Alluring Passion: A MM Contemporary Bundle Read online

  Alluring Passion

  Peter Styles

  © 2017

  Disclaimer

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are all fictitious for the reader’s pleasure. Any similarities to real people, places, events, living or dead are all coincidental.

  This book contains sexually explicit content that is intended for ADULTS ONLY (+18).

  Book List

  One Last Chance

  Sensational Sinners

  Undercover Lover

  I Need A Hero

  Back to the Start

  One Last Chance

  Peter Styles

  © 2017

  Disclaimer

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are all fictitious for the reader’s pleasure. Any similarities to real people, places, events, living or dead are all coincidental.

  This book contains sexually explicit content that is intended for ADULTS ONLY (+18).

  Chapter 1

  Moonlight turned pale stone into precious drops of metal, turning the graveyard from a mournful place of reverence and sorrow to something altogether more cheerful. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky to have a chance of stumbling over the face of the proud moon and all the stars hung low, like plump berries ripe for the taking. Their light was more than enough to see by, leaving little use for the headlamp Chance wore while working.

  Time held still in the graveyard, as it tended to do in places where nothing happened to break apart the hours. If the moon moved, it moved only slowly. Otherwise, the scene might as well have been a painting. Only one person moved, and that was Chance himself as he wandered down the length of rows, meandering back and forth with a bucket of cleaner and a damp rag.

  Dropping down to his knees, he just barely moistened the rag again with the fluid from the bucket and then rubbed the face of the gravestone in front of him. It had been a month since the last cleaning, as that was the schedule, and he was now in a part of the graveyard where very few every came. These graves were old, having lost their luster and much of their original shape to time and weather; no family came to visit, for there were none left, which meant no one ever touched the engraved lettering or wiped away clinging pieces of debris and dirt. Not even the rain from the storm earlier in the day had done much to clean the thick layer of grime away.

  That was Chance’s job—fixing things that nature faltered. Graveyards were beautiful things where the past mingled in on itself in clearly-marked layers. They were where beginnings ended, where history traced its path through a town or city. They were where people came to say goodbye, and no one wanted to bury their grandfather or little brother in a graveyard covered in soggy branches and mud puddles, where the headstones were so disgusting that it was impossible to tell who lay beneath.

  There was a funeral to be held tomorrow morning, bright and early. The grave was already dug out earlier by Old Rocky with the backhoe, and the lines of it sharpened from there with good old-fashioned shovels. Everything was ready for the service there, but the rest of the place had to match. After all, you didn’t just clean one table in the restaurant and call it good enough. You cleaned all of them before letting the customers in. That was business.

  And so was this.

  Holding the side of the headstone in one hand as he might support the head of a child, Chance dipped the rag in the combined cleaner and polisher and then scrubbed again and again at the glossy face of the stone. Words gradually revealed themselves, as did the date.

  Rebekah Abafum

  1808-1901

  There was no sentiment, no Gone but not forgotten. Chance had been working as a caretaker long enough now to have picked up on the patterns like that, of which names, ages, and styles of gravestone were more likely to have certain things. There wasn’t any reason why those things were. He tried to research them but there were some things just too specific for Google to answer. Old Rocky didn’t know, either. The old man didn’t really concern himself with things like that; he’d been here so long now that he didn’t care.

  At least she lived a long life, Chance thought, scrubbing a little less vigorously out of some need to respect the dead woman. Not everyone does.

  When his job was done, he straightened up and moved off to the next grave. The year moved back slightly, and would until he was done with the remainder of the next few rows, until he could go home. At this point, Rebekah was a rarity. People died off in their seventies or sixties, or even earlier. There were children and teens, the result of accidents or illness. Chance polished them all, sometimes humming softly under his breath and other times just listening to the silence of the night around him. However, the night wasn’t as silent as most people would think. Crickets chirped faintly from the nearby tree line near the edge of the cemetery. Wind stirred the branches, causing leaves to rustle together. Some nights he heard an owl, or saw a cat prowling around, searching for a meal; he even saw a fox once, her bushy tail swinging around her.

  No, things weren’t as quiet as people seemed to think they were. The thing was that people weren’t listening close enough.

  Straightening up again, Chance turned his sweaty face into the cool night breeze and let it ruffle through his hair. After a long day of work, all he wanted was to get home to his apartment and sleep for a few hours until he had to get up again.

  Something moved.

  What was that?

  Lifting up his head, he looked around. The moonlight was still so strong that he didn’t need his headlamp, but he turned it on anyway and spun in a slow circle so that its powerful beam cut through the shadows.

  Nothing.

  “Probably another dumb cat,” Chance grunted. He bent to pick up his bucket and moved off to the next grave. This one clearly belonged to a child, judging from the small flowers curling up one side and in an arch over the dirtied name. Only idiots were superstitious about places like this. Rocky hadn’t ever seen a ghost, and neither had Chance. Sure, one of them had been working here for forty years and the other for only five, but that was a pretty good reason for Chance to suspect they didn’t exist.

  Spiders were creepy, and so was the thought of dying suddenly and having his life cut short at twenty-four. Being jump-scared by a cat was kind of creepy, and so were a number of other things, like snakes and bats flying at your face.

  Graveyards weren’t creepy, and neither were ghosts. Because they didn’t exist.

  At least, not in the way that people understood them to. Chance was plenty haunted by the death of his father and all the things that came afterward. That was why he lived in this town two hundred miles away from where he grew up, and why he worked the often-backwards life of a cemetery caretaker. Hell, even after all these years of living here, there were still some people who didn’t recognize him when he went into his favorite coffee shop or dropped off a utility payment at the city hall. And really, that was fine with him.
It wasn’t because he’d been in trouble, but because trouble had a way of finding guys like him. The less he was noticed, the better.

  Lost in his thoughts, Chance made quick work of the rest of the row he was on and moved back to start work on the last one. The headstone he faced was in the shape of a cross, and he felt a little weird rubbing all over it.

  Something moved again.

  Not the slithering of a stealthy animal pacing low through the grass, and not the sudden rustling of a tree branch beneath the encouragement of a stray wind, but a deliberate stepping in the way only a human might do.

  The hairs on the back of Chance’s neck stood up. Slowly, he lifted his head and looked all around him so that the beam of his light struck through the shadows. Still nothing he could see, although now it suddenly occurred to him just how many places there were to hide. There were statues and expensive headstones that towered against the sky, and a bunch of trees behind him. There was the maintenance shed, and there was his car parked out on the other side of the gate. There were shrubberies that he trimmed only the day before, and manicured trees here and there that were specifically chosen by Rocky for the fact that they blossomed and scattered petals over the graves.

  Flowers for free, the old man said.

  Chance thought it was poetic at the time but now he stared at each trunk, leaning and craning his neck to try and shift the shadows around to see if a particular angle might reveal anything of a human form.

  And still he didn’t see anything.

  Chills raced up and down his spine, breath huffing in his lungs. His chest heaved the way it used to when he had asthma as a kid, before growing out of it in his teens. He never forgot the metallic taste of his own rushing blood that dribbled out of his nose, however. And he never forgot the tightness, like storm clouds sweeping in across the horizon to close in on the beating sun nestled in the mountains of his rib cage.

  He felt those things now, growing sloppy as his legs trembled. His thighs burned as he crouched, swiped at the face of a grave with a soaking cloth, and then pushed himself up to hurry on a few feet to the next. Over and over. Crouch, swipe, move. He held his breath, straining to listen, before ragged gasps came bursting back out of him again. His stammering heart clamored for more oxygen, incapable of being paused for more than a few seconds now.

  Nothing, nothing in the whole world but him and the nighttime not-silence and the additional sounds he made. Sloshing liquid and heavy thumps, damp squishing as the rag leaked fluid all down the marker in front of him. A spider web of drips, trickling slowly. He didn’t even bother wiping at them, didn’t bother spreading them. Who was going to care if it dried unevenly or stained? No one came back here anyway. These people were lost to time. No one visited them. No one would…

  More footsteps. Not just a single footfall now but a hurried burst of three or four. Approaching.

  Chance spun around, kicking over the bucket. Liquid sloshed across his shoes, dampened his socks. As he turned, he heard a scuff of earth as though someone slid into a hiding spot. And still he couldn’t see anything.

  But, he heard it. A short, muffled huff of breath as though someone was trying not to laugh.

  And just like that, he wasn’t afraid. He was pissed. Some idiot kid was out there screwing with him, picking on the weird guy in town. Yeah, really funny.

  “Okay, punk,” Chance snapped. He bent down and picked up his bucket, holding it so he could have something to disguise the fact that his hands were shaking from adrenaline. “You think you’re real funny, huh? This won’t be very damn funny when I call the cops on your stupid ass. Come out now and apologize and I won’t call ‘em.”

  He was bluffing. His phone was dead. He couldn’t call anyone, but this kid didn’t know that.

  Nothing happened.

  Chance put his hands on his hips and glared out into the darkness. “Are you for real? Fine. I’m calling the police!”

  Jamming his hand in his pocket, he pulled out his phone and punched at the screen like he was dialing.

  Just then, a rock flew past his face and he yelped, jerking around and dropping his phone. It slammed against the edge of a headstone. The shattering sound the screen made was like a peal of thunder in the quiet.

  Chance looked up, mouth open to really dig into this kid, when a shadow pulled away from behind a tree and lunged at him.

  He squealed, threw the bucket, and ran for the gate.

  Never in his life had he ever run so fast. His feet tore across the beautiful grass, churning through the paths without any respect for their pattern. He stumbled over the edge of a grave, twisting as he fell to catch himself with his hands. Footsteps echoed behind him but they might have just been his, he didn’t know. It felt like someone was breathing down the back of his neck but it might have been just the wind. Grabbing the gate as he ran through it, he swung around and slammed the door shut and latched it behind him. His fingers shook as he fumbled with the padlock but he managed to get it on the first try. Then, not daring to look back, he turned again and ran for his car while jabbing at the unlock button on his key fob. The headlights flashed, warm and comforting.

  Chance stumbled to a stop and threw the door open and then dove inside, slamming it behind him. The key went right into the ignition, the motion practiced and accurate. He pushed the car into reverse, backed out without looking, and drove out as fast as he could out across parking lot and out into the road. Accelerating as fast as he could, he spun around the edge of the park and out onto the main road.

  As he raced down the street, he didn’t dare slow down until he raced past the parking lot of a Dollar Store and saw a cop pull out behind him in his rearview mirror. Then, he jammed his foot on the brake and swerved off down the nearest side road. The police car idled behind him for a moment before pulling around him and heading away. Chance kept his head down, breathing hard.

  He struggled to get his breath back and it was a long time coming. He still didn’t feel quite steady when he heard another car coming from behind.

  That has to be the cop again. If I’m still here, he’s going to arrest me for sure.

  A guy like him wouldn’t do well in jail. Tomorrow was Friday and no doubt some people had gotten a head start on their drinking and would be in the same holding cell. No, that wouldn’t do at all.

  Shaking a little still, numb in his fingertips and yet still feeling far too much in his heart, he started the car up again and drove off. It took a bit to get his bearings about where he was, especially since he hadn’t been paying attention to where he was going, but before too long he found his way back to his apartment building.

  Gathering himself before he turned the car off, he raced in a hurry from the vehicle, up the stairs, and shoved his key into the lock. Pushing the door open, he slammed it behind him and locked it again.

  Then, and only then, did he go over to the window and take the time to lock his car. The streetlamps illuminated the parking lot besides the shadows between cars, and he couldn’t see anyone out there. Surely whoever was out there in the graveyard couldn’t have followed him?

  Chance shuddered and shook his head, reaching out to pull the curtains shut. Then, he hugged his arms around himself and went over to the couch in the living room where he always kept a blanket. Pulling it around his shoulders, he sat and shivered for a long time until it slowly eased.

  “It was just some dumb kid,” he muttered to himself. “Some dumb kid throwing rocks and trying to scare me.”

  Well, it had worked, hadn’t it?

  Shaking his head again, Chance stood up and walked the few feet over to his kitchen to start preparing a cup of tea. He’d picked up an old kettle for $2 at an antique store a few years ago and now he was hooked on it. Setting the water to heat up, he went back over to the couch and sat down again.

  Maybe graveyards are a little bit creepy, he admitted to himself. Then he sighed and reached for one of the books sitting on his coffee table. Because of some stupid kid, he’d don
e a horrible job, hadn’t cleaned up, and his phone was sitting out there still. He was going to get in trouble. Rocky always did a walkthrough of the cemetery first thing whenever he arrived, so he was going to come across all that stuff.

  Nothing Chance could do about it now, though. In the meantime, he wasn’t in trouble and as far as anyone knew, he had done his job and had earned a nice cup of tea and some leisure time reading before bedtime.

  Standing up again just as the kettle started to whistle, he poured the boiling water into a mug and then dropped in a tea bag.

  Half an hour of trying later, Chance put the mug of cold tea in the sink and then went to bed. He curled up under the blankets, shivering and staring off into the darkness. Not for the first time, he wished that he had the money to be able to afford cranking up his heat a notch or two but that just wasn’t in the cards right now.

  Sleep was a long time in coming. He wavered back and forth between shaking and being angry at whoever had done that to him. It wasn’t fair, because now someone was out there walking around and thinking about how much of a coward Chance was, and Chance didn’t know who it was. If they crossed paths, he would never know.

  “Dammit,” he muttered unhappily into the darkness. So many things were unfair. This wasn’t even the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was one of the grains of sand blown over the body of the dead camel after it had been left behind to die.

  Finally, his eyes slowly grew heavy and he finally fell asleep to unpleasant dreams of a ghost dressed in blue that followed him everywhere he went.

  Chapter 2

  “Boy, I ought to dock your pay. Damn near sliced myself in half on all that glass out there.”

  That was the greeting Chance walked into as he approached the church where Old Rocky waited for him, holding out a phone with a screen so broken it might as well not have had one in the first place. Triangular shards stuck inward from the edges like teeth, fully capable of slicing open a finger if one ran errant, but that was all that remained.