Love Is Always Write Volume 4

know how humans get when they are frightened."
    "I'm sorry. He's just like you were when you were little. Once he gets something in his mind you can't shake him."
    There was a tug on the dry side of Rod's pants. A little hand held up the Polaroid to his father. Mama would look at this at night when she thought I was sleeping and cry. That's when she told me to find you and make you come home if something bad happened. Something bad happened and you have to come home now.
    Rod took the picture then reached down and picked up his were son. It didn't matter that the boy's mother took matters into her own hands, drugging him for her own personal satisfaction. There was another werejaguar here in the world that needed guidance. Arms closed around his neck and the soft scent of cub filled his nostrils.
    "Mannix might not let me go. I keep order in the city."
    "Then take an extended vacation for now. Roddie is a handful and you can see my best isn't good enough." Travis reached out then hesitated before dropping his hand on the taller man's shoulder. "I'm not asking for forgiveness, Rodrigo, but if we could mend some fences, I would like to be at least your brother again."
    Rod stared at the werecougar. Even when he was fighting and clawing his way up this hierarchy in the city, this strong and handsome face was forever in his mind's eye… but never as a brother. There was a thump on his shoulder as Roddie's head plopped over on his side exhausted from the change to hairless and from his weeks of searching for his father.
    Rod laid a hand on the back of his cub's head. "Let's go home."
    THE END
    Author bio: Dark Romance: When love has consequences
    Derekica Snake writes in the genre of 'dark romance' dipping into the fantastic with animorphs—mermen, weretigers, and satyrs; the gothic with Vampires and Lycan and the regular run of the mill darkness of humanity. Non-consensual themes, dominance & submission and emotional angst are a specialty. The underlying mantra of her stories is love but the path is never easy but the ending is its own reward.
    Derekica is writing currently for SL Publishing Group and is publishing a vampire series called the Blood Nation Novels . Her boys are taking up most of her time, but she can be found sewing up cosplay gear and wandering around Anime conferences in Canada and the US.
    Contact info:
    Website
    Email
    Facebook
    Twitter
    ****

HALF-BAKED PROMISES
    by: Erica Pike

    One more day, that's all he needed. One more day to finish this presentation and get the hell out of town and back to his normal, everyday life. So it absolutely figured that some over-muscled moron with a pneumatic dick substitute would wake him up at the ass-crack of dawn and shoot his plans right to hell. At this point he'd try anything -- maybe a bribe?
    ~ Nancy

    genre: contemporary; romance
    tags: small-town Texas; troubled past, baking/cooking; reunited; blue collar; white collar
    word count: 9,499
    Back to Table of Contents

     
    Author's Note
    Credits go to Nancy for writing the most eye-grabbing prompt ever! The opening paragraph is her words, slightly modified. Thanks for inspiring me.
    Big thanks to Juliana and Pati for beta reading for me, to Ariel and Pati for helping me decide on the title, and of course to the M/M Romance group on Goodreads for organizing the Love Is Always Write event
    For my sweet Danny…
     

     
    HALF-BAKED PROMISES
    by Erica Pike
    One more day, that's all he needed. One more day to finish this project and get the hell out of town, back to his everyday life. Figures that some over-muscled moron with a pneumatic dick substitute would wake him up at the ass-crack of dawn. For four hours there had been nothing but the constant drilling. Not a soft, bee-buzz kind of drilling, but a thump-thump-thump of steel against hard pavement.
    There were short pauses now and then. This very moment, for example, was nice and quiet and Kevin could actually hear himself think. Downer was that it never lasted for more than a minute. The idiot in an orange construction vest seemed utterly oblivious to any sort of disturbance he might be causing. Seriously, who starts hacking up pavement at seven in the morning?
    One fucking day.
    Turning away from the window, Kevin yanked open a whitewashed pine cupboard, grabbed a red mug and poured himself coffee. Just as he brought the mug to his lips, the drilling commenced and Kevin jumped, sloshing drops of scalding hot coffee over his hand. The mug smashed to bits