A Dangerous Game by Rick R. Reed: Guest Post and Exclusive Excerpt

Sex can be a dangerous business. So can love.

On the worst day of his life, Wren Gallagher wants oblivion when he steps into Tricks for a drink. When a mysterious stranger steps up to pay his tab, he offers Wren the key to fulfilling his dreams of prosperity and true love.

But appearances are not always what they seem.

His savior owns the escort agency À Louer, and he wants the young and handsome Wren as part of his stable of men-for-hire. Down on his luck, Wren figures, why not? He needs the money. When he joins, though, he doesn’t count on meeting Rufus, another escort with whom he falls hopelessly in love.

But their love story will have to overcome the obstacles of not only trading love for money, but À Louer’s dark—and deadly—secrets.

Exclusive Excerpt: Wren Picks Up an Abandoned Paper on the Bus and Discovers a Murder in A DANGEROUS GAME
A Guest Post by Rick R. Reed 

A Dangerous Game has its thriller aspect as well as its love aspect. Here’s where one of our boys first finds out that escorting can not only be risky—it can also be lethal.
Snatch that paper up. See what’s going on outside your own little dramafest. Maybe there’s something in there that will take your mind off Rufus for the next ten minutes. Hell, maybe the classifieds is just twitching with dream jobs, just for you.
Right.
Wren did lean over and pluck the newspaper from the seat. He scooted back up against the window and opened it.
And his heart nearly stopped.
The front-page headline practically screamed at him, making his blood run cold and the world around him dissolve.
Second Murder on City’s North Side Believed to be Linked to Escort Service
Wren fought his way through the spare, journalistic prose to learn that a second young man had been “stabbed to death along Chicago’s lakefront.” The victim, whose name and details were being withheld pending notification of next of kin, was believed to have been associated with the same escort service, À Louer, that Evan Maple, who was murdered in a similar fashion two weeks ago, worked for.
Wren scanned the article for more, but there was nothing to identify who the victim had been. But Wren was suddenly certain it had to have been Rufus who’d been killed.
That was the reason he hadn’t called.
He was dead. And before that he was being stalked by some serial killer out to put an end to male escorts by picking them off one by one, stopping their hearts and their commerce with something like a sharp hunting knife.
Wren felt like he was going to be sick. Although he still had several blocks to go, he reached up and pulled the cord to alert the bus driver he needed to get off. When the bus had barely stopped at a corner, Wren dropped the paper to the floor and hurried out the back door of the bus.
Outside the air was thick with humidity and exhaust fumes, even this early in the morning. The sun, beating down harshly out of a dirty white sky, didn’t serve to make him feel any better. Wren sat down on the curb and then put his head between his legs, trying to slow his breathing and force back the bile burning the back of his throat.
He sat there for several long minutes, waiting for his heart rate and respiration to slow, telling himself over and over again that he needed to get ahold of himself and that À Louer employed several young men, any one of which could have been the killer’s victim.

 

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Rick R. Reed is all about exploring the romantic entanglements of gay men in contemporary, realistic settings. While his stories often contain elements of suspense, mystery and the paranormal, his focus ultimately returns to the power of love.

He is the author of dozens of published novels, novellas, and short stories. He is a three-time EPIC eBook Award winner (for Caregiver, Orientation and The Blue Moon Cafe). He is also a Rainbow Award Winner for both Caregiver and Raining Men. Lambda Literary Review has called him, “a writer that doesn’t disappoint.”

Rick lives in Seattle with his husband and a very spoiled Boston terrier. He is forever “at work on another novel.”

STALK RICK
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