Boone faced me, tucking his foot under his knee like before and heaving a deep sigh. “Yes, Mason,” he began, in his best let-me-explain-like-you’re-a-child voice, “but it could still be fun. Anna said the game is kind of based on a study that helped people get to know each other. I mean, unless you have some deep dark secret you don’t want me to know about,” Boone added and raised his eyebrows in challenge.

Secret? Oh, you know, just one that would destroy my friendship with Bennett and send my carefully planned life careening into a brick wall. How the hell was I supposed to handle this? My whole body felt off kilter and I didn’t like it one bit. All these years, I thought I had a handle on my reactions to him, but this wasn’t the Boone I was used to. It was almost—almost—like Boone was flirting with me. I had no idea how to act. I felt like a virgin with a first crush. What did I do with my hands when he was this close to me? Touching me?

For fuck’s sake, I was acting like a teen again. This night was messing with my head. It was all I could do to remember to breathe when he looked at me with those big beautiful hazel eyes. Memories of those awkward months after I’d first fallen for him rushed back to me and I felt a little panicky.

Boone watched me, waiting for an answer, but I knew saying no wasn’t an option. As if I could say no to him. Not when he looked so hopeful and adorable. I blew out a breath and shook my head in defeat. I glared at him when he laughed. Bastard.

“See you later.” He stood, grabbed his tray, and handed it to Hailey without a smile. As Gavin headed out the door, her gaze jumped from his back to Cole.

“He’s so scary.”

“What? Gavin? No, he’s…He was raised by wolves, hence the lack of manners.” Wolves and a shitty mother. People who didn’t know him would never guess, but Gavin’s biggest fear was to be abandoned, and to prevent it, he kept people at arm’s length.

“Okay?”

Gavin raised one eyebrow at him, but the normally teasing look lacked something. “I’m not the one freaking out as soon as someone touches me.”

Cole huffed. “Nah, you run away when you’re uncomfortable.”

“I do not.”

“No? How come you’re gone for weeks at a time then, months even?”

Ulric couldn’t move his hand. He’d placed it on Ilya’s shoulder—needing to touch him—and now he couldn’t step away.

Ilya was his. He’d known the second he’d stepped into the room. Only, how could his mate be wearing an elf suit? The universe had made a mistake. And then he’d ordered mineral water. Ulric shook his head.

He’d always believed he belonged on the good side. His methods of getting things done might not be conventional, but his purpose was good. He was a nice-ish person. Though one look at Ilya made him think he might have been wrong. He should have known. The veritas didn’t make mistakes. He’d never been shown to the left, no matter which club he went to, and yet he’d always believed he belonged there.

Vera glared at him when he didn’t move, and he forced his hand away from Ilya’s shoulder. He needed to strip him bare and bury himself in his heat, but this was not the place. He couldn’t make his eyes go back to human, his teeth buzzed with the need to change, and his claws prickled as he made his way to the bar.

“Problems?” The shifter behind the bar swept his eyes over the tables.

“Nah. Two whiskey doubles and…mineral water.”

The corner of the bartender’s mouth twitched. “Lemon?”

“What?”

“For the water, do you want lemon?”

How the hell should Ulric know? “Erm…sure.”

Like a magnet, he attracted my gaze the first time I stepped on the train, or maybe like a giant planet catching me into its orbit. My feet carried me without conscious input through the car, and I chose the seat across from him, one of the few open spaces.

It’s been the same every morning since; I look in his direction as the train rushes into the station, before I’ve even boarded, and as soon as I’m inside the doors, I find myself walking toward him, sitting across from him, the other three seats always empty, as though everyone but me keeps a wide berth of him and his harsh features.

And just like the giant planet capturing space debris without making a fuss about it, he’s made no indication that he finds my presence weird; he just looks up from his notebook, gives me the tiniest nod of acknowledgment before tightening his grip on his fountain pen and returning his focus to his writing.

His fountain pen. Another thing that fascinates me. Everyone else on the train, including me, uses phones or tablets or laptops on their morning commutes, but not my guy. He’s old-school and analog and the fountain pen fits with his overall style. His slicked-back hair and suave suits deserve nothing less; a regular boring plastic pen would ruin the appeal.

A monster of a dog, blacker than the night, stood five feet away. Its eyes gleamed in the starlight.

“Good doggie?” he tried, his voice wavering. Did New Mexico have killer wild dogs? He’d read about bears and mountain lions but couldn’t remember anything about enormous dogs with pointed ears and heads the size of basketballs and…oh God, those were really big teeth.

Big teeth that—wait. That was a yawn. The dog sat down on its haunches and gave a booming bark before its tongue lolled out of its enormous mouth.

Clearly, Dante wasn’t about to die. He stood and brushed dirt and grass off his khakis.

A moment later the crunch of feet on dirt and dead grass came from the direction Dante had left his car.

“That’s my boy,” a warm voice said. A man of medium height, with an athletic build and brown hair, mussed as if he’d just got out of bed, stood beside the dog. He had a flashlight in hand. The dog’s butt wiggled as the man patted the monster’s head, which seemed an appropriate response because Dante might also shake his ass if this guy petted him.

“Hi,” the man with a jawline like a statue said, raising a hand. “I’m Cameron Myers but call me Cam. This is Hatch, like the chile. We passed your car and I pulled over. The engine was still warm so I figured you couldn’t be far.”

It didn’t compute. “You saw an abandoned car and you just…pulled over?”

Spreading more book love!
Here are more of my…

✓ recent reads
✓ current reads
✓ re-reads
✓ want-to-reads

(all genres included)

These three books remain at the top of my TBR, but my next read is to finish JMS Books’ 2022 Top Ten Gay Romance. Look for the next five books in this wonderful anthology in 5-7 days (contains more stories from two more of these three fabulous writers):

About My Walking / #AmReading Posts

I started out with this being a Sunday thing, but sometimes I’d rather not mash multiple books into a single post, so now, you never know when you might see one of these posts.

Rather than give a true “review,” which I’m not entirely comfortable doing as an author myself, I share snippets from books I’ve read and enjoyed, letting the authors’ words speak for themselves.

As you’ve possibly noticed, if you’ve been following along, I highlight snippets for reasons of my own which might veer from what is often seen. Sometimes my highlights have more to do with a paragraph simply impressing the heck out of me for its fabulous writerly technique, other times it has to do with the lovely way it gives subtle insight into the story/characters. Still other times simply because it made me laugh.

Anyway, I sometimes add a little commentary, but not always, which is not in any way, shape, or form, to be taken as unwritten commentary. Most likely it just means I’m short on time and/or context isn’t needed to understand what’s happening, and/or my brain doesn’t feel like putting out the effort in that particular moment.

Also, I’m going to try to spread the book love by tacking on covers of more books at the end of the post that I’ve either recently read, am currently reading, or want to read. Not seeing a full post with snippets for any of these books is not a commentary on anything other than how much time I have available in a day either to read or to create a post about what I’ve read. It might also mean I listened to the audiobook only or that it’s a reread that I’ve featured previously, or it’s not M/M so probably not a good fit for featuring on this blog.

Happy reading!