by Daryl Banner
∙ Dante has trouble keeping things professional as he takes on a young new client.
∙ Brett and Skylar attempt to figure out how to adapt to one another’s needs.
∙ Connor debates a big change in his life.
∙ Zak finds himself in need of Dante’s assistance.
Keep scrolling for an excerpt from the first season of Boys & Toys: “Caysen’s Catch”! Or tap here to check out the whole first season now!
OTHER WORKS
BY DARYL BANNER
Best-selling Stand-Alone Male/Male Romance
∙ Bromosexual
∙ Hard For My Boss
“Spruce, Texas” Male/Male Romance Series
(sassy, sweet & steamy small-town M/M love stories set in Spruce, Texas)
∙ Football Sundae
∙ Born Again Sinner
∙ Heteroflexible
∙ Wrangled
“Bad Boys & Rebels” Male/Male Romance Stand-Alones
∙ Getting Lucky
∙ Raising Hell
∙ My Bad Ex-Boyfriend
“Boys & Toys: Season 1” Male/Male Romance Series
(a series of fun & sexy novellas centered around four gay best friends who get into all sorts of trouble in the big city)
∙ Caysen’s Catch
∙ Wade’s Workout
∙ Dean’s Dare
∙ Garret’s Game
“The Brazen Boys” Male/Male Romance Series of Stand-Alones
(stand-alone novellas filled of sexual exploration, coming of age, and romantic adventures)
∙ Dorm Game
∙ On The Edge
∙ Owned By The Freshman
∙ Dog Tags
∙ Commando (Dog Tags 2)
∙ All Yours Tonight
∙ Straight Up
∙ Houseboy Rules
∙ Slippery When Wet
A College Obsession Romance Series
(a new adult college romance series)
∙ Read My Lips
∙ Beneath The Skin
∙ With These Hands
∙ Through Their Eyes: Five Years Later
The Beautiful Dead Saga
(a post-apocalyptic fantasy saga)
∙ The Beautiful Dead
∙ Dead Of Winter
∙ Almost Alive
∙ The Whispers
∙ Winter’s Doom
∙ Deathless (coming soon)
The OUTLIER Series
(an epic dystopia saga in six large multi-perspective novels)
∙ Rebellion
∙ Legacy
∙ Reign Of Madness
∙ Beyond Oblivion
∙ Weapons Of Atlas (coming soon)
∙ Gifts Of The Goddess (coming soon)
Kings & Queens (an OUTLIER companion novella series)
∙ The Slum Queen
∙ The Twice King
∙ Queen Of Wrath (coming soon)
CAYSEN’S CATCH EXCERPT
11:57 PM.
The city is alive with music, clubbers, and partiers. Laughter, car horns, and cab-hailing fill the streets. And in an inner city high rise apartment, Caysen finishes up with a friend … in his bed.
CAYSEN
One thing you can absolutely never predict is where my underwear will be at the end of the day.
A body stirs in the sheets next to me.
“Wow,” he breathes. “Just … Just wow …”
“I know, right?” I peel off the condom, tie it in a knot, then squint an eye as I flick it at the waste bin. Score!
“I came so hard, I think I bruised my balls.”
I let out one dry chuckle as I glance around for my boxer-briefs, which I’m certain I kicked off somewhere around here. “I don’t think that’s how it works,” I tease, hopping off the bed.
He rolls over and shoots me a look, his upside-down face hanging playfully over the edge of the bed. “And you know all about the body, huh?”
“They don’t pay me the big bucks at the gym just to look pretty,” I throw back lightly, then take a glance around the front of the bed.
“You’re so hot. I mean, how do you even get a butt that sculpted? And your wide, muscled back that tapers perfectly toward it … And your round, big, muscled shoulders …”
“Eighty percent diet and a fuck-lot of lifting.” I step over my jeans and crouch down, looking.
He flips back over and sits up at once. “So do you hook up with all your clients?”
“Just the special ones.” I come out from the other side of the bed with a blue and white sock.
“Bet you tell your un-special clients that, too.”
I flash him a smile, then lift my hands in mock surrender. “You got me!”
“Not that I’m in a hurry for you to put them back on, as I’m rather enjoying the show, but if you’re looking for your underwear … they’re right there.” He points.
I follow his finger to the long dresser that sits under my mounted 52-inch LCD. And there they are, my shiny black boxer-briefs, hanging on the edge of a small wooden picture frame.
And in the photograph hugged by that wooden picture frame, two beaming young collegiate faces smile back. One’s mine. The other …
My gaze lingers on that photograph, as if I can feel the excitement that swelled in my heart that day only a handful of years ago when the pair of us graduated from Leadstone College. He didn’t want to throw his hat, too afraid he’d lose it.
The memory has me smiling.
“Is that your …? Oh.” He slaps a hand to his face. “Your boyfriend? Is that your boyfriend? Oh God, am I just a … a lay? Am I a mistress now?”
I pluck my underwear off the picture, my gaze lingering on it a moment as I slowly pull them on. “Wade,” I answer. “He’s my best friend.”
“Oh … best friend? Hmm. Is he straight?”
My life would be a hell of a lot easier if he was. I turn to him. “It’s getting late,” I point out, “and I have a new client in the morning. So …”
“Oh … Oh, okay.” After a second of biting his lip, he hops off the bed and, with uncertainty, starts to get dressed. “The old please-get-out-now thing. We had our fun, it’s all good, I know the drill. I’d just hoped we might hang out a tiny bit, maybe throw on a movie, but …” He sighs as he slaps a hand to his head and peers around my room. “I think I’m missing a sock.”
My phone buzzes on the dresser next to me. I pick it up, give a look at the screen, then smirk. It’s like he can read my mind.
WADE
“Oh my God. Caysen?” I hiss into the phone. “Are you there? Dude, you’ll never guess why I’m calling.”
Caysen snorts from the line. “Did you stick it in the wrong hole?”
“Close. I …” I glance over my shoulder at the back of the bathroom door and my lucky striped pastel-rainbow towel hanging from it, which I got ten years ago at Pride when I first came out. “I have a visitor. Right now. It’s the director. Of the show I auditioned for. The off-off-Broadway one.”
“Why are you whispering?”
“He’s on my couch. He says he wanted to talk to me about the lead role. The lead role, Caysen!”
“Uh … at midnight?”
“Okay, yes, I know it isn’t conventional, but he wanted to ‘discuss it’ and happened to be in the area. That can only be good news, right? Maybe I made call-backs! Maybe I might get the part!”
“Wade, you know they call it ‘casting couch’ for a reason, right?”
“It’s not like that! He’s really well known in the community. People respect him.” I catch my own gaze in the mirror. “Oh fuck, was my hair doing that the whole time??” I quickly push up a few rebel bangs off my forehead, sweeping them upward where they belong. “Anyway, what should I do? Should I play it cool? This could be the show, Cays. The one that breaks me into the scene.”
“I’m pretty sure he just wants to fuck you.”
I roll my eyes. “Always fucking and boys and toys
with you.”
“Hey, you’re the one calling me shamefully from your bathroom.”
“I’m n—! Wait, how can you tell?”
“The echo. Listen, I’ve got company, and—”
“Ooh? At midnight?” I taunt, throwing his own words back at him.
“Ah, you know me.” Then he mocks me right back. “Boys and toys.”
“He doesn’t just want to fuck me, Caysen.”
“The more you say it, the less you believe it.”
“My audition made him smile.” I give another glance back at the door, then shrink against the wall by the mirror, afraid even my whispers are too loud. “I’m the only one who did that! But … if I accept this role—assuming I am being offered it—I’ll miss Dean’s party, since the show opens that same weekend. Also, it’d be a crazy lot of lines and nightly rehearsals and tons of hard work …”
“Don’t do it, Wade. Not every smile is nice.”
“Shit, why’d I call your ass again? I’ve kept him waiting long enough. Gotta go,” I sing to him in a tiny, tiny voice before hanging up.
Then I stare at my reflection and bite my lip. I try a smile in the mirror, flashing myself my most charming. I have a nice smile, and I’m a nice guy.
Caysen’s so wrong. A smile reveals everything about a person. I’m an actor. Half my training is about nuance and specificity and the dozen things a simple smile can reveal.
And I know that my director is a nice guy with integrity.
And … really tight pants.
And also maybe a shirt that’s unbuttoned about two buttons too far to be decent.
Three buttons.
You’re letting Caysen get to you.
Tap here to see what happens next in the complete first season of Boys & Toys!
Table of Contents
BRETT CHAPTER LIST
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
[ THE FRAT BOY ]
1
2
3
[ THE EASY LIFE ]
4
5
[ THE BIG NIGHT OUT ]
6
7
8
9
10
[ THE BIG DAY ]
11
12
13
14
15
[ THE BEST BRO ]
16
17
18
19
20
[ BRETT’S EPILOGUE ]
EPILOGUE
DANTE
WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE BOYS?
OTHER WORKS BY DARYL BANNER
CAYSEN’S CATCH EXCERPT