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Tom s blood. He and Flynn would race to intercept one another, at a mission s end, to be the
first one home, the one who got to tear open the door for the other s arrival and tackle him
onto the sofa, the carpet, the stairs, sometimes even the bed if they could wait.
Great breakers crashed on the Porth Bay shore. The only non-living thing Tom would
have salvaged from the watchtower was the sea-glass wave. Their home had its other treas-
ures now, but by tacit agreement they had not replaced it it was a phenomenon that had be-
longed to its time. All things were so, Tom knew, and he no longer tried to hold on. All things
could fall and be lost: David s cairn, a handful of quartz in an avalanche, scattered, unforgot-
ten. Flynn was the tide of Tom s life now, the wave that surrounded him, that surged beneath
him bringing ecstasy, that delivered him safely to shore. On lifeboat nights, search-and-
rescue nights, nights of storm, when he was off duty, Tom went to the harbourside RNLI sta-
tion and helped Florence make tea, talked quietly to the others waiting there.
You made the best of every second you could spend with them, and then& you let them
fly.
About the Author
Harper Fox has spent most of her adult life laying siege to the ice castle of British paper pub-
lishing, and has only recently stumbled out into the warmth and light of the online world. She
was delighted (and shocked) to have her first M/M submission accepted by Samhain.
Harper loves to weave M/M romances against the backcloth of her favourite locations in
Britain, some of them picturesque, others picturesquely horrible. She is currently working on
an archaeological mystery set in Salisbury, and plans as her next project a story of warrior
monks battling it out with Viking raiders on the Northumbrian coast. She likes to think that she
brings the discipline and elegance of her long ice-castle apprenticeship to her M/M stories.
Her theory is that all that suffering can t have been for nothing. Her novels and novellas are
powerfully sensual, with a dynamic of strongly developed characters finding love and a
forever future after the appropriate degree of turmoil. She loves to try and show the ro-
mance implicit in everyday life, but she writes a sharp action scene too, and can never resist
a good helicopter.
Harper lives with her Significant Other in beautiful rural Northumberland, where she re-
ceives broadband when there are no trees on the cable. During this launch period of her writ-
ing career, she is also holding down a nine-to-five as a television subtitler. Many ideas for
stories come to her during the hallucinations caused by lack of sleep. When not writing, she
enjoys worrying about it, and hoping she will soon start again.
Damn it, a man shouldn t always have to be afraid&
Shining in the Sun
© 2010 Alex Beecroft
Alec Goodchilde has everything a man could want except the freedom to be himself.
Once a year, he motors down to an exclusive yacht club on the Cornish coast and takes the
summer off from the trap that is his life.
When his car breaks down, leaving him stranded on the beach, he s transfixed by the
sight of a surfer dancing on the waves. The man is summer made flesh. Freedom wrapped up
in one lithe package, dripping wet from the sea.
Once a year, Darren Stokes takes a break from his life of grinding overwork and appalling
relatives, financing his holiday by picking up the first rich man to show an interest. This year,
though, he s cautious last summer s meal ticket turned out to be more pain than pleasure.
Even though Alex is so deep in the closet he doesn t even admit he s gay, Darren finds
himself falling hard until their idyllic night together is shattered by the blinding light of real-
ity&
Warning: One explicit m/m sex scene and a great deal of swearing.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Shining in the Sun:
You must think I m mad.
Well, yeah. Darren took a step back, gauged the best angle to run. But I kind of hoped you
were harmless with it. Why?
Don t go past, I think I ll die ? Alec s laugh too had expanded, grown warm and wry. It
sounded genuine, honest, likeable. But then, so had Max s honey-coated charm. Dear God.
It was a bit& stalkerish, wasn t it? I m not like that. He turned away from the sea as it re-
treated before them both in its long, gentle afternoon withdrawal. His smile was that sweet,
closed-lipped affair, all warm eyes and head-tilt that Darren felt had to be trained in. Nothing
that heart-stopping could have come about without years of practice, surely?
I m not normally like that, Alec corrected himself. It s the combination it s you and the
summer. They made me brave. For a moment, at least.
The hairs stood up on Darren s arms, and the skin down his spine prickled, as it did when
he felt the perfect wave build beneath him and knew it was now or never to catch it. Make the
wrong move and it would drill him into the ocean bed, gone for good. What the& ? Yeah. He
tried to swallow and couldn t quite manage it. It does that to me too. The summer, I mean.
You gotta ride the wave while it s there, because the rest of the year s gonna be shit no mat-
ter what.
Alec s mouth fell slightly, and if it was possible the intensity of his gaze picked up, blue
laser bright. Oh God, you too? It s as though this is the only month I m alive. I spend all the
rest of the year being what other people want me to be. I m not normally like this, because
this is really me. He took a step forward, hand out.
Darren s heart drummed against his throat. The crawling sensation up his back intensified
as all over his body his skin decided it had to be awake for this. He could feel it building like
static electricity, streaming off him into the sky. Clouds should be boiling right now. If he let
that outstretched hand touch him, lightning would follow the circuit, arcing down through them
both, coring him out and leaving him gutted and smouldering, changed beyond all recognition.
He flinched away, dodged round the back of the board. Hell, yeah. We must ve been sep-
arated at birth, cause I know exactly what you mean.
Alec took his hand back, looked at the palm and rubbed it slowly across the hollow of his
hip. The moment passed, and in the undertow Darren cursed himself for missing it. Before
last year he would have flung himself recklessly into that wave. Not any longer. Come over
here. Are you right-handed or left?
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