Trials and Errors (9 page)

When it started to look like the car might pass them by, Mat realized just how insane he and Dougie might seem to some innocent driver. Like a pair of drunks or drug addicts, or worse, some psycho kinksters out cruising for unwilling victims. Fuck-all knew how long it’d be before another car came along. He couldn’t take the chance of losing this one, not after all the screaming they’d just done, not after everything they’d been through, not after Dougie had finally snapped out of his fucking nightmare and realized it’d all just been some awful dream. He
couldn’t
.

Without another thought, he freed his hand from Dougie’s and ran full tilt into the middle of the road. If the car hit him, so be it. At least then it would have to stop. At least Dougie would make it home.

It didn’t hit him.

The driver braked hard, swerved nearly sideways, but managed to pull the car to a stop just a few feet short of impact.

Dougie rushed up beside Mat and grabbed his hand like he thought he could stop him
now
from throwing himself into the road. The figure inside the car seemed to stare at them for a moment, unmoving, and he and Dougie stared back at the darkened shape of him—her?—behind the wheel, afraid to spook their would-be savior, afraid he’d start up again and run them over, afraid that if they stepped out of the way for even a second, he’d just take off into the night and—junker or not—leave them in his dust.

But then the driver waved to them, leaned across the front seat, and threw open the passenger door.

The time for hesitation and caution had passed. Do or die, quite literally.

Still clutching to each other, tears streaming down both their cheeks, Mat and Dougie rushed over and climbed inside.

http://www.riptidepublishing.com/titles/flesh-cartel-10-false-gods

Bookended

Giving an Inch (Professor’s Rule, #1), with Amelia Gormley

Apple Polisher (Rear Entrance Video, #1)

Wallflower (Rear Entrance Video, #2)

With Violetta Vane
:

Mark of the Gladiator

Galway Bound

The Druid Stone

The War at the End of the World

Hawaiian Gothic

“Salting the Earth,” a short story in the anthology Like It or Not

Cruce de Caminos

Harm Reduction

The Saturnalia Effect

Power Play: Resistance, with Cat Grant

Power Play: Awakening, with Cat Grant

Master Class (Master Class, #1)

Sublime: Collected Shorts (Master Class, #2)

Counterpoint (Song of the Fallen, #1)

Crescendo (Song of the Fallen, #2)

Anchored (Belonging, #1)

Where He Belongs (Belonging, #2)

Break and Enter, with Aleksandr Voinov

Heidi Belleau was born and raised in small town New Brunswick, Canada. She now lives in the rugged oil-patch frontier of Northern BC with her husband, an Irish ex-pat whose long work hours in the trades leave her plenty of quiet time to write. She has a degree in history from Simon Fraser University with a concentration in British and Irish studies; much of her work centred on popular culture, oral folklore, and sexuality, but she was known to perplex her professors with unironic papers on the historical roots of modern romance novel tropes. (Ask her about Highlanders!) When not writing, you might catch her trying to explain British television to her newborn daughter or standing in line at the local coffee shop, waiting on her caramel macchiato.

You can find her tweeting as
@HeidiBelleau
, email her at
[email protected]
, or visit her blog:
http://www.heidibelleau.com
.

Rachel is an M/M erotic romance author, a freelance writer and editor, and the Managing Editor of Riptide Publishing. She’s also a sadist with a pesky conscience, shamelessly silly, and quite proudly pervish. Fortunately, all those things make writing a lot more fun for her . . . if not so much for her characters.

When she’s not writing about hot guys getting it on (or just plain getting it; her characters rarely escape a story unscathed), she loves to read, hike, camp, sing, perform in community theater, and glue captions to cats. She also has a particular fondness for her very needy dog, her even needier cat, and shouting at kids to get off her lawn.

You can find Rachel at her website,
http://rachelhaimowitz.com
, tweeting as
@RachelHaimowitz
, and on
Goodreads
. She loves to hear from folks, so feel free to drop her a line anytime at
[email protected]
.

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