Signed, Your Deadly Admirer by Aver Rigsly
Book 2 in the Noir Nights series
General Release Date: 27th December 2022
Word Count: 46,089
Book Length: SHORT NOVEL
Pages: 183
Genres:
GAY,GLBTQI,HISTORICAL,ROMANCE
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Book Description
From number-one fan to number-one threat.
Ricky Morris, ex-cop turned private investigator for the elite Manhattanites of New York’s Upper East Side, came close to ending up on the slab when the St. Valentine’s Day murderer had him staring point-blank down the barrel of their gun.
Thankfully, NYPD officer Timothy Ward was there to save his neck and bring the murderer down. While Ricky and Timothy proved they could work well together in the shadows, their undeniable and dangerous passion for each other is leading to a forbidden relationship—the kind that Ricky promised himself he would never get tangled up in again.
Breaking it off with Timothy is hard to do though, and Ricky finds himself needing his help once again in a new case. The most famous burlesque dancer in Manhattan, Ms. Faye Fontaine—the Parisian Princess—has been receiving letters from a secret admirer…increasingly sinister letters, and Ricky knows all too well how these things play out.
Will Ricky and Timothy be able to work together and find out whose obsession has become deadly, or will the rampant heat of their forbidden feelings bring them down in flames before they can save the girl?
Reader advisory: This book contains period-typical attitudes, including slurs, and toward casual sex (no condoms m/m). There is on-page gunplay, and slow-burn MCs over course of series.
Walking into Ricky’s office at night was strange for Timothy, who was unfamiliar with the space in the weird twilight glow of the streetlamps outside spilling through the bay window by Ricky’s desk. Timothy had seen Ricky’s office a handful of times, but the foyer and main space were eerie in their shadows.
“Hold on, I’ll get the light,” Ricky said, stepping in and hitting the switch before closing the door behind them and taking Timothy’s jacket to hang up. Liz’s desk nearby sat empty, the top neat and tidy, and Timothy followed Ricky farther inside into his office, though Ricky didn’t stop there, leading them back through the door on the far wall into his private quarters that Timothy had never seen before.
There was something thrilling about being here so late, in Ricky’s personal space. Timothy had been quite surprised when Ricky had agreed to this, and now it felt like a small victory to make it this far.
Past Ricky’s office was a living room, fashionably decorated with an extremely expensive-looking leather couch and ottoman, a heavy-set mahogany coffee table and a matching mahogany-topped wet bar in the corner, which seemed to be decently stocked. Everything was pristine and fresh from the showroom floor, but there was an older-looking Queen Anne wing chair by an impressive brick-faced fireplace and an old cathedral-style radio that had to be an antique. Perhaps it was a hand-me-down. A reading lamp and messy side table littered with stacks of old newspapers, empty cola bottles and a full ashtray completed the corner.
“Make yourself comfortable,” Ricky said. He made his way over to the wet bar. “How does a highball sound?”
“Sounds great.”
Timothy was about to take a seat on the couch when a built-in bookcase on the right wall caught his eye. There were certainly nowhere close to the number of books Timothy had managed to cram into his own small apartment, but Ricky had a fair number, and Timothy couldn’t stop his curiosity and drifted over.
A few titles popped out right away, literary classics like Moby Dick and The Picture of Dorian Gray, and several titles by authors like Edgar Allen Poe and even John Keats. The many works of fiction were accompanied by an equal number of titles on photography. Histories of portable cameras, dark room and home developing guides, even a few art books of photographs by famous New Yorkers Alfred Stieglitz and Berenice Abbott. Timothy didn’t miss either how the bottom two shelves were chock-full of record albums of all sorts of types.
Ricky stepped up behind him, drink in hand, and Timothy accepted it with a quick thanks.
“I know my collection is not anywhere close to as impressive as yours,” Ricky said.
“I’m still impressed. Have you always been into photography, or is it purely a professional interest?”
Ricky took a sip of his drink, a smirk teasing at the corner of his mouth. “Believe it or not, I was always interested in cameras, even as a boy. Seeing the press at the baseball games fascinated me to no end, more so than the actual game itself, though I didn’t really get a chance to pursue the hobby until I became a private eye.”
“Never too late, right?”
“No. Would you like to sit?” Ricky asked, gesturing to the couch.
“Sure.”
Ricky reached down and snagged a record off the shelf. There was a beautiful Zenith radio cabinet, the expensive kind with the record player built right in, sitting opposite the Queen Anne chair by the fireplace. He got the record set up and spinning, revealing the sound of Eddie Fisher’s Just Say I Love Her. Timothy was quite fond of that song, but he usually only got a chance to hear it on the radio at Louie’s diner, where he regularly ate dinner alone. Tonight though, the smooth vocals and stellar violin solos did little to quell Timothy’s nerves.
In Ricky’s car, Timothy had been ready to go, his nerves flying clean out of the window when Ricky had kissed him. Timothy had been brave enough to ask for more then, but now encroaching thoughts were sapping his courage.
As much as he didn’t want to, he was beginning to worry about James, not that it was even a lick of James’ business what Timothy did in his spare time, or with whom, for that matter. Yet, James would flip his lid if he knew that Timothy was sneaking around and seeing Ricky again. Maybe that was putting it lightly. To say that Ricky and James disliked each other was a polite bandage over the truth. Timothy had hoped that after Ricky’s help solving the case last month, things might have been smoothed over a bit, but James hadn’t seemed to change his opinion of Ricky at all, and he bet that Ricky felt the same about James.
He couldn’t let James control his life, and this wouldn’t be the first time Timothy had gone behind James’ back to meet Ricky. In fact, Timothy had been looking forward to this night with Ricky all week. Ricky had been the only guy he had been brave enough to kiss, and tonight he had a plan, James be damned.
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Aver Rigsly
Aver Rigsly was born and raised in the Boston, Massachusetts area and spends her days working at a travel agency in Quincy. Some of her favourite places to visit are Washington D.C., Bangor, Maine, and most of all New York City. When she isn’t working a trip or writing LGBTQA+ romance obsessively, she spends her free time relaxing with knitting, needlepoint, video games, or marathoning horror movies with the family.
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