From the Blurb:
Can a farmer still love the man who stole his horse, and broke his heart?
What kind of relationship begins with a passive-aggressive bottle of wine?
How's life treating Mac and Tony of Life Lessons, ten years later?
Thirty short stories, ranging from flash fiction to 10,000 words, bring laughter and tears, triumph and heartbreak, and the quiet moments in between. And love, always love.
Do you have ten minutes, or an hour, to spend with a story? Check out this collection, filled with a wide range of contemporary, paranormal, and fantasy stories to feed the gay-romance-loving soul.
Excerpt:
Until Next Time
(WWII part 1)
David
The faint smell of smoke gave him away as I opened my door, that whisper of scent that clings to the clothes of a man who fills the dead hours with a cigarette. Could’ve been any of a dozen of my men, of course, but they wouldn’t sit there in the dark. I closed the door before reaching for the switch. I was proud of how softly and steadily the latch clicked shut.
When I flicked on the light, I saw him where I’d expected, legs stretched out on top of my Army-issue blankets, his back against the wall at the head of the narrow bed. He eyed me and said nothing.
“You look like shit,” I told him, because it was true, keeping my voice to a murmur. I’d developed a habit of reading aloud to myself on this posting. The men around me were used to the sound of my voice coming from this room at all hours. They laughed at me, but at the end of a day of heavy bombing, sometimes I read aloud to them now, too. Sometimes I mimicked Jack’s tones for them in the voices I read. It seemed safest.
“Thanks.” One corner of Jack’s lips quirked upward. His voice came out a thread as subtle as the smell of his tobacco.
The door didn’t lock. We weren’t supposed to have secrets that needed locking. But as an officer, they gave me a straight-backed chair and it served. I made sure the back rail was jammed tightly under the door handle, checked the blackout drapes over the window, then crossed the room to him.
When I stood beside the bed, he reached for me, wrapping his fingers in the hem of my jacket. I saw a new cut across the back of that lean hand, a slice that must’ve barely missed the tendons, still scabby with the stitches standing dark and irregular against his tanned skin. By now, I knew better than to ask.
I slid the jacket off my shoulders and he let go with a faint reluctance as I turned to hang it up.
Sometimes I would sit back down beside him, fully dressed, and we would talk, or perhaps say nothing, for a few minutes, before he had to go. Sometimes we got more. “How long, tonight?” I asked over my shoulder, my dick already rising.
“I have somewhere to be in the morning.”
He always did. Even if we lay down together and fell asleep, I’d never woken up to find him still there…
The Distant Hills and Other Stories will be available for purchase on Amazon on February 23, 2023 and can be pre-ordered now!
This is going to be remarkable!!
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