An Excerpt and Blurb From Full Release Available at Torquere Press

BLURB:

When studio accountant, Matt Latowski orders an erotic massage on the one-year anniversary of a bad break-up, he’s surprised to find the masseur calling him two weeks later for a date. Unable to say no, Matt begins a journey that leads to his becoming a murder suspect, and eventually an erotic masseur himself!

EXCERPT:

Eddie gave me his crooked smile, except this time it was different. It was shy, almost nervous. Like he was afraid I wouldn’t even let him in. He looked pretty much the same. Maybe a little tired. He wore a tight pair of Levi’s and a thin brown turtle neck sweater. He hadn’t shaved and the dark stubble made him sexier.

“You gonna invite me in?” he asked.

“Oh, sorry,” I said, quickly stepping out of his way. “Come on in, please.”

He set the table and his bag near the front door, then grabbed my collar and pulled me down for a quick friendly kiss. His tongue slipped into my mouth and explored. I allowed myself to enjoy this for a moment then pushed him away. A date should have some kind of other activity before the sex starts. As I led him into the house, he hooked a finger into my belt loop. I glanced back at him and laughed.

“You’re nervous,” he said. “So am I.”

He didn’t seem nervous. In fact, he seemed completely in control. But why would he feel like he was in control? This wasn’t--Wait, I was over-thinking this, just like Peter said. I needed to relax and go with it.

“How about some wine?” I asked.

“Yum.”

I pulled together the bottle of wine, a corkscrew and a couple glasses. Eddie was inches away as I did. I led him into the living room. Aside from the disruption of the construction, the room looked pretty much as it had since Jeremy and I moved in. Early on we’d spent an entire day on furniture row in West L.A. in order to find the least expensive, most comfortable black leather sofa the city had to offer. I complemented the sofa with a couple of wooden, vaguely Chinese chairs I’d found at an import shop for a very low price. Beneath, the chairs and the sofa was an area rug with a geometric pattern. A glass coffee table and two Jackson Pollack prints on the walls finished off the room. Trespassing slightly into the room was a Danish modern dining table found at a garage sale. Jeremy and I had spent an entire weekend recovering the chairs (with a fair amount of fighting) in a pattern similar to the living room’s area rug.

"What happened to your kitchen?" Eddie asked, as I opened the wine.

Nervously, I dumped out the story of my thieving ex. I knew better than talk about Jeremy, and not just because I’d just read it on the Internet, I’d watched as previous dates had mentally stamped BAGGAGE across my forehead in big red letters. Strangely, Eddie didn’t seem to care.

When I finished my story of woe, he said, "Wow, that sucks." Then he licked his lips.

I focused enough to say, "Yeah, it does."

There was an awkward silence. I remembered to maintain eye contact. His eyes were a pretty blue. A pretty blue distracting enough that I couldn’t think of a single question to ask him. Finally, he said, "You’re staring."

"Oh sorry," I said, looking away.

“You want to kiss me, don’t you?”
I did. But not yet. I changed the subject by asking the first question that popped into my head. "So, why did you call me? Honestly."

"Necessity," he said. "Some times I need to see someone who’s not going to pay me. It keeps me honest." Then he smiled. "Don’t worry. I won’t go all Glenn Close on you."

I laughed at his joke, something the Internet had recommended. My laugh was a little strangled though. I hadn’t been worried about him getting stalker-ish until he’d said that. Should I worry? Oh, God, I should worry. To cover my discomfort, I went into what remained of the kitchen and sent our dinners for their final spin round the microwave. Eddie followed me like I had him on a tether.

“Sixty more seconds,” I said as I hit start on the microwave.

“What can we do for sixty seconds?” He asked. “Oh, I know.”

He pulled me into a kiss. I was a sweet kiss, made sexy by the stubble roughing up my face. I was hard by the time the microwave beeped. We took our plates over to the table and sat down. He sat next to me and rested his left hand on my thigh.

As we ate we chatted about the food, which wasn’t great but Eddie pretended it was. I tried to find out more about him but he wouldn’t say much. Grew up in the valley. Left home early, possibly under less than ideal circumstances. When I tried to get specifics he turned the conversation back to me, and my life.

Over the course of the evening, he found out a lot about me.

"What made you become a masseur?" I asked after I took the dishes into the kitchen and set them on the standing butcher’s block that was my only counter. I’d leave them there until I got around to washing them in the bathroom sink.

He answered with a question. "What made you become an accountant?"

"I like numbers."

Eddie flashed his pretty eyes at me and said, "I like men." He’d been making that obvious since I answered the door.

"I’ll bet there’s more to it than that."

"There is," he said simply but didn’t elaborate. He changed the subject slightly by saying, "I see all sorts of men. Important men. Successful men. Rich men. But when they climb on my table they’re all the same. Naked. Vulnerable. Needing the...relief I have to offer."

"So you’re a humanitarian?" I suggested.

"Something like that," he said.

"You must have your share of bad experiences."

He didn’t answer. Instead, he smiled and kissed me again. "Let’s go play."