Risk it All: Queer Stories of Love, Suspense, And Daring, #1

By T. Thorn Coyle

Women in danger. Men in love. People looking for a way out, or a path in. Meanwhile, ghosts wander, stalkers are on the trail, and cities thrum with music, neon, and life…

Five short stories filled with thrills, intrigue, and the sweetest of kisses.

Take a risk and jump.

• Language: English
• Publisher: T. Thorn Coyle
• Release date: Feb 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393224891

T. Thorn Coyle

T. Thorn Coyle worked in many strange and diverse occupations before settling in to write novels. Buy them a cup of tea and perhaps they’ll tell you about it. Author of the Seashell Cove Paranormal Mystery series, The Steel Clan Saga, The Witches of Portland, and The Panther Chronicles, Thorn’s multiple non-fiction books include Sigil Magic for Writers, Artists & Other Creatives, and Evolutionary Witchcraft. Thorn's work also appears in many anthologies, magazines, and collections.  An interloper to the Pacific Northwest U.S., Thorn pays proper tribute to all the neighborhood cats, and talks to crows, squirrels, and trees.

Book preview

A Brief Introduction from the Author

Women in danger. Men in love. People looking for a way out, or a path in. Meanwhile, ghosts wander, stalkers are on the trail, and cities thrum with music, neon, and life…

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Every single story in this collection is as queer as I am. These stories evoke the thrill of the chase, the uprising of lust, and the promise of love. Whether they’re men, women, or nonbinary, the characters in these stories all have one thing in common: they need to take a risk.

And we all know, that life without risk is barely worth living.

Here’s a collection of five stories, all written with the support of my amazing Patreon friends. Some of these short tales have appeared in other collections, some not, but nonetheless these five stories all wanted to live together beneath one cover.

So here they are: thrills, intrigue, and the sweetest of kisses.

I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I enjoyed writing them.

Take a risk and jump.

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T. Thorn Coyle

Portland, Oregon

2020

1

Haymarket

A Jane Bannon Affair

book cover: Haymarket. Woman in dandy suit, lipstick, cigarette to mouth.

Jane leaned against the marble mantlepiece, gazing up at the elaborate portrait of the divine Miss Rebecca Talbot. Pale brown hair framed the heart-shaped face. Eyes, a darker brown, gazed down demurely at a lace fan, held half open at her waist.

The picture of innocence.

White ruffles spilled down the young lady’s front, framed by a sapphire blue overdress, cut slim around her fine figure. Impressive blue bustle behind, covering what Jane was sure was an equally impressive bottom perched atop the sturdy stems of Miss Talbot’s legs.

She was perfection, Miss Talbot was. Cream of the Chicago, new money gentry. Railroads. Just the thing to take Jane’s mind off sweet Alessandra, left behind in a convent in Rome.

Jane was perfection, too, if she said so herself.

Jane Bannon had spent quite some time in front of the large, wood framed mirror in the dressing room of her well-appointed suite before descending the cool sweep of marble stairs to Miss Talbot, who sat, coy and lovely, smiling from a cream damask-covered settee in the viridian silk hung walls of the formal parlor.

Miss Talbot was as rich as the blue and green flowered rugs under her feet. As rich as the damask chairs and sofas in varying shades of linden and cream. Money shone in the gleaming mahogany side tables, the porcelain vases, and the pianoforte impressive in its corner.

Miss Talbot was rich, but even better? She was so very young and firm, eighteen, lovely, and yes again…perfect.

Perfect for the likes of Miss Jane Bannon, dandy extraordinaire.

Some women called Jane a masher, a rake, but her preferred nom de amor was handsome devil.

As always, Jane had prepared carefully for tonight. Shoes shined to a high polish. White shirt front starched just so. Collar pointed and erect.

Dark hair slicked back from her sharp white face, and into a tight bun. Perfectly cut tuxedo, tracing the slight swell of her breasts and nipping in at her trim, athletic waist before the coat cut away into a swoop of tails. Burgundy ascot at the column of her throat, stuck through with a silver pin.

Just what certain young ladies from certain good families liked. Just the thing to take the mind off an absent fiancé.

Jane should have been out at her assignment again tonight, listening to more trade unionist speeches and spying about, generally keeping an eye on proceedings, to see if there any of the upstart leaders were in the employ of Talbot’s company and could be made examples of.

 After last night’s row with the police, which left some strikers dead, the three-week old wound in Jane’s side ached from being shoved about.  The strike would happen, it seemed, but the only sedition Jane could find was that the worker’s complaints seemed rather justified.

They were tired of being underpaid and working ten-hour days, six days a week, for wages that should have made a man embarrassed for doling it out at all. In other words, Jane couldn’t blame the strikers.

Especially as men like Talbot and Pullman certainly never worked that hard a day in their lives. Leaving the house at nine or ten, they were home, bathed, and in spotless dinner clothes, in time for seven-thirty sherry in their well-appointed parlors.

The working men and women were lucky if they saw their families much at all. That said, Jane should also have been out tonight simply to ensure that she got paid. But she had her best man on the job in her stead.

She really was weary, still recovering from a knife slash at her best waistcoat in Italia. The muscles of her stomach survived to take ten careful stitches and a wash of iodine. The waistcoat was deceased.

 So, she was taking one evening’s break from the upheaval in the city to play the dandy directly under the nose of her clandestine employer, scion of one of the good families of Chicago.

Eyes raking the large portrait picture, Jane pointedly ignored the real Miss Talbot who sat glowering a delicate little glower, golden skirts spread across the delicate damask-covered settee, sipping delicately at her own glass of delicate champagne, held between cream satin-covered fingers.

At least she had been, last time Jane had looked.

It wouldn’t do to let Miss Talbot know Jane noticed. Not just yet. So, Jane rocked, heel to toe, on the marble slab at the foot of the fireplace, biding her time.

Jane would seduce Miss Talbot tonight, the way Miss Talbot wanted Jane to do. But Jane couldn’t let Miss Talbot think it was her own idea. Not just yet. 

Not that Jane minded forward girls, loved them in fact, but Miss Talbot had not been trained by life or disposition to make the first move.

Convenient, then, that Jane had time in the young woman’s own home to ease the way.

Recently disembarked from a harrowing adventure in Italia, Jane returned to her own apartments, fashionably located just three blocks from Prairie Avenue, where the Talbot family lived, of course. And the Pullman’s. And any other family that mattered. The redecoration that had been promised to be finished well in time, was, in fact, not done.

Mr. Reginald Talbot, being in business with Jane’s Uncle William, had been persuaded to offer Jane a suite until such time as her rooms were done. He would be out of town, he said, but Jane was welcome to the family manse. He was certain she would find his daughter congenial, and Rebecca, he said, could use company near her own age, until Mr. Talbot and Miss Talbot’s fiancé, Mr. Burke, returned.

Jane installed herself post haste and had been at the Talbot mansion for three days.

Miss Talbot was congenial indeed.

And even Jane’s Uncle William wasn’t aware that Reginald Talbot had hired Jane to spy on the anarchists and unionists organizing against his company. He wanted a way to discredit them, he said.

The ormolu clock on the mantle on the mantle ticked out the time. An impatient sigh from Miss Rebecca Talbot arose from the damask settee behind Jane. Jane pretended not to hear.

She sipped more of the excellent champagne.

So far, Jane had found plenty to implicate the men. They were indeed ready to strike and seemed as though they would stop at almost nothing. That Mary Mother Jones they all so admired? An amble-bosomed firebrand in gold