Read an Excerpt/Buy it Here
Kris Ripper has brought a special conversation to Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words from the author’s characters in zir’s latest release, One Life to Lose (Queers of La Vista #4). Thank you, Kris and welcome.
Love Letters
by Kris Ripper
My phone dinged with a message: You have been invited to join the following conversation: JCK. Click to join.
I clicked.
Keith: Yay! Cam’s here! Hi, Cam! (^_^)/ (That’s me waving at you, but I actually had to look it up, ha ha ha ha.)
Josh: He literally googled until he found one he liked. You can’t imagine how many waving text things there are, seriously.
Cameron: Hello. What is this? I had to install something.
Keith: It’s a group chat! So we can all talk to each other!
Cameron: Aren’t we going out to dinner?
Keith: *sigh*
Josh: Yep. Still going to dinner at The Grill. You’re gonna wear a waistcoat, right, Cam?
Keith: …
Keith: This is what you’re looking for, Cam: *blush*
I blushed just looking at the word blush. I shook my head.
Cameron: I can’t type that.
Josh: Is it true, though?
Keith: …
Keith: Your silence speaks volumes.
Keith: I’m just saying.
Josh: I’m going to picture Cam in that waistcoat with gold thread. You know the one, Keith?
Keith: Oh yeah. The black one, with all that intricate gold details. God, that’s so hot.
Josh: So. Hot.
I took slow breaths and glanced around. Maybe to make sure no one was watching me (no one was; I might as well have been in an invisible bubble in the booth). Maybe just to clear my blush.
More messages dinged.
Keith: Yeah, wear that one.
Keith: Cam?
Keith: Okay, okay, we’ll stop rubbing one out thinking about you in that waistcoat.
Josh: He’s never going to come back if you say things like “rubbing one out”.
Keith: Sorry. We aren’t rubbing one out. I mean, obviously it’d realistically be rubbing TWO out.
Josh: Unless it’s me in control of exactly who’s rubbing what, babe. Don’t press your luck.
Now I kind of hoped Keith pressed his luck.
Keith: *googling*
Keith: Oh my god, never mind. I have to scrub my brain now.
Keith: People are perverted.
Keith: Like…I can’t unsee what I have seen.
Keith: You guys, seriously, there are some really disturbing emoji sets.
Cameron: What’s an emoji set?
Josh: Welcome back, Cam. And don’t think too much about emoji sets.
Josh: Anyway.
Josh: We’re going to dinner. Keith and I are dressing up.
Keith: We are?
Keith: I mean…yeah, we are.
Keith: I’m already planning what we’re gonna wear.
Josh: And we look forward to spending the night with you, Cam. Your place or ours?
I swallowed hard, thinking about the two of them dressed up. Thinking about sleeping next to them. I loved their apartment, but my thumb hovered over the Y and hesitated.
Keith: My spidey sense tells me Cam wants to be at home tonight.
Josh: Sounds good. Plus, we can bring over the stuff we were planning to bring over.
Cameron: Stuff?
Josh: We picked up some your-place pajamas. Nothing big.
Keith: And slippers. Got you a pair, too.
Josh: I forgot. And bathrobes.
I stared at the messages and my heart rate sped up. I stared so long the screen went black.
They’d bought things specifically to keep at my apartment for when they spent the night. The thought filled me with a fizzy floating sensation.
My phone vibrated.
Josh: We don’t have to, Cam. If you don’t want us to.
I fumbled the phone in my haste to reassure them.
Cameron: No, no. Please. Yes.
Cameron: I mean, yes, of course.
Cameron: *blush*
Keith: ❤ ❤ ❤ Love you, Cam.
Josh: All those hearts are from me, too.
Cameron: ❤ ❤ One for each of you.
Cameron: I look forward to seeing the slippers.
Keith: We’re gonna match. It’ll be great.
Josh: We’ll see you later, Cam.
Cameron: I’ll see you both tonight.
I put my phone face down on my desk and realized my hands were shaking.
They had brought so much beauty, and grace, and warmth into my life. But I’d never expected to love them. And I certainly never expected them to return the sentiment.
Heart, heart, heart.
About One Life to Lose
Cameron Rheingold is the kind of guy who takes a book to a bar. He’s a loner by nature, but he has to engage with the community to keep his movie theater business afloat. When two young men stay after a Cary Grant film showing to chat, Cameron thinks he might have made some new friends—but their interest is more than friendly.
Josh is charismatic, and every smile is a little bit seductive. Keith is sweet and kind, with a core of steel Cameron can sense even when Keith’s on his knees. Cameron is willing to be the couple’s kinky third, but that’s it. He refuses to risk complicating things with his growing devotion, even if being with Josh and Keith feels more right than anything else ever has.
When the three of them are attacked by the killer roaming La Vista, Cameron must decide what’s more important: pretending the assault never happened and he’s the same loner he used to be, or coming clean to Josh and Keith about how much he loves them, even if they can never return his feelings.
Now available at Riptide Publishing. http://riptidepublishing.com/titles/one-life-to-lose
About Kris Ripper
Kris Ripper lives in the great state of California and hails from the San Francisco Bay Area. Kris shares a converted garage with a toddler, can do two pull-ups in a row, and can write backwards. (No, really.) Kris is genderqueer and prefers the z-based pronouns because they’re freaking sweet. Ze has been writing fiction since ze learned how to write, and boring zir stuffed animals with stories long before that.
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Giveaway
To celebrate the release of One Life to Lose, one lucky winner will receive an ebook from Kris’s backlist! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on December 17, 2016. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!
Alec Ryder’s arrest in Aspen, early on the morning of December twenty-fifth, is the latest disaster in his series of unhappy Christmases. He’s dreaded the holiday since being subjected to endless church services as a child. Being kicked out on Christmas Day after he came out to his parents, followed by an improbable series of yearly yuletide trips to the emergency room, haven’t made his Christmases any merrier. But getting busted for prostitution is the worst catastrophe; it means Alec’s dream of a college degree is gone, replaced by the specter of jail time.
Hi, my name is Teodora and I live in London with my husband and my son. I’ve been writing ever since I can remember, but it became my full time job a few years ago when I decided that everything else I’ve tried bores me to death and I have to do what I’ve always wanted to do, but never had the guts to fully embrace. I’ve been a journalist, an editor, a personal assistant and an interior designer among other things, but as soon as the novelty of the new, exciting job wears off, I always go back to writing. Being twitchy, impatient, loud and hasty are not qualities that help a writer, because I have to sit alone, preferably still, and write for most of the day, but I absolutely love it. It’s the only time that I’m truly at peace and the only thing I can do for more than ten minutes at a time – my son has a bigger attention span than me.
