Anne Tenino's Blog, page 10

Well, 18% Gray is still slated to come out August 1 (they don't change things this late, do they?), so I'm going to keep posting excerpts. (First excerpt and all that good stuff, here.)

This is from Chapter 3, where Matt is trying to meet up with James in Idaho, but James has no idea Matt is coming. James has been recently released into Idaho (the Red Idaho Authority) society after spending months in re-education camp because he's a "moral criminal". In other words, he's gay. Matt has been sent to help him get out of Idaho and back to the Blue States.

The Excerpt

Matt cleared the block, including an alley. When he first looked down it, he’d been surprised to see a Dumpster. He hadn’t known you could get someone to service them. No one could fit inside a Sorpacter, but clearly someone could fit inside or behind a Dumpster.

When he checked it out, he found nothing. Except a really bad smell, which was now clinging to him even with the all-weathers he wore. Nice.
James had to be long gone by now. Matt would have to stake out his house. He looked around the corner at the end of the block just in case.

Bingo. The façade of a building partway down the cross street was being deconstructed, although there weren’t any workers around at the moment. There was equipment, scaffolding, even some debris strewn about. He bet James was there, and since it was deserted it was a good place to approach him. James might recognize him, and Matt couldn’t predict his reaction. It would be better without witnesses. A familiar reaction could cause problems when a guy was wearing the pink triangle. Even if “familiar” translated to “fistfight.” It could be reported and linked to James.

In front of the deconstruction zone sat a construction-sized Sorpacter. It was attached by a sorting chute up the scaffolding, with openings about every three meters so stuff could be dropped in. He didn’t think anyone could fit inside the unit, but he checked to be sure. The sorting bot inside slammed the cover in his face. Nothing.

Matt turned back toward the scaffolding. He was looking left, so he didn’t see James climb out of the sorting chute. He did manage to catch movement out of the corner of his eye right before 85 kilos of man hit him from 2.5 meters above him.

Not the way he usually preferred to be jumped by a guy. “Fuck, James!” he sputtered, his cheek mashed into the rough sidewalk. He could feel James freeze when Matt said his name. He had Matt’s arms twisted into some impossible configuration by then.

“Th’fuck?” muttered James, letting up on Matt’s arms a little. Thank God.

“Get off me, you fucking idiot!” Matt hissed. “If anyone sees you lying on another man on the street, you’re going back into re-education.”

“You were following me,” James pointed out calmly, not moving.

“Yeah, so I could talk to you. I’m not trying to do anything to you! Would I have been so obviously following you if I wanted to fuck with you?” Okay, so Matt hadn’t known he was so obviously following, but he’d use what he had. “C’mon, James. Seriously, you need to get off me before someone sees.”

James got up, but Matt could feel him standing very still back there in defensive—or offensive—readiness. Matt rolled over and looked up at James a few seconds before standing.

James stared at him stonily, ready for anything as Matt dragged his sore ass off the concrete. He really would have preferred a plastic composite walkway. Idaho seemed a little short on modern updates, though.

Matt could clearly see the pink triangle on the front of James’s shirt. Yeah, it would be obvious to anyone that this guy just got out of re-education.

“Th’fuck?” James asked again, the look on his face changing from stony to confused. “Matt?”



Ten minutes later, they were walking down the street together, each holding a coffee pouch. James had that completely blank expression he was so good at.

“What are you doing here? You need to get th’fuck out of the Red, Matt.”

“I’m gonna go.” Matt kept his voice just as low. “As soon as you’re ready.”

James said nothing for half a block, just stared straight ahead. “You’re rescuing me?” He whispered incredulously.

Matt imagined his smirk bore a striking resemblance to Andry’s from that morning. “Yup,” he said cheerfully.

“I don’t need you to rescue me.” James’s tone was flat.

“Then why haven’t you left yet? You’ve been out of the camp three weeks.”

“How do you know that?”

“Sorry; that’s classified info.” Matt was just goading him, now.

James snorted. “I have clearances you’ve never heard of.”

Matt got serious. “Yeah, I’m thinking my file on you was incomplete. You aren’t a SOUF Regular or a Ranger, are you?”

“Your file on me? Who the hell are you with?”

“You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”

“Fine. I’m Psi-force.” Matt took a small misstep. Psi-force was one of the most secretive and legendary branches of SpecOps, formed from the Blue remnants of Rangers PSYOPS after Fort Bragg and Camp LeJeune went Red in the ’50s. When the Blue states military reorganized in 2057, the Marines and all Special Operating Forces formed their own branch of the military—Special Operations Unified Force. Psi-force was one of the units that ultimately fell under the jurisdiction of both SOUF Command and the ArmySF Subcommand. Psi-force troops could be embedded with any military unit.

“Your turn.” James nudged him.

Matt stopped walking and turned to James. Let the fucker face this one head-on. “I’m an extraction agent for Queer Extraction Services Association.”

James gave another little snort, and stared for a second. “I’m being rescued by a contractor,” he muttered to himself.

Matt smirked again. They turned and continued on.

“You have a licensed recoder?” James asked in a low voice.

“Yeah.” Matt smirked a little more. It wasn’t like they let just anybody walk around with a recoder. James needed him for that if nothing else.

“Guess that’s all right, then. Thank God.”

Okay, we have the trifecta. The book, the cover and the release date (which is Aug. 1 if you didn't catch the title of this post). 18% Gray is available on the Dreamspinner website for preorder in both ebook format and paperback.

If you just wanna get to the excerpt, scroll down until you see "Excerpt" in bold. For the blurb, look for "Blurb". Otherwise you will put up with my wordiness.

18% is M/M sci-fi, futuristic with a dystopic edge. It's not very high-tech sci-fi, sorry. I'm not a high-tech kinda girl. One of my friends yelled at my (e-yelling, very unpleasant, caps and everything) for not telling her it was sci-fi.

Which led me to realize I haven't said much about this book at all, really. I am remiss. What kind of author am I?

The kind that thought she could write a book and go back into her cave, actually. Not so.

Anyhoo, while I could ramble along all day, I should probably just put in the blurb, say a few things about the excerpt, then shut the hell up, huh?


The Blurb:

" In a future where the United States has split along party lines, agent Matt Tennimore’s job is to get people out of the Confederated Red States, whether they’re captured special ops agents from his own country or gay CRS citizens who’ve petitioned for asylum. He never expected to have to retrieve his high school crush, aka the guy who ostracized him for being gay.

Rescuing James Ayala isn’t going to be easy: he’s crawling with tracking nanos and has a cybernetic brain implant that granted him psychic powers he isn’t sure how to control. That’s the good news. The bad? The implant is compromising James’s mental stability.

So they’re on the run, avoiding surveillance by AI aircraft and hiding from enemy militia. Then James confesses he tormented Matt in high school because James wanted him. Matt can’t resist the temptation James offers, but he wants so much more than sex; assuming they ever make it home alive. Is James really a good bet when he’s got a ticking time bomb in his brain? And then there’s the question of how much he’s actually changed."


The blurb could have a more amusing tone. It seems a little angsty, but I tried.

Okay, so the excerpt is the prologue of the book, and it takes place 7 (and a half) years before the main story. A little slice of when James and Matt knew each other in high school. I'll post another excerpt next Tuesday...


The Excerpt:

Prologue

March 2104

Matt spent the time on his knees thinking. Oh, he should have been concentrating on the dick in his mouth, but he’d lost interest in it a few weeks ago. About one week after he’d started putting said dick in his mouth.
Actually, it wasn’t so much the dick in his mouth he was sick of; it was the dick attached to it.

“Dude, deep-throat me,” Steve begged in a whiny voice.

Matt had learned from recent experience that snorting in derision when you were giving a guy a blow job didn’t end well for either party. He sent Steve a scathing look. Yeah, that’s gonna happen.

If Matt weren’t a hormonal, sex-deprived sixteen-year-old, he probably wouldn’t even be hard.

Oblivious to Matt, Steve thrust his hips a little. Matt planted his hands on Steve’s hips and held them still against the tractor Steve was leaning on. The dumbass moaned.

Matt was so getting a blow job this time. No more letting Steve get away with the hand job treatment. He’d managed to convince Steve to blow him—what? Three times, maybe? And in that same period of time Matt was sure he’d given Steve… let’s see… two to three blow jobs a week—he’d call it 2.5—for five weeks was… 12.5 blow jobs.

Look, ma! He could suck cock and do math at the same time!

He should have made Steve blow him first. He sighed around Steve’s erection. Live and learn.

“Oh, yeah, suck it, baby,” Steve moaned. This guy watched too many porn vids. To pass the time, Matt reviewed how he’d ended up here on his knees.

Fact: Matt was the only out kid in their high school. Announcing you were gay wasn’t that typical in a small town, even in a state like Oregon, where 95% of the people had joined the Blue States of America after the Split in ’56. Oregon had mostly just lost Ontario and a little of the southeastern corner in ’56 when Idaho went Red.

Fact: Statistically, Matt knew there had to be about fourteen other queer guys in his school. There were 230 kids in the whole K-through-12 school in Weimer. If about 12% of the population was queer, that meant there were twenty-eight gay or lesbian kids in school. Half of them were of no interest to him, having the wrong equipment and all. That left fourteen potential playmates for him. But they could be in kindergarten for all he knew.

Fact: Weimer was the largest town in the county, at just under 3,000 people, plus another couple thousand on outlying ranches. The closest school district to Weimer was 120 kilometers away, and it had fewer than one hundred kids in it.

Fact: He could forget sex with some sympathetic guy out of high school (or, you know, some elderly pervert—he was sixteen; he wasn’t that picky). Matt wouldn’t be of age for two more years, and no one would fuck with an underage kid in his family. Most of his cousins—and his mom—knew three ways to eviscerate someone with their pinky nail. Crap, he knew that. It was a requirement of growing up in the Kell-Viteaux clan.

Conclusion: It was going to be really fucking hard for him to get any action in this town. Like, ever.

Clearly, tactical planning was necessary. So, he’d come up with a simple two-step plan.

Step 1: He was a horny sixteen-year-old queer boy in an isolated, conservative community. He also happened to be relatively attractive. Instead of hunting his prey, it seemed easier to become the prey. So he very publicly came out in September.

Step 2: Wait to be caught.

Result? By February not a single underage, horny, closeted guy had come on to him. It looked like the plan was a bust.
So when Steve came on to him one drunken night last month? Matt was so happy for another guy to touch him that he jumped at the chance. Literally. Climbed right up Steve.
So now he had a closeted boyfriend. Really, fuck-buddy was a more accurate term.

So, yay! Matt was fucking around with the quarterback of the football team, but no one knew it except Matt’s family (well, he hadn’t worked up to telling Dad yet, but Mom and the grampas knew). Not only could he not brag about his hot fuck-buddy, but the fuck-buddy had misplaced his personality to top it off.

Somehow, this wasn’t as great as he thought it would be when he had come up with the grand plan to get some action. Too bad his closeted fuck-buddy didn’t blow him more, to make up for it. And, you know, for being generally boring. But Steve was the only game in town, and they both knew it.

Steve started to make those noises he made when he was getting close, and Matt snapped back to attention. Oh, yeah. Sucking cock. Matt glanced up at Steve.

Ugh. He was too… classically handsome. Dark hair, built, tall, perfect nose. Too cliché. Of course the totally hot quarterback was gay! Matt closed his eyes and imagined Steve as someone else. It was the only way he was going to get this done. Matt just wasn’t capable of giving it that necessary extra little bit if he had to give it to Steve.

Matt imagined the guy he imagined every time he sucked Steve off anymore. The guy who probably wasn’t gay, but telling himself that hadn’t stopped Matt from wanting him. James Ayala. Steve’s best friend.

James didn’t go in for a lot of the high school hubris Matt saw in most jocks (exhibit A? Fucking his mouth). James had self-confidence, and he didn’t need to treat anyone like shit to make himself feel better. He never bullied or ridiculed. He was the original strong, silent type, who understood what personal integrity was before most guys had even heard of it.

And if James was a little less than classically handsome? Something about the way he was put together, and the way he moved, and the way Matt felt when James looked at him more than made up for it.

So it was James’s hard cock he was sucking right now. He could feel James’s hand in his hair, gripping it tight, almost painfully tight. Forcing him to take it. Matt shivered at the idea and sucked harder, humming a little.
Steve gave a grunt, ruining Matt’s good time.

Why was that fantasy a turn-on when he imagined James doing it, but if Steve did it Matt felt compelled to twist his sac?

Matt opened his eyes and started pulling off Steve. He didn’t know if he could finish if the guy was going to make noise and ruin his fantasy.

That’s when Matt saw the guy standing in the door of Steve’s family’s machine shed. Backlit, he was mostly a silhouette, but there was just enough interior light that Matt could make out his face.

“James,” Matt breathed.

Steve froze and then gave himself whiplash cranking his head toward the door.

“Fuck, dude!” Steve yelped, pushing on Matt’s shoulders.

“Shit,” Matt groaned, pulling his hands off Steve’s hips. He didn’t see how this could be good.

“Jesus Christ!” James spat, his face going red with anger and… was that hatred?

Then James turned and walked out.



Steve tried to get Matt to finish but Matt told him to fuck off and left, looking for James. Matt climbed on his crotch rocket, not entirely sure what he was doing but knowing he needed to talk to him. It wasn’t like they were close friends, exactly, but James had been really cool to him. They were friendly.

He found James outside his family ranch house, plugging in his own crotch rocket. Matt pulled up silently, just the gravel crunching under his wheels. He raised the shield on the rocket, apprehensive and unsure what he was going to say.

Shit. He knew James could hear him, but he kept his back to Matt. Matt figured his best approach was a brazen one. He got off the bike.

“Th’fuck?” Matt asked James, walking up behind him.

James stood up from where he’d been stowing his helmet behind the seat. “I didn’t know you were a fag,” James said coldly, not even turning around.

Matt felt like someone had kicked him in the nuts. No one said the F-word anymore. Unless they were one. Then it was okay. But otherwise? Nuh-uh.

But it was so much more than that.

“How could you not know I was queer, James? Everyone knows I’m queer. Somebody lased it into the bathroom wall! ‘Need your cock sucked? Call Matt Tennimore’.”

“Yeah, I saw it.” James wouldn’t look at him, disgusted. “I just thought it couldn’t be true about someone like you.”

“Whadya mean, ‘someone like me’? Someone skinny and short and kinda effeminate?” It was a measure of how upset Matt was that he called himself effeminate. Most of the time he refused to admit he might be.

Not that there was anything wrong with it, of course.

“No!” James finally looked at him, the same look in his eye that he’d had when he’d found Matt on his knees in front of Steve’s cock. “Someone I liked.” James turned and stalked off toward his front door.

“But if you like me….” Matt wanted to kick his own ass as soon as he opened his mouth.

James turned but just gave Matt that stony look he was so good at. He snorted in disgust. “Gimme a fucking break. You think I’m going to hang out with a faggot like you?”

“What about Steve? He’s a fag too! He still your friend?” Matt called after him.

All he got in reply was a slamming front door.

Matt waited a minute. He felt hot and cold by turns, and his fists were clenched so hard he could feel the nails bite into his palms. It wasn’t the worst treatment he’d gotten in this fucking town, but it hurt the most.

This can’t end like this.

But it did, of course.



For the next four months of school James was Matt’s enemy. Cold looks, snide comments in class, and a lot of James pretending Matt didn’t exist.

Finally James went off to Oregon State, and Matt breathed a sigh of relief. Probably partly because Steve went off to college too. Matt was pretty fucking sick of Steve by then.
Not that he ever touched him again after that day, but Steve kept bugging him to.

James’s leaving felt like a splinter in his chest. Not because he gave a shit, but because what a fucking dick! No one gave him that kind of shit! He had relatives in Special Ops, and they’d kick James’s sorry ass for calling Matt a fag.

Except he didn’t ever tell them about it, because he didn’t want anyone to know what a loser he was. It certainly wasn’t because he wanted to save James’s ass.

I have two covers to share! First is my cover for 18% Gray, which comes out next month from Dreamspinner Press. Yay!


I plan on posting some excerpts from 18% Gray starting very soon (like, maybe tomorrow), so stay tuned. You know you wanna.

Second, I made a cover for Whitetail Rock! It's not "out" yet -- i.e., the M/M Romance group hasn't posted it -- but when it is I'll make it available for download as a pdf. And maybe an epub, if I can figure out that sort of voodoo magic.



I'm also currently working on a sequel to Whitetail featuring a secondary character.

Now "Hot July Days" has been changed to "Hot Summer Days". I don't know when my story will be posted, but I thought I'd put up a pic of Nik. :) I think I figured out how to make him smaller.

I finished my novella for the Hot July Days anthology. The title of the anthology is Don't Read in the Closet. Eventually the entire thing will be available for free download, I think in October, but the stories will be posted throughout July on the M/M Romance group on Goodreads. http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/2...

My main characters are Trooper Jurgen Dammerung and Nikhil "Nik" Larson. To see a picture of Nik, check it out here http://annetenino.wordpress.com/2011/... and for a picture of Jurgen, well, I could make you scroll down, but he probably deserves to be reposted. [image error] Technically, Nik deserves to be posted here, too but the picture kept coming out way too big.

Here, to whet your appetite (you know, if ol' Jurgen doesn't do it for ya), is a little sample of what I wrote. BTW, I was theoretically writing a short story, but it ended up being a 26,600 word novella. This is the beginning of Chapter Three:

Whitetail Rock

As soon as Nik turned the corner, he heard boots crunching across the gravel. He didn't sound like he was hurrying, but somehow Jurgen was on the porch before Nik rounded the back of the building. By the time he had his hand on the screen door handle, Jurgen's hand was holding it shut.

"Seriously?" Jurgen said.

What? Nik was frozen, hand gripping the screen door. "What?" He found himself looking at Jurgen's hand, planted, finger's splayed, next to his head. He had a light dusting of blond hair on his knuckles. Nik could feel the heat from Jurgen's forearm on his ear.

When had the porch light come on?

"You think you're some kind of what? Trophy fuck?"

Nik closed his eyes. He wasn't having this conversation. Especially not with the Blond God of Gay Police Officers.

Yet again, his mouth betrayed him. "Are you saying I'm not?"

"Yes."

Nik opened his eyes and yanked on the handle. Not surprisingly, the screen door didn't budge.

"What made you think that?"

Nik closed his eyes again, and slowly let his head sink against the door. Then he beat his forehead against it a couple of times, the screen giving under his head. In terms of distracting himself with pain, it was pretty ineffective.

Jurgen didn't move. Shockingly.

"I was a point of some curiosity here in this little hick town," Nik finally said.

Jurgen's voice was a little slow in coming. "So, some bi-curious hick -- white -- boy came along one night and what? Lured you into his truck and then fucked you?"

Nik snorted. "C'mon, give me some credit. I blew him." His voice sounded weird, smashed up against the screen like that.

"And he said that? He liked how your dark lips looked on his dick?"

Trooper Straight Talk didn't like to mince words, did he? Nik shrugged, head still on the screen. He was probably getting a grid pattern smashed into his head. "Something like that."

"More than one?"

More than one what? Oh. Guy. "I only fell for it once, but yes, more than one guy came around here looking for some while I was in high school."

"Did they all say that? It was because you weren't white?"

"What is this, a police investigation? No, they had more brains than to admit it upfront."

Jurgen was silent a while, and they stood there. Nik's head still resting on the screen door, Jurgen tensed behind him.

Nik felt strangely comfortable.

Jurgen's voice startled him. "How did they even know you were gay?"

"C'mon, Trooper, you must have a pretty good idea by now that my reaction to feeling insecure is to get loud and proud." Nik didn't have the energy to put any snark in his voice.

"You don't think it was just because you were the only openly gay guy around? You weren't the only dark skinned guy around. Half the county's hispanic."

That's not the same thing. Nik just bit back his knee-jerk response. "How many of them are openly gay? Besides, they have a whole community. I'm one Indian boy raised among white people."

Jurgen sighed. It was a weird sound, coming from him, hinting at actual emotion. Emotion other than lust.

Was lust an emotion?

"I wasn't thinking of you as a trophy fuck."

"Ah. That's so sweet."

Jurgen stepped in closer behind him. Nik began to regret not moving away from the door. If he did it now, it would be a clear retreat. He lifted his head from the screen and pressed his palms against it.

"I'm not going to lie to you, the idea of seeing your skin against mine makes me hot."

Nik stiffened even more. Running away was looking increasingly appealing.

"It's part of the package, Nik. I'd want you if you were white, too. The fact that you aren't is just an added dimension. Thing is, I think you'd like it, too."

Nik swallowed. "No. I wouldn't." Would he?

Nik could feel the heat of Jurgen's chest against his back. Jurgen's other hand came to rest on the other side of the screen door.

Running away wasn't really an option anymore. He was trapped. Which should be alarming and frightening, but... wasn't. His heart was pounding, but it had more to do with how arousing it was to have Jurgen crowding in behind him, not quite touching, but letting Nik know he was there. That he'd blocked off escape.

When Jurgen spoke, his lips tickled Nik's spine, making him jump. "I think you should see it."

"See what?" Nik sounded like he hadn't had water in a month.

"What it looks like when I wrap my hand around your cock. I won't even watch. We can stay just like this." Jurgen's lips were a little bit chapped, and the rough touch of them traced up and across Nik's neck, to just below his ear.

"You can have it all to yourself. You can see my hand wrap around your dark skin. Dark and light. I bet you're that purple-brown color, aren't you? And when the blood's filling your dick and your heart is pounding in your ear drums because you're about to blow, the head of your cock gets dark purple, and shiny-smooth. Right then, Nik, you'll look and you'll see my thumb sweep across the head. I'll look so pale next to you. It'll be some white man, jerking you, and he won't even get the pleasure of seeing it. All for you."

Ugh. Cotton-mouth. Nik swallowed a couple of times. "Please." Giving Jurgen exactly what he wanted, but it was really for Nik, right, so it was okay. He pushed back against Jurgen, rubbing his ass into Jurgen's hard cock, unable to help himself. He needed what Jurgen was offering.

Okay, sorry. But yes, Happy Birthday to Me is the epilogue to 18% Gray. I wrote 18% Gray first, but then before I had it completely ready to go, Dreamspinner had this perfect anthology they were accepting submissions for, and HBtM was so perfect for it....

Happily, 18% Gray should be out in early August. It's through the first round of edits, and as soon as I'm sure we've got the final version ready, I'll start excerpting it. One of my favorite parts of the book is the prologue, which takes place 8 years before the main story. Expect to see that first.

But if you just can't get enough of me (*giggle*snort*), my contribution to the M/M Romance group's Hot July Days project is finished and it's hot. More details here: http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_...

So, I went in and cleaned out my bookshelves today -- my virtual Goodreads ones, not the actual ones (like that's evah gonna happen). So, if you're following them and you got a big, long list of piddly little things I did? Sorry.

On the bright side, I now will only have books I can recommend on my shelves. Or at least I think others will get something out of reading.

Beware, I'm going to be adding books, soon. I'm way behind in keeping track.

Look! I wrote something and someone published it! Crazy!

Happy Birthday to Me (about 9,000 words) was released by Dreamspinner on June 1, 2011. It's part of the First Time for Everything Daily Dose anthology. The story is available individually for the low, low price of $2.99. Here's the direct link to purchase Happy Birthday to Me, http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/stor... .

Without further ado, an excerpt:

November 19, 2112

Matt turned 25 today. He knew James would never remember. It didn't bother him; that's the kind of guy James was. He did lots of things on regular days of the year to make Matt feel special.

And if Matt had anything to say about it, James was about to make Matt's birthday very, very special.

"James?" He knew his voice was a little tentative, but he was asking for something he'd never asked for, and it was a little... freaky. As in the kinky kind of freaky.

James was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the news on a comp tablet, not really paying attention. Matt could tell James wasn't picking up any psychic signals from him. If he was he'd be focused on Matt. James wouldn't be able to focus on anything else, not with how horny Matt was. Not to mention Matt didn't always let James into his head, so when he did, James usually paid attention.

Usually. When he noticed.

When James didn't answer right away, Matt tried again. "James?" He might normally get snappy at this point, but not this time. He wanted something.

He really, really wanted something.

"Hmmm, baby?" James didn't turn to look, preoccupied. But just the sound of that deep voice made Matt squirm a little. Even though James wasn't really paying attention yet.

Matt took a deep breath. "Will you spank me?" He said it so fast it almost ran into a single word.

James sat straight up in his chair, set down the tablet, stared out the window across from him and didn't say a word. His broad shoulders looked tense.

Uh-oh.

Slowly, James turned, and Matt could feel the mental connection now. His body sideways in the chair, eyes heavy-lidded and partially obscuring their honey color, James rumbled at him, "You really want me to, don't you, baby?"

Oh god. Matt fucking loved the rumbly voice. He nodded mutely, looking at James and fingering the drawstring on his thin cotton pants. Squirming a little more, thighs rubbing together, balls caressed by rough hair and smooth skin. Wishing it was James' hair and skin against him. Getting harder than his imagination had managed up 'til now.

James reached out a hand and captured Matt's wrist, stroking the soft inside with one calloused thumb. "Oh, yeah, baby. I can spank you."

But instead of drawing Matt forward, yanking down his pajama pants, throwing him over his lap and whaling on his ass, James stood up. Matt whimpered a little in disappointment and need. He looked at James from under his lashes. James quirked a lopsided smile at him.

The psychic link wasn't infallible. Sometimes all James got were feelings and impressions, sometimes words, and occasionally images. Matt had been really hoping James would get the image. The one of Matt, naked over James' lap, ass bright pink as James' hand landed on it over and over (and over) again. James fully clothed, pinning Matt's wrists behind his back with the hand that wasn't abusing his ass.

James chuckled at his whimper. "I know what you want. But we're doing this my way. How long have you wanted me to do this?" He stepped in closer to Matt. James was broader and more muscular, and when he used his size to intimidate just a little it always made shivers run down Matt's spine. In a really good way.

He looked in James' eyes, just the tiniest bit ashamed, still. But the need won out. He gave a faux-nonchalant shrug. "Couple months?" He looked back down at the drawstring he was fingering, then back up.

James smiled more fully. Still stroking his wrist, he pulled Matt in and kissed him gently, rubbing his chapped lips against Matt's. "We're doing this my way," James said again, breathing the words across Matt's lips. Matt felt goosebumps prickle their way up his back. "Tell me again you want it," James rumbled against his ear, caressing Matt with his stubbly cheek.

Matt took a deep breath and pulled back to look James in the eye. "I want you to spank me."

"No more talking," James said in that voice. The in-control voice he only (well mostly) used when they were playing. "You don't say another word until I give you permission. You can make all the other noises you want." James turned and pulled him into their bedroom by the wrist. Thank god, he's going to do it.

I think I am about to post the pic for my Hot July Days story. To learn more about Hot July Days, visit the M/M Romance group at http://www.goodreads.com/topic/group_... . Basically, anyone in the group could write a Dear Author letter and post a picture, then any author (published or not) could chose to write a story based on the prompt.

Here's my picture.
Hot, no?

I'm having a blast doing this story with my writing group, and it's turning out way hotter than I expected.