Rogue Desire: A Romance Anthology (The Rogue Series)

by Adriana Anders

  When he caught his breath at last, Will had pulled the blanket away enough to give Kaz some cool air and to tuck his softening dick most of the way back into his unzipped jeans. Wiped out, Kaz paused to regroup with his head in Will’s lap, sweat cooling on every inch of his skin, his shirt sticking to his back.

  He’d thought he’d be the one to stay up, staring out the window at the passing lights and cars, wondering what the fuck he’d just let happen here. But when Kaz woke up just far enough to realize someone was playing with his hair, stroking their fingers through the short strands and rubbing his scalp, that his cheek was mashed against the not-very-pillow-like contours of a thinly muscled thigh, Will was the one who shushed him and whispered, “We won’t be there for another hour. Go ahead and sleep.”

  And Kaz was the one who got taken care of after all.

  CHAPTER 7

  By the time the bus pulled up at the curb in front of the arched wrought iron gate at the campus entrance, the sky glowed pink with the dawn’s approach. The first students off the bus left dull tracks in the frost that whitened the dead winter grasses as they trudged away in different directions.

  Kaz hung back, waking up sound sleepers and checking under seats to make sure nobody left their backpacks or phones behind in their zombie dazes. He avoided looking at Will, the seams of whose cargo pants pockets were still imprinted on Kaz’s cheek probably, but his body was aware of him, like a bloop on underwater sonar. Every sixty seconds, his senses did a sweep and marked the spot that radiated Will. He kept his back turned on that spot though, and eventually his Will radar tracked Will’s passage down the narrow aisle—brushing against Kaz’s hip, a ghost trail of fingers dragging across his ass—and off the bus.

  Good.

  The weak sunlight struggling through the dirty windshield illuminated the empty bus. A shout whose words he couldn’t make out, followed by laughter, rose from a group of girls who strode off arm in arm, hair sleep-mussed and backpacks emptied of road snacks drooping from their shoulders. The empty bus vibrated under his feet as the driver opened a luggage compartment. He picked up trash as he made one last scan of the seats, then grabbed his own backpack and headed out.

  He was beyond tired. And he still had thirty papers to grade before Monday morning class. With any luck, his roommates would have crashed at their respective significant other’s apartments—Sun with her latest pillow princess and Marcus with that super annoying guy he’d been seeing since winter break. Kaz would be alone, free to catch up on the rest of his sleep and get his grading done, just the way he liked it.

  Will was waiting for him at the bottom of the steps, shoulders pressed against the side of the bus as he leaned, casual as all get out, and watched for Kaz’s appearance with sleepy eyes.

  But instead of heading for the baggage compartment where the driver was offloading whatever gear the students hadn’t wanted to carry on the coach with them, Will grabbed him by the hand and tugged him around the front of the bus to the far side of the coach. Once there, he grabbed Kaz by the shirtfront and pushed him against the cheesy blue seventies swirls of paint scrolling across the side, shoving himself right up into Kaz’s face and attacking his mouth without saying a word.

  Maybe Will knew it was a lost cause. Or maybe you’re his next bad life decision, the sarcastic voice Kaz worked hard to repress most of the time said in his head. Either way, Will has kissing him like it was his last chance and he was afraid to let go because letting go meant it was over. The midnight madness of their journey, or just sheer sleep deprivation, had made it feel like they were in a bubble. A tiny safe space that belonged to another world, or some other, less dangerous, time.

  But the bubble had popped with the hiss of the bus’s air breaks, and the real world was one imminent sunrise away from shining its light into all the hidden cracks where two people who had no business being together might have spent some time for one night.

  Time’s up, over now.

  “I want to see you again. Later. Tonight. Tomorrow,” Will muttered into his mouth, forcing Kaz to hold still and take his kisses with tight fingers digging into his hips. “Any and all of the nights you have free for the foreseeable future.”

  And being wanted like that, so badly that Will didn’t hesitate to put it right out there, blunt and honest and not trying to play any games about how maybe he did, maybe he didn’t . . . yeah, that was a fucking turn-on to make Kaz wish things were different. Wish he were different. But even if he was up for the kind of personal complication he usually avoided with his hookups, there were too many dangers here. He thought of how cavalier Will was about his own safety, and how far his anger might push him to fight and attract police attention to his activities with the antifa crowd. Kaz couldn’t risk it.

  “Sorry. I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He tried to keep his voice casual, like he didn’t really care one way or the other, but his fingers kept curling in the long strands at Will’s nape and his leg had somehow gotten wrapped around Will’s, keeping the two of them pressed close from hip to ankle.

  Black cargo pants and combat boots were going to feature heavily in Kaz’s sexual fantasies for the foreseeable future. A fact Will was definitely aware of, as he leaned back to pull against Kaz’s grip, which tightened reflexively to tug him close again. Will smirked as if Kaz had just proved his point for him.

  “Okay. Cool story.” Will snuck a hand up the back of Kaz’s shirt and scraped his fingernails over the bumps of Kaz’s spine until he shivered. “Where do you live? On Gothic, right?”

  Confused, turned on, distracted, trying to keep an eye out for anyone who might see him wrapped up with an undergrad, Kaz answered without thinking, picturing the apartment he shared with two other TAs on a residential street with housing only marginally too nice for most undergrads to afford. “Yeah. Seven Gothic Street, third floor.”

  “Pretty sure I’m gonna crash all day, but I’ll be over between nine and ten tonight after I get off work. If you answer the door I’ll take that as a yes,” Will said, shutting Kaz up with another drugging kiss when he tried to argue. After he’d melted Kaz’s brain, rubbing his hard dick against Kaz’s, bruising his back against the metal side panel, letting his hands roam and dip below Kaz’s waistband, Will sucked on his tongue one more time before letting him go with a last smacking kiss. “You can make me dinner or we can just go straight to the fucking, because I can’t wait to get you all the way naked on a bed.”

  Before Kaz could say a word, Will hitched his backpack securely on skinny shoulders.

  “I’m not ready to stop fighting, but I could do it with you instead of them. For now,” he said with a wink, then loped off down the sidewalk, pink bandanna fluttering in the breeze where he’d tied it to the webbed handle strap. His dark hair swung against his cheekbones when he glanced back over his shoulder at Kaz, the wind lifting it like a bird’s wing.

  Kaz told himself he wouldn’t answer the door. Or the phone. He’d ask his roommates to come home and tell them to lie. Say he’d gone out for the night. For the semester. Hell, that he’d left the country, was spending his break working with a nonprofit in Kathmandu, never to return. He told himself all sorts of things with one part of his brain, while the other parts were trying to remember if he still had a set of clean sheets in the closet or if he’d need to do laundry. Was wondering how many condoms he had left and if his roommates could be persuaded to stay away for the night, or if they’d just have to turn up the volume on the TV to avoid listening in.

  Because he was going to open the door. And there might be dinner—there was always pasta of some kind in the kitchen, and Sun had managed to keep their basil and oregano alive over the winter in their back porch greenhouse, so he could even jazz it up some—but he wouldn’t be making it until sometime past midnight. And they’d eat it in bed. Naked.

  He knew what the smart thing to do was. What the responsible choices were and how important it was that he make them.

  But this time, Kaz was
going to take something for his very own. He was going to make the selfish choice and grab hold to the rollercoaster that was Willis McTavish and ride it, praying they made it safely back to earth.

  THANK YOU!

  Thank you for reading Resistance. I hope you enjoyed it!

  Want to know when the full story comes out? Sign up for my occasional newsletter!

  Did you miss out on Nothing Like Paris, where Willis first shows up as a high school student in need of help? Read about the angry banjo boy who helps Will start a Gay-Straight Alliance club at his high school, or start at the beginning of the whole Bend or Break series with Off Campus.

  Reviews help other readers find books. I appreciate all reviews, whether positive or negative, and thank you for your time.

  This book is lendable! Please share it with a friend.

  I’m always excited to hear from readers. Please come and find me on my website at http://amyjocousins.com/, on Twitter, and on Facebook. Or email me at amyjocousins@gmail.com.

  WANT MORE BOOKS BY AMY JO?

  If you’re a fan of steamy LGBTQ romance…

  Bend or Break

  Off Campus

  Nothing Like Paris

  The Girl Next Door

  Level Hands

  Real World

  Between a Rock and a Hard Place

  The Belle vs the BDOC

  Full Hearts

  HeartShip

  HeartOn (coming soon)

  Glass Tidings

  If you like your erotica straight up, with a chaser of romance at the end…

  Play It Again

  Callie, Unwrapped

  Callie, Unleashed

  Gabe, Undone (coming soon)

  No Reservations (coming soon)

  For fans of classic category romance…

  The Tylers

  At Your Service

  Sleeping Arrangements

  Calling His Bluff

  When the Lights Go Down

  If you like your romance in bite-size morsels…

  Anthologies:

  How We Began (A Charity Anthology for the Trevor Project)

  All in a Day’s Work (“Dance Hall Days”)

  Rogue Desire

  Novellas & Short Stories

  Five Dates

  Full Exposure

  The Rain in Spain

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Amy Jo Cousins writes contemporary romance and erotica, both straight and LGBTQ, about smart people finding their own best kind of smexy. She lives in Chicago with her son, where she tweets too much, sometimes runs really far, and waits for the Cubs to win the World Series again.

  She is represented by Courtney Miller-Callihan of Handspun Literary Agency.

  Find Amy Jo online:

  amyjocousins.com/

  amyjocousins@gmail.com

  KISSING AND OTHER FORMS OF SEDITION

  EMMA BARRY

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  When a global crisis threatens to go nuclear, the world tips upside down and spills out Graham Wilcox’s unspoken feelings for Cadence Martel. Cadence is equal parts shocked and delighted by his confession, but one night of passion isn’t enough. So the new lovers set out on a road trip to save the world.

  CHAPTER 1

  T he problem with early exposure to Terminator 2 was when the president ranted on social media and caused an international crisis, visions of nuclear apocalypse, with everyone and everything turning to ash and blowing away in a super-heated wind, took over your brain.

  A speech on tax policy in one hand and a take-out container in the other, Graham Wilcox couldn’t shake the thought. This was it. The way it was going to end. The cause of death for humanity was going to be feckless presidential tweeting.

  No more dark, humid summer nights with a million points of light shimmering down on him. No more roll call votes when he didn’t know the outcome and could feel the excitement throbbing in the General Assembly chamber. No more Chrismukkah holidays with his big, messy family.

  And no more Cadence Martel. Cadence, who was probably watching the news and writing her own boss’s speech just three blocks away. Graham had many regrets now that he might be facing the end, but she…she was most of them.

  There didn’t need to be regrets.

  He set the speech and his dinner down hard enough to make the spork in the container rattle, and then he flipped to a clean page in his notepad and delineated two columns. One he labeled Reasons to go over there. Cadence was extremely attractive and also extremely smart and specifically a policy wonk. That might be an unprecedented combination. She was a bald-eagle-unicorn-hole-in-one. He wrote that down and then glanced into his open messenger bag.

  When he’d left the office a few hours earlier, she’d handed him a county-by-county analysis of a school funding proposal. Distract yourself with this. ~CM she’d jotted on the cover page, and she’d added a smiley face. Or was it a winky face?

  He was going to have to add it to the other notes from her he had tucked away inside his desk. He’d started the collection basically the moment they’d met. A simple crush at first, it had escalated every time she’d shared a white paper or snagged him a piece of someone’s birthday cake or helped him whip votes or debated policy with him. He’d stumbled further into it until he couldn’t find his way out.

  But he’d held his tongue and hadn’t breathed a word of what he felt. Not only because he didn’t want to be that guy—from his observation, men were lining up around the block to be that guy—but also because he didn’t want to hold her back.

  That became the first item in the other column, the Don’t do this, idiot column. Cadence saw this job, legislative assistant/speechwriter/shrink, as a stepping stone to something greater, and she had the brains and skills to get there. She should move on: analyze national legislation, fix the country’s budgets, and generally make the world better. Someday, she would leave without a backward glance, and he would wish her well. Wistfully.

  Sure, there had been moments when he’d thought she was watching him with something more than friendliness and professional courtesy in her eyes. She’d even asked him to come up for a drink once, and he’d had dreams about what might have been every night since. Breadcrumbs to madness, those looks and words, but he’d swept them up and cherished them. It felt presumptuous to even write “she puts winky faces on my memos” and “she once asked me to come into her house and consume alcohol” on paper, but he did, because there was no point in not doing a full accounting.

  The breaking news chyron swept in on TV. “We’re getting word the president is tweeting again,” the anchor reported breathlessly, and the apocalyptic images came roaring back.

  “World ending” went on the list, and then Graham added, “live without regrets.”

  Okay, so that wasn’t his regular mantra. He normally lived according to a different, more diffident rule: “Do small, incremental things to make a tiny difference in your immediate community.” But that was before the election, before this president, before the world went ass over tit.

  He sat with his lop-sided list for a full thirty seconds. The evidence was in favor of going to see her…but this was him. He wasn’t a risk-taker. He didn’t do grand gestures.

  But this might be his last chance.

  He grabbed his keys and his phone, and he went, for once, to be brave.

  The night was balmy though humid as Richmond springs tended to be. Every April the city suddenly remembered it was southern and made up for lost time. Graham dodged couples out for strolls and more than a few hipster gentrifiers enjoying their nights out—which probably included him.

  Oh Christ, he was going to die as a hipster gentrifier. That was the cruelest cut of all.

  The lights were on in Cadence’s tiny brick Victorian, but she might have gone chasing her own what-ifs. Graham opened the gate, walked past the small apple tree, flowers and herbs, to the postage stamp-sized porch. He knocked. Softly.

  No answer. Well, this had already been about
one hundred times more recklessness than he was comfortable with. He could sleep now—or watch headline news all night—with a clear conscience.

  He was creeping from the porch when the door opened.

  “Graham? What are you doing?” It looked like Cadence had showered recently and her hair, pulled up in a ponytail, was still damp. She was wearing yoga pants and T-shirt…and no bra.

  Suddenly, there wasn’t enough oxygen.

  “I need to talk to you,” he managed.

  “That must have been some memo.”

  For once, this wasn’t about policy. Only her enigmatic scrawls had anything to do with this. “It’s not about work.”

  “Ah.” The light in the hallway silhouetted her, so he couldn’t make out her expression, but from her tone, he could tell she was smiling. “Then what can I help you with?”

  Graham should have started composing this on the way over, written some notes on a card or something. He had plenty of experience coming up with the words, but he had much less practice delivering them. “Have you been watching the news?”

  “Oh.” Her attitude went serious. “Yes, of course. I’m worried, and I’m certain everyone is.”

  “It got me thinking, what if this is it?”

  “Like it it?”

  “Yeah, like the end of the world.”

  Cadence nodded and her ponytail bobbed. “I guess I better get another bowl of ice cream. And stop working on that speech for Patty to deliver tomorrow.”

  Just like he’d suspected. Knowing her that well made him glow with something remarkably like optimism. “Would you have any regrets?”

  A long pause. A long, long pause. Then she whispered, “Yes.”