Mending the Rift (28 page)

Luca cried out when deft fingers tilted his head up. He gazed into a pair of gray eyes, filled with love and concern. Marcus! Marcus’s lips moved, but blood pounded in Luca’s ears, making it impossible for him to hear anything. He watched Marcus shake his head before he was carefully cradled in Marcus’s arms. He wrapped himself around Marcus, soaking up his strength.

“Luca, hey, are you back with us?”

Luca jerked when Marcus’s words registered. He blinked up into his husband’s eyes. “What happened?”

“I’m guessing you were close to having a panic attack. What set you off? The medical equipment?”

Luca’s heart was still beating too fast, but at least his hearing wasn’t impaired anymore. “I thought I was back there, and they wanted… they….”

“Shh, kitten, it’s okay. If you can’t go through with a spinal anesthesia, we can still switch to a full anesthesia.”

“No!” Luca clutched at Marcus. “I don’t want that. I want to be awake when our baby’s born. I’ll be fine. Just… just don’t leave me alone again, okay?”

“I’ll never leave you, Luca.”

“I know. It’s a stupid reaction, but without you I was so scared,” Luca whispered.

For a while, Luca clung to Marcus before the doctors carefully approached again. This time, Luca had no trouble with the procedure, since they allowed Marcus to hold him all the time.

After the injection, they checked on Luca’s vitals and settled him on the table. The nurses set up a screen and provided Marcus with a stool that he positioned next to Luca’s head. The doctors and nurses conversed in low voices, and if Luca didn’t sense some tugging at his belly, he’d have wondered what they were doing or if they were doing anything at all.

“What are they doing?” Luca asked, unnerved from the silence around them.

Marcus’s lips quirked, but before he had a chance to answer, a high-pitched wail echoed in the room. Luca gasped, and he tightened his grip on Marcus’s hand. “That’s him, that’s our baby.”

Tears leaked from Luca’s eyes, and uncontrollable shivers surged through his body. “Where is he?”

Marcus gave a helpless shrug, but at just that moment, a nurse came by with their baby bundled in a light blue blanket. “Here he is. Congratulations on a beautiful boy.”

She placed the baby on Luca’s chest and made sure he was able to hold him securely. Marcus rolled closer, bowing over the baby with a stunned smile. Luca couldn’t stop crying, not even when the baby’s wails tapered off in snuffles.

“He likes to be on your chest,” Marcus commented in a choked voice.

“He’s so tiny. Damn, why can’t I stop crying? He must think I’m crazy.”

Marcus sent him a beatific smile as he stroked a finger along their baby’s fuzzy head. “Hello, Gabriel, it’s great to meet you in person.”

Gabriel, their baby boy, finally with them. Luca laughed and cried simultaneously. So many things had changed and would still change, but one thing he knew would never change—his love for his husband and their son.

Odds Are: Book One

Never judge a book by its cover.

Michael Campbell can’t hold a job for more than a few days. He’s lucky his foreman is giving him another chance with the solar panel project at an elementary school in Atlantic City. When he spies a man walking strangely in front of the school, Michael laughs, assuming he’s drunk or high. Little does he realize that Joshua Stone, a teaching assistant, has cerebral palsy, and he’s having a bad muscle control day. Taking a tumble right in front of the handsome construction worker is just his luck.

When Michael learns the truth, he feels bad for his cruel behavior. He offers to give Joshua—and his tricycle, the Racing Rhonda—a lift. Joshua accepts the help, and suddenly there’s a gorgeous man breezing into his life, turning his world upside down. But Michael has more issues than his inability to hold down a job, and neither man is sure if they’ll be able to overcome their fears in order to be together.

Sequel to
Despite the Odds

Odds Are: Book Two

And then they lived happily ever after…

Sometimes Joshua Stone thinks he’s died and gone to heaven. How else can he explain Michael’s love for him? And now they’re living together… in a real relationship. This is the stuff of fairy tales, a love like other people take for granted.

Sure, they have their moments, what couple doesn’t? But a small doubt lingers in Joshua’s heart. Can this really be true? Can a gorgeous man like Michael really love someone like Joshua—the guy with cerebral palsy, who’s helpless without his walker or his tricycle to get him around?

Michael senses Joshua’s worries, but there’s nothing he can do to dispel them because that would mean revealing his secret—and he’s not ready for that. Their mutual secrets hang between them like time bombs waiting to explode. They might not survive the inevitable blast.

Alliances: Book One

Spunky commander Berit Turner is known for two things: his huge libido and his lack of a filter—he says what he thinks. Berit sets his mind on being part of a mission to Ligador to make sure the planet is habitable for humans. He’s ecstatic when his team is assigned to the task force. A delegation of Nadisc, a humanoid alien race, accompanies them, and passion ignites between Berit and their commanding officer, Tom. But Berit is determined that Tom is just another notch on his bedpost, as he doesn’t do relationships.

The excursion to Ligador goes wrong from the beginning, when they discover Ligador has been established as a breeding station by their worst enemy: the Tash’Ba. Dinosaur-like creatures become the team’s worst nightmare, and staying alive is going to take everything they’ve got… and then some.

Alliances: Book Two

The fight to eradicate the Tash’Ba breeding stations continues, with spunky Commander Berit Turner and his Nadisc mate, Tom, in the thick of things. Sometimes it seems as though they’ll never locate and destroy them all. And there’s always the fear that the Tash’Ba have something else, something worse—if that’s even possible—lurking ahead.

As if things aren’t bad enough, Berit’s less than stellar past is threatening to bite him in the ass, and they’ve received alarming new information. The Tash’Ba queen needs to use Earth as a place to hatch the egg of her successor. And if what she says is true, the new queen will be even more voracious and cruel than her predecessor.

Berit, along with his team—Tom, Carson, Niyara, and Fleur—must do everything in their power to stop her. If they fail, Earth will be lost forever.

Sequel to
Sacrifices

A Jeff Woods Mystery

After leaving his dream job as an Atlantic City detective, Jeff Woods has moved to Washington DC with his life partner, Alex Fisher, and Alex’s disabled little brother Sean. Parker Trenkins, Jeff’s ex-partner on the force, has made the move as well, along with his significant other David. Jeff and Parker partner up once again, but in a new way, as owners of their own detective agency.

Life is difficult at the best of times. Sean loses sight in one of his eyes, a direct result of being pushed into the Atlantic by a homicidal maniac a year ago. In his struggle to deal with everything, a restless Alex enrolls in tai chi classes at a nearby school.

As it happens, a murder case Jeff and Parker take involves the head of that very tai chi school, Charles Cooper. Cooper is a suspect in the murder of a financial corporation official. He appears to have motive. Jeff and Parker’s investigation arouses the real killer’s interest, and if they don’t uncover his identity soon, it may be too late for them.

Breeding Stations

“…I found this one a nice, easy read with some interesting world building and nice suspense elements.”

—Joyfully Jay

“This was a very interesting and entertaining read. I found myself dragged into the story and unable to stop reading.”

—MM Good Book Reviews

“This was one exciting, high-octane action packed and damn sexy story.”

—

Battle Stations

“…this is very probably a crowd pleaser if read as a romance by fans of the spunky type of hero…”

—Sinfully

“An excellent installation of this series. I loved the first book and this one doesn’t disappoint either.”

—Inked Rainbow Reviews

Against All Odds

“…trying to find their way to being happy not only with each other (easy) but with themselves (much harder) made for a thought provoking story.”

—Hearts on Fire

CHRIS T. KAT
lives in the middle of Europe, where she shares a house with her husband of many years and their two children. She stumbled upon the M/M genre by luck and was swiftly drawn into it. She divides her time between her work as a special education teacher, her family—which includes chasing after escaping horses and lugging around huge instruments such as a harp—and writing. She enjoys a variety of genres, such as mystery/suspense, paranormal, and romance. If there’s any spare time, she happily reads for hours, listens to audiobooks, or does cross-stitch.