Bitter Taffy (27 page)

“Yeah?”

Rico continued his caress. “Swear. You’re… you’re the best home I could imagine. I saw him there on the lawn, and I was shocked. And worried about
him
,
if you must know the truth, because….” Rico thought about those scars on his knuckles and wanted to cry. “He’s fragile. I mean, I knew he was a little, but he’s… he’s fragile. And I’ll give him a place on Adam’s couch, and I’ll let Adam get him a job—hell, I’ll even ask you to give him a job—and we might even have to let him beat you at video games. But he can’t have that place in my heart anymore, Derek. You live there. You’ve set up this
beautiful
house”—he gestured to Derek’s living room, now graced with one of Adam’s brightest paintings and so warm and so full of beauty and comfort that it made Rico’s throat close—“and you’ve sort of set up the same place inside of me. I can’t leave this place—not to comfort Ezra. Not to make you feel like ‘the good guy.’ It’s my home now. We made it my home with every plan we made.” Suddenly his stomach clenched, the memory of the rather void apartment in New York, of the apartment on F Street that he’d never made his, of the dormitories he’d lived in without even a poster, of his room in his parents’ house with the plain white comforter and not a picture on the wall, all assailing him at the same time.

Any of them could have been his home, if only Derek had lived there too.

But Derek lived
here
,
and Rico couldn’t leave.

“Please don’t make me leave,” Rico said, the wobbliness coming back. “Being with you is the only home I’ve ever had.”

Derek leaned forward on the couch so he could look Rico in the eyes. “How you feeling?” he asked quietly. “Going to throw up or pass out?”

Rico shook his head. “Naw. But I might cry.”

Derek nodded and very carefully took his glass of ice water away, then set it on the glass-topped coffee table without a coaster. “That’s okay,” he said, giving Rico a shaky smile. “Me too.”

He felt so good in Rico’s arms. Warm, solid, beautiful.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Rico said against his shoulder.

“I believe that with all I got,” Derek said back.

There were a few tears then, but then the tears turned to kisses, and the kisses turned to making love on the couch, Rico on his knees with Derek’s cock erupting into his mouth, the taste of his come suffusing Rico with heat and bitterness and joy.

He rested his head against Derek’s thigh when it was done, palming his own cock while Derek caught his breath and played with Rico’s hair.

“So,” Derek breathed, still coming down, “is this ‘after’?”

“Sure,” Rico said, content and aching all at once. “But I’m still hard.”

Derek laughed and leaned over, pulling Rico up gently by the hair and taking his come-slicked mouth with a full-tongue kiss. He pulled back and smiled. “We’ll have to take care of that hard-on,” he promised. “There’s no ‘after’ without the ‘happy’ first, right?”

Rico grinned and stood, his erection bobbing, teasing Derek’s lips. “Then come on and make me happy,” he said playfully.

Derek stuck his tongue out and teasingly licked a drop of precome off, watching as Rico closed his eyes and bit his lip.

“I will
always
work to make you happy,” he promised, and then he opened his mouth and pulled Rico in, and words were the last thing on either of their minds.

D
ARRIN
WAS
rarely caught unaware, but when Adam and Miguel walked into Candy Heaven with the pretty young man he’d been dreaming about for the past week, you could have knocked him over with a feather.

“Really?” he asked Adam sharply. “Really? You’re responsible for this one too?”

“Hey, don’t look at me!” Adam defended. “Rico brought this one. Finn and I were finally going to get sex on the couch, but Rico said he’s ours, so I brought him here.”

Darrin looked the slick young man over, wrinkling his nose. “You smell like Manhattan,” he said with distaste. “We need to fix that.”

“I like Manhattan,” the young man said uncertainly.

No. “No, you don’t. You’ve been
told
you like Manhattan, but you really like Sacramento much better.” He looked at Adam. “Is this some sort of punishment? Your damned cousin haunted me for
four
months. You and Finn at least had the good sense to fall in love over the course of one. This one’s a project—what did I ever do to you?”

Adam blinked those big liquid brown eyes at him. “You hired me and sicced Finn on me like a love-struck schnauzer. You’re getting what you deserve. Now do you have a job for him?”

“And be nice,” Miguel said, his own sloe eyes wide and shiny like one of those hideous paintings of big-eyed children. “He needs some extra care.”

Darrin opened his mouth, closed it again, and then looked at Miguel’s protective hand hovering at the small of the newcomer’s back.

“Of course,” he said simply. Oh, this was convenient. Perhaps not easy, but, well, convenient. He put on his best smile and extended his hand. “Welcome to Candy Heaven,” he said sweetly. “I’m Darrin and I’ll be dispensing candy for all your emotional needs. What can I do for you today?”

The young man swallowed and smiled uncertainly. “I’m, uh, Ezra Kellerman, and I was told you could give me a job.”

Of course Darrin could. But that wasn’t all the young man needed—and that was the challenge, wasn’t it? “Go get him an apron,” he said to Adam. “And you get to train him.”

Adam shrugged. “Yeah, boss. Whatever.”

Ezra watched Adam disappear into the office like he was a last, best hope. Aw, poor puppy. Darrin succumbed to the urge to ruffle his carefully coifed hair.

“Hey!” The explosion of big hands and elbows was the closest thing Darrin had seen to spirit coming from the young man. “Watch the do!”

Darrin laughed, enjoying the sound, low and evil, from the pit of his stomach. “Ezra?” he said, smiling prettily.

“Yeah?” Ezra patted his hair carefully back into place.

“It’s going to be a
very
sweet day.”

A
MY
L
ANE
is a mother of two college students, two grade-schoolers, and two small dogs. She is also a compulsive knitter who writes because she can’t silence the voices in her head. She adores fur-babies, knitting socks, and hawt menz, and she dislikes moths, cat boxes, and knuckle-headed macspazzmatrons. She is rarely found cooking, cleaning, or doing domestic chores, but she has been known to knit up an emergency hat/blanket/pair of socks for any occasion whatsoever, or sometimes for no reason at all. Her award-winning writing has three flavors: twisty-purple alternative universe, angsty-orange contemporary, and sunshine-yellow happy. By necessity, she has learned to type like the wind. She’s been married for twenty-plus years to her beloved Mate and still believes in Twu Wuv, with a capital Twu and a capital Wuv, and she doesn’t see any reason at all for that to change.

Website: www.greenshill.com

Blog: www.writerslane.blogspot.com

E-mail: [email protected]

Facebook: www.facebook.com/amy.lane.167

Twitter: @amymaclane

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Contemporary Romance

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Terrell Washington’s childhood was a trifecta of suck: being black, gay, and poor in America has no upside. Terrell climbed his way out of the hood only to hit a glass ceiling and stop, frozen, a chain restaurant bartender with a journalism degree. His one bright spot is Colby Meyers, a coworker who has no fear, no inhibitions, and sees no boundaries. Terrell and Colby spend their summers at the river and their breaks on the back dock of Papiano’s. As terrified as Terrell is of coming out, he’s helpless to stay away from Colby's magnetic smile and contagious laughter.

But Colby is out of college now, and he has grand plans for the future—plans Terrell is sure will leave his scrawny black ass in the Sacramento dust until a breathless moment stolen from the chaos of the restaurant tells Terrell he might be wrong. When the moment is shattered by a mystery and an act of violence, Terrell and Colby are left with two puzzles: who killed their scumbag manager, and how to fit their own lives—the black and the white of them—into a single shining tomorrow.

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Meet Patrick Cleary: party boy, loser, and spaz. Patrick’s been trying desperately to transform himself, and the results have been so spectacular, they’ve almost killed him. Meet Wes “Whiskey” Keenan: he’s a field biologist wondering if it’s time to settle down. When the worst day of Patrick’s life ends with Whiskey saving it, Patrick and Whiskey find themselves sharing company and an impossibly small berth on the world’s tackiest houseboat.

Patrick needs to get his life together—and Whiskey wants to help—but Patrick is not entirely convinced it’s doable. He’s pretty sure he’s a freak of nature. But Whiskey, who works with real freaks of nature, thinks all Patrick needs is a little help to see the absolute beauty inside his spastic self, and Whiskey is all about volunteering. Between anomalous frogs, a homicidal ex-boyfriend, and Patrick’s own hangups, Whiskey’s going to need all of his patience and Patrick’s going to need to find the best of himself before these two men ever see clear water.

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

Quent Jackson has followed Jason Spade’s every move in business and in poker since their first day as college freshmen. Eight years later, when Jace finally decides Quent is the one man he can’t live without, he sees no reason for that to change.

But as much as Jace believes that poker is life, no one gave Quent the same playbook. After their first passionate night, the real game of love and trust begins, and Jace has been playing alone too long to make teaching the rules easy.  Jace only speaks two languages: one of them is sex, and the other one is poker. Between the two, he needs to find a way to convince himself to take a chance on love—and Quent to take a chance on him.  It’s a lucky thing they’re good at reading the odds, because they’re playing for keeps, and this is one high-stakes relationship that’s definitely worth the gamble.