Get ready…get set…READ…
The Couple Next Door
Rick R. Reed
Release date: December 7, 2015
Rick brought us a gift…an exclusive excerpt!
Below is an excerpt from my latest, The
Couple Next Door, and it’s a scene where two lost souls—Jeremy and
Shane—at last unite, under very difficult circumstances. See, Shane has been
physically and emotionally abused by the man with whom he lives. Jeremy has
been witness to it and has tried to be a friend, to help, to perhaps even be a
savior. He’s tried to keep a respectable distance.
But the pull between these two men, as
you’ll read, is just too powerful….
Does my knowing
the truth make me an accomplice? Does Shane knowing the truth make him an accessory
after the fact to murder?
What, I ask
myself for the thousandth time, have I gotten myself into? The answer comes to
me in an image: Shane, smiling, the delight clear in his icy blue eyes when he
first sees me.
A man. It’s
always a man. If I could learn to live without men, I’d be happy, I tell
myself.
Good luck with
that.
I go into the
kitchen, grab some oranges and a couple of protein bars from a drawer. It’s a
meager breakfast, but it’s the best I have to offer.
Knock, knock,
knock and Shane opens the door. His eyes are rimmed in red. He looks as though
he hasn’t slept—like me. He wears a torn and faded navy blue T-shirt and gray
sweatpants. I can see the outline of his cock through the loose jersey fabric.
My mind wanders away from danger, scaling other exhilarating heights.
He looks
breathtaking. All I want to do is hold him, comfort him, and go from
there—proceed directly to his bedroom, do not pass go. Why am I thinking of sex
at such a horrible time, when he has shared with me the truth of his history?
Now is the time for talk, not lovemaking. Yet the lust persists like an itch
right in the center of my brain. There’s only one way to scratch it.
It’s like he’s
read my mind. He takes the fruit and the protein bars from me and turns away to
set them on the arm of a chair near the front door. Then he comes back to me
and enfolds both of my hands in his own.
The moment is too
charged with something, some kind of electric connection, for words. Talking
would break the spell. The silence is delicious and weighted.
His hands are
warm, verging on fiery, feverish. He tugs me toward him roughly, and before I
know what’s happening, I’m in his arms. This is no friendly “hello” hug. This
is an embrace born of hunger, of desperation, of an animal need for comfort.
His mouth seeks mine, starving, and the merging of our lips and tongues is like
some kind of communion. It’s more than passion. It’s the uniting of two lost
souls.
And with the
thought of lost souls, I realize why we both feel such a connection. In his
famished kiss, I can feel not only his need for me but also mine for him.
We stop only long
enough to turn, to head toward the bedroom. Shane never lets go of at least one
of my hands. I can almost feel his need to cling, to ensure I don’t escape.
I welcome it.
He kicks the door
closed, and then he’s on me like some kind of jungle cat, ripping the few
clothes I wore off, scratching me in the process. I will not see the claw marks
until later, until they appear red and scarlet on my flesh. I will rub them, treasuring
the memory connected to them. Now, though, there is only animal want and the
desire, deep-seated, for human comfort that only oblivion can provide.
We tumble on one
of the two beds crammed into the room together, so hungry we can’t stop
devouring the other. Not just cocks but nipples, armpits, the crooks behind
knees, the tender, sensitive flesh of our thighs, the smalls of our backs.
Fluid—saliva, come, tears, all flow, and we exchange them. Greedily.
He mounts me. I
mount him. We are in such a haze we almost forget the condoms and the lube.
Almost.
Time stands still
as we fuck. As we suck. As we wait, breathless, and do it again.
It’s not until I
am lying in Shane’s arms later, when our respiration and heartbeats have
returned to some semblance of normalcy, that we speak.
I mince no words.
“Why did he do it?”
Blurb:
With the couple next door, nothing is as it
seems.
Jeremy Booth leads a simple life, scraping
by in the gay neighborhood of Seattle, never letting his lack of material
things get him down. But the one thing he really wants—someone to love—seems
elusive. Until the couple next door moves in and Jeremy sees the man of his
dreams, Shane McCallister, pushed down the stairs by a brute named Cole.
Jeremy would never go after another man’s boyfriend,
so he reaches out to Shane in friendship while suppressing his feelings of
attraction. But the feeling of something being off only begins with Cole being
a hard-fisted bully—it ends with him seeming to be different people at
different times. Some days, Cole is the mild-mannered John and then, one night
in a bar, he’s the sassy and vivacious drag queen Vera.
So how can Jeremy rescue the man of his
dreams from a situation that seems to get crazier and more dangerous by the
day? By getting close to the couple next door, Jeremy not only puts a potential
love in jeopardy, but eventually his very life.
Categories: Contemporary, Crime
Fiction, Fiction, M/M Romance, Mystery, Romance, Thriller, Romantic Suspense
200 pages
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Cover Artist: Reese Dante
Buy the Book:
Rick R. Reed is all about exploring the
romantic entanglements of gay men in contemporary, realistic settings. While
his stories often contain elements of suspense, mystery and the paranormal, his
focus ultimately returns to the power of love. He is the author of dozens of
published novels, novellas, and short stories. He is a three-time EPIC eBook
Award winner (for Caregiver, Orientation and The Blue
Moon Cafe).
Raining Men and Caregiver have both won the Rainbow Award
for gay fiction. Lambda Literary Review
has called him, "a writer that doesn't disappoint." Rick lives in
Seattle with his husband and a very spoiled Boston terrier. He is forever
"at work on another novel."
…and stalking them :)
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Thanks for, um, having me, Havan. Always a delight to stop by!
ReplyDeleteGreat clip. I'm so intrigued-a dead body, a complicated plot and sexytimes.... O.O
ReplyDeleteThanks, Veronica. These are a few of my favorite things....
ReplyDelete