Title: Rhyme of Longing
Series: Jack and Gil #1
Author: Emikly Carrington
Publisher: Changeling Press LLC
Release Date: February 17, 2022
Heat Level: 4 – Lots of Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 169 pages
Genre: Romance, Action Adventure, Dark Fantasy, Paranormal Romance, Suspense, Urban Fantasy, Elves, Dragons & Magical Creatures, Gay, Multicultural & Interracial, Shapeshifters
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Synopsis
Gilbert Sullivan hates his name, but refuses to go by Gil because of a rhyme he fears is a prophecy. When he meets Jack Sowerby, the new head of SearchLight, he’s terrified the rhyme will come true and he’ll lose his place as Crown Prince of the basilisks, but his attraction to Jack won’t let him stay away.
Jack, born human, is, above all things, practical. Still, when he meets Prince Gilbert, his need for the prince blossoms and he’s unable to resist — at least until he’s forcibly changed into a magical creature. He’s terrified of the new world he’s entering. When Gilbert tries to fight the rhyme, will their shattered relationship ever be restored?
All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2023 Emily Carrington
Gilbert was drawn to the window overlooking the street. If pressed, he would have said he was urged to look outside. Used to such compulsions, he went to the window. And a story below, he saw an older human getting out of the back of a car. He watched the human talk to the driver. He flicked his gaze up the street, curious to see what had attracted his attention. And he saw the three people, probably humans, coming toward the older human man. Their posture bespoke trouble.
Gilbert moved to the top of the stairs and jogged down. He’d agreed to “meet someone” in Agent Weinberg’s office but that would have to wait. The man was in danger.
But when he reached the first floor, he found Agent Weinberg herself blocking the front door.
“Madam,” he began, trying to move around her.
She touched his shoulder, restraining him.
He disliked being touched, especially when it wasn’t a member of his family. But she was powerful in her own right as well as the head of an organization with international clout. So, he made his face go blank. “There’s a man about to walk into some trouble out there,” he said as calmly as he could manage.
“Let’s watch.”
He glared at her for a moment before his gaze was caught by a glimmer of movement on the other side of the glass door. The man was being flanked, and both of the men confronting him had knives out.
“Trust him,” Agent Weinberg said.
“No offense meant, madam, but he’s elderly.”
“Trust him,” she repeated.
And before Gilbert could protest further, everything happened. He watched the woman strike at the older man, felt the wash of psychic ability bounce off his shields, the ones he always kept up in public, and saw the woman’s knife slide into and then out of the man’s sleeve. She’d cut him.
“Now may I –”
“In just a moment,” Agent Weinberg said as one of the men fled.
The other attacked.
But, moving with a confidence surely born of years of training, the elderly man spun with the grace of a dancer, placing the disarmed woman in front of him.
The male attacker’s knife went through her shirt and into her ribs.
“Now you may,” Agent Weinberg said and she at last stepped aside.
He shoved his way out the door, almost stumbling over the threshold in his need to get to the human man who was bleeding. He ran to the man easing the woman to the sidewalk.
Sounding much younger than he looked, maybe like a man in his forties instead of seventies, the human yelled for someone to call nine-one-one.
“Let me heal her,” Gilbert said as he crouched beside the two. He wanted to ignore the attacker and heal the protector, but he recognized her injuries were worse than the man’s.
He felt the human’s psychic sense skate off his shields and wondered if this was Rob Boyle, the lead parapsychology instructor at SearchLight Academy here in DC. He’d never met the man.
“Go ahead,” the elderly man said. He pulled out his cell phone.
Gilbert listened with half an ear as he spit in his hand and pressed his palm against the woman’s side. He pulled the knife free with his other hand. She winced but remained unconscious. He wondered if she had fainted because of the pain or because of the psychic sense that had blanketed this area.
He reevaluated the older man beside him as she sank deeper into sleep, aided by his healing. The man wasn’t extremely tall, but he was narrow-hipped, long of limb, and despite the wrinkles on his face, carried a general look of health and wellbeing. His green eyes shone with concern as he continually scanned the area, maybe to make sure the other two men didn’t return. He was certainly a SearchLight agent, maybe even a retired tracker, although they tended not to live so long. And he had no visible scars. That probably meant he wasn’t a tracker. What sort of SearchLight agent, what sort of human SearchLight agent, would be so well-trained?
Gilbert was aware of the inherent bias in that “human” qualifier and counseled himself to —
“Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”
The man calmly spoke into the phone, reporting their location, recounting what had happened, and leaving out the way Gilbert was healing the miscreant.
Gilbert, conscious that he needed to leave a little injury or there would be confusion on the part of the emergency medical technicians who came in the ambulance, made sure to not heal her all the way. He discreetly wiped her blood off his fingers and onto his black trousers.
Now, finally, he could tend the other human. “You’re bleeding,” he said quietly.
The man glanced down at his sleeve and his lips twitched as if he was trying not to smile.
“Is someone else hurt?” the woman on the other end of the phone call asked.
“I have a cut on my arm but I’m not sure how bad it is,” the man answered.
“An ambulance is on the way.”
Gilbert spit in his hand again. Conscious of the human, non-SearchLight agent on the other end of the phone call, he asked, “May I look?” He met Jack’s green-eyed gaze and saw amusement and perhaps the aftereffects of ebbing adrenaline.
The man nodded.
Gilbert put his saliva-covered fingers into the wound. And felt the human beside him stiffen.
The man swore.
“Sir?” asked the woman. Her voice was sharp with concern.
“I’m…” He gasped. “I’m fine. He’s just checking the wound and…” Closing his eyes, the man held as still as stone.
Then he turned his head away without pulling back from Gilbert’s touch. That must have taken some real focus. Gilbert could see the cords standing out on the sides of the man’s shapely neck.
Then, maybe deciding that looking away wasn’t going to solve anything, the human resettled his gaze, first on Gilbert and then on the unconscious female between them. “How bad is she?”
“She’ll definitely live.” Gilbert pulled his hand back. “As will you.” He looked at his fingers, frowning. For some reason he couldn’t readily identify, he didn’t want to wipe this man’s blood as casually on his dress trousers.
The man ended the call. “Go ahead,” he told Gilbert. “I give permission.”
Smiling, Gilbert answered, “You’re very kind.” And he licked the blood from his fingertips. Even as he did so, he wondered how the human had known what he was thinking.
Then he was overwhelmed, and aroused, by the taste of the blood in his mouth. This man tasted sweeter than anyone Gilbert had healed. He parted his lips to tell the man how good he tasted. And that was when the man’s eyes flashed. Not like a basilisk’s, or a dragon’s, signaling an oncoming change but with real heat.
“Whatever you’re going to say about my blood, I don’t want to hear it.”
Gilbert nodded, impressed by the authority in the man’s voice. “Thank you for the gift.”
There was the sound of sirens in the distance.
The man looked toward the sound. “Thank you for healing her. And me.” He glanced at his arm. “You even left a little cut. I appreciate your thoroughness.”
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Emily Carrington is a multipublished author of male/male and transgender erotica. Seeking a world made of equality, she created SearchLight to live out her dreams. But even SearchLight has its problems, and Emily is looking forward to working all of these out with a host of characters from dragons and genies to psychic vampires.
Fantasy creatures not your thing? Emily has also created a contemporary romance world, called Sticks and Stones, where she explores being “different” in a small town.
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