Horny

Riptide Publishing

PO Box 6652

Hillsborough, NJ 08844

www.riptidepublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Horny

Copyright © 2014 by Anne Tenino

Smashwords Edition

Cover Art by Simoné, www.dreamarian.com

Editors: Gretchen Stull and Sarah Frantz

Layout: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at Riptidepublishing.com, or at marketing@riptidepublishing.com.

ISBN: 978-1-62649-179-3

First edition

August, 2014

Also available in paperback as part of the My Haunted Blender’s Gay Love Affair, and Other Twisted Tales collection:

ISBN: 978-1-62649-182-3

ABOUT THE EBOOK YOU HAVE PURCHASED:

We thank you kindly for purchasing this title. Your nonrefundable purchase legally allows you to replicate this file for your own personal reading only, on your own personal computer or device. Unlike paperback books, sharing ebooks is the same as stealing them. Please do not violate the author’s copyright and harm their livelihood by sharing or distributing this book, in part or whole, for a fee or free, without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner. We love that you love to share the things you love, but sharing ebooks—whether with joyous or malicious intent—steals royalties from authors’ pockets and makes it difficult, if not impossible, for them to be able to afford to keep writing the stories you love. Piracy has sent more than one beloved series the way of the dodo. We appreciate your honesty and support.

Ryan Caulfield is a devout avoider of risk, so it comes as a surprise when he agrees to help a group of supernatural law enforcers catch Zeus (the god voted Least Likely to Keep It in His Pants). But how could he say no? He’s nothing if not law-abiding, even if it’s a legal code from another plane of existence. Besides, it all seems harmless enough . . . at least until the half-naked and all-hot immortal with wings and horns shows up.

In his centuries as an investigator for the Olympic pantheon, Leander of the Eroté has solved a lot of cases and slept with a lot of humans. But on this investigation, it looks like he won’t be doing either. His assigned task is bogus, and the most alluring mortal he’s ever met is determined to avoid hooking up.

But the pull Leander feels toward Ryan the bartender won’t let him turn his attention away for long. Soon, he finds himself interested in much more than his usual dalliances with mortals. Now if only he can convince Ryan he’s worth the risk.

This one’s for Andrea.

About Horny

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Dear Reader

Acknowledgments

Also by Anne Tenino

About the Author

Enjoy this Book?

The reinvention of Caulfield’s Roadhouse was working.

So far.

I deserve a beer.

Ryan left his office off the kitchen, not in a hurry like he usually was when the place was full of customers, but at a wander. Shadowed and sleeping right now, with a single light on behind the antique bar top, the roadhouse was peaceful. Cozy, in spite of being large enough for a few hundred customers. Fifteen years ago when Grandpa had modernized, Ryan had insisted he keep the exposed timber beams. The wood dance floor he now stood on was original too, but no one did the two-step on it with their best gal anymore. There was some serious bump and grind on weekends though, and Caulfield’s was the it bachelorette party destination for hundreds of miles.

Ryan wasn’t naturally inclined to taking risks, so when he’d begun to rebrand the family tavern, he’d had to firmly (and metaphorically) take his balls in hand. He’d done so—the remaking of the bar, not the testicle holding—with his grandfather’s blessing, which seemed only polite, since Grandpa had founded the place. After decades of profitability, the livers of their loyal but aging customers weren’t up to the task of keeping the place afloat anymore. When Grandpa had retired to Florida seven months ago, the last of their original customers had left the bar also.

If he wanted to continue the family business, he had to find new customers, and the way he saw it, Caulfield’s could fill a formerly unrecognized niche. There wasn’t a town with a population over seven thousand within a sixty-mile radius, but there were plenty of people. It was rich farmland, some of the best. Some of those farmers had to be gay, right? Or at least not homophobic. And those people had to be looking for a place to congregate. Not exactly a gay bar, but a gayesque bar. Ryan worked tirelessly to make sure that place was Caulfield’s.

He wasn’t ready to swear he’d never have cash-flow issues again, but he’d made enough the past few months to make his payments to his grandfather. He even had enough left over to feed himself.

I rebuilt the family business.

He wound his way through the tables and the forest of upended chairs on top of them, intent on getting his celebratory beer. The view of the dance floor from behind the tap was nearly as pleasing as seeing the rest of the place from the center of it. He smiled at it, but the smile slipped off his lips when he noticed he’d forgotten to turn off some of the new special-effects lighting. Except . . . It was looking misty out there. Thick mist. Smoky.

I didn’t install a fog machine.

Fire. He stopped the flow of beer into his glass automatically, staring out at the swirling smoke. Thank God he’d retrofitted a sprinkler system.

Don’t get ahead of yourself.

Walking a few steps left, still holding his pint, he tried to see from a different angle. The haze was increasing, and he knew for damn sure he didn’t have lights that deep shade of red. Strobe lights, black light, pink, purple, green, and blue. That was it. He quick-timed around the bar toward the . . . whatever it was, watching the scarlet smoke get thicker and brighter, boiling out of, well, somewhere.

I should get the phone. Call nine-one-one.

He froze before he could turn to find it, brought up short when he saw a silhouette in the middle of the blood red cloud. Then another, and another. Four altogether.

More alarming, the silhouettes didn’t look quite . . . right. The one in front looked human, but hugely, beefily so, like a caricature of a circus strongman, with bulging biceps and shoulders that made Ryan think of toting barges and lifting bales, all resting on top of cartoonishly slim hips.

What the . . .?

The circus strongman moved, stepping toward him. Ryan lost his breath when he saw a shadow of something swinging beside the man-creature, but within seconds, as the figure came closer to the light, he figured out it wasn’t a forked tail or whatever but . . . a sword hilt?

Definitely need to call nine-one-one.

His body wasn’t responding. It wasn’t getting as alarmed as his brain was trying to convince it to be. Even after blinking a half dozen times, he hadn’t moved, simply continued to stare at the guy. Probably a guy. A guy with leather strips for a skirt and a shiny breastplate and armor strapped to his shins and—

A warrior? On my dance floor?

Planting his feet wide, the strongman halted and placed his hand on his sword hilt. Ryan Caulfield? The booming, amplified quality of the voice was punctuated by shattering glass. Then cool liquid seeped through the canvas of Ryan’s shoes and he realized he’d dropped his pint on the floor.

Apparently that was enough of a response for the guy to continue, still in that projected voice. I’m Achilles, son of Peleus, king of the Myrmidons, and of Thetis, nymph of Olympus, he intoned formally. "I’ve descended on your drinking establishment with my team of satyroi from the Immortal Moral Authority in order to beg for your assistance in completing our mission. Then he grinned, shifting from a rigid stance to a relaxed, hip-out one. You can call me Axe, he said in a normal, non-echoing voice so at odds with his anatomy that it sounded like he’d inhaled helium. Easier not to get overwhelmed by my greatness that way. We need your help, barkeep." He beamed at Ryan like he’d just delivered a giant Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes check.

I don’t . . . Ryan shook his head. Help? He glanced down at the beer pooling at his feet. If only he’d had even a sip, he could blame this whole hallucination on that. But he hadn’t. And he somehow knew this was really happening, in spite of also being certain it was impossible.

"Maybe we could help you, first. Do you have a mop?" Another figure stepped up behind the warrior. Tripped up, actually, on goat’s hooves. And goat legs. And fucking ram’s horns curling back and around his head until they touched his ears. I can get that for you. He pointed at Ryan’s feet, smiling a very human—and attractively boyish—smile. In spite of himself, Ryan noticed the . . . goat-type creature was bare-chested and it was worth looking at.

But still. Uh . . . These things had broken in here to clean? He couldn’t get enough air to ask, was breathing too fast and too shallowly.

Probably in back, huh?