Indigo Footsteps, Spatters of Red

By J. Fally

At first glance, Carter Cross and Josh Lessard seem like an ordinary couple. They make love and fight, know each other's strengths and weaknesses, deal with the "in-laws," and share their life and home. They even work together. One day, they’ll probably die together – possibly a lot sooner than they’d prefer, given their profession as members of a paramilitary special unit formed to thwart a gory apocalypse. While Carter and Josh are used to cheating death on a daily basis, this time the odds are stacked against them. Between a deadly mission to complete and Josh's grandma coming for a visit, it’ll take a miracle to get them out as horror invades not only a major city but also their home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
• Release date: Jul 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781627988056

Book preview

For my Little Dragon—

Love as Always.

Indigo Footsteps, Spatters of Red

VIOLET. CARTER stared at the can of paint on the floor, clearly doubtful. You’re going to paint our living room violet.

Josh, undaunted, tossed him a brush. "No, dickhead. We are going to paint our living room violet. Unless you want to do it in green instead, but the only green they had was this weird pea-soup shade, so I don’t recommend it."

What’s wrong with white?

I don’t know. Josh shrugged and went for the paint can with a screwdriver. This was going to end badly, Carter could tell, but he made no move to intervene yet. He did put down the brush, though. Just in case. He might have to move fast to prevent total disaster. Don’t know, don’t care, Josh elaborated, distracted as he tried to figure out where to apply his lever. Mémère wants gay bliss, Mémère will get gay bliss. Gay people like color; we are painting the walls. Can’t be that hard.

Who says gay people have to like color? I’m gay. I like white. It’s neutral. It’s a non-color. You can paint over any stains and nobody will ever notice. It also made for a very pretty contrast when he put his dark hand on Josh’s winter-white ass, but this was not the time to get distracted. A horrible suspicion reared its ugly head. "Wait. Did you go on the Internet again? Did you google?"

I had to; she didn’t give me any specific orders. I needed data.

Josh hooked the tip of the tool into the can’s lid and pushed. The lid didn’t move. Josh adjusted his grip and narrowed his eyes. Carter realized that while it might be fun to watch Josh throw a shit fit when the can inevitably puked up its entire contents over him and everything close by, the paint was also going to splash all over the hardwood floor. There was a reason why Carter usually kept his partner well away from household chores or DIY work. Josh’s many talents lay in different areas.

Okay, stop. Carter nudged his bare toes against Josh’s knee, knocking him gently off balance. If you’re so hell-bent on painting the living room, we need to cover the floor and the furniture first. Though, just for the record, your ideas suck and we’re repainting everything once your grandma’s gone again. He frowned a little. Wait. How long is she gonna stay? Do we need to soundproof the bedroom?

Yes. No. No, wait, no soundproofing, we won’t hear anybody coming either; we’ll be sitting ducks. Or, worse, Mémère’s gonna walk in at the worst possible moment. My dick would never recover.

Your dick and my dignity.

Not that he had much of the latter left anyway, between Josh and Josh’s psycho family. There’d been a time when Carter had lived a… well, not exactly a quiet life, but a life blissfully free of fish in his diet, two a.m. drunk-dialing uncles crooning French nonsense in his ear, and determinedly accepting grandmothers invading his home to inspect his gay lifestyle, making his partner twitchy and unnervingly domestic. Josh should never, ever contemplate color swatches or china patterns. That was wrong on so many levels it hurt Carter’s brain.

Josh looked up at him from where he’d plunked down on the floor. His smile was a thing of beauty. All this talking about dicks is making me horny. Want me to suck yours?

Is the Pope Catholic?

Bad phrasing.

Awesome blowjob.

HOW MANY colors did you buy?

Carter didn’t have to fake his horror. His horror was a very real thing; it was all but riding his shoulder hissing and spitting. There were crates full of paint cans in his kitchen, most of them cracked open, suggesting that Josh had inspected the contents and then predictably hadn’t known what to do with them and had just stacked the boxes wherever. As a consequence, there were now crates upon crates blocking the way to their coffeemaker. If Carter wanted a caffeine boost, he’d have to blast his way through with the leftover C4.