GENRE: Gay Spicy Romance
LENGTH: 30,855 words
RATING:

Almost thirty, amateur boxer Daron Tulsa has a little mess on his hands. He just so happens to be falling for his best friend, Colm Frost, a sports-themed freelance writer for e-magazines. Life for Daron feels cataclysmically frostbitten because Colm is straight and has a stunning Hollywood actress girlfriend. For Daron, these major blocks leave Colm untouchable, both emotionally and physically.

As the Pittsburgh winter becomes a tempest of snow, ice, and cold, so does Daron’s heart. He realizes Colm will never be a part of his world and pulls away from the man. But when Colm’s girlfriend travels for her career, leaving him behind, two personal secrets unexpectedly unfold, which may eventually melt Daron’s heart.

EXCERPT:
Note: may contain sexually explicit scenes of a homoerotic nature.

Malcolm Frost had to be someone’s nemesis in the boxing ring -- mine. Not that that mattered to me, since I still wanted to undress the middleweight contender with my bare hands and roll my fingertips over his hairy and pert nipples.

He made me feel frostbitten.

I couldn’t have him sexually, though. Never.

I wouldn’t have him, or so I told myself.

The sexy and muscular boxer refused to have our chiseled torsos touch, even though I wanted to be physically close to the man. Never could we become in a heated embrace of mutual bliss because Colm had Melinda Moretell’s heart; a bombshell of an actress with her ditzy charm, model qualities, and numerous sexy stilettos. He loved Melinda, I knew. Every part of her. Everything about the Hollywood actress.

Again, I studied Colm inside the ring at Ranard’s Gym on Nelson Street in downtown Pittsburgh. Memberships were steep and limited to use the gym, and both of us were lucky to have one. The man resembled fire on the mat, quickly shifting back and forth on the balls of his feet, jabbing his practicing buddy, Brian “Beef” Tarkin, in the chest. Colm threw a bolo punch and followed it up with two rabbits. Beef had the reputation of being a palooka, a weak and unskilled competitor, who usually lost a fight. Colm simply used the guy as turtle meat to practice on, throwing random left hooks and a haymaker, which sent Beef against the mat, head-first.

Pleased with himself, Colm took off his head gear. A smile spread over his handsome face. Pride etched around his stunning eyes. Accomplishment twinkled in his pupils. The man opposed to being arrogant, I knew. Instead, he humbled himself with pride, came across as being sweetly charming, and a certain someone that I considered the man of my dreams, yet untouchable because of a certain actress in his life that I believed that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, marrying and loving forever, until death.

There, positioned on the sideline, outside the ring, I studied the twenty-six-year-old yet again and digested his delicious features: thick curly hair the color of a crow’s feathers, piercing marsh green eyes, and an English-sloped nose. He had pinkish narrow lips, broad shoulders with convex-structured triceps, a plated hairy chest, erect nipples the color of molten brown, and an athletically hourglass-shape. He stood at five-ten, featured muscled hips, thighs of steel, and had a chunk of cock hidden in a canary yellow Champion trunk.

Colm helped Beef up and off the mat and escorted him to the edge of the ring. They shook hands and exchanged words of encouragement with, and for, each other. The loser climbed out of the ring and headed for the showers. Colm crossed the mat, walked up to the ropes on my side, and looked down at me. He smiled and asked, “What did you think, Daron?” The Liverpool accent no longer accessorized his speak after living in America for twenty years; too bad for me since I thought it a turn-on. Colm moved from Liverpool to Greenwich Village with his mother, Eve, when he turned six. Eve functioned as a single mother, never married, and wanted her only son to have the best experiences in life, which she believed could only happen in America. The paperback romance writer felt that Pittsburgh had the slice-of-life they needed to survive, and the pair settled there, tucked in the polite city. Some two decades later Eve now lived in San Francisco with a plumber, and sexy Colm just happened to live in downtown Pittsburgh, which immensely pleased me, close at hand, staying my friend.

“You’re definitely a fighter. God has given you a gift and you’re using it with expertise. Kudos, my friend.”

He huffed and puffed for air. His silky and sweaty chest rose and fell as he waved me into the ring and said, “You need to get in here so I can beat the shit out of you.”

“Always a gentleman, aren’t you, Colm? To tell you the truth, I’m good right here,” I confessed, grinning from ear to ear. “You already know you’re better in the ring. There’s no reason to prove it again, my friend.” Frankly, he could slip his lean and muscular body between two of the ropes and let me brush my lips and chin against its bulging physique, helping him out. Then I could make his cock turn hard, letting him enjoy the reason I called him a man, and we could end up in the gym’s shower area together, naked and panting, sexually intertwined. That didn’t happen, though, and probably never would. Colm had Melinda for such sexual pleasantries, not Daron Tulsa -- me.

“Come on. Come in the ring, man,” he begged. “I’ll be gentle with you.”

And I foolishly believed him.