Making Promises (2 page)

Published by

Dreamspinner Press

4760 Preston Road

Suite 244-149

Frisco, TX 75034

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Amy Lane

Cover Art by Paul Richmond http://www.paulrichmondstudio.com All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 4760 Preston Road, Suite 244-149, Frisco, TX 75034

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

ISBN: 978-1-61581-461-9

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

July, 2010

eBook edition available

eBook ISBN: 978-1-61581-462-6

Dedicated to moms and their boys.

Trystan, Kewyn, you are my boys,

I am your mom, and

that will never, ever change.

Back about a thousand years ago, after I got my teacher’s credential, my stepmother took me shopping for an outfit in which to interview. I came out of the dressing room at one point, and the next thing I knew, Janis, my stepmom, was adjusting my bra, pulling up my socks and generally straightening my clothing, while I sat passively in daughterly mortification. After a moment, Janis realized what she was doing—and that I was twenty-three and not eight—and said, “I’m sorry—you realize that when you’re sixty and I’m eighty, I’m still going to be adjusting your socks.”

My stepmother has become the guardian of the elderly in our home.

An ICU nurse, she has taken over the last affairs and the medical needs of my father’s mother, her ex-husband’s mother, and her own mother. She has been there in their final moments.

She is nothing short of a miracle.

She has taught me everything I believe about life, death, kindness, and dignity in all of it. If there is anything about Mikhail and Ylena’s relationship that touches you at all, you may thank her.

It’s about time I did.

Thank you, Janis. Brother, did I luck out.

Just when you think you got it down…

“Promises in the Dark”—Pat Benatar

SHANE PERKINS had never had a male lover before. He didn’t know protocol, but he was pretty sure that two beat cops boning each other in the locker room of an L.A. precinct violated a whole bunch of it.

“No,” he said firmly, when his partner—still fully clothed—wrapped his arms around Shane’s naked, burly chest.

“No?” Brandon Ashford looked more like a calendar pinup than a cop. He was tall, built like a willow tree with deeply defined muscles in his chest. He also had dark blond hair, blue eyes, grooves in the side of his mouth, and a pair of dimples that men and women had probably been falling into since the day he was born.

“No” was not a word Brandon heard very often.

“We’ll get caught. Don’t like Top Ramen. Would rather eat hamburger.”

Shane heard the puzzled draw of breath behind him and sighed.

Once again, whatever came out of his mouth had jumped two sentences down in the conversation. It had made sense in his head—they get caught, they get fired. They get fired, they don’t have any money. They don’t have any money, they end up eating Top Ramen instead of at their favorite hamburger stand in the Barrio.

He felt Brandon’s frustrated shake of his head. “Yeah—whatever, Shane.” Brandon’s hands came up to his shoulders and he fitted his lean 2

form against Shane’s back. “I’m not talking about
lunch
, man, I’m talking about, you know….” Brandon lowered his mouth to Shane’s ear, and Shane
loved
it when someone whispered in his ear. It was, in fact, how Brandon had coaxed him into bed the first time—what had started as casual, harmless banter had gone up six notches when Brandon had whispered it in Shane’s ear.

“
Lunch
…,”
Brandon whispered, and Shane sprung a boner that could have dented the locker in front of him.

“Someone’s going to…,” Shane whispered back helplessly. What he really wanted to do was bend over. He wasn’t hung up on being a top or a bottom—it was just that Brandon was behind him, and that was easier.

“No one’s going to,” Brandon said, grinning. He’d won—he knew it.

His hands fumbled at Shane’s towel, and the thing dropped, revealing Shane’s thick, blocky body. The only time in his life Shane had ever felt graceful and fine-boned had been in Brandon’s bed, under the magic of his hands. Those hands were traveling the fronts of his thighs now, tickling the thick brown hair that grew at Shane’s groin.

“You ever think about waxing?” Brandon purred, and Shane’s head tilted back onto Brandon’s shoulder.