It was an early summer evening, the sun half set. I was making my way to the door with one of the club’s boozeless Bloody Marys to find a deck chair and keep an eye on whoever came up the stairs. Decide what I wanted after sunset.

The door opened before I could touch it. He paused, backlit by the setting sun. Golden. Glowing. Idealized male beauty wrapped in an invisible cloak of incredible power. He was so careless of it. He scanned me and grinned. As if the sight of me delighted him. No one grinned here. Not with genuine pleasure.

He passed close to me, still scanning. It was the kind of moment that called for locked gazes and hardening cocks. Instead, he happily looked me over like I was a pastry display and he was deciding which succulent treat to select.

Cam was fresh from deep powder and Olympic triumph. Exuding health and vitality and bonhomie and danger.

I wanted to give him everything, simply because he existed. And looked at me.

He reached out and put a hand on the side of my neck, his thumb skating lightly along my jawline and down, across my larynx. My insides turned to water.

Don’t pick me. Please.

His eyes narrowed a little as if he’d heard. His hand tightened – scarcely, definitely – and withdrew.

“Kneel for me when you’re ready,” he said. And was gone.

Cam looked out the window, leaving me to myself while I drove us through the quiet dark of the Capitol Hill streets. I wondered why this killer wasn’t perfectly obvious to me. I wondered if it was impossible for me to see them, being so close that everything blurred at the edges and melded together.

“Did anyone ever tell you, you think too much?” Cam asked.

“Did anyone ever not?”

“Take the next alley,” he told me.

“What? Why?”

“You need to stop thinking.”

“Cam,” I put a warning in my voice. “There’s not much time-“

The bastard grabbed the wheel and cranked it hard right.

“Shit!”

“Steer!”

I lifted my foot off the gas, or tried to. He had his left hand on my thigh just above my knee, digging in, pressing down.

“Stop it, goddamn it!”

“Pull into that parking lot.”

“Alright! Just let go, for Christ’s sake!”

He released me instantly and sat back. I managed to miss the light pole and the dumpster and slide into a parking space behind a converted Victorian housing psychologists’ offices. An appropriate place to stop when riding with a no limits lunatic.

The offices were dark, now, but the mosquito bulb over the back door and the security lights at the rear of the building illuminated the lot. And the car’s interior. Anyone walking by could see us. If they saw us in flagrante delicto, they’d call the cops.

Cam had gone too far. I shut off the engine but before I could turn and bust his ass, his fingers found my seat belt release and he launched himself up and over the console into my space, his big hands slid down my arms toward my wrists. I twisted sideways and we wrestled for control of my hands.

I was at a distinct disadvantage under the steering wheel. He bent me toward him and my head was on his thigh.

“Stop it, Cam! Not now, we are not playing!”

He fell back into his seat, taking me with him and manacled me with one hand. But we were sweaty from the struggle and I managed to break his grip, freeing my hands.

He didn’t try to regain them. He simply raised himself and laid his body over mine. My head pressed into his crotch, his weight forced me onto the hard lump of the console.

“You can always safeword you know,” he said. I heard the challenge. The taunting. He was having fun.

“Fuck you,” I grunted underneath him.

I’d never safe worded in my life. Not to “red,” anyway. “Yellow” a few times when I had a cramp or was on call and my cell went off with a dispatch tone.

Safewording might have been an option for me now, if his power and the idea of being at his mercy, of which he possessed none, hadn’t given me a blazing erection.

He’d been betting I wouldn’t go there—confident I wouldn’t safeword. He really was good at this.

I felt his hand at my belt in back. Handcuffs. A thrill of fear and excitement made me choke on air. I struggled again, just enough to feel my inability to stop him from doing exactly what he intended. Jesus, I was hard, weeping against my thigh, trapped by the elastic briefs.

My legs were twisted and caught under the steering wheel. His body locked my right arm against the seatback. He deftly handcuffed my left wrist and calmly found my right and ratcheted the other cuff around it.

This was not the infamous Dom of the club, calculatedly giving me what I needed. Not the sexual virtuoso of last night, expertly bringing me everything I never knew I wanted. Pleasures I never thought existed.

This was the sadist in his element. Loving what he did to me because of what it did for him.

Then, suddenly, I knew who the killer was.

The Mystery

“You are familiar with the Tamil burial jars case I’m hearing?” the judge asked as she led him into her chambers.

“Enough to know the case exists,” he said, putting his professional face on. Why would they need a homicide investigator for an international property dispute? “I should mention I’m acquainted with Doctor St Clair who was appointed head of the research team.”

“I see,” she said, taking her chair but not inviting him to sit. “Do I have to go over confidentiality? I was informed with you it wouldn’t be necessary.”

“It isn’t,” he said.

“Good.” She sat forward and clasped her hands on the desk. “Expert testimony the Court finds to be compelling establishes the impossibility of determining the geographic origin of the jars or when they were created and sealed without extensive testing. There will be a problem of international relations if I award the urns to the Denver museum and later testing reveals clearly that the plaintiff did have standing.”

Hunter nodded. The judge cocked a skeptical eyebrow at him. “You understand the issue?”

“It will look as if we must have known all along and used a technicality in the law to keep the jars here. I imagine they have more than scientific value?” he said.

A slow and very small smile appeared. “Have a seat,” she told him. He did.

“At my request, Doctor St Clare sent a doctoral fellow to take air samples from the jars to determine how long ago they were sealed. That was ten days ago. I received the results on Friday. So did the attorneys. After which, I issued a gag order.”

Hunter waited for her to get to the point.

“I’m curious, detective, what you would guess the tests showed?”

“At least one of the air samples had a much higher level of carbon dioxide than would be present when the jars were made. And traces of methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulphide and nitrogen. Decomp gases.”

Her Honor nodded.

“There’s flesh rotting in one of those jars and it wasn’t put there a thousand years ago,” Hunter said.

Buy Links

Amazon US | Amazon UK

How did you decide on the titles of your books?

On His Knees is what Hunter did for Cam. Matchstick Men is from the game but also from the song and a painting. It’s all in the story and appendix at the end of the book.

Dancing Men is from Conan Doyle’s story of the same name. I have a whole set of covers with the figures on them. But, I had also written a screenplay, a romantic comedy, set in a dance studio. I had all these dance quotes and metaphors about relationships in my head. It was just kind of inevitable, really. It’s where they are.

What are you working on at present? Would you like to share a snippet?

I’m working on a short with a peripheral character from Matchstick and Dancing. I’ve had it in my head for a while. And I don’t have enough to give you a snippet. How about the first line:

“How is it when I say ‘Go away and don’t come back,’ you hear ‘Come over and shove your dick up my ass’?”

It’s about a guy at the moment of change, like walking through a doorway to a new life. His doorway just involves a LOT of surprisingly hot sex considering the circumstances.

What was the hardest part of writing your book?

Other writers will hate me but, really, none of it. I love writing. I love waking up and knowing I can go do it. I like all the parts. I can’t help it, I really do.

Did you learn anything from writing your book? What was it?

I always learn from writing books. I have a huge list of research sites from the three. I post them on my blogs. Here’s Dancing: https://dancingmenadiraaugust.blogspot.com/p/links.html

One thing I learned is that our government brings suit against things. That’s in the List – Why Does the Government Sue Inanimate Objects?

Do you have any advice for other writers?

Well, I’ve been writing for money for decades now, though I just started on prose fiction. So, my advice is: learn your craft. Not that we ever completely do. I mean, if we are blessed with talent, yay. But no one will care without craft.

Are there any genres you prefer to write and if so, why? 

I’m really enjoying M/M. I love being able to delve into a relationship and leave the sexual politics outside. Men and women are very different for very good reasons. I go into that a lot in the Desire for series. But it takes up room!

Hunt and Cam is more straightforward in some ways, which leaves time to expand on hso complex and different they are, just as people. It’s quite powerful to only have one gender. And I get to be with two hot guys doing hot stuff a lot. So winner!

Why M/M?

I had no choice, Hunter kidnapped me and took me to see Cam. I got hooked like everybody else.

Do you have any genres you prefer reading, and if so what are they?

When I read, just for myself, I often read screenplays. I read a lot of non-fiction.

I read for work in that I read lots and lots of MM erotica titles. But I read like, the first ten pages and if the author hasn’t engaged me or the writing makes me wince too many times, I move on.

I often talk about Alexis Hall, who is brilliant. People will be reading him decades from now. I think Kevin Woodward is going to be around a long time and just get better and better. Joseph Lance Tonlet’s Grif’s Toy is a pure pleasure. Nikky Kaye is a friend of mine. She’s really coming into her own now with her m/f romantic comedies. Um, sex drenched – okay, not that much, but they aren’t Hanks and Ryan, you know?

Are any of your characters based on you or people you know?

The places are. The BDSM club is based on a real place. Ben Hart’s castle has a “moat” with a sign that says “Fish Have Right of Way.” That’s a real sign at a real house with a real stream running through it.

Hunter is physically based on a guy I knew, so is Cam. Both beautiful men. But the boys quickly usurped that and became unique.

Are you a panster or a plotter?

No way to plot. It’s more like it comes from outside me and some writer in the ether worked it out and I’m just downloading.

Do you write often? Do you have a schedule?

Pretty much every day. I get antsy if I don’t write. My schedule is, I get up, turn on the computer, and write. I live my life in the breaks.