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Jade Buchanan
Jade Buchanan was born in the summer of 2006, out of a slightly shy but definitely warped mind. Jade's alter-ego spends her days working in the world of safety management consulting, but at night she lets Jade out to play. Preferring to live in the world of fiction in which she was born, Jade can be found wandering through fields of words whenever she can. Now if only she can find her dream man—a time-traveling Scottish laird who was born a werewolf that became a vampire and lived on a pirate ship, only to make his way to the new world and work on a ranch in Montana (with a brief foray in the Navy SEALs), before conquering the space time continuum and becoming a space marauding pirate and ruling the galaxy—she'd be a very happy lady.
Jade would love to hear from you. She can be reached at [email protected] or come visit her at www.jadebuchananbooks.com.
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Fire Thief
Jordan Castillo Price
A glittery glam rock waif and a tattooed existentialist duck into a closet behind the bar. It's just another gritty, anonymous, gay encounter in the dark...
Isn't it?
* * * *
Rat traps. A great big box of them. It was the last thing I saw before the guy in purple shoved me into the janitor's closet and pulled the door shut behind him. “Is there a light in here?” The thought of a rat climbing up my legs with its pointy little toenails and its wormy tail dragging along my thigh was a real buzzkill.
"We don't need a light."
"But there might be rats."
"If there were rats in here, I'd know it.” He pressed himself into my back and slipped his hands around my waist. One hand slid up. His fingertips brushed over my nipple through my T-shirt. The other moved south, worked my nuts right through my jeans. I turned around to face him, got a handful of his ridiculous boa coat, and did my best not to think about the skittering of tiny paws.
"Besides,” he said, “it's easier to focus on what we're feeling without the distraction of light."
I beg to differ. When I score with someone who looks like he does, I want to see it. I opened my mouth to say so, but his mouth covered mine, off-center at first, then sliding into place. My lips parted, and his tongue glided over mine. I tasted like beer. Him, vodka tonics.
His crotch bumped against mine. He gave a little groan and nudged me between the legs with his bulge. It was a great bulge. I kissed him back and slipped my hands under his coat so I could cup his ass two-handed.
He worked his fingers under my T-shirt. I let go of his ass so I could raise my arms to let him get it over my head. The purple boa coat was fuzzy against my chest, and distinctly not rat-like. It brushed my nipples as he moved against me. I arched my body into his. My elbow eased back onto the industrial shelving and caused something to shift and clatter. I groped behind me, felt the squat glass shapes. Cheap, heavy-bottomed restaurant candles, the kind they had on the tables out by the bar.
"We could light a candle,” I said. I figured he might go for that instead of the overhead light.
"Didn't your elders teach you never to play with fire?"
"I dunno. I probably wouldn't have listened, anyway. I have this problem with authority figures."
He pulled my hand away from the candles and pressed my palm to his mouth. I tried to picture his face as my hand covered his lips and brushed his nose. The bar was crowded, but he'd stood out—and not just because of the giant purple boa coat that would've made anyone else look like a frickin’ puppet, but not him. No, he looked like a glam god who'd stepped down off a black light poster from 1975.
His tongue, hot and wet, crossed my palm. I shivered. He'd been beautiful. Even under all that makeup—glitter and black lipstick and false eyelashes—I could tell. Even if I'd scrubbed him clean, everyone would've still stopped and stared when he walked into the room.
I was guessing he didn't give a rat's ass about how pretty he was. He was out to make a statement.
He was doing a pretty good job of it.
"C'mon,” I said. “You didn't get all dolled up for nothing.” I squeezed a hand between us and pulled a lighter out of my front pocket.
His hand closed over mine, and he worked the lighter free. Plastic clattered to the floor. “Man was never meant to have fire."
"Unless it's me you don't wanna see.” He had a long black scarf looped once around the pale stretch of his throat. “I could blindfold you."
He gave my ass a quick squeeze, then drew his scarf off and coiled it around my neck. “I wouldn't be here if I didn't think you looked tasty."
"Then let me watch you. I wanna watch you.” There was a pack of matches in my other pocket with a phone number on it I'd never bothered to call. I stuffed my hand in to get it, and his followed. I felt his fingertips brush the crease of my thigh through the thin fabric of the pocket, and my breath caught.
"You've heard of Prometheus?"
"I didn't know I was gonna be quizzed."
"That's okay. It doesn't matter."
Either he had a hard-on for non sequiturs, or he was high. But he was also caressing my nutsack through my pants pocket, and I didn't want to disappoint him. “Prometheus. He stole fire from the gods. Gave it to man."
"I'm impressed.” Glitter boy slid down my body and dropped to his knees in front of me. He pressed a kiss under my ribcage, against my liver. I suspected he wasn't high, or not too much, anyway. “Most people think it's the name of a new nightclub, or maybe a brand of condom."
So my seven years of undergrad hadn't gone to waste.
He unbuttoned my waistband and tugged down my zipper. His tongue traced the underside of my ribs, and then lower. My navel. My hipbone. I was hard by the time he got to my cock. He ran his tongue around the root, worked his way up slowly. I tried to picture him in my mind's eye, kneeling in front of me in that crazy purple coat. He'd be looking down. His eyelashes would cast long shadows over his pale cheeks. A stripe of bare, smooth chest would show where his coat hung open. That pale line would be unbroken now that he'd hung his scarf around my neck.
His mouth closed over my cock, and I grabbed his tousled black hair in two big handfuls. I would've loved to have seen that face of his wrapped around my cock. But if I had to choose sight or touch, one or the other, I'd rather feel it.
His mouth was a hot, wet furnace. He took me in deep and he sucked hard. I wondered if I'd find smears of black lipstick on my shaft the next day. I tried to breathe normally, but my gasp sounded loud and sharp in the dark room, even over the throb of music that seeped in from the bar.
He slid his hot mouth off my cock. I heaved a sigh of relief, but then he licked his palm and started jacking me off, and my back arched, and my nuts clenched up against my body.
"There's a Prometheus story I like better than the one where he ends up feeding braunschweiger to the eagle for eternity. Not too many people know it."
"Harder ... mm, yeah. Sweet."
"Zeus already hated Prometheus, long before the stolen fire incident. Prometheus was a smartass, and he set Zeus up to look like an idiot."
For a moment, he stopped touching, but only long enough to turn me around so that I faced the shelves. He pushed my jeans down around my ankles. I kicked off my boots and stepped out, one foot, then the other. He ran a hand down my leg, and his coat tickled the backs of my thighs. I flinched, but as the downy fuzz grazed my bare skin, the sensation grew on me. I wondered if maybe he'd leave that coat on while we did it. I almost asked, but he was busy telling that story, and I was letting the sound of his voice—low, melodic—get my juices flowing.
He placed his hands on my hips and ran his thumbs along the new ink just over my tailbone, all black, scrolls and swirls. The feel of him tracing the slight ridges sent shocks that traveled all the way up my spine, then back down to the skin of my balls.
"One day, Prometheus rigged up a couple of Zeus's offerings. He took the good one, the T-bones, the prime rib, and hid the
m inside a cow's stomach so that they looked like a nasty jumble of organs. And then the bones, and gristle and all the other inedible shit? He wrapped them up in a layer of fat so that they looked like a big old rump roast.
"Prometheus asked Zeus which one he'd rather have. Zeus picked the booby prize, and Prometheus made off with the good stuff."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"'Cos it doesn't matter what you see. It's what you feel, and what you know, that you've got to trust.” He took my ass in both hands and pried me open like a ripe tangerine.
"Oh ... fuck.” I tried to find something to hold on to. I knocked over bags and boxes, and hoped, for my sake, that I wouldn't end up with my face in a carton of urinal cakes. And I suspected that instead of ducking into the nearest empty room, I should've taken him home.
But there'd been no time. I'd wanted him bad, and that very second, too.
His hot, wet tongue swiped over my hole. I knocked something else over, heard it bounce and spill. “Holy crap ... you don't have to ... fuck, that feels incredible."
His tongue was everywhere. My ass. My nuts. The back of my cock. He kept going and going, licking like he had all night. That tongue of his was surreal. There was almost a texture to it, which I hadn't noticed before, when we were kissing, or when he was blowing me. And he knew how to use that tongue, too. He could probably tie knots in the stems of maraschino cherries as a party trick.
He licked me until I had to lock my knees against the trembling in my thighs. I steadied myself on the shelving, fumbled over a vaguely familiar item. A butane lighter, the gun-shaped kind that could reach deep down inside those restaurant candles.
I wondered how he'd look right now with his lipstick smeared and his face glistening with spit. Probably even more fuckable than he had at the bar. Amber-eyed and swollen-lipped. He had a mouth like a girl. Or a sailor. Maybe both. I grabbed the lighter, and he smacked it out of my hand, hard.
"Haven't you been listening?” His voice was low and rough.
"But I just wanted to..."
He pressed a finger up my ass and words failed me. That. I wanted that. I arched my back and pushed against his hand.
"You saw me out there. You know what I look like. Now focus on the way I make you feel."
He pulled his finger out of me and pressed his whole body along my back. His tongue moved over the skull tattoo at the nape of my neck while his hands roamed my belly and thighs. His cock was cradled between my ass cheeks. He flexed his hips and rocked against my back, hinting at what would come next.
"Do it,” I said.
He pulled back briefly. I heard the tear of a small plastic packet and the sound of moist latex unrolling. And then I felt his cock pressed against my hungry, wet hole.
He pushed. Both of us moaned out loud.
I pressed back into him, feeling every part of him that I could. The dark did make everything else ten times as intense, that's for sure. And even though it brought home the storage closet smells, like disinfectant and bleach and a rotten old mop somewhere in the corner, it also made him feel hotter. His coat fuzzier. As if he was larger than life.
He pushed in all the way and sighed, and held me there for a long moment while our bodies figured out how they fit together and decided it was all good. His fingernails pressed into my hips, ten sharp points of pleasure.
His first thrusts were easy and shallow, almost tender. I pushed my ass against him and made low noises that told him how I liked getting fucked. He understood. He kicked at the inside of my foot so I had to spread myself wider for him, arch my back harder. And then he angled himself, and I shuddered all over and knocked a few more things off the shelves. Right there. Perfect. He thrust deep, faster now, and harder, hard enough that his balls slapped against my taint with each perfect thrust.
"So what're you supposed to be?” I managed, as I gulped air. “The bad meat in the pretty package, or the good meat in the tainted wrapper?"
"You tell me, Zeus."
His hand closed on my cock. Oh God, oh fuck, he was jerking me off with the sleeve of that crazy purple boa coat, and I peaked, hard. My whole body clenched, spasmed. I danced, helpless, impaled on his cock, while I spurted into the boxes of trash can liners and coasters.
He slammed me for a few minutes more while I hung there like a wrung-out bar rag, and all the while, he made this sound, like a growl, deep, deep down in his throat. I felt him stiffen against me, and then let his breath out, slow and careful.
He pulled out. The smell of our sweat was strong and earthy, unusually strong. Animalistic—like the county fair, or the petting zoo. I turned around for a kiss, and his silk scarf slid from around my neck, tickled my body like a long lick from shoulder to hipbone. He caught it before it hit the floor and looped it around my eyes.
"What if you dropped the allegory talk and told me something in English,” I said as he pulled the knot tight. “Like maybe your name. And your phone number."
The phone number would've been a bonus, but I thought I could at least get a first name. The only reply I got, however, was the sound of a door latch.
I tore the scarf away from my eyes. “God damn it.” I was naked and sweaty and it was probably the most opportune time for my friends to discover me and mock me within an inch of my life, but I didn't care. I stuck my head out of the storage room. My boy in purple was nowhere.
Everything had happened so fast, it almost seemed as if it couldn't have been real. I got back into my jeans and T-shirt, and then I saw it on the floor, barely, a slip of black silk crumpled in the shadow of a metal storage shelf, next to the open condom wrapper.
I picked up his scarf and looped it around my neck. And then I held the end over my nose and mouth, and breathed. There was that smell again, something from my childhood. Not the petting zoo. Sharper, less grain-like. I sniffed again, and then I recognized it.
The big cat house.
He was the good meat in the bad wrapper, I decided. Or maybe not. Maybe neither. Maybe he was the flame.
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Jordan Castillo Price
Jordan Castillo Price grew up in the steel mill warrens of Buffalo, NY, spent some formative drinking years in Chicago, and migrated north to small-town rural Wisconsin once she realized she was going to kill the next person who bumped into her with a shopping cart. She did a six-year stint in art school and played bass in a punk band that crashed and burned just before their first CD was pressed. At least she got a cool boyfriend out of the deal, since she ran off with the drummer.
Jordan has a weekly show on erotica writing tips and techniques at www.packingheat.net. She suspects some of her listeners aren't much interested in writing, and just tune in to hear her say naughty words.
Readers interested in freebies, snippets, and peeks into the writing process should check out JCP News, a monthly newsletter where Jordan posts links to free eBooks and serialized M/M stories. Visit www.jordancastilloprice.com to sign up.
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Britta's Beast
Kate Hill
When Max and Britta met at a convention for members of magical law enforcement, they seemed like a perfect fit. But Max believes women should raise the family while men do the protecting. Problem. Britta's a Valkyrie, and that's just not her style. Time for the centuries-old cat to learn a few new tricks—before his lover takes wing.
* * * *
Britta settled into bed again, hoping this time she might get some sleep. It was nearly midnight and the cat hiding in the clump of trees outside her rented cabin had been screeching for most of the evening. She'd tried being nice, putting out a bowl of milk and half a can of tuna, but no. He'd kept right on screeching. At the end of her patience, she'd tossed a boot out the window and he'd finally shut up.
She closed her eyes and tried to relax. Between work and splitting up with her boyfriend, it had been a stressful week. The danger of her job was actually what bothered Max so much. Ironic considering they were
both in similar careers. They'd met at a convention for various branches of magical law enforcement. Britta was an officer in the Wide-Range Police Force and Max was a detective in the Cat Shifter Patrol. They both risked their lives capturing supernatural criminals, but like most cat shifters, Max tended to live by double standards. He believed women should raise the family while men did the protecting. Of course women could help out on the hunt.
Britta snorted. She knew some races of cat shifters that believed women should do all the hunting, not to mention live in harems serving one “king.” As a Valkyrie, that wasn't her style.
Max hadn't insisted she leave the force entirely, but suggested she go to part time after they got married. She knew that was his way of weaning her off independence and into wedded life, or at least a cat shifter's idea of wedded life. She wasn't sure which frightened her more—losing her career or binding herself to one man legally and forever.
Since they'd split up she realized marriage didn't seem so bad. Actually she missed Max so much that even the stupid cat outside her window had reminded her of him. Though he didn't change shape around her very often—his kind didn't condone changing in front of non-cat shifters, unless joined in marriage—he had showed her his cat form once. Of course she hadn't heard him screech, but he had done a lot of purring.
Britta smiled at the memory of the fun they'd had that night.
It was over now. Unless she begged for a second chance. She hated the idea of crawling back to him, especially since she had no intention of giving up her career. Why should she? After all, she hadn't asked him to leave his job.
If only she could find a way to see him again that would make their meeting seem coincidental.
Tapping on the door jarred her thoughts.
Damn. She'd rented this cottage to get some peace and quiet, time to think. So far she'd had nothing but interruptions. The knocking continued and Britta cursed. The urge to beat the tar out of her unwanted visitor nearly overcame her. She threw open the door and her heart skipped a beat.
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