A Bit of Me
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A Total-E-Bound Publication
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A Bit of Me
ISBN # 978-0-85715-805-5
©Copyright Bailey Bradford 2011
Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright November 2011
Edited by Claire Siemaszkiewicz
Total-E-Bound Publishing
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Total-E-Bound Publishing.
Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Total-E-Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.
The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.
Published in 2011 by Total-E-Bound Publishing, Think Tank, Ruston Way, Lincoln, LN6 7FL, United Kingdom.
Warning:
This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a
heat rating
of
Total-e-melting
and a
sexometer
of
2.
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Love in Xxchange
A BIT OF ME
Bailey Bradford
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Book six in the Love in Xxchange Series
Chase Murphy lost everything—money, his best friend, and his confidence—but one man wants to
help him regain what was taken from him along with a love that Chase never expected to have and
doesn’t believe he deserves.
Xavier Talbot has everything a successful man should, or at least he thought he did.
Suddenly he discovers that his brother is a sick sadistic jerk. The boy Xavier found on the streets and raised for the past several years is going to give him a clear understanding of
‘empty nest syndrome’. Then there’s the club he’d built up from nothing, The Xxchange, now seems like a sleazy place instead of the GLBT paradise Xavier had imagined. But a chance encounter with one man gives Xavier a bit of hope in his rapidly depressing world.
Chase Murphy only wanted one thing—to find his best friend, James Stratton, who’d been kidnapped by a vengeful sociopath. Hurt and stranded in a town he has no intentions of staying in, Chase meets a man he wants to hate, but he can’t stop thinking about Xavier Talbot no matter what he does. Slowly, seductively, the town and its inhabitants draw Chase in and make him rethink his opinion on forming friendships and the possibility of a long term relationship. He isn’t sure he wants to hang around to see if things would work out, but it isn’t until James is found that Chase discovers the truth about what it means to love people, both as friends and, for Xavier, as a lover.
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To M. S., thank you so much for the help with the title!
Trademarks Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
Google: Google Inc.
Stetson: Stetson Co.
Dantrolene: JHP Pharmaceuticals LLC
Porsche: Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG
Ramada Inn: Wyndham Hotel Group
Cops:
Langley Productions
Alfa Romeo Spider: Fiat Group Automobiles S.P.A.
Viagra: Pfizer Inc.
MSN: Microsoft
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A BIT OF ME
Bailey Bradford
6
Xavier Talbot rolled over in bed and groaned. His head was throbbing and his mouth
was as dry as could be. He suspected sunlight was creeping in through the blinds, not that he was willing to open his eyes and check. It was too bright behind his eyelids for the blinds to have been pulled closed properly. Xavier dragged an arm up over his brow and winced as his muscles protested the move.
What the hell had he done last night?
A groan from beside him had Xavier’s eyes popping open. Who the hell had he done
last night?
Images flashed through his mind, blurry scenes from the night before. Walking into his office, finding…
Oh no!
Xavier didn’t want to look. He really,
really
didn’t. That didn’t stop him from craning his neck and turning his head.
His stomach lurched as blond hair tipped with blue brushed against his nose. The hair moved, his bed partner’s head tipped back, and Xavier found himself looking down into worried blue eyes.
Shit!
“Morning,” Billy said, his voice thick with sleep and his breath ripe with the vestiges of alcohol.
“Jesus!” Xavier snapped to full awareness as he scrambled back, both from shock and to escape Billy’s potent morning breath. Had Xavier been a little less hungover and a lot less shocked he might not have misjudged how much mattress he had left.
As it was, he hit the floor with a resounding
thud
that shot through his entire body and knocked the air right out of his lungs. He wheezed, feeling like he’d been kicked in the gut.
Billy peered over the edge of the bed, his eyes lit with amusement.
“If I’d have batted my eyes at you and called you Big Daddy, would you have gone
right through the wall?”
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A BIT OF ME
Bailey Bradford
7
Xavier narrowed his eyes at the little shit and then breathed a sigh of relief when he noticed Billy still had his silver shirt on. It wasn’t much of a shirt, granted, but it gave Xavier hope that he hadn’t done anything stupid, like fuck the man.
He cringed and closed his eyes. That would be like fucking his brother, and that was just…gross. But the thought spurred his brain into gear, and memories of last night came flooding back. He’d been in a foul mood because he was short staffed, because a couple of idiots had got into a fight over a twink, because the deposit from the night before hadn’t added up and he had a sneaking suspicion of why that was so—he’d had problems with his brother Randy ‘borrowing’ cash from the register before. The last thing he’d needed was to walk into his office and find Randy sitting at his desk.
Well, that was almost the last thing he’d needed. Seeing Billy’s blond and blue hair bobbing up and down had been the straw that broke the camel’s back—or Xavier’s temper.
Normally he kept a tight rein on his emotions, but finding his moronic brother using his office as a fuck room had thrown gasoline on the ember of anger boiling in his gut. And to know it was
Billy
Randy had been in there with—Xavier growled and opened his eyes to glare at the smaller man.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he snarled. Billy was like a brother to him, more so than Randy had ever been. Granted, Billy was a much younger, much more annoying,
trouble-making brother—and those last two descriptions were really saying something, considering the crap Randy always seemed to stir up. But at least Billy’s brand of trouble wasn’t malicious. He was just naïve and he didn’t ever
think
about repercussions, whereas Randy was a bully who got off on his delusions of power.
Randy was an ass.
Billy shrugged and looked remorseful, sort of. He was hard to read sometimes. “Well, I
told
Randy I didn’t want to, but he wouldn’t leave me alone so I thought if I got him off he’d just shut up. It seemed like the quickest way to get him to go away.”
Xavier groaned again and smacked his forehead, something he regretted immediately.
He was surprised his eyeballs didn’t shoot right out of their sockets. “Billy, I told you—”
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A BIT OF ME
Bailey Bradford
8
“I know, I know,” Billy said, then sighed noisily. “I’m supposed to come get you if
Randy’s being a dick. But you were busy, and you were all…snarly. You know I don’t like snarly. It cancels out my happy.”
Oh my hell! How the—
“Billy, sucking off Randy doesn’t cancel out your ‘happy’?
Seriously?” He would never,
ever
understand this man’s way of thinking! Trying to watch out for Billy was going to be the death of him.
Billy huffed and slid off the bed to lie on the floor beside him, his head propped up on one hand. The serious expression on his face was so out of place Xavier could only gape at the little blond.
“I figured you had enough to deal with already,” he admitted, and something Xavier
never wanted to see again flickered across Billy’s face. He’d never seen the man look ashamed before, and it made Xavier ashamed as well. It was his fault Billy had
been…servicing Randy. If he’d kept his shit together last night instead of being ‘snarly’, Billy wouldn’t have felt the need to handle Randy on his own.
“Anyway, it wasn’t so bad,” Billy continued, although the downturn of his lips said
otherwise. “Randy’s an ass, and he’s rough and—”
“Stop!” Xavier didn’t want to hear the details. He’d already had the visual—walking in, finding Randy pummelling into Billy’s mouth, the gagging noises flooding his ears as Billy pushed at Randy’s thighs.
That explained the soreness in the rest of Xavier’s body. He’d beaten the fuck right out of Randy, but not without taking some damage himself. Then he’d proceeded to get
miserably drunk, and then…
“How’d we get home?” Xavier frowned. “And why are you here?” Billy lived in the
apartment over the garage, had for a few years now.
Billy sat up, looking surprisingly good despite the prior night’s events. No one would know that that cute face was backed by dragon breath right now, either. The man looked damned angelic when he smiled.
“We got drunk—well, I got drunk, you got shit-faced,” Billy corrected. “I didn’t want you to, you know, like, choke to death on your own puke or anything, so I called a cab and came home with you.”
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A BIT OF ME
Bailey Bradford
9
Xavier was fairly certain he hadn’t been
that
drunk. Had he?
Billy bounced on his butt and clapped his hands together, setting off a thunderous
explosion of pain in Xavier’s head. “Oh! Maybe I even saved your life! Does that mean you owe me?”
An exuberant Billy was too much to take this early in the morning—or whatever time it was. Xavier levelled a glare on the man to no avail. “Did I throw up, Billy? Because I don’t remember throwing up, and if I didn’t throw up, or if I did and made it out of bed and to the bathroom on my own, then no, I don’t think my life was in any danger.”