Release Blitz: The Coup and the Prince by Mell Eight #LGBTQ #fantasy @MellEight @GoIndiMarketing

 

Title: The Coup and the Prince

Author: Mell Eight

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: 05/17/2021

Heat Level: 1 - No Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 19900

Genre: Fantasy, LGBTQIA+, royalty, kidnapping, war, poverty, law enforcement, military, revenge, prostitution

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Description

The coup should have been simple: oust the tyrannical regents and restore the rightful heir to the throne. No one expected the rightful heir to be dead, or for his younger brother to be missing. The search for the missing prince is important, but not as important as putting the destroyed country back together. At least, that’s what Aiden thinks until he stumbles on a terrible crime ring and a pair of beautiful green eyes that might just derail everything he’s been working towards.

Excerpt

The Coup and the Prince
Mell Eight © 2021
All Rights Reserved

One
Aiden

Meetings, meetings, meetings! His whole life was meetings!

Aiden was going to go mad, screaming and hair pulling included, if he had to go to another meeting. As if that weren’t bad enough, after the endless rounds of meetings, he had paperwork. Endless bloody stacks of paperwork. For every piece he finished, another fucking dozen appeared on his desk. He couldn’t escape from it all. He was a frigging soldier, not a paper pusher, and he hated sitting still. His new position as captain of the guard required he attend to his new duties, rather than actually being out in the city where the real work was, but Aiden was thinking of stuffing it all and running away.

In fact, that sounded like a great idea. Fuck them all anyway. He deserved a long weekend off. Aiden slammed his pen down on his desk, glad to have his decision made, and stood with a violent shove of his chair.

“I’m done for the day,” he snapped to his shocked-looking secretary across the room.

Ernest nodded. Aiden had worked with Ernest long enough to know Ernest would have blindly agreed even if Aiden had declared he was off to fuck a duck, but Ernest didn’t mind the damned paperwork, so Aiden kept the kid around anyway.

“It’s after midnight, sir,” Ernest replied softly. “Shall I hold your appointments until tomorrow afternoon?”

Aiden winced at the thought of having any more meetings. “Push them until Monday morning. I should be able to think straight by then.” If he had to go to another meeting any earlier than Monday, he might actually snap and strangle someone.

Ernest nodded in agreement again and quickly made a note in the ledger on his desk before jumping up to help Aiden with his coat.

“What should I tell Major Trell, sir, if he comes calling?” Ernest asked before Aiden could fasten his buttons and get out the door to freedom.

“Tell the old bastard that he should have planned a little better before he threw his coup, and anything that goes wrong in my absence is his fault,” Aiden snapped as he wrenched the door open and slammed it behind him.

A muffled “Yes, sir” sounded from behind the door.

“And take tomorrow off too, Ernest,” Aiden yelled before stomping off.

Aiden didn’t go to his rooms in the castle. He could easily be found there and dragged off to something “vitally important” that Aiden didn’t give a fuck about. He needed to be out there doing, not sitting on his ass.

Before the coup, Aiden had led men. He had been in charge of keeping the city safe, catching criminals and murderers and putting them behind bars so people felt safe at night. He had loved the job and the men and women he had commanded. Trell, the bastard, had promised Aiden he could have his job back after the coup. Hell, that was one of the reasons Aiden had joined with Trell in the first place.

The coup had been a disaster, plain and simple. They had taken power back from the regents, yes, but instead of reinstating the heir like they had originally planned, they were stuck putting the country back together themselves.

Ten years before the coup, the king had started forgetting things. It was only recent edicts, meeting times, and simple things in the beginning, but five years ago, when he forgot the names of his wife and two sons, the physicians declared the king needed to be sequestered for his own safety.

The king’s oldest child was only fifteen at the time, so the council had chosen the grand duke and the queen to act as joint regents on behalf of the heir until he came of age. Given how quickly the councilors chose two people mostly unsuited for the task, Aiden had little doubt they had been bribed. Aiden would have let it go—that was politics after all—except then the council had allowed the regents’ excess to take over.

For the subsequent five years of the regents’ rule, food, goods, and a lot of money had gone into the castle and only bodies had come out. Taxes were raised, and the crown stopped paying for the goods it consumed. Prices for wheat skyrocketed after a late-summer storm wiped out much of one year’s crops, and the crown demanded more instead of helping the people it served.

The last straw for Aiden had been when the city guard had been disbanded. His beloved troops were left penniless and without prospects, as was he for that matter. When Trell approached Aiden, Aiden had been more than happy to lend his influence to the coup.

The queen and the grand duke had been killed in the fighting. The king had survived the coup, somehow. Trell and Aiden had gone to see him once the castle was secured and found a clueless and helpless child in place of the strong man Aiden remembered.

Trell had always planned to reinstate the king’s heir to the throne, not take power himself—which was why he was still considered a major despite the fact he was basically running the country—but when they broke into the heir’s room, they had found him lying in bed, dead. His body had been left where he had been murdered, and when Trell’s soldiers entered the room months later, they found a bloated and decaying mass of nearly indistinguishable flesh. No doubt the regents had claimed he was “indisposed” or something equally indelicate to keep anyone from asking questions, and removing the prince from the picture had also removed anyone who might have had the power to protest the regents’ actions.

The king’s younger son and only other child had never been located, had in fact been missing since the regents took power, which meant the task of putting the city and country back together after five years of mismanagement fell to Trell and Aiden. It also meant that, while the city guard had been reinstated, Aiden couldn’t be there for his troops until everything else had also been cleaned up. Instead, he was stuck with the bloody paperwork.

Still, one night walking the beat would go far to lift his spirits. Aiden couldn’t stop a small smile from stretching his lips at the thought. One night to remind him what he was working so bloody hard to achieve might even reground him. The sooner he finally got through those endless fucking piles of paperwork, the sooner he could return to the job he actually liked.

He did try to keep abreast of some of the cases that were baffling his troops. Ernest put together a weekly report for him, and Aiden always found the time to read it. The most distressing one on the list was the ring of underage prostitutes. Ordinarily it would be easy enough to find the pimp and arrest him and then find safe homes for the kids being abused, but there were mitigating circumstances. No one could actually locate the pimp, for one, and for another, any time one of the kids actually spoke to the guard they were found with their throats slit the next morning.

Aiden wasn’t in uniform, and it had been quite a few years since he had been able to patrol the lower city; maybe his face wouldn’t be recognized. He could easily pretend to be just another man out looking for a suck and a poke.

With his plans firmly in mind, Aiden finished sneaking out of the castle and headed into the city proper. He had a small townhouse where he would change clothes into something more disreputable and then go see what delights the lower city had to offer him.

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NineStar Press | Books2Read

Meet the Author

When Mell Eight was in high school, she discovered dragons. Beautiful, wondrous creatures that took her on epic adventures both to faraway lands and on journeys of the heart. Mell wanted to create dragons of her own, so she put pen to paper. Mell Eight is now known for her own soaring dragons, as well as for other wonderful characters dancing across the pages of her books. While she mostly writes paranormal or fantasy stories, she has been seen exploring the real world once or twice.

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Release Blitz: Eye of the Beholder by Thomas Grant Bruso #Paranormal #LGBTQ @ThomGrantBruso

 

Title: Eye of the Beholder

Author: Thomas Grant Bruso

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: November 16, 2020

Heat Level: 2 - Fade to Black Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 41900

Genre: Paranormal, LGBTQIA+, established couple, evil spirits, businessman, law enforcement, mental illness, horror

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Synopsis

In the middle of a psychic session with Madame Petri, David hears a ghostly voice calling his name. But he is not sure if it’s the elderly fortuneteller exaggerating the reading or bizarre grumblings coming from a mysterious old man in a painting hanging in the psychic’s foyer.

When Madame Petri disappears in a ball of flames, David rushes home, terrified. From that moment on, David and his policeman boyfriend, Zane, find themselves trying to solve the series of murders and mayhem that begin to haunt David.

Excerpt

Eye of the Beholder
Thomas Grant Bruso © 2020
All Rights Reserved

Chapter One
“What do you see?” I asked.

I was sitting across from Madame Petri at the oval-shaped table in the dimly lit backroom of her business, Spiritual Crossings.

The devil-white glow in the medium’s iron-gray eyes pierced through me. “A dead body,” she said. Her bloodred nails were sharp and pointy like talons and wrapped around the cloudy white edges of the crystal ball.

I bit back the sour taste of Cote Rotie from an art exhibit event I had hosted earlier in the evening. All I wanted was a reading of my future, I had told myself after closing the gallery and walking three blocks to Madame Petri’s Spiritual Crossings. Now, I turned to the neighborhood medium and shuddered, my gut clutching.

Some of my art friends had recommended her to me.

“You’ll like her,” one of them had said. “She’s colorful and full of spirit.”

“Go in with an open mind,” somebody else had told me.

Maybe I need new friends.

Clenching the border of the velvet-soft tablecloth, I leaned forward to see if I could glimpse what she had seen in her crystal ball.

There was a bright light in her gaze when she noticed me rising off my seat a few inches to get a better look at the dead body in the cloudy glass ball. But I was drawn back to my chair with a hand clutching my shoulder from behind and pushing me back into my seat.

Blackness swallowed the light in her eyes as if a switch had been turned off inside her, and her gaze fell back to the crystal ball, which was dimming like the low lights in the room.

A steely silence engulfed us.

Balls of sleet smacked against the front glass window in the outer foyer, and the soft sound of thunder rumbled around us. Lights flickered overhead, and a cold draft snuffed out some of the burning incense candles in the dark alcove behind me. A murmur of fear climbed the back of my throat, and I let out a mousy squeal.

When I looked up at Madame Petri’s waxy face, her expression froze.

I clenched my teeth, biting down hard on the cloying taste of cigarettes in my mouth.

Over Madame Petri’s shoulders, I noticed shadowy movements in the other room, and beyond the half-open velvet curtains, the drifting clouds of smoky incense danced like ghosts in the pallid light.

A pale, narrow face stared back at me from the inky blackness: decrepit, deathly white.

I shouted and rose from my chair, breaking the medium’s stern concentration.

Madame Petri stared up at me, her firm grip on the white glass ball unmoving. Her eyes were wide and frightened.

I sucked in short, tight breaths, glancing behind Madame Petri to the outer room, to the far wall where an abstract painting of a haunted face of an old man glared back at me.

David.

I heard my name and froze. Looked around. Let out a deep, shaky breath.

Nothing there.

A trick of the light, that’s all it was, I thought. I adjusted my eyes to the dense grayness and took my seat across from Madame Petri.

“I’m sorry,” I said, wiping my clammy palms on my jeans. “I thought I saw something.”

“You saw it too,” Madame Petri said. The lights in the room dimmed and died and came back.

My mouth was cotton dry, and I shook my head, staring into the still deadness of the medium’s eighty-year-old eyes, thick and hazy with cataracts.

“Saw what?” I stared over her shoulder again at the dark slashes of color in the evocative painting hanging askew in the foyer. It looked like one of the paintings hanging on the walls of my art gallery.

“Death,” Madame Petri said, a crackle in her voice. She raised a jewel-encrusted finger and pointed at me. “Somebody is going to die.”

I rubbed my arms to ward off a chill and heard the harsh warnings of my partner in the corridors of my mind, ridiculing me for shelling out a day’s worth of work to talk to a psychic. How much did it cost you this time to have your future predicted by that phony would-be clairvoyant?

Then the sound of somebody whispering evoked a troubling memory of dead voices. Their small screams floated in the dark like distressed spirits.

“What was that?” I asked, clenching the arm of the chair.

Madame Petri looked around the room and then over at me, a web of wrinkles bracketing the edge of her small mouth. Her tangerine-orange lips stretched into a wide, clownish smile. “The spirits, dear. They’re coming.”

I rose to leave. As I pulled out two twenties from my wallet, Madame Petri reached across the table for my hand. Her fingers were dead cold, and I felt a tremor of electricity when she touched me. “Be careful,” she said, flipping over the Death card from the pile of her tarot cards and tapping it with a black, pointy fingernail. “He who opens the gate must shut it.”

I jerked my hand away and tucked my wallet back into my pants pocket.

The lights flickered again and went out.

Panicking, I stayed still in the dark, calling out for Madame Petri, and hearing movement ten feet from where I stood behind my chair.

“Madame Petri,” I said. “Are you there?”

The heightened smell of decay and burnt flesh and cigarettes aggravated my senses, and a spark of strong pain ignited in the back of my mind.

David.

I heard movement at the other end of the room, somebody bumping into something, and a vase falling and crashing to the floor. Glass shattered.

When I called out Madame Petri’s name again, there was no answer.

I navigated in the dark to the foyer, staying close to the edge of the room and reaching out for the wall to help guide me to the front door.

At the opening to the velvet curtains, lights flashed and turned on in the adjoining rooms. My heart was pounding, my breath short and raspy.

I went to the rain-smattered front door and pushed it open, turning around once at the sound of a door creaking open behind me down the hall, its hinges squawking in protest. I called out Madame Petri’s name, but there was no response. I couldn’t see her anywhere in the semidark hallway through the hazy tendrils of smoke from the blown-out incense candles, but my gaze drifted to the far wall where the painting of the decrepit face of an old man was mounted.

“Madame Petri,” I called out. I reached into my back pocket for my half-smoked pack of Salem’s and my Bic lighter. Flicked it a few times, my hand shaking hard, my heart pounding.

Nothing.

A cold, wet rain blasted me on the back of the neck, and I shivered from the early evening chill.

I lit the end of my cigarette, barely managing to work the lighter, and inhaled a lungful of smoke before shoving the pack of smokes and the cigarette lighter back in my pants pocket.

Then quickly, as if a bolt of lightning flashed through my jumbled thoughts and illuminated my worst nightmares, I glimpsed the haunted painting again to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. The man in the painting was gone, the canvas blank.

Animalistic, ghostly murmurings in throaty growls awakened down the hall.

I ran.

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NineStar Press | Books2Read Universal Link

Meet the Author

Thomas Grant Bruso knew at an early age he wanted to be a writer. He has been a voracious reader of genre fiction since he was a kid.

His literary inspirations are Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Ellen Hart, Jim Grimsley, Karin Fossum, Sam J. Miller, Joyce Carol Oates, and John Connolly.

Bruso loves animals, book-reading, writing fiction, prefers Sudoku to crossword puzzles.

In another life, he was a freelance writer and wrote for magazines and newspapers. In college, he was a winner for the Hermon H. Doh Sonnet Competition. Now, he writes book reviews for his hometown newspaper, The Press Republican.

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Release Blitz: Time Lost by C.B. Lewis #SciFi #LGBTQ

 

Title: Time Lost

Series: Out of Time, Book Two

Author: C.B. Lewis

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: September 7, 2020

Heat Level: 3 - Some Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 114600

Genre: Science Fiction, LGBTQIA+, science fiction, gay, British, detective/police officer, law enforcement, crime procedural, engineer, programmer/decoder, murder, mystery, age gap, interracial, dirty talk, spanking, outrageous flirtation

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Synopsis

A dead intruder. A missing scientist. A terrified child.

No one wants a dramatic case first thing on a Monday morning, but that’s exactly what Detective Inspector Jacob Ofori got. It should be open and shut, but scientist Tom Sanders is nowhere to be found, a dead man seems to have appeared from thin air, and the Temporal Research Institute—Sanders’s company—is strangely uncooperative about assisting with the case.

Jacob’s only source is TRI engineer, Kit Rafferty. He clearly wants to help, but there’s only so much the man can and will tell him. As more and more impossible questions mount up, Jacob finds himself facing a reality that could change his world.

Excerpt

Time Lost
C.B. Lewis © 2020
All Rights Reserved

Chapter One
At first, everyone assumed it was a burglary.

The postman was the first on the scene. He’d arrived early in the morning to make a delivery to the house in question and found the front door wedged open. No one answered when he rang the bell, so he called the police. The two constables arrived to investigate, and they were the ones who found the body.

It escalated after that.

Not even noon, Jacob thought grimly. Hell of a way to start a Monday.

His autopod shuttled along, arcing off from the main highway. As much as he missed manual controls of old-fashioned cars and early autocars, he appreciated the driverless function of the pod because it gave him time to skim through the images from the crime scene en route.

He wouldn’t get a feel for the scene until he got there, but the images let him know what he was about to walk into. There were signs of a struggle in the room where the body was found, and plenty of blood, but the rest of the house seemed undisturbed.

“Control to Delta Seven. ETA to destination?”

Jacob leaned forward and cleared the images from the display on the windscreen, bringing up his location on the map. Beyond it, he could see the country roads through the glass.

“ETA fifteen minutes, Control,” he replied, then muttered under his breath, “Into the backside of nowhere.”

It was half an hour beyond the miles of sprawling suburbs of the city in the middle of green fields and close to a forest. The nearest amenities had to be at least four miles from the building. He shook his head. What kind of person chose to live all the way out there anymore? It wasn’t as if there were a shortage of housing in the city.

A chime indicated another image had been received.

Jacob opened it up and leaned forward, frowning.

A door, barely visible, blended into the pattern of the wall. No handle, no visible hinges.

“You seeing this, sir?” Constable Foley’s voice rang through the speaker.

“I am indeed, Foley,” he said, widening the image. “Is that a safe room?”

“Looks that way, sir,” the constable replied. “The dust in front of it suggests a box was moved and recently. Looks like someone might be in there.”

Smart girl, Jacob thought with approval.

“Any response?”

“Not yet, sir, but if they were attacked—”

“They might not be capable of replying,” Jacob finished. “Keep trying.” He minimised the image and looked out through the windscreen. “I have visual on you, Foley. Be with you soon.”

Ahead of him, the house was visible between the trees. The red brick structure had to be at least two centuries old, but even from a distance, the modern touches were obvious. The windows were thick and secure. The roof had been replaced with faux slate.

The autopod purred to a halt beside the four other vehicles lining the gravel courtyard, and the door slid aside. Jacob stepped out and glanced at the other vehicles. He recognised the coroner’s transport pod, and the standard blue-and-white- patterned squad pod, but the other two were probably the homeowner’s.

Foley opened the front door to greet him.

Half his age, she hadn’t been with the force long enough to be as jaded as him yet. She smiled in greeting. “Morning, sir.”

He winced. “Say afternoon. It makes it a little more bearable.”

She laughed. “You want a summary, sir?”

“I read up on it on the way over. Any word on the owner?”

“Thomas Sanders,” Foley said, leading him toward the house. “Forty-eight. Widower with one young son. He’s a well-reputed scientist and engineer. High up in some kind of historical and scientific research program in the city, the Temporal Research Institution.”

“Have you been able to make contact with him?”

Foley shook her head, her sandy ponytail swinging. She offered him overalls to cover his suit. “We’ve tried his business and private numbers. His colleagues said he’s been on a leave of absence for health reasons for several weeks. Our best bet is the safe room.”

“Any sign of the son?”

“We assume he’s with his father,” Foley replied.

“Do we have an ID for the body yet?”

She hesitated in the hallway. “That’s the strange thing, sir. We can’t find anything on him. His prints aren’t in the system. No DNA trace either. We still need to run facial recognition, but so far, we’ve got nothing.”

“That’s not unusual.”

Foley looked at him. “There’s something off about it all. I’ll show you.”

The house was spacious inside. The lower level was split into four rooms, all branching off from a wide, sunlit hall. Foley led him down the hall and to one of the rooms at the back, her covered boots thumping on the wooden floors.

Jacob stopped in the doorway, taking a moment, then stepped across the threshold. The crime scene team was still at work.

The room appeared to be some kind of laboratory with workbenches running along one wall. Another wall was covered in old-fashioned whiteboards with all kinds of incomprehensible text and codes marked on them in half a dozen colours. Jacob studied all of it for a moment, but whatever Sanders was working on, it was far beyond Jacob’s barely adequate physics A level.

There were little machines here and there, suspended from the boards by wires. Spools of wire and gears were scattered across the floor. Several boxes had been upended from shelves and lay on their sides.

In the middle of it all, the body lay face down on the floor, a bloodied hammer close at hand.

Danni Michaels was working on the body and glanced up with a nod. “Sir.”

“Cause of death?” Jacob said, keeping his eyes off the dead man’s face.

“Looks like blunt force trauma,” Danni replied, nudging her magnifying glasses up her nose with her knuckles. “I don’t think it’s a wild guess to say the weapon was that hammer. It was a single blow, landed here.”

Jacob gritted his teeth and looked. The left side of the man’s forehead was ruptured. His eyes were open, and he had an expression of surprise on his rigid, bloody face. He was young. Maybe thirties. Dark-haired. His eyes were dark, the pupils flared wide open, but death sometimes did that. Blood had spread in a wide, sticky pool around his body. Jacob swallowed down the familiar rising acid.

Christ, he hated the messy ones.

He glanced around the room.

A pair of slippers, several steps away from the blood pool, had left bloody prints on the polished floor. The owner must have kicked them off, and they’d ended up at least three feet from each other. Not good shoes for running, slippers. If he—men’s slippers, size nine approximately—had already knocked down the man on the floor, then there had to be another assailant whom he was running from.

“Any sign of this man’s accomplice?”

“Accomplice?” Foley asked.

Jacob gestured to the slippers. It was easier than looking at the body. “You don’t try and run from an unconscious, nearly dead man. There was someone else here.”

“We haven’t seen any sign of anyone else,” Foley replied. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t even notice that.”

He offered her a brief smile. “That’s why I’m a DI, Foley.” He motioned to the body. “You said there was something off?”

Foley nodded, crouching by the body. “Take a look at his right eye.”

Jacob went down beside her, propping his forearms on his knees. It took him a moment, but then he saw what she was pointing out: The pupil wasn’t blown. There was no iris at all.

“What the hell…” He leaned closer. “Michaels, can I borrow your magnifiers?”

She handed them over and obligingly shone the torch over the man’s eyes. “Clever, isn’t it?”

Jacob peered down and frowned. “A synthetic bionic eyeball? Is that even possible?”

Michaels shook her head. “I’ve heard of people developing them, but I’ve never heard of any successful trials.” She squatted by the body and grinned. “I can’t wait to get it out and see what it’s made of.”

“And there’s one of those images I didn’t need,” Jacob murmured, peering through the magnifier again. The pupil seemed to be a focusing lens. High-quality, high-end technology. “Foley, have you checked anywhere that might carry tech this advanced?”

“We’re putting together a list,” she said. “But from what we’re hearing back, this is off the charts, sir. No one has heard of technology like this before, or if they have, they’re not telling us about it.”

He straightened up. “You said this Sanders was a scientist?”

“Doctor in physics and engineering,” she confirmed.

“Could he have made something like this?”

She hesitated. “From all accounts, he didn’t deal in human biology or bio-artificing.”

“Doesn’t mean he couldn’t.” Jacob ran a hand over his face. “Well, if we can’t find this man by standard identification, maybe we can find him by the eye he doesn’t have. Danni, we need all the information you can get us as soon as possible.”

“Sir,” Danni said at once.

Jacob turned to Foley. “Where’s Singh?”

“Still trying to get into the safe room.” She jerked her head. “This way.”

The safe room was up the stairs in what appeared to be a playroom. Windows lined one of the walls, the others covered in posters and drawings. Kids’ toys and games were scattered all over the place. Singh was working his way along the one blank wall with a scanner.

Jacob took in the mess. “You said Sanders has a son?”

“Ben,” Foley confirmed.

“About eight?”

Foley looked at him in surprise. “Seven and a half. Is this another one of those detective things?”

Jacob chuckled. “This time, it’s one of those dad things.”

Singh glanced over his shoulder at them, sighing in frustration. “Foley, I know you said to scan for a high intensity of fingerprints on the wall, but this whole wall is fingerprints.” He nodded at Jacob. “Afternoon, sir.”

“Singh.” Jacob approached, studying the wall. “It’s very smoothly done, isn’t it?” He rubbed his short beard thoughtfully with his fingertips. “No visible buttons or latches anywhere?”

“None we could find,” Foley said. “I thought it might be a pressure-point system, but seems not. We requested an expert, but they’ve been delayed.”

“I think we need to un-delay them,” Jacob said, touching his earbud to activate it. “If Sanders is wounded and inside there, we need to get him out. If not, we need confirmation, because this could be an abduction.”

While they waited, Jacob had gone down to the laboratory to take another look at the whiteboards. He didn’t see what it had to do with Sanders’s work at the Temporal Research Institution. A quick search suggested the institution specialised in identifying historical discrepancies and confirming historical events. It could be something to do with locating old records and creating algorithms, he supposed. You would need a specialised engineer to do that.

“Sir?”

Jacob turned. “Foley?”

“The smith is here. I thought you might want to be present if he can open the door.”

They headed back up the stairs to the playroom. The body had been removed in the hour before the locksmith arrived, the crime scene unit now working their way out from the house across the grounds, searching for trace evidence of the intruders.

The locksmith was already working on the wall with a scanning device.

“Apparently,” Singh said, joining them, “all safe room doors come installed with a registration chip, in case the mechanism needs to be deactivated in an emergency.”

“Not unlike this,” Jacob observed. “Useful.”

The locksmith glanced over. “It’s a recent make. Give me two minutes.”

In the end, he took less than thirty seconds, and the door swung outward.

Inside, there was a room big enough for a family, but only one person was there. A small tawny-haired boy shrank back into the corner of the room, his arms wrapped around his legs, his face bone-white.

Jacob motioned for the smith and the two constables to back off, and crouched a couple of feet away from the door.

“Hey,” he murmured.

The boy was shivering, and tears rolled down his face from swollen, red-rimmed eyes.

Jacob took out his badge, laid it on the floor, and slid it across to the boy. “It’s okay. I’m a policeman. My name’s Jacob.” He watched as the boy tentatively leaned forward and looked at the badge. “Are you Ben?”

The boy nodded. “Where’s my dad?” His voice shook as much as he was.

“We’re trying to find him now.” Jacob offered a hand. “Do you want to come out? You don’t need to stay in there.”

“Dad told me to stay here.” Ben wrapped his arms tighter around his legs. “He told me to, until he came to get me.”

“I know.” Jacob knelt and sat back on his heels. “We want him to come and get you, too, Ben, but right now, I think he’d want you to be safe, don’t you? How about we keep you safe?”

“P-promise?”

Jacob nodded. “Promise.”

Ben got unsteadily to his feet. His trousers were sodden, and there was vomit on the front of his shirt. The poor kid must have been terrified. Jacob knelt up, offering both his hands, and Ben’s icy fingers wrapped around his.

“There you go,” Jacob said as gently as he could, drawing Ben back out. “You’re safe now.”

The little boy gave a sob and stumbled forward and wrapped his arms around Jacob’s neck, clinging to him. Jacob scooped him up and rose to his feet with the boy in his arms. He rubbed his hand in circles on Ben’s back.

“You’re okay,” he murmured. “You’re okay.”

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NineStar Press | Amazon

Meet the Author

C.B. Lewis has been making up nonsense since she was able to talk. Now, she puts it into computers and turns it into books. She is chuffed to bits to officially be yet another one of the collective of authors from Edinburgh. Find C.B. Lewis on Facebook.

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New Release Bitz: Send Lyawers, Guns, and Roses by Heloise West #ActionAdventure #LGBTQ @velvetpanic

 

Title: Send Lawyers, Guns, and Roses

Author: Heloise West

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: August 31, 2020

Heat Level: 3 - Some Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 76700

Genre: Contemporary, LGBTQIA+, Action/adventure, Established couple, Law enforcement, revenge, crime, vacation

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Synopsis

When Hunter and Alex are given the vacation of a lifetime, it’s a chance for them to pay attention to romance and get out of danger’s path. The tiny Caribbean island of Saba is gorgeous, the first to have marriage equality, and the Sabans are the nicest people on earth. There’s lots of rum poolside for relaxing and a room with a mirror on the ceiling for passion. Hot Karaoke nights, cold beer, and new friends.

Orfeo and Max, and Max’s sister Talisha, confide a troubling secret. Alex and Hunter want to help. As a hurricane bears down on them, a dead body surfaces and a purple backpack loaded with stolen jewels brings Derek Boyd, a jewel thief, into their lives. He wants his ex-boyfriend Max and the stolen jewels returned before the Russian mobster, who wants his wife’s jewels back, can catch up with him and exact his revenge.

Paradise is turning into hell on earth.

Excerpt

Send Lawyers, Guns, and Roses
Heloise West © 2020
All Rights Reserved

Alex

The door closed behind the last customer, and the noisy bar returned to silence, a booze-fumed, tacky-underfoot silence where the small noises Alex made seemed twice as loud. His ears rang as he picked up the broom to sweep out the crap on the floor behind the bar.

The front door opened again, and his shoulders tensed. He cursed himself for not locking it when he’d shoved out the last drunk patron, distracted by the e-mail he’d received. A rookie mistake. He groped under the bar for the bat the owner had urged him to use if he suspected he needed to.

“Excuse me,” the man in the doorway said. He’d been in the bar earlier, an Asian man along with a rather bland, nondescript white guy.

Alex looked closer, not letting go of the bat. “We’re closed. Need me to call a cab for you?”

The man appeared innocuous, but innocuous-looking people could still be trouble. The instincts Alex had honed all those months on the run had stayed with him. Director Flint’s warnings about retaliation flashed through his mind.

The guy opened his mouth to answer Alex’s question, but someone shoved him from behind before he could speak, and he stumbled. Alex grabbed the neck of the bat.

“Didja ask him? Is it him?” The pushy friend pressed himself forward a few steps, far drunker than his buddy.

“We’re. Closed.” Alex threw some menace behind the authority in his voice and revealed the bat. The Asian man flinched and grabbed at his friend, who fished in his pocket for something.

“It’s him. You. Boy Blue,” the drunk man burbled.

Alex froze, shifting gears. He tightened his grip on the bat. Anger fueled his ass up and over the bar to land a few feet in front of the drunk who pulled out a phone, aimed it in his direction, and blinded him with the flash.

“You fucker!” Alex reached out to slap the phone away—too late, because the man had thrust it back into his pocket. Alex smacked the bat against the tiles on the floor. It made a sharp, solid noise, and they both looked at him with drunken, slow-motion surprise. “Get out before I call the cops!”

“Asshole!” The first guy grabbed his friend again, shoved him out the door, and slammed it shut behind him.

Alex locked it this time and leaned against it, heart racing. When it began to slow, he took a deep breath and another, and his temper faded. He had a date tonight, and if he didn’t move his ass, he’d be late. Cranking up Dropkick Murphys to exorcise the intruders, Alex cleaned the place out in record time. Once done, he grabbed his phone and clicked on the video text. Happy Birthday! The handmade sign filled the screen. Alex smiled.

Bare feet on their unmade bed. Hunter wiggled his toes, and Alex laughed. The phone camera traveled along Hunter’s shins to his knees, all dusted with brown and copper-tinged hair, and as he bent his left knee, the sheet fell from his muscular thigh. Hey, the pointed birthday hat covered his… Hunter stretched like a big cat, and the tip of the hat rocked as he adjusted his hips. Alex swallowed hard, mesmerized as the camera swept across Hunter’s hips and flat belly, up the opposite side of his body, past an erect pink nipple, the tattoo, and the hairy armpit, along his biceps, which he flexed, then forearm to wrist and the silver bracelet around it. Alex’s heart gave a little lurch, beating faster. His boyfriend had handcuffed himself naked to the bed for his birthday.

Oh, honey. Alex groaned, grabbed his wallet and keys from the cash register, and ran for the door.

He jogged out into the warm June night, the sky clear and sparkling over Delingham as he jumped into the car. He hoped to get home without wrecking the care while Hunter’s video replayed in his head. His blood boiled for Hunter.

He drove through the quiet streets. Alex hadn’t wanted to come back to Delingham at all, but Hunter’s family had made sure the rent got paid on his apartment. At least they had a safe place to go to when Hunter recovered from Dale Markham’s accidental gunshot wound. Dale Markham, former FBI agent, rotting in jail—someplace hot, Alex hoped, good practice for when he got to hell. Nick Truman, too, but a big black hole existed where he’d once been. Maybe they had put him in Witness Protection like Nick had hoped. The case against the two men who had murdered Alex’s uncle had become a nonissue, since before they could be taken into custody, someone had killed them.

Nothing like thinking about those things to defeat his raging hard-on, so he blasted out Dropkick Murphys again to fuel up the testosterone.

“Here I come, baby,” he murmured.

Not finding a parking spot near the apartment building set him seething and grinding his teeth. His lot in life had improved, but not his temper. He dropped the keys twice on the front stairs and made it through the door before he considered alerting Hunter. Alex texted—coming up now—and smiled to think again of Hunter there, waiting, naked, and handcuffed to the bed. They’d talked about playing like this but hadn’t got around to it yet. In the video, Hunter had kept the wounded leg covered; he hated the scar, the asymmetry where they’d taken part of the muscle during surgery. Doing better after a pretty deep depression before his physical therapist motivated him on the road to getting back in shape.

Yeah, we’re doing good.

Alex kicked away his shoes and whipped off his socks. “It’s me!” In the bedroom, both the music and the lights were low. Alex opened the door, grinning from ear to ear. Hunter grinned back at him, naked on the bed, the party hat on his head tipped at a rakish angle. A second set of cuffs dangled off the tips of his fingers. Alex pulled his shirt up and over his head, wrecking his hair, but he didn’t care. Hunter’s eyes were on him; Alex wanted Hunter drinking him in as much as Alex drank in Hunter. Alex had set himself up with a rigorous workout schedule to prep for the physical part of the special agent application process. He didn’t know for sure if he’d get accepted, but the real payoff lay in Hunter’s eyes.

Alex worked the zipper of his jeans. “Have you been waiting long?” He stripped off his jeans and underwear.

“I’m fine. Come and have your birthday cake.” Hunter laughed, the sexy, dirty laugh Alex loved. Hunter’s whole body moved in a sinuous, inviting wiggle, and the cuffs rattled. Alex’s cock and heart led him right into the bed like the needle on a compass pointing true north. He straddled Hunter, their legs tangling together in the sheets. He ran his hands over Hunter’s bulging biceps; he and Hunter had been working out together.

Hunter, his dream of love, impossible, unreachable. His selfishness for staying with Hunter kept him awake at night, tossing and turning, his head filled with fear. Vargas or Truman would take Hunter from him, from the world, and he’d be left to live out his days without Hunter, knowing he had been the one to cause his death.

Alex kissed Hunter to burn away his fears. When he put his hand down on the bed to brace himself, he touched the second set of cuffs. “I can’t believe you did this for me.”

“I guess you liked the video?”

Alex froze for a moment, like he had in the bar when the drunk guy had called him Boy Blue. Looking around, he found the webcam on the nightstand beside Hunter’s laptop and moved it into the top drawer.

“Ah,” Hunter said. “I thought you might want to make a sex tape, you know, for us?” He smiled cute and sexy, but Alex shook his head.

“I want my cake.” He nibbled Hunter’s neck.

“Did something happen in the bar tonight?” Hunter’s eyes were so light blue they appeared gray, but this close they were dark with concern. “You looked worried there for a minute.”

“Nothing to worry about,” Alex assured him, hoping he spoke the truth.

“Okay?” Hunter bucked his hips under his. “Come on, baby. Let’s go. I’ve been lying here thinking about you and all the things you’re going to do to me when you get home.”

“You look good enough to eat. And lick.” Alex flicked his tongue across the letters of Hunter’s tattoo. When he took a hard little nipple in his mouth, Hunter arched his body with a moan, and Alex tightened his thighs around him. Hunter pulled at the cuffs. They rattled again, the play of straining muscle in his arms mesmerizing Alex. He unwrapped Hunter like a present, pulling the sheets from them both until they were naked. As he reached for the lube, he tightened one hand around both their cocks and squeezed and stroked them together. Hunter’s groans set his blood on fire, and he strained to keep from sinking into Hunter’s ass and fucking the daylights out of him.

“So ready for you.” He moaned, arching up against Alex, the heated slide of their skin making Alex shiver. “Come on, tiger.”

Alex moved Hunter’s wrist to the headboard and cuffed his other hand to the top of the wooden frame.

Monogamy had freed them from the tyranny of condoms. Hunter’s hot and ready flesh welcomed Alex, wrapping around his aching cock like a velvet glove, and he pummeled the soft nub of Hunter’s prostate until his body fell under Alex’s control. No wrestling with his bossy bottom—Hunter took what Alex gave him, and Alex gave everything he had. He stared into Hunter’s eyes as he fucked him, the eye contact a live wire between them while he drove into Hunter, so sexy, so much love.

“Coming,” Hunter groaned out, tears in his eyes. “Oh, God…Alex…I love you.”

Alex couldn’t form words. Hunter had melted his brain. Alex stroked him until he came in Alex’s hands, crying out his name as orgasm racked his body. Alex didn’t hold back anymore and came like a rocket.

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Meet the Author

Heloise West, when not hunched over the keyboard plotting love and mayhem, dreams about moving to a villa in Tuscany. She loves history, mysteries, and romance. She travels and gardens with her partner of fifteen years, and their home overflows with books, cats, art, and red wine.

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Release Blitz: Ge-Mi --Part One by Mell Eight

Title: Ge-Mi: Part One

Author: Mell Eight

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: March 16, 2020

Heat Level: 2 - Fade to Black Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 33900

Genre: paranormal fantasy, LGBTQIA+, MM romance, opposites attract, genetically modified humans, law enforcement, restaurant server, men with pets, cat rescue

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Synopsis

A hundred years ago, evil scientists spliced human genes with those of animals, creating a genetic mutation passed on through the generations. Hated because of their differences, these Ge-Mis live on the fringes of society where they scrounge and scrape to get by.

Nevada is half Ge-Mi and hides that fact behind baggy clothes and by keeping distance between himself and everyone around him. One day, his peaceful life is shattered by an explosion and the arrival of a pack of wolves to sniff out the culprit.

Wolves have excellent noses and as Alpha, Taylor can sniff out every one of Nevada’s secrets—and the harder Nevada tries to resist, the more difficult staying away from Taylor becomes.

Excerpt

Ge-Mi: Part One
Mell Eight © 2020
All Rights Reserved

Prologue
In the waiting room, people milled about restlessly. There weren’t any chairs provided for the supplicants, nor for the onlookers who were only there to enjoy the show. Handing over a bribe wasn’t supposed to be a comfortable experience, after all.

Nevada stood in a corner, the backpack containing the only thing he had that would suit as a bribe clutched carefully in his arms. Rosto stood next to Nevada, one shoulder pressed indolently against the wall. He was older than Nevada by at least twenty years, his hair grayed at the temples, but his back still strong and unbent. Rosto had done this before—brought a supplicant with his bribe—and he had a personal connection with the lord of the city. Rosto wasn’t worried, but Nevada was.

It had only been six months since Mom had died. They hadn’t had the money or the resources to get her proper health care, and her cold had turned deadly far too quickly for Nevada’s three part-time jobs to pay for a doctor’s bill. It wasn’t just that the doctor was expensive, but payoff money for his silence was too much. Nevada would have risked it for Mom’s sake, but Mom had put her shaking and weak foot down and the matter was settled.

After that, Nevada hadn’t been able to stay in that house or city. The hiding was a fact of life, but he hoped the melancholy could be alleviated with a new home and a new start. Nevada had arrived in Kensey three days ago and found an apartment whose owner didn’t mind pets. The down payment had sapped the last of his hastily scraped-together funds, so Nevada had gone job hunting.

Rosto’s café was quaint and in need of a full-time waiter. The pay was decent and the hours reasonable. But in Kensey, things worked differently than Nevada’s old home. The lord in Kensey wanted a direct bribe from every citizen; the previous lord didn’t pay any mind to peons like Nevada. Had Nevada known he had to meet with the lord directly and provide a bribe that, if accepted, was his ticket to having any sort of life in Kensey, he might have chosen to settle in a different city with a different lord.

The room fell silent quickly, almost suddenly, as a side door opened. The man who stepped into the room first was clearly a guard. He was wearing a light layer of armor, the bluish metal vibrant against his dark skin, and a large laser gun at his hip. His hard eyes surveyed the room once before he stepped aside. The second man who walked into the room looked like he was Rosto’s age, somewhere in his late fifties. His blond hair disguised whatever gray may have been present, but the crow’s feet around his blue eyes revealed his true age.

“Where is Taylor?” the lord asked his guard. They both walked to the front of the room where a very large desk built of thick, dark wood was positioned. It was intimidating, but that was probably the point.

“Off with his wolves,” the guard replied stiffly.

“That boy,” the lord grumbled. “All right, let’s get started.”

A third man stepped forward from where he had been standing off to the side of the desk. He was holding a datapad from which he read out the first name.

A woman and her two young children approached the foot of the desk. She needed help finding her layabout husband. He owed her back wages for childcare, and she wanted him to pay up. Her bribe was a gold necklace with a ruby in the center, which would have paid for the childcare handsomely.

“She’s after revenge,” Rosto explained under his breath. “Her husband was a cheat, and she wants what’s rightfully owed to her because she knows he’ll suffer for it. Lord Reyes prefers supplicants ask for something meaningful, instead of straight out asking for something purely selfish. He’s a good man.”

Nevada hoped so because he didn’t have anything nearly as nice as a ruby necklace in his bag.

For the next half hour, he watched as fancy watches, jewelry, and other expensive items were offered to Lord Reyes in return for favors. Some of them Lord Reyes agreed to, like the woman looking for childcare money, but others he denied. He didn’t return the bribes either way.

“Rosto Gregorio,” the steward called.

“That’s us,” Rosto grunted as he pushed off the wall. He strode forward, unconcerned, and Nevada hurried to follow.

They reached the desk and stopped a few feet away. Rosto bowed, and Nevada copied him a beat too late.

“How’s the café?” Lord Reyes asked, a smile on his face. It was the first smile Nevada had seen from him. He apparently was interested in what Rosto had to say.

“We’re expanding the kitchen at the moment,” Rosto immediately began to explain. “Putting in four ovens so we can sell fresh-baked goods as well. We’re also adding outside tables for the summer, which means I need additional waitstaff. I’m looking to hire Nevada here.”

Lord Reyes turned his attention to Nevada, and Nevada fought not to squirm. He needed the job, which meant Lord Reyes had to like him.

“New to the area, too, I believe,” Lord Reyes said. “Has all the appropriate paperwork been filed?”

“As of last night,” Rosto replied. “All it needs is your seal of approval.”

Lord Reyes nodded. “You’ll have to come over for dinner and tell me about your renovations,” he said to Rosto. His attention switched back to Nevada. “What have you brought to entice me to allow you to live and work in my city?”

Nevada gulped and reached into his bag. He knew what he looked like. He had a ragged bandana tied tightly over his head, his long-sleeve shirt was threadbare and unraveling at the cuffs, and his loose jeans had a darned hole in one knee. The clothes were baggy, too, but Nevada had to hide a pair of cat ears and a tail beneath his outfit. He looked poor, but hopefully that meant Lord Reyes wouldn’t look any deeper at what Nevada was hiding. Hopefully, it also meant he wasn’t expecting anything extravagant as Nevada’s bribe.

Nevada pulled the fluffiest, whitest cat he had ever fostered out of the bag and gently placed her on the desk.

“This is Princess Pea. She likes big houses and lots of attention. She’s also very particular about what blankets she sleeps on. I thought you might like to have her company.”

The waiting room had gone silent. It was even quieter than when Lord Reyes had first walked into the room. Yes, it wasn’t a ruby necklace, but surely a beautiful cat wasn’t so bad. Nevada fought to keep from turning to look around the room.

Lord Reyes’s eyes had frozen in a hard glare. “Is this a joke?” he snapped.

Nevada bit his lip, wondering how to answer that. Maybe live animals weren’t acceptable as a bribe? Before he could formulate an answer, Princess Pea took over. She sauntered across the desk toward Lord Reyes and hopped down into his lap where she promptly began to purr furiously. One of Lord Reyes’s hands involuntarily drifted to his lap where he began to pet her soft fur.

“Fine,” Lord Reyes snapped. “Six months’ probation. Rosto will come report to me then, and I’ll decide whether to accept you in my city. I’ll even make sure Princess here isn’t eaten,” he added cryptically.

Rosto bowed, one of his hands pushing on Nevada’s shoulder to force Nevada to bow also. Then that hand pushed Nevada toward the door.

“I can’t believe you got away with that!” Rosto breathed once they were out of the waiting room and headed toward the building exit.

“Got away with what?” Nevada asked, glad to be away from Lord Reyes.

Rosto laughed, but he didn’t sound amused. “You gave Lord Reyes a cat. That’s practically the ultimate insult.”

“Oh,” Nevada mumbled, feeling his shoulders droop. He had six months, at least, which was enough time to save up before he had to move to another new city.

“Where did you find that cat anyway?” Rosto asked as they reached the main doors and headed out into the parking lot.

“I find cats everywhere,” Nevada replied with a shrug. “I have a beautiful tortoiseshell looking for a new home, if you’re interested.”

Rosto unlocked the car without answering. Nevada got in and buckled his seat belt. The engine whirred to life, and the hydraulics bounced them gently into the air. The car flew toward the city down the hill, Rosto guiding them along in silence. They stopped a few minutes later outside Nevada’s apartment building.

“No more cats where Lord Reyes is concerned, okay?” Rosto said. The car idled in the air for a few seconds as the hydraulics engaged and the car drifted to the ground. “You start on Monday, 9:00 a.m. sharp.”

Nevada got out of the car and stepped onto the curb. Rosto waved goodbye before sending the car streaking upward again.

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Meet the Author

When Mell Eight was in high school, she discovered dragons. Beautiful, wondrous creatures that took her on epic adventures both to faraway lands and on journeys of the heart. Mell wanted to create dragons of her own, so she put pen to paper. Mell Eight is now known for her own soaring dragons, as well as for other wonderful characters dancing across the pages of her books. While she mostly writes paranormal or fantasy stories, she has been seen exploring the real world once or twice.

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Release Blitz: A Touch of Danger by Elaine White

Title:  A Touch of Danger

Series: Surviving Vihaan, Book One

Author: Elaine White

Publisher:  NineStar Press

Release Date: February 10, 2020

Heat Level: 3 - Some Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 66400

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

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

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

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

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

Excerpt

A Touch of Danger

Elaine White © 2020

All Rights Reserved

Chapter One

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

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

“Through a fraternity house?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It helps.”

“Yeah. You! It won’t help me much.”

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

“I happen to like being a hermit.”

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

Nothing like short notice.

“No wire,” he decided.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not a shred.

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Meet the Author

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

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

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

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