Summary:
Psycop #2
Psycop #2
Criss Cross finds the ghosts surrounding Victor getting awfully pushy. The medications that Victor usually takes to control his abilities are threatening to destroy his liver, and his new meds aren't any more effective than sugar pills.
Vic is also adjusting to a new PsyCop partner, a mild-mannered guy named Roger with all the personality of white bread. At least he's willing to spring for the Starbucks.
Jacob’s ex-boyfriend, Crash, is an empathic healer who might be able to help Victor pull his powers into balance, but he seems more interested in getting into Victor’s pants than in providing any actual assistance.
Vic is also adjusting to a new PsyCop partner, a mild-mannered guy named Roger with all the personality of white bread. At least he's willing to spring for the Starbucks.
Jacob’s ex-boyfriend, Crash, is an empathic healer who might be able to help Victor pull his powers into balance, but he seems more interested in getting into Victor’s pants than in providing any actual assistance.
It's only been about 6 months or so since I originally read Criss Cross so there was nothing in the story I didn't remember but the truth is, Vic and Jacob's journey is so brilliantly delicious(a word I used in my original read and it fits so perfectly I can't help but continue to use it😉) had it been 6 years I would still recall it all.
Again, I don't want to give anything away because as I originally said, this may be an "oldie" to many but it was new to me and I'm sure there are others like me and I won't ruin it for them. I'll just say that it may seem weird to describe paranormal creepy as fun but Jordan Castillo Price has a way of bringing the fun to the table no matter what the main characters face. I couldn't help but love Vic and Jacob's snark and cuddle chemistry intertwined with a level of edge of my seat creepy. Here's that word again but it's "deliciously" brilliant.
As for the narration, once again Gomez Pugh brings that element of dark and light to life. Would another narrator do as good a job? Perhaps, but frankly I can't imagine any other voice doing justice to the men, their circle of friends, enemies, and everyone(and thing) in between. Price and Pugh are a wonderful combination bringing the world of Psycop to life. Definitely a series that will be a re-reader & re-listener for years to come.
Original ebook Review March 2020:
I want to jump out of the gate and say just how deliciously creepy this entry in the author's PsyCop series is. I can certainly understand Vic's need to medicate to help him deal with the things he sees, I can't imagine seeing dead people everywhere. Most of us have read ghost stories or watched haunted house films where there is one ghost or one place with many ghosts but the whole idea of driving down the street and seeing them or not being able to go into a hospital without being bombarded by spirits never entered my mind so I completely understand and sympathize with the character.
As for Jacob? Some might think: "He's too perfect, too accepting, too understanding there just has to be something wrong with him, something underhanded, something lurking underneath all that willingness to understand" but not me. Don't get me wrong, he's no pushover or Vic's "lapdog", when he gets riled up about something he is definitely a force to be reckoned with and I don't think we've even begun to see that side of him but you know he'll never turn that force against Vic.
I'm not going to give away any spoilers to the plot because even though this is far from a new release, it was new to me and I'm sure there are others like me who were late to the party and I don't want to spoil it for them. I'll just reiterate what I started with and say Criss Cross is deliciously creepy with a well balanced diet of love, friendship, humor, mystery, and heat. Not a single character, main, secondary, or cameo is extra page filler, they each play a part that makes this a wonderful follow-up to the series opener, Among the Living. I for one can't wait to read more.
RATING:
As for Jacob? Some might think: "He's too perfect, too accepting, too understanding there just has to be something wrong with him, something underhanded, something lurking underneath all that willingness to understand" but not me. Don't get me wrong, he's no pushover or Vic's "lapdog", when he gets riled up about something he is definitely a force to be reckoned with and I don't think we've even begun to see that side of him but you know he'll never turn that force against Vic.
I'm not going to give away any spoilers to the plot because even though this is far from a new release, it was new to me and I'm sure there are others like me who were late to the party and I don't want to spoil it for them. I'll just reiterate what I started with and say Criss Cross is deliciously creepy with a well balanced diet of love, friendship, humor, mystery, and heat. Not a single character, main, secondary, or cameo is extra page filler, they each play a part that makes this a wonderful follow-up to the series opener, Among the Living. I for one can't wait to read more.
RATING:
Summary:
Ivy Grove #1
“I didn't believe in ghosts. Until I met him.”
As a horror novelist, Ben makes a living telling scary stories. However, he's struggling in his career and fears he's lost his touch. Not only is there a disconnect in his writing, but in his personal life as well. After his relationship goes south, he decides to start over and moves to Ivy Grove, a small town with a lot of history.
He hopes the quaint town and beautiful Victorian manor he moved into will spark inspiration and help him fall back in love with writing.
And then strange things start happening.
Creaks in the hall, shadows from the corner of his eye, and the sense that he's being watched. Ben soon learns that the manor has a dark past, and within the morbid history, he discovers a century old mystery.
Who is Theo Blackwell? And what happened to him all those years ago?
As Ben begins to unravel the truth, he finds himself not only falling in love with writing again, but also falling for the stunning young man who haunts his manor.
*The Ghost of Ellwood is a paranormal m/m romance. You'll find mystery, a somewhat grumpy writer, a sassy ghost, and of course a HEA.*
Summary:
Folk Lore #1
--- Forgive me, Father, for I will sin ---
Adam. Catholic priest. Celibate. Does not yield to temptation.
Emil. Sinner. Seducer. Snake. Hot as hell itself.
After a sheltered childhood ruled by religion, all Adam wants is to be a good priest and make his parents proud. But it’s hard to stay virtuous in a big city like Warsaw, and when he makes one slip up, his life spirals into ruin. He is sent to a tiny mountain village where he hopes to live down his shame and work on restraint.
But staying celibate becomes far from easy when he meets Emil, a local man with long dark hair, a mysterious past, and as little morality as he has luck. Emil has no qualms about flirting with a priest. Worse still, he seems hell-bent on tasting forbidden fruit and unearthing the desires Adam has always kept hidden.
The odd village hides secrets far more sinister than Adam's insatiable lust for Emil. Old Slavic magic looms everywhere. Superstition mixes with reality. Someone is watching his every move. Someone follows him in the dark, lurking in the shadows of the ancient forest. Adam is plagued by disturbing events, and Emil could be his only salvation even if he is the devil himself.
Can a priest shepherd the black sheep to safety or has he been the wolf all along?
POSSIBLE SPOILERS:
Genre: Dark, paranormal M/M romance
Erotic content: Scorching hot, emotional, explicit scenes
Themes: Occult, witchcraft, Slavic superstition and myth, folklore, priest, forbidden love, hurt/comfort, metalhead, little town, temptation, religion, paganism, cult, old gods, possession, demons, magic, homophobia, bigotry, prejudice, coming out, fish out of water, soul mates, mysterious man, tease and denial
WARNING: This story contains scenes of violence, offensive language, self-harm, and morally ambiguous characters.
Summary:
The Spectral Files #2
No one said being a medium would be easy.
Rain Christiansen, former FBI agent and current cold case detective, is starting to think it's the hardest job he's ever had—and the most important. He's determined to accept all the changes in his formerly well-ordered life, but that means embracing a whole lot of weird. There's no instruction manual for meshing his work with his medium duties, and he's painfully aware that he's flubbing the job. So are the ghosts, who are becoming increasingly impatient. And stronger.
To complicate matters, he's not sure what these spooktacular developments mean for his relationship. It certainly seems like Daniel McKenna, his partner in work and life, is in it for the long haul. But Rain can't help but wonder how long that patience will last...and what he'll do if Danny decides the intrusive ghosts are just too much.
Rain thought accepting his supernatural gifts would be the solution to his troubles. But he's starting to realize his problems are just getting started.
Summary:
Soulbound #3
Never promise a life that isn’t yours to give.
New York City is decked out for the holidays, and Special Agent Patrick Collins is looking forward to a reunion with his old team when he gets assigned a new case. A human child is missing, and the changeling left in her place causes a prominent witch family to demand justice from the fae.
Meanwhile, continued harassment from the New York City god pack forces Jonothon de Vere to formally establish his own with Patrick. Doing so will mean a civil war within the werecreature community—a war they risk losing from the start without alliances. Making bargains with the fae is never wise, but Patrick and Jono have nothing to lose when a fae lord comes asking for their help.
The Summer Lady has been kidnapped from the Seelie Court, and if they can find her, Patrick and Jono will cement an alliance with the fae. But the clues to her disappearance are found in Tír na nÓg, and the Otherworld has never been kind to mortals.
Venturing past the veil, Patrick and Jono risk losing territory, time, and their very lives while searching for answers. Because the Queen of Air and Darkness knows they are coming—and the ruler of the Unseelie Court has an offer for them they can’t possibly refuse.
A Crown of Iron & Silver is a 107k word m/m urban fantasy with a gay romantic subplot and a HFN ending. It is a direct sequel to All Souls Near & Nigh. Reading the prior books in the series would be helpful in enjoying this one.
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Random Paranormal Tales of 2020
Criss Cross by Jordan Castillo Price
It was a pretty good day, for October in Chicago. The weather was warm enough that I could get away with wearing just jeans, a T-shirt, a flannel shirt, and my threadbare jean jacket. I could see my breath as we set the rowboat in the water, Maurice in his knee-high rubber boots, steadying the small aluminum boat so I could climb in. Water squished through my black Converse. Not the best shoes to wear fishing, I gathered.
But I’d never been fishing before, so how the hell would I know?
Maurice heaved himself over the side, thrust an oar into the slimy green water on the bank of the Calumet, and shoved off. And he did it with an ease that reminded me that even though he was graying, he was still in reasonably good shape.
Maurice Taylor had been my partner in the PsyCop Unit for a dozen years, and now he was retired. We’d been quintessential opposites when the force had matched us up: him, a mature black man without a lick of psychic ability, who’d inched his way up to detective with years of hard, honest police work. And me, an impulsive white kid with no friends, whose sixth sense was always tuned to eleven unless I was on an anti-psyactive drug cocktail.
Maurice was still old. And he still had his common sense, far as I could tell. Me? I wasn’t a kid anymore, but at least I’d managed to make a few friends. Other than that, I couldn’t really vouch for myself.
“Give that oar over here,” Maurice said, stretching his hand out to me. “We be goin’ in circles all day, if I let you just splash it all over the place like that.”
I didn’t argue. Maurice is more stubborn than I am. I know this.
Maurice took several deep breaths as he rowed us farther from shore. The Calumet’s current wasn’t particularly fast in the fall. It had pockets of reedy marsh along the banks that seemed like ideal places to just sit in your boat and while away the day. A train clanged by to the north of us and the scream of a siren drifted by from a stretch of elevated highway. Nature.
“Smell that fine air,” Maurice said.
I grunted. It smelled like algae and exhaust fumes to me.
Maurice pulled a few more strokes with the oars and then eased our anchor—a hunk of metal that’d been part of a barbell in another existence—over the side.
“Shouldn’t I have, uh...a lifejacket on?”
Maurice smiled and started fiddling with his rod. Or reel. Or whatever the fishing pole thing is called. “S’okay, Victor. Water ain’t but waist high.”
I glanced over the side of the boat. The water was opaque green. Hard to tell if Maurice was exaggerating.
He put the fishing pole in my hand and pulled out another. “Just set there and wait until I show you how to cast. Else you’ll tear your eye out with the hook.”
I looked down at the hook. Maurice had squished a worm onto it. A worm spirit didn’t appear and immediately start telling me about the moment of its death, so I presumed I was safe from the spirits of bugs. But then it moved and I realized it was still alive. Gross.
Maurice cast his own line with a fairly straightforward explanation of what he was doing, then exchanged it with me for the first fishing pole, which he also cast.
I stared out at the little red floaty things that marked where our hooks had sunk and waited for more instructions.
Maurice wedged his fishing pole into a groove on the floor of the boat and unzipped his duffel bag. He pulled out a thermos and a battered plastic travel mug.
“What next?” I asked him.
Maurice poured some coffee into the mug and handed it to me. The early morning sunlight filtered through the steam that curled up from the surface of the coffee, and I felt like the two of us were in a Folgers commercial. Maurice poured another cup for himself, screwed the stopper back onto the thermos, and sighed. “We wait,” he said.
I noticed he was smiling, a soft, kind of distant smile as he gazed out over the water, conveniently ignoring the beer cans and plastic shopping bags that floated around us. Retirement suited him.
We drank our coffees together in silence, and we stared at the water while I tried to control the shivering, me sitting there in wet canvas sneakers in October. It was warm for October, but not that warm. I wedged my fishing pole into the groove in the floor as I’d seen Maurice do and poured myself another coffee. I contemplated pouring out the rest of the contents of the thermos onto my freezing cold feet, but I figured it would only feel good for about a minute, and then the coffee would cool and pretty soon my feet would just be wet again. I saved the coffee for drinking, instead.
“So,” Maurice said, after he finished his coffee. “Warwick find you a new partner yet?
“Yeah, a couple days ago. Some guy. His name’s Roger Burke.”
I really couldn’t think of much to say about Detective “please, call me Roger,” Burke. He was kinda like white bread. When I was a teenager, I would have been pretty eager to get him down my throat. But now that I was looking at forty, I found him a little bland.
Don’t get me wrong, Roger was cute. He had a ready smile that he lavished on me at the drop of a hat. His thick hair was naturally blond, cut short and smart. His eyebrows and eyelashes were a darker blond, framing greenish hazel eyes.
I’d never seen him in anything less than a sport coat, but judging by the way it sat on his shoulders and buttoned smoothly over his nipped waist, I was guessing he probably exercised regularly, and was hiding a set of washboard abs under his perfectly pressed dress shirt.
It was difficult to say if he’d pitch for my team or not. Once upon a time I assumed that all the other cops except for me were straight. That was before Detective Jacob Marks cornered me in the bathroom at Maurice’s retirement party.
I was still too fixated on Jacob to really give a damn if Roger Burke slept with men, women, or inflatable farm animals, for that matter.
“What’s this Burke guy like?” Maurice asked.
I decided it would be far too gay to tell Maurice what color Roger Burke’s eyes were. And besides, Maurice wouldn’t give a shit. “He always buys the coffee. Seems decent enough. He was a detective for five years in Buffalo.”
“New York?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh.” The plastic floaty on Maurice’s line dipped beneath the water. He reeled the line in carefully but all that was on the hook was a drowned worm. He cast it back out. “What about that Mexican girl?”
“That Mexican girl” was Lisa Gutierrez. She’d been selected to be my non-psychic partner, or Stiff, after Maurice retired. Things had worked well between us, until our sergeant figured out that she was a psychic herself. She’d rigged her test scores to get the job.
“She’s in California at some place called PsyTrain. Even if she decides to come back here once she’s done, they’d never pair us up. They’d have to put her with a Stiff.”
“Too bad. Heard the two of you hit it off.”
I froze, and not just because ice crystals were forming on my sneakers. I’d been wondering if we’d have this conversation, just me, Maurice and a bunch of garbage floating around in the Calumet River. The little talk where I told him I liked men.
“We, uh.... She’s nice.”
Maurice reeled his line in a couple of turns and gazed out over the river. He didn’t say anything more. I let my breath out slowly, relieved that I’d dodged the bullet, but maybe a little disappointed, too. A few moments of really, really awkward conversation, and then he’d probably never mention it again.
Heck, according to Jacob, Maurice probably already knew. Or at least suspected. Twelve years and no girlfriend? That might be significant if we were talking about an average guy—but it was me under the microscope. For all Maurice knew, I was just too messed up to have a woman in my life. I was probably too messed up to have a man in my life too, come to think of it. But since Jacob was a big, strong man with a gun, a cop who knew how to kick ass and take names, I figured he could hold his own.
The two cups of coffee I’d just sucked down roiled around in my stomach, and I hung my head over the side of the boat and tried to talk myself out of being sick. I’d swallowed a donut in three bites on my way out the door, but it wasn’t doing a very good job of soaking anything up. Acid licked at the back of my throat and I swallowed hard.
“Don’t tell me you’re seasick,” Maurice said, his eyes still focused on the floaties a few dozen yards away as if I wasn’t turning green and gulping air.
I seized on the chance to blame my nausea on anything other than my own internal freak-out. “Maybe,” I said. “Haven’t been on a boat since I went on that horrible cruise when I turned thirty.”
I stared down at the soupy green water sloshing against the side of the rowboat, and picked out tiny round shapes that were plants, or snails, or some other mysterious bits of life in the murk.
“Just set there,” Maurice said. “It’ll pass.”
A larger pale, round shape floated beneath the murky water, probably a shopping bag, or maybe a milk jug. I tried to distract myself by imagining a homie out drinking milk with his posse and chucking the plastic bottle into the river, but I didn’t find my own humor particularly entertaining.
It bothered me, not being able to tell what the thing was, and I leaned my face closer to the water and squinted at it. I noticed there was another one, about the same size and shape but maybe a little farther down, to my right. And another to my left. My vision seemed to open up and I realized these pale shapes were all around us, like cloud formations beneath the river’s surface.
Some kind of algae, then. Or maybe even pale, sandy mounds, with the Calumet’s bottom as close as Maurice had said it was, even closer, us bobbing in a couple of feet of water where we just could have waded instead, if I were dressed appropriately.
I pushed myself up on the side of the boat as my nausea receded. I was just about to ask Maurice about his trip to Fort Lauderdale when the underwater shape surged up toward me and coalesced into a pale, dead face.
I snapped up tall and the fishing pole leapt out of my grip. I managed to grab it before it fell into the water, but maybe I should’ve just let it drop. Maybe I wouldn’t have looked like I was shaking so hard if I didn’t have a big, telltale fishing line visibly quivering between me and the water.
The water that was full of dead people.
Maurice stared at me for a beat, glanced over the side, then took the fishing pole from my hands and wedged it into the bottom of the boat. “What you see?” he said calmly.
I knew what I must look like, whites of my eyes showing all around, face paler than usual. The Look. The one that said I’d just seen something. Maurice knew The Look.
I closed my eyes and images of pallid, distended faces bobbing to the surface filled my memory. Hundreds of them, eyes open and unseeing, a landscape of them stretching to the horizon—or at least the highway.
There wouldn’t be that many there. Not in real life. It was just my own mind fucking with me.
“It bad?” Maurice said gently.
I opened my eyes and stared hard at his brown, gray-whiskered face. I took another breath. It wasn’t that bad, I told myself. I’d just seen a handful of revenants and let my imagination run wild. It wasn’t as if I’d never seen dead people before, I told myself. It wasn’t like I’d never seen a ghost.
I peeked over the side.
A face peered back at me, rubbery mouth opening and closing like it was trying to talk—but the water didn’t move and no bubbles came out. The face next to it blinked. A hand moved toward the surface of the water like a pale, bloated spider, reaching for me. And beyond it, another hand. And another beyond that.
“Jesus,” I said. I jerked myself upright and started chafing my arms. “The water’s full of them.”
Maurice reeled in his drowned worm, and my empty hook, and then the anchor. I felt him shove the oar into the riverbed and give us a push toward shore.
“Should I make some phone calls, have ‘em drag it?” Maurice asked.
“I don’t know.” Was anybody missing? Yeah, probably. But dozens of somebodies? Maybe hundreds? “I just....” I sighed and made a “whatever” gesture. “I don’t know.”
But I’d never been fishing before, so how the hell would I know?
Maurice heaved himself over the side, thrust an oar into the slimy green water on the bank of the Calumet, and shoved off. And he did it with an ease that reminded me that even though he was graying, he was still in reasonably good shape.
Maurice Taylor had been my partner in the PsyCop Unit for a dozen years, and now he was retired. We’d been quintessential opposites when the force had matched us up: him, a mature black man without a lick of psychic ability, who’d inched his way up to detective with years of hard, honest police work. And me, an impulsive white kid with no friends, whose sixth sense was always tuned to eleven unless I was on an anti-psyactive drug cocktail.
Maurice was still old. And he still had his common sense, far as I could tell. Me? I wasn’t a kid anymore, but at least I’d managed to make a few friends. Other than that, I couldn’t really vouch for myself.
“Give that oar over here,” Maurice said, stretching his hand out to me. “We be goin’ in circles all day, if I let you just splash it all over the place like that.”
I didn’t argue. Maurice is more stubborn than I am. I know this.
Maurice took several deep breaths as he rowed us farther from shore. The Calumet’s current wasn’t particularly fast in the fall. It had pockets of reedy marsh along the banks that seemed like ideal places to just sit in your boat and while away the day. A train clanged by to the north of us and the scream of a siren drifted by from a stretch of elevated highway. Nature.
“Smell that fine air,” Maurice said.
I grunted. It smelled like algae and exhaust fumes to me.
Maurice pulled a few more strokes with the oars and then eased our anchor—a hunk of metal that’d been part of a barbell in another existence—over the side.
“Shouldn’t I have, uh...a lifejacket on?”
Maurice smiled and started fiddling with his rod. Or reel. Or whatever the fishing pole thing is called. “S’okay, Victor. Water ain’t but waist high.”
I glanced over the side of the boat. The water was opaque green. Hard to tell if Maurice was exaggerating.
He put the fishing pole in my hand and pulled out another. “Just set there and wait until I show you how to cast. Else you’ll tear your eye out with the hook.”
I looked down at the hook. Maurice had squished a worm onto it. A worm spirit didn’t appear and immediately start telling me about the moment of its death, so I presumed I was safe from the spirits of bugs. But then it moved and I realized it was still alive. Gross.
Maurice cast his own line with a fairly straightforward explanation of what he was doing, then exchanged it with me for the first fishing pole, which he also cast.
I stared out at the little red floaty things that marked where our hooks had sunk and waited for more instructions.
Maurice wedged his fishing pole into a groove on the floor of the boat and unzipped his duffel bag. He pulled out a thermos and a battered plastic travel mug.
“What next?” I asked him.
Maurice poured some coffee into the mug and handed it to me. The early morning sunlight filtered through the steam that curled up from the surface of the coffee, and I felt like the two of us were in a Folgers commercial. Maurice poured another cup for himself, screwed the stopper back onto the thermos, and sighed. “We wait,” he said.
I noticed he was smiling, a soft, kind of distant smile as he gazed out over the water, conveniently ignoring the beer cans and plastic shopping bags that floated around us. Retirement suited him.
We drank our coffees together in silence, and we stared at the water while I tried to control the shivering, me sitting there in wet canvas sneakers in October. It was warm for October, but not that warm. I wedged my fishing pole into the groove in the floor as I’d seen Maurice do and poured myself another coffee. I contemplated pouring out the rest of the contents of the thermos onto my freezing cold feet, but I figured it would only feel good for about a minute, and then the coffee would cool and pretty soon my feet would just be wet again. I saved the coffee for drinking, instead.
“So,” Maurice said, after he finished his coffee. “Warwick find you a new partner yet?
“Yeah, a couple days ago. Some guy. His name’s Roger Burke.”
I really couldn’t think of much to say about Detective “please, call me Roger,” Burke. He was kinda like white bread. When I was a teenager, I would have been pretty eager to get him down my throat. But now that I was looking at forty, I found him a little bland.
Don’t get me wrong, Roger was cute. He had a ready smile that he lavished on me at the drop of a hat. His thick hair was naturally blond, cut short and smart. His eyebrows and eyelashes were a darker blond, framing greenish hazel eyes.
I’d never seen him in anything less than a sport coat, but judging by the way it sat on his shoulders and buttoned smoothly over his nipped waist, I was guessing he probably exercised regularly, and was hiding a set of washboard abs under his perfectly pressed dress shirt.
It was difficult to say if he’d pitch for my team or not. Once upon a time I assumed that all the other cops except for me were straight. That was before Detective Jacob Marks cornered me in the bathroom at Maurice’s retirement party.
I was still too fixated on Jacob to really give a damn if Roger Burke slept with men, women, or inflatable farm animals, for that matter.
“What’s this Burke guy like?” Maurice asked.
I decided it would be far too gay to tell Maurice what color Roger Burke’s eyes were. And besides, Maurice wouldn’t give a shit. “He always buys the coffee. Seems decent enough. He was a detective for five years in Buffalo.”
“New York?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh.” The plastic floaty on Maurice’s line dipped beneath the water. He reeled the line in carefully but all that was on the hook was a drowned worm. He cast it back out. “What about that Mexican girl?”
“That Mexican girl” was Lisa Gutierrez. She’d been selected to be my non-psychic partner, or Stiff, after Maurice retired. Things had worked well between us, until our sergeant figured out that she was a psychic herself. She’d rigged her test scores to get the job.
“She’s in California at some place called PsyTrain. Even if she decides to come back here once she’s done, they’d never pair us up. They’d have to put her with a Stiff.”
“Too bad. Heard the two of you hit it off.”
I froze, and not just because ice crystals were forming on my sneakers. I’d been wondering if we’d have this conversation, just me, Maurice and a bunch of garbage floating around in the Calumet River. The little talk where I told him I liked men.
“We, uh.... She’s nice.”
Maurice reeled his line in a couple of turns and gazed out over the river. He didn’t say anything more. I let my breath out slowly, relieved that I’d dodged the bullet, but maybe a little disappointed, too. A few moments of really, really awkward conversation, and then he’d probably never mention it again.
Heck, according to Jacob, Maurice probably already knew. Or at least suspected. Twelve years and no girlfriend? That might be significant if we were talking about an average guy—but it was me under the microscope. For all Maurice knew, I was just too messed up to have a woman in my life. I was probably too messed up to have a man in my life too, come to think of it. But since Jacob was a big, strong man with a gun, a cop who knew how to kick ass and take names, I figured he could hold his own.
The two cups of coffee I’d just sucked down roiled around in my stomach, and I hung my head over the side of the boat and tried to talk myself out of being sick. I’d swallowed a donut in three bites on my way out the door, but it wasn’t doing a very good job of soaking anything up. Acid licked at the back of my throat and I swallowed hard.
“Don’t tell me you’re seasick,” Maurice said, his eyes still focused on the floaties a few dozen yards away as if I wasn’t turning green and gulping air.
I seized on the chance to blame my nausea on anything other than my own internal freak-out. “Maybe,” I said. “Haven’t been on a boat since I went on that horrible cruise when I turned thirty.”
I stared down at the soupy green water sloshing against the side of the rowboat, and picked out tiny round shapes that were plants, or snails, or some other mysterious bits of life in the murk.
“Just set there,” Maurice said. “It’ll pass.”
A larger pale, round shape floated beneath the murky water, probably a shopping bag, or maybe a milk jug. I tried to distract myself by imagining a homie out drinking milk with his posse and chucking the plastic bottle into the river, but I didn’t find my own humor particularly entertaining.
It bothered me, not being able to tell what the thing was, and I leaned my face closer to the water and squinted at it. I noticed there was another one, about the same size and shape but maybe a little farther down, to my right. And another to my left. My vision seemed to open up and I realized these pale shapes were all around us, like cloud formations beneath the river’s surface.
Some kind of algae, then. Or maybe even pale, sandy mounds, with the Calumet’s bottom as close as Maurice had said it was, even closer, us bobbing in a couple of feet of water where we just could have waded instead, if I were dressed appropriately.
I pushed myself up on the side of the boat as my nausea receded. I was just about to ask Maurice about his trip to Fort Lauderdale when the underwater shape surged up toward me and coalesced into a pale, dead face.
I snapped up tall and the fishing pole leapt out of my grip. I managed to grab it before it fell into the water, but maybe I should’ve just let it drop. Maybe I wouldn’t have looked like I was shaking so hard if I didn’t have a big, telltale fishing line visibly quivering between me and the water.
The water that was full of dead people.
Maurice stared at me for a beat, glanced over the side, then took the fishing pole from my hands and wedged it into the bottom of the boat. “What you see?” he said calmly.
I knew what I must look like, whites of my eyes showing all around, face paler than usual. The Look. The one that said I’d just seen something. Maurice knew The Look.
I closed my eyes and images of pallid, distended faces bobbing to the surface filled my memory. Hundreds of them, eyes open and unseeing, a landscape of them stretching to the horizon—or at least the highway.
There wouldn’t be that many there. Not in real life. It was just my own mind fucking with me.
“It bad?” Maurice said gently.
I opened my eyes and stared hard at his brown, gray-whiskered face. I took another breath. It wasn’t that bad, I told myself. I’d just seen a handful of revenants and let my imagination run wild. It wasn’t as if I’d never seen dead people before, I told myself. It wasn’t like I’d never seen a ghost.
I peeked over the side.
A face peered back at me, rubbery mouth opening and closing like it was trying to talk—but the water didn’t move and no bubbles came out. The face next to it blinked. A hand moved toward the surface of the water like a pale, bloated spider, reaching for me. And beyond it, another hand. And another beyond that.
“Jesus,” I said. I jerked myself upright and started chafing my arms. “The water’s full of them.”
Maurice reeled in his drowned worm, and my empty hook, and then the anchor. I felt him shove the oar into the riverbed and give us a push toward shore.
“Should I make some phone calls, have ‘em drag it?” Maurice asked.
“I don’t know.” Was anybody missing? Yeah, probably. But dozens of somebodies? Maybe hundreds? “I just....” I sighed and made a “whatever” gesture. “I don’t know.”
A Crown of Iron & Silver by Hailey Turner
“Fuck,” Jono breathed, his hand coming up to touch the side of Patrick’s face. “Love the way you look with my cock in your mouth.”
The cock in question was growing hard against Patrick’s tongue, in his throat, the thickness something he enjoyed. Patrick hummed around Jono’s cock, enjoying the way Jono swore at the sound. Patrick’s own cock was growing heavy between his legs, a gentle build of desire that had him rolling his hips against the bed every now and then, looking for friction.
Patrick pulled back a little, breathing through his nose as he did so, getting a lungful of Jono’s musky scent. He wrapped a hand around the base of Jono’s cock, giving it a squeeze. Jono’s cock twitched at the pressure, the head bumping against the back of Patrick’s throat. He pulled off all the way, licking his way back to Jono’s balls. He tongued at the soft skin between them, tugging on one with his free hand.
Jono’s thighs pressed against his shoulders, hips canting upward. “Bloody tease.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Patrick propped his chin on Jono’s thigh, casually stroking his cock. “How do you want to come? In my mouth? On my face?”
The way Jono’s eyes darkened told Patrick either option was good. Jono reached for him, tracing his mouth with a careful finger. “Rather come in you.”
It was Patrick’s turn to groan at that, shivering at the possessive look on Jono’s face. “Sure. Like I’d say no to that.”
Patrick didn’t protest when Jono half sat up, reaching for him. Patrick was dragged up Jono’s body until he was lying on the other man, within easy kissing reach. He framed Jono’s face with one hand, mapping out his mouth with an eager tongue. He heard the pillow rustle, then the sound of the lube bottle opening up.
Patrick moaned into Jono’s mouth at the finger that pressed inside him, hips twitching away from the intrusion before pushing back against it. Jono fingered him the same way Patrick had sucked his cock—slow and easy, with a loving attention to detail that left him gasping and wanting more.
He panted against Jono’s mouth, trying to breathe as Jono worked his way up to three fingers, stroking Patrick deep inside. He clutched at Jono’s shoulders, rocking back against the fingers stretching him.
“You want me to ride you?” Patrick asked.
“Don’t want you to do all the work.”
Patrick nipped at his bottom lip. “Getting fucked by you is never work. Pretty sure it’s the opposite of work.”
Jordan Castillo Price
Author and artist Jordan Castillo Price is the owner of JCP Books LLC. Her paranormal thrillers are colored by her time in the midwest, from inner city Chicago, to small town Wisconsin, to liberal Madison.
Jordan is best known as the author of the PsyCop series, an unfolding tale of paranormal mystery and suspense starring Victor Bayne, a gay medium who's plagued by ghostly visitations. Also check out her new series, Mnevermind, where memories are made...one client at a time.
With her education in fine arts and practical experience as a graphic designer, Jordan set out to create high quality ebooks with lavish cover art, quality editing and gripping content. The result is JCP Books, offering stories you'll want to read again and again.
Jaclyn Osborn was born and raised in the state of Arkansas. When not actively writing a new book, she can be found plotting and gaining inspiration for the next story. Writing is her passion and she's thankful for each day she's able to live her dream. A firm believer in happy endings and redemption for damaged souls, her boys in her stories mean the world to her, and she'd be lost without them.
All types of genres in the m/m world interest her, in both reading and writing, and she hopes to delve into a few of them in her writing career.
K.A. Merikan are a team of writers who try not to suck at adulting, with some success. Always eager to explore the murky waters of the weird and wonderful, K.A. Merikan don’t follow fixed formulas and want each of their books to be a surprise for those who choose to hop on for the ride.
K.A. Merikan have a few sweeter M/M romances as well, but they specialize in the dark, dirty, and dangerous side of M/M, full of bikers, bad boys, mafiosi, and scorching hot romance.
K.A. Merikan have a few sweeter M/M romances as well, but they specialize in the dark, dirty, and dangerous side of M/M, full of bikers, bad boys, mafiosi, and scorching hot romance.
S.E. Harmon has had a lifelong love affair with writing. It’s been both wonderful and rocky (they've divorced several times), but they always manage to come back together. She's a native Floridian with a Bachelor of Arts and a Masters in Fine Arts, and used to spend her time writing educational grants. She now splits her days between voraciously reading romance novels and squirreling away someplace to write them. Her current beta reader is a nosy American Eskimo who begrudgingly accepts payment in the form of dog biscuits.
Hailey Turner is big city girl who spoils her cats rotten and has a demanding day job that she loves, but not as much as she loves writing. She’s been writing since she was a young child and enjoys reading almost as much as creating a new story. Hailey loves stories with lots of action, gritty relationships, and an eventual HEA that satisfies the heart.
Jordan Castillo Price
WEBSITE / NEWSLETTER / KOBO
SMASHWORDS / LIVEJOURNAL / B&N
EMAILS: jordan@psycop.com
jcp.heat@gmail.com
Jaclyn Osborn
FACEBOOK / TWITTER / FB FRIEND
WEBSITE / INSTAGRAM
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EMAIL: authorjaclynosborn@gmail.com
KA Merikan
PINTEREST / SMASHWORDS / B&N
EMAIL: kamerikan@gmail.com
SE Harmon
Hailey Turner
FACEBOOK / WEBSITE / NEWSLETTER
FB FRIEND / PINTEREST / BOOKBUB
INSTAGRAM / AUDIBLE
FB FRIEND / PINTEREST / BOOKBUB
INSTAGRAM / AUDIBLE
EMAIL: haileyturnerwriter@gmail.com
Criss Cross by Jordan Castillo Price
AMAZON US / AMAZON UK / B&N
AUDIBLE / JCP BOOKS / iTUNES
KOBO / iTUNES AUDIO / SMASHWORDS
BOOKS2READ / GOODREADS TBR
AUDIBLE / JCP BOOKS / iTUNES
KOBO / iTUNES AUDIO / SMASHWORDS
BOOKS2READ / GOODREADS TBR
The Ghost of Ellwood by Jaclyn Osborn
Where the Devil Says Goodnight by KA Merikan
Principles of Spookology by SE Harmon
A Crown of Iron & Silver by Hailey Turner
