Today I am so pleased to welcome A.M. Arthur to Joyfully Jay. A.M. has come to share an exclusive excerpt from her latest release, Come What May, the first book in the All Saints series (you can check out my review here). She has also brought along a great giveaway. Please join me in giving her a big welcome!

Excerpt

“I’m sorry.”

Jonas blinked at him, streetlights casting odd shadows on his face. “For what?”

“Bringing you here. Practically humping you on the sidewalk. Making us targets. All of the above.”

“You didn’t make us targets. The jerk who threw the bottle made us targets.”

“I know but you’re still working on this self-acceptance and being out thing, and I dragged you into one of the city’s most notorious gay bars.”

“Have I complained once about that?”

“Well…no.” Tate couldn’t shake the sense that he’d fucked up, though, just like he’d felt it earlier on the sidewalk. He’d danced Jonas into an orgasm, and that had sent Jonas fleeing the scene of the crime. Tate couldn’t decide if tonight had been fun, or an unmitigated disaster.

Jonas cupped his cheeks in both palms. “I have never felt more alive in my life than I did dancing with you tonight. I was me and no one else. I loved it. I don’t care how it ended, those minutes were amazing.”

His words shattered some of the doubt tangled around Tate’s heart. “I don’t want to do anything you’ll regret. I like you too much to fuck this up.”

“Good.” Jonas kissed his forehead. “Let’s get off the ground, my ass is freezing.”

Tate laughed. “Mine too.”

They helped each other up. Tate unlocked the doors so they could get inside. He started the engine, grateful the old machine still spat warm air pretty quickly.

“So what next?” Tate asked. “Home?”

“You ready to go home?”

Not if there’s more kissing in our immediate future. “Not really. I thought maybe you were done, after the bottle.”

Something in Jonas’s face hardened. Dug in. Tate imagined that was the look he gave his fellow frat boys when a challenge was laid down and Jonas had decided to accept. Jonas leaned across the console. “Like I said before, two people had erections earlier but only one of us came.”

The blatant seduction in his voice caressed Tate’s skin, dancing across his abdomen and down to wake up his dick and balls. No sex while in the closet was a stupid rule anyway. Sex was sex, and he really wanted to have sex with Jonas.

It wasn’t like they were dating. “You plan on making me come?”

“As hard as I possibly can.”

Tate’s mind raced, searching for a place they could make this happen. His apartment was off-limits while the girls were there. He didn’t like the idea of sneaking into the house and down into the basement, only to have to sneak out again later. Paps was a notoriously light sleeper, and getting caught was as good as outing Jonas without his permission.

His regular hookup landing pad would work.

Maybe.

“I have an idea for a place to go,” Tate said, “but I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

“Where?”

“Marc gave me a key to his place a while ago. He said I could use it if I needed someplace to, um, hang out.”

Jonas frowned. “Hang out?”

“Have sex.”

“Like with the guys you meet on your phone?”

“Yeah. I mean, Marc doesn’t care, and he understands why I don’t want to bring random people back to the apartment, so he lets me use his place.”

“You’re taking me to your hookup pad, is what you’re saying?”

Tate dropped his forehead against the steering wheel. “Nevermind, I can think of something else. Bad idea.”

“Tate, I’m not offended.”

He sat up straight, surprised. “Really?”

“Our options are kind of limited for being alone together, and I know I’m not just a random hookup for you. You aren’t for me, either.”

“Yeah?” Tate liked hearing that this was more than sex for Jonas. “I want you to be sure. I mean, an accidental blast-off on the dance floor is one thing, but this is us deliberately going somewhere to have sex. I don’t want it to hurt our friendship.”

“Tate, if all I wanted was sex, I could go out and find it. And I used to, because girls threw themselves at me, but I’m sick of that kind of sex because it was always so empty. I never felt connected to any of them, and I mostly didn’t care if they got off.” He curled his fingers around Tate’s. “I care if you get off.”


Blurb

Come What May by A.M. ArthurJonas needs Tate. He just doesn’t know it yet.

Or at least, he doesn’t want to admit it. Because there is no way Jonas Ashcroft is gay. He’s a straight, carefree frat boy player, just like any good son of a conservative state senator. If only his struggle to convince everyone—especially himself—didn’t leave him so miserable. No matter how many girls or bottles he drowns himself in, Jonas can neither escape nor accept who he is.

Enter Tate. He’s smart, confident, and instantly sees right through Jonas’s surly exterior. Sure, he’s done things in life he’s not proud of, but he knows who he is and what he wants. And what he wants is Jonas. As their easy friendship intensifies into something more, Tate introduces Jonas to a life he’s never known. One filled with acceptance and sex and a love that terrifies and excites them both.

But some inner demons refuse to be shaken off so easily. When Jonas’s old life barges in, he faces a shattering choice, one that could destroy everything he and Tate have fought so hard for. Sometimes love just isn’t enough—and sometimes it’s exactly what you need.


Bio

A.M. Arthur was born and raised in the same kind of small town that she likes to write about, a stone’s throw from both beach resorts and generational farmland.  She’s been creating stories in her head since she was a child and scribbling them down nearly as long, in a losing battle to make the fictional voices stop.  She credits an early fascination with male friendships (bromance hadn’t been coined yet back then) with her later discovery of and subsequent love affair with m/m romance stories. A.M. Arthur’s work is available from Samhain Publishing, Carina Press, Dreamspinner Press, and SMP Swerve.

When not exorcising the voices in her head, she toils away in a retail job that tests her patience and gives her lots of story fodder.  She can also be found in her kitchen, pretending she’s an amateur chef and trying to not poison herself or others with her cuisine experiments.

Where to find the author:


Giveaway

A.M. has brought a $25 gift card to Amazon or Barnes & Noble to give away to one lucky reader on her tour. Just follow the Rafflecopter below to enter. 

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