Book Title: The Road to Pienza (The Road to Montepulciano #2)
Author and Cover Artist: Garrick Jones
Publisher: GRJ Press
Release Date: November 6, 2025
Genre: Crime Thriller
Themes: Historical fiction; Crime Fiction; Political Thriller; Action Thriller
Heat Rating: 5 flames
Length: 117 000 words/348 pages
It is part of a series, but does not end on a cliffhanger.
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Buy links
Amazon US | Amazon AU | Amazon UK | B&N
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The action-packed sequel to the best-selling thriller, The Road to Montepulciano
Blurb
The action-packed sequel to the best-selling thriller, The Road to Montepulciano
On the night of the ninth of June 1944, four days after the Allied liberation of Rome, four nuns are murdered in a railway carriage at the Vatican City railway station.
Sixteen years later, returning to Tuscany after a gruelling book signing tour of Australia, Damson O’Reilly finds his partner, Giancarlo (no longer a detective but now a well-known and successful lawyer) engrossed in a slander case between Italy’s screen heartthrob, Mario Celestino, and a high-profile, fascist industrialist, Giovanni Scavola.
The case uncovers buried secrets, secrets that bring to light the involvement of both men in the WW2 crime and which lead to kidnapping, torture and murder, culminating in a dramatic, bloody outcome that will rock the Italian nation to its core.
Kendall was a very likeable man, thirty years old—six years my junior—and, despite his affluent upbringing, very down-to-earth and somewhat taciturn. I’d expected someone spoiled and vain before we first met. However, over the course of the weeks I’d spent with him nearly every day, I’d learned that he’d played first-grade rugby before joining the army for a ten-year stint, and that his rugged exterior was a front for a sensitive, rather shy man with an inquisitive, honed intellect and irreverent sense of humour. Physically, he reminded me of Father Justin, my old sports teacher at the monastery. He was more muscled, but had the same blond hair, craggy good looks and somewhat old-fashioned yet charming manners. I had to admit that I was smitten not ten days after first meeting him. He could also swear as robustly as I could in private, another thing that made me feel close to him, as if we had some sort of spoken bond forged by our time in the services.
He’d told me that he was bisexual, had never had, or wanted, a relationship, but was fascinated with men’s bodies, especially those fortunate enough, like me, to be well endowed. He said he was basically attracted to older women, but that hadn’t stopped him from knocking on my hotel door when he’d had too much to drink—or claimed he had—or barging in while I was in the shower, pulling out his dick and playing with it while he watched me soap up my body. He’d told me early on that he was essentially a voyeur, but then, when fully aroused, he was open to most things.
Of course I’d told him about Giancarlo and me and, in exchange for some of his stories about his infrequent mutual masturbations while in the army, I’d shared some of my own experiences, including parties at my friend Randy’s South African pal’s place in Florence, where everyone stripped off at the door and wore a black domino mask. He’d wanted to know more details and had become so aroused that it had become the first time that he let himself go and had fucked me.
I never asked, but he’d often share the details of what he did with the two married women passengers he was sleeping with, both of them in their fifties. He wasn’t interested in young women at all. I didn’t particularly care; I’d slept with married and engaged men aplenty in Italy. He attested that he just wanted to keep the record straight between us.
He was very closed about many personal things but freely admitted that he genuinely liked me and what we did. I knew that he hadn’t had many experiences with other men before we’d started fooling around, and when I’d asked him why me, he’d simply replied that he was crazy over my cock. He loved to hold it, to squeeze it, fondle my balls, run his tongue over it and choke on it in an effort to get it all in his mouth. He’d take random opportunities to play with it through my trousers in all sorts of inappropriate situations, sometimes arriving at my cabin early in the morning just to suck on my dick while I was still half asleep then leave me with an ache in my balls, exasperated because when I tried to pull him into bed to finish the job he simply smiled and said he’d see me at breakfast.
Of course, during the course of the book tour, I’d begun to want more than the occasional tumble with him. He knew I was firmly attached to Giancarlo, who I’d explained had not minded when I’d told him that Kendall and I had been having sex. In fact, Giancarlo had lusted after him too, asking me to see if we three could arrange to spend an evening together. To Giancarlo’s frustration—and I have to admit mine too—the evening in our suite at the Hotel Australia in Sydney had been supremely enjoyable on one hand, but disappointing on the other. Kendall had stripped off and sat in a chair playing with himself while watching Giancarlo and me fuck, teasing us both by occasionally wandering over to the bed, waving his long, plump cock inches from our mouths and running his hands through our hair and over our bodies, but pulling away if we tried to touch him. It was obvious that he was very aroused, but I enjoyed the teasing; it was extremely erotic. He eventually spurted over us both—I caught a great gob in my mouth—then allowed Giancarlo to suck out the last drops. As he’d so often done with me, he’d grinned, kneeled down and kissed us in turn, said thank you, got dressed and then left without another word, leaving us both laughing into each other’s mouths as we began to finish what we’d started while he’d been watching.
There was a note from him under my door when I returned to my cabin after my massage. Deck tennis after lunch? I knocked on his cabin door. I heard a muffled, “Come in.” He was in the shower.
“Where have you been?” he asked.
“Getting some sun on the foredeck, then I just had a swim and a massage.”
“Did he finger you?” Kendall asked.
“Of course—doesn’t he do the same to you?”
“Every time,” he said with a laugh. “Did you blow?”
“Nope.”
“Neither did I. I had one of my ladies in here this morning, but we’d only just got started when she suddenly said she had to leave.” He turned around to face me, running his hands through his hair. He was hard.
“So, you were left high and dry … just like me,” I said.
“Oh, you had an interrupted encounter too? Do tell.”
“Well, it wasn’t really uninterrupted, more like unreciprocated. A telegram from home came. Carlo brought it, and, as I didn’t have any money on me to tip him …”
“Well, O’Reilly, get your arse in here with me. No use wasting all that juice in our balls; let’s see what we can do about it.”
Ten minutes later, on my back on his bed, I sighed with pleasure as he slammed me into the mattress, one of his hands behind my neck while his other kneaded my cock.
From the outback to the opera.
After a thirty-year career as a professional opera singer, performing as a soloist in opera houses and in concert halls all over the world, I took up a position as lecturer in music in Australia in 1999, at the Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music, which is now part of CQ University.
Brought up in Australia, between the bush and the beaches of the Eastern suburbs, I retired in 2015 and now live in the tropics, writing, gardening, and finally finding time to enjoy life and to re-establish a connection with who I am after a very busy career on the stage and as an academic.
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