A warm welcome to author Lynn Kelling joining us today here at Love Bytes to share an exclusive excerpt on her newest release “Loving the Master”.
She also brought along a giveaway to participate in!
Welcome Lynn 🙂
Book Title: Loving the Master
Author: Lynn Kelling
Publisher: Fantastic Fiction Publishing
Imprint: ForbiddenFiction
Book’s Publication Date: 2/9/16
Blurb:
Billionaire Dominant David Davenport needs a break from the loveless isolation imposed by wealth, responsibility, and the stress of running the Manse, his private gay club. While at lunch with an old friend, David finds himself enchanted by the charming and submissive nature of Shea Whittier, their young waiter. David offers to help the young man out with his personal troubles, never suspecting the danger he’s putting them both in. (M/M)
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Shea Whittier barely glanced down at the small, two-person table he stood next to, his head spinning with all of the many things he needed to remember to do before returning to the kitchen. Like silverware. He couldn’t forget the silverware for table six. Oh, and table three still needed to give him their drink order. He hoped they didn’t take forever to decide. This day had been long enough without lingerers clogging the flow. Wait, who needed the silverware again? Fuck, he couldn’t remember. He wasn’t a details kind of guy, unless you counted remembering extremely relevant information from the Captain America comics, Silver Age through the spinoffs involving the Avengers. Which he did think should count, since he always managed to impress the hell out of the other nerds at the local comics shop, and that was pretty much the only circumstance in his life in which he’d managed to impress anyone.
What was he trying to remember again?
Take the order of the people you’re standing next to, stupid, he reminded himself when he realized the patrons were staring expectantly up at him. They were kind of good looking actually. Really good looking. Especially the one who looked like he could be Tony Stark’s hopefully-less-arrogant younger brother.
Right.
He recited, with a sincere, sunny grin, “Hi, welcome to Teresa’s! My name is Shea and I’ll be your server. Can I start you off with some drinks?”
The music track changed abruptly and a heavy-thumping country song began to play instead. That meant one thing.
Nervousness fluttered in his stomach. That small but potent apprehension sent his thoughts reeling, his emotions spiking.
His beaming, professional grin faltered, turned crooked and awkward. Nearby, some of the other staff began to hoot excitedly, clapping their hands along with the beat and gathering in the aisles to dance. The two male customers seated at Shea’s table were still watching him curiously, their full attention on him and not at all on their menus. He really wished they were looking at the menus instead.
“Oh God, no,” was Shea’s pained murmur.
“Is everything all right, Shea?” Stark’s hotter brother asked. There did seem to be real concern behind the question, instead of impatience with Shea’s admittedly chaotic social skills, which pulled his attention in quickly, helping him to focus.
“Oh, yeah. I’m fine, I think. Thank you for checking, sir. That’s very kind and… observant… of you.” He bowed his head and flipped open his notepad, pen poised ever-so-hopefully to take their orders. If they ordered something, he had a completely valid reason to not also be dancing. Wholeheartedly wanting his handsome customers to order something, he told them, “I’d be more than happy to tell you about our specials, if you’re interested? I can personally attest that they’re each spectacular and would love to give you a chance to try them.”
Please look at your menus, he prayed. Please.
“We’d actually heard that Teresa’s has gotten a lot of recognition in the press lately for the gourmet macaroni and cheese, which is why we decided to stop by.”
“Oh, you’re absolutely right about that, sir. They just reprinted the menus with the little award badge from the magazine contest right there next to where it’s listed, see?” Shea pointed at the side of the menu in the customer’s hand and got a strong whiff of an intoxicatingly masculine cologne. He also got a brief glimpse down the slightly unbuttoned neck of the guy’s shirt, seeing tan skin and being really inappropriately unable to stop looking at it for a moment. “Would, uh, you like to order that now, or…”
“Yes,” the customer smiled. “I would, actually.”
“Let’s take a little more time to consider the other offerings,” the other man at the table interjected.
The hooting and cheering got closer, the clapping louder. There was a shout of, “Whitt! Come on!” and he was tempted to wave back at whoever had called, but continued, hoping against hope that the customers needed his attention. Making the customers happy was much more important than abandoning them in order to dance horribly in the aisles. Please, oh dear customers of mine, he thought silently, save me from my inescapable humiliation? Please?
“That’s fine,” Shea told them. “I can come back to take your orders but can I get you started with drinks first? While you look? We have freshly brewed peach tea which I highly recommend for its, uh… peachiness, or maybe something from the bar? I mean, it’s lunchtime, but what the heck, right? I know I could use a stiff drink right now, not that I’ve ever had alcohol or can actually carry it to the table myself, since I’m not twenty-one yet—”
“Whitt!”
At Shea’s table, the elegantly dressed, taller guy kind of had a Brother Voodoo vibe about him, since Shea could easily see him being able to hypnotize anyone into doing what he wanted, probably—hopefully—in a non-creepy way. He smiled coyly in his companion’s direction but Shea was the only one to notice. The companion—or Tony Stark’s less obnoxious, facial-hair-free sibling—was a disturbingly handsome, dark-brown-haired, light-green-eyed man seated across the table, and he seemed to have eyes only for Shea. The rapt attention from someone like him made Shea quickly lower his gaze and clear his throat, willing his face not to turn pink. He could only hope the staring was for a good reason.
Shea’s skin felt too tight. Like an overstuffed sausage, he thought. I’ve become a sausage. Dude, stop thinking about phallic things while there’s a hot guy paying attention to you. He’ll be able to tell. Your luck is exactly that bad.
“We need another minute to decide,” Brother Voodoo told Shea. “I think your co-workers over there want you to go dance with them.”
Without acknowledging this statement, the other customer said, “You seem a little overwhelmed, Shea. Take a deep breath. Nothing else matters right now except addressing the needs of your customers, and you’re more than capable of doing that, right?”
“Right,” Shea responded. He took a deep breath, as instructed, focusing only on the green eyes of the man before him. The noise and chaos of the restaurant around them faded back, holding much less of his attention or concern. His hands stopped shaking and he smiled in thanks.
After winking at Shea, the guy’s warm smile widened, drawing Shea in more. Then, the brunette’s gaze swept downward from Shea’s face, from his blue eyes and light brown, slightly shaggy hair, over his lean body and low enough that Shea did indeed start to blush. “There, you seem steadier. See how easy that was?”
Shyly, Shea bowed his head, dropping his gaze. “It’s never usually that easy.”
“It should be.”
Lynn Kelling began writing in order to tell stories that aren’t afraid of the dark, don’t hold anything back and always strive to be memorable, forging lasting attachments between character and reader. Her inspiration comes from taking a closer look at behaviors and ideas lurking at the fringes of life—basically anything that people may hesitate to speak of in mixed company, but everyone wonders about anyway. Her work is driven by the taboo in order to expose the humanity within it. Lynn is an artist, designer and lover of any form of creative self-expression that comes from a place of honesty and emotion, whether it’s body art or opera. She has had multiple novels published, has written over seventy works of erotic fiction of varying lengths, and always has several novels in progress.
Author Links: lynnkelling.com Facebook Twitter Pinterest email: lynn@lynnkelling.com
Rafflecopter: 1 set of paperbacks of both Bound by Lies & Loving the Master.
Goodreads: 1 paperback copy of Loving the Master
