Sunday's Safe Word Shelf: Three of a Kind by Sean Michael

Summary:
What’s better than a pair? Three of a Kind of course!

Zane is about to give up by the time his truck breaks down in Arizona. All he has in the world is the truck, less than fifty bucks and more bruises than any one young man should have to bear. That’s when he meets buff giant Butch who takes Zane in, helping him get his life back together.

Problem is, Butch already has a lover, an artist named Randy. Or at least Zane thinks it’s a problem. Turns out, it’s not the kind of trouble Zane thinks it is when Butch and Randy both take a romantic interest in him.

Can Zane let go of his troubled past and let Butch and Randy teach him that love doesn’t have to hurt?

Reader Advisory: This book contains references to past physical abuse.

Publisher's Note: This book has been released elsewhere. It has been revised and re-edited for re-release with Pride Publishing.

Zane looked at the mile marker then at the map.

Then at the big-assed saguaro outside then at the white smoking pouring out of the engine.

Fuck a duck.

Zane looked at his fingers shaking and trembling against the steering wheel. There was a deep cut in one of his knuckles and it was red and raw. Hurt.

Didn’t hurt as bad as some of him, but it was something to focus on. Something to look at while he sat in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere Arizona, trying not to run in blind circles, screaming.

Headlights lit up his rear-view mirror, the truck slowing, pulling up behind him. Zane grabbed his hat, pulled it on, told himself not to panic. Just a Good Samaritan. Okay.

The guy who got out of the truck was tall, wearing jeans and a wife beater. He came up to the window. “Hey. You okay?”

Zane nodded, tugged the brim of his hat down a little. No. No, he wasn’t okay, but he wasn’t in Abilene anymore, so that was all right. His nose was broken, for sure, maybe his cheek and he was scared to try to take his shirt off. “Truck blew the water pump.”

“I’m not surprised. This thing looks like it belongs in the junk heap. In fact I think I might have a few there looking in better shape.” The guy went around to the hood and put it up, checking out his engine.

Zane slid out of the cab, heading for the front. “I don’t suppose you have some duct tape and water to spare? I’d be real grateful.” He ached, deep inside, and just wanted to get to San Diego, see the ocean.

“I probably got the duct tape, but not that kind of water on me.” The guy slammed the hood and bent a little, peering at his face. “You’re almost in worse shape than the truck.”

“I’ll be okay. Someone’ll be by with water. Thanks for stopping.” He’d sleep in the truck and figure shit out in the morning.

The guy snorted. “This time of night? You’re lucky I happened by.” The guy nodded at his truck. “Come on. I’ll take you home and you can clean yourself up. Tomorrow I’ll bring you out and the tow truck can get this puppy to the junk heap.”

“I… If you’ve got a spare water pump, I could install it in the morning.” If it cost less than the thirty-seven dollars fifty in his pocket.

“Sure, we can see what there is. Hell, it’s a junk heap, there’s bound to be something you can use.” A square hand was thrust out. “Butch Serno.”

He reached out, shook. “Zane Howell. Pleased.”

Butch turned his hand. “That’s a nasty scratch.”

“Yeah. Been a long couple days.” Real long.

“Well, let’s see if we can end this one with a bit of antiseptic and sleep.” Butch led the way back to his red pickup.

“Y…you’re sure? I…I ain’t got much cash to pay for a night.” God, he was tired, and if this guy was going to hurt him, he thought he’d rather just lie down and die.

“Oh, I think I can manage to put a scrawny pup like you up for a night without expecting anything in return.”

“Thank you, sir.” He pulled down his hat again, grabbed the trash bag with what was left of everything he had, something deep inside him screaming as he lifted. Please, God. Let him get to wherever without breaking down.

The garbage bag was taken from him and put in the back of the truck and the passenger door opened. “You think you can get in without making a face like that again?”

“I’ll give it my dead level best.” He eased himself up, sitting gingerly.

Butch got up behind the wheel and started her up, heading back out onto the road. “How badly are you hurt?”

“I’m not fixing to die. Just real sore.”

Butch nodded, quiet for a while before they turned into a long lane that led to a junkyard. “I got a roommate. So you know.”

“I won’t cause no trouble. I swear. I’ll be out of your hair in the morning.”

Author Bio:
Often referred to as "Space Cowboy" and "Gangsta of Love" while still striving for the moniker of "Maurice," Sean Michael spends his days surfing, smutting, organizing his immense gourd collection and fantasizing about one day retiring on a small secluded island peopled entirely by horseshoe crabs. While collecting vast amounts of vintage gay pulp novels and mood rings, Sean whiles away the hours between dropping the f-bomb and persuing the kama sutra by channeling the long lost spirit of John Wayne and singing along with the soundtrack to "Chicago."

A long-time writer of complicated haiku, currently Sean is attempting to learn the advanced arts of plate spinning and soap carving sex toys.

Barring any of that? He'll stick with writing his stories, thanks, and rubbing pretty bodies together to see if they spark.

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The Case of the Guilty Ghost by Amber Kell & RJ Scott

Summary:
Bob is lost in grief, Sam is fighting for his life, and there is no middle ground. Can their love survive?

Bob is grieving over his brother’s sacrifice. Guilt-ridden and devastated, he buries himself in vampire mourning and pulls away from Sam.

Magic tears Sam from the vampire castle and he has to face new adversaries alone, when all he wants is Bob at his side.

Ettore is in the Aset Ka waiting room, next in line for the ceremony for his soul to be torn from his body. Aset Ka has other plans, and Ettore finds himself reunited with a lost love and fighting alongside his brother.

A forgotten past binds Theodore ‘Teddy’ McCurray Constantine III to Ettore, and with the curse tied to Ettore broken by his death, Teddy’s past returns to him with a vengeance.

A royal family in denial, a battle between gods, and long forgotten love leaves no time for Sam and Bob to take a breath. Is it too late to save the supernatural world?

I had bittersweet feels about this one when the release day came around.  On the plus side, End Street Detective Agency Series is amazing, stupendous, fabulous, well frankly it's just plain great all around.  On the minus side, it's the conclusion, the end, finale, final, finis, no more, well frankly that leaves me with just all kinds of boo-hooing.  So as you can imagine, I hated to begin because then it would be it when I hit the last page but I couldn't not read The Case of the Guilty Ghost, the gang cried out to be read.

What can I say about Guilty Ghost without giving anything away?  Not too much really but I can't stress enough that this is NOT a standalone, you have to start at the beginning with The Case of the Cupid Curse.  I will say that Sam has finally accepted that he's not entirely human, although I don't think he likes it being pointed out.  His magic, or paranormality if you will, continues to grow and we finally learn why he is what he is as so many factors fall into place.

We have vampires, dragons, and ghosts, oh my!  Bob's brother returns, Teddy the ghost's history is revealed, the evil is uncovered, and the future is shaky but it's all yummy.  RJ Scott and Amber Kell have created a world that one can get lost in and who knew it would go where it did when Bob the Vampire rented a room from Sam the human(he thinks).  I have already re-read the first five stories even though it hasn't even been 6 months since my original read and I'm already looking forward to my next re-read, which probably says more about how much I love this universe than all the words I've already written.  End Street has definitely earned it's prime position on my paranormal shelf.

RATING: 

Chapter 1
Sam took the stairs two at a time, all one hundred and sixty of them, to the top of the tower, leaving him gasping for oxygen. He’d seen Bob heading that way, or dreamed it, or half woke and imagined it. He didn’t know what exactly, only that somehow, he knew he would find Bob at the top of the black tower. He ducked the low lintel, slid to an ungainly halt on the stone floor, unbalanced and grabbed at the wall to hold himself upright.

“Bob?” he called into the dark corners of the tower, but there was no reply. His vampire lover didn’t step from the shadows with a smile or words of love. The place was empty, and the only presence Sam sensed was spiders. Knowing his luck, they were man-eating spiders.

“Sam!”

Sam winced at the shout up the stairs, and then heard huffing and cursing as the owner of the deep voice appeared in the doorway. Jin, who had never quite gone home, citing that he was responsible for Sam, was way past pissed. At least Jin, being a dragon shifter, could light up the room. Then Sam recalled he could light up the room just by thinking about it.

“I want there to be light,” he murmured, and then held up his hand to block his eyes as a pure white light exploded in the center of the room, filling every corner before receding back to a steady glowing orb.

He blinked, the light burning his retina. He closed his eyes tight, willing the spotted vision to go.

“What are you doing up here?” Jin asked. He sounded wary, like everyone else tiptoeing around Sam these past two weeks.

“Bob,” Sam said. When he opened his eyes again, he could see the entire room. An elaborate altar took up the far side of the circular chamber, built into the wall and covered in years of dusty cobwebs, likely from the imagined killer spiders. He stepped toward it, a low humming drawing his attention. Jin moved to block his way.

“Leave it, Sam,” Jin said. His hard tone left no room for discussion.

The noise of more footsteps stomping up the stairs, then Lambert, Sam’s vampire liaison, appeared at the top. Lambert, a tall stretched-skinny vampire with eerily cloudy eyes, had a propensity to follow Sam everywhere, spouting fear at everything and anything.

“Sire, you can’t be in here,” Lambert said, waving his hands ineffectively.

Sam spun back around to face the altar. “Stop calling me sire,” he muttered under his breath. He was getting pretty sick of how people treated him in the damn castle. Half the vampires lauded him as a ruler of supernaturals, the other half wanted him either locked up or gone. The first group assigned Lambert to him. They felt Sam needed an escort in the vampire kingdom because he was, in their words, special. Lambert was the kind of paranormal stuck firmly in the past. The historian kept talking about the old days like they were better times.

Sam wasn’t sure why Lambert had been so accepting of him given he was A, human, and B, with Bob.

Jin held up a hand, glowing with the remnants of dragon fire magic and placed it flat on Sam’s chest. It didn’t burn, only fizzled, and popped sending a small shock through his body.

“Sam, talk to me,” Jin demanded.

The humming from the altar intensified, and a voice in Sam’s head was saying the same things over and over, Sam, I am here, and I need your help.

“I can hear Bob in my head, he called me up here,” Sam repeated.

“No, you can’t have heard him,” Lambert corrected. “The mate link is blocked in times of mourning. You are hearing something else, dark magic maybe. You need to come back down to your chamber where you are safe.”

A mixture of exasperation and fear crossed Lambert’s face when Sam stepped back toward the altar.

“I want to see him.” He’d been too long without Bob. Their separation was causing cracks in his sanity.

“It’s not much longer until he’s done,” Jin reassured.

“Please come away, Sam,” Lambert pleaded. That was new. Lambert never called him Sam.

“Just take my hand,” Jin said, holding out his hand.

Sam stepped backward, more toward the altar, and he heard Lambert let out a small curse.

“Take my hand, Sam,” Jin said. “This is stupid and dangerous.”

Sam turned on Jin, sparks flying from his fingers. Jin stepped back from him, narrowly avoiding the biting magic. “Stay away from me.”

He shook his fingers, electricity passing up his arm. Usually when that happened, Bob was there to hold his hands, settle him and take away the pinpricks of pain.

“Come away, Sam,” Jin said.

“Listen to the dragon,” Lambert added, his voice thick with fear.

“You and Jin do what I say,” Sam snapped, not knowing where the superiority in his voice was coming from.

Sam fought his loss of control. So much for me being a higher supernatural. Every day without Bob felt like torture, and Sam was lost without his vampire lover next to him. The headaches, the sparks of energy from his fingers, and the pain in his chest grew more intense with each hour that passed. He knew Bob was in mourning. Hell, Sam respected the traditions, but right then, all he wanted was his lover by his side.

Hurry up, the voice in his head said. I need your help.

He shook off the words and concentrated on Lambert. “Take me to the Sanctum, let me see Bob, convince me he isn’t calling for my help, and I will come with you.” He wasn’t being unreasonable, they were.

“This is an ancient rite.” Lambert seemed stunned that Sam was asking this. “No humans.”

“Something is wrong.” With me? With him? Something is terribly wrong, but no one is listening.

“What is wrong? Is it your head?” Jin asked, his voice low, and his expression concerned.

Yes. No. Hell, I don’t know. I know Bob loves me, and I love him. I just need to kiss him.

Instead, he said, “I have to help Bob with his grieving. We can’t be apart like this.”

Sam didn’t know what made him say it that way; he wasn’t needy, it wasn’t a normal need for lovers to be together. His instincts had been screaming at him that he and Bob shouldn’t be apart.

Ever!

Lambert gasped as he did every time Sam suggested he should be part of any ancient vampire rite. “A non-pureblood cannot help with the rituals of grieving.”

Sam knew Lambert was winding himself up to that whole vampire purity speech and he sighed. Jin must have sensed his irritability because he rounded on Lambert and roared, fire sparking around him. Lambert stumbled back in shock.

“Wait for us outside,” Jin ordered.

Lambert looked torn between staying to keep an eye on Sam, his job, or evading the dragon fire that Jin was breathing all around the room.

Lambert’s eyes narrowed. His calculating gaze flashed from Jin to Sam and back again a few times before he sketched a small bow and left the chamber. “I will go down exactly the seven steps of Aset Ka,” he announced over his shoulder. He was kind of stuck on numbers and more than a little obsessive about the freaking vampire god.

The same god who had made a bargain with Bob’s brother Ettore before returning Bob to Sam, and taking Ettore to some kind of hell, or heaven, or whatever.

“Bob needs me,” Sam said, firmly. “I was asleep and heard him calling me. He must be out of mourning.”

“Sam, you have to stop, he isn’t up here.”

“He must be, he called me.” Maybe if Sam said it enough times one of them would listen.

Jin shook his head. “You heard that through your mate link? In your mind. You can’t have because the link is muted when Bob is mourning.”

Sam shook his head, confused. “No, it was like an image of the stairs, and this room, and there was an altar, only it wasn’t this old. It had gold all over it, a chalice in the center, and Bob was examining it, and he called me over, and there was magic….” Sam pressed his hands against his temples, attempting to ease the tension building from that incessant humming. “He needs me.”

“Sam, it was just a dream. You’re tired. Let’s go get some sleep, and we’ll re-examine this in the morning.” Jin took his arm, encouraged him back to the doorway, but Sam wrenched away and shoved Jin to the side, and with a flick of his hand there was a thick wall of ice between them. Sam stood on the side of the altar, and Jin beat on the ice trying to get through.

Bob needed him, and nothing or no one was stopping him. He’d felt Bob’s grief, through their bond, for four long days and then without warning; the bond was severed. He’d been told that had to happen as part of the rituals of mourning.

Sam was lost. Not even his daughter Mal arriving had helped. At that moment, it didn’t matter that she was the light of his life, he wasn’t whole without Bob. There was no family without Bob.

“Watch Mal,” Sam spoke clearly through the ice, which wasn’t giving way, and Jin snarled at him. “Please.”

“Don’t do anything stupid, Sam! We’ll go down and find Bob.”

But Sam wasn’t doing anything stupid. He was doing what he should have been doing all along, finding Bob and making sure he was okay. Something had happened, someone had come into the castle, stolen Bob from his mourning and only Sam could help. He turned his back on Jin to face the altar. Something there was calling him. Help me, help me.

Bob’s voice? Or was it softer the closer that Sam got to the altar? A whisper of a voice?

He stepped closer, the hum louder, and then another step, and as he neared the low resonating noise stopped, and for a moment he was motionless.

He reached a hand toward the altar, expecting a barrier, or magic, or some booby-trap that would whisk him to killer spider land or some other awful, horrible place.

A crash behind him had him looking back. Jin was nearly through the barrier, melting the ice as fast as he could with his dragon fire; in seconds he would be through. Sam flicked his hand to create another level of ice, but nothing happened.

“Just when I need magic, it isn’t there,” he murmured.

Something inside him began to hurt, an insistent tug at the base of his neck that ran down his spine then back again. The sensation was weird, moving his feet, guiding him, and he had no control over his own body. He was a marionette, and someone else was pulling the strings.

Fear began to spread in the pit of his stomach, Jin screamed his name and the heat of dragon fire warmed his back, but none of it mattered.

Because his hand touched the altar.

And everything went to hell.

Click Here for Saturday Series Spotlight: End Street Detective Agency Part 1

Author Bios:

RJ Scott

RJ Scott is the bestselling romance author of over 100 romance books. She writes emotional stories of complicated characters, cowboys, millionaire, princes, and the men and women who get mixed up in their lives. RJ is known for writing books that always end with a happy ever after. She lives just outside London and spends every waking minute she isn't with family either reading or writing.

The last time she had a week’s break from writing she didn't like it one little bit, and she has yet to meet a bottle of wine she couldn’t defeat.

Amber Kell
Amber Kell has made a career out of daydreaming. It has been a lifelong habit she practices diligently as shown by her complete lack of focus on anything not related to her fantasy world building.

When she told her husband what she wanted to do with her life he told her to go have fun.

During those seconds she isn't writing she remembers she has children who humor her with games of 'what if' and let her drag them to foreign lands to gather inspiration. Her youngest confided in her that he wants to write because he longs for a website and an author name—two things apparently necessary to be a proper writer.

Despite her husband's insistence she doesn't drink enough to be a true literary genius she continues to spin stories of people falling happily in love and staying that way.

She is thwarted during the day by a traffic jam of cats on the stairway and a puppy who insists on walks, but she bravely perseveres..

She also writes under the name Mikela Q. Chase.

RJ Scott

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Amber Kell

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