Chapter 57

Luke caught up to Sally and Allison behind Brent’s house, and the three of them stopped, crouching, behind a pile of rust that was once a tractor. The backyard was a breathtaking field of chaos, full of cars, boats, bicycles, and parts for every mechanical thing ever made, all thrown haphazardly into the brush. Blackberry brambles crawled out from beneath a trio of old Triumph motorcycles, briars curtained off a stripped-down Volkswagen, and a holly bush was caught in a permanent act of exploding from within a propane gas grill, its red berries like bright embers. It looked like a mechanic’s shop long after an apocalypse. For Luke, who was as delighted with machines as a child in a Toys“R”Us, it was a macabre scene.

“This,” Luke said, “this yard—it’s an atrocity. A mechanical holocaust.”

“Focus, old man,” Allison said. “Crimes against living things first.”

“Oh God, is that a Mustang over there?”

Sally dragged Luke down behind an old Ford truck tilted onto its side. “Luke,” she said, “look me in the eye, baby. There you go. Is Brent dangerous with access to all this?”

Luke thought about what he’d seen Brent do, magically speaking, over the years. Very little, really; the tinker fae had always kept to himself. “Well, most of his magic takes a lot of prep work.”

“That’s good.”

“But for all I know, he’s done the prep work and just had to come out here to get to it.”

“That’s bad,” Allison said with a huff. She checked her phone. “Can you keep him here, keep him talking, for another ten minutes?”

“Maybe,” Luke said. “What happens in ten minutes?”

Allison grinned. “I called for reinforcements.”

“I fucking love reinforcements,” Luke said. He stood most of the way up. “Brent! Hey man, it’s Luke. What the hell’s going on, man?”

“You tell me,” Brent said. “You’re the one who’s come to take me in, apparently.”

“Well, kinda, yeah. See, I took this pipe from Alan, and hell if it didn’t look like your handiwork. Now, you know me well enough to know I’ll hear your side of it. You want to tell me what happened?”

“You’re politely ignoring Charlie getting shot in the chest,” Sally snarled softly.

“Yes I am,” he hissed back. “I’m stalling for time, remember?”

“I wish I had a good story for you,” Brent called back. “I wish they’d tortured me, or misled me. But this time, it was all about the money, man. They offered me fifteen grand. Fifteen. Thousand. Dollars! For one job. I had to take it. Luke, you know what we make in construction. I was never going to make a good life for myself on that. Anyone in my position would have done the same thing.”

Luke’s blood boiled. “You knew what they were going to do with it? Call something up to go after me?”

“I didn’t think they were going to try to kill you, or so many other folk. I thought they just wanted you preoccupied so you couldn’t interfere.”

Luke took several deep, steadying breaths. Time, he remembered. He was just stalling for time. “And here I thought we were friends,” he said.

“You sure are naïve for being two thousand years old. We all got to do the best we can with what we got. It’s not like you’ve always been Mr. Honorable, doing the right thing, looking out for everyone around him.”

“Nobody’s perfect. But I do my best.”

“Oh, sure. Like with Sally, huh?”

Luke cast a look down at Sally. “What about Sally?” he called to Brent.

“You knew I liked her, and you boned her anyway!”

Allison rolled her eyes dramatically, and Sally signed, unmistakably, that she wanted to decapitate Brent. Luke drew in a deep breath and wincingly kept the conversation going.

“I’d really like to keep Sally out of it,” he said. “What we got right now is kind of a standoff between you and me. You want to come talk to me face-to-face, or are we going to keep yelling across your backyard?”

Brent laughed. “You can come over here any time you like. But besides me to worry about, there are cottonmouths all through here.”

“Shit!” Sally hissed, jumping away from the base of the truck, brushing at her pants and boots as if batting away invisible snakes. Allison was a little more controlled, but not by much.

“Who all you got over there with you, Luke?” Brent called. “Some friends? You got Sally with you now? You’re a dumbass if you brought her with you.”

“How’s that?”

“Who’s gonna protect her if you die? Not complaining, mind you. I’d love to get a good look at her titties.”

Now all three of them wore matching homicidal expressions. Luke took a moment before answering, looking at Sally while he did so. “Brent, you are officially on my list. I’m gonna do whatever I can to bring you in. It would be nice if you were alive, but not necessary. And if it’s not me taking you down, I assure you, the others will.”

“Tell you what, man. You come blazing over here like the big billy goat gruff those trolls made you out to be, and you and me can rumble.” Brent’s voice turned to a snarl, and an ugliness came into it that Luke had never heard before. “And after I’ve put you down, I’m gonna have a good time with your girl. She might be a frigid bitch, but she’ll learn how good it can be, how much she really wants it. I’m gonna rub my dick between her tits until I jizz on her face. I’m gonna turn her over a dirty workshop table and tie her to the vices, and I’m gonna fuck her till I come in her, then I’ll fuck her with a vibrator till I’m ready to fuck her again. Maybe up her ass, too. I’m gonna make her like it, Luke. I’m gonna make you look like a bad prom lay.”

As Brent spoke, the three myth-folk crouched behind the Ford reached a decision without exchanging a word. Anger drained away; such emotions were too reckless, too chaotic, for what they had to do. They turned cold, deliberate, as careful and deadly as spiders. This was not about vengeance, or betrayal, or outrage. This was putting down a threat, the pesky stray who’d taken a snap at a child, the garden snake who rose and struck with a spread hood, the beehive with an African queen. This was no longer an attack. This was extermination.

Allison checked her gun, made sure her spare clip was ready at hand, and looked up and down the yard for paths of cover. Luke took Sally’s hand and squeezed it.

“Brent,” Luke said, “I hope you have a better life next time around, because this one’s over.”

Capricious is published weekly on Circlet.com. Want more? Proceed to the next post! Or, revisit earlier installments.

Julie Cox lives in Texas with her husband, children, and ever-expanding menagerie of animals on their farm. She runs a small online yarn business and teaches yarn spinning. She has numerous stories published with Circlet Press and elsewhere. For her full list of published works, see her website at www.lazypifarm.com.

Circlet Press digital titles are also available at the Amazon Kindle Store, B&N.com, Smashwords, Kobo, Apple’s iBookstore, Scribd, and many independent booksellers via Google ebooks, as well as specialty ebookstores like All Romance eBooks and Rainbow eBooks, to name just a few! (Please let us know if your favorite source for digital books does not carry this title and you want them to.)

Why “feline fetishes?” A number of reasons. First, by challenging authors to write something that “connected the feline universe to the erotic one” we were assured that we wouldn’t be seeing anything typical or run-of-the-mill. Secondly, both the publisher and editor have a “thing” for cats. And third, there was something about the thought of feline erotica that just sounded right.

But of course there was. Our cultural references all connect the cat to the sexual, viz: common slang for the female genitalia, a sexuallv aggressive female is a “tigress,” but if she’s real cute she’s a “sex kitten,” a house of prostitution is a “cat house,” and so on. In pop culture the feline has always carried with it a certain air of eroticism. Think of Catwoman, the only woman Batman ever loved in the old comic book and TV show. (And now Tim Burton’s gone one more step to make her an SM/fetish goddess, up there with Emma Peel and Bettie Page). Or in the Billy Crystal film When Harry Met Sally, when the line “You made a woman meow!?” was delivered. Or the ultimate cat-lover’s film, Cat People. The 1980s remake of the classic film was billed as “an erotic thriller about the animal in us all.”

With stories of cat aliens, cat gods, cats who turn into humans, and more, these authors have made the connection between the feline universe and the erotic one explicit, exploring that juncture through fantasy and science fiction in a way it cannot be examined in the so-called real world.

Contains stories by Lauren P. Burka, K. A. Kristiansen, Mary Malmros, and Reina Delacroix.

Look under the cut for a hot excerpt…

from “Courtship Rites” by Reina Delacroix

“Duke Varek, sir?”

I acknowledged Kattor’s presence with a slight nod, but did not
rise. Depression, bred of frustration,lay heavily upon me.
“You should not sit here in the dark, my lord. Shall I set the globes aflame?” I nodded again. The warm humidity of late spring in equatorial Mirvun weighed my limbs down as if invisible chains clung to each extremity. Like most Kalis, I prefer the cold crisp weather of our homelands in the mountains; if I were in Kalissanne now–
But there was no use in thinking of Kalissanne; Kalissanne was no longer mine. My younger brother Darez, now king, had seen to that when he accused me of treason. No Kalith land could harbor me after that, and my servant Kattor and I had been lucky to reach the border ahead of the three days’ outlawry. Even the Mrumman provinces closest to Kalissanne were uneasy with my presence, and so I had made my outcast way to Mirvun, where Lord Jatur welcomed me for my late father’s sake, if not my own. Now I was truly in alien lands, in alien hands, and if my situation wasn’t precarious enough, I could easily make it more so.

“What is the time, Kattor?”

“Ten at night, my lord.”

“No, tell me in Mrumman terms. If I am to remain here, I must learn to live as my hosts do.”

“They say ‘two-night,’ sir, as their hour of arising is eight at night.”

I grumbled as I too arose. “How appropriate for a race which legend has descending from cats. It saves them from working under the hellish noonday sun they have here, though, so I suppose it’s sensible.”

“Do not laugh at legend, Duke,” came a low, purring voice from the doorway.”If you are to stay with us, you will come to know the truth of our legend.”

I looked up, startled by the sound of a Mrumman voice speaking my own language, its husky contralto vibrating even the harshest of consonants. Suddenly I knew how the prey of a cat must feel: trapped, helpless, and fascinated. The eyes–almond-shaped, jewel green around the slit iris–would have caught me alone, but the voice held me as secure as any cage. It held such promise it made my chest squeeze tightly around my heart.

I wasn’t sure if the speaker was a man or a woman, but it didn’t matter to me. With all the calculated sexuality of my brother’s court, Kalis had become masters of perversion; gender would be no barrier to me, though what it might be to Mrumma I had as yet no idea.

I recognized the speaker; in the confusion of my unheralded arrival the previous evening, Jatur had introduced him/her as Ruzhe, youngest of his siblings. Youngest what? I could not remember him saying. Ruzhe, standing in the shadows, had not spoken, merely nodded; if I had heard that husky voice then, I would have remembered it and pursued it as I intended to now.

I switched to the Mrumman language, Dumnan, to acknowledge the honor of a greeting in my native Kaita. “I did not mean to make light of your beliefs. Please forgive my ignorance. Perhaps you would teach me Mrumman ways–” I stopped, not wanting to offend by giving this Mrumma the wrong title. Already I knew that Mrumma were prickly about protocol.

“Perhaps…” began the slow, pensive answer. “It must be difficult for you, leaving your family and friends, making a new home in a land you don’t understand.” Ruzhe looked carefully at my baggage, at Kattor who was making my bed with a great show of pretended disinterest in our presence, and finally-it seemed unwillingly–at my pajamas of silver satin, but never directly at my face. There were many elaborate rituals of eye contact, or lack of contact, in Mrumma society; this looked to be a gesture of tentative, but non-invasive, interest.

The simple gentleness of his/her comment would have been an object of derision in my old life, but here the unexpected sympathy touched me. “I have not had much time to consider it,” I lied blithely. “Running for one’s life doesn’t leave much time for contemplation.”

“But now you have come to rest here,” Ruzhe replied, the soft voice a deep throb, almost a growl. Still this one would not look directly at me, so why did that very indirectness strike me as a welcome, almost an invitation? “Maybe in time you will come to love us for our own sake.”

Was this was Mrumman flirting? If so, I had to respond in kind.

“Maybe you will help me with that.”

I saw Ruzhe flush, even through the fawn-brown skin, and I worried I had gone too far. But the response came in an even tone, “There’s no time for us to talk now, Duke Varek. Jatur sent me to ask you to see him in his chambers by three-night. But I’ll be in the gardens until four-night, and then once I groom myself I usually go to the palace library until midmeal.”

I kept my gaze firmly on the table. Two could play whatever this game was. “I’ll seek you out there, then.” As my visitor turned to go, I glanced up and saw, very distinctly, that each finger ended in an inset claw. And that a fine line of chestnut fur ran down the nape of the neck into the back of the red and gold tunic.

I shivered.

I had thought I was cynical, and immune to love.

There were more surprises in store.

To read the rest, download the ebook today!

Feline Fetishes: Erotic Tales of Science Fiction

Feline Fetishes takes the link between the feline and the erotic to its logical conclusion. With stories of cat aliens, cat gods, cats who turn into humans, and more, these authors have made the connection between the feline universe and the erotic one explicit, exploring that juncture through fantasy and science fiction in a way it cannot be examined in the so-called real world.

Price: $5.99

Chapter 56

To Luke’s surprise, Sally put a hand on his arm as he went to get out of the car, stilling him. Her hand was warm, and there was a not entirely friendly electricity to her touch that unnerved him. She was revved up and ready to rock and roll.

“Luke,” she said, “I think you’d better stay in the car.”

His brow furrowed, and his own stubbornness stirred to match hers. “I’m sorry, what? Maybe you had better stay in the car. You’re here to accuse him, I’m here to hear his side of it.”

“That’s exactly why you should both stay here,” Charlie said. “Luke’s ready to defend this guy, Sally’s ready to condemn him. Which speaks pretty fully of both your personalities.”

“Hey,” Sally said, a warning sharpness like a switchblade coming into her voice.

Charlie tipped his head toward her in deference. “I once promised you I would always tell you the truth, even when it was not what you wanted to hear.”

Sally slumped in her seat and crossed her arms, glaring out the windshield. “You have a plan?”

Charlie nodded. “You guys and Allison stay in the car. I’ll go talk to him first. Allison, if you see trouble coming on, you’re the next one on the front line. Now, if he attacks me, I expect you all to come out with guns blazing. My devil form may be scary, but let’s face it: I’m a computer tech from Austin, and this is my first rodeo.”

“Sounds good to me,” Luke said.

“Call me real quick, mute it, and keep your cell phone on,” Sally said, “so we can hear Brent’s side of it. I’ll put it on speaker so we can hear.”

Charlie did as she instructed, clipped his cell-serving-as-microphone to his belt, and approached the house.

It was eerie, watching the conversation on Brent’s front steps and listening to it from Sally’s phone. Brent crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame, casual but cross. The magical power difference between the two throbbed in the air, Brent bristling and intimidating, Charlie holding his ground impassively. They were parked far enough away, in a neighbor’s driveway, that Brent had not glanced in their direction. It felt intrusive to Luke, dishonest, to listen in.

“Can I help you? I’m real busy,” he drawled. “And I’d thank you to take a few steps back from my threshold.” His accent was deeper South than Texas—Louisiana, or maybe Georgia. Luke only noticed it now that he was paying rapt attention to Brent’s voice.

Charlie politely backed a few feet away from the bottom of the stairs. “I’m one of the myth-folk from Austin called in to help with the situation with the chupacabras and trolls,” he said. Technically not a lie. “I wanted to offer you our support in pursuing justice against those who imprisoned you, and make you aware of the resources available for your recovery.” Charlie’s voice had hardly any accent at all, just a soft touch of roundness to his vowels that betrayed his Texan roots. Luke liked listening to him talk. He wondered briefly how much of his growing warmth toward Charlie was empathy and how much originated in his own heart.

“I’m fine,” Brent said. “Most of the trolls involved are dead now anyway, right? Orson destroyed Alan’s troll-self, Allison shot another—that just leaves the one Jeff took into custody, right? The senior, the one that tried to kill Luke.”

Charlie shook his head. “It’s more widespread than that, and moreover, the magic that the satyr unleashed is going to target a lot of people who were only peripherally involved. Whether or not he knew that is still under investigation. So we want to take everyone involved into custody, not only to uncover the truth—which tends to out one way or another—but for their own protection.” Something about Charlie’s stance changed, and the slight young man looked suddenly predatory. “I, for one, wouldn’t want to wake up with a chupacabra at the end of my bed.”

Brent shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know anything.”

“Then why did the trolls kidnap you?”

“Hell if I know!”

“I think you do know, Mr. Parrings. And if you don’t come willingly now, there will be little I can do for you later. You don’t have to tell me anything. But do let us try to protect you until this blows over. Enough myth-folk have already died.”

“Only three, Glenn and the trolls!”

“I think that’s quite enough to warrant caution for the rest of us. With the unpredictable magic being thrown around, who knows who else might be targeted, or even possessed?”

Brent’s pale, freckled face turned splotchy and ugly; he shifted from one foot to the other. Behind him, Luke heard Allison unbuckle her seatbelt. “That’s just stupid, the trolls can’t possess anyone else anymore, can they?”

Charlie took a half step forward, ducking his head sharply in an ‘aha.’ “Now Brent, just how did you know that?”

A frozen moment passed between them, in which Brent seemed to realize he’d been caught. Luke saw the realization written all over his face, even from that distance. A beat later, Brent whipped a gun out from the small of his back and fired. Charlie had only a few seconds to backpedal, and fell backward onto the dirt path, the force of the shot lifting him off his feet before dropping him. Sally leaped out of the car, with Luke and Allison on her heels. Brent slammed the door.

Sally ran to where Charlie lay sprawled on the ground. Allison drew a gun from the shoulder rig she wore and watched the windows, covering them. Luke hovered over Sally, wanting to haul her up off the ground and drag her back to the car, wanting to fall to his knees alongside her, wanting to charge in and throttle Brent with both hands—

Then Charlie sat up. He moaned piteously and pulled his T-shirt down to look at his chest. There was a light bulletproof vest beneath it. “Oh my God,” he said, “I did not know how much that would hurt.”

Luke huffed out a heavy breath, relief battling the adrenaline in his blood. “Shit,” he said, “where did that come from?”

“Sally’s father’s closet.”

“Daddy’s been holding out on me,” Sally said.

“Pity it wouldn’t have fit you,” Charlie said, “what with the boobs and all.”

“Personally, I’m glad it was on you,” Sally said. “Stand up, kid, back to the car and its illusion of cover.”

They got Charlie into the backseat of the car, and Luke pulled the vest off of him. His heart ached as he saw the bruises already blossoming across Charlie’s chest. The vest had stopped the bullet, but it could do nothing about the sheer amount of force a nearly point-blank shot delivered. Charlie would be lucky if his ribs weren’t broken. If Brent had been using anything other than a dinky little pistol, he might have died anyway, just from internal damage. Luke cupped Charlie’s cheek.

“Are you going to be all right?”

Charlie winced. “I think I’m done for the day,” he said. He managed a small, reassuring smile through the pain. “But I strongly suspect I will be breathing when you come back.”

Luke kissed him on the forehead. “Stay low, stay safe.”

Charlie gave him an impertinent smirk. “I take a bullet, and I get a kiss on the forehead?”

If he could joke, he was going to be all right. Luke smiled down at him, and kissed his mouth. He felt so different from Sally, stronger and more needful. Charlie opened his mouth, a small sound shaking in his throat, and Luke pressed into him, touching lips and teeth and tongue. Charlie still tasted just a little like the blackberry jam they’d had on their biscuits at breakfast. And bacon. The satyr in Luke wanted to ignore the incredible danger of the situation, straddle the injured young man and… experience him. Behind him, he heard Sally take a deep breath and felt the mirrored stir in her. They needed a room.

It was Allison who jabbed Luke in the side with her shoe. “Hello, not the time, stop being a goddamn satyr, we have a bad guy! You are convinced he’s a bad guy now?”

Luke felt a deep pang of regret. His eagerness to defend Brent might have easily killed Charlie. “Yes. Charlie, I’m so sor—”

“No, never mind, no apologies in war. Go kick his ass.”

Luke stood up. “Now that, I can do.”

Allison was already moving around the mobile home. “Luke!” she called. “He’s gone out the back door.” Two gunshots. “Shit he’s fast!”

Sally took off to join her. Luke closed the car door with a pang of regret and ran after Sally and Allison. He reflected later that running toward gunshots was perhaps not the best move.

Capricious is published weekly on Circlet.com. Want more? Proceed to the next post! Or, revisit earlier installments.

Julie Cox lives in Texas with her husband, children, and ever-expanding menagerie of animals on their farm. She runs a small online yarn business and teaches yarn spinning. She has numerous stories published with Circlet Press and elsewhere. For her full list of published works, see her website at www.lazypifarm.com.

Circlet Press digital titles are also available at the Amazon Kindle Store, B&N.com, Smashwords, Kobo, Apple’s iBookstore, Scribd, and many independent booksellers via Google ebooks, as well as specialty ebookstores like All Romance eBooks and Rainbow eBooks, to name just a few! (Please let us know if your favorite source for digital books does not carry this title and you want them to.)

This volume collects ten tales of vampires whose hungers go beyond the need for a nightly drink. These vampires–gay, lesbian, bisexual, kinky, gender-bending, and otherwise–seek out humans for erotic fulfillment and even for love and companionship… but they remain dangerous creatures.

Includes stories by A.R. Morlan, Susan Elizabeth Gray, Rhomylly B. Forbes, Catherine Lundoff, Deb Atwood, Gary Bowen, David May, Thomas S. Roche, Raven Kaldera, and Robert Knippenberg.

Look under the cut for a hot excerpt…

from “El Tigre” by Catherine Lundoff

I have but recently arrived in this new land, sent from my home in disgrace for believing the seductive words of a young noble from the court. He took advantage of my naivete, and now both my child and I will pay the price: she raised as a bastard in convent in , and I sent to this cursed land conquered by barbarians who call themselves my countrymen. I was told that I am to be the new “companion” (a term that I believe to be synonymous with “maid”) to a Doña Fernanda, a widow related somehow to the Viceroy, as well as distantly related to my cousins and myself. It hoped by my cousins, the only family that I possess, that here in Mexico, far from my disgrace, I will find a suitable marriage. I hate them all.

Closing my diary, I find my gaze drawn out out the window to the courtyard below. Dimly lit archways open onto a dusty open patio, circled by some small orange trees, with an even smaller central fountain, a sad replica of the great palaces of the Moors in my beloved Spain. I lean on the edge of the window, inhaling the warm evening air in great breaths as I not to weep. A noise below causes me to pull back into the shadows. In the dusk, I see a cloaked figure emerge from one of the archways on the floor below and walk swiftly toward the stables. Surely it is some other servant of the elusive Doña Fernanda, whom I yet to meet in my two days here. A servant on an errand, yes, that’s it; thus, I try to dismiss my curiosity. But my gaze follows the figure as he emerges, leading a black horse, mounts, and rides rapidly from the courtyard. What errand could call for sending a man out onto the dirt roads outside of Veracruz, just as night falls?

I ponder this question as I draw the shutters closed. There are many such thoughts for me to mull over, first and foremost concerning the purpose of serving as a “companion” to a woman I have not seen. At least my room is plain and comfortable-far from luxurious, but better than the convent. The bed, with its carved wooden posts, seems large enough for two, and there is a strange and beautiful woven cloth draped over the wardrobe which holds my attention each time I it.

I my head for the prayers that do not come before the image of the Santa Maria which rests on the carved wooden shelf on the wall opposite from my bed. Then, placing my rosary on the shelf before her statue, I read the Bible in the wide bed with its woven coverlet until I fall asleep, one of the few things that I thank the nuns for teaching me. I with a gasp many hours later, my nightdress open at the throat, shivering in the night breezes from the open window. But surely I closed that, think to myself as I dash across the room to shut it again.

It only when I return to the large soft bed that I remember my dream. A dream about a woman, wearing the clothing of a man(!), standing over my bed, and gazing down at me. She is tall and lean, wearing a long black cloak and carrying a sword. Her high cheekbones and long black hair mark her as mestiza, whom my countrymen see as “tainted” with the blood of the unfortunate indios of this land. She is beautiful and even in my memory, I am drawn to her. Drawn to her, perhaps, more strongly than to the young lord whose words brought me here. I find that I want to taste her lips, as thoughts that had been carefully forced down in the convent return once more. I remember lusting after Sister Teresa, the strongest and most comely of the nuns, remember desiring her attention, even her punishments. Here is another such a one to awaken that desire I thought long dead within me.

My awareness shifts as her hand brushes my hair away from my face in this dream of mine, the most vivid I have had in some time. As her hands brush my face and neck, I find my lips caressing them. I blush somewhat to think of it, but only a little, for I am a fallen woman, even at only eighteen summers, not some convent innocent who has never known carnal desires.

I draw her onto the bed in this vision of mine, reaching out to pull her lips to mine for a kiss. Even though it is just a dream, I feel the heat rush through me as I remember the imagined touch of her lips. Her lips part and she showers my neck with kisses, as she unfastens the top of my nightdress to expose more of my shoulders and neck. In this dream, I know that I will give her anything she wants, though I should burn in Hell for eternity as the priests told me. I feel her bite my shoulder, then a dreamy lassitude overtakes me and I fall into a deeper sleep.

To read the rest, download the ebook today!

Cherished Blood: Vampire Erotica

This volume collects ten tales of vampires whose hungers go beyond the need for a nightly drink. These vampires--gay, lesbian, bisexual, kinky, gender-bending, and otherwise--seek out humans for erotic fulfillment and even for love and companionship... but they remain dangerous creatures.

Price: $5.99

Chapter 55

The phone at Sundance Hospital rang twice, and the receptionist picked up. Luke asked if Kristin and the others had arrived the night before; they had. He asked if Kristin was still there, and he was on hold for a long time, listening to a static-ridden synthesizer version of “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” before Kristin’s gruff voice answered. She sounded like she was smoking, and Luke longed for a cigarette.

“Hey, Luke. I was going to give you guys a buzz before I headed back. I think everyone is settled here, finally.”

“Cool,” Luke said. “Listen, how is Brent? Is he—”

“Funny you should ask. He told me to drop him off at his house. Wouldn’t come with us. I thought that odd, but he insisted. As far as I know he’s there still.”

Luke let out a big sigh of relief. “OK, thanks.”

“Everything all right?”

“I’ll fill you in later. Have a safe trip home.” He hung up and handed the science fiction-age cell phone back to Charlie. “He’s at his house. Thank God. Let’s go ring his bell.” After a cigarette, he added to himself.

Nothing in Fox Pass was far from much else in Fox Pass, given that there was only one major road, so it took them about fifteen minutes to get from Sally’s house on the poor-but-comfy side of town to Brent’s mobile home on the poor-and-scary side. Luke drove Charlie’s Honda Accord, quietly marveling at the cleanliness of the car, and how everything worked on it. It was a shame, he thought, that such a comfortable vehicle would also be absolutely useless to his way of life. He resolved anew that once he had some money socked away, he was going to start saving for a really nice truck. An F-350 diesel, he thought, with a gooseneck hitch, crew cab, four-wheel drive, all power everything, truly massive tires, and a CD player. Multidisc CD player, he upgraded. Less than thirty thousand miles on her, bright blue with tan leather interior, he decided. He wouldn’t even let people smoke in her. He could almost hear the throaty hum of her engine, revving ferociously. The fantasy was a pleasant distraction from the task at hand and kept Luke from freaking out.

At least, until Charlie leaned over Sally’s shoulder from the back seat and asked, “So who is Brent again?”

“He’s a tinker fae,” Luke replied, reluctantly putting away the daydream of the truck, whom he had just named Artemis. “He builds stuff. He works for the same construction company I do. If he was responsible in the least he’d be in charge of his own team by now, but he’s not, so he’s lucky to have a job at all. We’re friends of a sort—not close, but he’s an OK guy.” He paused, before adding, “Unless he really is behind some of this, in which case he’s a son of a bitch who does a good impression of an OK guy.”

“Luke wants to see the good side of everyone,” Sally said, “so let me give you a different assessment of Brent. He’s a lazy, entitled, creepy, selfish, immature brat.”

“You’re just mad,” Luke said. They went over the railroad tracks, now officially on the wrong side.

“I have never liked that guy.”

“Abundantly clear.”

“With good reason!”

“I validate that.”

“Thank you,” Sally said, calming her hackles. “Here’s what’s up with me and Brent, Charlie. Some time ago he decided he liked me. So he started hanging out with me whenever he had the excuse, which was usually that there was a group gathering of myth-folk. A couple of times he volunteered to come help me out with something, since he had a truck and some DIY experience. I mean, I never asked, but he offered when I mentioned something that needed to get done around the farm. The last couple of times, when we were finished, he asked if I wanted to get dinner. I said no. I was polite and everything, but I didn’t owe him a date for manual labor.”

“So then Brent starts hanging out with me and Orson,” Luke said, picking up the thread of the story. “Which was fine, if a little sudden. But he was always asking if we wanted to include Sally in our plans. Which I didn’t, most of the time, because plans with Orson usually involved drinking beer and watching a football game, or hunting, which aren’t things she’s into, or doing some stupid guy thing.”

“Sometimes I like stupid guy things, you know,” Sally said, a sweet, affectionate tone in her voice that made Luke wonder if she was being serious or if he himself was the stupid guy thing she liked. He chose to take it the best way.

“Course you do. And I did call you when I thought you’d be interested. But would you have wanted to go turkey bowling at 1 a.m. at Walmart?”

Sally held up her hands. “Nope. I don’t even want to know what turkey bowling is.”

“It’s where you get a frozen turkey—”

“I said—”

“And a bunch of those big bottles of soda—”

“Fine, thank you for not including me in all your shenanigans. Anyway, I figured out pretty quick that Brent was using my friends to finagle hanging with me. Not cool. So I sat down with him and explained that while I liked him as a friend, I wasn’t interested in anything romantic with him. So he says that’s fine, then goes around to anyone who will listen telling them how he got ‘friend-zoned,’ how he spent all this time and energy on me and I just led him on, how I talked big about how I wanted a good man but then I was really—” She stopped.

“Really into the bad boys?” Charlie supplied. “You gotta admit, August at least looks the part of bad boy. Motorcycle and everything.”

“This was before August came into town. Actually, he said some unkind things about my virtue in regards to Luke. I’m sorry, honey, but he was rather unkind about your sexual habits.”

Luke scowled and glared at the road over the steering wheel. Few things irked him like talking about people behind their backs.

Charlie whistled. “What a charmer.”

“Yeah. Anyway, that’s why I don’t like Brent, and why I think his moral character is questionable enough to be a suspect, given all the other little bits of evidence.”

“I still hope it’s not him,” Luke said. “I hope there’s another explanation.”

Sally put a hand on his knee. “I hope so too, baby.”

Luke pulled over. They were across the street from Brent’s mobile home. The car was in the drive. The lights behind the curtains were on.

Luke unbuckled his seat belt. “Time waits for no immortal being. Let’s do this.”

Capricious is published weekly on Circlet.com. Want more? Proceed to the next post! Or, revisit earlier installments.

Julie Cox lives in Texas with her husband, children, and ever-expanding menagerie of animals on their farm. She runs a small online yarn business and teaches yarn spinning. She has numerous stories published with Circlet Press and elsewhere. For her full list of published works, see her website at www.lazypifarm.com.

Circlet Press digital titles are also available at the Amazon Kindle Store, B&N.com, Smashwords, Kobo, Apple’s iBookstore, Scribd, and many independent booksellers via Google ebooks, as well as specialty ebookstores like All Romance eBooks and Rainbow eBooks, to name just a few! (Please let us know if your favorite source for digital books does not carry this title and you want them to.)

The vampire has always been viewed as a sensual creature. They are hunters and seducers of their prey, the hunt as primal and animal as sex itself. They are outside of the strictures of “common” propriety, the chastity of marriage broken, the purity of the virgin defiled.

In these seven seductive tales, sex and death and eternal life are intertwined as vampires of all descriptions–men and women and otherwise, gay and straight and bisexual–come together for danger-laced erotic encounters with humans and with each other.

Contains stories by Pat Salah, Renee M. Charles, Warren Lapine, Amelia G, Raven Kaldera, Gary Bowen, and Dave Smeds.

Look under the cut for a hot excerpt…

from “The Perfect Form” by Pat Salah

10:15 on a Saturday night. Pandemonium is already packed. Arriving ten minutes from now and I’d be queueing in the rain for half the night. I pay my cover and spot Reg and Suzy shooting some stick. Kiss. Kiss. Hi. Hi. Throw my leather down and cruise up to the bar, scoping the action. Used to be the Olympia Theatre before Eckhart bought it up. Mighty pretty place: Victorian parlor decor all in red and black and gold; rococo frescoes on the walls and huge fuck’n stained glass skylights, and girls dancing in the opera boxes, except the top two where Eckhart holds court and toasts his most honored guests. I love it. Too bad Eckhart owns it. Guy’s a pig. Notice Dre working the floor, looking sweet as usual in green velvet and fuck’n thigh-high docs, black braids slap’n against her tits. Don’t know how the prick does it but he’s got the rockingest chicks in the city working for him: all his barmaids take a turn in the boxes, and, when they’re on the floor, it shows. Like when I spot Colette my eyes are nailed to the place where the back of her shift daround the curve of her ass. So nearly knock some pubescent punker chick over. Don’t see many of those around here these days. Essen pours me a Kier, eyebrows arched, painted mouth making a moue that’s supposed to be questioning, provocative. Guy’s such a poseur. Used to think he was so styl’n, when he played with Universal Rejection. His punk days. My punk days. Now the Elders of the Kin–goddamned Vampires is what they are–openly walk the earth and anybody who knows shit hangs at Pandemonium and embraces the Gothik lifestyle. I read it in Interview: Montreal, the Canadian New Orleans. But fuck, Propaganda the exact same thing. I swear. Life has gotten weirder, it’s not just me. Trade-offs. Like when I was a punk I hung with a regular crew of pretty cool guys. When the Vampires came out of hiding I turned Goth.

Most of those guys became warm fascists–shaved their heads and started off to the idea of staking members of the Kin. fucking chance. Nothing can kill the already Dead. I moved into a cooler crowd. Cooler, as in, Dead-loving, and also, as in chillier. Lars didn’t need to pull attitude to be cool though. A good guy. When the Vampires came to town we both knew what we wanted. He got it, sort of. They moved on to some new scene, taking him with them. But they’ll be back–Lucrezia, Lars’ maker, said so in the last Engarde Quarterly. days I’m casual with lotsa folks. Keep to myself. Which suits. It’s how Lars got taken.

Man! Didn’t even recognize him the only time I saw him after the Kin Elder sunk her teeth into his neck. At least that’s the rumor, that she’s an Elder, which makes sense, she is their spokesperson. Besides the young ones aren’t supposed to be able to make new ones: otherwise he would have taken me, I’m sure of it. We both swore we would. The other thing they say is that the young ones are slaves of the Elders that make them. But that’s gotta be bullshit, a system like that would never work, because they’re all immortal: that would mean they’re all slaves of one or two really ancient Kin which is obviously ridiculous. Of course with immortals, you’ve got to wonder what would count as elder anyway. Over one hundred years, for sure. One thousand? And how could you tell? Thom says they’re shapeshifters besides. Lars Changed. Fuck, he was beautiful…

* * * *

Remember how he appeared before you out of the darkness of the club, his black hair in curls, with waif eyes and rose petal lips, an ingenue, and yet so pale and tawdry in a red satin dress and too much blush–like a prostitute dead and risen under a lurid sun. Or, as the Vampire thought, like a boy too pretty to be left alone with his sex, too in love with his cock to be made a girl: only after the Change was worked upon him, to become as pale as the bones of the moon. The Vampire left him neither living nor dead no longer wholly male nor quite female. That one shaped his body to suit his deepest desires, during the bloodletting when will was strongest. It walked his dreams and saw his wishes and answered them. It imagined Lars as voluptuous as any Vargas girl, a body fitted to his gutter angel face and his slut’s soul. The dreams of the Vampire possess such force. What a shock for dear Lars when he woke. His is the perfect form aspired to by those tormented men who hound surgeons and psychiatrists, pointing to their men’s magazines, begging: “Make me like her. Make me Marilyn, Bardot, Madonna. Inside I’m more woman than any woman.” Though Lars is not complete in that respect. He still has his beloved cock, and of course, he is Dead. All this, and more, you knew in that first moment of matched gaze. You knew the stories of the Vampire’s preternatural strength, both of will and of form, to be true. You knew could have you as it pleased–you would give your blood or flesh up willingly. Lars would not have to take you forcibly, though it thrilled you to think the thing he had become could. That was, after all, your pact.

And moments after Lars left, you were drowning in the absence of its perfume, drowning in your memory of its beauty. Until then you had caught mere glimpses of the Kin, in the dark, in your dreams: you had never seen one revealed. Now you know. The supple white length of neck, delicate curve of ankle beneath silk, arch of red rhinestone stiletto… Then you noticed you had come, your legs were weak, and you mouthed: “Come back to me,” pleading.

To read the rest, download the ebook today!

Blood Kiss: Vampire Erotica

The vampire has always been viewed as a sensual creature. They are hunters and seducers of their prey, the hunt as primal and animal as sex itself. They are outside of the strictures of "common" propriety, the chastity of marriage broken, the purity of the virgin defiled. In these seven seductive tales, sex and death and eternal life are intertwined as vampires of all descriptions--men and women and otherwise, gay and straight and bisexual--come together for danger-laced erotic encounters with humans and with each other. Contains stories by Pat Salah, Renee M. Charles, Warren Lapine, Amelia G, Raven Kaldera, Gary Bowen, and Dave Smeds.

Price: $5.99

Chapter 54

The next morning, Luke was up with the dawn, and the rest of his entourage followed suit not too long after. He handed them each a cup of coffee as they staggered from the bedroom, each declaring him far too cheerful and energetic.

They took turns in the shower. It crossed Luke’s mind to suggest to Sally that they shower together, but a look at the incredibly tiny bathroom dashed that idea. He wistfully stowed the thought away for another time, perhaps at a nice hotel on their honeymoon, and contented himself with quietly being aware that she was naked a few rooms away. And then with the idea that Charlie was naked. Luke’s own shower might have been more exciting, given how stirred up he was by then, but the hot water ran out early, and he rushed through rinsing the shampoo out of his hair. He used a pink plastic disposable razor with daisies on it to shave, leaving a neat goatee, sharp sideburns, and just a couple of nicks. His hair disobeyed his instructions to comb out, preferring instead to follow the whims of his cowlicks. Finally he just got the tangles out and let it go, hoping for artfully messy. He borrowed a set of clothes from Charlie, who had packed more than enough: a pair of jeans with intact knees and hems and a T-shirt proclaiming support for a band Luke had never heard of. He didn’t feel like himself until he put on his boots.

Sally took Charlie with her to collect eggs from the hens’ nest boxes, a process he found absolutely thrilling. He was disappointed there was nothing to milk.

“The Saanens are milk goats,” Sally explained, “but the does are all pregnant, so we’ve dried them off.”

“What does the goat being wet have to do with milking?”

Sally shook her head. “It means we got them to stop making milk.”

Charlie looked taken aback. “You can do that? Is it special food? Something in the water?”

Sally held up her hands. “Dear heart, your urbanism is showing.”

Luke cooked the eggs, along with a hearty portion of bacon, and presented it to the others with a flourish. “Ta-da! Fresh from the chicken’s butt!”

The girls rolled their eyes and tucked in, but Charlie looked a little pale. “The eggs come out of their butts?”

“They only have one rear orifice,” Luke said. “Eat up!”

“C’mon, Jersey Devil,” Sally kidded him, “join us in consuming the mangled unborn!”

It clearly took Charlie a minute to regain his sense of isolation from the reality of eating bird embryos, but the aroma of fresh-scrambled eggs with sharp cheddar cheese, freshly ground pepper, and bacon soon convinced him not to care.

Clean bodies, fresh clothes, and warm food soon had all four myth-folk feeling more human. While they were finishing the remains of breakfast, Charlie reached behind him and picked up the panpipes from the kitchen bar. “So this is what the trolls were using to call and command the chupacabras?”

Luke nodded. “That’s the one bit that doesn’t fit. Sure, they could make a pipe like that. You could get all the parts for it at Walmart. But how did they imbue it with magic? That’s not troll magic. It had to be someone else, someone who knew a lot about chupacabras.”

“Or someone who specialized in the creation of magical objects,” Charlie said. “It might not be just chupacabras it can command.”

The table grew silent, and Luke exchanged worried looks with the others as he thought of August and Mae.

“In that case,” Allison said, “why not use it on all of us?”

“Well, good tools don’t make the carpenter,” Luke said. “Maybe they tried. Maybe they tried it on a whole assload of people and only managed to snag August and Mae. And chupacabras. August because with him present, no one would call the council, and Mae to rob me of my greatest strength—you girls. If she disrupted my relationships, or drained my magic, I couldn’t possibly have stood up to them magically.” He took the pipe from Charlie and gazed into the pipes, turning it over, as if hoping it was signed somewhere.

Sally looked suddenly grave. “Can I see that?” Luke handed her the pipes, and her expression deepened. “This… looks like it was made out of popsicle sticks, acrylic yarn, and a wind chime.”

Allison guffawed. “Jeez, who would make a powerful magical object out of dollar store crap?”

“Brent,” Sally said definitively.

Luke and Allison stared at her, and Charlie piped up, “Who’s Brent?”

Luke shook his head. “Sally, I know you don’t like Brent and you think he’s a creep. But he’s worked with me for four years. We’re friends. And he was one of the ones kidnapped by the trolls, remem… ber….” He trailed off, trying to recall what Brent was blubbering about when they rescued him. Some kind of apology? He couldn’t summon it up through the tumultuous recollection of violence and fear that was yesterday.

Sally set the pipe on the table. “I saw him at Walmart. I hate that place, but it was two a.m. and I was buying Pepto Bismol for a sick goat.”

“Like ya do,” Charlie muttered.

“I turned a corner heading to the checkout and ran into Brent, almost literally. It was real awkward, you know, because he was such a twit toward me before. But he was carrying an armload of stuff, including a wind chime and red yarn. I smiled at him and said, ‘Craft night?’ ’Cause, you know, it’s two a.m. Of course you need to pick up that stuff right then. I only remember because it struck me as such a random bunch of stuff at a funny hour. In classic Brent style, he told me to fuck off. Such a classy dude. And he could definitely do this kind of magic.”

Luke dropped his face into his hands. “Oh wow. When was this?”

“Months ago. Well before the first attack.”

“Shit. Shit shit shit shit.”

“Where’s Brent now?” Allison asked.

“He went with the other damaged myth-folk to Austin. That’s five hours away…. Who took them?”

“Kristin,” Allison said. “She can handle herself. She’s one of mine, a sea serpent.”

“She can handle herself when she’s expecting an attack,” Luke said, pulling out his cell phone. “But any one of us is vulnerable to a gunshot to the back of the head when we’re not expecting it.” Luke looked around the table. “Did anyone account for all the guns yesterday?”

“Crap, no,” Allison said. “We were either fucked up or taking care of the fucked up.”

“I’m gonna call Kristin. You have her number, Allison?” Allison gave Luke the number, and he called. It went straight to voice mail. Luke stood up, the pine chair squeaking on the linoleum. “Sally, can I use your computer? I gotta look up the number for the center they were heading toward. We’ll see if they made it there last night.”

Charlie pulled out his phone and tapped the screen. “I’ve heard tales of you trying to use a computer. What’s the name of the center?”

“Sundance Hospital. Technically in Dripping Springs.”

Charlie tapped a couple more screens and then handed the phone to Luke. It was already ringing.

“What an amazing modern world we live in,” Luke said, admiring the sleek miniature computer that masqueraded as a phone. “Boy, I’m keeping you around.” He winked at Sally and turned to pace nervously around the room while the phone rang.

Capricious is published weekly on Circlet.com. Want more? Proceed to the next post! Or, revisit earlier installments.

Julie Cox lives in Texas with her husband, children, and ever-expanding menagerie of animals on their farm. She runs a small online yarn business and teaches yarn spinning. She has numerous stories published with Circlet Press and elsewhere. For her full list of published works, see her website at www.lazypifarm.com.

Chapter 53

Charlie was sitting up in Sally’s bed when they came in, a battered paperback copy of The Hobbit propped on his knees. He looked over the top of his glasses at them, a childlike librarian. “Am I getting kicked out?”

Sally smiled as she sat down on the bed next to him and laid her cheek against his shoulder. “No honey, of course not. Luke and I thought we might could help you. You know, get centered, get past the worst of the trauma. Satyrs work with earth magic, they’re good at that kind of thing.”

Charlie put the book on the bedside table. “I appreciate the gesture, but I’m actually doing fine.”

Sally brushed his hair off his forehead. It fell right back. “You don’t have to put on a brave face, love, we know how traumatic this has all been. It really does help. He did it for August, and Orson, and Mae.”

“The hell-bitch?”

Luke sat down on the other side of him. “Yes, her. It doesn’t have to be real sexual. Easier that way,” Luke said, then quickly added, “but it’s by no means a requirement.”

“I really do appreciate the offer,” Charlie said, pushing down the blankets and sitting up, “but I actually, truly am doing all right.” His blue eyes were bright, and Luke could see the thoughts bubbling up inside of him, wanting to burst out, like a shaken bottle of soda. “It’s like… I’ve been so passive for so long, staying out of the center of things, staying safe, so afraid the other myth-folk would turn against me if they really knew what I was, if they understood my magic. And they didn’t!”

“Course not,” Luke said. “All myth-folk can be dangerous, capable of evil and violence. Your myth ain’t any more terrible than anyone else’s, though I can see why you’d get some flak for it.”

“It’s not just that,” Charlie said. “It’s that the magic that allows me to pass for human isn’t mine. I forget if I told you already—or if Sally told you—”

“Tell me again,” Luke crooned. Sally curled up against Charlie’s other side.

“When I was little, my mother took me to see a human woman who could work magic. I guess you’d call her a witch, though she sure wasn’t any Wiccan. She wanted to change me into a human, or at least let me look human. The witch took another myth-folk’s magic and put it over mine, like a slipcover on an ugly sofa.” His brow furrowed. “Of course, I only figured out later that she would have had to kill the myth-folk to obtain that kind of magic. It’s kind of sick, you know, like wearing someone’s skin.”

Luke shook his head. “You were a child. You can’t hold yourself responsible for that.”

Charlie waved him off. “I’ve been through all that with Sally, she’s helped me come to grips with it. But other myth-folk frequently got creeped out by me. I come here, and yeah, it’s in the midst of a major crisis, but….” His eyes softened as he smiled. “And you guys trusted me. You let me help. You let me try. And you didn’t give me a bunch of shit.”

Sally threw her arms around Charlie’s neck. “Ohhh, didn’t I tell you so, sweetie? Those guys in Austin are jackasses. People out here are good people.”

“Yes, I can see that now.” Charlie smiled at Luke over Sally’s shoulder. “So thanks for the offer, but I’m more likely to be able to offer you warm fuzzies than vice versa.”

Sally pulled back suddenly. “Oh,” she said, “I wanted to talk to you about that.” She looked over at Luke and bit her lower lip. “Luke, you said something once about… maybe it would be OK for you to draw on other people sometimes. As long as I got to be there, I’d be totally cool with you and Charlie.”

Luke raised his eyebrows. “You sure about that?”

Charlie furrowed his brow. “What are we debating? Are we talking about sex?”

Sally started to answer, and Luke held up a hand. “Let me lead a minute,” Luke said. He trailed the backs of his fingernails up the young man’s arms, watching the goosebumps rise. “Part of being a satyr is that I can tell when someone’s attracted to me, unless they’re actively suppressing it, like Sally did for so long.” Sally stuck out her tongue at him. “And you, son….” He gave him a grin. “You think I’m purdy.”

Charlie rolled his eyes. “Great. Now I can’t even fantasize in peace.”

“Don’t have to be a fantasy,” Luke said. “I think you’re pretty spiffy too. You can do computers, which is badass, you’re smart, you’re willing to step up and help people even when you don’t know how they’ll take it. You just show up and work. That takes a big heart.” He leaned in a little closer, near Charlie’s ear. “And you suit my taste just fine.”

“What taste is that?” Charlie smirked. “Saucy, loyal, dry wit, and prone to fits of violence?”

Luke sighed. “Fine, you have me pegged.”

“Oh, I’d like to peg you in more ways than that,” Charlie said, showing a heretofore undemonstrated forwardness. “But I’d have to have Sally’s approval—no, her enthusiasm.”

“Gawd!” Sally said. “Will you please just kiss?”

Luke cupped Charlie’s cheek in one calloused hand and kissed him. It was so different from that first magic-drunk kiss. He felt the prickling, energetic thrust of Sally’s magic, seeping into him, saturating him, and Charlie’s magic, fluid and fresh. He smelled like the forest after a rain, and Luke breathed him in, making small sounds against his mouth. Charlie opened his mouth and gasped as Luke gave some of that magic back to him, right to the center of him. Luke’s hands strayed over the young man’s chest, pulled him close, enjoyed the warmth of his skin and the brush of his hair. He was so unlike Sally, with her soft curves; Charlie was angular and thin, with a faint peach-colored five o’clock shadow. His heart beat fast and fierce, and his kiss was needful, hungry.

“Son of a bitch,” Charlie hiccupped when Luke pulled back. “Ok, so there are benefits to many lifetimes worth of experience.”

“I’d love to demonstrate further,” Luke purred.

“You bastard. I haven’t gotten laid in like, two years.”

“Well,” Luke said, making himself a little more comfortable, “I’m not prepared to bed you right this moment, in the middle of Sally’s very girly bedroom. But perhaps we can work up to that.” He nodded to Sally. “With her alongside, of course. From that epic grin I’d say her enthusiasm is not lacking.”

Charlie nestled a little closer against Luke, almost as if he wanted to occupy the same space. “Given how often she’s described this particular fantasy, I can’t imagine it otherwise.”

Luke raised his eyebrows at Sally. “Seriously?”

She elbowed Charlie. “Dude, be cool.”

Luke ran his hand down Charlie’s side to his waist and found the edge of his shirt. He slid his hand under the soft cotton and felt up Charlie’s chest, letting the shirt ride up against his arm. Charlie shivered, wriggling with excitement that he had no idea how to express. Luke sat up and unceremoniously stripped off his own T-shirt. Nothing like bare skin, he thought, to up the ante. He lay down and guided Charlie to lie down next to him. The young man’s skin was hot against his, arousal evident in every aspect of his being.

“This is going to be a tight fit, with three of us on a twin bed,” Sally said.

“I’m staying here with the satyr,” Charlie purred.

“How about the floor?” Luke suggested. “It’s a thick carpet, Sally’s comforter is crazy bouncy, and I suspect after today we are all going to sleep like the dead.”

“Sounds good to me,” Sally said. With some doing and maneuvering, the three made themselves something of a nest, with Luke in the middle and all their boots kicked off by the door.

Their kisses were deep and searching, exploring each other with hands and mouths. Luke’s body throbbed with want, aching to hold down the handsome young man beside him and ride him, or to fuck the hell out of the girl on his other side. The satyr in him wanted penetration, possession, his cock deep inside another’s body, pleasure rocking them both senseless. He was quietly smug about his self-control, catering to the needs of his partners, letting them set the pace. Charlie had to be reassured several times that it was OK, that Luke didn’t care he hadn’t brushed his teeth or shaved, and that sex truly wasn’t necessary or even on the table at this early stage. At one point Sally sat up and reminded Charlie that “The Ex” was not in the room. After that he settled down and fretted no more.

At about ten o’clock, Luke heard his mother’s car start up on the front lawn. He’d forgotten she was in the kitchen, and felt a pang of embarrassment. It didn’t last long, as Allison rapped on the door once and opened it.

“Well you don’t you guys look snug,” she said, hands on her hips. Charlie was right, Luke realized; he did have a type.

Sally half sat up, sleepy and satisfied from a terrible, long day that culminated in sex and realized fantasies. “You can join us if you want,” she said.

“Really?” said all three others in the room.

“Sure,” Sally said. “Allison’s cool, as it turns out. I can see why you like her, Luke.” She lay back down and snuggled against Luke’s back—he had been deeply involved in leaving a mark on Charlie’s neck until a moment ago.

“The sentiment of a woman secure in her relationship,” Allison said. “I approve. And I will sure as heck join in the sleeping pile of puppies. After I shower and brush my teeth.” She patted the bag on her shoulder.

Sally pointed. “Hey, when did you get an overnight bag?”

“Are you kidding?” Allison said as she stepped out the door. “I’ve been hanging around Luke long enough to keep a go bag within reach at all times. Makes life a lot more comfortable.” She closed the door on the sleepy trio. When she returned a half hour later in bright turquoise pajamas, they were all beginning to drift off.

“Why do I feel,” she said as she lay down next to Sally and wrestled a corner of blanket from her, “that I have missed something important?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Sally said. “Luke’s got it all figured out.”

From the other side of the pallet, Luke guffawed like a fog horn. That was the last noise he made. The day, and the sheer quantity of magic he’d channeled, had finally caught up to him. He thought he could think of no greater contentment than being curled up with these three people, safe and secure and happy. Then Sootie came in and lay on his cold feet, and the world was perfect. He fell into a bone-deep, dreamless sleep.

Capricious is published weekly on Circlet.com. Want more? Proceed to the next post! Or, revisit earlier installments.

Julie Cox lives in Texas with her husband, children, and ever-expanding menagerie of animals on their farm. She runs a small online yarn business and teaches yarn spinning. She has numerous stories published with Circlet Press and elsewhere. For her full list of published works, see her website at www.lazypifarm.com.

Chapter 52

Luke rapped his knuckles on the door of the spare bedroom and entered when he heard Orson’s voice give a muffled “Come in.” He’d never been in this room of Sally’s house. Orson and Mae sat on a white metal daybed with enough decorative pillows to double as a couch. An old Singer sewing machine and a bookcase with an impressive array of cotton print fabrics and half-finished projects was on one side of the room; a pegboard with enough unfathomable tools to fill a dungeon hung on the adjoining wall. The closet door had a sign written in calligraphy: “Craft Closet: Open at Your Own Risk.” The room was awash in blush pink, lavender, and sunshine yellow. This was, clearly, Sally’s mother’s domain.

Luke’s mental vision of Mae was of a woman of fine taste and an invincible poker face. He’d seen her budget once, when he and Orson had been roommates after college, and it included things like “dry cleaning,” “gym,” “salon,” and “Nordstrom.” He hadn’t seen “feed store” or “beer” anywhere on there and wondered why “therapist” wasn’t present. Then again, that might have been on Orson’s budget.

The Mae before him now reflected none of that. None of Sally’s clothes fit her, given that Sally was both more rounded and six inches shorter than Mae. They’d had to go with an ancient pink nightgown with a faded gray tabby kitten and too-short sweatpants with the drawstring cinched tight. She sat with her legs pulled up to her chest, the sweatpants halfway up her unshaven shins. Her nail and toenail polish was chipped and grown out, her hair pulled back into a frizzy ponytail. She wore no make-up, and no defense. Her pain and fury were written there for the world to see.

Orson wasn’t a whole lot better. Mae leaned against him, his arm around her shoulders. All his centuries seemed to show in the lines and worry of his face. Most telling was that they didn’t shoo Luke off; they let him come in, stand before them, study them. He extended his right hand to Mae, and she took it in her left, just holding on to him, on to anything solid and warm.

Finally she said, “I’m sorry.”

“Of course you are. But it was hardly you who done it all.”

“No, I mean…. Well yes, I’m sorry this whole thing happened. Thing is, they couldn’t have used me if I hadn’t been so damn public about… not getting along.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

“I made us all vulnerable.”

“No use fretting on it now. You know you were already forgiven, right?”

Mae sniffed and wiped her eyes with her wrist. “Goddamnit. Why’ve you got to be so easy about it? Why can’t you have the decency to treat me the way I would’ve treated you?”

“How can I resist, when you’re so charming?” Luke said, his voice dry, bordering on snarky. He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Listen, I have something to offer. You and I, we’re all about control. I give it up happily. I encourage others to give it up. You, you take control, wrest it away from others. There is a part of me that is vengeful, that wants to ask how it felt to have your control taken away.”

She looked away, her brow furrowed, frowning. She wasn’t crying yet. She would, soon. But not yet.

He soldiered on. “But I won’t, because I know very well that it sucks ass, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Especially not someone who once shared love with my closest, oldest friend.” He cast a glance at Orson, who nodded in appreciation. To Mae he continued, “If you’ll let me, I can give you a little of your control back to you. You remember the night Randy went through the Harrowing?”

She nodded. “He didn’t know it was a blood moon, and came back staggering and babbling about deer skeletons and black foxes.” She chewed her lip, thinking. “You did something out on the porch with him, and he came in and slept for two days. And then he turned into this philosophic git who wanted to talk about everything in maddening depth for the next semester.”

Luke nodded. “Uh, yeah, I guess he did. It’s a kind of earth magic similar to grounding. It won’t fix any of the problems, but it’ll give you a good, solid touchstone to come back to. A big chunk of satyr magic to push around.”

Mae was silent for a minute, wrestling with something internally. Finally Luke said, “Do you want me to give you this?”

Mae nodded.

Luke pursed his lips, wondering how he could possibly manage this with someone who made a regular appearance in his nightmares, now that he was committed. He couldn’t kiss her on the mouth. He just couldn’t. Finally he said, “Sally, help me.” He drew Sally’s arm over his shoulders; she put her other arm over Mae’s. Luke leaned in and kissed Mae on the forehead, her hands in his. He pressed his cheek to hers and drew up as much magic as he could. It was awkward and forced, and the magic clung to him like bits of styrofoam, not wanting to go to her. But slowly, little pieces of magic, like faint gasps of wind, left him and sank into her. He felt her body quiver and knew if he opened his eyes to look at her, he would see tears sliding down her cheeks. When she sat up and the tears stopped, and she let go of his hands, Luke stood—and almost fell over.

“Whoa,” Mae said, her eyes filled with concern. It was a foreign expression on her features. “Are you OK? It didn’t feel like I took that much.”

“You didn’t,” Luke said. “It was just really hard to give it to you.” He pointed at Orson. “You’re next.”

Orson held up his hands. “I’m all right.”

Luke got his balance back and put his hands on Orson’s shoulders. “Bullshit. You put up a good show, but you need to be centered and grounded and given a port in the storm as much as anyone here.” He touched his forehead to Orson’s, feeling the base of his horns touch Orson’s shaved hairline. It was easier to do with Orson than with Mae. He drew up all his emotions for Orson, their many years together, his absolute trust and confidence in the man. He thought of when he’d been afraid for Orson, in battle and in life. He thought of when Orson had been there for him, sometimes when no one else was. He thought of Orson’s walrus mustache, his old but tidy trailer, everything he associated with Orson. His magic liked Orson, even if there was no sexuality between them. The fae was his rock. He gave back to Orson all he had been given.

Luke was beginning to feel weak when he straightened this time. He was surprised to see Orson reach for a tissue and wipe his nose. No tears, not him, but he had gotten close.

“Thank you,” Orson said softly. “Go take care of someone else. We’re all right now.” He put his arms around Mae, and she leaned against him. Just as they had been when Luke came in, but with a great look of relief mirrored between them. Luke nodded good night to them and guided Sally out the door ahead of him. He’d done all he could. The rest was up to them.

Sally hugged him once they were out in the hallway. “My big-hearted billy,” she said, burying her face in his chest.

“If I’m a billy, does that make you a hen?”

“Fuck no.” She looked up at him. “Do you have enough left to do anything for Charlie?”

“I hope so. If you’ll help me.” He let her lead the way toward her bedroom.

Capricious is published weekly on Circlet.com. Want more? Proceed to the next post! Or, revisit earlier installments.

Julie Cox lives in Texas with her husband, children, and ever-expanding menagerie of animals on their farm. She runs a small online yarn business and teaches yarn spinning. She has numerous stories published with Circlet Press and elsewhere. For her full list of published works, see her website at www.lazypifarm.com.

Review by Victoria Pond

Dark Space combines epic space opera with an individual’s sexual awakening, making for a fun m/m novel. Author Lisa Henry nails the tone… and this reviewer is a HUGE lover of anything with space marines.

When humanity reached for the stars, the stars struck back. Our hero is Brady, just eighteen. He’s served the first three years of his conscripted service on an out-of-the-way space station that never sees any action. For which he’s grateful. But then an enemy pod drops into range, cradling a human war hero who’s been presumed KIA.

Cameron was NOT, in fact, dead, but a prisoner of war. It should be a relief for poor Cam to be home, but the human officers fear he’s collaborated with the enemy aliens. Also, he’s a bit Stockholm-ly in love with his creepy dubcon tormentor.

To keep Cam alive after the doctors open his pod wrong, wrong-place-wrong-time Brady becomes his “battery.” Our heroes are always touching. Telepathically touching. The situation soon turns steamy.

For the older, sexually-aware Cameron, this is great. For younger, never-been-into-men-before Brady, this takes a lot of getting used to. Cam is older and wiser and HURTING. And Brady just goes along with his desire because it sounds nice, but he isn’t sure. Is that dub con? It’s grey.

Brady’s homosexual freak out a quarter of the way in reaches unfortunate levels of cliché. Like, yes, he’s part of a closeted military installation, but the “where did that come from?” thoughts and the “not gay, not gay” worries in the bathroom—over the top.

Also, the war felt more like an afterthought or plot-device. It didn’t have a large role in Brady’s story of discovery. Though, perhaps the message is that individual stories go on, even while all these giant things are happening.

If you enjoy space opera stories or m/m military fiction, this book may be for you.

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Reviewer Victoria Pond reads and writes erotica from her Seattle home, where she lives with a husband and a cat. In November 2012, she published an erotic Steampunk romance collection, My Lady Gambler.