Showing results by author "Z. A. Maxfield" in All Categories

The snick of a lock. The squeak of door hinges. The creak of a floorboard... Nothing is more mysterious than footsteps in the dark. Are those approaching steps that of friend or enemy? Lover or killer?

Hope brightens a bleak Edinburgh December. A man gets a second chance with his high school crush. A decade-long game of cat and mouse comes to a passionate conclusion. And Santa Claus drives a red muscle car. Heat up your holidays with this collection of four festive tales from some of the top talent in the male/male genre.

Cupid is visiting Bluewater Bay, and he's leaving chaos in his wake. Nothing's been the same in this sleepy little logging town since Hollywood came to shoot the hit TV show Wolf's Landing - especially Valentine's Day.

Jeff Paxton came home from Afghanistan looking to put down roots. Instead his pregnant sister talks him into a job babysitting the volatile megastar Nigel Gasp. Nigel is stubborn, needy, and determined to be the center of attention everywhere he goes. Before long, Jeff realizes that something is bothering Gasp, and that keeping him out of trouble might be more difficult than he thought.

Cooper has spent the last three years running from a painful past. He's currently moving from town to town, working in restaurant kitchens, and playing his violin for tips. As soon as he starts to feel comfortable anywhere - with anyone - he moves on. He's aware that music may be the only human language he still knows. Ironically, the one man he's wanted to communicate with in all that time is deaf.

The Brothers Grime is Jack Masterson's way of helping people in crisis after disability ends his career as a firefighter. Jack's people get to a scene long after the physical trauma ends. They don't solve crime or rescue the victims. They help people move on. The new job is all Jack wants or needs, until he gets the call about old flame Nick Foasberg's suicide. Ryan Halloran's cousin Nick has been on a downhill slide for a long time. Despite that, Ryan does everything he knows to help.

Rory's just a simple southern boy from St. Antoine's Parish, Louisiana, but he knows what he wants - the girl of his dreams, reclusive and mysterious artist Ran Yamane. He's loved her since junior high school, and now he has the chance to meet her. He chucks everything and travels 1,500 miles to Anime Expo in Long Beach just so he can tell her. He's determined that nothing and nobody are going to stand in his way. Turns out, Ran Yamane isn't a girl, but he gets that a lot.

Eddie and Andrew have dynamite chemistry. But Eddie is profoundly dyslexic, and Andrew lives to read. Andrew is pathologically disorganized, and Eddie likes things neat and clutter-free. Andrew is desperately ashamed of his hoarder father, and Eddie is embarrassed by his lack of education - secrets that could pull them apart even as a friend's tragedy brings them together.

Nash is the reliable one in the Holly family, the guy everyone counts on to keep things going. His genius twin brother is off at university, so Nash runs the family's auto repair business and cares for his partially-paralyzed little sister while his crackpot father invents. His life seems mapped out for the foreseeable future, however much that might chafe.

As the Indiana Jones of historical erotica, there is no document existing - or just rumored to exist - Adin Tredeger can't unearth. Why he would risk the biggest coup of his career to join the mile-high club is beyond him. But the disarming, dark-eyed man who somehow enters Adin's locked airplane washroom has him completely nude and coming apart. All without a whimper of protest.

Jacob "Yasha"" Livingston is having a bad day. First there is the head cold. Then the orgy, the fight, and the hospital. Between that and the bus driver who ejects him - after accusing him of transmitting the Swine Flu - the rest of his day seems fairly vague. Now he's stuck in a small town called Santo Ignacio and he has a whole lot of thinking to do. One thing is, when fate speaks in the form of an EMT, maybe it's time to listen.

When Jordan Jensen moves to St. Nacho’s he has one goal in mind: starting over. He wants to reconnect with best friends Cooper and Shawn yet is uncertain of his welcome. He has the skills to get a job, but isn’t sure any prospective employer can get past the time he spent in jail for alcohol-related vehicular homicide. He’s past the worst part of his life but knows it will haunt him forever.

Leave a note and slip away to Paris alone, Adin thought. It'll prove to his vampire lover he doesn't need 24/7 supervision, Adin thought. Instead Adin lands in a surreal situation that isn't going to endear him to Donte - at all. As he awaits an old foe, Ned Harwiche III, for a prearranged meeting, Adin is head butted, tossed into the back of a car...then gets the chance to acquire an artifact Harwiche had been bidding on.

A retired marine, Logan is methodical and conservative. Richard is a liberal pacifist who is pathologically afraid of guns. Yet the minute Logan sets eyes on Richard, his heart turns over like an old car engine, and it isn't long before his motor is revved and Richard is in the driver's seat - even if it seems like each man is driving a different car. Richard Hunter is parenting his grandson, and the kid - Nick - has had it rough. Richard vows nothing will stop him from creating a loving and stable home.

As mob boss Yvgeny Mosko s open secret, Dylan Anderson is happy enough with a passionate, if loveless, arrangement that affords him a life of luxury. But at 36, he wonders how committed Mosko will be to an aging lover. He finds out when a rival gang kidnaps him in a turf war everyone s sure to lose. Mosko unleashes deadly force, leaving no one alive except for a young man whose dark eyes tug at Dylan's heart and the conscience he thought he'd excised long ago.

Fitz Gaffney finally has some breathing room. His mother's out of town, his piano coaches have backed off, and he's spending his time in a music conservatory where he only has to be adequate for an entire year before all his responsibilities come crashing back in again. Along with his new free time comes the realization that he's lonely, but his first attempt to make new friends goes horribly awry. Fitz's new - but possibly imaginary - friends, Evan and Serge, want to help him find happiness.

Jae-sun Fields is pissed. Someone has taken the seminal coming-out, coming-of-age novel Doorways and satirized it. He's determined to use his Internet skills and his job as a tabloid reporter to out the author as the fraud and no-talent hack he's sure she is. Kelly Kendall likes his anonymity and, except for his houseboy, factotum and all-around slut, Will, he craves solitude. There's also that crippling case of OCD that makes it virtually impossible for him to leave the house.

Toby Andrews is cooking up more than a little trouble for Evan Blankenship. Because of pranks, indiscretions, and plain bad timing, his ability to work in New York's temples of haute cuisine is a thing of the past. When Toby's sister tells him he should look up an acquaintance whose restaurant - Le Potiron - is failing, he doesn't have much choice. Pretty soon he's in bed, literally, with a cook who hates people, trying to save a restaurant that only the neighborhood mothers seem to love, and on the verge of another - possibly painful - lesson or two.

After Brendan and his mother witness a completely random tragedy, his carefully controlled life begins to fall apart. First he starts having nightmares and panic attacks, and then he loses focus in his daily life. His board of directors insists he take a vacation at a so-called "relaxation destination", and to make matters worse, they've hired newly minted psychiatrist, Dr. Dirk Melovitch, to accompany him.

Fire cost Jared Kenny his home and all his memories of the man he'd loved for over half his life. But it also brought him firefighter Adam Collins and the purest blue eyes Jared had ever seen. Despite the best efforts of his department, Adam had to watch with Jared while Jared's house burned to the ground. Something about the man touched Adam and made him want to follow up and protect him. Later, when the two of them gave in to their passion, it burnt and bared them both.