Don't Read in the Closet: Volume Four (101 page)

with the flow, his curiosity and the thrill he got out of trying new

things.

When we’d made it back to the resort we’d parked the four

wheeler at the main building, slipped off our shoes and shirts, and

started to walk barefoot along the beach to our cottage. Until Mike

had yelled, “Race you,” and taken off.

Who knew he was such a kid at heart.

I guess I did. Once upon a time. I liked him in Hawaii. Away from

the bar and the stress of the construction at the restaurant.

He came to a stop and stared out over the ocean. I was out of

breath when I reached his side. He turned and without a word he

tackled me. We fell to the ground, both of us breathing heavily. He

was on top, but I dug my heels into the sand and flipped us.

We wrestled more, rolling in and out of the surf. Neither of us had

shaved since we’d left Ohio, and the rasp of his facial hair against my

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 611

chest as he tried to roll me over teased my nipples. I was getting hard.

I hadn’t been turned on from such simple, playful aggression in a long

time. I felt free, like I could breathe again, only I hadn’t known I’d

been holding my breath for so damn long.

We need a break.

“Hey.” Mike stopped the rolling and sat up beside me. He stared

out over the water again. “Check it out.” The sun was setting in the

distance, giving off a glow that turned the surface of the ocean blazing

shades of orange and red.

I sat up and said, “I can’t believe you did all this.”

“You having fun?” he asked.

“I am.”

He stood. “It’s time to go get ready or we’ll be late.” He reached

down and helped me up. When I was standing beside him he slipped

his hand into mine and didn’t let go. In fifteen years we’d never held

hands. Not outside of the bedroom. I wanted this moment to go on for

a while longer. I didn’t want to go to some bar where we didn’t know

anyone, where it wouldn’t be just the two of us, where he wouldn’t

laugh like he’d been doing all day.

But I had made a promise to myself. This one night I’d give him

what he needed.

When we reached the deck I stopped. There was a small round

table in the middle that hadn’t been there before. It was set for two.

Covered plates at each setting, candles lit in the center, and a bottle of

wine off to the side.

I pointed to the table. “Are we eating first? I thought you said

we’d be late.”

“Yeah. For this.”

“No bar?”

“No bar. I said that to throw you off the surprise. I thought this

year maybe…” He looked at the table, then back to me. “Just us.”

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 612

I stood staring at him for a minute, then leaped forward and

grabbed him. I’d meant for it to be a hug, a show of appreciation. I

hadn’t meant to fling myself at him so hard we’d go flying backward.

Good thing the deck was low to the ground. He landed on his back on

the sand, and I came down sprawled half on top of him, half beside

him.

I pulled myself up and straddled his thighs. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I take it you’re okay with the change of plans?”

“More than okay.”

He sat up and shifted us around until we were kneeling side by

side watching the sunset again.

“Why did you do all this?” I asked.

“Fifteen years deserves a little something special, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He slowly looked my way, his expression serious, and then he

glanced out over the water again. “We needed this. It’s too easy to get

swept away by life. Away from what matters most. I wanted us to be

swept away together, if just for a little while.” He paused, then added.

“We need to do this every year. Get away. Recharge. Just us.”

“Just us,” I said. I looped my arm around his and placed my head

on his shoulder.

He rested his temple against mine and whispered in my ear.

“Happy Anniversary.” I could hear it in his voice…he was smiling

again.

That made two of us.

THE END

Author Bio:
Award-winning author Sloan Parker has been

writing and playing with fictional characters for years, but she finally

found her true passion when she began telling stories about two men

(or more) falling in love. Now she spends her writing life creating

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 613

m/m erotic romances and romantic suspense. She loves to explore the

lives of people who are growing as individuals while falling in love.

Visit
www.sloanparker.com
to learn more about Sloan’s work, read
excerpts from her books, and download free short stories.

Websit
e: http://www.sloanparker.com/

Blog
: http://blog.sloanparker.com/

Faceboo
k: http://www.facebook.com/sloan.parker

Twitter
: http://twitter.com/sloanparker

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 614

Jen Pinto – BLUE FLAMES (Sci-Fi/Masturbation)

Genre:
Science Fiction

Tags:
mutual masturbation, crime

Dear Author,

Words:
10,180

Quiet, restrained, and

serious, he always dated the

BLUE FLAMES

type of men his family,

by Jen Pinto

friends, and business

associates expected. That is

Aoi Hisaki stood on the threshold of the

until he met the inked man

latest crime scene and felt the intricate tattoos

that was his polar opposite.

lining his shoulders, spine and waist flare to life

[PHOTO: In blinding

as the energy in the area reacted to his

sunlight against a wall, two

near-naked dark-haired men

emotions. He knew the sigils were glowing a

kiss open-mouthed, hands

luminescent blue under his shirt and focused on

cupping each other’s necks.

calming himself with meditative breathing to

The man with his back to us

release the energy safely. Despite all his years

displays a wealth of tatoos

on shoulders, spine, and

of experience it was harder to do than usual.

arms. The other, hidden

Being an interplanetary agent of NOVA, an

behind him, uses one hand

to push down his lover’s

intergalactic police force solely dedicated to

white briefs.]

tracking and apprehending trans-planetary

Please give this beautiful

criminals, Hisaki was created precisely for the

couple the HEA they

position he filled. He was trained, body and

deserve.

mind, to deal with the horrors he saw on a daily

THANK YOU!

basis, so his difficulty in releasing the energy

Kerry

he’d gathered was disturbing. It wasn’t enough

to make him take a step back from his current

case, though.

For the past seven months Hisaki had been

tracking a child abduction ring that was

invading the homes of families, killing the

parents and stealing the children to sell on the

silver market, which dealt exclusively with live

merchandise unlike the black market which

dealt only with non-living entities. This was the

fourteenth crime scene his team had been called

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 615

out to investigate spanning five different planets across three solar

systems.

Hisaki noted all the similarities this scene had to the others as he

carefully made a walk through. The broken front door access pad

singed around the edges as if a fire inside the unit had burned hot and

bright for a moment, overturned chairs at a full dinner table with the

parents’ bodies lying nearby and blood spatter from the archaic

shotguns they used comprised this scene the same as the others.

Once again Hisaki wondered where they had gotten the deadly

relics of a violent planet that had destroyed itself long ago and how

they were finding ammunition for their weapons. Were they making it

themselves? If so, where did they gain the knowledge to create such

barbaric and deadly items? Someone out there must know something

about them.

Hisaki walked across the living area, dodging around the scene

techs scurrying about gathering evidence, to a wall full of beautiful

family pictures and removed a small 5x7 portrait of the missing child.

She looked to be about two or three years old in the photo. The year

was stamped in gold in the bottom corner, 3776 DT or dimensional

time, would make this a very recent photo.

Hisaki focused on the image of the little girl as if he could make

her appear, safe from harm, just by the strength of his desire to save

her. Big blue eyes pleaded with him from the heart shaped face of a

cherub. Hisaki felt his heart breaking, shattering, as he wondered how

soft her wavy light brown hair would feel under his stroking hand as

he sung her to sleep or tamed her wild bed head when she woke. It

just wasn’t fair; someone this sweet and innocent should have been

untouchable, off limits to even the worst criminals. He knew he had to

get her back and keep her safe, he just didn’t know how to do it.

Hisaki removed the photo from the frame and slid it into the inner

pocket of his clingy metallic blue uniform shirt. The varying colors of

the uniform shirts in NOVA depicted the wearer’s status at a glance.

Flat green was a novice officer initiate, light green was a novice

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 616

officer, pale metallic green was a junior officer in charge of the

novices, pale yellow was an office worker, metallic pale yellow was

an office supervisor, metallic black were all crime scene techs, flat

blue was all high level officers except for the Flames.

There were four Flames who headed their own teams and were

assigned to different areas and crimes. The four Flames were different

from normal people in many ways. They were conceived in a lab and

grown in a pod filled with cerebral fluid for the first 18 years of their

lives. The following ten years were filled with training. They trained

their bodies to be lethal weapons and their minds to control their

bodies and to be even more deadly since it was the mind that

controlled their flames.

Each Flame went through a sacred ritual as old as time at the

moment of birth from the pods. Sacred sigils were tattooed in a

distinct pattern in a specific order across the backs of their shoulder,

then down their spines and finally across their lower backs to wrap

around their waists ending in the center of their belly just above their

pubic line.

The sigils were a tool used to gather the energy all around them

for their minds to use in combat or defense. Each Flame was trained to

use the energy in all the ways possible, but each Flame had an affinity

for a certain energy element that decided the color of their energy

flames.

Hisaki’s energy flames were a translucent blue and his affinity

was with water, so his uniform shirt was a metallic blue that