Title: Elias
Author: Erin E. Keller
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 7/17/17
Heat Level: 3 - Some Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 36800
Genre: Contemporary, romance, contemporary, gay, cisgender, explicit, domestic abuse, panic attacks, law enforcement
Synopsis
After his partner’s death, Thomas Doyle lives a life made of work and late-night sexual encounters with unnamed bodies. It’s a life of solitude that leaves him too much time to think and regret.
Yet, despite everything, he jealously treasures it.
That’s why when Elias Byrne—who comes out of the shadows of Thomas’ nights—suddenly bursts into his everyday life with arrogance, Thomas finds himself fighting against ambivalent feelings—the need to reject the tormented Elias and the strange, inconceivable, and difficult to accept desire to join their solitudes.
Excerpt
“Do you like people with black-and-blue faces? Is this what excites you?”
Thomas glared at Elias. “Stop it.”
Elias sipped some more beer, then put his glass down, looking around. “Can you explain to me why we’re here?”
Thomas quickly thought about what and how much to say. “I don’t know,” he answered in the end, more or less honestly. “You confuse me, Elias. I don’t understand why you obsessed over me and then pushed me away. And I don’t understand what happened to you and why your face looks like a mess. Maybe it’s also because I’m a police officer and I always want to understand…or help others. You know, the promise to serve and protect, those kind of things…”
“So that’s what it is—you pity me?”
Thomas shook his head. “No, I don’t. I don’t know what you do to me, but it’s not about pity. You attract me—it’s true—but if you were to ask me what I think about you, I couldn’t answer. I don’t know who you are, where you come from, why you kissed me without knowing me, and why a few minutes ago you were afraid of me. Elias, I don’t know…I’d need a user’s manual to understand you.”
Elias remained silent for a few moments and observed Thomas from behind his hair before he moved it from his forehead, nervously.
“It might sound strange, but usually I don’t act like this. It’s that I saw you by chance at the Black Sheep. Many times. You were never looking at me because, I know, I’m a kid. But there was something in the way you behaved with the other men you approached or who approached you. They seemed to feel good with you. I wanted to give it a try. Understand what it meant to feel good for a while.”
Thomas hadn’t thought Elias could surprise him again, but every time he spoke, he did so, perfectly. And what was the answer to such a statement? Thomas licked his lips and looked around, searching for an answer he couldn’t find.
“Hey, I’m not asking for anything, okay? I wouldn’t…I won’t bug you anymore. It was an accident that we saw each other again, so you can relax. It looks like someone just shot a torpedo in your ass.”
Thomas didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, escape, or hit his head on the table. He decided to just drink his beer and observe Elias, who was glancing around. “How do you know this place? You come here often? It’s very different from the Black Sheep.”
Thomas’s answer was the most sincere thing he’d said for many years. “This place is part of my everyday life.”
Elias tilted his head to one side and looked at Thomas, curious. “So what am I doing here?”
And again, that sensation of struggling. Thomas was thirty-eight, he had a well-paid job, a good position. And he couldn’t find a fucking thing to say back to Elias. But the question made him think and worry. He’d always been very careful not to mix the two parts of his life, and now he was in the full contamination zone. He had to divert his attention from this fact and Elias’s question too.
“It’s not important. I’m more interested in you explaining what happened?”
The dark cloud that seemed to loom over Elias most of the time that had cleared in the last few minutes returned, crying out for justice.
“Do you want to psychoanalyze me?”
Another question that puzzled him. It was like Elias was always thinking a step ahead, out of the box.
“I’m asking you what happened. I just want the facts. I’m not a psychologist or a psychiatrist.”
Elias lifted a hand as if to touch his face but immediately lowered it, hiding it under the table. From the movement, he was most likely clasping it with the other hand. Thomas thought he was finally going to talk, because Elias’s gaze met his, and for a moment, Elias seemed almost helpless, but then the mask fell back into place.
“Sometimes people come to blows,” he said, shifting his gaze away.
Thomas ran a hand over his eyes and shook his head.
“If you don’t want to help me understand, I can’t help you.”
“Have I ever asked you to help me?” The violence with which Elias questioned him made Thomas jump.
“No you haven’t, but you went to the hospital because you needed help.”
“Exactly. I didn’t come to you. And if I’d known I’d see you there, I wouldn’t have gone.”
Thomas hit the table with his hand, and Elias jumped. “Do you want to stop?” His patience was at a breaking point.
That gesture seemed to break the moment between them. Elias finished his beer and stood up.
“I want to go home.”
Christ. Saying he was exhausting was a euphemism. Psychopathic, a sort of similitude. Bad temperament, a sure thing.
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Meet the Author
Erin is Irish in her heart and soul, and she hopes she’ll move to the Emerald Island one day. She lives with her husband and their cats in a house near a wheat field.
She has been writing for years but admits she is a very undisciplined writer. The problem is that handling a couple of jobs makes it almost impossible to write every day. She loves letting her mind wander through the real world and likes to write contemporary M/M romance, because she loves love. And men.
Tour Schedule
7/17 MillsyLovesBooks
7/18 Book Lovers 4Ever
7/19 Bayou Book Junkie
7/19 Happily Ever Chapter
7/20 Divine Magazine
7/21 Erotica For All
7/21 MM Book Escape
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