Release
Date: September 23, 2015
Categories:
Contemporary,
M/M Romance, Sports Romance
Publisher:
Ellora’s Cave
This
book is a sequel to Two Man Advantage
Life
has been treating Victor Kalinski well, which is a surprise for the
ginger-haired forward with the venomous tongue. His career is
somewhat stable, at least for another season. His relationship with
Cougars alternate captain Dan Arou is deepening, despite the fact
that Daniel has yet to come out of the closet.
It’s
typical Kalinski luck when a puck bunny he shared a drunken night
with several months ago slaps him with a paternity suit. Despite the
sizzling passion and painfully heartfelt connection between them, Dan
doesn’t take the news well, and heads back to Canada alone.
If
he wants to make things right and win back the man he loves, he has
no choice but to swallow his pride—and nobody’s prouder than
hot-headed, ego-driven Victor.
Reader
Advisory: This story has graphic sexual language and scenes—no
closed bedroom doors (or other rooms) here!
An
adult
male/male romance
from Ellora’s Cave
I
found Dan in our bathroom running a Q-tip around his right ear as
water from his recent shower ran from his hair. He smiled at me, a
special kind of light in his eyes. I stalled in the doorway, my
summons wrinkled in my fist. The smile disappeared from his face as I
stared blankly at him. He tossed the swab into the trash, which
needed to be dumped, and turned to face me.
“What’s
wrong?” he asked. My gaze roamed over him clad in nothing but gray
cargo shorts that hung off his hips. If not for the fact that my
heart was beating so hard I was scared it would blow up, I would have
gotten all over the man. He still torqued me up like no one else ever
had. “Vic, what’s wrong?”
I
handed him the wadded-up legal document. His gaze darted from my face
to the crinkled papers then back to my face.
“I
don’t know who the fuck this chick is, but she is playing me,” I
managed to cough up. I looked around the room, trying to get the
palpations under control. The walls had ugly flowered wallpaper on
them. The counter was plain white. Two razors lay side by side next
to the sink. Sometimes, like right then, I wanted nothing more than
to grab my razor and my toothbrush and get the fuck out of Dodge.
Just seeing Dan’s personal shit playing cozy-cozy with mine scared
me to death. Most days when that urge to fuck this thing up overtook
me, I swallowed it down like a bad oyster and forced myself to get
past it. Today, then, there, that second, those two razors were about
to push old Vic K. over the brink.
“Paternity
test,” he whispered as the papers blew in a stiff summer wind. I
couldn’t look away from those two disposables.
“Someone
is playing me, Dan,” I grunted, then spun from the Schick love-fest
occurring on the chipped white bathroom counter. I pounded out to the
living room, my feet squelching in my wet sneakers.
“Well
yeah, obviously this Heather chick is trying to pin this on you.
Big-name sports star. It happens like daily, you know?”
I
nodded as I paced the small but homey place where we spent most of
our downtime, aside from the bedroom. I jammed my fist into my other
hand and began grinding as I circled the sofa.
“Yeah,
but why me and why now? Why not do this when I was pulling in the big
bucks in Beantown?”
Dan
dropped onto the couch and put his bare feet on the edge of the
coffee table. As I paced, he flattened out the summons on his thick
thighs and read. My gut was in turmoil. My head felt light. My heart
still thundered in my ribs. A kid. My
kid. I barely made it back to the bathroom. I threw up the fancy
lunch that we had eaten at the golf club earlier. Dan didn’t come
in, which was wise. I don’t like people fawning over me when I’m
sick. Dear old Mom never did. I could handle myself. Been doing it
since I was about five. I’d had a head cold the month before and
nearly ripped Dan into bits one day for making me chicken noodle
soup. Why that man was still with me, I do not know. I retched a few
times, then slammed the lid and flushed. Over to the sink for a swig
of mouthwash. Do
not look at the razors, Kalinski, or you will make a bigger twat out
of yourself.
“You
okay?” Dan called.
“Yeah,
just some ptomaine from the clam chowder at lunch,” I replied, my
throat and nose still burning. “I’m taking a shower.”
“Okay.
I’ll read this over close while you wash.”
The
shower didn’t last long enough, nor did it help one damn bit. Aside
from having nuts that smelled like an Irish glen, I was still this
close to hyperventilating. A kid. Holy fucking goat titties, I needed
a drink.
“Hey,
you need to call a lawyer in the morning,” Dan said when I shuffled
into the living room in nothing but an old pair of cutoff jeans.
“This paperwork is crazy legal, but according to what this
Hillary—”
“Heather.
Heather Pavlick. Who the fuck
is
Heather Pavlick?” I asked the kitchen table.
I
jerked open the cupboard under the sink and reached for the bottle of
Yukon Jack, one of three or four bottles of booze we had on hand for
cocktails at night if the mood struck. Dan kind of liked Jack over
ice. Did I want ice? Did I want a glass? Nah. The whiskey burned my
raw throat like gasoline. I lowered the bottle, coughed, and ran the
back of my hand across my tingling lips. I saw Dan appear in the
doorway, papers still in his hand. He looked upset.
“I
wish you’d use a glass,” he grumbled, then stalked around me to
get two tumblers from the cupboard next to the fridge. I sucked in
some air through my teeth in reply. His whole body twitched at the
sound. “Two fingers, and stop making that fucking noise,” he said
after he returned to my side. I glugged some Jack into both tumblers,
my eyes on Dan’s. He handed me a glass. We both knocked the whiskey
back then went out to the couch, him with my summons and me with the
Jack.
“Okay,
so this is obviously some sort of rip-off,” Dan said after we’d
dropped our asses back to the sofa. Thankfully he’d left the boob
tube off. I was so
not in the mood to talk over his science shows. I poured myself
another two fingers. Dan held up his glass, so I refreshed him.
“Heather Pavlick. Is that the girl you were serious with?”
I
shook my head as I swirled the Canadian whiskey around my glass. Mr.
and Mrs. Rupert’s voices, as well as the smell of meat grilling,
rolled in through the windows.
“No,
her name was Gina. We were careful. I mean, we were obsessively
careful every time we fucked to prevent any kind of kid-making.” A
kid.
I couldn’t get the glass of whiskey to my lips fast enough. Ah,
what a nice burn.
“This
is why you should just identify as gay and be done with it. You don’t
have to worry about knocking me up.”
“Yeah
well, if I could just pick my sexual identity like I do my socks, I
would. But I kind of like pussy once in a while. Stop badgering me,
gay boy.”
“That’s
just weird,” Dan muttered, and sipped his Jack.
I
nodded. Yeah, to a gay dude, wanting pussy probably did seem weird.
And while I didn’t crave it anymore because, yeah, Dan Arou, back
in the day I’d taken some great delight in leaping from twat to
cock with wild abandon.
“Maybe
you can talk to someone in the team’s legal department. I mean,
this will come out. They’ll want to know about it beforehand so
they can handle the bad PR.”
“Fuck.
My. Life.” I dumped more of the amber liquid into my glass. My
stomach rolled and bucked as whiskey met empty gut. Whatever the
landlord was cooking was making me queasy.
“This
is just fucked,” Dan said after a long moment of silence punctuated
only by my stomach speaking up. “See, this paper says ‘unborn
child’, and that’s impossible. You and me have been tight since
Thanksgiving of last year. That’s nine months, right? November to
July is nine.”
“If
you count November.”
Christ
on a unicycle. Dan and I really been doing the monogamy thing for
nine months. I mean, I knew that we had, but hearing him say it out
loud drove the point home. No wonder those razors made me twitchy.
That was fucking incredible. Even with Gina, I’d bailed at six
months. That had been the most solid relationship I’d ever been in
before Mr. Stumpy and I had hooked up. Someone
call Guinness. We got a new world record here.
I threw another two fingers of Yukon down. Dan made a noise about the
speed of my ingestion, I assume, which I ignored.
A
moment ticked by. Two. Three. Dan sipped and repeatedly read that
summons, counting and recounting the months. This was major fuckery,
because there had been no one but Dan since the first time I’d
punched him in the face.
My
gaze rested on the Xbox under the flat screen. Our games were
scattered on the floor. I tipped my head to stare at the artwork on a
World War I battle game that Dan and I liked. It showed a German
zeppelin dropping bombs on some European city…
It
hit me like a semi that had lost its brakes. Ms. Goodyear. That
blonde with the incredible tits. I’d rolled her the night I’d
tried to drink Dan away. Had her name been Heather? Had she said? Did
it matter? Guess so.
“Ah,
fuck,” I moaned, then closed my eyes.
“What?
Did you figure out who this woman is?”
Shit.
Just shit.
This was going to be bad. I inhaled through my nose, blew out the
breath and started sucking on that Jack bottle like a hungry babe.
Dan jerked it from my hand. Whiskey sloshed down my chest. I
swallowed what was in my mouth, licked my lips and turned to find Dan
looking at me with concern tinting his lapis eyes.
This
was going to suck.
When
not writing spicy romances, she enjoys spending her day with her
menagerie in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania with a cup of fresh
java in hand. She can also be found online on Facebook, Twitter,
Pinterest, and GoodReads.
e-Copy of ‘Game Misconduct’
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