Welcome to my eleventh edition of Muse Monday. It’s a chance for a character who inspires me to guest on the blog. Today, we have the once-nerdy and insecure but now handsome and confident Gavin Pemmican from my Christmas short story Tied Up with a Bow, a m/m holiday romance.
Slade will never understand what it’s like to feel inferior. How can a man who’s beyond handsome and muscular, who’s nothing but confident and has the attention of everyone, know what it’s like to stand in the shadows, pushed aside, and when noticed, mercilessly teased, comprehend what drove me to do what I did?
Maybe I should have trusted in his love. Maybe his love should have been enough. But it wasn’t at the time. I was too filled with self-loathing to love myself. Actually, I couldn’t stand myself. I wanted to prove to the rez, and maybe even myself, that I did count. That I could be somebody.
Everyone wondered what Slade saw in me. They looked at my two left feet, my stutter, my shyness, and wrote me off as a loser. Everyone except for Slade. He said he loved my brain. He loved my intelligence. And he loved my quirkiness.
That, right there, should have been enough.
But the laughter from the other people on the rez chased me everywhere. I had to show them.
The plan was simple: I’d come back as a success. I’d run the rez as their chief. Yeah, I’d show them.
But Slade never understood. When I told him I wanted to leave and go away to school, build a powerful career for myself, he told me I was doing it for the wrong reasons and sacrificing what we shared for the wrong reasons.
Now I’m back. I’m the chief. I’m a lawyer. And Slade’s words still haunt me…
****
He’s got the perfect Christmas present for the community’s chief—vengeance wrapped in a shiny box with a red bow on top.
Joseph Slade Indian isn’t angry. He’s pissed. Pissed that the man who threw over his love for glory and money is back, and now leads their Ojibway community as the new chief. Holding the pain deep in his chest, Slade knows how he’ll celebrate the most miserable day of the year—opening a gift of recompense after being dumped by the one man he dared to love.
Gavin Pemmican is full of regret. He knows he made a big mistake leaving Slade for a materialistic dream of power and prestige. No longer the poor bullied misfit but an educated lawyer, he’s ready to put his skills to the biggest case of his life by brazenly challenging Slade in the kangaroo court of sexual torture he’s daring to stick Gavin in—and win back the only man he’s ever loved.
Genre(s): M/M Contemporary Romance, Holiday Romance, Light BDSM Romance, LGBTQ+, Erotic Romance, First Nations Romance
Heat Rating: Level 4
Publication Date: November 29, 2019
Publisher: eXtasy Books
Maggie Blackbird 