Beneath His Stolen Skin
By R.W. Clinger
()
About this ebook
When Nolan Baxter opens up his house to tenants over the summer for cash, he falls for the sexy and alluring Zeb Thursday.
Zeb is quiet, subdued, and spends a severe amount of time in his bedroom alone. Nolan begins to wonder about him. Why does he wear gloves, long-sleeved shirts, and a baseball cap during the hot and humid summer days? Why is he hiding his physical appearance? And why does he rarely come out during daylight?
Nolan makes it a point to find out Zeb’s history, and along the way learns of the man’s secrets and sins. But as he pries into Zeb’s business, Nolan invades his tenant’s privacy. As a sexual longing builds between them, they devise strength in each other. Nolan inevitably falls for Zeb and vice versa.
But will their individual scars, deep and dark, prevent the pair from loving each other?
R.W. Clinger
R.W. Clinger is a resident of Pittsburgh. He has a degree in English from Point Park University of Pittsburgh. His writing entails gay human studies, and includes the novels Just a Boy, Skin Tour, Skin Artist, Soft on the Eyes, Pool Boy, and The Last Pile of Leaves. He has published many stories with Starbooks Press as well as The Weekender, a novella with Dreamspinner Press. His gay mystery, Cutie Pie Must Die, is published with Bold Stroke Books. For three years he has held the position of managing editor for the literary magazine, The Writer’s Post Journal. For more information, please visit rwclinger.com.
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Beneath His Stolen Skin - R.W. Clinger
Beneath His Stolen Skin
By R.W. Clinger
Published by JMS Books LLC at Smashwords
Visit jms-books.com for more information.
Copyright 2013 R.W. Clinger
ISBN 9781611529210
For more titles by R.W. Clinger at Smashwords visit https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/rwclinger1
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Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com
Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.
All rights reserved.
WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.
This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It contains substantial sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which may be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in the United States of America.
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Beneath His Stolen Skin
by R.W. Clinger
Chapter 1: The Tenant Upstairs
There was something rather peculiar about the young man in the upstairs bedroom, but Nolan Baxter couldn’t exactly put a finger on it. The man was so quiet and kept to himself, a prisoner within his own cell. One who Nolan believed to be solitary, introverted, and very much afraid of the world and its unfolding events around him. Rarely did he come out of his room when the other two tenants were present. Almost never did he leave the brownstone without a hat on, long-sleeved shirt, and gloves, even when it was considerably warm outside. Yet, Nolan found the young man’s peculiarities rather attractive, perhaps magnetic, and he only wanted to get to know the tenant even more, substantially better, and build a certain amount of trust and friendship with him.
The room on the second floor was the tiniest in the lakeshore house. One window overlooked Lake Erie to the north. The closet was a foot deep and two feet wide, which was hardly useable. A full-size bed barely fit inside the room with a four-drawer dresser and a writing table—all were crammed against the available walls like children in a foster home. The man’s rent was a mere three hundred dollars a month since the room was miniscule. Had it offered more space for the tenant, Nolan would have charged a considerable amount more.
Zeb Thursday, that was the strange man’s name, kept the room tidy. Regularly he swept the oak floor, washed his bed sheets, and used window cleaner on the single window. Never was there a hideous aroma that escaped his confines like unwashed clothes or three-day old pizza. Zeb was clean by all means, Nolan had noted. One of his cleanest tenants, if the truth be told.
Nolan knew the young man’s age: twenty-three. He knew where he had come from: Cincinnati, Ohio. He believed Zeb’s parents had passed away, although he wasn’t quite positive. Zeb did not do drugs. He did not paint or play video games. Oftentimes he liked to take walks at night around Erie and Nolan sometimes followed him. The young man enjoyed Joyce Carol Oates novels, John Updike stories, and poetry by Sylvia Plath. Never was he seen with a Grisham or King novel tucked in his palms. He didn’t smoke, nor did he drink. Never did he have a visitor at 1287 Medford Street—a certain somebody in his life who climbed the sixteen steps to his second floor room to spend an hour or a night. He wasn’t a graduate of Edinboro or West End Colleges. He didn’t work, Nolan surmised, but his monthly rent for the room was never late, and always in cash. Honestly, Zeb Thursday wasn’t a problem at all. Strange, but not a nuisance like some of the other tenants Nolan housed throughout the last three years. In fact, Zeb was desired, in more ways than one, but those details of Nolan’s fixation were tamped and unprofessional.
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Nolan had opened up the brownstone to tenants when Peter Awestruck, his lover of four years, accidentally drowned in the lake. During a Fourth of July cookout at Hugh Break’s house, some three miles east of Medford Street, Peter had decided to go swimming in the lake. A strong current took him under, held him captive beneath its surface, and filled his lungs. Peter's body was found at twilight, that exact time when colorful fireworks began to burst over the lake in celebration of the country’s independence.
With grief therapy twice a week, Nolan Baxter survived his lover’s death, although he couldn’t pay for the brownstone, groceries, and electric bill. Hence, the welcoming of tenants into his abode. It was either he lost the house or opened the spare bedrooms on the second and third floors to roommates. At first, following Peter’s untimely summer demise, Nolan really