Ellis Parker is a lucky man: he escaped his persecuting family, survived his tour of duty, and met Maxwell Clark in the city of New Amsterdam. Clark showed Ellis more than the ropes: Clark helped Ellis figure out who he is -- a gay submissive with a massive fixation on a beautiful, mysterious ballet dancer named Bryn Rothe. Ellis knows a Good Man when he sees one, and he wants nothing more than to score a first date with Bryn.<br><br>Little does Ellis know that Bryn has a violent past that is crawling out of shallow graves to haunt him. Even his hectic schedule and beloved stage aren’t enough to distract him. It’s impossible for Bryn to figure out how he feels about Ellis with his demons between them, but when Ellis saves Bryn not once but twice, Bryn is forced to admit that there’s something about Ellis that Bryn might not merely want but need.<br><br>Together, they journey to the scene of Bryn’s original crime -- Charles Towne, South Carolina. There they will dig up secrets that might explain Bryn’s tortured life but might also be his -- and Ellis’s -- undoing.

Earthquakes

It’d been Clark who helped Ellis accept all parts of himself, even the ones that liked belts and buckles, but not when they were swung at him in hatred. Pain inflicted out of love…Ellis had never thought anything like that was possible until Clark.


Ellis supposed he had been and still was a little in love with Clark. Maybe a lot in love. But so was everybody who knew him. Clark owned a bar, Glow, in the Fashion District of New Amsterdam, and he was the epitome of the friendly barkeep. He loved talking to people and figuring out how they ticked, and just, well, he loved people. Period. Not everybody, of course, but the worthy, sure. With Ellis it was a forever loyal kind of love but not the romantic kind. Clark kept those lines clear, and Ellis had never gotten hurt, and besides, he didn’t want Clark like that. Ellis’s affection for Clark wasn’t Love, with the capital. That sort of Love was what Ellis wanted. Eventually, that is. If he ever found somebody who looked at him that way.


Chapter 5