Contemporary Romance & Erotica
Criminal Intentions
M/M Romantic Suspense Serial - New Full-Length Novels Releasing Every Month

The Cardigans
Season One
Episode One

Junk Shop Blues
Season One
Episode Two

The Man With the Glass Eye
Season One
Episode Three

Changing FaceS
Season One
Episode Four

IT'S WITCHCRAFT
Season One
Episode Five

WHERE THERE'S SMOKE
Season One
Episode Six
THE CARDIGANS
CRIMINAL INTENTIONS
Season One, Episode One
New Novel Releasing Every Month
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ABOUT SEASON ONE, EPISODE ONE
When a string of young queer men turn up dead in grisly murders, all signs point to the ex-boyfriend—but what should be an open-and-shut case is fraught with tension when BPD homicide detective Malcolm Khalaji joins up with a partner he never wanted. Rigid, ice-cold, and a stickler for the rules, Seong-Jae Yoon is a watchful presence whose obstinacy and unpredictability constantly remind Malcolm why he prefers to work alone. Seong-Jae may be stunningly attractive, a man who moves like a graceful, lethal bird of prey…but he’s as impossible to decipher as this case.
And if Malcolm doesn’t find the key to unravel both in time, another vulnerable young victim may end up dead.
ABOUT THE SERIES
Baltimore homicide detective Malcolm Khalaji has his own way of doing things: quiet, methodical, logical, effective, not always particularly legal. He’s used to working alone—and the last thing he needs is a new partner ten years his junior.
Especially one like Seong-Jae Yoon.
Icy. Willful. Detached. Stubborn. Seong-Jae is all that and more, impossible to work with and headstrong enough to get them both killed…if they don’t kill each other first. Foxlike and sullen, Seong-Jae’s disdainful beauty conceals a smoldering and ferocious temper, and as he and Malcolm clash the sparks between them build until neither can tell the difference between loathing and desire.
But as bodies pile up at their feet a string of strange, seemingly unrelated murders takes a bizarre turn, leading them deeper and deeper into Baltimore’s criminal underworld. Every death carries a dangerous message, another in a trail of breadcrumbs that can only end in blood.
Malcolm and Seong-Jae must combine their wits against an unseen killer and trace the unsettling murders to their source. Together, they’ll descend the darkest pathways of a twisted mind—and discover just how deep the rabbit hole goes. And if they can’t learn to trust each other?
Neither will make it out alive.
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JUNK SHOP BLUES
CRIMINAL INTENTIONS
Season One, Episode Two
New Novel Releasing Every Month
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ABOUT SEASON ONE, EPISODE TWO
A murdered night club mogul unlocks a web of infidelity and deceit. The most likely suspect? The daughter of the richest family in Baltimore, if only Detectives Malcolm Khalaji and Seong-Jae Yoon can piece the evidence together. The clues just aren’t lining up—but Malcolm can’t tell if he’s missing a piece of the puzzle or completely missing the mark. The McAllister case still haunts him. So many dead. So many he couldn’t save. It’s throwing him off his game.
And the only one who really understands is his strange, coldly aloof partner.
A partner he can never see the same way, after a moment of intimacy that haunts him as much as the voices of the dead.
Seong-Jae Yoon is struggling in his own way. He can’t solve the case when he can’t trust Malcolm, and he can’t trust Malcolm when the grizzled old wolf is growing increasingly erratic, increasingly dangerous. What disturbs Seong-Jae is how much he needs to trust Malcolm. He doesn’t get that close. He doesn’t get that involved.
But he may have no choice, if they want to stop a powerful killer from slipping away.
ABOUT THE SERIES
Baltimore homicide detective Malcolm Khalaji has his own way of doing things: quiet, methodical, logical, effective, not always particularly legal. He’s used to working alone—and the last thing he needs is a new partner ten years his junior.
Especially one like Seong-Jae Yoon.
Icy. Willful. Detached. Stubborn. Seong-Jae is all that and more, impossible to work with and headstrong enough to get them both killed…if they don’t kill each other first. Foxlike and sullen, Seong-Jae’s disdainful beauty conceals a smoldering and ferocious temper, and as he and Malcolm clash the sparks between them build until neither can tell the difference between loathing and desire.
But as bodies pile up at their feet a string of strange, seemingly unrelated murders takes a bizarre turn, leading them deeper and deeper into Baltimore’s criminal underworld. Every death carries a dangerous message, another in a trail of breadcrumbs that can only end in blood.
Malcolm and Seong-Jae must combine their wits against an unseen killer and trace the unsettling murders to their source. Together, they’ll descend the darkest pathways of a twisted mind—and discover just how deep the rabbit hole goes. And if they can’t learn to trust each other?
Neither will make it out alive.
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THE MAN WITH THE GLASS EYE
CRIMINAL INTENTIONS
Season One, Episode Three
New Novel Releasing Every Month
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ABOUT SEASON ONE, EPISODE THREE
A cold-blooded execution sends Detectives Malcolm Khalaji and Seong-Jae Yoon on a surprising trail that brings back names and faces they’d thought were buried. Yet certain things refuse to stay suppressed…like the building tension between them, brought to a head as they slip undercover to gather information. Mixing business with pleasure could ruin them both, but with a new blend of heroin hitting Baltimore’s streets and a string of hitman murders on the rise, they’ll have to ignore the heat between them.
Before one moment of inattention leaves a bullet stopping them cold.
ABOUT THE SERIES
Baltimore homicide detective Malcolm Khalaji has his own way of doing things: quiet, methodical, logical, effective, not always particularly legal. He’s used to working alone—and the last thing he needs is a new partner ten years his junior.
Especially one like Seong-Jae Yoon.
Icy. Willful. Detached. Stubborn. Seong-Jae is all that and more, impossible to work with and headstrong enough to get them both killed…if they don’t kill each other first. Foxlike and sullen, Seong-Jae’s disdainful beauty conceals a smoldering and ferocious temper, and as he and Malcolm clash the sparks between them build until neither can tell the difference between loathing and desire.
But as bodies pile up at their feet a string of strange, seemingly unrelated murders takes a bizarre turn, leading them deeper and deeper into Baltimore’s criminal underworld. Every death carries a dangerous message, another in a trail of breadcrumbs that can only end in blood.
Malcolm and Seong-Jae must combine their wits against an unseen killer and trace the unsettling murders to their source. Together, they’ll descend the darkest pathways of a twisted mind—and discover just how deep the rabbit hole goes. And if they can’t learn to trust each other?
Neither will make it out alive.
CHANGING FACES
CRIMINAL INTENTIONS
Season One, Episode Four
New Novel Releasing Every Month
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ABOUT SEASON ONE, EPISODE FOUR
With Malcolm on forced bed rest and off duty, Detective Seong-Jae Yoon faces his first solo case since joining the BPD–and it’s one that will challenge his morals, his sense of duty, and his insistence on adhering to the letter of the law, especially when his actions in the Bishop case leave him questioning his own integrity. When the supposedly accidental death of a husband and father points to foul play in the victim’s family, how close will Seong-Jae look to determine if the ends justify the means…and will he be able to live with the choices he makes?
Especially when his mind is as far from the case as possible, and lingering on Malcolm Khalaji, Malcolm’s ex-wife, and Seong-Jae’s own conflicted feelings?
ABOUT THE SERIES
Baltimore homicide detective Malcolm Khalaji has his own way of doing things: quiet, methodical, logical, effective, not always particularly legal. He’s used to working alone—and the last thing he needs is a new partner ten years his junior.
Especially one like Seong-Jae Yoon.
Icy. Willful. Detached. Stubborn. Seong-Jae is all that and more, impossible to work with and headstrong enough to get them both killed…if they don’t kill each other first. Foxlike and sullen, Seong-Jae’s disdainful beauty conceals a smoldering and ferocious temper, and as he and Malcolm clash the sparks between them build until neither can tell the difference between loathing and desire.
But as bodies pile up at their feet a string of strange, seemingly unrelated murders takes a bizarre turn, leading them deeper and deeper into Baltimore’s criminal underworld. Every death carries a dangerous message, another in a trail of breadcrumbs that can only end in blood.
Malcolm and Seong-Jae must combine their wits against an unseen killer and trace the unsettling murders to their source. Together, they’ll descend the darkest pathways of a twisted mind—and discover just how deep the rabbit hole goes. And if they can’t learn to trust each other?
Neither will make it out alive.
IT’S WITCHCRAFT
CRIMINAL INTENTIONS
Season One, Episode Five
New Novel Releasing Every Month
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ABOUT SEASON ONE, EPISODE FIVE
An eerie ritualistic murder sends Malcolm and Seong-Jae down a bizarre path of the occult to find a killer–but when it comes to witchcraft, the suspect’s not the only one casting a spell. With Seong-Jae haunting his dreams, Malcolm is practically bewitched, his trust in Seong-Jae growing deeper and deeper as both men learn to rely on each other.
But when the murder triggers memories from both Seong-Jae’s and Malcolm’s shadowed pasts, will the secrets they share bring them closer…or drive them further apart?
ABOUT THE SERIES
Baltimore homicide detective Malcolm Khalaji has his own way of doing things: quiet, methodical, logical, effective, not always particularly legal. He’s used to working alone—and the last thing he needs is a new partner ten years his junior.
Especially one like Seong-Jae Yoon.
Icy. Willful. Detached. Stubborn. Seong-Jae is all that and more, impossible to work with and headstrong enough to get them both killed…if they don’t kill each other first. Foxlike and sullen, Seong-Jae’s disdainful beauty conceals a smoldering and ferocious temper, and as he and Malcolm clash the sparks between them build until neither can tell the difference between loathing and desire.
But as bodies pile up at their feet a string of strange, seemingly unrelated murders takes a bizarre turn, leading them deeper and deeper into Baltimore’s criminal underworld. Every death carries a dangerous message, another in a trail of breadcrumbs that can only end in blood.
Malcolm and Seong-Jae must combine their wits against an unseen killer and trace the unsettling murders to their source. Together, they’ll descend the darkest pathways of a twisted mind—and discover just how deep the rabbit hole goes. And if they can’t learn to trust each other?
Neither will make it out alive.
WHERE THERE’S SMOKE
CRIMINAL INTENTIONS
Season One, Episode Six
New Novel Releasing Every Month
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ABOUT SEASON ONE, EPISODE SIX
They say where there’s smoke, there’s fire—but Malcolm and Seong-Jae have a lot of blood and no body in a case where the only witness to a murder may be the killer himself. Yet as they chase down a victim who may or may not exist in a crime that may or may not have happened, it’s the sparks flying between them that threaten to ignite into dangerous flame…and by the time this case is over, their relationship may never be the same. One kiss, one case, one night may change everything…
…and when Malcolm and Seong-Jae come together, someone’s going to get burned.
ABOUT THE SERIES
Baltimore homicide detective Malcolm Khalaji has his own way of doing things: quiet, methodical, logical, effective, not always particularly legal. He’s used to working alone—and the last thing he needs is a new partner ten years his junior.
Especially one like Seong-Jae Yoon.
Icy. Willful. Detached. Stubborn. Seong-Jae is all that and more, impossible to work with and headstrong enough to get them both killed…if they don’t kill each other first. Foxlike and sullen, Seong-Jae’s disdainful beauty conceals a smoldering and ferocious temper, and as he and Malcolm clash the sparks between them build until neither can tell the difference between loathing and desire.
But as bodies pile up at their feet a string of strange, seemingly unrelated murders takes a bizarre turn, leading them deeper and deeper into Baltimore’s criminal underworld. Every death carries a dangerous message, another in a trail of breadcrumbs that can only end in blood.
Malcolm and Seong-Jae must combine their wits against an unseen killer and trace the unsettling murders to their source. Together, they’ll descend the darkest pathways of a twisted mind—and discover just how deep the rabbit hole goes. And if they can’t learn to trust each other?
Neither will make it out alive.

Cult of Personality
Season One
Episode Seven

Collateral Damage
Season One
Episode Eight

A Single Bright Candle's Flame
Season One
Episode Nine

Backdraft
Season One
Episode Ten

Crescendo
Season One
Episode Eleven

The Hatter's Game, Part I
Season One
Episode Twelve
CULT OF PERSONALITY
CRIMINAL INTENTIONS
Season One, Episode Seven
New Novel Releasing Every Month
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ABOUT SEASON ONE, EPISODE SEVEN
“He pushed me.”
Three words turn a suspected suicide into an unsettling murder, pointing to a killer whose methods and motives threaten to expose buried memories of Seong-Jae’s past. Yet neither Malcolm nor Seong-Jae are ready for the shadowed secrets that could shatter their tenuous new relationship, when a haunting presence seems to stalk them around every corner, watching their smallest move, baiting them and flirting just out of reach. Is it the killer, always staying one step ahead?
Or a green-eyed ghost, luring both Malcolm and Seong-Jae toward the point of no return?
ABOUT THE SERIES
Baltimore homicide detective Malcolm Khalaji has his own way of doing things: quiet, methodical, logical, effective, not always particularly legal. He’s used to working alone—and the last thing he needs is a new partner ten years his junior.
Especially one like Seong-Jae Yoon.
Icy. Willful. Detached. Stubborn. Seong-Jae is all that and more, impossible to work with and headstrong enough to get them both killed…if they don’t kill each other first. Foxlike and sullen, Seong-Jae’s disdainful beauty conceals a smoldering and ferocious temper, and as he and Malcolm clash the sparks between them build until neither can tell the difference between loathing and desire.
But as bodies pile up at their feet a string of strange, seemingly unrelated murders takes a bizarre turn, leading them deeper and deeper into Baltimore’s criminal underworld. Every death carries a dangerous message, another in a trail of breadcrumbs that can only end in blood.
Malcolm and Seong-Jae must combine their wits against an unseen killer and trace the unsettling murders to their source. Together, they’ll descend the darkest pathways of a twisted mind—and discover just how deep the rabbit hole goes. And if they can’t learn to trust each other?
Neither will make it out alive.
COLLATERAL DAMAGE
CRIMINAL INTENTIONS
Season One, Episode Eight
New Novel Releasing Every Month
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ABOUT SEASON ONE, EPISODE EIGHT
Tragedy strikes on the homefront when a husband and father snaps…but if Detectives Malcolm Khalaji and Seong-Jae Yoon can’t track down a killer on the run, this crime of passion may take one more victim. Moral boundaries blur, lines cross, and even as a secretive puppetmaster watches from the shadows, both Malcolm and Seong-Jae must make a choice. One path leads to salvation.
While the other may leave an innocent dead.
And not even the feelings growing between them will stop Malcolm and Seong-Jae from shattering for good.
ABOUT THE SERIES
Baltimore homicide detective Malcolm Khalaji has his own way of doing things: quiet, methodical, logical, effective, not always particularly legal. He’s used to working alone—and the last thing he needs is a new partner ten years his junior.
Especially one like Seong-Jae Yoon.
Icy. Willful. Detached. Stubborn. Seong-Jae is all that and more, impossible to work with and headstrong enough to get them both killed…if they don’t kill each other first. Foxlike and sullen, Seong-Jae’s disdainful beauty conceals a smoldering and ferocious temper, and as he and Malcolm clash the sparks between them build until neither can tell the difference between loathing and desire.
But as bodies pile up at their feet a string of strange, seemingly unrelated murders takes a bizarre turn, leading them deeper and deeper into Baltimore’s criminal underworld. Every death carries a dangerous message, another in a trail of breadcrumbs that can only end in blood.
Malcolm and Seong-Jae must combine their wits against an unseen killer and trace the unsettling murders to their source. Together, they’ll descend the darkest pathways of a twisted mind—and discover just how deep the rabbit hole goes. And if they can’t learn to trust each other?
Neither will make it out alive.
A SINGLE BRIGHT CANDLE’S FLAME
CRIMINAL INTENTIONS
Season One, Episode Nine
New Novel Releasing Every Month
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ABOUT SEASON ONE, EPISODE NINE
Detective Malcolm Khalaji is at a loss.
For the second time in his life, he wasn’t there when his lover needed him. And with Seong-Jae Yoon on leave pending an internal investigation, Malcolm doesn’t know what to do with a shattered partner and boyfriend who’s retreated from him into a dark and broken place. It’s Gabrielle all over again…yet this time, Malcolm is determined to do this right. This time he’s determined to be there no matter what Seong-Jae needs, even if it means taking time off from the pressures of their job to hold Seong-Jae through every moment of trauma, of guilt, of self-recrimination.
Until a frantic phone call from Seong-Jae’s parents destroys any hope of peace.
Because Seong-Jae’s younger sister is missing—and there’s only one place she would go.
Yet even if the desperate search breaks Seong-Jae’s numbness, it’s the warmth of family that brings him back from a black and dangerous edge—and shows Malcolm a side to Seong-Jae he never could have imagined. But not even these idyllic moments of calm are safe, as the twisted machinations surrounding them continue. If each player in this game is a chess piece, then none other than Edmund Bishop is a pawn, sacrificed to save his queen. Yet is Lillienne Wellington really the one pulling the strings?
Or is someone else trying to eliminate Bishop for their own dire ends?
ABOUT THE SERIES
Baltimore homicide detective Malcolm Khalaji has his own way of doing things: quiet, methodical, logical, effective, not always particularly legal. He’s used to working alone—and the last thing he needs is a new partner ten years his junior.
Especially one like Seong-Jae Yoon.
Icy. Willful. Detached. Stubborn. Seong-Jae is all that and more, impossible to work with and headstrong enough to get them both killed…if they don’t kill each other first. Foxlike and sullen, Seong-Jae’s disdainful beauty conceals a smoldering and ferocious temper, and as he and Malcolm clash the sparks between them build until neither can tell the difference between loathing and desire.
But as bodies pile up at their feet a string of strange, seemingly unrelated murders takes a bizarre turn, leading them deeper and deeper into Baltimore’s criminal underworld. Every death carries a dangerous message, another in a trail of breadcrumbs that can only end in blood.
Malcolm and Seong-Jae must combine their wits against an unseen killer and trace the unsettling murders to their source. Together, they’ll descend the darkest pathways of a twisted mind—and discover just how deep the rabbit hole goes. And if they can’t learn to trust each other?
Neither will make it out alive.
BACKDRAFT
CRIMINAL INTENTIONS
Season One, Episode Ten
New Novel Releasing Every Month
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ABOUT SEASON ONE, EPISODE TEN
When a 911 call goes wrong and a young man goes missing, it falls to Malcolm and Seong-Jae to investigate the responding officers when Internal Affairs’ internal politics leave the case compromised and the officers aren’t willing to talk. But with Seong-Jae on the wrong side of the thin blue line, tensions just may turn violent before the detectives find their answers–and only their trust in each other will keep this investigation from hitting a dead end. Will Malcolm and Seong-Jae’s savage love survive the test, or will this case end in self-destruction?
With Sade mysteriously vanished once more, taking one of their major assets out of commission, it’s anyone’s game. Especially when their missing young man becomes a dead young man…and no one will admit who’s truly responsible for his violent demise.
ABOUT THE SERIES
Baltimore homicide detective Malcolm Khalaji has his own way of doing things: quiet, methodical, logical, effective, not always particularly legal. He’s used to working alone—and the last thing he needs is a new partner ten years his junior.
Especially one like Seong-Jae Yoon.
Icy. Willful. Detached. Stubborn. Seong-Jae is all that and more, impossible to work with and headstrong enough to get them both killed…if they don’t kill each other first. Foxlike and sullen, Seong-Jae’s disdainful beauty conceals a smoldering and ferocious temper, and as he and Malcolm clash the sparks between them build until neither can tell the difference between loathing and desire.
But as bodies pile up at their feet a string of strange, seemingly unrelated murders takes a bizarre turn, leading them deeper and deeper into Baltimore’s criminal underworld. Every death carries a dangerous message, another in a trail of breadcrumbs that can only end in blood.
Malcolm and Seong-Jae must combine their wits against an unseen killer and trace the unsettling murders to their source. Together, they’ll descend the darkest pathways of a twisted mind—and discover just how deep the rabbit hole goes. And if they can’t learn to trust each other?
Neither will make it out alive.
CRESCENDO
CRIMINAL INTENTIONS
Season One, Episode Eleven
New Novel Releasing Every Month
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ABOUT SEASON ONE, EPISODE ELEVEN
“I’m sorry.”
A stage play turns into high drama when the leading man’s mutilated body takes center stage–and the remorseful note pinned to his chest is Malcolm and Seong-Jae’s only clue to finding the killer. What should be a simple case is complicated by secrets and lies; as more and more of Seong-Jae’s past surfaces, every deflection and careful half-truth builds the walls between partners-turned-lovers higher still.
When Malcolm and Seong-Jae can no longer see eye to eye…will the closing act of their story turn into a tragedy?
ABOUT THE SERIES
Baltimore homicide detective Malcolm Khalaji has his own way of doing things: quiet, methodical, logical, effective, not always particularly legal. He’s used to working alone—and the last thing he needs is a new partner ten years his junior.
Especially one like Seong-Jae Yoon.
Icy. Willful. Detached. Stubborn. Seong-Jae is all that and more, impossible to work with and headstrong enough to get them both killed…if they don’t kill each other first. Foxlike and sullen, Seong-Jae’s disdainful beauty conceals a smoldering and ferocious temper, and as he and Malcolm clash the sparks between them build until neither can tell the difference between loathing and desire.
But as bodies pile up at their feet a string of strange, seemingly unrelated murders takes a bizarre turn, leading them deeper and deeper into Baltimore’s criminal underworld. Every death carries a dangerous message, another in a trail of breadcrumbs that can only end in blood.
Malcolm and Seong-Jae must combine their wits against an unseen killer and trace the unsettling murders to their source. Together, they’ll descend the darkest pathways of a twisted mind—and discover just how deep the rabbit hole goes. And if they can’t learn to trust each other?
Neither will make it out alive.
THE HATTER’S GAME, PART I
CRIMINAL INTENTIONS
Season One, Episode Twelve
New Novel Releasing Every Month
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ABOUT SEASON ONE, EPISODE ELEVEN
Broken trust. Shattered hearts. Secrets exposed–and yet still no closer to the truth. When Malcolm and Seong-Jae’s relationship hits a wall, their partnership fragments as well…and they may not be able to withstand the crushing tide when protests over Tomasz Kowalczyk’s death turn into deadly riots. Too many familiar faces return, and one will be leaving in a bodybag.
But for the puppetmaster guiding their every move, the chaos that descends on Baltimore is the perfect opportunity to capture his mark.
And when Sila sets his eyes on Malcolm…
Malcolm will discover that nowhere is safe. There’s no one he can trust.
And no one to save him from the man who taught Seong-Jae to love through pain. Through suffering. Through hatred. Through lies.
Through betrayal, when nothing and no one are what they seem.
Part I of the thrilling Season One finale!
ABOUT THE SERIES
Baltimore homicide detective Malcolm Khalaji has his own way of doing things: quiet, methodical, logical, effective, not always particularly legal. He’s used to working alone—and the last thing he needs is a new partner ten years his junior.
Especially one like Seong-Jae Yoon.
Icy. Willful. Detached. Stubborn. Seong-Jae is all that and more, impossible to work with and headstrong enough to get them both killed…if they don’t kill each other first. Foxlike and sullen, Seong-Jae’s disdainful beauty conceals a smoldering and ferocious temper, and as he and Malcolm clash the sparks between them build until neither can tell the difference between loathing and desire.
But as bodies pile up at their feet a string of strange, seemingly unrelated murders takes a bizarre turn, leading them deeper and deeper into Baltimore’s criminal underworld. Every death carries a dangerous message, another in a trail of breadcrumbs that can only end in blood.
Malcolm and Seong-Jae must combine their wits against an unseen killer and trace the unsettling murders to their source. Together, they’ll descend the darkest pathways of a twisted mind—and discover just how deep the rabbit hole goes. And if they can’t learn to trust each other?
Neither will make it out alive.

The Hatter's Game, Part II
Season One
Episode Thirteen

The Golden Ratio
Season Two
Episode One

In Sequence
Season Two
Episode Two

Cold Calculation
Season Two
Episode Three
THE HATTER’S GAME, PART II
CRIMINAL INTENTIONS
Season One, Episode Thirteen
New Novel Releasing Every Month
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ABOUT SEASON ONE, EPISODE THIRTEEN
Malcolm Khalaji is missing.
And Seong-Jae Yoon is the only one who can find him.
But to do so means walking paths he swore he would never tread again. Descending into the blackest hallways of a twisted and sadistic mind. Breaking down every wall he’s ever built around himself, to try to predict what Sila will do next.
Yet not even Seong-Jae can anticipate the outcome of this deadly game.
One chance.
One choice.
Will Seong-Jae sacrifice himself to save Malcolm…
…or become the monster that Sila knows him to be?
Part Two of the explosive finale and the climactic ending to Season One!
ABOUT THE SERIES
Baltimore homicide detective Malcolm Khalaji has his own way of doing things: quiet, methodical, logical, effective, not always particularly legal. He’s used to working alone—and the last thing he needs is a new partner ten years his junior.
Especially one like Seong-Jae Yoon.
Icy. Willful. Detached. Stubborn. Seong-Jae is all that and more, impossible to work with and headstrong enough to get them both killed…if they don’t kill each other first. Foxlike and sullen, Seong-Jae’s disdainful beauty conceals a smoldering and ferocious temper, and as he and Malcolm clash the sparks between them build until neither can tell the difference between loathing and desire.
But as bodies pile up at their feet a string of strange, seemingly unrelated murders takes a bizarre turn, leading them deeper and deeper into Baltimore’s criminal underworld. Every death carries a dangerous message, another in a trail of breadcrumbs that can only end in blood.
Malcolm and Seong-Jae must combine their wits against an unseen killer and trace the unsettling murders to their source. Together, they’ll descend the darkest pathways of a twisted mind—and discover just how deep the rabbit hole goes. And if they can’t learn to trust each other?
Neither will make it out alive.
THE GOLDEN RATIO
CRIMINAL INTENTIONS
Season Two, Episode One
New Novel Releasing Every Month
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ABOUT SEASON TWO, EPISODE ONE
The boys are back, and an old face from Seong-Jae’s past plunges BPD Detectives Malcolm Khalaji and Seong-Jae Yoon from a two-month suspension right into the depths of hell — and into one of the most horrific, grisly cases of Malcolm’s life.
He’s never seen anything like it. Macabre ritual killings, and the only one who’s ever been able to crack the killer’s pattern has been his partner and lover.
But Malcolm and Seong-Jae aren’t the only ones tracking this case.
And with the return of FBI Division Chief Aanga Joshi, Malcolm may have to contend with more than a rogue killer.
A jealous ex. More of Seong-Jae’s buried secrets. A prison break turned into a blood-soaked crime scene.
And two men, far from home, standing on the brink.
Where nothing may be safe.
Not even each other.
ABOUT SEASON TWO
Malcolm Khalaji and Seong-Jae Yoon are back on the case — and partnering with the FBI on a horrific serial murder case that will test Malcolm’s faith and revive the darkest parts of Seong-Jae’s past. With an enigmatic killer leading them on a wild goose chase through city after city and body after body, both Mal and Seong-Jae will find themselves pushed to their limits as they discover the worst of what humanity can do.
Even two minds against one may not be enough as they track the devious Golden Ratio Killer, and try to find the key to his pattern. But the trail of breadcrumbs left by the white rabbit will lead them suspiciously close to home, and a connection they never could have predicted. With their worlds exploding around them and everyone they know suddenly cast into doubt…
Can their partnership — and their love — survive the greatest trial of their lives?
IN SEQUENCE
CRIMINAL INTENTIONS
Season Two, Episode Two
New Novel Releasing Every Month
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ABOUT SEASON TWO, EPISODE TWO
The Golden Ratio killer resurfaces in California to target a former victim, and this time the case takes Malcolm and Seong-Jae hunting deep into his past, searching for connections between victim and killer that may reveal his identity. But with the killer one step ahead of them, toying with them, leaving false trails at every turn, it’s like playing Russian Roulette — and if they guess the wrong suspect out of a potential five, one misstep could leave many more dead.
With Malcolm and Seong-Jae’s domestic life — and sex life — up in the air they’re off their game, off the mark, and already starting to crack. But they aren’t the only ones, as back in Baltimore Huang kicks a new plan into motion and Anjulie finds herself under unwanted scrutiny. Everyone’s lives are falling apart.
And if they can’t get their sh*t together, more than their relationships may crash and burn.
ABOUT SEASON TWO
Malcolm Khalaji and Seong-Jae Yoon are back on the case — and partnering with the FBI on a horrific serial murder case that will test Malcolm’s faith and revive the darkest parts of Seong-Jae’s past. With an enigmatic killer leading them on a wild goose chase through city after city and body after body, both Mal and Seong-Jae will find themselves pushed to their limits as they discover the worst of what humanity can do.
Even two minds against one may not be enough as they track the devious Golden Ratio Killer, and try to find the key to his pattern. But the trail of breadcrumbs left by the white rabbit will lead them suspiciously close to home, and a connection they never could have predicted. With their worlds exploding around them and everyone they know suddenly cast into doubt…
Can their partnership — and their love — survive the greatest trial of their lives?
COLD CALCULATION
CRIMINAL INTENTIONS
Season Two, Episode Three
New Novel Releasing Every Month
Preorder – Releasing 12/10/2019
ABOUT SEASON TWO, EPISODE THREE
How do you profile a serial killer who keeps changing his pattern?
A body encased in ice and a cryptic message make Malcolm, Seong-Jae, and Aanga Joshi question everything they thought they’d learned about the Golden Ratio Killer. If their suspect can change his methods and alter his patterns, he could easily disappear…
…along with any chance of catching him before he completes his deadly game.
To keep up, Malcolm and Seong-Jae will have to find the bigger picture, the larger plan to intercept their target before that strange message turns into another victim — but it’s the small things tripping them up when their relationship and some unsettled business between them leaves them stumbling around each other and falling head-first into mistakes that could cost them more than just the case.
It could cost another innocent life, and leave that blood stained on their hands.
ABOUT SEASON TWO
Malcolm Khalaji and Seong-Jae Yoon are back on the case — and partnering with the FBI on a horrific serial murder case that will test Malcolm’s faith and revive the darkest parts of Seong-Jae’s past. With an enigmatic killer leading them on a wild goose chase through city after city and body after body, both Mal and Seong-Jae will find themselves pushed to their limits as they discover the worst of what humanity can do.
Even two minds against one may not be enough as they track the devious Golden Ratio Killer, and try to find the key to his pattern. But the trail of breadcrumbs left by the white rabbit will lead them suspiciously close to home, and a connection they never could have predicted. With their worlds exploding around them and everyone they know suddenly cast into doubt…
Can their partnership — and their love — survive the greatest trial of their lives?

The Lost
Crow City #1

The Fallen
Crow City #1.5

The Found
Crow City #2

The Saved
Crow City #2.5

Autumn
Crow City #2.75

The Rich
Crow City #3
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THE LOST
A Crow City Novel
Darkly haunting erotica with the taboo appeal of V.C. Andrews.
Praise from Publishers Weekly: “If the romantic character study is a genre, this fascinating contemporary novel is its exemplar. McCade digs deep into the difficult topics of rape, incest, and sexual abuse via the remarkable voice of Clarissa Leigh VanZandt.” [Read Full Review]
There’s something wrong with Leigh.
She’s known it her whole life. She knows it every time she spreads her legs. Every time she begs for the pain, the pleasure, the heat of a hard man driving deep inside. She’s a slave to her own twisted lusts–and it’s eating her alive. She loves it. She craves it. Sex is her drug, and she’s always chasing her next fix. But nothing can satisfy her addiction, not even the nameless men she uses and tosses aside. No one’s ever given her what she truly needs.
Until Gabriel Hart.
Cold. Controlled. Impenetrable. Ex-Marine Gabriel Hart isn’t the kind of man to come running when Leigh crooks her pretty little finger. She loathes him. She hungers for him. He’s the only one who understands how broken she is, and just what it takes to satisfy the emptiness inside. But Gabriel won’t settle for just one night. He wants to claim her, keep her, make her forever his. Together they are the lost, the ruined, the darkness at the heart of Crow City.
But Leigh has a darkness of her own. A predator stalking through her past–one she’ll do anything to escape.
Even if it means running from the one man who could love her…and leaving behind something more precious to her than life itself.
TRIGGER WARNING: 18+
This book contains material that may be triggering or deeply disturbing to some readers, including scenes discussing or detailing rape, physical and emotional abuse, and incest. Please focus on self-care and, if this book is triggering to you, do not be afraid to put it down and walk away, or skip certain chapters. Be good to yourselves.
-C
EXCERPT
A pair of worn combat boots stuck out from under the Impala like the Wicked Witch’s ruby slippers. Leigh smiled to herself, tugged her earbuds out, and tip-toed closer, listening to the scuff and clang of rough hands at work. She stopped next to a pair of long legs in dirty, frayed jeans, rested her hands on her knees, and bent to watch, holding her tongue.
“You do know I can see your shadow.” A low, gritty voice drifted from beneath the Impala. Dry, coolly masculine, inflected with a certain cultured, exacting articulation, yet rough about the edges—as if he spoke so rarely his voice was rusty, ill-used. That roughness brushed over her skin like chill breath, and she shivered. That voice didn’t belong in the light of day.
“Ghosts aren’t supposed to cast a shadow,” she said.
“Is that what you are?”
“That’s how I live. Somewhere between the world of the living and the world of the dead.”
“I see.”
A humorless, mocking chuckle slid from beneath the Impala, followed by a long, ferally graceful body: a stark man, defined by absolutes and keen edges. Chill gray eyes, pale as cracked ice. Hair as black as the sea at night, sharp-cut and falling over one eye, spilling against the cracked wood of the creeper beneath him and touched with thin threads of shooting-star silver at the temples. Older, she thought, from his hair and a certain dignified elegance to his stubble-shadowed jaw. Tanned, scarred skin stretched over broad shoulders. Sweat and grease stains darkened his thin white A-shirt. His tattoos said ex-military, jagged silhouettes of fierce-sweeping wings and a pointed beak in the stark style of the Arapaho, turning his right arm into a canvas from shoulder to wrist, slick black oils painted on burnished gold. He stretched out atop the creeper in a long, lazy sprawl and looked up at her, guarded and impenetrable. Something about him spoke of cold precision. A gunsight in human form, locked on and ready to kill.
And when he looked at her as if he could see right through her, see through the transparent empty pointlessness of her, Leigh didn’t just feel like a target.
She felt like prey.
She straightened and looked away, tucking her hands into her pockets, her stomach shivering and light. “This your place?”
“It is.”
“Blackbird Pond?”
“One witch, at your service.”
“She’s contrary as a very witch herself,” she quoted, a smile trying to creep over her lips if only she’d let it. She bit it back and studied the Impala—watching him only from the corner of her eye. “You done working your magic on Gary Mitchell’s car? I’m supposed to pick up.”
“You’re Leigh, then.” He rolled to his feet with easy grace. He moved like an animal, something savage under his skin, behind those unreadable eyes. Something wild that pulled at Leigh like the jungle calling to a beast that had spent its entire life behind bars. She lingered on his hands, large and cruel and rough-cut as raw granite, as he wiped his fingers clean on a rag. “Just finished final inspection. You sure you’re big enough to drive her? She’s a brute.”
“My feet reach the pedals, Daddy.”
A forbidding stare pinned her. “Cute.”
Nothing else. Just that hard, steady stare while he stood over her, feline and powerful as a black-spotted leopard, lazy strength looming tall until she was a child in his shadow, beneath the weight of his gaze. He didn’t look at her the way most men looked at her. Like they were eyeing her pale pretty thighs and tiny skirt and slight, girlish body and wondering if she was street-legal, wondering if she’d let them go for a test drive to find out. There was a certain kind of man who went for the dirty grunge princess look, pure heroin chic, all smeared eyeliner and kiss-swollen lips, and normally when she made eye contact she knew with a certain click of rightness that she’d found a place to sleep for the night. Even the ones who didn’t want to fuck her, she could still tell what they were thinking—but not him.
He was a glacier, and she found herself wanting a name just to make him human.
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Discover more about Gabriel Hart – and who he was before Leigh.
Reconnect with Gabriel Hart, Maxi, and Gary in Gabriel’s prequel novella, THE FALLEN – now free on Amazon and other retailers. Discover Gabriel’s story before Leigh entered his life, just what it took to break him…and just what put him back together again.
Exclusive: meet Priest, the hero of THE FOUND, and get a sneak preview of the darkly sinister man who was once one of Gabriel’s closest friends. [Read an Excerpt]
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THE FALLEN
A Crow City Prequel Novella
Reconnect with Gabriel, Gary, Maxi, and Crow City in this free companion novella telling the story of THE LOST‘s Gabriel Hart before Leigh entered his life – and get a sneak preview of the sinister Priest, hero of THE FOUND.
Gabriel Hart is a broken man.
And everyone close to him dies.
His military unit. His sister. His parents. Everyone he’s come to care for has been taken from him, leaving him with nothing but a crippling war injury, a Vicodin addiction, and a scraggly, chewed-up rag of a cat. It’s enough to make anyone want to check out. And when he holds his service pistol in his hand and presses it against his temple, for the first time in a long time the world feels right.
But he’s not as alone as he thinks. And when grizzled bar owner Gary challenges him to honor his sister’s memory by repairing her houseboat before he gives up on life, he discovers she left more for him than her belongings. And her letters lead him on a trail through discovering himself, discovering what he truly wants…and discovering that he has the strength to choose his own path.
Praise for THE LOST from Publishers Weekly: “If the romantic character study is a genre, this fascinating contemporary novel is its exemplar. McCade digs deep into the difficult topics of rape, incest, and sexual abuse via the remarkable voice of Clarissa Leigh VanZandt.”
NOTE & TRIGGER WARNING: This novella does not have a romantic or erotic storyline, but is the companion novella to a romantic erotica as a prequel tale told from the hero’s POV. While it is a standalone book, it’s a character story designed to segue into the beginning of THE LOST and should not be considered a separate romance. This story also contains content discussing suicide and self-harm at length. If you are triggered by such things, please don’t hesitate to put the book down and focus on self-care.
-C
EXCERPT
The phone rang twice before that click came, that sound of the line connecting when Gabriel had half hoped it wouldn’t. He didn’t know what he was hoping for. What he thought would happen. And he didn’t know what to say when a familiar voice rolled over the connection, deep and liquid with the fluidly lyrical inflections of a native Italian speaker.
“I never thought I would hear from you again.”
Gabriel closed his eyes. Priest’s voice wrapped him in chains. As long as Priest was alive, as long as one was left, something still bound him to earth.
Even as those chains squeezed the life from him, choking him until he couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak.
He had no voice. No words, when he didn’t even know why he’d called.
Because the one thing he wanted to say, save me…
That would never happen.
In the silence, Priest’s low, dark laughter drifted, a breathy and dangerous thing, heavy with sinister promise. With malice. He hadn’t sounded like that before. No. No, he’d laughed with hearty, cynical amusement, the laughter of a man surrounded by people he trusted and cared for like his own brothers and sisters, people he’d sworn his life to. Sworn his humanity to, though they’d failed to protect that.
Gabriel had failed to protect that.
“I know it’s you, Hart,” Priest breathed. “Trying to pull me back from the edge again?” A long silence, and then he made a low, considering sound. “No…that’s not it, is it? You’re standing on the edge yourself. Looking over into the black. Ah, si…it’s so very tempting, isn’t it? Compelling. Seductive.”
Gabriel shuddered. Priest spoke about suicide the way some men spoke about sex, raw and deeply enticing, yet he’d never go down that road himself. No. Not Priest. Instead he’d filled the cracks in himself with blood.
Other people’s blood.
I can’t do that, Gabriel tried to say, but the words wouldn’t come out.
“You know how to ease the pain.” Priest chuckled. “You just won’t do it.”
“I don’t know how you can.” He found his voice. It plunged daggers into his throat and carved the words out of him. “I don’t know how you can give this to other people. Make them feel it. It’s not right.”
“There is no such thing as ‘right.’ There is only who deserves pain, and who doesn’t.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“Don’t I?” Priest lilted. “Madre de Dio, you’re still so noble. But that is where you and I differ, my friend. Your scars cut away the monster to reveal the man. My scars killed the man…and left only the monster. And the monster understands that sometimes, pain is the only way out.”
“You’re not a monster.”
“We are all monsters.”
“I can’t believe that. I can’t accept it.” He shuddered. “I can’t accept this.”
“Then your only options are to watch yourself die slowly—or finish it quickly.”
“Believe me,” Gabriel whispered, “I know that already.”
Again that laughter. That sick, darkly seductive laughter that didn’t belong to the man Gabriel knew. The man he’d loved like his own blood. This was the laughter of the grim reaper, reaching through the phone to wrap dry bone fingers around his neck.
“Look at you. Still sacrificing yourself for your country. Semper fi was never meant to be so literal, Hart.”
He ground his teeth and hissed, “Maybe not to you.”
“You and I are different breeds.”
“We weren’t always.”
“Things change.”
“You changed them.”
“I didn’t do this to myself,” Priest growled, that voice deepening abruptly, the snarl of a wolf backed into a corner, hackles up. “This was done to me.”
“But you chose what to do with it.”
“At least I chose.”
“Yeah.” Gabriel opened his eyes, pulled the phone away, and ended the call with a swipe of his thumb. His fingers went numb, and he dropped the cell, carrier of hateful messages, onto the counter next to the Sig. “Yeah, you did.”
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THE FOUND
A Crow City Novel
Witness to a murder. Kidnapped by a monster. Life hanging on a whim. Willow Armitage’s world was already falling apart; between getting fired and caring for her chronically ill father, she’s had little room for anything but survival. But that survival hangs in the balance the night she stumbles into a back alley – and watches a stranger die at the hands of the most beautiful man she’s ever seen.
Lethal. Powerful. Unstable. Terrifying. The contract killer known only as Priest is a dangerous unknown, and when Willow wakes tied to a chair in his hideout, the only thing she sees in his fox-gold eyes is death. Yet for Priest, Willow is a dilemma: an innocent, a saint among the sinners he cuts down in the streets of Crow City. His code of honor forbids shedding innocent blood. Releasing her will send her straight to the police. The only answer is a warped game, and his promise: that he will find the darkness inside her, expose it, and prove that deep down, everyone is just as monstrous as he…and just as worthy of death.
Yet he unearths not a monster, but a smoldering and secret desire – one that has always terrified Willow, and may be her undoing. His touch sets her alight. His strength burns through her like flame. And his control melts her each time he binds her virgin body, possesses her, teaches her the strength in weakness and the passion in submission. But that passion may be her damnation, and in the end Willow must choose: Priest’s love, or her own life.
When his every kiss is pure sin…can she resist damnation long enough for Priest to find his way to redemption?
TRIGGER WARNING 18+: This story contains content centered around non-consent, bodily autonomy, sexual assault, bodily functions, and violence. Please focus on self-care above all, and don’t be afraid to put the book down if you need to in order to protect yourself. You come first, always.
-C
EXCERPT
His fingers grazed the curve of her waist. With a gasp, she snapped her eyes open. He met her gaze, fox-gold turned hot as melting amber, fierce and animal and stripping her more bare than that exposed, naked flesh. She felt like a butterfly pinned to a board, held by his gaze, her limbs going slack and her struggles stopping against her will. She hardly felt it, when he hooked a fingertip under the bunched edge of her tank top—then ripped with such effortless strength, the threads of the side seam snapping apart one after the other, until there was nothing left of her tank top but rags of cloth. No, she hardly felt that…but she felt it when he teased those rags from underneath the ropes, as every scrap of cloth stroked and washed against her skin until she was nothing but a trembling tangle of sensitivity and frozen breaths building tighter and tighter in her chest.
And she felt it when that taunting, teasing fingertip hooked in her panties, slipping into the opening just above her thigh, and she realized just what he intended to do.
“Don’t touch me.”
Suddenly she could move again—and she writhed against the ropes, fighting to squirm away. But she had barely an inch of slack, nowhere to go but against the ropes, hanging in midair and so fucking helpless she would scream with sheer rage if she didn’t want to cry with sheer hopelessness. Was he enjoying this? Enjoying watching her struggle? Enjoying how her skin tightened and pulled and her nipples swelled and her breaths came shallow with every touch, her fucking disobedient body whispering dirty thing, dirty thing, give me more of that dirty thing while her mind and heart screamed no, no, not like that, never like that?
Was he enjoying having her at his mercy, unable to escape his every touch?
His fingers dug into the fabric of her panties. Clenched it against his fist. Pulled. Cloth creased, bit, burrowed into her dirty, dirty thing, her wet dirty thing, her pulsing dirty thing, and she was a fucking dirty thing when she arched off the seat and cried out and whimpered and mewled, as he dragged the cloth against her and all she felt was sweet-rough friction and that slickness, sickness, wet and running like a licking tongue.
“D-don’t,” she cried again, and yet he only pulled harder, the panties so much worse than the rope when every fold and crease molded to her flesh like liquid fire and left nothing untouched. “Don’t!”
He paused, held that steady pressure, keeping her on the end of a taut-stretched wire. “Are you a virgin, firefly?” he growled.
She spat in his face.
Panting, body heaving, she drew back and spat in his face, and watched with a sort of foggy, dazed satisfaction as it landed in a wet streak on his cheek, dripping down his bronzed skin like a tear. He remained unmoved, watching her steadily, waiting, holding her dangling from the one hand as if he hardly felt her weight and those damnable fingers pulling her panties against her flesh.
“My body is not your business,” she hissed.
“Right now, your body is my property.” He slid a fingertip down into the crease between her hip and thigh, the place where the seam of her panties normally cut in whenever she sat, moved, shifted; there was something too personal about that touch, so close and yet so far, a threat that made her shrink back even as that feeling inside her nearly exploded, that hollow feeling that seemed like a rapacious beast, a dragon with an open maw and empty gullet that was hungry, so hungry to be full. “I want an answer.”
He bunched her panties into his hand again, curling the fabric in stretched wrinkles against his palm—and this time when he pulled he gave no quarter, a single sharp rip and a sound of cloth tearing like tape pulling off the spool, high and shrill. There was a moment’s painful bite, a muted cry welling in her throat, and then the pressure eased as the tatters of her panties fell, forgotten, to the floor.
Still he watched her. And she, naked with nowhere to hide, curled into herself; she felt her nudity like a presence, like a thing touching her and twisting over her flesh to force her to feel every moment of her exposure, every moment of her vulnerability and helplessness. Priest said nothing. He didn’t need to. He never needed to. When he wanted an answer, he got one, and would wait her out as he had before, implacable and unmoving and relentless. She had always imagined men like him to be all force, all bluster, all violence and snarling and threats.
She was quickly learning that silence—silence and careful, metered application of just enough strength to drive his point home—was just as effective as force.
And just as frightening.
Dangling from his grip like a puppy, she hung her head. Anything not to meet those piercing eyes; anything not to feel the shame of giving in to the quiet demand in his gaze; anything to make this end, so he would stop tormenting her and leave her alone.
“…yes,” she mumbled. Still he didn’t speak, or put her down. Defeat sparked into frustration, and she glared at him from under the fall of her hair. “Yes, all right? Are you happy? Is that what you fucking wanted to know?”
“Yes,” he said simply, and lowered her to the floor.
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Meet Priest before he became a cold-blooded killer…and more.
Learn who Vin Manion was before he became Priest – and discover how he knew Willow’s uncle Walford Gallifrey, and the quietly intimate relationship that sent Priest down the path into darkness. Discover the wounded soldier who became the fox-eyed murderer in this free prequel novella, offering heartbreaking glimpses into the mind of a killer. [Read an Excerpt]
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THE SAVED
A Crow City Prequel Novella
For it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. – Leviticus 17:11
Before he was a mysterious, silent killer stalking the streets of Crow City, the strange man known as Priest (THE FOUND, Crow City #2) was a lost and broken soul—and part of Willow Armitage’s world in ways she could never have imagined. Shattered by the Afghanistan War, left with no companions other than fellow survivor Gabriel Hart (THE LOST, Crow City #1), ex-Marine Priest turns to his lost faith for answers when his life has lost all meaning…but in searching for his God, he finds a new religion. A religion of blood. Of pain.
Of vengeance.
And from that religion rises a mission to replace everything he had lost, to set right just a few of the small wrongs in the world…and to ease the constant bleeding of his broken heart, filled with sins without number.
Revisit Crow City and meet Priest as he was before the fateful night that brought him into Willow’s life…and reconnect with beloved names and faces as we discover what—and who—set him on his dark and merciless path.
Trigger Warning 18+: This story depicts scenes of graphic violence, as well as dealing extensively with the subject of PTSD in veterans. Contents may be triggering to some readers.
-C
EXCERPT
Purgatory came in gray-washed flashes: faint bursts of pain, then darkness again, alternating in and out until it was a strobe lighting occasional glimpses of walls, of street lamps, of concrete streets and car seats and shadowed, moving figures that spoke in a language Vin didn’t understand. He thought he laughed, at one point, as he wondered vaguely if Charon had modernized, and replaced his ferry with a late-model sedan—for surely these were devils, ferrying Vincent to his judgment and either eternal torment or eternal rest.
He didn’t think he deserved rest.
Yet it came in increasing periods of blackness: freedom from the pain, as he sank into the dark again and again, and finally didn’t come back up. Somewhere he was aware of the sounds of cars, not so very far away, rolling through some dark highway of the damned but growing quieter and quieter, fewer and farther between, further and further away. The pain was a grinning thing crouched on his chest, a weight pressing him down, the only awareness of his body a dull hot knot of agony; his arms and legs seemed to have vanished into a kind of thick, lethargic mist.
Deep down, he knew this wasn’t purgatory. Wasn’t any kind of afterlife. He wasn’t dead yet, but he was getting there, and he thought the grit under his back was pavement. He’d been dumped in the street to bleed out, because that was the ending of a Greek tragedy: the hero dead, the damsel sacrificed, and if he tried to save himself he would only bring down the wrath of gods older and more vengeful than the one who had stopped answering his prayers years ago.
He wanted this, he thought. Just like this. One last burst of bright scarlet emotion to remind himself he was human…and then an end to it all. Quiet. Peace. A darkness where he could no longer feel pain, no longer feel loss, no longer feel anything at all.
He’d earned this, both with his suffering and his failure.
Mi benedica, padre, perchè ho peccato.
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
A soft sound scuffed close by—too close. Right next to his head, the noise oddly loud, painfully so. He winced, and forced his eyes open. The light of street lamps spilling into the close walls of the alley nearly blinded him, searing…until someone bent over him, blocking them out.
Through hazed vision and trembling lashes, he glimpsed a pale, lined face, narrow and graceful, with dark eyes and a soft, full pink mouth below the strangest, most whimsically curling moustache Vin had ever seen. Dark hair fell across a high, smooth brow that wrinkled in confusion as the man tilted his head, blinking quizzically at him.
“Well hullo there,” he said, his voice rolling, ringing, resonant. “What do we have here?”
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AUTUMN
A Crow City Side Story
There are worse things in life than loving a man who hates you.
Unfortunately, Walford Gallifrey can’t think of many.
Ever since a ghost from his past kidnapped his niece, Willow (THE FOUND, Crow City #2), Wally’s life has been nothing but grief, turmoil, and loss. With no idea if Willow is dead or alive, Wally’s only comfort is in caring for his grieving brother-in-law and Willow’s father, Joseph Armitage. For the past twenty years, Wally has never hoped to be anything but the backdrop to Joseph’s life; between marrying Wally’s sister and decades of mistakes building walls of enmity and resentment between them, Joseph has been firmly cemented in Wally’s mind as unattainable.
But the pain of Willow’s loss forces them to face the demons sleeping between them, find common ground—and more. Together, they explore mutual grief. Shared memories. Quiet respect. Warmth. Camaraderie. The joy of learning to live again.
And an unspoken attraction, buried beneath the scars of hurtful words and terrible missteps.
Yet even as they work through the thorns and tangles of old wounds, Joseph has his own struggles to face. The struggle to leave his ex-wife in the past. To let his daughter go. And to trust Wally to love him, to see him as more than just his multiple sclerosis, when so many have treated him as less than a man. The only way forward for them both is forgiveness. Trust.
And a second chance to discover what it means, to truly be in love.
Note: This novel, while a standalone, follows in the aftermath of the events of THE FOUND (Crow City #2), and ties in to the events of THE SAVED (Crow City #2.5), which detail–respectively–the events of Willow’s kidnapping and Walford’s prior relationship with her kidnapper, Vincent Manion.
EXCERPT
“Take it while I’m being sentimental.” With a mock-snarl, Joseph tumbled them both over onto their sides, pinning Wally with a leg draped over him and burying his face in his throat to bite and lick and nuzzle until Wally was laughing, pushing at his shoulders.
“Bloody stop that!”
“Nope.” Joseph bit his jaw lightly, then laughed and burrowed into him. “But FYI, I’m a pushover after sex. You should take note of that for future reference.”
“Giving me ammunition already?”
“Just a page out of the Joseph Armitage handbook.”
“And what would that be? The Proper Care and Feeding of Boyfriends?”
Joseph stilled. “Is that what we are?”
“Is what what we are?”
“Boyfriends.”
Oh. Well that was…quite a bit more of a question than whether or not they’d be having sex again, wasn’t it? And still Joseph was so unreadable, simply watching Wally quietly, yet his body language was lazy and relaxed—and Wally didn’t think he’d be this lax and lovely stretch of warm sinew and masculine ease if the idea made him so very angry.
“If you’d like to call it that,” Wally ventured shyly, a small tremor taking hold of his heart. “I could call it many things.”
“Such as…?”
“A tryst. A liaison. An entanglement. Or…a second chance at what could have been.”
A slow smile broke over Joseph’s face, a dawning that crept up one second at a time until between one breath and the next it bloomed into something that snared Wally’s heart in bright-burning tangles. “Yeah?” he asked, and Wally let out a flustered laugh.
“Yeah.”
“I like that.” Joseph chuckled and kissed the top of Wally’s head. “But ‘boyfriends’ is less of a mouthful.”
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THE RICH
A Crow City Novel
Coming 11/20/18
Meet Devon West – half-brother to Willow Armitage (THE FOUND, Crow City #2), wastrel, spoiled rich brat…and lost soul who may only find redemption in the arms of his adopted brother Roan.
If Roan can ever forgive him for mistakes long past, and half a lifetime spent in jail atoning for Devon’s misdeeds. Meet the West brothers in THE RICH (Crow City #3).
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His Cocky Valet
Undue Arrogance #1

His Cocky Valet: After Story
Undue Arrogance #1.5

His Cocky Cellist
Undue Arrogance #2

His Cocky Prince
Undue Arrogance #3
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HIS COCKY VALET
Undue Arrogance #1
Ash Harrington’s life is out of control.
At twenty-three years old, he’s suddenly the head of a multibillion dollar global corporation he is in no way equipped to run. His father is dying. His mother’s run away. He’s spent his entire adult life playing fast and loose with his life and his loves, but when he’s dragged into a position of responsibility with the fate of the company on his shoulders, he goes spinning into freefall.
And Brand Forsythe is the only man to catch him.
Icy, detached, nearly twice Ash’s age, the massive monolith of a British valet is impossible to deal with and like no servant Ash has ever met. Domineering and controlling, Brand quickly puts Ash’s life in order.
And quickly takes Ash in hand.
Even if by day Ash has to project authority, leadership, and calm…by night he’s discovering the breathless pleasure of giving up control. The shivering thrill of surrendering to Brand. The sweet taboo of being submissive to the man in even the smallest things. Ash can’t quite understand why it feels so good to put himself in Brand Forsythe’s capable, commanding hands.
He only knows, as he faces the hardest decisions of his life…the only thing that can save him is the love of his cocky valet.
Author’s Note: If you’re reading this, you likely know why this book exists. Bask in the petty, my darlings. Bask.
EXCERPT
Gulping back another harsh breath, he glared at Forsythe. “Is it so fucking wrong of me to want a distraction?”
Forsythe’s eyes narrowed. He studied Ash in measuring silence, before inclining his head, then straightening, his hand falling away from the door. He slipped his fingers under the hem of one glove and peeled it off precisely, revealing a long, angular hand with crude knuckles and a certain brutish grace and finesse to it.
“Very well,” he said—then caught the fingertip of the second glove in his teeth, his stern, firm-lipped mouth moving against the white fabric as he tugged the glove away from his other hand.
Confusion roiled in Ash’s gut. His gaze darted from Forsythe’s eyes to his mouth, those hands, then back again. “…what?”
“Since male attention is the distraction you desire,” Forsythe replied calmly, “I shall oblige.”
Neatly, meticulously, he tucked his gloves into his suit coat pocket.
Then captured Ash’s face in the heated coarseness of palms worn work-rough and capable, tilted his head up, and leaned down to claim his mouth in the hard and undeniable command of those cruel and unsmiling lips.
Where Forsythe’s words were ice, his mouth was fire, burning and wild—and Ash went hot in a trembling flush from his fingertips to the twisting breathless depths of his stomach, burning in a liquid wash as if he’d plunged into a sea of molten flame. That searing ocean stole the air from his lungs and swallowed him deep, in over his head before he’d even known he was drowning.
Forsythe took command of his lips the same way he’d taken command of Ash’s life, and while Ash gasped and floundered and clutched at Forsythe’s arms, at the hard-hewn strength concealed beneath the lie of the smoothly tailored suit…Forsythe showed him with languid, domineering control exactly what he meant to oblige with every soft, taunting graze of his teeth and every flick of a tongue that licked and teased at Ash’s throbbing, sensitized mouth.
For a breath, he couldn’t stop himself from going boneless, from arching against Forsythe. His usual distractions were boys his own age—college boys with football bodies and rich clothing and easy, shit-eating grins. He’d never been kissed before by a man who knew what he was doing with such certainty that he made Ash feel small and vulnerable and new, suddenly not so sure of himself at all, trembling and overwhelmed and completely swept up in the sheer magnetic force of Forsythe’s absolute control.
God, he tasted like liquor and sharp steel edges, tasted weathered and wild all at once, and the size and heat of his body, the feeling of muscle tested and worn by time, were turning Ash’s blood heavy and hot and dark. Every time he tried to steal a breath around that deep, dominating kiss it drew every part of his body up tight until he felt the smallest inhalation pulling at the base of his achingly hard cock.
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If you loved HIS COCKY VALET, catch up with Ash and his stoic valet Brand three years down the road as they navigate life and love together…and face a heavy, heady question that could change their relationship forever.

HIS COCKY VALET: AFTER STORY (Undue Arrogance #1.5)
It's been three years since spoiled playboy CEO Ash Harrington and his stiffly formal British valet, Brand Forsythe, swore to love each other through every strange and intricate tangle of their relationship of power, control, intimacy, submission...but a little meddling from Ash's father may bring trouble in paradise, and threaten the foundations of their trust in each other.
With HIS COCKY VALET: AFTER STORY you get:
- A 65-page, multi-chapter novelette following Ash and Brand years into their relationship
- Two entirely new sex scenes
- More angst
- More sarcasm
- A sneak preview of HIS COCKY CELLIST (Undue Arrogance #2--coming November 19th, 2018)
- Look I'm not saying there's wedding talk but I'm not saying there's not, and there's a ring on that cover for a reason
- ...and it's all free to subscribers
Already a subscriber? Head over to the VIP Section and log in with your password to download HIS COCKY VALET: AFTER STORY and get your fix of my weird little kinky age gap couple, issues and all.
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HIS COCKY CELLIST
Undue Arrogance #2
Take Pretty Woman. Add BDSM. And then Make It Gay™.
One night. One contract. One kiss, and Victor Newcomb will never be the same.
By age 24, Vic has accomplished more than most men achieve in a lifetime. Since childhood he’s tried to be the perfect son, the perfect executive, the perfect heir—and as next in line for the throne of his father’s multibillion dollar textile empire, he’s made his life entirely about discipline and control.
But he doesn’t know what discipline truly means—until he meets Amani Idrissi.
University student. Part-time masseuse. Cello virtuoso. The serene, reserved Moroccan American femme fascinates Vic with his cool allure, changing everything Vic thought he knew about power, about control, about his own sexuality. Yet when cello lessons turn into a business deal of an entirely different nature, Vic quickly realizes he’ll pay anything for the chance to see Amani again. To submit to his touch.
To discover the complete and utter freedom in giving up control.
But the deeper Vic falls headlong into love, the more he realizes he doesn’t know Amani at all. Secretive, withdrawn, Amani seems determined to keep their relationship strictly business. Even if Vic can see the quiet hurts, the old wounds hiding behind those dark, enticing eyes…
How far will he have to go, to win the love of his cocky cellist?

A Second Chance AT Paris
Bayou's End #1

Zero Day Exploit
Bayou's End #1.5

Third Time's the Charm
Bayou's End #2
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A SECOND CHANCE AT PARIS
Bayou’s End #1
One week in Paris. One chance with her childhood crush. And one lie that could ruin it all.
Before she was Dr. Celeste London, Astrophysicist, she was Mary Celeste Haverford: dork, loser, the geek formerly known as Hairy Mary. But she’d left all that behind–and left Ion Blackwell behind, nothing but an unrequited crush and the memory of a high school field trip, a night in Paris, and the words Celeste never had the courage to say. She’d never expected to see him again…until a surprise encounter on a Parisian riverboat tour brings him back into her life, and gives her the opportunity to start over as someone new. Someone Ion doesn’t recognize, transformed from a social outcast into a polished, professional woman that Ion doesn’t realize is the girl he’s been longing for since childhood, the ideal he’s dreamed of his entire life.
Suddenly this vivacious (if charmingly awkward) “new” woman is teaching him that real love is better than any dream–but Celeste is hiding more than her identity. Hiding something that makes it hard to trust her increasingly erratic behavior, and her frequent secretive phone calls. When the truth comes out, the deception could shatter them both…unless they can give each other a second chance, and take a risk on love.
EXCERPT
With a smile, Celeste leaned on the rail. She’d been a silly girl, heart on her sleeve, but she kind of missed that. Falling in love was never the same—never as light, as sweet, as guileless, the emotion not as raw or real when it became about work schedules and who paid for dinner and whether it was too soon to have sex. Mundane things took the romance out of it, when at sixteen it had been about wishing for that one perfect, breathless, magical kiss with that special someone who didn’t even know she was alive.
Now she just had a half-dozen ex-special someones who said she was an amazing friend, but a lousy girlfriend.
Her eyes stung. She should be standing here with…someone. People did that; they fell in love and took romantic trips to Paris, and cuddled on dreamy moonlit boat tours. But even then she’d have been worrying over her presentation for tomorrow, wondering if Ophelia gave their father his meds, pondering wind speed for Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in Jupiter’s Red Spot, picking out constellations…and never quite here with the imaginary boyfriend.
She really wasn’t cut out for relationships.
She lifted her gaze to the sky and picked out Venus. It hurt, when she smiled. “Guess I wasted a wish,” she whispered. “Do I get a do-over?”
The soft scuff of a sole against the deck warned when someone approached. She straightened, rubbed her eyes, and pulled her hoodie tighter around herself. Last thing she wanted was to ruin some happy couple’s romantic Parisian night when they stumbled on a single woman on the verge of a nostalgic crying jag. They’d probably think she was pulling a Rose, about to fling herself dramatically over the rail of the mini-Titanic.
The footsteps stopped at her side, barely a foot away. She caught a sense of height, masculine body heat, a quietly commanding presence. A low voice rolled over her, husky baritone like whiskey and silk.
“Belle nuit, n’est-ce pas?” he asked, softly accented inflections agonizingly familiar. Celeste looked up, her heart tumbling to the very bottom of her chest and constricting painfully tight.
Fathomless blue eyes looked over the water, set in an elegantly sculpted face: ten years older, more weathered, tanned complexion darkened by the shadow of stubble—but so distinctive she’d know him anywhere. She clutched the railing with fingers almost numb to the cool metal, blood draining to leave them rubbery. She knew him. She knew him, but there was no way it could be him. It was impossible. It was incredible. It was absolutely unbelievable, and she had to be hallucinating.
It was Ion Blackwell.
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ALL BOOKS IN THIS SERIES
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ZERO DAY EXPLOIT
A Bayou’s End Bonus Novella
A bad decision never felt so good.
zero day exploit (noun):
1. An attack that penetrates a previously unknown vulnerability in a computer or system.
2. The kind of infuriating, manipulative man who gets under your skin and refuses to get out.
And now, a one-night stand may turn out to be the biggest mistake of Zoraya Blackwell’s career.
In this free side story to the Bayou’s End series, Ion Blackwell’s ( A Second Chance at Paris ) younger sister Zoraya gets a rude wake-up call about her life, her programming career, and her love when a one-night stand turns out to be more than she can stand. But just when Evan James thinks he has her number, she’ll turn his world on its end, find her way into his heart…and make him realize the love he’s never wanted is everything he’s ever been missing.
GET A GLIMPSE INTO THE BLACKWELL FAMILY WITH A SIZZLING EXTRA IN THE BAYOU’S END SERIES
EXCERPT: Chapter One
Maybe, Zero thought, licking sugar from the rim of her lemon drop, maybe she should just quit her job.
Yeah. Right. And maybe she could pay her rent with butterflies and unicorn farts.
She couldn’t believe Rick had stolen her promotion. Rick. That slack-jawed idiot wouldn’t know an exploit from a botnet if a zombie computer bit him in the ass. He’d taken credit for her find. She’d uncovered a potential exploit in the company’s flagship software, the kind of backdoor security vulnerability that could wreck a business, and Rick had gone running to executive management to claim credit. Credit that got him a raise, a new title, and an office away from the cube farm.
A raise, title, and office that should have been hers.
And she hadn’t said a word about it, refusing to tattle on Rick like a five-year-old. She was better than that, she’d told herself. She didn’t need handouts, she’d told herself.
But what good was integrity if it left her stuck on the bottom rung for the rest of her career?
She was as good as doomed anyway. The IT firm she worked for had sent out a memo that afternoon; major crackdown on dress codes and employee behavior. No more jeans in the office. No more Goth Hello Kitty hoodie. The red tips in her hair had to go, and the rows of piercings in her ears. Everything that made her herself was going in the trash, to leave a faceless drone.
Sometimes, growing up really sucked.
So did the reprimand she’d found on her desk this morning, signed by none other than Rick. She already had a mark on her permanent employee record over a policy she hadn’t known she was violating because no one had been told yet. Not until lunch and a long, catered meeting about “the vision of a new globalized, harmonized future.”
We are Zero of Borg. Resistance is futile.
She ran her finger around the rim of her glass and listened to the music thumping through the crowded bar. Some kind of awful electronica; this wasn’t her usual after-work spot, but she hadn’t wanted anyone on her team to catch her sulking into her lemon drops at Tapas. They’d either make things worse by sulking with her, or tell her to get over it—and they’d be right. Changing her work M.O. wouldn’t be that bad. Other people did it all the time. She thrived best in a creative environment, just like the rest of her team, but as a junior programmer she didn’t get to call the shots. She could put her time in. Put on a frumpy pants suit. Wear—shudder—heels.
What she wasn’t sure she could do was endure a week-long, company-wide motivational “performance management” seminar.
Performance management. Motivational. Corporate code for veiled threats masked as chipper crap about empowering her workflows and carpe-ing her goddamned diem all the way into working overtime for half the pay just to catch up to jerks like Rick.
She’d need a lot more to drink by the time this week was over.
She tossed her drink back, enjoying the sweet heat of it sliding down her throat, then signaled the bartender for another. She hardly paid attention to the warmth of another human body sliding onto the stool at her side, denim hissing on vinyl, until a deep, gritty voice washed over her.
“That’s your fourth in the last hour. Bad day at work?”
Low words, casual with a slight Creole drawl, familiar from the few years she’d spent in Louisiana after her parents’ Roma wanderlust had turned her childhood into an episode of Carmen Sandiego, dragging Zero and her older brother and sister to a new city every few years. Probably a down-home mouth-breather in a Polo shirt with a popped collar. Not what she needed to deal with tonight.
“Bad enough to want to drink alone.” She fished out her wallet.
“Want to talk about it?”
Zero slid a ten across the bar, flashed the bartender a smile, then turned to face her would-be suitor. “Look, I’m sure you’re a nice g—”
The hinges on her tongue rusted. Pale green eyes studied her, reflective as jade ice, stark against the swarthy tan of sharply angular features—a forbidding face like an unfinished sculpture, edges left rough and hard-chiseled, accented by the dark crop of his close-shaven hair and tightly-trimmed beard. He slouched with casual ease against the bar, wearing frayed don’t-give-a-fuck jeans and a battered brown leather jacket. Not a popped-collar mouth-breather. Not what she was expecting at all.
He arched a brow. A lazy, amused smile softened the harsh planes of his face. “Something wrong?”
“No.” She found her voice—barely—and turned away, curling both hands around the stem of her martini glass. Her face felt molten, her ears burning. “Um. No.”
“That’s interesting,” he drawled softly. “You were ready to brush me off. But one look, and suddenly you’re blushing. So if I was plainer, I wouldn’t have had a chance.”
Her head came up sharply; she glared at him. “Are you calling me shallow?” So he’d caught her off guard. Didn’t mean she was suddenly interested just because he was too hot for a slummy New York corner bar. “And who said you have a chance?”
His gaze lingered on her cheeks. “That blush.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“That may be.” He chuckled, deep and rolling off his tongue like liquid chocolate. “You’re still blushing. So either you’re shallow and you like my pretty face, or you need someone to talk to more than you want to admit. Which is it?”
“Which answer will get you to go away?”
“Neither.” He signaled the bartender. “But I get it. Sometimes a girl just wants to drink alone. Just tell me to get lost.”
She eyed him sidelong. “Who wants to listen to a girl bitch about a bad day?”
“Me.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “The longer I keep you talking, the more time you have to sober up.”
“I’m not driving.”
“Because being drunk and alone on a New York subway is so much better?”
He leaned against the bar to request a Crown and Seven, slipping a few folded bills to the bartender with a subtlety that made him look like he was handling a drug deal. Or maybe she was projecting, since he’d already pissed her off. Presumptuous asshole, strutting over here like he had any right to police how much she drank. Next he’d be telling her to smile, you’d be so much prettier if you smile just like every other jerk out there. Or he’d try to reverse-psychology her into opening her legs.
“Who are you, my nanny?” she muttered against the rim of her drink.
He returned his gaze to her, studying her for long moments. “No. Just a guy who doesn’t like to be the drunken decision you regret in the morning.”
She stared at him. Why that overconfident, arrogant— “If that’s your way of asking if I’ll sleep with you,” she bit off, “you’re out of your mind.”
“It’s my way of saying I’m interested.” Once the bartender set his drink down, he lifted it to his lips, watching her over the rim with a steady gaze. “But we can just talk, too.”
Zero covered her glass with one hand and edged away. “…do I need to watch my drink around you?”
A deep, rolling laugh suddenly lit his face, transforming severe brows and chilling eyes into inviting warmth; faint lines creased the corners of his eyes. He ran a hand over the soft burr of hair clinging to his scalp. “Do I really give off that kind of vibe? Man, I need to work on my game.”
“Yeah, you do.” But the sound of his laughter relaxed her shoulders from where they’d bunched around her ears, and she offered a half-smile. “The suave thing really isn’t working for you.”
“Maybe not. How about dorky yet charming?” He extended a hand—broad, weathered, fingers square and angular. Definitely a down-home Southern boy’s hand. “Evan James.”
She hesitated, but he had distracted her from her little funk. After a moment, she slid her hand into his. “Zero Blackwell.”
His fingers folded around hers, hot and coarse. Just a brief squeeze, but it was long enough for the pad of his thumb to graze the back of her hand, a shiver of friction that left her face too warm again. “Zero?” he asked.
“Short for Zoraya.” She reclaimed her hand and pushed the sleeve of her hoodie back to bare the tattoo encircling her wrist. A bracelet of binary code, ones and zeros looped around, black against her tanned skin. “Code monkey. It’s a thing. You know—binary, Zero.”
“Ah.” He peered at her wrist. “I have no idea what that says other than one zero one one zero…”
“It’s okay. Most people don’t.” She pulled her sleeve down and took a sip of her drink. “So is that what you do? Just dive in face-first like every other neckbeard out there and hope you don’t get slapped?”
“Who says I don’t want to get slapped?”
Biting back a laugh, she gave him a flat look. “Evan.”
He grinned and idly swirled his glass. Ice cubes clinked against the sides, soft underscore to the tinny bass from the speakers. “I go where instinct takes me. Instinct told me you’d had a rotten day, and you could use an ear.”
“So you decided to act like an overconfident, skeevy creep?”
He snorted. “I’m not overconfident.”
“But you won’t deny skeevy creep?”
“Own what you are, I always say. I think I wear my creep crown quite handsomely.”
“That’s awful.” She chuckled, shaking her head. “You’re weird, you know. Watching me for an hour. Counting my drinks.”
Evan leaned on the bar and tilted his head back thoughtfully. “I’m not that much of a stalker. The drinks were a lucky guess. The rest was just working up the nerve to talk to you.”
“So you’re trying to tell me you’re shy now?”
“Would you believe me?”
Zero shook her head with a quick burst of laughter. Who was he fooling? The man had arrogant written all over him. “Not in the slightest.”
“Made you laugh,” he pointed out, a slow, contemplative smile curling his lips. He really had the most distracting mouth, full and lush and desperately in need of biting. “It’s like low, quiet bells when you laugh. I like it.”
Clearing her throat, Zero jerked her gaze from his lips. “Bells?”
“I’m bad at witty compliments.”
“Extremely.”
“You’re still smiling.”
“Okay,” she groaned, then laughed and held both hands up. “Okay. I’m in a shitty mood, and your weirdness might just be cheering me up.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.” He grinned. “You going to tell me why you’re sucking down lemon drops like it’s the zombie apocalypse and you’re out of chainsaws?”
She couldn’t help laughing again, before trailing into a sigh. “It’s bullshit, really. The company I work for used to be great. Huge, creative team culture. It wasn’t polished, but we got shit done. But there was a huge IPO, and then a merger. Now it’s all about corporate policy. People get screwed.” I got screwed. “Everything gets buried in corporate bureaucracy until we’re hopelessly behind the competition. Plus? I got written up for a dress code violation this morning by my underqualified jerk of a team lead.”
His gaze dipped to her half-zipped hoodie, and the plunging V neck of the t-shirt underneath. “Was that the shirt you were wearing?”
“Yeah.” She glanced down. Invader Zim looked back up at her, middle finger in the air.
He hid a smile behind his tumbler. “I can see how it would be distracting.”
“If you want to cheer me up, you’re not supposed to take their side,” she muttered. “Rules didn’t roll out until this afternoon. Writing me up was bullshit. Plus we all have to go to a mandatory seminar with a motivational speaker, or we’re fired.”
“Sounds pretty rough,” he said mildly.
“Shut up, smartass.” She groaned and dragged a hand through her hair, then pulled a lock forward. Black faded down to a deep, bloody red. She should pick up some black dye in the morning. “I know—I know it’s not much. I just…don’t do well in corporate environments. Maybe I’m being childish.”
“Maybe.” He looked into his tumbler. “Some people are just too independent to work under someone else’s thumb. Human nature is different for everyone. That’s what it means to be human.”
“Yeah. Guess so. But in this economy, I’m lucky to have a job. So…” She raised her drink in a toast. “Ugly pants suits, here I come.”
“Hear hear.” He clinked his drink against hers, before they both tossed theirs back. Zero was tempted to order another, but four was enough. She still had to work in the morning—and bizarrely entertaining as he might be, she was too smart to get wasted in a bar with a strange guy.
The bartender swung by, and she raised her hand. “Coffee, please? Mocha, no cream, two sugars.”
“Same for me, no sugar,” Evan said.
The bartender stalked away, muttering this isn’t a fucking Starbucks. Zero glanced up to find Evan watching her, his pale green eyes shrewd.
“Ever thought of striking out on your own?” he asked. “You’re a programmer, right? I’ve heard every corporate programmer is the legacy of a failed dot-com.”
“I think about it every day, but I have rent to pay. Ideas don’t pay rent.” She shrugged. “Never had a dot-com. Just finished grad school two years ago. Wasn’t even in the market when the bubble burst.”
“And that would make you…how old?”
“Twenty-six.”
He whistled softly with a wicked smile. “Barely legal.”
“You say that like it’s a selling point. How old are you?”
“Thirty-four.”
“Perv,” she teased. “Creeping on barely-legal girls in bars.” Thirty-four shouldn’t look so damned good, but she liked it on him. Made him look more settled than most of the twenty-something recovering frat boys who usually hit on her, or the metro-geek guys who were sweet enough until they called her a bitch for friend-zoning them.
“You don’t have to be in your thirties to be sexy and smart.” A lingering gaze swept over her. “Both of which I’d say you are.”
A slow smile crept across her lips. “More selling points?”
“Definitely,” he murmured, holding her eyes, his own dark and heated. Something about the way he looked at her—the confidence in it, the promise, the easy, casual certainty in himself—made her shiver. Definitely not her usual. And if he kept looking at her that way, she’d probably do something reckless she’d definitely never tell her friends about. She didn’t need to listen to pointless slut-shaming over a little harmless fun.
…she wasn’t actually considering this, was she?
Thank God, the bartender was back with her coffee. She didn’t need to be thinking about making those kinds of mistakes with some overconfident weirdo she’d barely met.
She turned away from him and toyed with the handle of her coffee mug; its warmth soaked into her fingers. “You,” she said, “are definitely doing a better job of distracting me.”
“How about flirting?” he asked. His jeans rasped against the barstool’s cracked vinyl as he shifted closer. The scent of his leather jacket blended with a crisp hint of aftershave and a certain primal male musk. “How am I doing at that?”
Deep breaths. “I’ll let you know after you buy me my next coffee.”
“So flattery and a mocha latte are the way to a woman’s heart.”
“Not necessarily my heart, but you’re talking your way into my good graces.”
He laughed, picked up his mug, and slid off the stool. “C’mon.” He tossed his head toward a booth. “I don’t know about you, but these barstools are chapping my ass.”
Zero rolled her eyes, but rose and followed him to the booth. Still an asshole, she thought. He draped his coat over the back of the seat; she tucked her hoodie and messenger bag into the booth and slid in across from him. “So what do you do, hm?”
“The usual. Suit and tie. I’m more interested in honing my flirting skills than talking about work.”
“Great. Now I’m practice.” She snorted, trailing into a laugh.
She was still laughing hours later, when she glanced down at her watch. Her stomach dropped out. She couldn’t believe how late it had gotten; Evan had completely distracted her. She’d thought he’d stop being funny once the lemon drops were out of her system, but three hours and five coffees later, here she was. He’d teased. She’d rebuffed. He’d flirted. She’d avoided. But she kept finding her gaze returning to that sinful mouth, her thoughts drifting until he dragged them back with another question or smartass comment.
But smartass comments wouldn’t keep her going in the morning. She slid to her feet and into her hoodie. “It’s midnight. I should be in bed. I still have to go listen to that douchenozzle tomorrow.”
“Douchenozzle? Creative.” He rose with her, shrugging broad, powerful shoulders into his leather jacket. “Come on. I’ll walk you home.” At her skeptical look, he laughed. “Seriously, I just want to make sure you get home safe.”
“I stopped being tipsy four coffees ago.”
“I know. But it’s after midnight, and this is New York.”
“For all you know, I live a two-hour train ride away.”
“Then we’d better find something to talk about,” he said, and gestured toward the door with a bow. “After you.”
Zero eyed him, then groaned, shouldered her bag, and headed for the door. “You’re not getting off the train with me,” she said.
“Of course not.”
He got off the train with her.
They took the twenty-minute ride in easy silence, pressed close on the narrow subway seats, the hard heat of his thigh sandwiched against hers, their bodies brushing together each time the train jolted. God, he smelled good. She was way too sober for what she was thinking right now. Especially when every time he caught her eye—caught her watching him—he gave her that slow, sensuous smile that said he knew exactly what was on her mind.
When the train let off at her stop he rose with her, but stopped at the door of the subway car, looking down at her. She had fifteen seconds to make up her mind before the train whisked him off and she never saw him again. She looked up into pale green eyes, dark with the question he wouldn’t ask.
She took a deep breath. To hell with it. Not like she hadn’t done the walk of shame before.
“Walk me to my door?” she asked, and he smiled with those sinful damned lips that made something so simple look so dirty.
“Of course,” he said, and stepped off the train. The door whooshed shut behind him. “I’d hate for anything to happen to you.”
In the twenty steps from the transit exit to my front door, she thought, but said nothing.
They stepped out into the crunch of snow on the sidewalk, breaths tasting of the crisp, clean scent of fresh snowfall on each cold bright inhalation, pluming into smoke as they rushed out. Street lights gleamed golden, stars bottled in glass, lighting their way as she led him up the sidewalk to her building, their arms brushing with every step. She dug out her keys, then glanced at him, biting her lip.
“This is me.”
“I had guessed.” He reached up to coil a lock of her hair around his finger, then brushed its tip against her cheek in a ticklish trail as he stepped closer. Deliciously close, oppressively close, the tall bulk of him caging her against the door of the building. “I won’t ask, Zero. It’s your choice.”
“Okay,” she said with a shaky breath. “Okay. Well you can come up if you want. Or not.”
“You have to unlock the door first.”
“That too.”
Somehow she fumbled her key into the lock, and nearly ran up the stairs. He was a dark shadow on her heels, stalking her to the front door of her third-floor shoebox studio. She felt hunted, and a delicious shiver went through her when, as she unlocked her door, his hands curled against her waist, burning hot and rough through her hoodie and shirt. He leaned into her, his body hard against her back, and dipped his head. His lips hovered over her throat, and with a husky sound he simply inhaled.
“You smell like green apples,” he whispered, and caught her earlobe between his teeth. The sharp pleasurable sting of a bite bolted straight to every pleasure point in her body before he soothed it with the soft tracery of his tongue. She trembled, and made herself pull away long enough to step inside and drag him through the door.
He backed her up against the wall just past the entryway, trapping her against the hard brick. She wasn’t that short—five foot five—but he towered over her, until he nearly enveloped her. His knuckles grazed down her throat, rough callused texture teasing her skin into prickles as he traced a path down to the zipper of her hoodie.
“Changing your mind?” he breathed, eyes simmering hot as he slowly dragged the zipper down, teeth popping apart with a loud rasp.
“No,” she whispered, and swallowed hard. “But let’s get one thing straight. You are definitely the mistake I’ll regret in the morning. You won’t call me, I won’t call you.”
“I can deal with that,” he said, then drew her close and kissed her.
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ALL BOOKS IN THIS SERIES
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THIRD TIME’S THE CHARM
Bayou’s End #2
Coming Soon
Meet Celeste’s sister Ophelia – and discover the secret she was hiding during her backpacking trip across Europe. Ophelia’s ready to start her life over, but she can’t seem to find true north.
Until she meets a man who challenges her as much as he infuriates her, until she’s determined to find herself…even if only to spite him.

Over and Over Again

Pinups
A Collection of MM Vignettes

Sometimes it Storms

The Girl With the Stars on Her Skin
Our Constellations #1-7
OVER AND OVER AGAIN
Coming 07/24/18
Preorder on Amazon for $6.99 $3.99 | Add to GoodReads
A ring of braided grass. A promise. Ten years of separation.
And memories of an innocent love with the power to last through time.
When Luca Ward was five years old, he swore he would love Imre Claybourne forever. Years later, that promise holds true—and when Luca finds himself shipped off to Imre’s North Yorkshire goat farm in disgrace, long-buried feelings flare back to life when he finds, in Imre, the same patiently stoic gentle giant he’d loved as a boy. The lines around Imre’s eyes may be deeper, the once-black night of his hair silvered to steel and stone…but he’s still the same slow-moving mountain of a man whose quiet-spoken warmth, gentle hands, and deep ties to his Roma heritage have always, to Luca, meant home.
The problem?
Imre is more than twice Luca’s age.
And Luca’s father’s best friend.
Yet if Imre is everything Luca remembered, for Imre this hot-eyed, fey young man is nothing of the boy he knew. Gone is the child, replaced by a vivid man whose fettered spirit is spinning, searching for north, his heart a thing of wild sweet pure emotion that draws Imre into the compelling fire of Luca’s frustrated passions. That fragile heart means everything to Imre—and he’ll do anything to protect it.
Even if it means distancing himself, when the years between them are a chasm Imre doesn’t know how to cross.
But can he resist the allure in cat-green eyes when Luca places his trembling heart in Imre’s hands…and begs for his love, over and over again?
Get a first look at Red’s story in PINUPS for free by joining the Xen x Cole McCade newsletter
PINUPS
A Collection of M/M Vignettes
Coming 08/21/18
Five lawyers in lingerie. One LGBTQIA charity photo shoot. What could go wrong?
When an office memo goes around the law firm of Stockton, Stockton & Wells asking who’s just a little naughty, law clerk Red Jacobson isn’t sure if his stone-cold boss Corbin Stockton is testing their response to actionable behavior–or has been taken over by a pod person. What he finds, though, is neither as he discovers, beneath Corbin’s impenetrable facade, a man committed to and passionate about fighting toxic masculinity in the queer community.
Yet when a simple pinup photo shoot turns charged with latent attraction and breathless sensuality, Red will discover Corbin’s passionate about more than that.
And he’s only the first.
Red.
Corbin.
Sutter.
Alistair.
Lane.
JR.
Six men come together for a good cause, only for the shifting lines of connection between them to change everything they thought they knew about attraction, sex, and love.
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SOMETIMES IT STORMS
Previously part of the IPPY Award-winning charity anthology WINTER RAIN (Love in the Rain 2).
All Ethan Randall has ever known is solitude. Solitude is safer. Solitude is something he can’t ruin with the painful, unclean memories sleeping under his skin–memories that make him reject human contact, memories that turn every attempt to love into nothing but pain.
Yet when he meets Aurelie—a woman who understands pain, her own scars rooted deep—her love may be the brilliance he needs to illuminate the dark inside him. The balm he needs on old wounds. And a much-needed lesson on how to live, even when old wounds won’t heal.
How to survive a love like storms without drowning, and how to find his voice beneath the thunder of his demons’ roar.
THE GIRL WITH THE STARS ON HER SKIN
Our Constellations #1-7
Coming 12/25/18
When a shooter turns a university stadium into a bloodbath, within moments Anneliese Roantree loses her best friend – and the girl she’s loved her entire life. One cataclysmic event sets off seven intertwined threads of fate as loss, warmth, grief, fury, and healing weave together into a complex tapestry of lives that touch upon each other again and again, leaving love and heartbreak in their wake. Anneliese. Lark. Elle. Lorenzo. Andre. Verity. Zoe.
All brought together by the girl with the stars on her skin.
The Dissonant Universe
Cross-Genre Queer Novels & Serials

Shatterproof
Dissonant #-3

Unravel
Dissonant #-2

DESTROY
Dissonant #-1

UNTITLED
Dissonant #0

Subhuman
Dissonant #1
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SHATTERPROOF
Dissonant #-3
The first symptoms of a dying world.
There are worse ways to die than by falling in love.
Grey Jean-Marcelin has given up on life. Not even his fame as renowned artist “The Grey” can ease the mental health issues destroying him from the inside out. Yet when a failed suicide attempt brings the man known only as Saint into his life, he’ll enter into a Faustian bargain that will challenge not only his will to live…but his will to die.
Saint is a man like no other. A leanan sidhe, a cursed fae surviving by draining vitality from his chosen prey—and it’s Grey’s love that will feed his life. The temptation of Saint’s lips, of his strange and alien beauty, is undeniable. The offer he makes is irresistible.
And if Grey has to bargain with a devil to die, at least it’s one who ignites him with a heat, a hunger, a need he’d thought he’d forgotten how to feel.
Yet their contract never accounted for star-crossed fate—or for the impossible idea that Saint could love a mortal with a desperation bordering on pain. When one must die so the other may live, their dread pact may snuff the desire, the love, the blood-bonded heartache between them before it has a chance to grow.
Or together, they can make a choice…and discover no one’s heart is shatterproof.
Back and better than ever, from bestselling queer romance author Cole McCade writing as Xen: the new 2018 edition of SHATTERPROOF, with 30% more content, new scenes, new fae mythos, vampires, and more.
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UNRAVEL
Dissonant #-2
Coming Soon
Hollywood makeup artist Die Lai is used to being known as “the boy in the dress.” But what he aches to be known for is his singing – if only he can get over childhood fears that make him afraid to even speak in front of another human being. But maybe someone not-so-human might coax the songbird forth when, on the set of a film reboot, he meets domineering, lazy asshole and world-famous South African rock star Eloi, front man of punk-grunge band Unravel. One moment Die’s fixing Eloi’s eyeliner. The next he’s the stand-in after an accident on set, but something in Eloi’s eyes says he’s not acting when he pulls Die close against his body and whispers sinful things into his ear.
But there’s something off about Eloi. Something strange.
Something beyond the human world, and as Die falls deeper and deeper under Eloi’s spell he’ll discover realities he never knew existed. A darkness under the skin of the world.
A dissonance.
And that dissonance is rising, waiting to swallow the human world whole.
Eloi’s love may be able to save Die.
But he can’t stop the coming destruction of all we’ve ever known, as the threads of fate begin to unravel.

The Whites of Their Eyes
A Collection of Queer Horror
Whites #1

The Black of Their Bones
A Collection of Queer Asian Horror
Whites #2
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THE WHITES OF THEIR EYES
A Collection of Queer Horror
There are no happy endings here.
In the town of Inverse, Silvino and Scott Orellano discover the darkness in their deepest hearts. At the cusp of a new life, Kane Orwell learns terrible truths whispered by a black and eldritch mouth. Torn between one identity and another, Shania Logan struggles to hold on to the fragments of her self.
And standing on the threshold of the afterlife, a grieving wife balances between life and death on the flicker of a candle’s flame.
Inverse.
Insurrection.
Mouth.
Flicker.
Four tales of horror, written from a queer perspective. In this collection of short stories and novellas, our heroes and heroines will explore the depths of terror both macabre and mundane–and live their darkest fears, reflected in the whites of their eyes.
EXCERPT
He closed his eyes, pressed his face against the back of Michio’s neck, and willed himself to sleep.
Until the chattering returned. The clicking.
No—just one. One click. One snick, and his breaths dried up in his lungs.
He opened his eyes. Outside, the balcony light had turned on: pale white as milk and smoke, casting the concrete and steel into washed-out monochrome shades. The lights were motion-activated; the agent who’d shown the place had stage-whispered behind her hand, exaggerating her Midwestern drawl.
For those late night parties, you know, she’d said. So you don’t fall over.
The light shouldn’t be on. Not when the balcony was empty, that light like a spotlight on an unoccupied stage saying here we are, party of none, let the show begin. Unless a moth or something had triggered it, some kind of bug—
Click.
The light flicked off, plunging the balcony into a faux darkness misted gold by the omnipresent city light pollution.
Click-click.
On again. Off again.
Click-click-click.
On. Off. On.
Click-click-click-click-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK—
On and off, on off, on off on off on off, flashing like a strobe light, dark and light and dark and light again so fast, so fast, until every click blended together into a chatter, a chitter, just like at the end of that scream. A chatter like teeth, and he waited for the scream to come but there was only on again off again, bright and dark, light and shadow click click click click CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK like some kind of sick Edgar Allan Poe joke where that flickering light was the beat of his tell-tale heart.
“Michi,” he rasped. “Michi!”
But Michio didn’t move. Didn’t hear him, as if Kane hadn’t made a sound.
Kane pushed himself to the far side of the bed, backing himself up against the headboard and pulling the blankets up over his knees, over the bottom half of his face, watching the light until it burned into his retinas and turned everything in reverse. Light was dark, dark was light, it didn’t matter anymore when there was only the strobe, the flash, the pulse.
And for a moment, in a flash that might be light inverted as dark or might just be the night itself, he saw a figure: a tall and lopsided thing, one shoulder drooping low, the other high, the dark amorphous blob of its head suggesting a tilt that turned it nearly upside down, a too-thick torso with too-thin, too-long arms. The next time the light strobed it was gone.
Kane dug his fingers into the blanket and screamed.
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From the Ashes
Fires of Redemption #1

Into the Dark
Fires of Redemption #2
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FROM THE ASHES
Fires of Redemption #1
Now Available from Entangled Publishing
Sociopath. Killer. Deviant.
Monster, devoid of morals, incapable of human emotion. The villain known as Spark has been called this and more, and as a super-powered aberrant has masterminded countless crimes to build his father’s inhuman empire. Yet to professor Sean Archer, this fearsome creature is only Tobias Rutherford–antisocial graduate researcher, quiet underachiever, and a fascinating puzzle Sean is determined to solve.
But one kiss leads to an entanglement that challenges everything Tobias knows about himself, aberrants, and his own capacity to love. When his father orders him to assassinate a senator, one misstep unravels a knot of political intrigue that places the fate of humans and aberrants alike in Tobias’s hands. As danger mounts and bodies pile higher, will Tobias succumb to his dark nature and sacrifice Sean–or will he defy his father and rise from the ashes to become a hero in a world of villains?
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INTO THE DARK
Fires of Redemption #2
Coming Soon
What happens when you fall in love with a ruthless mass murderer, only to discover the human at his core?
Return to the world of FROM THE ASHES, and this time see that world – and Tobias – through Sean’s eyes. Discover what lies at the heart of the enigmatic Englishman, even as Tobias tests that heart again and again with a darkness inside him that cannot be quelled.

CRACKS
Featured in FIYAH LITERARY MAGAZINE #3
COLD CALCULATION
CRIMINAL INTENTIONS
Season Two, Episode Three
New Novel Releasing Every Month
Preorder – Releasing 12/10/2019
ABOUT SEASON TWO, EPISODE THREE
How do you profile a serial killer who keeps changing his pattern?
A body encased in ice and a cryptic message make Malcolm, Seong-Jae, and Aanga Joshi question everything they thought they’d learned about the Golden Ratio Killer. If their suspect can change his methods and alter his patterns, he could easily disappear…
…along with any chance of catching him before he completes his deadly game.
To keep up, Malcolm and Seong-Jae will have to find the bigger picture, the larger plan to intercept their target before that strange message turns into another victim — but it’s the small things tripping them up when their relationship and some unsettled business between them leaves them stumbling around each other and falling head-first into mistakes that could cost them more than just the case.
It could cost another innocent life, and leave that blood stained on their hands.
ABOUT SEASON TWO
Malcolm Khalaji and Seong-Jae Yoon are back on the case — and partnering with the FBI on a horrific serial murder case that will test Malcolm’s faith and revive the darkest parts of Seong-Jae’s past. With an enigmatic killer leading them on a wild goose chase through city after city and body after body, both Mal and Seong-Jae will find themselves pushed to their limits as they discover the worst of what humanity can do.
Even two minds against one may not be enough as they track the devious Golden Ratio Killer, and try to find the key to his pattern. But the trail of breadcrumbs left by the white rabbit will lead them suspiciously close to home, and a connection they never could have predicted. With their worlds exploding around them and everyone they know suddenly cast into doubt…
Can their partnership — and their love — survive the greatest trial of their lives?