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

He couldn’t get the kiss out of his mind. He’d gone there, meaning to say no more. He’d meant to say stop. To call fucking safe word or whatever.


But then Ellis, with those eyes and that kindness, saying all that stuff about how he’d let them go slow. He’d let Bryn go slowly. He’d understand.


Only Bryn knew Ellis couldn’t understand. He wouldn’t. They were doomed.


“But it was fuckin’ sweet while it lasted, wasn’t it?” Jared asked from where he stood at the far corner of the stage, smoking a cigarette through a hole in his jaw. “That boy’s mouth. Ooooh damn.”


“It’s his knee,” Medea pronounced when the medical team arrived. She tore off Bryn’s white powdered wig and freed his hair from its wig cap.


“How do you know?” Jules asked, panicked and with tears on her face. It was the night before the last performance of the season, and her lead man was likely out. Bryn would cry too if it weren’t for all the drugs.


Chapter 43