Shiloh’s Secret by KD Ellis
Book 2 in the Out in Austin series
General Release Date: 16th November 2021
Word Count: 92,026
Book Length: SUPER NOVEL
Pages: 367
Genres:
ACTION AND ADVENTURE,CONTEMPORARY,CRIME,EROTIC ROMANCE,GAY,GLBTQI,MEN IN UNIFORM,THRILLERS AND SUSPENSE
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Book Description
Shiloh Beckett has a trust fund, a stalker and a secret. He doesn’t trust easily, but his new bodyguard might just break the cycle.
Shiloh Beckett might be the sole heir to Beckett Industries, one of the leading tech companies in the world, but the last thing he wants is to become another suit-and-tie. He’s learned the hard way that money can’t buy happiness, just a better brand of misery.
Gage Tucker lives by the motto Protect and Serve. Raised by a cop who failed his family, Gage chose to serve his country the only way he knew how—with boots on the ground and a gun in his hand. After a mission gone wrong, Gage came home with a broken body but the same drive to protect. Months of rehab later, he joined Eagle Security as a Personal Protection Officer and he’s been a bodyguard ever since. Protecting a trust-fund brat from the paparazzi isn’t what he signed up for.
Soon he learns that there’s more than just the media after Shiloh, and the secrets the boy is hiding will change everything. If he can’t convince Shiloh to trust him, how can he keep him safe?
Reader advisory: This book contains scenes of violence, rape, reference to past child abuse, self-harm and suicidal ideation, and PTSD,. There are references to drug use, sex work, elements of BDSM—Daddy kink and power play—and parental neglect.
Shiloh kept his eyes firmly latched on the roses dotting the nurse’s scrubs as she withdrew the needle from the crook of his arm and started capping the blood-filled vials that lined the metal tray. It wasn’t the blood that bothered him. It was the needles. He wasn’t afraid of them—rather, years of using them for stress relief left his fingers itching to grab one to shove in deeper, until the pinch turned to burning.
The nurse gave him a bright smile. Her voice was high-pitched, too cheery for a woman currently unwrapping a pair of long cotton swabs. “Okay, just two left and you’ll be all set to go.” She held the first swab up. “Open up and say ‘Ah’.”
Shiloh opened his mouth obediently and she quickly dragged the swab along his cheek. Then, Shiloh reluctantly bent over so she could slide the second swab between his other cheeks. He winced as it probed uncomfortably into his ass, which was still sore from last night’s ‘visitor’.
“All set. We’ll text your initial results within the hour but do make sure to follow up with us again in three months. Have a great day!”
Shiloh doubted anyone that was showing up at the dingy clinic tucked between a UPS store and an out-of-business hair salon for an STI checkup after a broken condom mishap was having a ‘great day’, but he didn’t bother arguing as he re-tucked his dick into his panties and tugged up his skinny jeans. At least he wasn’t leaving empty-handed.
He shoved the scrip for a prophylactic antibiotic into his pocket, slid his designer sunglasses onto his face, then headed outside to his car. It was a short drive over to his favorite pharmacy where he left the scrip to get filled. Since he had time to kill, he decided to visit a few of his favorite shops in East Austin.
Not that he bought anything. He wasn’t ready for his dad to track him down yet, and a purchase here would have a pair of goons on his tail before he could blink. He’d be lucky if his dad hadn’t already put a hold on his credit card anyway, like he had after the last time he’d skipped out on dinner. For some odd reason, shit like that pissed the old man off. He wasn’t sure why, since Dad never wanted to spend time with him anyway, unless there was a lecture involved.
Shiloh shoved down the frustration and started thumbing through the racks of clothing. He slung a few cute tops over his arms. He wouldn’t buy them, but trying them on was nearly as exciting. It was fun at first, but after the third trip to the fitting room, it became just sad. Shiloh fingered a pretty pink chiffon scarf. He draped it over his shoulders, playing with the fringe where it fell over his chest.
“It suits you,” a voice said from behind him.
Shiloh’s mouth twitched into a smile as he slowly turned. The boutique attendant was older than him by a decade, his dark hair coiffed into a pompadour, and though his suit was clearly off the rack, it had been tailored to fit—not that Shiloh expected anything less from someone who worked at Vale. The boutique was known to cater to the rich and famous. Its employees had to look the part.
“It does, doesn’t it?” Shiloh sighed and ran his fingers over the silk.
Ten minutes later, Shiloh was on his knees behind the cash register. Five minutes after that he was strolling from the shop, salt on his lips and with the pretty scarf draped around his neck.
Traffic snarled at the intersection and the sidewalk was cluttered with people. A man in a tie-dye ‘Keep Austin Weird’ shirt and cowboy boots ran into him at the crosswalk, hollering a pleasant apology over his shoulder. Shiloh blew him a kiss and kept strolling.
The glint of sunlight on a camera lens had him veering sharply to the right. It was probably a tourist, but it could be paparazzi. He didn’t mind flirting with the cameras most days, since he knew each headline pissed his dad off a little bit more, but today his goal was to stay under the radar. As soon as his dad got wind of his location, he’d be back under lock and key again. It was early afternoon, and the goal was to make it home late enough that his father would be in bed and the guards too busy gambling in the guardhouse to pay him much mind.
He cut over a few streets, until he found one that looked paparazzi-free. It was the only benefit to living in Austin instead of LA. Too few celebrities meant fewer of the vultures—the downside, of course, being that there were too few celebrities to take the lenses off him. It didn’t matter what he was doing, they found a way to twist it. Like last week, when he’d dropped his spoon under the table and they sold a pic claiming he was ‘blowing’ his date. Like Shiloh went on dates in the first place. It had been a boring dinner with his father’s accountant at some restaurant he couldn’t pronounce the name of.
It was ironic, really, how many times they’d twisted him doing perfectly normal things into a sex scandal, and yet, not once had they gotten a picture of him with a trick. He almost wished they would. Some days, he imagined himself tipping one off, getting caught with a fat, married man’s dick lodged halfway down his throat. Maybe that would be the final straw.
He doubted it. He hadn’t been disinherited yet, so the only thing it would get him was a tighter curfew and another guard who’d spend more time staring at his ass than guarding it. He had a plan to finally get out from under his father’s controlling thumb, and it kind of hinged on him having a certain freedom of movement.
He stopped at an open-air stall along the sidewalk. An older Mexican woman named Rosa sat behind it, a bright red rebozo draped over her shoulders. “Ola, Doña. Cuánto por esto?”
She rubbed the scarf between her fingers, examining the weave with a critical eye. It wasn’t the first time he’d sold to her, but she went through the same process each time. She harrumphed. “Veinte dolares.”
He switched to English. He’d taken the two credits of Spanish mandatory to graduate high school but remembered very little except for how to find the bathroom and how to count to twenty—which was the only reason he knew how much she was offering for the scarf.
“It’s worth at least sixty,” Shiloh bargained. Really, it retailed for over a hundred, but asking for that much would get him laughed away from the stall.
“Forty. No more.” Rosa held up the bills. “Take it or go away.”
He snatched the bills and regretfully passed over the pretty scarf. “Gracias, Rosa,” Shiloh said before leaving the stall behind.
He really needed to come up with a better way to make money. He got tips for dancing at Envy, and that was nice, even if the tips didn’t always amount to much. Lately, though, he’d found himself spending more time watching the johns in the audience than dancing, and that, more than anything, scared him.
If he couldn’t dance anymore, where did that leave him?
Anger blossomed in his chest. Without thinking, he kicked the empty tin can that appeared on the sidewalk in front of his pink Chucks. Except…it wasn’t empty, and when he kicked it, it went rolling out into the street, spreading nickels and dimes like a trail of breadcrumbs behind it.
“Come on, man. What the heck?” a young man whined as he scrambled after the coins, plucking them up and shoving them into his threadbare pockets.
“Shit, sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.” Shiloh crouched down beside the teenager and helped gather up what he could reach, but a good handful had already spilled down a sidewalk grate.
“Clearly.” The kid glared at the grate like the force of his anger was going to make it cough the coins back up. He dropped back against the lamppost he’d been leaning on with a huff. “Whatever. Probably just pennies anyway,”
Shiloh shoved his hands into his pockets. Well, his fingers, anyway, since that’s all that would fit in the tight pants he was wearing—and stared at the kid. The ragged hems of his jeans crept halfway up his shins, like he’d had a growth spurt since he’d first bought them, but the waistband gaped open over his skinny hips. And don’t get him started on the sorry shape of his shoes. They were more air than cloth at this point. If he wasn’t homeless, he was only one step up from it—and clearly starving.
“Can I buy you lunch?” Shiloh blurted. “Or, um…a coffee?”
The boy glanced up, trailing his gaze over Shiloh’s outfit. Maybe he was embarrassed at the thought of being seen with a man fully decked out in pink or maybe he was looking for a weapon. In the end, he shrugged and stood up, hiking his jeans higher when they sagged. “Sure. I know a place.”
Shiloh’d planned on an Italian restaurant a few streets over but didn’t care enough to argue. He was likely going to charge the meal to his dad’s card anyway. Instead of to a restaurant, though, the kid led him into an alley, stopping beside a dumpster.
“So how do you want to do this? You want a blow job, or…?” The kid hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his jeans and made to shove them down.
Shiloh immediately backed up, his hands lifted. “No, shit, sorry. I actually meant lunch, not…”
The boy eyed him warily. “People never mean lunch when they say ‘lunch’.”
“Look, kid—” Shiloh started.
“Not a kid,” the kid growled. “I’m sixteen. I’ve been taking care of myself for years, so fuck off.” He pushed past Shiloh, headed for the street.
Shiloh didn’t think before he grabbed for the teenager’s arm. He just knew if he let the boy out of his sight, he’d never see him again. The kid yanked his arm away, slamming into the alley wall in his haste to get free.
“Sorry, sorry.” Shiloh lifted his hands again in apology. “Let me take you to lunch. Real lunch, with actual food.”
“Why? If you don’t want my ass, what’s in it for you?”
“Well, kid—okay, sorry, not a kid—but it’s not like I know your name, dude, so what else am I supposed to call you?” Shiloh rolled his eyes and planted his fist on a cocked hip, lifting a brow in question.
“Riley,” the kid finally said. “You can call me Riley.”
“Great. Well, Riley, I get to apologize for kicking over what was probably your lunch fund, and I get company for what would otherwise have been a boring meal at a taco stand or Tex-Mex or something. Nobody is sticking their dick in anyone, I promise.”
After several moments of silence, Riley finally spoke, though his shoulders remained tense and his feet stayed pointing toward the alley, one step away from fleeing. “I guess you can buy me lunch. But I’m not fucking you. You promised.”
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KD Ellis
KD Ellis is a professional cat wrangler by day, and an author by night. She moved from a small town to an even smaller village to live with her husband and wife and their two children. She loves reading—anything with men loving men. She writes queer romance in between working her two jobs and cuddling her pets—all six of them, which confuses the turtle.
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