Maggie Blackbird

Since I’m now in edits with my publisher for Two Princes, book one in the When We Were Young series, a LGBT YA romance, I thought I’d post one more excerpt.  You can find the two previous excerpts here and here.  The third excerpt continues on where the second excerpt ended.

Check out the third excerpt.

Billy sat on the windowsill cushion at Indian Corner, flanked by the only two dudes who bothered with his loser ass.  Footsteps scampered on the stairwell.  Two guys Billy had attended elementary school with back on the reserve appeared—Stuart Oshawee and his yes-man.  They stopped.  Both kept their heads down, but they stole peeks at Billy.  Their fearful eyes rested on his flag.

Those geeks weren’t stoners or skidders.  This must be a shake down.  If he sold them anything, they’d out him to the cops or the principal.  Or even worse, Chief Oshawee, since Stuart was the son of René’s cousin.

Clearing his throat, Stuart inched forward.  “How’s it going?”

They could piss off.  Neither of them looked Billy’s way on the school bus.  He raised his middle finger.  He wasn’t that desperate to get rid of his weed.

His buddies laughed.  “Keep walking,” Lonn told the geek twins.

“We just…y’know.”  Stuart’s voice was pleading.  He again inched forward.  “We-We heard, heard, heard…”

From the stairwell, cheers erupted, and people calling out, “Renny!”  “Ren-Man!”  “’Sup, Renny?”  “Yo, Ren-Man, what’s shaking?”

Those two nicknames always burned Billy’s gut.  And why was René coming up the lower-class staircase, and even weirder, near Indian Corner, anyway?

Stuart and his yes-man froze.

Boot heels lazily connecting against cement carried to where they stood.  René appeared.  He pocketed his sunglasses.  “’Sup?” he asked, using his slightly broad chin to motion at Stuart.

“Nothing.”  Stuart squeaked like a mouse and shook his head.  “We…We were doing nothing, Renny.  I swear.  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  Right?”  He craned his neck and gaped at his yes-man who’d melted against the wall.

René’s scrutinizing look said, Was I born yesterday?  “Seems something’s going down.”  He raised his long finger at Billy.  “Uh uh.  Not my little cuz.  Stay away from him, Redsky.”

Billy wasn’t taking any snot-assed orders after playing statue in Prince Oshawee’s wheels.  Plus, he’d never done anything wrong.   “Screw you.”

René’s almond-shaped eyes narrowed, drawing his angled black brows down.  “I see.  This is what I get after I give you a ride, huh?  Typical of your fam.  C’mere and say that.”  He pointed at the black speckled floor right in front of him.

No way and no how was Billy going to look geek in front of his two main men.  He squared his shoulders and ambled to René.  A bright, crisp, clean scent drifted under his nose, something he hadn’t smelled while he’d been in the truck, probably because of the air freshener.

René’s wide, rose-colored mouth curled up at the corner.  “Say it.  Go ahead.”

The revulsion in those four words slapped Billy’s face.  “Eat it.”  He raised his middle finger.

René’s right hand held textbooks and a binder.  He used his left hand to lock his fingers around Billy’s bird-flipping insult.  When the heat from René’s silky skin tightened around Billy’s finger, hot prickles bubbled along his flesh.  A gush of warmth traveled from his crotch, down his thighs, and to his toes.  As they stared at each other, sweat sprung at the back of his neck.  René’s breaths dusted Billy’s face, bathing him in mint and cigarette smoke.

Contempt saturated René’s dark-brown eyes.  “You loser.  Only a moron accepts a beat-down.”

“Think you got the stuff?”  The air in Billy’s throat twisted to a flashover racing through a tunnel.

René dropped his books.  Bam.  They hit the floor.