Come Unto These Yellow Sands (23 page)

I knew what was next and I consciously relaxed my muscles as I felt his warm hand spreading the silky lotion in the cleft of my ass.

This was it. I shifted, allowing him better access, trying not to tense as J.X. pushed his finger through the tight band of muscle. It was invasive, certainly, but it was electrifying too. I bit my lip, trying not to make any sound that might be mistaken for pain. It was a bit uncomfortable, but the wicked pleasure of J.X. touching me there melted any resistance I might have had.

Some things are sweeter than revenge.

Bad Company

© 2011 K.A. Mitchell

“I need a boyfriend.”

Hearing those words from the mouth of his very straight
ex
-friend is enough to make columnist and editor Nate Gray choke on his Corona. It’s been thirteen years since Kellan Brooks’s father crushed Nate’s family on his climb to wealth and power. Even longer since he entrusted Kellan with the confession that he might be gay—only to have his best friend out and humiliate him to their entire high school. The last thing Nate expects is Kellan begging for his help.

Breaking off his engagement to a senator’s daughter was the last straw for Kellan’s CEO father. Frustrated at being cut off, his father’s stinging words—that he wishes Kellan had never been born—still ringing in his ears, Kellan turns to Nate. In a move worthy of a corporate raider, Kellan plans the ultimate revenge. Come out as the boyfriend of the man his homophobic father betrayed.

Convincing Nate to play along isn’t easy. It’s even harder to figure out why the lie feels so close to the truth.

Warning: Contains old friends, old enemies, a dramatic cat rescue, soft drink references and a lot of teasing before the steamy sex. Readers are cautioned against drinking any beverage while reading to avoid accidental snorting or spraying of said beverages.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Bad Company:

Broad chest stretching out another of Nate’s T-shirts, Kellan lay sprawled across most of the bed when Nate finally made it through the door at two. Tomorrow Nate could sleep in, unless there was an emergency with the printing and distribution. After he got out of the bathroom, he surveyed the landscape by the light from the streetlight on the corner and executed an acrobatic arch around Yin to find a spot on the mattress.

As soon as Nate got the sheet over him and his pillow precisely the way he wanted it, Kellan flopped an arm over Nate’s hips.

“Shove over, Kell.” The déjà vu from those three words made Nate smile until an equally strong frisson of agony had him bolt up, feet on the floor. Because this wasn’t one of those hundred times they’d been tucked together in Nate’s bed as kids, when a shove from a hand or a hip meant nothing more than friendship. Now he was surrounded by the smell of Kellan’s skin, the sound of his breath, drowning in the need to roll on top of Kellan and put way more into him than his tongue.

“What’s wrong? Drunk again?” Kellan’s voice sounded deeper than usual in the dark.

“I’m fine. Just thought of something about the paper.”

Nate heard Kellan drop hard onto his back.

“Yeah, the paper.” Kellan’s laugh was more breath than sound. “At least you haven’t cut yourself off from ever getting laid again. While every guy you were ever friends with is wondering if you take it up the ass.”

“Christ, Kellan, then why the fuck did you do this?” Nate spun around to face him, moving so abruptly Yin took off to find a quieter spot. She paused by the kitchen island to level an evil glowing glare in his direction.

Kellan sat up and dragged a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I guess it seemed like a good idea. I mean, I still think it’s a good idea, but it feels weird.”

Nate turned back to face the window. “Yeah. Weird. I get that.” A Kellan a lot hotter than anything Nate remembered, who he got to sleep next to and kiss but not really touch, was about as weird as it got.

Kellan laughed, an audible chuckle this time. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so weird if I actually was doing what everyone’s going to think I’m doing.”

“What are you saying? You want to be doing it?” Nate turned on the bed so he could watch Kellan’s face in the light from the street. Was Kellan trying to ask Nate for it?

Kellan shrugged.

Nate launched himself on top of Kellan, pinning him on his back with hands on his shoulders, and leaned close to his ear. “You want me to fuck you, is that it? You want my dick in your ass, Kellan?”

Kellan’s lips curled in before he spoke. “I didn’t say that.” But Kellan didn’t try to shove Nate off. Broad shoulders flinched under Nate’s hands.

Nate wanted to scream in frustration. This was another one of Kellan’s games, to get Nate to go far enough so that Kellan could laugh it off as a joke and make Nate the aggressor who took things too seriously.

“I might be doing this for my own reasons, but I’m not that much of a whore.” Nate sat up, still straddling Kellan’s hips, and lunged across to the end-table drawer. Tossing the lube and the dildo on Kellan’s chest, Nate said, “Try it out and let me know what you think. Practice sucking it too. I’m not into virgins.”

He swung off Kellan and stood up.

Kellan rolled onto his side facing Nate, picked up the dildo and tossed it at his feet. “Now I know why you’ve got one of those. You’re such a self-righteous prick you’re the only one good enough to fuck you.”

Nate gaped at him, hands curling into fists. He’d never wanted to punch someone before in his life.

“That’s right,” Kellan went on. “You may not be whore enough to fuck me, but you’re whore enough to fake a big gay love for revenge. Get off your high horse, Nathan. This is so much more about my dad than saving the city from some evil corporation.”

“Do you know what it did to my dad? Did you hear what happened when old Geoffrey went public with the energy-drink formula he stole from my dad? KZ Cola threatened to put him in jail for industrial espionage and theft. We lost our house. Everything.”

Kellan’s face, pale against the shadows, grew dark as he flushed. “I didn’t know all that.”

“No. You were too busy at your new school, in your new mansion, to worry about that. Not that you even gave a shit about me then.”

“I could try to fucking apologize again, but I don’t know what the hell would be good enough for you. I’m sorry I wasn’t born perfect. I’m sorry your life sucked. What was I supposed to do?”

“You were supposed to be there, Kellan.” It was Nate’s turn to shove the scar on his forearm under Kellan’s nose. Nate kept his voice low and tight so it wouldn’t break with the still-raw memory of that betrayal. “I never let you down. What happened to you?”

Nate was learning to read this older Kellan. The lip biting Kellan had done when he was anxious had become a quick pull in between his teeth, pushing it out to make his bottom lip fuller.

This time though, Kellan bit his lower lip so hard Nate thought there’d be blood. “I turned into a dick. Does that make you happy?”

“No.”

Kellan glanced over at the clock on the table. “Shit. I’m supposed to be back at the café at six thirty.” He ran a hand over his face. “Unless you’re going to toss my ass on the street.”

“No. I promised you could stay.”

“Right. Noble Nate.” Kellan stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“Newsflash: we ordinary people have to take a piss every once in a while.”

If Nate climbed into bed now, maybe he could fall asleep before Kellan got out of the bathroom. One of the things about knowing someone for a long time was that you could always save the argument for later. That was, until you ran out of laters.

Can love repair a shattered life in time to save the world?

The Salisbury Key

© 2011 Harper Fox

Daniel Logan is on a lonely quest to find out what drove his lover, a wealthy, respected archaeologist, to take his own life. The answer—the elusive “key” for which Jason was desperately searching—lies somewhere on a dangerous and deadly section of Salisbury Plain.

The only way to gain access, though, is to allow an army explosives expert to help him navigate the bomb-riddled military zone. A man he met once more than three years ago, who is even more serious and enigmatic than before.

Lieutenant Rayne has better things to do than risk his life protecting a scientist on an apparent suicide mission. Like get back to Iraq and prove he will never again miss another roadside bomb. Yet as he helps Dan uncover the truth, an attraction neither man is in the mood for springs up against their will. And stirs up the nervous attention of powerfully placed people—military and academic alike.

First in conflict, then in passion, Rayne and Dan are drawn together in a relationship as rocky and complicated as the ancient land they search. Where every step leads them closer to a terrible legacy written in death…

Warning: Contains bombs, archaeology and explicit M/M sex, not necessarily in that order.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
The Salisbury Key:

I had tensed up momentarily, almost unable to bear this new touch. Now, having let go and leaned briefly into it, I could hardly bear the thought of it stopping. I eased back, ending it myself. I wanted his passion, didn’t I? That was all. “I know,” I said. “I know. Thank you. Now come to… Come with me.”

Because
come to bed
was a problem. I was still sleeping on my own side of the double up there, and what I should have spent today doing was clearing out Jason’s clothes, which I didn’t need, not pretending to sort through his books, which I did. I tried to envisage rolling around in the sheets I still hadn’t changed, the wardrobes looking on in silent witness. I came to a halt in the hallway and felt Rayne gently collide with me. We both looked through the open living-room door at the sofa.

I said faintly, “What do you… What do you want?”

“Christ, Logan. I think I want you to fuck me, and I’m not even sure what that entails.”

I felt my eyes widen. “Not seriously.”

“What—about the fucking…?”

“No, you idiot—about the not
knowing
. I can’t—”

He cut me off impatiently. “No, for God’s sake. I know the—biological details. I just can’t imagine it being good.”

“Well, I’ll attempt to show you, but…” The sofa wouldn’t do for that. Quite apart from recent memories of Jase ploughing me down onto it—he loved that, to consummate passion while people went about their ordinary business, back and forth on the pavement outside—I needed space, or the demo would end up just as uncomfortable and awkward as Rayne probably feared.

I saw him seeing my problem. He was so alert. I could imagine being in a relationship with him, enjoying his delicious quickness, the sense of his being in pace at my side. No. Just a fuck. A good one, for preference, but that would be all.

He glanced upstairs and made a wry face at me. “I get it. Want to go to a hotel?”

Now there was a certain seedy, dreadful charm in that. Salisbury wasn’t long on establishments where you could book an afternoon room, but maybe we could find somewhere. Stay overnight to make it look good, screw each other blind and stupid and maybe get all this out of our systems in one fell swoop.

I swallowed, feeling faintly sick. That prospect felt worse—by just one shade, but definitely—than doing it in Jason’s bed on the day after his funeral. “God, no.”

“Okay. Well—don’t you have a spare room up there?”

I thought about it.
Dan’s rumpus room
, Jase had once called it, in affectionate disgust, passing by its open door. “Yes,” I said. “Of sorts.”

“Neutral ground?”

“Just about.” It would have to be. Apparently there wasn’t enough guilt in the world to stop me starting my slow burn. Heat like summer lightning, flickering all over the surface of my skin… He saw that problem too, and this time he didn’t say anything. He just took my hand.

So we each took up a position on either side of the bed, and between us we cleared it in painful silence. I would have felt much better if he’d laughed at me for my untidiness or for the range of my taste in books. I hadn’t always been a serious-minded student, and there were layers of history here—Frederick Forsyth novels and training manuals from the short time in my life when I’d wanted to be a commercial airline pilot.

But Rayne had thoughts of his own to occupy him. His hands moved efficiently, lifting off one stack after another. Eventually the mattress appeared. There was a pale blue undersheet on it, but that was all. I reached to brush dust off this and to tug it straight.

“God,” I said. “That looks a bit clinical. I’ll go and get a duvet.”

“No,” he said. I looked up at him. He was standing with his hands on his hips, surveying the mattress in much the same way as I’d seen him assess our next bit of dangerous ground on the plain. “Don’t. Putting a duvet over this isn’t gonna make it any better.”

I straightened up. Leaning on the wall, I folded my arms. “Better?” I echoed. There were things that I could tackle in a lover—initial shyness, mistaken ideas about anatomy—and things that I could not. Things that people had to straighten out for themselves. “Do you think what we’re going to do is bad?”

“What—morally? God, no. It just doesn’t fit…what I thought I was. What I thought I was going to be.”

“Which is?”

He shrugged. “Very boring. Wife and kids.”

With anyone else, I’d have laughed. I wondered what he thought was going to happen to him here on the spare-room mattress that would deprive him of the power to marry and reproduce. But he was pale, the rainy light and the expanse of sheet setting tired, nervous shadows under his cheekbones and eyes.

I said, “You can still have those things, can’t you? Did it ever occur to you that not getting killed in Iraq might be a better idea, if that’s what you really want?”

“Oh, I don’t really want them. I just…” He went to the window and carefully pulled at the cords of the blind until the slats were almost closed. Then he turned to face me. “Do you know what I wanted? I wanted to find some poor woman, marry her and squeeze a handful of kids out of her. Then be a perfect husband and father for the rest of my life, so I could shove my perfect fucking family in the face of…something that I don’t think even exists anymore.”