Painted Lace
K.M. Neuhold
M/M Contemporary Romance
Release Date: 10.09.20
Blurb
Austin never realized he was painting his life with shades of gray, until Keaton came along and injected a rainbow of color.
Keaton is a tornado of chaos and paint, which turns out to be more exciting than I ever would’ve imagined. I love my organized, predictable life…or at least I thought I did. But what started as a casual hookup is slowly becoming so much more, and I find myself loving the beautiful mess more than I expected.
Can two people so different really make it work once feelings get involved?
**** This story was originally published as Kiss and Run in the Valentine’s Inc series. It has since undergone significant changes and doubled in length.
I slide off his lap and tug him down onto the drop cloth already spread out on my living room floor.
“Hold on, please. I need to find the right colors,” I explain with a wink, grabbing a fresh palate and examining my tubes of color, choosing the ones I want and then picking out a brush.
When I turn around again, Austin has his arms behind his head, waiting patiently, his skin bathed in moonlight and a smile on his face. Kneeling beside him, I dip my brush in the blob of red paint first and then drag it across his stomach.
He jerks and giggles, the sound settling in my chest.
“Oh my god, that’s cold, and it tickles,” he complains.
“Shh, you’re a canvas.”
The second stroke doesn’t surprise him as much, but he does giggle again.
“What are you painting?” he asks, once I’ve added a few different colors and started to blend them.
“Your soul,” I answer.
“My soul?”
“Yup,” I smirk. “The red is the passion that overflows in you, the orange and yellow are for your warmth,” I explain the colors I’ve added so far.
“And the blue?” he asks as I add a fourth color.
“The blue is your loneliness.”
He quiets, his expression growing serious. “I’m not so lonely anymore.”
“Me either.”
Our eyes meet, and all the unspoken things on the tips of our tongues hang between us in the air. 
Author K.M.Neuhold is a complete romance junkie, a total sap in every way. She started her journey as an author in new adult, MF romance, but after a chance reading of an MM book she was completely hooked on everything about lovely- and sometimes damaged- men finding their Happily Ever After together. She has a strong passion for writing characters with a lot of heart and soul, and a bit of humor as well. And she fully admits that her OCD tendencies of making sure every side character has a full backstory will likely always lead to every book having a spin-off or series. When she’s not writing she’s a lion tamer, an astronaut, and a superhero…just kidding, she’s likely watching Netflix and snuggling with her husky while her amazing husband brings her coffee.
