by Willa Okati
Laine slapped at his hand and stepped back. “Don’t touch me. You had your lackeys destroy my shop today. Wait till I tell Dev you’re here.” Laine was seething. No way was he going to stop Dev from busting this asshole up this time. The fucker had some nerve. Laine tried to step around Victor, but his arm was grabbed and he was jerked around and pulled up against Victor’s chest. “Let go!”
Victor chuckled. “No, I don’t think I will.”
Laine struggled, flailing and jerking, to no avail. Victor was a lot bigger and stronger than him. Damn.
The larger man backed him up against the wall, chuckling, giving Laine even less room to maneuver. “I do like the way you struggle, Laine. You may be a wimp, but you’re no coward.”
“Fuck you.”
“I tell you what, Laine. You let me fuck you and I’ll take it easy on your loved ones. Speaking of which, where is your boyfriend?” Victor’s mouth crashed down on his.
Laine wrenched his head to the side and used all his strength to escape the Alpha’s arms.
Victor just laughed at him, holding on tight. “You know, if you’d have just kept your mouth shut—”
“Fuck you. If you weren’t such an ass to everyone, I would have kept my mouth shut.”
Again, Victor tried to kiss him.
The door creaked open and a gasp sounded as Laine managed to bite Victor’s lip, drawing blood.
Victor howled and let go with one hand, raising it up, making a fist. “You little shit.”
“I don’t think so, asshole,” a deep voice growled.
Victor was yanked away as his fist descended, missing Laine by several inches.
Laine blinked, watching Cole pummel the man’s face. He sighed in relief. He hated to admit it, but he’d been getting a little concerned.
Finally, after several blows, Victor bolted towards the door. When he got there he turned to glare at Laine and pointed his finger. “You will regret this, Laine.” He took off out the bathroom door.
Laine sagged against the wall, taking a deep breath.
“You okay, Lainey?” Cole came over to him.
He nodded. “Thanks, Cole.”
Cole frowned. “The Alpha?”
Again Laine nodded. “Yeah, he—”
The bathroom door flew open and hit the wall with a loud bang. “Lainey!” Dev came running in, looking around. His gaze fell on Cole, then Laine. He rushed forward, pulling Laine into his arms, practically crushing him. “I saw Victor running out, I thought… Are you okay?”
“Yeah, thanks to Cole.” He hugged Dev then leaned back. “I’m all right, really.”
Dev glanced at Cole without loosening his grip on Laine. “You okay, buddy?”
“Yeah. I’m good. We have to stop this guy, Dev.”
Dev nodded. “Yeah…yeah we do.”
Scott and Keegan have both known their share
of manipulation and abuse. Can they rise above the
heartaches of their separate pasts and build a future together?
Eros Rising
© 2007 Ally Blue
Available January 16, 2007 from Samhain Publishing
Part of the Hearts from the Ashes collection
Scott Jasper needs a change in his life. Stuck in a dead-end relationship with a man who manipulates and uses him, Scott wants out but hasn’t found the one thing to motivate him to leave. Until the night his partner takes him to local gay swinger’s club Ganymede’s Grotto, where Scott meets the man who might just be The One.
Keegan Rourke—a.k.a. “Eros,” the most popular stripper at Ganymede’s Grotto—has been burned before. Determined never to let another man rip his heart out, Keegan doesn’t let anyone get close enough to love him. Until Scott comes along, offering Keegan the gentle, unconditional love he’s always needed but has never experienced.
For Scott and Keegan, the road to lasting commitment isn’t a smooth one. A lot of roadblocks stand in their path—Scott’s trepidation about his own dominant tendencies, Keegan’s abusive past and resulting fear of intimacy. Can they can rise above past sorrows and find their happiness in each other’s arms?
Enjoy the following excerpt for Eros Rising:
The Saturday night before Valentine’s Day, Scott walked up to the front door of Ganymede’s Grotto with a brand-new membership card in his hand. “Hi Patrick,” he said, grinning at the tall, gangly young man at the window. “How are you?”
“Gettin’ by,” Patrick drawled in his honey-thick accent. He nodded toward the card in Scott’s hand. “Finally joined up, huh?”
Scott laughed. “I figured I might as well, since I’m here nearly every day anyhow. It wouldn’t be fair for me to keep taking advantage of Keegan like that, coming in as his guest all the time.”
After that first afternoon and evening as Keegan’s guest at Ganymede’s Grotto, Scott had begun to spend more and more time there. Stopping in for a couple of hours after work had become a habit. He knew all the staff now and had been more or less adopted by Earl, who fussed over him more than his own parents ever had.
At first Scott had tried to pretend that he kept going there to get away from Logan’s increasingly erratic behavior. But he couldn’t lie to himself for long. Ganymede’s Grotto was a nice club, clean and friendly with a laid-back, no-pressure atmosphere, but it wasn’t a place where he would have normally spent so much time. He went there to see Keegan, and everyone knew it.
Scott continued to stubbornly insist he felt nothing but friendship for Keegan. Even he was having trouble believing it anymore.
“It made Earl pretty happy that you joined, I bet,” Patrick observed, taking Scott’s card to scan it. “He’s been dying to sign you up ever since day one.”
Scott raised his eyebrows. “Really? Why? Is it my incredible good looks, or my enormous bank account?”
“Smart-ass.” Patrick handed Scott’s card back. “Keegan likes you, and Earl spoils that boy rotten.”
“Keegan’s almost thirty,” Scott said, putting his card back in his wallet. “Hardly a boy, and definitely older than you.”
“Maybe, but he looks way younger.” Patrick grinned at him. “Speaking of Keegan, he says come back to the dressing room, he wants your opinion on what costume to wear for his show tonight.”
Scott’s heart tried to jump right up his throat. He swallowed it back down. “Oh. Okay. So he’s, um, he’s not being Eros tonight?”
“You know he changes his act around now and then, just to keep things interesting. You’ve seen some of his other acts.” Patrick chuckled. “Man, when are you gonna make a move already? You know he’d be putty in your hands, right?”
The blood rose in Scott’s cheeks, because he did know it. “Come on, Patrick, don’t.”
“Yeah, I know. Logan.” Patrick shook his head. “I’m not sayin’ a word, man. Have a nice night.”
“You too. See you.” Scott pushed the door open and escaped into the welcoming dimness of the club.
Making his way through the already crowded bar to the tiny dressing room behind the stage, Scott smiled and spoke to the staff and a few of the members he’d gotten to know. He thought, not for the first time, that he should thank Logan for bringing him here that night. He felt comfortable and accepted here, even though he never did anything but sit at the bar and talk to Keegan. And watch him strip, Scott reminded himself.
The thought was enough to tighten Scott’s balls. He bit his lip and forced his mind away from the memories of Keegan looking like a debauched angel in that obscene G-string and those huge white wings.
When he reached the dressing room, Scott tapped on the door. “Keegan? It’s me, Patrick said you wanted to see me.”
“Yeah, c’mon in,” Keegan called, his voice muffled.
Scott eased the door open, slipped through and closed it again before looking at Keegan. When he did, he burst out laughing. “What the hell are you doing?”
Keegan’s blue eye glared at him over a strip of black lace. “Shut up and help me
, I’m stuck.”
Still snickering, Scott strolled over and walked in a circle around Keegan, trying to make sense of the tangle he’d made. “What is this, a dress?”
“Yes.” Keegan wriggled in a way that had Scott adjusting his crotch, and managed to get an arm through one sleeve. “It’s not a tear-away, and it’s really fucking tight. Could you just straighten it out in back there? Then maybe I can get it all the way on.”
Scott obediently tugged on the tangle of black fabric wound around Keegan’s back. Heat flared in his belly when his hands brushed Keegan’s skin. He longed to slide his arms around Keegan’s slender waist and pull him close, bend and kiss the curve of his pale shoulder. He satisfied his urge to touch by tracing his fingertips over the naked, pale blue pixie tattooed on Keegan’s back.
Keegan laughed and turned around, slipping his other arm into the sleeve and yanking the dress down. “You feeling up Blue Boy’s cock again?”
“No,” Scott said, truthfully for once. He’d been fascinated with the tattooed pixie’s frighteningly large erection ever since he’d first gotten a good look at it. “I was feeling up his fangs this time.”
“Yeah, well, that’s another erogenous zone for him, I hope you know.” Keegan faced the mirror, eyeing his reflection critically. “So what do you think? Should I put on make-up and be the Goth-Chick-With-A-Dick, or be lazy and drag out the devil costume?”
Scott considered. “I kind of like what you’ve got on. But how do you get it off again if you had this much trouble getting into it?”
Keegan grinned. “Tear it off.”
“Oh.” Scott groped behind him for the chair he knew was there and hung on for dear life. “Yeah, do that.”
“Hot idea, huh?” Keegan rotated his hips in a slow, teasing motion, tongue flicking at his lip ring. “I can only rip the dress in half once, but it was only two bucks at the thrift store, so it’s no big deal.”
The mental image of that tight little black lace mini-dress ripping away to reveal Keegan’s sleekly muscled body did not a damn thing to reduce Scott’s arousal. Before he could think of what he was doing, Scott stroked a hand down Keegan’s lace-clad chest.
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