no sex - Stories

Owen has never met his best friend.

For four years Xavier has been a voice in his headset. Xavier knows about the dog Owen lost at nine. He knows which voice Owen uses when he's lying about being fine.

Xavier lives two thousand miles away. That's what Owen believes.

At midnight, when a man appears under the tree across the street and won't leave, Owen calls the one person who always picks up.

Xavier tells him to breathe and stay away from the window, and promises he's safe.

Xavier means every word.

He's lying about almost everything else.

The Montana sky is wide, coffee strong, and wounded souls are never turned away from Two Spirits Horse Ranch. When Jake finds a young stranger left for dead at the north gate, his promise to protect him draws the whole ranch into a fight against fear, memory, and the men who might return to finish what they started. Warm, funny, tender, and suspenseful, In the Barb is a Western romance about found family, survival, and the kind of love that begins as rescue but grows into home.

Under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Benjamin and Alexander built a life behind the word roommate. Afghanistan cost them the rest of it. Now, every evening at dusk, Benjamin sits by a river with the only photograph of the day he let himself be seen.

He kept the photograph. The river keeps the rest.

In a world where humans and orcs are forced to live in symbiosis, not everyone can choose for themselves how to live their life. And often enough it's forced to take an unexpected turn, same for Susanna and Dremakk. Some turns are negotiable, though...