New excerpt from Lonely Cowboy.
Simon Morrison watched Tate.
He was close enough to touch him but of course, with his training, Tate couldn’t see him, but sometimes Simon thought he might sense him.
His nostrils flared as he analyzed Tate’s scent. Peanut butter for lunch again. And ink. And some kind of chalk, the stuff he used to draw over his quilts. And cotton, fresh, unwashed. And Tate hadn’t showered yet but that didn’t matter. Simon liked his musky natural scent.
Gradually, painfully, Simon’d been getting better. His head didn’t hurt as much. He had more long stretches of clarity and he couldn’t remember his last black out.
Simon rubbed the jagged scar on his temple, left over from a sniper in Afghanistan. He remembered he’d been there. He’d been a warrior.
Mostly though when he tried to remember, he got a handful of faces, flashbacks, and a head pounder of a head ache.
It was easier to live as the wolf though even as the wolf he didn’t function normally anymore.
The wolf didn’t feed itself. It didn’t hunt.
Instead, lately, Simon had found himself lurking around Tate’s cabin, watching him. Sometimes Tate came out onto the porch and rocked on one dilapidated rocking chair while he hand sewed quilts.
Simon was fascinated. The colors, the swirl of patterns... one quilt was the shades of sand under a desert sunset, vivid peaches and oranges and browns and another reminded him of the misty Pacific Northwest, all weeping greys and sad blues. It was like Tate was a magician, pulling out toy after toy, bright and shiny, distracting Simon from himself and the worries that he was half a man, half a wolf.
Tate frowned and looked directly at Simon. Simon closed his eyes. Prey could sense when you were looking at it. It was instinctual. And though Simon no longer had it in him to hunt, he was still a predator.
“Huh, too much time spent alone,” Tate said, shaking his head. He got to his feet and carefully crept across the debris of his front yard and back into his cabin. But Simon caught the click of the dead bolt. Tate had locked himself in.
Simon could have told him it wouldn’t help. When Simon got hungry, he helped himself to Tate’s food. And sometimes, even knowing it was creepy and he shouldn’t do it, he stood just outside Tate’s bedroom door, listening to the soft sounds Tate made as he slept. The creak of the mattress as he turned over, the pale arm or leg that flopped over the end of the bed. Simon wanted to go in and lick that skin.
He wanted to wrap himself all around Tate and have Tate wrap himself around Simon.
Blurb:
Tate... I fell in love with a man I didn't understand. You know how that is? Simon Morrison has long silver blond hair in a ragged pony tail, and blue eyes more alive than I've ever seen, like he's walked with death so everything else has burned away. He's a warrior who came back broken, who hides in the shadows. And there's something dangerous about him, but I didn't understand until the night I ran after him and they were waiting, the other wolves. They tore into me and I died. My name is Tate Stevens and I died but something kept me here. I couldn't leave my warrior behind no matter how much it hurt, how confused I am to be whatever it is I am Becoming.
Simon... I came back from Afghanistan with one goal, to find a place to die. But slowly, watching Tate working on his art quilts, it didn't hurt so much. I felt the colors coming back. He is my light. He is my heart. They tried to take him away from me while I screamed his name. And now he thinks he's a monster. I have to find a way to bring him back to his light.
Lonely Cowboy available HERE.
