STORY EXCERPT

Just looking at the Texas bartender was sexual.

The hunky man moved with the restrained power of a predator, and liquid sex seemed to ooze from his skin. How else could Joshua explain the immediate and overpowering sexual attraction to the seven-foot-tall man? Sexy as sin, the bartender seemed to take up more space in the room than anyone else with his broad shoulders and his unusual height. His body was filled in on all the right spots, and he was all muscle.

The bartender had a bad boy look that Joshua wasn’t usually attracted to, but he couldn’t help but want a piece of him after seeing those bright emerald green eyes wash over him. Joshua shivered. The bartender’s chestnut hair looked to be shoulder length, but he couldn’t tell because it was pulled back neatly in a ponytail. His right arm was encased in a sleeve of tattoos, making Joshua wonder what else was hidden under that tight T-shirt and beneath his Levi jeans. Joshua slid into the seat in front of the sun-kissed man, trying not to make goo-goo eyes at the guy. He had a face that could have belonged to a model, but he didn’t dress like one. Joshua removed his baseball hat and set it on the counter, waiting politely to catch the other man’s attention.

Joshua had just moved to Texas because he was following his lifelong dreams and had been accepted to the police academy. He didn’t know anyone yet, but he still missed being with a man once in a while. On the hot nights he was really lonely, he went downtown for a quick anonymous hookup, but tonight he came to the Castaway Bar and Grill because it sounded welcoming to gays under the website reviews—and one comment in particular got his attention.

If you want to have a really good time, come and order yourself a Sex on the Beach.

Joshua knew about good times, and he was looking for something special. Those nights of anonymous sex were beginning to feel all the same. After some beer, and a hot sweaty night, he and his new lover would go their separate ways. However, tonight he didn’t have a date waiting to meet him. He wanted to find something different—something more satisfying. Instead of an arranged meeting online, he was looking around the smoke-filled room to see who else was in the gay bar. He needed excitement in his life, and his heart screamed that this was just the opportunity he had been waiting for.

Deep in his gut he felt like something was about to change for him. Tonight was different than normal. The air held a palpable energy, and he felt edgy. Restless.

Even for a Tuesday night, it was not particularly busy. There were less than twenty guys in the bar, and most of them sat in small groups already. Joshua had arrived a little too late to hook up with anyone in particular, but he could be happy just looking at the eye candy in front of him. The bartender was the best-looking guy in the bar, with dark-brown hair and intense green eyes laced with thick lashes.

Joshua’s mouth went dry.

“What will you have, greenhorn?” The bartender set down the whiskey glass he was drying and placed his hands on the wooden counter. Joshua drew his breath in quickly as he saw those pectoral muscles flex against his gray shirt. The guy had to work out every hour he wasn’t working to be that built. Seriously. He was hot. He had a wide angular jaw that met a thick neck and expansive shoulders and deep sea-green eyes Joshua could get lost in.

I’d drink you if you came in a bottle…

Joshua couldn’t stop staring, but if he didn’t respond soon, flies were going to land in his open mouth and Mr. Sex-on-a-Stick would be totally turned off. He jerked himself back to reality. He was smarter than this. A cute guy shouldn’t be able to turn him on his ass. It wasn’t like he was some inexperienced virgin. He loved men, and he was known to be a bit of a playboy around town.

The way he was feeling around the bartender was throwing his game off, and while he didn’t like feeling out of control, he did like the way the butterflies in his stomach took flight every time the bartender made eye contact.

“I can’t think clearly right now, but it’s on the tip of my tongue.” What the hell was I supposed to order again?

The bartender arched an eyebrow. “Tongue’s in a twist, eh?”

Yeah, but I know what I’d like to have it twisted around.

ADULT EXCERPT

“Come for me, Josh,” he whispered against the other man’s neck. His fangs lengthened and just barely grazed the skin. He was tempted to drink, but just for a taste, not to kill or to drain him dry. Sex and blood went together like wine and chocolate.

He was rewarded with Josh pushing into his arms. Thick warm cream spurted into the palm of his hands. Sticky-sweet love juice. He held him close, waiting for Joshua to finish giving himself to him. When Joshua finished, he licked his fingers.

Joshua’s eyes widened as he watched.

“Did you want some? Taste yourself.” Tyler held out his fingers to Joshua’s lips and was rewarded with a sucking sensation. Joshua swallowed his fingers and sucked them clean.

“Mmm,” Joshua moaned, but then he noticed some of the seed had dripped down Joshua’s thick legs. He wiped at the sticky cum ineffectually and smeared it across his skin, making Tyler want to bathe him with his tongue. “I am going to need a shower after this.”

“Good sex isn’t always clean. Sometimes it gets messy. Slippery. I think it’s better when it’s not in a clean package and breaks from your expectations,” Tyler said.

Joshua chuckled low and throaty. “I am used to keeping it simple. A bed. A man and a condom.”

The smell of sex and salt water filled the air, a beautiful perfume that only served to arouse Tyler further. His kind were free of sexually diseases. He wouldn’t dream of putting a condom over his skin and lessening the effect or the experience of being with his mate. All he really wanted was to fuck him.

“My turn,” Tyler whispered.

Joshua lifted his head. Tyler loved the way his blue eyes glistened and almost turned silver in the moonlight. He could read every emotion in those deep blue depths, lust, and love just beginning. A promise for the future and no darkness crowded his mind or thoughts. Not yet anyways, but he didn’t know he was about to give himself to a demon. A monster that lived for darkness and danger.

Devil take him, sometimes he hated who he was.

“Help me undress and I don’t want you to stop before I am as naked as you,” Tyler said.

“Then what?” Joshua asked, full of innocence.

“Then you are going to be bedded, marked, and thoroughly fucked by me.”

“Then what?” Joshua repeated, his lips lifting in a playful smirk.

He was tempted to say, Then we’ll do it again, but instead he said, “Then we’ll have all eternity to figure out the rest.”

Joshua smiled, baring clean, white teeth. “I’d like that.”

Tyler wrapped Joshua’s wrists with his much larger hands, guiding him to help lift the black shirt over his head. “There is nothing I’d like better than to have you naked in my bed every day for the rest of my life.”

Which was a considerably long time, considering he was an immortal demon.

“We can start with tonight.” Tyler felt Joshua’s spirit retreat. As if the thought of committing really scared him. Tyler wondered what happened to make him afraid. Something or someone must have hurt him in the past, and part of him would really like to know who so he could kick his ass.

“What is this?” Joshua’s velvet-light touch ran across the gargoyle inked across his chest. He felt the gargoyle tattoo rumble in pleasure, but it did not move. The beast lay still, awaiting his lover’s caress. Thank the heavens above, because if it had moved, he most likely would have had to chase Joshua kicking and screaming into the darkness.

“It’s my mark, sort of like a tattoo.” He struggled for a moment, trying to put it into the simplest terms for Joshua to understand. He was born with it, like a birth mark.

“It’s gorgeous.” The beast sighed contently, and its emerald-green eyes closed. The stone statue shifted to a more comfortable position on his chest, wrapping his wings around himself. Joshua snapped his hand back as if he’d been burned. “Shit! It moved!”

Tyler felt the rising panic in Joshua like a floodwater on the horizon. Once more, he captured the other mans wrists in his own. Joshua would not run away from him. Not now. Not ever. Certainly not before he mated and marked him. Quickly he worked his magic to soothe Joshua’s emotion and calm him. “You’ve been drinking too much, my friend. There is nothing about me that would ever hurt you. Trust in me.”

The tension in Joshua’s muscles relaxed once more.

“Weren’t you helping to disrobe me?” Tyler reminded him. He pushed against Joshua’s will, helping him to forget the gargoyle tattoo for now.

There were more important things at stake, for instance, like the claiming of his mate.

Joshua slipped Tyler’s pants down around his waist, and Tyler helped wriggle out of them. He kicked off his shoes and took of every layer until he was as naked and as free as Joshua.

Tyler pulled him against him and kissed Joshua, deeply thrusting his tongue through Joshua’s resistance. He felt Joshua’s buttocks tighten under his hands. The soft, cool skin in sharp contrast to his much hotter body temperature. It felt so good just to hold him like this, but he wanted more than to touch him. He wanted to become part of the other man. “I wanna do bad things with you…to you.”

“I’ll take that as an invitation.” Joshua smiled and dipped his face down to touch his lips on Tyler’s cock. His lance jumped under the touch of his lover, but he needed more than kisses in the dark.

“Suck it.”

“My pleasure,” Joshua answered, and then he licked and sucked with as much gusto as if he were a dying man of thirst in a desert. Joshua sucked him dry until Tyler erupted again and again as if Tyler’s manhood was the fountain of life.

Tyler made powerful thrusts into Joshua’s mouth, and while he could not take everything he had to give—no man could—he gave it his all. He used his hands on what his tongue and lips could not cover. Tyler tangled his fingers in Joshua’s shaggy blond hair, holding him as close as possible. His mouth was all pleasure. Warm. Wet. Liquid sex.