Tank is a man with a violent past. We first met him in The Wrong Side of Right—he was the man who led Tony down a dark path of seduction and dangerous cravings. Now Tank is on a mission, seeking revenge against those who took what was his.

He is a darkly conflicted, passionate, possessive, dangerous man…

Good Boy Bad is not a sequel, it’s vengeance.

*****

Those who walk on the darker side may still have families. Even though his family is splintered, his sons are important to Tank, and the death of his boy has him determined to find those responsible and bring them to justice. The justice of the court means nothing to him. He’s interested in the vengeance meted out by Glocks and hollow-points.

The course of retribution, like the course of love, does not run smooth, and when Tank meets another young man, the two paths tangle dangerously. The south side of Chicago is home to exactly the kind of former friends who can help the hollow-points find their mark, but at a fearsome price. Vengeance doesn’t come cheap, and this time the price may be more than Tank and Alex are prepared to pay.

Some doors only open one way, some roads are dead ends

when good boys turn bad.

*****

Alex was one of the hordes of homeless cast into a system that failed them at every turn, leaving the man-child with the only choice that mattered… no choice at all… until one day fate intervened and meted out another kind of retribution. Saviors are often the worst of savages as Alex soon finds out… 

It was hard not to feel out of place, hard not to take short, sharp, shallow breaths because you knew you reeked, truly godawful in ways that had nothing to do with the hogs or the chickens or the mountains of manure you tended and turned and composted.
It was hard not to feel the denim fibers opening cross-wise, strained to breaking point because you grew and grew and grew, and there was never the money or the time, and you tended the manure, the fucking manure pile, day in and day out, so why bother with fresh and new and special?
The day came before the light.
The night ended before the dark descended.
It was like being strung between hell and more hell. And hard was hard, because it was the right way. The Christian way. And the path was simple and straightforward and lit with candles that extinguished with each pass.
Because that path wasn’t his path, not the path of righteousness, not the path of belonging, not the path of worthy or even marginal…
Alex spanned the cubbyhole, too broad-shouldered to disappear from view, carrying his mass high up, weighted with work—hard, unrelenting, exhausting work. He hated it didn’t matter, not a wit, not one iota. He was and always had been invisible, lost to a system that extended pity through indentured servitude, rewarding the hosts with expressions of admiration.
Sometimes they’d give him a lingering look, assessing him, knowing his roots—the corruption and the addictions—just trash tossed aside. He’d been saved and detoxed and menialized until no one saw him, just his backstory—the arbiter of his misfortune. That extended to everybody in that godforsaken hamlet on flatpan with nothing but corn and wheat, the silos extending forever. It traveled for as far as the mind could weep with the agony of a horizon so pure it burnt the eye sockets and armor-pierced the skull with the favor of an almighty who tithed through fickle reward and punishment.
This night, this time and place, the music and the slow rhythm of not belonging ached in ways that sinned.
His keepers were looking to loose him without freeing the chains. It cycled back to the hard and the need for him to keep doing and undoing and redoing, payback for the meals and the single in the loft, high up, third floor, brutal and airless and stinking with his sweat and the frantic strokes that freed him for an instant. Freed his body, letting it soar, forget forget forget…
He could have run, should have run, back when he still had reasons and ambition, as skewed as they were. The keepers only knew about the track marks and the steam vents and him handing off to the well-groomed in suits and designer boots, packets of relief in return for a percentage of the take.
What they didn’t know was what he’d done on the side… What he’d craved. Who he was.

*****

The church lot lay canted toward a stand of old oak, the square structure with white siding and demure appearance looked solid and worthy. On rough gravel, sacred and secular merged in ragged formation, every vehicle wearing rust with determination. Alex fled the stifling scent of disdain and pity, seeking solace in solitude, seeking peace, seeking relief. 

Eyes squinted, inhaling in great ugly gasps and rasps, knowing wanting wishing hoping they’d find him, there, just like that. Exposed, naked, thick and defiant, his lungs huffing fuck you fuck you fuck you…
Fuck me…
Please, oh god oh god oh god, please fuck me…
The stranger’s hand stayed his frantic motion, cupping him, squeezing harsh, unrelenting, like he knew, he knew and he picked it up, he picked up the movement, the man, knowing how, understanding.
The zipper ripped at his flesh and he cringed without wanting to. The hand ripped him, took him to now, to then, to palms slapping scarred pine walls in the sludge of heat and the filth in his mind…
A thumb, the thumb, the one coddling and stroking and tempting, the one saying fuck me, that thumb grazed his chin, pressuring it up and back, and tendons bulged with exposure as the thumb indented until his cock screamed with agony and pumped against metal and muscle, and he broke silence with silence, head thrown back, mouth agape, spittle and cum and sweat undammed…
…damned, damned forever, for now, for then.
The big man backed away, backlit by thin, transparent flickers from gauzy rays seeping across pockmarked gravel, and the light of the righteous warred with the dark of his soul and the salvation of the flesh.
His flesh.

Alex wept…

*****

He asked, “What’s your name, kid,” but not out loud, the old courtesies hanging with him, despite him turning away, leaving it all on the streets.
When you run, you don’t need names.
Names are for roots, for the solids, the stayers and keepers and believers.
Not for transients, not for the likes of him.
And this kid was no kid. When you looked at him, into his eyes… Even staring in light that wasn’t, light so dim it might as well have been his imagination… When you looked, really looked, you saw.
It was the seeing that roughed him up, from the inside out. Like looking down a well, maybe, though he’d never seen a well, never looked down anything other than the wrong way, the wrong path, the wrongness of himself.
The kid was him, used like him, packaged in muscle hiding a soul, an old soul who’d been places. Places you maybe wanted to forget, places others said weren’t real, or meant for you, or strayed from the good, the narrow.
Corruption.
Corruption was why he’d touched. It was wrong. There was no NO, but there should have been, would have been except for his own yes and his own hunger and hope that maybe that invisible yes hiding in a world of no, hiding in plain sight with whimpers and eyes so old and desperate for relief, maybe he’d done a solid for the kid, for himself.
He didn’t ask for consent, he gave it.
Why can’t I give it to myself?
The kid wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands, grinding away, knuckles gouging at the sockets, damming it back. Then he looked up.
Mouthed, “Thank you,” silently, like they were talking head-to-head, heart-to-heart, building a connection that was wrong, wrong, wrong.
“I’m…”
Fuck, who am I? What am I?
The kid slithered off the tailgate, stood, tall, solid, filled out in ways that made his cock ache and twitch and regret he’d come full circle, back to no, to denial. The old eyes looked him up and down, mostly up. He stood a couple inches shorter, at just shy of six foot, but filled up the space in the night, in the dim light crowded with vehicles and the ringing of laughter and music wafting across the gravel, stood there with his hands clenched and whispering, “I’m Alex.”
The kid held out his hand. It shook. Quaked. His whole body was on fire and the bulge, the bulge was there, still, nudging at the stain and the release and the silent scream. For more. More.
Knowing it was trouble, knowing he was being stupid, couldn’t afford it, not now, not when he needed to stay low, off radars, off the grid.
He held out his hand and it wasn’t the touch, the grip, the simple squeeze, the electricity shooting the rapids in his arm, setting his hair, his tongue, his groin on fire. It wasn’t any of that.
This was too much like another time, another place. Another mistake.

*****

GOOD BOY BAD is speculative fiction employing narrative poetry interwoven within standard erotic storytelling. It is available from Amazon in ebook and print, and it’s also available in Kindle Unlimited.

ADULT CONTENT: This is transgressive, homoerotic lit, intense and dark, employing adult language and adult, often challenging, themes. If you are easily offended, if you require trigger warnings, Good Boy Bad may not be appropriate for you. This is experimental fiction: outré, out there, challenging, complex, disturbing, mind-bending, exploring boundaries…

Taking you to the edge of your comfort zone … and into mine.