Wren’s Wroster

My first book, The Trap, is available now as an e-book from Samhain Publishing.  I loved getting to know David and Ethan, and I hope they’ll find a home in your heart, too!

Released October 19, 2010

      http://samhainpublishing.com/romance/the-trap

The Trap

Three years ago, David stood with his college roommate, Ethan, on the brink of unimaginable success—ready to revolutionize an industry, and reap billions.

But then, David accidentally revealed the attraction he’d never wanted to feel, and certainly never meant to let Ethan see.  Unable to face his best friend’s certain disgust, he ran from everything that mattered—the fledgling company he’d helped to build, the bright future he’d worked to secure, and the man he couldn’t let himself want.

Now David’s built a new life for himself.  So what if it’s not the one he hoped for?  He’s learned to look only forward, and not to envy the success Ethan achieved without him.  He’s even learned to cope with the nightmares. The panic attacks. The failed relationships with women.

But it’s never occurred to him to wonder whether the man he’s pushed so firmly to the past is willing to stay there.

So when the opportunity arises to enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime getaway to a private-island resort, David never suspects a trap is about to be sprung—one where he’ll be forced to face the truths from which he’s been hiding … and the man from whom he’s never stopped running.

WARNING!

This book contains erotic waffles, sexual math, blatant ABBA worship, kidnapping, nude napping, dog-napping, journal hijacking, betrayal, redemption, and red-hot man love so poignant and passionate, you won’t know whether to say “awwwwwww” or “oooooohhh!” It is strongly recommended that you acquire flirty, comfortable sandals before reading, as your toes may not uncurl enough to let you wear your regular shoes for weeks.

 
Excerpt 1:

David’s cheeks flamed.  He tried to keep his voice calm.

“Please.  Let’s not do this. I said I would go, and I will.  This isn’t the time or place to … to get into anything.”

“No.”  Ethan gave a humorless laugh.  “That would have been three years ago, in New Mexico.”

David squirmed.  His knuckles were turning white on the grip of his carry-all.  He forced himself to relax his hands and meet Ethan’s eyes.

“Three years is a long time to … to nurse a grudge, Ethan.”

“Oh, I assure you, there’s been no nursing required.  My grudge is fully recovered.  Completely autonomous.  Ready for action.”

Were the words deliberately suggestive?

Did he really want to know?

“Petty grievances aside, I’d say everything worked out for you in the end, didn’t it?”

“Well, now, I couldn’t say.” Ethan’s drawl was silky.  “I haven’t gotten to the end.  Not yet.”

His stare was open and challenging.

David looked away first.

Minutes stretched by.  Ethan fwipped through his magazine.  David gripped his knees and stared unseeingly at the bookshelves along the far wall, waiting with increasing desperation for someone—desk clerk, pool boy, fucking palm tree mascot in full costume, he didn’t care, anyone, anyone at all—to get off his or her ass and come rescue him from this hell.

God, what was taking them so fucking long?  What if he had a panic attack or something, right here in their precious lobby?   What if he keeled over and died because his throat swelled up and he couldn’t breathe?  What if they came at long last to check him in and they found a stiffening corpse on their beautiful wood floors?  That’d be pretty goddamn inconvenient for them, wouldn’t it?  That would teach them to leave a guest cooling his heels through their entire Bach audio library.

On the CD, the cellist transitioned smoothly from the third suite to the fourth.

Fwip.  Fwip.

When the fifth suite started, David couldn’t suppress his outburst for another second.  “God, where are they?”

Ethan looked up.  “Where are who?”

“Everyone.” David gestured helplessly at the empty room.  “Receptionist.  Bellhop.  Concierge.”

“Oh, them.” Ethan looked back down at his magazine.  Fwip. “We don’t have any of them.”

“I’m sor—what?”

“No receptionist.” Ethan spoke with exaggerated care, as if he were talking to a particularly slow child.  “No bellhop.  No concierge.”  He rolled his eyes up to consult a mental list.  “No masseuse, cabana boy, valet, bartender, room service waiters, or laundry attendants. Oh, and no chambermaids.”

David gawked.  “But that’s … that’s not possible.   How could they run a successful world-class resort without any kind of staff?”

“By ‘they,’ do you mean the nonexistent people I just told you about, or their nonexistent employers?  Either way, to answer your question, they couldn’t.”  Ethan pulled the magazine closer, apparently to squint at a photo caption.  “Fortunately for them, not to mention their equally nonexistent shareholders, this is a nonexistent resort.”

David felt as if he’d tumbled down the rabbit hole.  Or maybe, he thought with a sudden rush of hope, he was still asleep on the plane and just having a dream.

Another of his many unsettling dreams about Ethan.

“What do you mean, ‘a nonexistent resort’?  The brochure says …”  He yanked open his carry-all and dug out the brochure, flipping pages frantically.  Phrases he had all but memorized in the preceding weeks leapt up at him.

A private playground of the privileged few where every need is anticipated and every desire fulfilled …

… where windswept beaches and turquoise waters invite you to explore the corners of your very soul …

Let the magic of sun-kissed solitude tempt you to let go of your fears and reach for your dreams …

Relax, recover, and rediscover the very best, suppressed part of yourself … come away to a place you’ve never been, and find yourself again.

“Here it is.  Right here.”  David tapped a page for emphasis.  “‘Welcome to Cayo E’tan, an exclusive resort hideaway and private island spa unlike any other on earth.”

“Oh, that.”  Ethan glanced dismissively at the brochure.  “Yes.  Well.  I wrote that.  And now that you read it back to me, I do see that I may have … exaggerated a little.  I see, in retrospect, that my words imply a certain … ‘resort-ness’ … to this place, when, in fact, it has none.”

“Imply … You wrote …” David’s voice failed.  His eyes swung from Ethan to the brochure.  With a jerk, he let it fall and drew back, as wary as if a scorpion had crawled from the glossy pages and tried to sting him.

Welcome to Cayo E’tan. He felt suddenly, unutterably stupid.  E’tan. That’s not even a word, is it?

He tried to swallow back the rising tide of trepidation.

“For God’s sake, Ethan. Why on earth would you do such a thing?”

Ethan let the magazine fall to his lap and stared directly into David’s eyes.

“To con you into coming here, of course.  To lull you into packing a bag and walking, of your own free will and on your own two feet, onto an airplane … and then a boat … and then a helicopter … and then this island.  In short, David, to get you to stop running—at long, final, fucking, overdue last—and come to me.”

David stared at Ethan like a paralyzed rodent staring into the opening maw of a hungry snake.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Ethan shrugged, “I wasn’t entirely sure it would work.”

 

Excerpt 2:

On the beach, Bella was launching herself now, barking joyfully, at a loose group of birds standing in the tide and pecking at the sand whenever the sea sucked itself momentarily away from the strand.  The birds raced away from her comically on fast-moving, spindly legs, only taking to reluctant wing when it became clear that they couldn’t actually outrun her.

“What I finally came to realize, Davo, is that a fair part of achieving happiness comes from understanding your own programming.  And a fair amount of getting what you want from other people comes from understanding theirs.”

David felt lightheaded, barely tethered to the ground.   

“Really.  And what is it that you want?”

“Right now?  I want a beer.”  He unzipped the cooler bag and withdrew two cans, tossing one to David, who managed to catch it deftly despite his surprise.  He held the icy can between his hands and watched Ethan pop the top on his, holding it out to let the fizzy overflow run off into the sand.

On the beach, Bella barked and snapped at a seagull.

“Leave it, Bella!”  Ethan slipped off a canvas shoe and flung it without great force in the dog’s direction to distract her.  She pounced gleefully, shaking the shoe and growling.

Ethan fell back into the sand beside David and took a sip.  When he spoke again, his voice was very quiet, and something about it set off little quakes of hyper-awareness all down David’s body.

“What I want, David, is to explore what we might have had if you hadn’t run away.  If you’d had the courage to reach out for what you wanted.  I want to see if the people we were are still somewhere inside the people we have become.”

He looked up.  “I want to see if I can break down all of your very carefully constructed defenses and lay you bare.  In every sense of the word.”

Now he was leaned closer, his eyes fixed on David’s mouth.  David couldn’t move.

“I want to touch you in ways—in places—you’ve never been touched.  I want you to give yourself to me and to surrender to whatever I might decide to do.  I want you to trust that I will give you exactly what you need.”

David could scarcely breathe.  He could only watch, wide-eyed, as Ethan leaned closer, those lips coming nearer and nearer his own until suddenly they brushed past his jaw to breathe the rest, soft and warm, into his ear.

“That’s what I want. And as you can see, I don’t much care anymore about the consequences of trying to get it.”

David felt a shock of raw desire slam through his body, so hard that he trembled with it.  His popped the top on his own beer, just to give his fingers something to do besides wrap around the back of Ethan’s neck and pull him closer.

 “And what about what I want?”

“Oh, you’re going to get what you want, too.”

“A first-class ticket home?  An appointment with the district attorney?”

Ethan smiled.  “No.  A connection.  A real one.  The kind that comes from letting go.  Risking.  Trusting.”

“There you go again.” David tried to keep his voice steady.  “Even I know what those words are code for.  You do whatever you want with your own sex life, but leave me the hell out of it.  I’m not into whips and chains.  I’m sure there’s no end of sad little people ready to line up and put on leather hoods and nipple rings and … and rubber ball gags, or whatever you call them … and give you what you want.  I still don’t know why I’m here.”

“There’s nothing ‘sad’ about knowing what you want and reaching out for it.  And I’m sure you’re right; there probably are whole crowds of people who would step up and do exactly that for me, if that’s what I wanted. If they were what I wanted.  But it’s not.  And they’re not.”

He looked directly into David’s eyes.

“You’re here because for me to get what we both want, I’m going to have to break down some very solid walls.  I know you put them up to shut the scary stuff out, but all you did was shut yourself in.”

David’s lips felt like tissue paper.  “My walls are none of your business, Eath.  Go huff and puff at someone else.”

“Oh, I’m going to take them down.” Ethan’s voice was liquid silk.  It flowed effortlessly under David’s barricades and lapped at his toes.  “Brick by brick.”

He took David’s wrist in one hand.  David was too shocked to pull it away.

“Brick one,” said Ethan quietly.  “You have no interest in experiencing sex with another man.  With me.”

Now he was tracing little circles on the inside of David’s wrist.  It trembled.

“Brick two.  You don’t burn to find a safe place to give up control.”

David could feel his pulse hammering beneath Ethan’s fingers.

“Brick three.  You can’t let yourself trust anyone.  Not with anything truly private … personal … or real.”

David snatched his hand back and held his throbbing wrist firmly against his thigh.

“That’s it?  Three bricks?”

He’d meant the words to sound mocking, but they came out curiously … curious.  He raced to blanket them with sarcasm.  It felt like dabbing at the Great Chicago Fire with a gasoline-soaked potholder.

“That’s not a wall.  That’s not even a … a highway divider.”

“Ah, but you’re a very capable engineer,” smiled Ethan.  “And they’re very large bricks.”  He took a long sip of beer and set the can down in the sand.  “Don’t worry, though.  I’ve thought it all through.  I have a plan.”  He turned his gaze back to the retriever.

David raised his beer with nerveless fingers.  “Oh?  Let me guess.  You’ll take me to the beach to chew shoes and chase seagulls.  Are you going to teach me to lie down and roll over, too?  To sit up and beg?”

“Yes, in a manner of speaking.” Ethan didn’t take his eyes off the scene on the beach. “I’m going to make you come.”

The words caught David in mid-sip, and his throat spasmed.   He sputtered and choked as the beer slipped down the wrong pipe.

“I’m going to touch you,” said Ethan softly, when David could breathe again.  “With my fingers and my mouth, until you think you’ll die from the sheer pleasure of it.  That you’ll explode from it … until you do explode from it.   Onto my tongue, or your belly, or my cock, or into my hands, or wherever I choose … and Davo?”  Hazel eyes caressed green.  “You’re going to let me do it.  You’re going to ask me to do it.”

And before David could think of a single thing to say, or even try to remember how to form words, Ethan was standing and tugging off his remaining shoe, letting it fall to the sand beside his abandoned beer.  Then he was walking toward the beach, clapping his hands and whistling for Bella.

David stared after him, his own beer forgotten …