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

“No,” Bryn yelled, the outburst surprising him. His heart throbbed, and his pulse raced, and he grew dizzy. “I don’t want anybody’s fucking help. Not yours, not his, not anybody’s. Ineededhelp when I was six and she was hating me, or when I was ten and getting beat up, or twelve and in a brainwasher’s office, or seventeen and tying him up and holding him down and—”


“Bryn!” Marella appeared wearing an apron. It must be around five A.M. She’d be helping the cook prepare breakfast. “What on earth?”


Lights came on in the foyer. “I heard shouting,” said one of the aunts from upstairs. Fast thuds on the steps preceded Ellis materializing in the living room. His hair stuck up straight, and he’d left the button on his fly undone.


“Bryn?” Ellis asked, coming to Bryn’s side and ducking under Bryn’s arm whether he liked it or not. Butting in. Interfering.


Bryn was starting to depend on it, and it scared the living daylights out of him. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”


Chapter 72