by Q. Zayne
“Shush. That’s my neighbor, Mrs. Hough. More than giving me a ride, she wants to grill me about you. And scold me.” I could relate, my pack wanted to scold me, too. Distant howls keened over the rain.
I loosened my hold to let the decision be hers. As much as I wanted her, I was a stranger and I couldn’t expect too much.
“It’s up to you.” I was too embarrassed to tell her I couldn’t give her a lift.
Charity put her finger to her lips. My day was saved.
The tottering footsteps of the woman retreated down the path and I let out my breath. I kissed Charity’s hair.
She shrugged out of my embrace. I wanted to pull her close again. I reached for her and she took my hand. She gave me a wicked grin.
“If you aren’t squeamish, we can keep drier inside.”
I grabbed my clean handkerchief out of my pocket and draped it over her head. I felt silly, but I wanted to help. She gave me her high-voltage smile.
“Sugar, I almost think you’ve been reading up about Black women and their hair. But seeing as I’m the only Black woman in town, unless you’re a stalker, that’s pretty unlikely.”
I couldn’t tell her all the things I read up on, ‘the better to see you with, my dear’ because it seemed my years of studying humans was for the purpose of courting her. I kept my mouth shut and followed.
She stopped at the center crypt and yanked the chain through the gate. Her slender hands handling the heavy chain could make an art study, or a series of photos that could make you come or cry.
“This one’s gate only looks locked. I noticed it was broken when I was working in the garden.” It sounded as if she wanted to assure me she wasn’t in the habit of breaking into the resting places of the dead, or getting into crypts with strange men.
The gate creaked open, inviting us into the sepulcher, a primal moment for young lovers.
“Of course. Sensible thought, Charity.” I examined the crypt, making sure it was empty, and stepped into it. I didn’t mind the rain much, though I missed my water-repellent pelt. Skin was pretty useless against the elements; at least it dried fast. Charity wasn’t dressed for the storm, so this enclosure was better for her. Clever woman, she’d solved the problem of having no place to go. Here we were.
It smelled faintly of long-dead mice, nothing worse. No danger.
“This will keep the storm off,” I said, to say something. I smiled in a non-threatening way.
Charity glanced at me and away, her smile shy. Her skin glowed, so beautiful even in the dim crypt. She turned, her dress flaring and brushing me, and read the names and dates of the dead. The bodies were encased in their hermetically-sealed coffins and encased in concrete. It had never been clear to me if people thought their moldering bones were supposed to rise out of all that encasement for the Rapture, though a lot of art depicted that, skipping the steps of how the skeletons broke the seals and got through the concrete.
Even if they were buried with crowbars and jackhammers that would be some job. Especially considering skeletons had no muscles and became brittle with age. The thought of skeletons crumbling to bits while trying to get out of their worm-proof coffins to answer the trumpet call distracted me for a moment. Stress, I supposed. Enclosed places disturbed me. Being in a potential trap went against all my instincts, yet I would go anywhere to be with Charity.
She put the chain back like it had been, making the gate looked locked.
“Just in case anyone else comes looking,” she said. “Here we are, safe and dry.”
“Good job.” I opened my coat in invitation. She took off the handkerchief and I put it away. My heart skipped, awaiting her return. She wouldn’t change her mind, would she? She looked back through the gate, rubbing her bare shoulders.
“It’s really coming down out there. We’d better stay here awhile.” She turned and her smile lit me up.
Charity slipped back into my arms. Sweet, soft, strong, spirited armful of woman. The scent of her arousal pierced through all other scents, the rabbits and gophers in their dens outside, a dog and a raccoon family searching for scraps near the church picnic benches. Her musk was subtler than a she-wolf’s, yet entrancing. How did men do this? How was I supposed to be a gentleman in this situation?
Nothing in my life prepared me to be the beast in a crypt with Beauty in my arms. At least it wasn’t the full moon and no threats were near. I could stay a man with her. An aching man, but at least I’d keep from revealing myself as a wolf. Some day I’d have to, but not on the first date. Talk, Wyatt, talk. I figured that’s what Cody would tell me. He told me in his time they called it sparking. Way back, when I was on his knee. How did we get on that topic? I sure wish I knew everything that good old man knew about women. His wife Myra loved him like I’d never seen anyone love, decades on, and still had room in her heart for me; Wild Boy she called me, after some boy raised by wolves when she was young.
“How long have you been singing?”
“Since I was little. Momma sang, we all sang. Where’d you come from? You’re not just passing through are you?” I saw pain behind her eyes, supposed someone passed through on her not so long back. “I’ve never seen you before.” Her gaze swept me from my shoes, up my close-fitting jeans and shirt and stubble-covered face. Those big, big pupils of her told me she liked what she saw. I gave her my best wolf-grin. Felt weird with this face, but she seemed to like it. She gave me her slaying smile right back.
“We, my family, we live up there.” I waved toward the hills. I didn’t want to lie, just had to keep some things to myself. That was it, the way to say it. “We keep to ourselves. Clannish, always have been.”
“Who’s your family?”
“There’s my younger brother and sisters, cousins and friends. My mom’s gone and Dad died in the winter.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He was old.” I stopped myself from blurting ‘I have to take care of everyone now,’ it sounded self-pitying, and it wasn’t true. I didn’t have to do it. It was a choice, as coming down the hill to answer Charity’s song was a choice.
Who was Charity? What did she want? What made her sing like that?
“It’s hard to lose someone.” Her voice furred with a depth of loss, layers of it like a deep core sample from the earth. I wanted to take all that pain away. She leaned back in my arms and stroked my face, looking at me with her eyes wide. “There’s a lot that’s different about you, Wyatt. I don’t mean in a bad way. I guess I pick up on it because I’m different too, and it’s lonely, lonely being different from everyone else. I don’t mean just in obvious ways, being surrounded by white people. Just, different to my core.”
“I know what you mean.” I swallowed, wanting to tell her everything, but not wanting to risk it yet.
“I thought you did.” She searched my face.
“I feel that way, too. I always did, even when I was a kid.” I caught myself from saying pup. I wanted to be honest with her, and I had to be careful. It was too soon to say too much. “I thought I must belong somewhere else, and someday it would come right, the mistake would be corrected, I’d find a home where I belonged.”
“Wouldn’t that be amazing? To belong.” She said belong with such reverence, her voice told me how out of reach she thought belonging was for her. Her eyes teared up. “Not just tolerated or put up with or whatever, truly belong. Be celebrated, not just sort of accepted.”
He felt like he was looking into her heart, seeing where her music came from.
“How’d you come to be here?” I wanted to know what brought her to where I could find her. Her presence in my territory about made me believe in miracles.
“More of a tragedy than I want to bring up just now, you know?” She shrugged. “This has been a happy day, I don’t want to call up those old shadows. Enough to say I ended up alone, needed a place to go. I knew a girl from school here and we’d stayed in touch. So I came here when I didn’t know where else to go. It’s strange, but I’ve gotten used
to it. Used to the stares, used to men who assume I’m a whore, used to being on the edge of things in a town where everyone knows each other and their pets and everyone’s business going back generations.”
“Do you think about leaving?”
“Hell, yes.” The growl in her voice thrilled me. So husky, earthy, delicious. She laughed, bringing the crypt to life. It could be full of happy spirits now, come to bask in that musical sound. Even when she didn’t sound happy, she made me happy. It disoriented me more than anything I ever encountered, even more than when I first saw a zebra some dolt bought to pen up on his ranch.
“What’s your plan?”
“I’ve been saving money. I wait tables, pick up odd jobs, sock everything away. All I need is a destination.”
The wistful look in her eyes came close to breaking my heart.
“You’re brave. I have a feeling about you, Charity. You’ll find your destination. You’re the kind of woman who goes after what she wants and changes the world.”
“Wyatt. There’s something about you. I want to believe you, want to believe it’s more than sweet talk, you know?” She looked into my eyes like she planned on finding something there. I looked back, wanting her to find it, find me.
“I know.” I held my breath, let her find her words.
“Wyatt, Wyatt, Wyatt.”
My name coming from her lips made me heady. I wanted to kiss her again and not stop, not stop ever.
“You know something, Wyatt Hunter?” her voice went husky and my blood raged.
“What’s that, Charity Washington?”
“I don’t want to be a good girl anymore.”
“You mean —?”
“I want to stop it right now, right here, with you.”
I held my breath, not daring to believe she really meant it. She launched herself at me and wrapped her voluptuous thighs around me. Her hungry eager mouth told me she meant what I thought she meant. The most beautiful woman I’d ever seen—the tender, tough, hurt young woman who stole my heart—was offering me her virginity.
More Hughes Empire Edgy Books
Get Consumed on Amazon US
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The dirty edge, when you say yes to being overpowered because you want it that way, you want to be crushed under him. Hell yes, you want to have his baby.
Two risky first times…. Forbidden love isn’t always sparked by the man who’s too close. Sometimes he’s the one who’s too dangerous.
These untouched heroines feel the power of a man who might be lethal. But what if he’s her fated mate?
His fingers burned my wrist. We were standing in the shed, about as far from my mom’s bedroom as we could get and it started to sink in that maybe that was the whole point of his bringing me here.
I took a deep breath. I was kind of shaking.
“Now for what we came here for, Cassandra. First, you must agree to be spanked. And second, you must understand that if you wish it, I will stop.” He held up a big finger to tick off those points.
“What are you talking about?” I was tempted to make another crack about his mental health, but there was something steely about him, and I wasn’t sure anyone would hear me scream.
He shut the door and locked it, his movements calm and unhurried, bringing the point home.
“You will agree that you need improvement and I will provide you with discipline. If you want for me to stop, you will say basta, enough. That is an expression you would not say by accident, so if you say it, I know you mean it and I will stop. That is our contract.” He had a way too sexy accent, too. So not fair.
Please note: Crushed includes a standalone episode from my Billionaires Club erotica serial. Although it has romantic elements and an HEA, the dirty sexual content may go too far for some readers.
Dangerous Protector on Amazon US
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Are you ready for this? My first novel is hot menage suspense:
Amazon US
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Billionaire Weston Drake is older than Ivy’s father and likes to spank. He makes the curvy virgin tingle. His close bodyguard is so tender and sexy she can’t stop thinking about him, either. And bad guys are out to kill them all.
Ivy’s sexual awakening peaks during her dangerous journey with her new boss. She wants both men.
As Q. Zayne, I write romantic dirty books. Viv Phoenix is my dirty romance side. The hot, older, kinky billionaires are a giveaway.:)
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My website has more of my books, including outright erotica. Different readers have different tastes, so I don’t feature erotica in my Erotic Romance and Dark Fantasy books. The link to my website is on the About the Author page, next.
Q
About the Author
Q. Zayne delves into the hidden places and tells secrets.
Q. Zayne is the wicked pen name of a California horror writer. Q. minored in Classical Archaeology and has an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. After teaching at the university, working as an editor, and freelancing for several years, the author embarked on a wild digital publishing adventure. Thanks to fabulous readers and unflagging supporters, Q. writes fiction for a living from the Yucatan.
Q.‘s childhood included lots of monster movies, trips to ghost towns and daily life on an old ranch in California. And reading—Gothics, fantasy, horror, science fiction, adventure stories, and the ones hidden under beds. The gutsiest writers left the greatest impact.
“Thanks for being part of my journey.”
— Q.
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An author’s note on an erotic novella? Bear with me. Or don’t. This isn’t required reading. Some of my favorite authors write notes about their books, and I’ve always enjoyed them. It’s a chance to take a peek behind the scenes.
I wrote the original version of Bear Consumed early in my self-publishing adventure. There’s room in the world for all kinds of books, so I don’t intend any disrespect to anyone else’s reading preferences. Yet as a reader, I’ve been unhappy to see monsters made cute. I’m not fond of the whiny or arrogant ones, either. As someone who grew up on werewolves when they were scary, my reaction to the pun-filled werebear romance trend was Bear Consumed. My bear shifter is the kind of werebear who’d turn me on.
The original Bear Consumed not only ignored and bent the tropes of the werebear niche, it was a genre-bending tale, too.
At that point, I didn’t know much about marketing an unusual book. I haven’t broken myself of writing them, so I’ve had to learn a few things.
I discovered that it’s more difficult to build a readership when you don’t write to the current trends. It’s due to adventurous readers that I still write books that aren’t copies of whatever is trending on Amazon this month.
Still, I have to make a living, so when I took a fresh look at Bear Consumed, I made some minor changes. I dropped a genre-bending element. I was able to do that without damaging the book, which is a good test of when an element isn’t necessary to a story. I deepened the central relationship of the book. It’s been a love story from the beginning and over time I’ve become more comfortable with the tender parts of a relationship, so this edition reflects that. The high-heat intensity of the original remains.
Bear Consumed was my second shifter book and my second from the male point of view. Werewolf’s First Love was my first real romance. It presented a challenge because of my discomfort with making a werewolf into a romantic hero. After writing out all my issues about werewolves and romance, I wrote an unusual book from the point of view from a young, inexperienced alpha werewolf.
Writing th
at book was a transformative experience. It remains one of my favorite books. Of course, I bent the werewolf romance in multiple directions. I created an interracial love story with a white male virgin werewolf and a Black virgin church singer in a small town bordering ranches and werewolf territory in the middle of a shifter war. It honors my heritage: my rural California beginnings and my position as an outsider. I published it as a three-part serial and I treasure the reviews on those episodes. I saved all of those reviews, even though the werewolf singles are no longer live. Some readers appreciated characters who are different from the standard hero and heroine. They especially enjoyed Charity, the fierce, curvy Black heroine. The complete collection, Werewolf’s First Love, is still available. It’s also included in my Viv Phoenix BBW & alpha bundle, Dangerous Protector.
My alter-ego Viv gets credit for the romances and I take take credit as Q. for the edgy erotica and erotic dark fantasy.
Consumed grew by a few thousand words as I edited it. I holed up in a house in Valladolid in the Yucatan and immersed myself in the book, reworking it scene by scene and word by word. My only company came from neighbor cats and iguanas in the walled backyard. In the midst of it, I wondered why I was spending so much time on a book that tanked. It made no sense.
My Viv Phoenix books bring in a small fraction of my income. My first novel, Losing It in Africa, hasn’t sold as well as I hoped. It was my first release on multiple retailers, instead of in Amazon’s exclusive Kindle Unlimited program. I knew that was a risk. Of course, publishing a curvy virgin hacker, billionaire boss and Black bodyguard bisexual menage romance suspense was a risk, too. It got a couple good reviews at launch and I didn’t lose money on it, unless I consider that if I’d spent all that time publishing more erotica it would have been a hell of a lot better for my income.
