonesia then—in December of 1941.”

“Mon dieu. During the war.”

“Yeah. The captain decided it was too dangerous to leave Batavia while the Japanese and the United States were fighting in the Pacific. So my grandfather opened a store in Batavia, and started selling the merchandise he had bought in Japan. My grandmother was pregnant with my mother, and even after the Japanese came everything was fine for a while. My mother was born in Indonesia, and she had never even told me.”

“Parents have secrets.” Pascal ate a handful of peanuts from a dish on the table between us. “That must have been scary. How did they get out of there?”

“Eventually the Japanese confiscated the shop and the house, and took away my grandfather. After that my grandmother and my mother had to move into the Tjiden camp.”

“That must have been terrible,” Pascal said. “I’ve written a couple of articles about places like that. The treatment there was inhumane.”

“It made my grandmother very sad to talk about it, but she said we had to. It was like Holocaust survivors, you know? They feel like they have to leave behind a testimony.”

“Poor you, just a teenager and having to hear all that.”

I nodded. “It was tough, but that’s when I became seduced by history, particularly by the stories of all those bit players in the grand sweep of world events. I started reading about all these tragedies—the San Francisco earthquake; the Triangle Shirtwaist fire; the Armenian genocide. Every time I had a history paper to write I picked a topic where there were so many anonymous victims.”

“You must have been a real goth.”

“No, just a nerd. But enough about me. Tell me something about yourself.”

(To learn what Pascal has to say, read The Buchanan Letters!)

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Makara excerpt by Kristen Ringman

The novel Makara by Kristen Ringman asks the question, “What if you grew up with a seal mother and a human father?”

Fionnuala is such a daughter: a part-human, part-seal Deaf woman who falls in love with Neela, a Hearing woman in India. While growing up with Neela’s family in Tamil Nadu, she struggles with her distant parents living apart in Ireland and Indonesia. Eventually her father brings her to Venice where she becomes a mime artist. What binds them all together is the unstoppable undercurrent of ache running through the sea of their lives.

Makara
Handtype Books
ISBN: 978-0-9798816-4-0

Excerpt:

DARKNESS

I was fourteen when the darkness started. It was a year after the night my arms became splattered with blisters from the ants. The night when Neela first touched me and I could feel my entire body singing to her, wanting to sign, move, speak.

Finally, it said.

* * *

Neela and I sneaked away together often. Our bedroom became our own private temple in homage to our favourite stories and each other’s bodies. We kept a picture of Lakshmi besides our picture of Ganesh on the wall. We conversed in sign and wrote in Tamil. Sometimes we just stared and let the words flow back and forth beneath our eyelids.

Neela’s skin was almost black, like many South Indians. She had a round face and thin eyebrows. Her hair flowed down to her waist in soft waves. Her eyes were dark, but when the sunlight shone in them, I was able to see tiny flecks of gold around her pupils. We liked to compare our lips in the mirror because they were so different from each other. My lips were narrow and pointy. Pale against paler skin. Neela’s lips didn’t have the same two points on top that mine did. Hers were rounded and full. The kind of lips you can’t stop thinking about kissing. The kind of lips you want to feel on your skin. I was self-conscious of my freckles, but Neela said they were beautiful. She licked them sometimes.

Father hadn’t written in months. He was somewhere in Indonesia. I pictured him diving with sharks, examining the corals shining with shades of red, orange, and yellow, rivaling the brightness of the saris around me.

* * *

The day the darkness began was a day like any other. It was a sweltering afternoon. Neela and I went home from school early. We wanted to do something bad. Our newfound womanhood leaned us towards experimentation. The canyons called to us—promises of daytime nudity, swimming in our favourite pool, making love in the sunlight. I was thinking of the curve of Neela’s wet hip against the canyon rocks as she pulled her body up onto the ledge. The way I would try to brush the red dirt flecks off her skin, but they would only stick to my fingers until we jumped back into the water. The way her dark hands tangled in the auburn waves of my hair as she braided wet flowers into it.

I didn’t notice Neela’s Amma standing near the shops as we passed. Her eyes met Neela’s, and I could feel the ground shaking below us. She was furious to see us so far from school and why?! I read the Tamil on her lips without needing anything written down. Normally that would have made me feel proud, but I was terrified.

Neela pretended to cry, and Amma said something terrible to her. I didn’t know what it was. I pinched Neela’s arm on our way back to school repeatedly, but she would not tell me.

After school, we were sent to our room without dinner. On our shared bed on the floor, Neela finally signed, A demon will come here tonight.

I laughed. I brought her under our blue elephant sheets, and told her we were safe there. I signed, Remember G-a-n-e-s-h? He will protect us!

She shook her head. Not now.

How can I do anything if I don’t know what’s going on?

She sat for a moment. Tears made salt rivers upon her face, prominent against the dark of her skin. Her eyes were full of fear. She never showed fear without courage lurking behind it. Her ego was strong like a snake—but it wasn’t strong now. She began slowly.

I’m going to write the name down, then you burn paper and I’ll tell the story. Ok?

NILI, she wrote.

I burned the paper and waited. My stomach grumbled. My eyes were tired, although the sky was still violet. We both sat cross-legged beneath the blue sheet. The grey and white batik elephants froze in their procession to watch the story told by the moving hands below.

Her story went like this:

In a small hut by the river, there lived a man and his wife. She was by far the most beautiful woman of the entire village and the man felt lucky to have her. She became pregnant and throughout the pregnancy, she was very sick. They were both afraid for the child, but the woman was strong. She held on through her contractions until she was finally able to squeeze the baby out of her. Once the little boy was in her husband’s arms, she died.

The father wept as he washed his healthy son and cut the cord linking him to his mother.

The ghost of the man’s dead wife materialised out of the far shadow in the corner. The man was overjoyed to see his wife’s soul come to bless her baby and kiss him goodbye. But as she glided closer, he saw a deep blackness in her eyes. The man bolted out of his home and ran with his child, still damp in his arms, up to the hut of a saint. He felt her breath upon the back of his neck. She whispered into his ears, “Let me kill the child.”

The baby wailed.

When they reached the hut, the door was already open for him. Saints knew such things before they happened. As the man entered, the door slammed behind him. Strange herbs were hanging on small strings from the ceiling of the hut. The saint sat cross-legged by a glowing fire. He wore only a white lungi and clear crystal beads hanging from his neck. His hair was long and tied back with a string. His eyebrows were thick. His deep brown eyes radiated peace.

The saint spoke in a whisper. “Your wife’s sorrow at her own death and separation from her child has caused her to become a demon. She will try to kill you and the child until she has succeeded.” He took a gleaming silver blade from beneath his skirt and handed it to the man. “This knife will protect you both from her as long as you hold it. Lose it, and you will not escape your death again.”

The man understood. He replied over and over, “Nandre nandre nandre.”

He crept back out into the dark.

His wife was waiting, but when she saw the knife she vanished into the night. With the knife in his hands, he walked back home and slept until dawn. As the sun rose, the light comforted him. He began to prepare his wife’s body for burial. First, however, he had to carry the child down to the river for a bath and gather water for washing the body. As the husband made his way to the river, the demon took on solid form in the sunlight and went before the leader of their village. She cried before him: “My husband has gone mad and stolen my child and he has a knife he will use to kill me with if I get near them! Please help me!”

The village leader responded: “Where is your husband, so that I may demand his knife from him and give you back your child?”

“The river, the river.” She moaned and followed him with an invisible smile upon her perfect lips.

When the leader saw the husband with the blade in his hands, he yelled: “Set down your knife and give your child to his mother! You must not abuse her like this!”

The husband cried: “You don’t understand! My wife is dead! That woman behind you is a demon!”

“I will hear nothing of that! She has been weeping and weeping over your madness! Drop that knife! End this now!”

The man looked to the heavens. He looked towards the saint’s hut at the top of the hill. Neither the saint nor the god Shiva seemed to be near enough to help him. Giving in to his fate, he kissed his child, and replied: “Let it be finished then!”

The man let his sacred knife slide through his hands as the demon flew towards him. She grabbed her child and ate him. As the remaining chunks of his tiny body fell from her hands and his blood poured into the river, she seized her husband with her long nails and tore into his flesh, too. And she disappeared.

The story was terrifying, but I didn’t know how it related to what Amma had told her. Seeing the question in my eyes, she signed, Wait, I’ll finish.

I waited as she rested her hands on her skirt. I let my own hands press against her knees for comfort and found that she was still shaking. She continued. Mothers here tell this story to their children. If we pretend to cry, they say we are Nili?? crying and once the sun goes down, she will come and get us.

My hands couldn’t move to reply. We clasped against each other in the terror Neela had shared. Between us, the terror grew so large it filled the room. There were moments when we felt Nili’s hands scratching at our sheet that we kept covering our heads—a mystical barrier. We didn’t notice the sweat dripping down the sides of our faces, down our necks, between our breasts. We didn’t lie down for the fear that she would crush us beneath her. The night passed from one gasp to another.

In a subtitled YouTube clip, the publisher discusses why he chose to publish Makara –click http://youtu.be/PkclltSFGCw

To purchase, click http://www.handtype.com/books/makara

Horror, Dark & Lite, volumes 1 and 2 excerpts by Anel Viz

In Anel Viz’s Dark Horror anthology, the vampires, serial killers and shape-shifters in these three novellas will drain the blood from your heart. Where it goes from there is no one’s business but your own.

“Val” – For years, Brad has been obsessed with the memory of his dead lover, Val. His obsession takes over his life when he meets another Val, a hustler who looks exactly like the first.

“Slasher” – A man is found in a cubicle at a gay bathhouse with his throat slit. Then another victim turns up. Only Lou’s lover, Jamie, can identify the most likely suspect.

“The Matador” – Soledad de Riquer feels certain that her brother, the celebrated matador El Valiente, has his eye on her young boyfriend, Adulio.

Volume I: Dark Horror
Silver Publishing (October, 2012)
ISBN: 9781614956266

Excerpt from “Val”:

[Situation: Brad knows that his much younger lover, Val, is a hustler – it’s how they met. But he has seen Val in the company of another older man, and the two seem to know each other too well for it to be a strictly business relationship.]

On the third night Brad waited outside his office building to see if Val and the tall stranger would hook up there again. They did, and he followed them at a distance. When they stepped into a bar he hid in a shop entrance to see when they would come out. He didn't have to wait too long. They came out as soon as the night had turned very dark and continued on their way.

He did not understand the irresistible urge he felt to follow them. Jealousy? Curiosity? The risk of discovery? It was not hard trailing them inconspicuously. There were still plenty of people in the streets.

He rushed to catch up with them when they suddenly turned into an alley. Afraid they might see him, he sidled up against the building and peered around the corner. The alley was empty; they were not there.

Cautiously, he walked down it. He'd gone only a few steps when everything fell silent, the noise of the street behind him blotted out. It was very dark. The alley opened into another street, a lonely street, also dark and quiet. Empty, too, or so he thought at first, but hidden in the shadows against the walls dozens of young men stood lined up, on the prowl for sex. In this light they all looked like Val.

He walked slowly down one sidewalk, then the other, checking each one out as he passed. No, they were not Val, but they could have been. They had the same long, straight, black hair, the same piercing blue eyes, the same pallid skin; the height and build were right, the tight denim outfits, too. Except for their hustler's come-on stare, at once veiled and brazen, a look which any of them would have shed had he brought him home, they reminded him of the dress-up Vals he used to create; not quite right, but right enough. In fact, he thought he recognized one or two among them as his male-for-hire Galateas, but they had all blurred together over the years, and his new Val, the true Val, had effaced their features even more. There was no telling, and there was no denying they were all beautiful.

He approached one of them, bold yet apprehensive, like a cat with lives to spare. He raised a finger to his cheek, and gently stroked it. "Val?" he whispered.

"Whatever," the man said. "We're all nameless here." And he placed his hands on Brad's shoulders and forced him to his knees. "Undo my belt."

Brad resisted. The hustler held him firmly by the back of the head and pulled his face into his crotch. The sexual scent of his groin and the bloated cylinder stirring like a living thing beneath the denim was all the invitation Brad needed. He reached up and opened the man's jeans, admired, and tentatively mouthed, smooth as satin and startlingly cold, what he would have willed himself not to desire if he had the strength to do so. Snarling abuse at him, breathy and guttural, the Val thrust into his mouth and humped his throat relentlessly.

The other Vals homed in on them, stroking their bulges. Through the corner of his eye, he saw hands unzipping flies, pants lowered over hips, cocks pulled out and jerked, and he heard obscenities muttered as encouragement by leering lips. He felt the man swell in his throat, then his head was pushed back and the hot spurt splashed onto his face and shirt. Though he hadn't noticed any pleasurable sensations in his own penis, Brad felt a sticky wetness in his underwear.

Almost immediately, another pair of hands grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head to the side. "Suck me!" The man pulled him with such violence that Brad banged his face on the hanging belt buckle and cut his lip. Another large cock, cold and silky, slid over his tongue and plunged into his gullet. He gagged, and tears welled in his eyes to blind him. He was dimly aware of other couples forming around them, grinding together, beating off, sucking. He struggled a little, but ineffectively.

He lost count of how many forced themselves on him. He had no idea how long it went on. He lay doubled up on the pavement and listened to their receding footsteps. When he opened his eyes, the street was deserted.

Bruised, disheveled, his nose running, his clothes crumpled and stained, he rode the subway home. The car was nearly empty, but he felt that the few people in it were staring at him. Was he that much of a sight? Did he look roughed up? Or did the stench of anonymous sex cling to him yet like a wax mask?

He stumbled up the stairs and saw Val sitting forlorn beside his door, resting his head in his arms folded in front of him. He'd forgotten Val had no key to the apartment. He looked weak, helpless, exhausted, as the first Val had been when he found him in the gutter and took him home many years ago. He didn't feel much better than that himself.

Val sat directly under the hall light; Brad stopped short of the end of the flight, back in the shadow of the stairwell. Hearing the footsteps stop at that floor, Val looked up. "Where were you?"

There was nothing weak about his voice. He sounded angry. Brad ignored the question. "I saw you with someone tonight. A client?"

"Maybe. What did he look like?"

"Tall, thin, dark hair. Greying, I think. He held you by the elbow." He did not say he had followed them.

"Oh, that was Derek, my agent," he said, getting up as Brad stepped forward into the light. "God Almighty! What happened to you? Were you mugged?"

"It's nothing. I fell, that's all."

"Fell, my ass. You've been punched."

Brad put his tongue on his upper lip. There was still a trickle of fresh blood. Val came up to him and licked it.

"What on earth are you doing, Val?"

"Dogs lick their wounds."

"When human beings lick their wounds they admit defeat."

"Only when they lick their own."

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http://bookworld.editme.com/AnelViz

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In Anel Viz’s Lite Horror anthology, the vampires, stalkers, aliens, and shape-shifters in these stories prove less threatening than the main characters feared.

“A Layover at Atatürk International” – When their plane is delayed in Istanbul, Chase looks forward to sharing a hotel room with fellow passenger Viet Bloedrank.

“Coffee and Aftershave” – Skyler discovers that the creepy individual who followed him home from the subway is also stalking the men he dates.

“Bryce Olson is Pregnant” – Hoping for benefits, Russell decides to play along when Bryce Olson gets it into his head that his ex-boyfriend is an alien.

“The Stray” – John thought it just coincidence that his housemate and the big grey dog that came by for handouts never crossed paths. How long would it take him to catch on?

Volume II: Horror Lite
Silver Publishing (October, 2012)
ISBN: 9781614956273

Excerpt from “A Layover at Atatürk International”

[Situation: Chase went to bed while his assigned roommate stayed up to read. When Chase wakes up in the middle of the night, Viet is gone. He assumes the man has left to drop in on the Frenchwomen he flirted with earlier that evening.]

The door opened and the light came on in the tiny entrance vestibule. Chase pretended to be asleep and watched under half-closed eyelids Viet undress before coming into the room, as if afraid he might wake his roommate. Chase thought he looked different. Although he moved cautiously and on tiptoe, his actions radiated greater energy despite their slowness and a rosy glow suffused his pale skin. He slipped naked into bed behind Chase and—delight of delights!—pressed close to him, passed his arm around him, placed a hand on his chest, and drew him toward him. His palm felt as dry as when they had shaken hands, but now it was warm, and the rest of his body was, too.

"Am I dreaming?" Chase murmured.

"Yes," Viet whispered in his ear. "Is it a pleasant one?"

"It's a dream come true. Does it go on?"

"It goes on."

"How does it end?"

"The way you dreamed it would."

Chase tried to turn his body face to face with dream lover, but Viet tightened his grip and wouldn't let him. "Lie still," he cooed. "Let me fulfill your dream. And I will. Trust me. Viet Bloedrank knows how to give pleasure, exquisite pleasure."

"I want to see you. I want to touch you, too."

"You'll have that chance. We won't be leaving tomorrow. For now, leave everything to me." His voice descended in pitch and took on a mesmerizing quality like a low rumble. "I'm in charge now," he intoned. "Yield yourself. Prepare to be transported to another world, a world of wonderful sensations."

Chase's heart fluttered in anticipation and his body went limp, while Viet's incantation flowed from his lips like a slow-moving river, uninterrupted. "Sensations like those you love so well, but more intense, keener, more all consuming, and unbearably pleasurable."

"Unbearably pleasurable," Chase repeated breathlessly.

Viet put his mouth on Chase's shoulder, opened it wide, and, sucking like a greedy infant, passed his tongue over the sentient, imploring skin. He pinched his nipples and slid his hand down his chest, over his abdomen, ever lower, tantalizing, and brought it to rest on Chase's hardening penis. Chase parted his thighs in invitation. Viet cupped his hand over his balls and traced circles with his thumb on his cock head, slicking it with Chase's own precum.

"Yes," Chase whimpered. The pleasure was more thrilling than any he could remember, and Viet had done little more than touch him.

Chase felt a sudden but painless stab as Viet bit down hard on his shoulder. His eyes opened wide and his muscles tensed. It felt as if he had been injected with a drug that at once sedated him and made his body more responsive. His senses grew more acute and his awareness heightened. So alert was every nerve, the skin on his buttocks and the back of his thighs seemed able to visualize every feature of the body pressed against them, a body that grew harder as his own relaxed, more passive than when he had first yielded to the spell of Viet's seduction. He had never felt more vulnerable, and his now pounding heart rejoiced in his submission. He pushed backward and clenched his buttocks around the thick, heavy shaft nestled between them.

Chase felt the tip of an oily finger probing and greasing his hole. Then a larger hardness slowly eased into him, deeper, deeper, until Viet's pelvis lay flush against him and he was filled. It swelled even more inside him as Viet pumped more blood into it. Then he withdrew half way and plunged back in to the hilt.

Chase stiffened and his body tensed. When had Viet had time to put on a condom?

As if he understood what frightened him, Viet lifted his face from Chase's shoulder and said, "Don't be alarmed. You're perfectly safe."

How could he be sure of that?

"Hush," Viet murmured, "hush and enjoy. I won't hurt you. I never gorge myself, and I drank at least a pint before I came back for you. I'm very environment oriented and not one to deplete what sustains me. I'll be able to feed on you again tomorrow night, and the night after if we're still here, and you'll be none the weaker for it, I promise. My seed will replenish your strength. I decided when you first approached me I would save it all for you, and I have. Our French acquaintances, on the other hand, will feel wan in the morning. They'll need a hearty breakfast. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

"I understand."

"Good. Now, is there something you want to say to me?"

"Yes. Fuck me."

"Do you mind if I drink a little more while I do it?"

"Drink as much as want. Drain me dry. Just fuck me. Please… I want it."

"Tsk tsk. Viet Bloedrank isn't a glutton. It would appear, however, that his dear friend Chase is. No, just a little blood in exchange for one huge fuck."

Then he rolled Chase onto his stomach, climbed on top of him, positioned his mouth below his ear and his hips above his bottom, sank in fangs deep into the one and his dick deeper into the other, and pounded. Chase was in seventh heaven.

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Sea of Light excerpt by Jenifer Levin

The Sea of Light by Jenifer Levin is a wise, beautiful, and very American story of three women and their desire to excel and win - and heal one another - in the highly charged world of athletic competition.

Angelita is the hurricane that brings down a plane carrying a team of star-quality swimmers, groomed from childhood to compete at the international level. Babe Delgado is a young Cuban-American woman, presumed dead, who is rescued from the crash. Fifty-one hours in the Atlantic have left her scarred in body and spirit, afraid to compete again. Brenna Allen is a tough, driven swim coach at a small university, grieving for a lover lost to cancer. She finds solace in building her own winning team, driving her overworked captain, Ellie Marks, ever harder. Ellie is a child of holocaust survivors, struggling to own herself and her sexuality as hard as she's working to win. Brenna recruits Babe, promising to help her rebuild her damaged body, strength, and will.

The Sea of Light is a story of wins, losses, and passions in a world where destiny and magic interfere with victory, where families are forced to reconcile with private hurts and false dreams, and where a redemptive, healing love between women - erotic and overwhelmingly intimate - stands in stark contrast to the expectations of the world. A sensitive, powerful tale of self-discovery, sexual identity, and violent emotions unleashed by sudden disaster, this novel is sure to command attention and acclaim.

Excerpt:

Dinner stays half-cooked. We talk about a lot of things.

Kay, the house, Boz. Her job. This new kid on the team, who will help them win big meets—some girl with a Spanish-sounding name I won’t remember. She asks about me, too: Do I still love my work? Have I been seeing anyone since Marianne? I tell her, Yes. And: No one important.

Mostly, though, it’s good to feel comfortable in her presence again. Even though she’s a wreck, and I feel the dim jangling danger of unexplored emotions sloshing around in the bucket of myself, at least we’re both finally, fully here—at a kitchen table, on a living room sofa, holding hands like friends, reaching to touch a cheek or shoulder.

Boz whines to go out and we walk him together, bundled in sweaters against the breeze from river and bay. Ambling between streetlights, fire hydrants. The dog seems happier, jumps against my thighs in some sort of supplication and gives a canine version of a smile, I think. I rub his chest. Taking a shine to the idea of him, of keeping him, despite myself. Watching us, Bren laughs. A full laugh, prematurely ended—she’s cut it off intentionally like an unwanted digit. Walking back against the wind, she takes my arm. Whistles some tune. The good mood begins to make me nervous. It’s like being on the edge of something—her grief the true reality to take into account, the more permanent underlying condition she is likely to relapse into at any second—and, instinct tells me, I ought to maintain a certain detachment. But I let her take my arm; because we’re friends, because she has done it so many times before. I let her press the arm with her fingers; because, I tell myself, sixteen years means something, and it’s okay to trust.

Keys in the door. A burst of comfort and warmth. Boz off the leash, light dimmers turned, sweaters off. We broil dinner, throwing everything together: too-dry fish, stale rice, fatigued vegetables. Bren eats with surprising appetite. Watching, I feel good. And I eat too. The danger signals fade away. Between bites she is matter-of-fact.

“Ever cremate anyone?”

“No. When my mom died they had a wake—the whole traditional thing. Billy got drunk again, it made Dad furious. They went into the basement and yelled at each other. Marianne showed up late, she and I had our last big blowout fight, in front of everyone. Pat’s kids started crying. So did his wife. The whole thing was a mess. Still—it was good in a way. It was a time and a place to get it all out, you know? All the grief, all the mess.”

“Well, when you cremate someone—”

“What, sweetie?”

“—They make you pick out an urn. I chose one—just any old one—it didn’t seem to matter. Later, though, I had second thoughts, that maybe Kay would have wanted something special. Like a vase in the shape of an old whaling ship.”

She laughs. So do I. She scrapes her plate clean, drops fork and knife across it with a sudden clatter.

“Anyway, they give you the remains in a plastic bag. It looks like dusty chips of gravel—not ashes at all, really. The bag is sealed. And you put it in the urn, you take it away.” She glances up at me, her face uncertain. “I’ve been fighting with the bunch of them long-distance, the whole Goldstein clan. They told me the cremation was some sort of defilement, they wanted a regular burial—a coffin, gravestone, all of that. And some rabbi to bless her. As if it would wipe out everything about her life that they didn’t care to see. Me, for instance. But she hated that stuff, you know. ‘Keep me out of the ground, Bren!’ she said. ‘Keep me out of the ground, and away from those men in their little black hats!’”

It sounds just like Kay. I can feel myself smile.

We clean the table, wash dishes, wrap food up and stash it in the fridge. Bren dries utensils, places them neatly in rows in the cupboard drawers. She hums softly, seems happy again.

Now it’s late. Boz is sacked out on the pseudo-Oriental rug. I scratch his ears for good-night, give Bren a forehead kiss and tell her to sleep well, ask one last time if she needs another blanket. No, she says, not a blanket.

In the bathroom I wash up, brush teeth, glare at the mirror and mentally slap myself around. I am putting on a little weight. Short-featured Irish face hovering at the borderline of early middle age, wrinkles etched around eyes and mouth. Always too serious to be cute; now, too old as well.

Instinct blinks some danger signal again, warning me to think a while, figure out what is going on. Bren. Food. The dog. The ashes.

Phrases well up in me—from prayers, I think, from long ago. Our light, our sweetness, and our hope. Banished children of Eve.

And I tell myself: Stop it, Caroline. Give yourself a break. These dynamics are exhausting. Grief’s dynamics always are. But the day is over, and so is the pain. Just go to bed. Just go to sleep.

My bedroom light’s on. In the hallway, she stops me.

“Chick. Come here.”

I am here, I say. Then my face is between her hands and she’s kissing me.

“Bren, no. Just wait.”

I don’t want to, she says. But there’s a kind of terror on her lips, in her voice. I pull back, see the struggle—between the terror and her mastery of it. Part of the mastery, though, is a masking that doesn’t work. The failure makes her sullen.

“Bren, listen to me. We need to talk this one through.”

“Oh no. Talk, talk, talk.”

“It feels like a land mine.”

The mask falls into place and grins. “Don’t worry, okay? I’ll make it feel better.”

“For God’s sake, Bren—that is hardly the issue.”

Then she says it, out loud, for the second time in sixteen years:

Shut up, Chick. You talk too much.

She says it softly, though, and for a second the mask falls away, the tears refusing to spill are real, raw need mingling with fear on her fingertips touching me. Please, she says, please. And I know it’s wrong, but what I know offers no alternative. Something else seizes power. Tosses me up in the rift between body and mind. Mercy. Desire. With nothing to betray but a vase full of ashes. She rocks against me, I rock back, and I just can’t help it. I love her so.

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Neighbors excerpt by Victor J Banis

In Neighbors by Victor J Banis, Linda, who is becoming bored in her marriage, finds herself fixated on the new neighbor who has moved into the trailer next door. Might she be the change Linda's looking for?

Neighbors
Untreed Reads Publishing (June 14, 2010)
ASIN: B003S3RZZY

Excerpt:

She hated having to pretend, to fake something she didn't feel, but she knew how he was—he'd just go on and on and on, till she wanted to scream, really, and not from any orgasm, either. So far as she could say, he was utterly tireless. Sometime, maybe, she'd wait him out, see how long he really could keep it up. All night wouldn't surprise her. A month wouldn't surprise her, actually.


She began to grunt and to groan, softly at first, and as if it were his cue, he picked up his tempo, driving harder and faster now. Usually, she would drag it out a little, she knew it made him happy when it lasted, but tonight she was tired and her back ached from stocking shelves at the Seven Eleven. She thrashed her legs and moaned, louder, and tightened her grip on his shoulders, and, finally, stiffened her body like an ironing board.

It worked. It always did. She didn't know how he did it, holding himself at the ready the way he did, and then able to let go just like that. She thought there were probably a lot of men who would envy him. She knew he was proud of it. Probably, if you were a man, it was something to be proud of. Maybe there were women who would appreciate it more than she did. Her sister was proud of the way her Schnauzer would roll over or stand up on his hind legs when she told him to. It was just a matter of training, wasn't it?

Maybe you're just a bitch, she told herself, and did not have to fake a sigh of relief when he rolled himself off of her.

After a minute, he got up and went to the bathroom. He left the door open. He always did. Before they had fucked you, men closed the door. After, they always left it open. Why was that? She'd always wondered, and couldn't think who to ask. Once, she'd almost asked the minister, and had to stifle a giggle at the thought of his reaction. But, really, how were you supposed to find these things out? They sure didn't mention that in Ladies Home Journal.

She listened to him pee noisily, and couldn't help noticing that he didn't wash his hands before he came back to bed, slipping in beside her, bending down to give her a quick kiss.

"How was that?" he asked.

"It was great," she said, as enthusiastic as she could make it. Which wasn't very, but he never noticed. The question was rhetorical. He thought it was great. That was all that mattered. He lay back beside her and gave her thigh a pat.

"Have to keep my baby happy," he said.

"You sure know how to do that, Ray," she said. Once, she had made the mistake of telling him she hadn't had an orgasm. Not like she was complaining, or anything, it was just, he asked, and she had said, no, but it was okay, it didn't have to be every single time for a woman.

"It has to be for my woman," he said, half pouting, and he went and got himself a beer, and drank it lying in bed, not saying anything, and then, just about the time she was drifting off to sleep, he rolled her on her back and climbed on, and started all over again.

That was the night she started faking it. A year and a half ago. Almost two years, actually. A long time without, she supposed. She didn't miss it as much as you would think she would. Sometimes, but mostly not.

Once, she'd run across one of his girlie magazines. Stuffed at the back of his sock drawer. Curious, she'd looked through it, wondered how the women could do that, let their pictures be taken that way. She hated those times, luckily not often, when he decided he wanted to do it with the lights on.

"I like to see what I'm getting," he said, but even he could not fail to notice that it made her uncomfortable, and he had given that up.

She had looked at the ads, though, some of them she wasn't sure she even understood, but it was fairly easy to understand the vibrators. She'd looked long and hard at a full page ad of them, and wondered what it would be like, if she could give herself an orgasm with one of them—but he would never go along with that, and she couldn't have one without his knowing about it. It was hard to keep secrets in a small trailer. Anyway—maybe if it didn't look like something attached to a man. She'd had her fill of man things, thank you very much, and no pun intended.

"I saw the lezzie," he said, startling her out of her thoughts.

"Amy?" she said without thinking.

"That her name?" He sounded surprised. "Say, you two ain't getting all chummy, are you?"

"Just neighbors," she said. "You know, she's right next door, we see one another coming in and out, you have to say hi."

"Maybe she's comin' on to you," he said.

"Don't be silly." She knew Amy wasn't. Knew, because Amy had told her that. She'd asked Linda if she wanted to come in for some coffee, and Linda had acted like some stupid schoolgirl, all flustered and blushing, and Amy had said, "Hey, don't get excited, I wasn't coming on to you. Just being a neighbor."

"I'm just teasing you," Ray said. He gave her thigh another pat. She held her breath, hoping this wasn't going to be one of those nights. "Hell, no reason for you to want a woman, when you got a man to take care of you. Reckon I do that, all right."

"That's for sure," she said into the darkness, thinking about that time Amy had asked her in, wishing—not for the first time—that she had gone. Not for that. Just for, well, she didn't know what exactly, something. Something maybe a woman could get from another woman, something she thought certain was unknown and unknowable to a man.

"That's probably all she needs, too," he said. "Maybe I ought to stop over and see her some night."

"Ray," she said, like she was shocked. Frightened was more like it, though, frightened of the way Amy would look at her differently if he did something like that, of the difference it would make in the way she smiled at her, like she really wanted to be friends. Well, you couldn't be after that, could you, after a man had brought man stuff into it.

"Maybe we ought to have her over here," he said. "Let her have a taste of what I get regular, and then show her what I can do. Give her the old double whammy. What do you think?"

"I think you're letting your imagination run away with you," she said, She rolled on her side, turning her back to him. After a minute, he rolled on his side, too, away from her.

"Might be kind of fun, though," he said, chuckling softly.

#

She waited until he was asleep, snoring noisily. When she was sure he wouldn't wake up, she got out of bed, found her bathrobe on the doorknob, and walked barefoot out to the kitchen. She left the lights out. Even with the door closed, the light still spilled into the bedroom, and anyway, the door squeaked and she might wake him up closing it.

She got herself a Bud from the fridge, opening the door just enough to reach it out, twisted off the cap, and took a sip. It helped rinse the taste from her mouth that she didn't know where it came from.

She went to stand by the sink and look out the window. Amy's trailer was right there, not even eight feet away. Her blinds were only half closed. She could see Amy moving around inside, doing something, it looked like stretches of some sort. She had her music on, the same girl singer she mostly listened to, black, Linda thought, sweet voiced and vinegary all at the same time. "Embrace me…"

Amy wore this oversized tee shirt, so big it was almost a dress. It was what she usually wore when she was home alone, Linda knew that from other nights, standing at the window, watching, and when she bent over, you could catch just a glimpse of jockeys—not panties, but jockeys, like a man wore. Linda thought it was cute. She wondered what Ray would say if she tried wearing a pair. Probably he'd say she had turned lezzie on him. Or maybe it would turn him on. That thought discouraged her. Whatever that man needed, it wasn't anything to whet his sexual appetites.

Amy finished her stretches, walked to the kitchen area of her trailer, did something at the sink. They were only a few feet apart, facing one another. If Linda's lights were on, they could wave, maybe open their windows and talk. Only, not with Ray there. He'd think it was sex. He thought everything was sex. What Linda wanted was something different, something she didn't have any words for, and she knew he wouldn't understand them if she found them. Amy would, though. Somehow, she felt sure of that. Which was silly. How could you know something like that about somebody you didn't even know? She thought it was true, though.

She supposed she oughtn't to complain, really. Compared to a lot of women, she had it pretty good. Carol Sue's husband knocked her around. Carol Sue denied it, but they all knew it was true, and Bobbie's man jumped on anything that stood still for more than forty seconds, probably including the Schnauzer when he wasn't rolling over, and Sandra's spent all their money on Jack and smack, half the time Sandra and the kids didn't have enough to eat.

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Blood Royal excerpt by Rowan Malloy

Blood Royal by Rowan Malloy:

An unwilling princess caught between feuding clans
A ruthless queen's deadly web
Forbidden love in a world built on magic and murder

Struggling artist Eva Milaras resents getting stuffed into a magic limo by a wizard who calls her names like “Serenissima” and “Highness,” even if he is heart-stopping handsome. Never mind he’d just saved her life in the bomb blast at Budget Foods. Even though Talak claimed she would be safer in his world of magic, it looked like staying alive was going to be a challenge.

Prisoner of an aristocratic destiny she didn’t know about and doesn't want, Eva must survive the deadly ambitions of her new-found relatives—as well as all their enemies—as they maneuver to gain power in a murderous royal court.

Talak knows the rules—Eva must marry a man from the royal bloodline regardless of his love for her. Together they battle intrigue and betrayal, but finally must choose between letting go of each other…or certain death for treason. That’s a choice Eva refuses to make…

Blood Royal
Wayfarer Press (September 16, 2012)
ISBN:
978-1-939092-01-4 (E-pub)
978-1-939092-00-7 (Kindle)
978-1-939092-02-1 (Print)

Excerpt:

CHAPTER ONE

Instead of the large, perfect fruit shown in the flyer, the Granny Smiths at Budget Foods were small and beaten up—another disappointing win for reality over promise. Eva Milaras gazed at the poor things as she tore off the coupon and stuffed the rest of the pages back into her bag. I guess we’re all bruised in one way or another, she thought.

Still, she was sure she could find half a dozen decent ones in the stack. She’d get some yams and put them together in a casserole—a tasty and inexpensive declaration that she was now back in charge of her life in spite of being broke.

She’d tough this out with what little cash she had in her purse until the gallery could figure out what the mysterious delay in her payment was. They owed her for two large paintings, and that money would be more than enough to get her back on her feet again. It was just a matter of time. She yanked a plastic bag from the dispenser and began picking through the apples.

She flashed on her little studio. It had great light, decent ventilation, and was within walking distance of most everything she needed. So what if she had to maneuver around her bed to get to the tiny kitchen? With Derek gone, it was all the room she needed for her easel and canvases. She’d love to keep it if she could, but the rent was due in two weeks and…well, she’d go to the gallery this afternoon, see what Leslie had to say.

She found two more unbruised apples, and took them as a sign of better times coming. She really would take charge of her life—simplify, concentrate on her work, and avoid complications like an unemployed boyfriend.

“Pardon, Serenissima,” a strong, warm voice from behind pulled her from her reverie.

She turned to see a man, early thirties probably, tall and well-built, dressed completely in black. Who wears such an expensive silk shirt and slacks to Budget Foods on a Saturday morning? They had to be club clothes, but he didn’t look like he’d been out partying all night. And what a great face to paint! A delicious olive tone to his skin, deep eyes, strong angular face-planes, so… compelling, framed by black hair that fell unbound, thick and dangerously sexy, past his shoulders. Great shoulders. Lean waist. Yes, he’d make a terrific model. She found herself smiling at him, realizing too late that it probably wasn’t a good idea. He was already standing uncomfortably close.

“Are you talking to me?” She backed away and tilted her head at the apples. “I’m afraid I’ve picked through these already. Good luck finding more decent ones.”

“Forgive my abruptness,” the man said, reaching toward her, “but you must leave this place with me immediately. You are in gravest danger. Please—we must leave this instant to avoid disaster.”

Suspicion chilled the spark of interest she’d felt. “Look, I came here just for apples.” She slid one hand into her purse, locating her pepper spray. “Leave me alone, please, or I’ll call store security.”

She hoped this guy didn’t know that Howard—the entire security staff of Budget Foods currently on duty—was in his seventies and would never be able to stand up to someone like this man, who carried himself with the smooth precision of a dancer or a martial artist. At least Howard had a radio.

The man dipped his head and upper body in an odd, twisting bow. “My Lady,” he said, his voice tight and urgent. “Please, I beg you. Your life is in very real danger. You must trust me in this. I will explain later, but first we must flee.”

Flee? Eva looked around at the worn ordinariness of Budget Foods, with shoppers inching their carts along the aisles. There was nothing here to flee from but boredom.

Her finger found the directional notch on the tiny canister in her bag. “Look, I don’t know you, what you’re on, or what your deal is, but you’re scaring me.” She pulled out the spray and held it up. “This is nasty stuff and I’ll use it on you if you don’t back off—right now.” She backed away from him again and bumped into the stacked apples. Several of them tumbled to the floor—even more bruises, she thought, as if they didn’t have enough already. She held her eyes on the stranger, wincing as the apples thumped and rolled on the scarred wooden floor.

In a single fluid motion the man flicked the can out of her hands and wrapped his arms around her, pushing her to the floor, covering her with his body. Before she could scream for help an explosion ripped the storefront window open, and she heard the screams of others.

In a strange, time-suspended clarity on the way to the floor Eva could feel the muscles of his torso flex and twist, pushing hot against her in a symphony of coordinated power. How the heck did he know this was going to happen? She hit the floor and her breath whooshed out in a grunt.

She looked up into his face. His eyes stared into hers, fierce as a looming storm. Blue gray, she thought. No, slate. He was heavier than he looked and she needed to breathe. But he had great eyes.

“Get off me!” She pushed against him, and he rolled away without protest.

She sat up. Her ears hurt. The store—or what was left of it—was a mess. She could see two, no, three shoppers on the floor, not moving. In fact, nothing moved, and the stillness was horrible.

A soft groan floated through the smoke from somewhere. Still in its pink sweatshirt sleeve, an arm without an owner lay on the floor. And blood. Lots of it. This was so wrong. Oh, my god. She swallowed several times against a wave of nausea. What on earth had happened?

Then there was movement. All around her, shards of glass began to twitch and shift, becoming dark red scorpions scuttling toward them—dozens of them, different sizes, all the same. Glass shouldn’t do that, she was sure of it.

“Do not move, Serenissima,” the stranger commanded, his voice icy. He turned his back to her, putting himself between her and the scorpions. She stared at his back. He’d been hit by several pieces of glass; two of them stuck partway out of his flesh. All of those would have hit her if he hadn’t thrown himself over her. What the hell is going on?

His hands glowed, and pale fire flowed from his fingers in dancing streams—first carving a circle around them, then striking out at each scorpion. As his fire hit each one it sparked into smoke and dropped, again becoming an inert piece of glass.

What did he just do? Eva looked around, trying to locate her pepper spray, but couldn’t see where it had rolled. She needed to get out of here. But her body was too heavy, too far away to respond.

“I don’t know how,” the man growled, “but your enemies have discovered who you are, my Lady. Now you will have no peace until you reach your Ceremony or they have destroyed us both, for I swear I will not outlive you.”

He stood, bending down. His hair tumbled forward, as if reaching to touch her. “I apologize, Highness,” he said, “but I have no choice but to carry you to safety. With or without your permission.”

Why is he calling me these strange names? As he reached for her, Eva saw another shard of glass sticking out of his arm. Blood had drenched his shirt down to the cuff. His hand was dripping red, but he seemed oblivious of it. Still dazed, she felt him reach under her shoulders and knees and pick her up as if she weighed nothing.

“Stop!” she screamed. “Put me down! Help!” She twisted against his iron-hard grip and grabbed a coconut from an end display as they passed. Eva pounded it against his chest and face but he didn’t even look at her as he strode through the carnage to the rear of the store, kicked open the warehouse doors, and jumped off the loading dock to the ground. On the other side of the alley sat a sleek limousine with darkened windows. As they approached, a passenger door swung open. The man deposited her inside, wrested the coconut from her, and tossed it away. He climbed in opposite her and pulled the door shut, wincing at the reach. The limo began to roll.

CHAPTER TWO

Panic tackled her—she was trapped in a stranger’s car. “You can’t do this!” This was not good.

She forced herself to deepen her breathing, get grounded in her body again. She needed to get out of this car, and looked around for anything she could use as a weapon. There was nothing but smooth luxury.

Eva rubbed her arms as she scanned the compartment, grateful for the comfort of her own touch. Her hands were ice-cold against her skin, but still reassuring. Maybe he left the door unlocked!

She lunged for the door and pushed it open, prepared to leap. But Roanoke was hundreds of feet below them. Inexplicably, they were airborne. The river was a sparkling blue ribbon wandering past the rail yards. This is really wrong.

The man scowled at her and gestured at the door. It swung shut against all the resistance she could muster.

“You can’t fly in this thing, there’ll be radar—” Eva realized she had no idea of what she was talking about. “Or something. Homeland Security… You’ll be tracked down.” Maybe she could bargain with him. “Take me back now and I promise not to file a complaint.”

The man grunted, his face a pain-filled grimace as he unbuttoned his bloody shirt. “No one saw us on the ground, or since, my Lady. We are enshrouded in magic that makes us invisible to others.”

What the hell does that mean, enshrouded in magic? This wasn’t supposed to happen when someone walked two blocks over to Budget Foods to buy apples. But it had. She wanted this to be a dream but knew it wasn’t. She’d left butter on the counter at home. In this heat it would be a puddle by the time she got back. If she got back.

The man smiled at her—or maybe it was a wince—as he used his uninjured arm to peel his sodden shirt from his back. He obviously worked out. A lot.

So this is what cognitive dissonance feels like. “You know how serious a crime kidnapping is, don’t you? Besides, I’m broke. I have nothing for you to demand in ransom. I’m not the one you want. You’ve made a mistake.”

The man’s smile was grim as he shook his head, saying nothing as he dropped his bloody shirt on the seat beside him. It made a heavy wet plop against the leather.

“Answer me!” she shouted. “What the hell is going on here, and where are you taking me?”

“I take you to safety, Serenissima,” the man said with an apologetic dip of his head. “I ask for your forgiveness, but a longer explanation, which you most certainly deserve, must wait while I attend to my injuries. They require my most urgent concentration.”

Eva watched as he arched his back and reached behind him. He’s flexible enough to hold a difficult pose, she thought, and then laughed aloud at herself in disbelief. This man had probably saved her life, kidnapped her, shoved her into an invisible flying limousine going god knows where, and now sat half-naked across from her, bleeding all over the cream leather, and all she could think about was how good a model he might be. Still, he really would make a terrific model.

But then there was the whole scorpions-from-glass thing. Maybe she’d been drugged and was hallucinating. Maybe. That would be the best answer possible, but this felt horribly real.

The man let out a sharp grunt. When she could see his hand again it held a red-stained shard of glass, which he tossed into a corner on the limousine floor.

He blew onto the tips of his bloody fingers and murmured words she didn’t understand. His fingertips glowed again, just like in the store. This time the air filled with the scent of lilacs, or maybe honeycomb—yes, honeycomb. He reached behind him again, and there was a sharp hiss.

He took a deep breath, arched, and reached behind him again. He scowled, and this time his hand returned empty.

“Forgive me, my Lady, but would you be willing to draw a piece of glass from my back? I would be most grateful.” He lifted his shirt to his mouth, bit down on the torn sleeve and ripped a small strip from it. He offered it to her. “If you grasp the glass with this, you can get a safer grip.”

“You want me to help you? Oh, right!” She glowered at him. “There’s nothing to stop me from pushing it in the rest of the way, is there?”

“Nothing at all.” The man smiled, affable and grim. “And I might die. But whether I live or die, this car’s course is already set, and it will take you to its destination. Without me to protect you when you arrive, you most certainly would die as soon as your presence was discovered. Quite unpleasantly.”

He dipped his head, as if apologizing. “So, as distasteful as it may be to you, I represent your very best chance of survival.” Again he proffered the scrap of cloth.

She was in a flying car and had no idea where she was or where she was going. So not in control of her life, just when she’d sworn to take charge and never give it up again. Hallucinating or not, survival sounded good to Eva.

“Damn.” She took the scrap from him. It was the thickest, richest silk she had ever felt. “I have to tell you I don’t do well with blood.”

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The Carpenter (Workplace Encounters #4) excerpt by Serena Yates

In The Carpenter by Serena Yates, the lead character Tom is a carpenter in desperate need of a few big projects to save his company -- could Matt Langford and the dilapidated mansion he inherited be just what he needs?

Tom Halderson is a carpenter who inherited his father’s construction company. Despite the fact running a business is not one of his strengths, and having made his foreman a full partner, he is in trouble. His older brother, Derek, who vanished five years ago has returned and wants what he thinks is his part of the inheritance. Tom refuses to give in, but lets him live in their father’s house. When Derek fails at the job Tom gives him, he turns vengeful and makes life even more difficult for Tom.

Matt Langford is a safari guide who inherited his grandfather’s house when his mother committed suicide, not wanting to face her husband’s infidelities any longer. Matt plans to have the dilapidated house renovated so he can sell it, and move back to his adventurous life in Africa. The immediate attraction he feels for Tom completely derails him.

Could the stability-loving Tom be just what Matt needs to settle down? Could the adventurous Matt be exactly what is lacking in Tom’s life?

The Carpenter
Silver Publishing (July 2, 2011)
ISBN: 9781920501334

Excerpt:

Chapter One

"Thank God it's Friday." Tom Halderson rose slowly, stretching muscles cramped from stooping over his portable workbench for too long. The bracket feet for the black ash DVD cabinet he'd just finished carving were the final bits needed before assembling the elaborate piece of furniture. Why the client insisted on having everything handmade was beyond him, but he was glad for the work.

"Amen!" Chris Allen, a painter he'd worked with before, dropped the brush he'd been using onto the newspaper spread out at his feet and stood back from the living room wall. After one last appraising glance he turned toward Tom. "I can't wait to hit the bar and down a cold beer."

"Same here." Tom grinned. A beer at the end of the work week was one of the few luxuries he allowed himself. Staying in business and making a large enough profit to cover a minimal salary was getting tougher by the month. But he owed it to his dad to keep the company running. It had been his father's only focus after his mother died giving birth to him. Even though he'd never wanted to go into business he'd had little choice when his dad fell from a high-rise building three years ago. He'd been dead on impact and Halderson Construction had suddenly become Tom's responsibility.

"The Thirsty Bear okay?" Chris picked up the cloth with the used brushes, wrapping them carefully before walking into the nearly finished kitchen to clean them.

"Sure." He didn't much mind where they went. Downtown Colorado Springs offered a lot of choices and the beer was equally cold wherever they'd end up.

"I'll see you there at seven." Chris put the cleaned brushes into a large glass, upside down so they could dry. He disposed of the dirty newspaper in one of the large bin bags they kept around for waste of all kinds.

"Okay." Tom was only half paying attention to Chris leaving.

He cast a critical eye over the parts, now strewn across the floor, waiting to be put together. They looked good, and he was tempted to finish the job, but he really wanted a shower and a change of clothes before making his way to the bar. He sighed. Assembly would have to wait until Monday.

He put away his tools, neatly arranging the gouges, veins and chisels into their individual pockets within the soft cloth. Wrapping them and depositing them into his tool box was a good way to step back from the job and start relaxing. When he was done, he grabbed the box, toured the house to make sure everyone was gone and all windows and doors were properly locked. Finding everything in order was a relief, and he quickly got into his car and drove home to the small house in Cimarron Hills his father had also left him.

Sometimes he wished there'd be someone else who cared as much about the company as his dad had. Especially after a week like this, with plans changing, clients calling him all the time, and last minute emergencies needing to be dealt with. At least he'd gotten to work on the cabinets. That was all he'd ever wanted, to work with wood. It was his passion, and if he'd had a choice, he would have been a woodworker. Instead, his father had made him follow the three-year union-contactor apprenticeship program so he could be a carpenter. Now, he only ever managed to assign himself the odd carpentry job. Most of his time was taken up with running the company together with his partner, Ken.

It wasn't fair. He sighed as he pulled up to his driveway. Then his eyes widened. A man lounged near his front door, clearly waiting for him. Tom didn't expect anyone, so he parked the car, got out and carefully approached, keeping a close eye on the stranger. Except, the closer he got, the more familiar the guy looked.

No, it wasn't possible!

"Derek?" He hadn't seen his older brother in over five years.

"Tom." Derek nodded, not looking happy.

"What… how…?" He didn't even know where to start. Wanting to hug his brother, now the only immediate family he had left, was his first impulse. But there was so much distance and rejection in Derek's body language, he didn't dare touch him.

"You didn't think I'd come back, did you?" Derek sneered. "Thought I wouldn't find out Dad left everything to you. I bet you wanted to keep it all to yourself. Well, think again. I did find out, even if it took my friends some time to get around to telling me, and I'm here now, so you better pay up."

What the hell?

"Aren't you even going to ask me in?" His brother frowned. "You're not going to be difficult about this, are you?"

"What's wrong with you?" His heart was beating a mile a minute and his hands were trembling. But he managed to open the door and got inside, Derek following on his heels.

"Nothing's wrong with me, there never was." His brother stormed through the hallway and straight into the living room, looking around as if searching for something. Or maybe he wanted to make sure everything was still in its place?

"Look, you were the one telling us you didn't want us to come after you." He wanted to be excited and happy, but there was something really wrong about Derek's words. He sounded demanding and bitter, as if he'd been the one wronged. Hell, the man had left without a trace after their father had told him not to marry Simone because she wasn't good enough for him.

"Well, I've changed my mind, okay?" Derek flopped down on the sofa, managing to look as if he owned it. "I'm Dad's son just as much as you, so I figure I'm entitled to some of the wealth now that he's dead. I'm here to collect."

Tom wanted to yell at his brother for being so materialistic. He didn't even care about the money so much, he just wanted his brother back. But this stranger sitting on his sofa and demanding money that wasn't his, the will had clearly said so, scared him. What had happened to the big brother he'd adored?

"I hate to tell you this, but there are no huge amounts of money." There never had been. "Dad left the house and the company to me, true, but that's it."

"And that's a whole lot more than that bitch Simone left me with after the divorce she put me through." Derek fisted his hands. "And I bet Dad would have left the company to both of us, had I been around."

"Maybe." He couldn't help but feel overwhelmed and disappointed. Why weren't they celebrating their reunion? This should have been a happy moment. Instead they were talking about money? He couldn't quite bring himself to say that, though, for fear of driving his brother away again. He'd only just gotten him back and was going to do everything in his power to keep him here. With a tough divorce behind him from the sounds of it, Derek wasn't himself right now. He'd come around, wouldn't he?

* * * *

"Hello! Anybody home?" Tom knocked on the front door of the small rental log cabin in Cascade for the second time. Why was there no answer? He checked his watch. Yep, just after five like they'd agreed over the phone. The sleek black Ferrari in the carport surely meant someone was home.

He shook his head. Who would bring a luxury car up here? Maybe his potential client wasn't aware of what the approaching Colorado winter might do to the roads. Matt Langford had told him he was originally from Georgia, but he'd spent the last ten years organizing safaris in Africa. The man probably had no experience with cold weather and ice on the roads. A reliable truck was what he'd need once the snow started falling.

But that wasn't really his problem, was it? As long as the guy was ready to spend the money on renovating his recently inherited house a few blocks farther toward the edge of town everything would be fine. It was a nice building from what he'd seen, but it would need a lot of work to become livable again. Tom clutched his messenger bag containing the sketches more tightly. He desperately needed this project to keep the company going.

The last six months since Derek's return had been hell. Nothing he did seemed good enough for his brother. He'd tried so hard to help him get settled. Without saying a word, he'd moved into a small apartment, leaving the house to Derek. He'd refused to give his brother a say in the company, because that was his livelihood and he'd thought the house would've been enough to appease the man. His brother had been adamant he get something, so Tom had finally relented and given Derek a job in the office. The idiot had messed up so completely they'd lost several existing, and potential, clients.

Tom sighed. Having to fire Derek had been hard, but he couldn't let his brother ruin the business. He'd given Derek the required severance payment and had asked him to sign an affidavit swearing he wouldn't sue Halderson Construction. Derek's reaction had been totally over the top. He'd threatened that he'd make Tom pay for betraying him.

That had been a month ago and Derek had cashed the check, but there was no sign of the signed affidavit. Tom knew he should hire an attorney to set the situation straight, at least getting the affidavit completed, but he just couldn't get himself to do it. This was his brother, after all. The first nasty rumors about Halderson Construction had started two weeks after Derek left, and Tom had decided he was going to focus on his work and ensuring he did the best possible job. Surely the facts would be more important than unfounded speculation?

So, here he stood, determined to convince Mr. Langford Halderson Construction was just the company to be put in charge of the renovation of the man's dilapidated house. He would win them over one by one, if necessary.

Where was the guy? Tom knocked again, a little louder this time.

"What?" The door opened and a tall guy with dark, tousled hair and dark blue eyes squinted at him.

The man was only about two inches shorter than his own six-foot-two, very well built and wore nothing but dark blue pajama bottoms. Not that he was looking, because, geez, he was built everywhere.

"Uhm… we had an appointment?" Tom tried not to grin at the guy's confused expression.

"Now?" The man looked up at the sky and frowned. "Oh, looks like it's already late afternoon. Sorry. I was taking a nap. Um. You must be Tom Halderson."

"Yes, I am. You're Matt Langford?" He had a hard time not letting his eyes wander away from Mr. Langford's face. The dark whorls of chest hair on his well developed pecs were very sexy.

"Indeed I am." Mr. Langford slid a long-fingered hand through his hair in an unsuccessful attempt to smooth it down.

"Do you want me to come back later?" He hoped not. The number of unpaid bills was increasing daily and he needed a big project on the books to make the creditors back off for a while. But the client was always right, so he would reschedule their meeting if that was what the guy wanted.

"No. No, it's all right." Mr. Langford stepped back and pointed at the inside of the cabin. "It's my fault. The drive up here took longer than I thought and apparently I slept away most of the afternoon. If you give me a minute, I'll get dressed and we can have our meeting. Please, come in and take a seat."

"Okay." Tom stepped inside and looked around while he was waiting.

In keeping with the outside look, the interior walls consisted of simple wooden logs. There was a large overstuffed couch to his right, facing a rock gas fireplace and a little TV in the corner. To his left was a door into a small kitchen and another straight ahead to what looked like a patio. Colorful rugs on the hardwood floor made the cabin feel cozy. At the back of the room was a staircase which presumably led to the bedroom upstairs which the delectable Matt had vanished into.

Stop thinking about him that way. He's a potential client, for heaven's sake! Hadn't he promised himself to stay away from anything that even remotely looked like he might get emotionally entangled? One catastrophic relationship was enough for his lifetime. Anything more than an anonymous encounter was dangerous. He knew better, so why was he lusting after this man?

Tom sat down on the comfortable sofa and tried to relax. A few minutes later Mr. Langford returned, now dressed in simple blue jeans and a light grey sweater which accentuated the blue of his eyes. His feet were encased in thick woolen socks and his hair still deliciously tousled. He looked good enough to eat.

An offer of a cup of coffee was made and accepted. His host soon returned from the kitchen with two steaming mugs and placed them on the low table between them and the fire place.

"So, tell me a little more about Halderson Construction." Mr. Langford sat down on the other end of the sofa and turned toward him. "I've checked your website and have made a few calls but there doesn't seem to be an awful lot of information about any current projects you may be working on."

"That's probably because the company has recently gone through some difficulties." Tom wasn't sure how much to reveal to his potential client but he wasn't going to lie. The man had probably already heard all of the lies Derek had been spreading, so he might as well give him his side of the story. "It won't impact your project and has nothing to do with our qualifications as a choice for a historically accurate restoration."

"My impression was you had some financial problems?" Mr. Langford raised his eyebrows. "I'd say that might have an impact on any deal to which we might agree."

"You're right, some of the problems are financial. Look, I'll be honest with you. There have been some disagreements with my recently returned brother. We've had some—major—fights. He told me he was going to get his revenge, and apparently he's been spreading rumors about the company, trying to scare people away. You may have heard some of them already." Tom took a deep breath. "I know you don't have to believe me, but if you check the older records, the ones over six months ago, you'll see we were doing fine and there hasn't been a specific incident which caused the current issues. Of course, we aren't exactly cash rich right now, but we are sound enough to keep running the business."

"I appreciate your honesty. It sounds like this project is quite important to you." Mr. Langford smiled. "I don't mind, on the contrary, it reassures me."

Tom snorted. Did that sound like his newest potential client wanted him to depend on this project—wanted to have some control over him? Just like the asshole who'd been his lover? Not to mention the control freak Derek had turned into? Or was he being too sensitive here? And anyway—this was a business relationship, wasn't it? So that made it different. It was his family life he needed to worry about.

"Now we have the financial discussion out of the way and until we start negotiating a price, can you tell me a little bit more about your qualifications in the area of historical restorations?" Mr. Langford took a sip of coffee and tilted his head.

"Over the past three years Halderson Construction has remodeled four early twentieth century buildings in and around Colorado Springs. You probably won't be familiar with any of them, but two were mentioned in the Old House Journal as particularly well done. You could also check with the local historical society which has developed case studies for each of the four properties." Tom was particularly proud of those because they were far more relevant for the local community and a really nice showcase for his work.

"Sounds like you really know your stuff." Mr. Langford looked thoughtful. "I want to check out some of those references later. I'll need this renovation to be done quickly and within budget. I want to sell the house as quickly as possible so I can get back to somewhere with decent temperatures, and I need it to make a profit so I have a nest egg for when I want to settle down somewhere nice and tropical. From what you've just told me, it sounds like Halderson Construction might be the right company to get the property ready for me to do just that."

"May I ask why you haven't come to an agreement with any of the other local construction companies?" Tom didn't think any of them was more qualified but he was interested to find out the man's reasoning.

"Aha, you're not afraid to ask difficult questions. Very good." Mr. Langford grinned. It made the man look even better, younger and less serious. "Without revealing any details let me just say several of them were too small to handle the work, and two of the larger ones didn't strike me as particularly trustworthy."

"Thanks for telling me. It's always good to know what the competition is up to." Tom grinned back. "I'm obviously familiar with the house and have taken the liberty of obtaining blueprints from the council registrar to come up with some initial drawings and draft ideas."

"Very impressive, Tom. May I call you Tom?" Mr. Langford put down his empty coffee mug and stared right at him.

He nodded, mesmerized by the penetrating dark blue gaze. If he didn't watch it, he could so easily get distracted by this man.

"Okay, then you must call me Matt." Matt sat back in his chair. "So, tell me what you've come up with?"

Tom pulled his sketches from the messenger bag and laid them out on the table after moving the empty mugs to the floor. They went over the simple drawings one by one. Matt turned out to have a good eye for detail and asked some pointed questions.

When they'd gone through the material, he sat back up and stretched. He was a lot stiffer than expected and when he looked outside it was dark. His eyes widened. He hadn't even noticed the time passing.

"I'm impressed." Matt stretched as well, offering a tempting view of muscles moving nicely under the soft fabric of his sweatshirt. "You've obviously done your homework. I'm ready to move to the next stage, if you agree."

"Thank you." Tom actually blushed. "In that case I suggest we meet at the property tomorrow during daylight hours and go over the details."

"I agree. We should meet around ten in the morning so we have enough time to go over everything we need." Matt sat forward in his chair, a definite gleam in his eyes. "Now we've concluded the business part of our meeting, can I interest you in dinner? I don't know about you but I am quite hungry and would love some company."

"I—dinner?" He swallowed. That sounded suspiciously like a date and he hadn't even thought about dating since he'd taken over the company. There were too many homophobic people in Colorado Springs, ready to ruin his reputation at the drop of a hat. Anyway, he'd been too busy working.

"Yes, you know, the meal at the end of the day?" Matt grinned, obviously enjoying his discomfort.

"Oh, that dinner." He felt embarrassed but was determined not to let the other man see how confused he was. "Are you sure?"

"I wouldn't have asked if I wasn't sure." Matt snorted and shook his head. "Look, if you'd rather not, just say no. I just wanted to talk some more about the project."

"Sure." Tom felt rejected. He shook his head. Of course the man wanted to discuss business, what did he expect? Why was he even thinking about a relationship? He may have missed having a family, but that was no reason to throw himself at a complete stranger. One who was only planning to be here for a few months at most, from the sound of it.

"Excellent! I hope you don't mind leftovers. I promise they're good." Matt got up, gathered the empty mugs and walked toward the kitchen. "I always make casseroles in large portions because I think they taste better. They keep me supplied with a couple more good meals anyway."

"You cook?" Tom cringed at the stupidity of his question. Why shouldn't the man cook? Not everyone was a prick like his ex-lover Preston who liked to be waited on hand and foot.

"Yeah, anything wrong with that?" Matt placed the mugs in the sink and turned around, a big grin on his face.

"Nope, nothing wrong with that at all." He felt his lips twitch but managed to suppress his own grin. "In fact, I'm a bit of a hobby chef myself."

"You are?" Matt opened the fridge and pulled the medium-size glass casserole dish out before putting it in the microwave. "Do you have a specialty?"

"I'm all right for meals. But my real favorite is baking bread and cakes." Tom missed the relaxed Sunday mornings over home-made rolls or bagels he'd shared with Preston when their relationship had been good. Not having someone to enjoy the food with just wasn't the same.

"Sounds promising. I tend to be better at starters and main meals." Matt started pulling plates, glasses, and cutlery from the cupboards. Placemats were added and the small table in the corner of the kitchen was set by the time the microwave's 'ping' signaled their food being done.

"I can see some interesting joint projects coming up." Tom sat down on one of the chairs while Matt distributed a potato chicken dish onto the two plates.

"What would you like to drink?" Matt put the used casserole dish into the sink and opened the fridge. "There's water, milk, and orange juice. Sorry, I seem to be out of beer."

"Not a problem about the beer, I still need to drive." Tom never had any alcohol if there was a choice. Not after his dad's fatal accident three years ago. "I'd love some orange juice, please."

They enjoyed their meal in quiet companionship and he was surprised how easy he felt in Matt's company. It was as if they'd known each other for much longer than a few hours.

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