All his resistance disappeared under the force that is Flor Romero. Spitfire, stubborn Flor—even at sixteen, he refused to be taken lightly. As he grows older, putting a stop to what Flor obviously wants to happen between them harder than Dominic would ever want to admit.
Dominic knows that he has too many demons to let anybody get too close. But life didn’t prepare him for Flor, who just might be ready to fight tooth and nail for a place in Dominic’s life—and his heart.
The question is, will Dominic’s past keep him from his future?
Natural Magic Series
In This Iron Ground
Summary
Damien is nine years old when his parents die. What should have been the worst moment of his life begins a journey shadowed by loneliness and pain. The night of a full moon, four years and seven foster homes later, Damien flees to the forest, desperate to escape everything.
Instead, he finds the Salgado pack, and the earth beneath his feet shifts. Damien has seen the Salgado children in his school: Koko, who is in his class, and Hakan, two years older and infinitely unreachable. Damien is suddenly introduced into a world that had only ever existed in his imagination, where there is magic in the forest and the moon. He meets creatures that look like monsters, but Damien knows that monsters have the same face as anybody else.
Over the years, Damien and Hakan grow closer. First, just as friends and foster brothers in the Salgado house, and then into something heated and breathless when Damien joins Hakan at college. Despite what he may yearn for in the darkest part of the night, Damien knows, deep down in that bruised and mealy part of his core, that he’s not good enough to be part of the Salgado family, their pack. He’s not worthy of calling Hakan his home.
Even though he knows in the end it’ll hurt him, he’ll hold onto this for as long as he can.
Continue reading…
All That Has Flown Beyond
Summary
Kaiyo’s bloodline has been part of the Garrow pack for generations. He has been destined to be shaman, to anchor the werewolves to the land, and to lend aid with the force of his Ousía. When Kaiyo is fourteen, however, an attacking group kills all of the adults in the pack, leaving young Ahmik, only fifteen, as leader.
Their worries don’t end there.
Smelling blood in the water, enemies hunt the decimated pack from all sides. Kaiyo grows increasingly reckless in his desperation to defend his pack, to finally grow into his shaman powers, and to protect Ahmik: the boy he loves.
In the end, Kaiyo loses his pack anyway.
Packless, landless, Kaiyo drifts. For ten years, he fights to remake himself into the shaman, and the man, he was meant to become. One phone call from his old pack, though, and he is forced to return.
Something is killing children, and Kaiyo is the only one strong enough to stop it.
Kaiyo never thought his journey would take him back to his old land, his old pack, and to Ahmik. Forced to face his past, and the wounded love that still aches for Ahmik, Kaiyo will be tested like never before.
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Fox Lake Series
Sicken of the Calm
Summary
Joaquin would never forget the boy who came out in the middle of the school cafeteria when they were both fifteen. Ezra. His unapologetic bravery was something that would haunt Joaquin who, despite being the captain of his high school football team, was too reserved to come out before college, let alone approach the boy he admired from afar.
Joaquin is in his third year at Fox Lake University when he sees Ezra again. Joaquin expects the distance between them to remain unbreached, but Ezra, as brash and impetuous as he was in high school, crashes into his life. At first, it’s just a shared class project, but it doesn’t take long for things between them to heat up. Before Joaquin knows what’s happening, he’s squirming on a chair as Ezra watches him jerk off, those clear, intent eyes pinning him in place. This starts a friends-with-benefits relationship with the aim of exploring a submissive and Dominant dynamic in bed, dipping a toe in the BDSM world together.
However, nothing is ever so simple. As their sexual relationship amps up, so does their friendship deepen, fed by those gentle moments after sex, underbelly-soft and vulnerable. As Joaquin gets to know Ezra better he realises that his assumptions about who Ezra is, and even the assumptions he has made about himself, have to be challenged in order to break the cycles that may lead to their relationship breaking apart.
Excerpt
“Fucking Excel. I swear to God…they do this on purpose.…I’m about to…how is that the y-axis? Who decided that should be the y-axis!” I bark at the computer. Ezra snorts and I whip around to glare at him.
“Do you want to try to get this to work?” I growl. Ezra holds his hands up, still grinning.
“Nope. You’re doing amazing. Fuck Excel, go you,” he says. I roll my eyes, turning back to the computer. “What’s the problem? Is it the data?”
“It’s not the data. It’s the program. It’s the—look! Why does it do that? Why would it think that’s the data for the y-axis I just—” I pull the hair on my head.
“Ok, dude, I think we need a little break.”
“I don’t need a break.”
“Uh, yeah, you do. We can do something relaxing.”
“I’m not doing fucking yoga with you,” I say. Ezra snorts.
“Well, then I’ve run out of ideas. That’s all I do, yoga twenty-four seven, no other way to relax. Well, that, and jerking off.” There was a pause. “Maybe you should try that.”
I turn to glare at him, expecting to see a teasing grin. Instead, his face is quiet. Intense. My whole body stills like it’s sensing a danger my mind hasn’t caught up to. I know I could just roll my eyes and make a joke of it, but the moment stretches past the point of no return.
Slowly, Ezra sits back, still pinning me in place with his eyes. I can feel every breath in my tight chest, in my throat, in my dry mouth.
What the fuck is going on? What the fuck is going on?
Ezra slides his chair to face mine. Slowly, slowly, he lifts one of his long legs and places it on the side of my wheeled chair and pushes gently. The chair slides away from the desk until it faces him. The mouse clatters on the desk as I release it from my suddenly sweaty hand.
I wait for the joke to end. Wait for him to sit up, to throw his arms in the air, to wink and tease. Instead, the stillness thickens and settles like honey, sweet and oppressive.
“Why don’t you show me what you like?” Ezra says. His deep voice makes my own mouth open, but I can’t think enough to protest. His foot is still on the side of the chair. I can feel the pressure of it on my thigh. I can’t move and I can’t think and I can’t—
“Show me what you like, Joaquin,” he says, and my name in his mouth makes my chest tighten. I’m caught in the current of his demand. A soft sound leaves me, a formless breath, “Ah.”
My head is a single white room. My hand is no longer mine. It’s Ezra’s, and it moves down between my legs. Presses against my jeans and the hardening beneath. My breath stutters and his lips part slightly, a flash of tongue. Everything is happening too quickly for the fog of my thoughts to catch up, even if I wanted them to.
And, God, I don’t.
Continue Reading…
Nights Without Night
Summary
Isadoro and Iván have known each other all their lives. They were raised together in La Portera, between the orange trees and water reservoirs, under an endless blue sky. That’s where Iván’s love for Isadoro grew, too. From the earth and water, organic and helpless.
Isadoro leaves for the military when they are both eighteen, but a thread remains. Phone calls, Skype sessions, rests between tours…it’s never quite enough.
After eight years, Isadoro comes back. An already complicated situation is tangled further as they rekindle the “benefits” part of their friendship. The heat between them has always been undeniable, and now it scorche
s through them.
All seems well in the beginning, but nothing is ever so simple. Iván’s love cannot simply banish the insomniac shadows of the past, but perhaps they can face what the night brings—together.
Excerpt
The summer before Isadoro was finally deployed had run on borrowed time. I hadn’t applied to college but had gotten a summer job in La Portera while I figured out what to do with my life. After work, I would go to the beach with Isadoro, pretending this was any other summer and that adulthood wasn’t looming in September for both of us.
One night, we went down to the beach when it was late and dark. The sea was a pool of ink, the sound of it washing in and out a secret call. On Isadoro’s dare, we’d stripped our clothes and ran into the water, the coolness a relief from the thick summer air.
The half-moon had been a bowl of rice perched on the black. We’d swam around, free in the salt and the waves, pulling each other under in a familiar game.
We’d been our child selves, free of the ties tugging at us beyond the water.
When we tired and let ourselves drift, I remember Isadoro swimming close to me. Remember the moon in his eyes. The way his wet skin had felt against mine. It had almost been a kiss. Almost. But I couldn’t do that to myself. Not again. Not when he was leaving and he wasn’t in love with me back.
Who would have thought that I would be able to resist the pull of the moon at eighteen, and cave so many years later, caught completely in its tide.
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Honeythorn: Alpha/Omega Page 20