Cardyn's Top Ten Fave Lines from Dodging Eros
- Each breath tasted of vice and smelled of sultry sin.
- He would make a donation to the nearest women’s shelter as a gesture of gratitude to the gods for their mercy.
- Chief Maxwell stalked up to her, leaned down until they were nose to nose, then stared into her eyes with the menacing squint he used to intimidate foolhardy probationary firefighters.
- “Explain before my head explodes,” Rick said as he waved Owen toward a chair.
- “Am I the only one who remembers that we’re federal agents, not remedial cooking school students?” Agent Yoeh asked.
- Ten years of tepid serial monogamy to offset his unfulfilled desire for one woman and he was going to miss his chance with her by a cruel forty-eight hours.
- Luis Miguel refused to allow some pissant number-crunching drone to thwart his objectives with legalities.
- Despite Rick’s desires, the number of people indefinitely residing with him and Danya continued increasing.
- “... Soon, you and I are going somewhere private to get naked and stay naked for a very long time.”
- Mona wondered if she was being punished for years of uncharitable thoughts about Black people who married non-Black people.
Author: Cardyn Brooks
Series: Stand Alone
Genre: Erotica
Publisher: Private Moments Publishing
Release Date: Jan 21 2016
Edition: eBook & Print
Blurb/Synopsis:
When is love a safe haven, a shield or a
launch pad? When is it a mine field or a trap?
Dodging Eros, Through Past, Present and Pleasure is
something different about love.
Cupid is not simply a cherubic prankster.
Cupid is a tireless hunter. He’s dangerous.
While men and women bait and lure each other into the tricky gauntlet of attraction, Cupid circles, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
Siblings Danya, Monica, and Warwick Fullerton come from a family tradition of love that endures. They understand the risks and rewards of loving and being loved, but the intersection of the politics of pleasure with the evolution of 21st-century society versus entrenched ideas about who is expected to love whom challenges them to fight for their beliefs, which differ from their parents’ ideas.
Dodging Eros uses the early 20th-century past as prologue about the present day to frame the generational shifts in the risks of loving and being loved as the Fullertons confront their personal demons and battle The Fellowship, a secret society of power brokers conceived during the era of U.S. Prohibition now expanded into a modern international network of corruption.
Cupid is not simply a cherubic prankster.
Cupid is a tireless hunter. He’s dangerous.
While men and women bait and lure each other into the tricky gauntlet of attraction, Cupid circles, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
Siblings Danya, Monica, and Warwick Fullerton come from a family tradition of love that endures. They understand the risks and rewards of loving and being loved, but the intersection of the politics of pleasure with the evolution of 21st-century society versus entrenched ideas about who is expected to love whom challenges them to fight for their beliefs, which differ from their parents’ ideas.
Dodging Eros uses the early 20th-century past as prologue about the present day to frame the generational shifts in the risks of loving and being loved as the Fullertons confront their personal demons and battle The Fellowship, a secret society of power brokers conceived during the era of U.S. Prohibition now expanded into a modern international network of corruption.
Book Links:
Amazon
~ * ~
Excerpt:
Bossy
v. Moody
Danya and Rick: Their Beginning
Mona Fullerton snagged her husband’s upper
arm and tugged until he slowly stepped a few paces backward out of the short
hallway in front of the food prep area and into the walk-in pantry in their
family bakery in Darlingfield ,
Virginia .
“Stop looking at our new worker like you’re
planning to put him in a headlock, John,” she whispered as they both watched
Danya, their youngest child, show Frederick Maxwell how to knead and shape
dinner rolls for the final rise. Mona thought the two young people looked
adorable standing next to each other in their matching Full Bake ball caps and
t-shirts.
“Oh, no, ma’am, a headlock is too good for
that boy who keeps looking at our baby girl.” Bewilderment seeped through the
menace in the soft growl of his whispered threat.
Mona shifted her gaze away from her
daughter’s budding summer romance with the young man who was working off what
he owed for his share of replacing the front window of the bakery when he and
his friends decided in their drunken inspiration to use the wrought-iron bench
on the sidewalk as a ramp for practicing their daredevil skateboard tricks. She
thanked God that it was three skateboards instead of three bodies that crashed
through the glass.
While her husband scowled at their
daughter’s would-be beau, Mona studied John’s stern profile and still
recognized the tenderhearted boy and former Black Panther civil rights activist
in the man standing beside her.
“Rick is a decent boy, John. He stayed and
waited for the police even though his two friends ran,” she said quietly,
reminding him of facts he already knew.
She embraced him with one arm around his
waist and squeezed when he chuffed with grudging acknowledgement.
“John, your ladybug is now a young woman
who’s coming into her own power. We need to trust her to live her life based on
everything we’ve taught her.
“Plus, this is just a summer flirtation. In
six weeks Danya returns to State and Rick goes back to school in Colorado a few days
later.”
Mona’s words were a consoling reminder to
herself as well as to her worried husband because at first she had dismissed
the idea that this smart, good-looking, privileged white boy was seriously
interested in pursuing Danya. But weeks of observing the boy’s awareness of and
attentiveness to Danya had made his respectful intentions obvious.
Rick also let Danya scold him about
cheerful eye contact and using words instead of grunts when serving customers
who might choose to buy their baked goods elsewhere from more courteous
workers.
Mona couldn’t blame her daughter for being
curious about Rick. She understood that times were different now. Interracial
dating wasn’t as rare or dangerous as it had been during Mona’s younger years,
but she believed that all three of her children would choose to marry Black
people when they were ready to settle down. She needed to believe it for her
own peace of mind.
“Come on, John,” she said. “Glaring at the
boy won’t change anything. Let’s finish payroll.”
Mona counted his heavy sigh accompanied by
his slow turn toward the business office as a win for all four of them--Danya,
Rick, John and herself.
~~~~
Hours later and two blocks away from the
bakery, Danya said, “Rick, get in the car right now. Please. It’s raining. And
lightning! Your parents wouldn’t want you to risk getting electrocuted.”
Rick wasn’t so sure. His parents had been
furious with him when they came to get him at the police station a month ago
the night he and his friends broke the big front window at the Fullerton
Bakery. They’d taken him into one of the interrogation rooms and expressed their
disappointment with his poor choices: underage drinking, getting drunk,
destroying private property, skating outside of a skate park, cowardly friends.
In fact, his dad had said Rick’s decision
to remain at the scene of the crime was the only reason the Fullerton ’s weren’t filing a complaint and
the police weren’t pursuing any criminal charges against him. It was also the
reason his parents were taking away his driving privileges for the entire
summer, but not grounding him. Friends could pick him up and drop him off for
social activities only. Rick had to walk or ride his bike--like a little
kid!--to and from the early Saturday morning alcohol education classes at the
police station, his restitution work at the bakery and his regular summer
intern job as a physical endurance trainer in the evenings at the YMCA. Weight
training combined with walking and running to his two jobs meant he was
stronger and more physically fit than he’d ever been. He’d completed the
mandatory alcohol ed course last weekend with his former friends. So that
torture was done. Thank you, sweet lamb of God.
Rick stopped at the corner when Danya
stopped for the red light at the empty intersection. He bent low to make eye
contact with her through the half-lowered passenger window on the ancient
compact car her grandmother used to drive around Darlingfield before she got
too sick to renew her driver’s license.
“Boss Dan, when we’re not at the bakery I
don’t have to do what you say. Go on home. I’m fine.”
He tapped the roof of her car, then stood
and stepped off the curb as the traffic light glowed green.
~~~~
Danya slid the car into first, then second
gear, pacing Rick as he jogged along the sidewalk. He was drenched from head to
toe. Water splashed up to his knees with each of his quick, long strides.
When the steady downpour instantly switched
to a deluge of slanting sheets of rain, Danya sped up to turn right at the next
intersection, stopping abruptly to block his path. She leaned over to unlock
the door and shoved it open.
“Rick, please let me take you to the YMCA,”
she yelled to be heard over the whooshing rain when he grabbed the edge of the
door in order to slam it closed. “Save your stoic endurance for your clients at
the gym, Moody Broody Maxwell!”
~~~~
Rick got into her car. Because he was
soaked down to the bone and tired of worrying that Danya might wreck her car
while dividing her attention between watching him and navigating the slick
streets. He pulled the door closed with a slam, adjusted the seat as far back
as it would go and still felt cramped as he fastened his seat belt before he
rolled up the window, then turned to watch Danya’s expressive face while she
pulled a k-maneuver to get back onto the road to the YMCA. The enclosed space
filled his head with the smell of wet fabric softener mixed with spiced dough
and Danya’s unique savory scent.
“Thanks for the ride,” he said, wiping his
wet face and slicking back his wet hair with the wet palms of his hands. “So
you’re naturally bossy all of the time.”
“Yes.” She nodded, then turned to smile at
him in a way that made him smile, too.
For the next two blocks they argued about
how he planned to get home after work. Danya speculated aloud about rearranging
her evening plans in order to work out until the end of Rick’s shift. By the
time she pulled up to the employee entrance for the YMCA Rick had
agreed--promised--to call his parents if it was still raining later.
~~~~
“Did you catch Rick before he left the
bakery, Glen?”
His wife Jane’s melodious voice floated to
him as he closed and locked the front door.
“No,” he said while taking off his Colorado
Academy ball cap, shaking out of his trench coat and hanging it on the top edge
of the open door to the front closet as his wife’s soft footsteps tapped
closer.
“No?” she asked before sweeping her gaze
over him from head to toe, then leaning up to kiss him on the lips and pulling
back quickly when he reached for her.
“I’ve seen a lot of lightning, Glen. Where
is our son?”
He grabbed her soft hand and squeezed it
gently to reassure her.
“The Fullerton ’s
youngest was dropping Rick off when I traced his route from the bakery to the
gym. He looked wet. That’s on me,” Glen said as they walked down the central
hall toward the kitchen. “I know Rick takes everything I say about rules of
conduct literally. I should have reminded him to call home for a ride when I
heard rain in the forecast.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” he said when Jane
placed a mug of hot coffee in front of him as she sat next to him with her own
steaming mug of the strong brew he preferred.
“I took away his driving privileges because
seeing that broken plate glass window and imagining Rick cut and bloodied,
maimed or dead still wakes me up in a cold sweat some nights. I wanted the
punishment to inflict so much aggravation on him that he’ll never do anything
that stupidly dangerous again.
“But he should know that I don’t want him
to get sick in the rain or struck by lightning. Right, Jane. Why doesn’t he
know that? Why didn’t he call?”
~~~~
Jane watched her husband chug his coffee
and wondered for the thousandth time in the past two years what she could do to
mend the widening rift between Glen and their son.
Some of it was due to Rick’s evolution from
boy to man, where their son’s very liberal leanings clashed with Glen’s
life-long conservative ideals. Jane suspected that a young man’s need to
establish his own identity separate from his father’s was the source of most of
their communication problems.
“Glen, Rick has strictly followed his
punishment rules without any slip-us for the past month. Otherwise, Melissa
would have told us since she never passes on an opportunity to torment her
older brother.”
They both laughed.
When their shared amusement faded, she
asked, “What if we allow him to drive to and from his jobs only? It worries me
when he leaves before dawn to go to the bakery, and gets home from the gym
after sunset. Darlingfield is a safe place, but criminals are opportunists and
someone might view Rick as an easy target because he’s by himself--despite his
size and obvious physical strength.”
Jane stopped talking even though additional
arguments hovered on the edge of her tongue. She knew her husband well enough
to understand that he had started this conversation so she could convince him
of what he already knew: The severity of Rick’s penance had made its point.
They sipped their coffee in silence until
Glen asked for a refill. While Jane stood and walked to the counter, her
husband knocked his knuckles once against the kitchen table.
“You’re right, Jane. We’ll lift some of his
driving restrictions. Let him drive directly to and from work. I’ll tell Rick
when I pick him up tonight. What time’s he off?”
Jane glanced at her son’s work schedule
taped to the side of the refrigerator.
“Ten.”
She brought the pot over to the table and
half-filled both of their mugs. Once she’d placed the nearly empty pot on the
trivet in the center of the table and reseated herself, Jane caught her
husband’s eye as he sipped.
“After you tell Rick about his partially
restored driving privileges, Glen, remind him to make sure he protects himself
and his future every time he’s with a girl.”
Her husband paused, lowering his mug
without breaking eye contact. “You think he’s fooling around with the Fullerton girl?”
Jane thought about the look on Rick’s face
the few times he’d griped to her about Danya’s high expectations for his work
performance at her family’s bakery. In Jane’s opinion her son’s attitude
reflected more intrigue than annoyance.
“No, I don’t think he’s done anything with
her. Yet. But I think he wants to.”
~~~~
Glen liked the Fullertons. His department
supervisor at the municipal water treatment plant always hired them to cater
their holiday parties. Everyone in the Fullerton
family was professional and well-spoken. Over the years he and John Fullerton
had agreed on more than one issue at Darlingfield town meetings and school fundraisers,
but Glen still believed that keeping things simple with personal relationships
was best for everyone.
“We’ll swing by the drugstore on the way
home.”
~ * ~
Cardyn Brooks writes erotica as social
commentary. Her C. X Brooks persona writes edgier variations on similar themes.
Cardyn Brooks writes erotica as social
commentary. Her C. X Brooks persona writes edgier variations on similar themes.
Thank You for Hosting and Sharing Dodging Eros by Cardyn Brooks with your Readers
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