Title: Bad Moon Arising
Series: Outcasts, Book One
Author: CL Mustafic
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: July 9, 2018
Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 51100
Genre: Paranormal, shifters, werewolves, mates, humor, enemies to lovers
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Synopsis
In a sleepy trailer park in the backwoods of Minnesota lake country, there lies a secret—threatened by a Grindr hookup gone bad.
Clay Anderson gets more than he bargained for when, in a moment of passion, he bites his Grindr hookup hard enough to draw blood. The man’s reaction isn’t as reassuring as Clay hoped, but of all the consequences Clay considered, lycanthropy wasn’t among them.
Damian Maccon leads a simple life as part of the Outcast pack. Not realizing at first that Clay swallowed his blood during their wild romp, he feels responsible when it’s evident that Clay has become infected. Worse, he now has a new werewolf on his hands until Clay learns the rules, and he has to oversee Clay’s decision to choose a mate within the pack.
Damian thinks his biggest problem is that Clay hates him, but when Clay chooses Damian’s abusive ex-boyfriend, Blaine, he goes on full alert. Can he save Clay from the same fate that befell him at Blaine’s hands?
Excerpt
Bad Moon Arising
CL Mustafic © 2018
All Rights Reserved
Chapter One
CLAY
Sitting in the back booth of the Blue Moon Bar and Grill—the only openly gay-friendly spot in the small city I worked in—I ran my finger over the screen of my phone, trying to gather up enough courage to tap the picture I’d been staring at for the past ten minutes. Touching the pic brought up his profile, which I’d already memorized. The green light told me he was online and only a few miles away from my current location. I liked his pic. It wasn’t very often Grindr users in my rural area posted pictures of their faces. Previous experience had taught me most of the app’s users were closeted and/or straight guys who liked to suck the occasional cock and worried their dude bros would download the app as a joke and see them there. But this guy had no such issue, and boy, was I glad.
Of course, on the heels of that thought came another: it probably wasn’t a real pic of the guy. As I stared into the mismatched eyes—one a light green, the other a pale blue—I had a feeling he was catfishing, but there was only one way to find out for sure. Tapping the picture of the shaggy, sandy-blond-haired, scruffy-faced man brought up the chat, but I hesitated a moment. His user name was MoonGazer, which made me think of a nerdy guy with a telescope. Suddenly I had a vision of the guy sitting in his room spying on the hot guy next door, which gave me the boost of confidence I needed to send a message.
[hey]
I sent the one word and immediately wanted to take it back. I should have said something like Hey, sexy, want to hook up? but that wasn’t me, and I couldn’t change the person I was, even on Grindr. Half a beer later, he responded.
[hey urself]
My palms were sweaty as I stared at the words and tried to formulate a response, but he beat me to it.
[r u l%kin 2 h%k up]
All the moisture left my mouth, so I picked up my beer and chugged the rest before I sent another one-word message.
[yep]
[whr u at]
Shit, he moved fast, but this is what I wanted, and he must have liked my pic enough to give it a go. My profile pic was only my chest. Yeah, I know it’s a cliché, but I had a great body, whereas my face? Well, my face wasn’t my best feature.
[you know where the blue moon is]
[b thr in 10]
I almost dropped my phone, but instead, I juggled it and managed to avoid it hitting the table.
[I’m in the back booth, black hair, red shirt]
What the hell was I doing? Oh, fuck it. I needed to get laid, and even if the guy wasn’t remotely as hot as his picture, I could turn him around and do it without having to look at him.
[gotcha]
Well, he wasn’t going to be much for conversation; that was for sure. After ordering a shot of vodka and another beer for courage, I sat back in my booth, eyes glued to the front door as I sipped my beer to soothe the burn from the stronger alcohol. The minutes ticked by slowly, and then the door opened and all the air in the room was sucked out when he stepped into the bar.
He waved to the burly bartender before turning his head and surveying the room. It was like a god had appeared, and I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Every set of eyes followed the tall, muscular man as he sauntered across the room. I wanted to shrink down into the booth. His picture hadn’t done him justice, and I knew I was about to be rebuked in a horrible fashion when he saw what he’d come to meet.
The moment he spotted me will be forever etched into my mind. His mismatched eyes settled on my face, and a predatory grin spread across his lips. Droplets of sweat rolled down my back and pooled in the crack of my ass, making me shift at the uncomfortable sensation. His gaze never left me as he made his way to my booth before dropping down on the bench across from me.
“Hey there, black hair, red shirt,” he said, in a slow, sexy, Southern-tinged drawl. His voice was low and gravely, and it stirred all sorts of feelings in me—well, in my pants at least.
“Hey.” God, I sounded like the nerd I’d been hoping he’d turn out to be. He chuckled, and the hairs on my arms stood up.
“Want to get out of here?”
Straight to the point, like his messages; at least he wasn’t at all about false advertising. Nodding, I grabbed my wallet and pulled out a twenty to leave on the table to cover my tab and tip. We stood at the same time, and he waited for me to put my jacket on before he headed for the door. We didn’t say anything more as we left the bar. I followed him out into the parking lot, but then stopped when I realized I had no clue where we were going since my car was parked in the opposite direction from the one he was heading.
“Do you have someplace we can go?” I asked. I could take him back to my place, but that meant a twenty-minute drive, and I wasn’t sure I wanted him to know where I lived. He could be a serial killer for all I knew.
“I got a camper on the back of my truck. That work for you?” His grin widened into a smile when he looked back over his shoulder at me and pointed to the brand-new four-door extended-box pickup that did indeed have one of those tacky campers attached to it. His wasn’t too bad, since it was a newer model, but it was still something of an atrocity. I wondered briefly if he lived in there, but then decided I didn’t care. It wasn’t as if I was looking to marry the guy.
“I guess that will do.” I shrugged and went to the small door at the back, but he’d gone to the driver’s side door of the truck.
“I think we should at least drive out of the city a bit. Wouldn’t want to scare the good folks when you start screaming my name,” he said, with a wink, before opening his door and climbing in without even waiting to see if I’d follow.
I hesitated. Did I really want to get in the truck with this guy? My brain said it wasn’t the best idea, but my cock didn’t agree. I guess the small head won out because next thing I knew, I was sitting in the big leather seat next to him, and he was driving out of the city. There was no conversation. I didn’t expect there to be an in-depth discussion on environmental politics or anything, but a bit of chitchat would have been nice while we drove for over ten minutes looking for a place to pull off that provided us some tree cover to hide the truck from the traffic on the highway.
He put the truck into park and shut off the engine before he turned to me. “You ready to do this?”
“Yeah, let’s go.” I opened my door and jumped down. The sound of his door opening made the situation feel real to me in a way it hadn’t before. Something about the guy seemed off, and I wondered, if I were to start running, would he give chase or simply laugh at me? I made my feet move and met him at the back of the truck.
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Meet the Author
CL Mustafic is a born and bred American mid-westerner who mysteriously ended up living in one of those countries nobody can ever find on the map of Europe. Left with too much time on her hands—let’s be honest here: it was the lack of television channels in her native language–and too many voices in her head trying to fill the silence, she decided to give her life-long dream of writing a novel a shot. So now, between shuttling kids back and forth from various activities and risking her life on the insanely narrow, busy streets of her new hometown, she loses herself in her own made-up world where love always wins.
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