Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Story Spotlight - Heir Apparent (Part of the Blue Line Collection)








Universal Link

#MM #Hockey #Romance #MayOctober #Goalies 



Superstar Cam Evans is fighting to climb out of a slump that`s growing worse with each day of living in denial. Fresh from the minors, Jacobi Neal is hungry for this chance to play back-up for the legendary goalie. Can two men battle each other, their inner demons, and the sizzling attraction building between them?



Excerpt:

Turns out the Kaufmann Clock was this old, gold clock with naked Grecian men on either side of it. It’s a damned impressive clock that is a Pittsburgh landmark, I would learn later. It seems that it is quite the thing to meet someone under this over one-hundred-year-old clock. It was where I found Cam, bundled up in a thick blue parka, sipping a hot beverage. The corner of Fifth Avenue and Smithfield Street was pretty quiet. I pulled up in front of Macy’s, parked, then jogged over to Cameron.

"You could have picked somewhere warmer to meet," I said.

Cam began walking. I fell in beside him.

"Like where?" the man asked, his face nearly concealed by the huge hood over his head. "Tell me one damned place in this town that we could meet to talk without someone knowing it was us."

I padded along beside him with no reply for his comment. He was right. Everyone knew his face in “The Burgh.” The longer we walked, the more I accepted that I would freeze to death. We made two complete laps in total silence. Cam stopped to drop his empty coffee cup into a trash can. We stood under a streetlight, our breath twin clouds of steam hovering in front of us.

"You have to understand that this…I don’t know how to go about…shit." He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his parka. Again, we started walking.

"Look, man, if I knew for sure what we were dealing with, maybe I could help a little better.” A biracial couple hurried past us. I burrowed into my flimsy coat until all that stuck out of the collar were my eyes.

"I have a daughter. She’s a senior in high school."

"Awesome,” I mumbled into my coat. My forehead was extremely cold. Like ice cream eaten too fast cold. We kept walking that block.

"She is awesome." I peeked over at him. I wished he would drop that fucking hood so I could see his face. "And not aware of how things were with her mother and me."

"How things were, or how you were pretending they were?" I chanced it. What the hell? He would either slug me, call me a motherfucker, or stalk off. Whatever happened it had to be better than roaming around this fucking city block when the temperature was a balmy four degrees. "I mean, that is what you’re dancing around, right? That you’re so far back in the closet you just discovered Narnia? Why not just admit that much to yourself before we both succumb to fucking hypothermia?”

I should have known that Cameron Evans was a man of action. I mean, I followed his career all though my school years. He was fast. My back was against the wall under that old clock before I could register the shove. Cam then got all sorts of in my face. I did not raise my hands. His angry exhalation was flavored with vanilla.

"Are you calling me a queer?"

I shrugged one shoulder. "I call them as I see them. Now, you can either step off or you can kiss me." I threw the challenge out without a second thought. I stared into the shelter of his hood, finding his dark eyes in the shadows. They flickered down to my blue lips. "Whatever you decide to do, do it fast. I’m cold, tired, and hungry."

He did. He captured my mouth with a kiss so aggressive my teeth ground into my lips. Yeah. This was it. This was what I had been pushing him to do…hoping he would do. His hands slapped to the wall on either side of my head. I grabbed his hooded head then ran my tongue over his bottom lip. The tempting taste of his latte lingered on his tongue. Then he lost the fingertip hold he had found on the slippery slope of sexual honesty. Cam stumbled backward. I remained flat to the wall, my lips warmed nicely. He threw horrified looks up then down the street.

"Cam, man, it’s okay. It is okay to kiss a dude on the street. It is totally acceptable."

"No one knows." He pulled his hood even farther over his face.

"Then tell them. Go to your daughter, tell her. Tell your ex-wife, unless she already knows?"

"No, she doesn’t know, but she suspected. I need more time to…think this through."

"Cam, don’t you think you’ve lived a lie long enough, dude?" I asked as he retreated farther into his parka.


"It’s so much easier to hide in the dark," he murmured then left me under the clock, back flat to the wall, lips tender from our kiss.