by
In 1915, gay men don't get married, they don't take care of children together, and if they do, they don't get caught. Gael and Jack are a lot of firsts to each other. Gael is the first other gay man Jack has ever met, kissed, or wanted. Jack is the first really decent man who only see an Irish gangster and whore that Gael has ever known. Gael and Jack just work for each other. First love is fabulous, even if it's forbidden. Enduring love is hard, extra hard in the face of WWII, Prohibition, and a world that can't know them as they are. The story is presented as a serial and is free to read.
- 10 To Be Read lists
- 2 Currently Reading lists
Publisher: Independently Published
Cover Artists:
Genres:
Tropes: Aliens Among Us, Interspecies Romance, Roguish Thief, Time Travel
Word Count: 90000
Setting: South Carolina, New York, various
Languages Available: English
Tropes: Aliens Among Us, Interspecies Romance, Roguish Thief, Time Travel
Word Count: 90000
Setting: South Carolina, New York, various
Languages Available: English
Caught off guard, Jack stood there, arms at his sides, eyes staring, wide open, over Gael’s shoulder as if their disparate timelines clashed. Gael’s raw wet emotion smeared across his cheek, soaked into his beard. “Of course, Gael,” he said, voice quieter than he’d meant it to be, cautious, disturbed. “You’re my dear brother now.”
His words only made Gael hold him tighter, one hand working into his short hair, gripping him almost painfully, as if it weren’t Gael who were drowning, but Jack, as if it were Gael trying to pull him back from disaster. Tear wet lips brushed over Jack’s ear, warm, and almost shockingly, threateningly cold at the same moment, “I’m not your fucking brother.”
READ MOREThat tremble went over Jack’s shoulders then, leaving him trembling in Gael’s arms. “I just mean,” Jack said, feeling more like the lost boy who’d met Gael in the train station, as if the whole world had become the overwhelmingly strange New York where he’d met this wild creature in the first place. He cleared his throat and thought about pulling away, but in the end didn’t. His hands rubbed lightly at Gael’s sides, demure, shy. “I mean. We’re in public, Gael.”
Gael’s teeth held the edge of his ear and he growled very quietly.
Jack could just see the look in Gael’s eyes. It was a look that he’d memorized long since and seen in his most pleasant dreams. Suddenly his mouth went drier, his breath sank deeper into his being and he washed his mouth, tongue searching for words and ability as he stood there in Gael’s embrace. It was as though he only then realized how cold he’d been, how smooth and sterile and worthless his life had been, how soft and polite it had become.
Those teeth on his ear bit a little tighter. Tongue brushed at the edge of his ear and maybe the world wasn’t quite that soft anymore. Lips and breath still against Jack’s ear, Gael purred, “Hardly public, baby. It’s just you. It’s just me. Miss me?”
“Oh god.” The safe, orderly, proper, patriarchal world dropped out from under Jack’s feet and the only thing holding him was Gael’s arms around him. “We’re... we’re .. where are we?”
When Gael pulled back enough to look at him, there was that smile, crooked and bright. That smile outshone the moon. The moon behind him, the moon gave him a halo more fitting to an angel than the embodiment of Earth that Gael clearly was. Blond curls, and one sparkling blue eye, and Jack suddenly brought both hands up, pressed them to Gael’s cheeks, feeling the stubble that was so real, so mundane and normal and he pressed forward, kissing him, awkward, with no more finesse than he would have had in the train station where they met.
COLLAPSE
