Author Name: V.L. Locey
Book Name: Game Misconduct
Publisher: Ellora’s Cave
Cover Artist: Allyse Karam
Release
Date: September 23, 2015
Blurb:
This book is a sequel to Two Man Advantage
Life has been
treating Victor Kalinski well, which is a surprise for the ginger-haired
forward with the venomous tongue. His career is somewhat stable, at least for
another season. His relationship with Cougars alternate captain Dan Arou is
deepening, despite the fact that Daniel has yet to come out of the closet.
It’s typical
Kalinski luck when a puck bunny he shared a drunken night with several months
ago slaps him with a paternity suit. Despite the sizzling passion and painfully
heartfelt connection between them, Dan doesn’t take the news well, and heads
back to Canada alone.
If he wants to
make things right and win back the man he loves, he has no choice but to
swallow his pride—and nobody’s prouder than hot-headed, ego-driven Victor.
Reader Advisory:
This story has graphic sexual language and scenes—no closed bedroom doors (or
other rooms) here!
An
adult male/male romance from
Ellora’s Cave
Pages or Words: 32,500
Categories: Contemporary, M/M Romance,
Sports Romance
Excerpt:
I found Dan in our bathroom running a Q-tip around
his right ear as water from his recent shower ran from his hair. He smiled at
me, a special kind of light in his eyes. I stalled in the doorway, my summons
wrinkled in my fist. The smile disappeared from his face as I stared blankly at
him. He tossed the swab into the trash, which needed to be dumped, and turned
to face me.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. My gaze roamed over him
clad in nothing but gray cargo shorts that hung off his hips. If not for the
fact that my heart was beating so hard I was scared it would blow up, I would
have gotten all over the man. He still torqued me up like no one else ever had.
“Vic, what’s wrong?”
I handed him the wadded-up legal document. His gaze
darted from my face to the crinkled papers then back to my face.
“I don’t know who the fuck this chick is, but she is
playing me,” I managed to cough up. I looked around the room, trying to get the
palpations under control. The walls had ugly flowered wallpaper on them. The
counter was plain white. Two razors lay side by side next to the sink.
Sometimes, like right then, I wanted nothing more than to grab my razor and my
toothbrush and get the fuck out of Dodge. Just seeing Dan’s personal shit
playing cozy-cozy with mine scared me to death. Most days when that urge to
fuck this thing up overtook me, I swallowed it down like a bad oyster and
forced myself to get past it. Today, then, there, that second, those two razors
were about to push old Vic K. over the brink.
“Paternity test,” he whispered as the papers blew in
a stiff summer wind. I couldn’t look away from those two disposables.
“Someone is playing me, Dan,” I grunted, then spun
from the Schick love-fest occurring on the chipped white bathroom counter. I
pounded out to the living room, my feet squelching in my wet sneakers.
“Well yeah, obviously this Heather chick is trying
to pin this on you. Big-name sports star. It happens like daily, you know?”
I nodded as I paced the small but homey place where
we spent most of our downtime, aside from the bedroom. I jammed my fist into my
other hand and began grinding as I circled the sofa.
“Yeah, but why me and why now? Why not do this when
I was pulling in the big bucks in Beantown?”
Dan dropped onto the couch and put his bare feet on
the edge of the coffee table. As I paced, he flattened out the summons on his
thick thighs and read. My gut was in turmoil. My head felt light. My heart
still thundered in my ribs. A kid. My
kid. I barely made it back to the bathroom. I threw up the fancy lunch that we
had eaten at the golf club earlier. Dan didn’t come in, which was wise. I don’t
like people fawning over me when I’m sick. Dear old Mom never did. I could
handle myself. Been doing it since I was about five. I’d had a head cold the
month before and nearly ripped Dan into bits one day for making me chicken
noodle soup. Why that man was still with me, I do not know. I retched a few
times, then slammed the lid and flushed. Over to the sink for a swig of
mouthwash. Do not look at the razors,
Kalinski, or you will make a bigger twat out of yourself.
“You okay?” Dan called.
“Yeah, just some ptomaine from the clam chowder at
lunch,” I replied, my throat and nose still burning. “I’m taking a shower.”
“Okay. I’ll read this over close while you wash.”
The shower didn’t last long enough, nor did it help
one damn bit. Aside from having nuts that smelled like an Irish glen, I was
still this close to hyperventilating.
A kid. Holy fucking goat titties, I needed a drink.
“Hey, you need to call a lawyer in the morning,” Dan
said when I shuffled into the living room in nothing but an old pair of cutoff
jeans. “This paperwork is crazy legal, but according to what this Hillary—”
“Heather. Heather Pavlick. Who the fuck is Heather Pavlick?” I asked the
kitchen table.
I jerked open the cupboard under the sink and
reached for the bottle of Yukon Jack, one of three or four bottles of booze we
had on hand for cocktails at night if the mood struck. Dan kind of liked Jack
over ice. Did I want ice? Did I want a glass? Nah. The whiskey burned my raw
throat like gasoline. I lowered the bottle, coughed, and ran the back of my
hand across my tingling lips. I saw Dan appear in the doorway, papers still in
his hand. He looked upset.
“I wish you’d use a glass,” he grumbled, then
stalked around me to get two tumblers from the cupboard next to the fridge. I
sucked in some air through my teeth in reply. His whole body twitched at the
sound. “Two fingers, and stop making that fucking noise,” he said after he
returned to my side. I glugged some Jack into both tumblers, my eyes on Dan’s.
He handed me a glass. We both knocked the whiskey back then went out to the
couch, him with my summons and me with the Jack.
“Okay, so this is obviously some sort of rip-off,”
Dan said after we’d dropped our asses back to the sofa. Thankfully he’d left
the boob tube off. I was so not in
the mood to talk over his science shows. I poured myself another two fingers.
Dan held up his glass, so I refreshed him. “Heather Pavlick. Is that the girl
you were serious with?”
I shook my head as I swirled the Canadian whiskey
around my glass. Mr. and Mrs. Rupert’s voices, as well as the smell of meat
grilling, rolled in through the windows.
“No, her name was Gina. We were careful. I mean, we
were obsessively careful every time we fucked to prevent any kind of
kid-making.” A kid. I couldn’t get
the glass of whiskey to my lips fast enough. Ah, what a nice burn.
“This is why you should just identify as gay and be
done with it. You don’t have to worry about knocking me up.”
“Yeah well, if I could just pick my sexual identity
like I do my socks, I would. But I kind of like pussy once in a while. Stop
badgering me, gay boy.”
“That’s just weird,” Dan muttered, and sipped his
Jack.
I nodded. Yeah, to a gay dude, wanting pussy
probably did seem weird. And while I didn’t crave it anymore because, yeah, Dan
Arou, back in the day I’d taken some great delight in leaping from twat to cock
with wild abandon.
“Maybe you can talk to someone in the team’s legal
department. I mean, this will come out. They’ll want to know about it
beforehand so they can handle the bad PR.”
“Fuck. My. Life.” I dumped more of the amber liquid
into my glass. My stomach rolled and bucked as whiskey met empty gut. Whatever
the landlord was cooking was making me queasy.
“This is just fucked,” Dan said after a long moment
of silence punctuated only by my stomach speaking up. “See, this paper says
‘unborn child’, and that’s impossible. You and me have been tight since
Thanksgiving of last year. That’s nine months, right? November to July is
nine.”
“If you count November.”
Christ on a unicycle. Dan and I really been doing
the monogamy thing for nine months. I mean, I knew that we had, but hearing him
say it out loud drove the point home. No wonder those razors made me twitchy.
That was fucking incredible. Even with Gina, I’d bailed at six months. That had
been the most solid relationship I’d ever been in before Mr. Stumpy and I had
hooked up. Someone call Guinness. We got
a new world record here. I threw another two fingers of Yukon down. Dan
made a noise about the speed of my ingestion, I assume, which I ignored.
A moment ticked by. Two. Three. Dan sipped and
repeatedly read that summons, counting and recounting the months. This was
major fuckery, because there had been no one but Dan since the first time I’d
punched him in the face.
My gaze rested on the Xbox under the flat screen.
Our games were scattered on the floor. I tipped my head to stare at the artwork
on a World War I battle game that Dan and I liked. It showed a German zeppelin
dropping bombs on some European city…
It hit me like a semi that had lost its brakes. Ms.
Goodyear. That blonde with the incredible tits. I’d rolled her the night I’d
tried to drink Dan away. Had her name been Heather? Had she said? Did it
matter? Guess so.
“Ah, fuck,” I moaned, then closed my eyes.
“What? Did you figure out who this woman is?”
Shit.
Just shit. This was going to be bad. I inhaled through my
nose, blew out the breath and started sucking on that Jack bottle like a hungry
babe. Dan jerked it from my hand. Whiskey sloshed down my chest. I swallowed
what was in my mouth, licked my lips and turned to find Dan looking at me with
concern tinting his lapis eyes.
This was going to suck.
Buy the book:
Meet the author:
V.L. Locey loves worn jeans, yoga, belly laughs,
reading and writing lusty tales, Greek mythology, the New York Rangers, comic
books, and coffee. (Not necessarily in that order.) She shares her life with
her husband, her daughter, two dogs, two cats, a flock of assorted domestic
fowl, and three Jersey steers.
When not writing spicy romances, she enjoys spending
her day with her menagerie in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania with a cup of
fresh java in hand. She can also be found online on Facebook, Twitter,
Pinterest, and GoodReads.
Where to find the author:
Twitter-
https://twitter.com/vllocey
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