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    Otherwise Alone: Evan Arden, #1
    Otherwise Alone: Evan Arden, #1
    Otherwise Alone: Evan Arden, #1
    Ebook82 pages1 hour

    Otherwise Alone: Evan Arden, #1

    By Shay Savage

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Former Marine Lieutenant Evan Arden sits in a shack in the middle of nowhere, waiting for orders that will send him back home—if he ever gets them.  Other than his loyal Great Pyrenees, there's no one around to break up the monotony.  The heat is unbearable, but he makes do with the little he has.  He's accustomed to harsh conditions and simply exists as best he can.  The tedium is excruciating, but it is suddenly interrupted when a young woman stumbles up his path.
    She's lost; she's cute, and he can't resist the temptation of luring her into his bed.  Why not?  It's been ages, and he is Otherwise Alone.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherShay Savage
    Release dateDec 16, 2012
    ISBN9781301192120
    Otherwise Alone: Evan Arden, #1
    Author

    Shay Savage

    Shay Savage is an independent author from Cincinnati, Ohio, where she lives with her family and a variety of household pets. She is an accomplished public speaker and holds the rank of Distinguished Toastmaster from Toastmasters International. Her hobbies include off-roading in her big, yellow Jeep, science fiction in all forms, and soccer. Savage holds a degree in psychology, and she brings a lot of that knowledge into the characters within her stories.From the author: “It’s my job to make you FEEL. That doesn’t always mean you’ll feel good, but I want my readers to be connected enough to my characters to care.”Savage’s books many books span a wide variety of topics and sub-genres with deeply flawed characters. From cavemen to addicts to hitmen, you’ll find yourself falling for these seemingly irredeemable characters!

    Read more from Shay Savage

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    Reviews for Otherwise Alone

    3.5/5

    27 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Quick read; a novella that serves as prologue to series. Well done beginning, meaning my interest has been piqued to continue reading the series.
    • 3/5
      Well I did like this book but I really should try to avoid short stories as they frustrate the hell out of me. I suppose in the next one we might get to know more about the characters lives ?
    • 4/5
      Pretty hot and yummy quick read. Definitely left me wanting more. Even though the sex scenes came about quickly, I still felt it believable which isn't common. Nothing felt off about the storyline, simply honest and blunt. I'm looking forward to more Evan.

    Book preview

    Otherwise Alone - Shay Savage

    Otherwise Alone

    By Shay Savage

    Second edition

    All characters and events in this publication are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

    Copyright © 2012 Shay Savage

    Published by Shay Savage

    All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

    Cover design: Mayhem Cover Creations

    Editing: Tamara

    Dedication

    For everyone out there who has read my writing in the past and offered me their continued encouragement to get out there and actually publish something, it is to you my first real publication is dedicated.

    I would never have gone this far without all of you!

    And for Tamara, who has been there through every step of this crazy being a writer journey for a long, long time.

    Table of Contents

    Dedication

    Preface

    Chapter One – Meaningless Existence

    Chapter Two – Resolved Tension

    Chapter Three – Sowed Seeds

    Chapter Four – Accepted Fate

    Author’s Note

    More Books by Shay Savage

    About the Author

    Preface

    In blazing heat and almost complete isolation, I hide in the Arizona desert and wait for the day my boss tells me I can come back home.  My only companions are my Barrett rifle and a Great Pyrenees named Odin.

    I check my email regularly – it’s my only link to what has become the outside world.  Everything in it reminds me of what is currently out of my reach, and I wonder if I will end up rotting here after all.

    Maybe it isn’t exile.

    Maybe it is an execution.

    The days are long and the nights are longer, until a young woman suddenly appears on my doorstep.  I’m all for getting a little – it’s been ages – but she makes me long for more.

    Chapter One – Meaningless Existence

    It’s fucking hot.

    Even though I’m naked, I’ve kicked all the blankets off in the middle of the night.

    The sun isn’t even up yet, and it’s still blisteringly hot in the middle of the desert, somewhere west of Pinon, Arizona.  I roll over on my back and try to blow air down my chest, letting the sweat there mix with my breath to cool me down a bit.  It helps, but only when I’m actually exhaling.

    The bed squeaks as I drop my legs to the side and hope I don’t end up with another fucking splinter from the ancient wood floors.  My eyes fall to my Barrett, a long barreled rifle with an elaborate scope, which is propped up in the corner of the room, next to the bed.  It is my constant reminder of how I ended up here.  I stretch and moan a little before I take a quick piss and dig around for a clean pair of boxer shorts, my jeans, and a faded Jesus and Mary Chain concert T-shirt.  Once I’m dressed, I go outside and check the level of gasoline I still have for the generator.  If I don’t run a fan and only use the electricity for cooking and checking my email, I’ve got enough to keep me going another week or so.

    Internally I hope that will be enough, but I know in the back of my head that it probably won’t be.  I will have to make the one-hundred mile trek to a gas station where I have yet to be seen.  Lots of people pass through the area on the highway several miles from here, but they don’t ever stop twice in the same place.  Even if they did, chances are no one would notice, but I’m not one to take chances.

    Before I can head back through the door of the small, two room house, I hear a magnificent sneeze followed by the thumping of four canine feet across the dusty ground.

    Come ‘ere, Odin, I say with a yawn, and the Great Pyrenees lopes over to get his head scratched.  Though his white coat is still pretty close to his skin, in this heat he needs another haircut.  I wonder if I have enough juice to charge up the electric trimmers.  If there isn’t, I’m going to have to do it by hand with a pair of scissors.  Odin isn’t going to like it much, and it will probably end up looking like shit, but it’s better than overheating.

    I fill his water dish from the pump outside and wipe my forehead with the back of my hand.  There’s just enough light to see by as it streaks across the barren landscape while the sun decides to make an appearance.  I do a quick look around, check the wires hooked up to the battery of the old Chevy truck in the back of the house, and verify they’re still connected.  The wire runs the perimeter of the two acre property and would set off the vehicle’s horn if breached.

    It’s not the best security around, but I’m supposed to be dead anyway.

    I stretch out, do a few pushups and sit ups, then jog around the shack a few times before I head back in.  Odin follows me back inside, and I take quick inventory of the place out of habit, not because I don’t know what I will find.  There isn’t much to go over – a bathroom with rusted out fixtures, a kitchen area with a mini-fridge full of room temperature – that is, warm – bottles of water, and a small electric stove.  The main room is mostly occupied by my twin-sized bed with a cast-iron frame, once painted white, but is now chipped and falling apart.  Pushed against the wall is a card table with two folding chairs.  There isn’t even room for a full sized chest of drawers or anything, so the small amount of clothing I do have is folded up in the drawer of a short nightstand.  I showed up here with a single duffle bag, so I don’t have that much, anyway.

    Fucking paradise, I grunt to myself.

    Odin looks up at me and snuffs.  He hardly ever barks but seems content to huff through his nose and occasionally whine at me.  I’m not one to talk to the dog a lot either, though he

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