First and foremost, I'd like to thank everyone who read and reviewed Clan Companions: Matthew. I'm grateful so many enjoyed our adorable little guitar player. As the wife of a working musician, it was high time I wrote a story featuring such a character.
If you read Matthew, then you met the woman he called "Irene Musical-Fucking-Goddess-of-the-Universe Jonson." She and her band Casual Innuendo were the pioneers of Kalquor's rimnastin music scene. Obviously, it's time to tell her story. We're going all the way back to the Alien Embrace era for this First Mataras tale, which will feature how Irene went from a budding opera star to fronting the hard and heavy sounds of rimnastin, featuring her clanmates Sherv, Rusp, and Jemi.
I'm working on the first draft of Irene, which I hope to have out sometime in the summer. The following excerpt is a very rough cut of Irene sneaking into a club in disguise and her first impression of Clan Sherv, notably Nobek Rusp. I hope you enjoy it.
The thunder of sound was almost a physical blow, and Irene stood frozen a few steps within the entrance in shock. Her senses reeled.
The bass thud had become a blistering thunder within the sound-canceling barrier that had kept the club from breaking the station’s noise level regulations. Irene was grateful her headgear and the hood tugged over it offered some buffering, but her ears would no doubt be ringing when she left.
When she’d recovered from her surprise, she moved further into the room, taking in her surroundings.
A long bar spanned much of one side of the club, and the clientele standing at it were predominantly Kalquorians, at least half wearing those black uniforms trimmed in blue, red, or green. The reds predominated, and Irene noted those men had the fiercest expressions, though they appeared relaxed and content for the most part. Even the pair slamming fists into each other’s chests in turn looked absurdly happy, laughing and growling at what was apparently a contest of strength or perseverance. Irene wondered if they’d end up caving in their sternums.
Others, again mostly Kalquorians, crowded the floor, milling around and shouting in companions’ ears. At about the halfway mark to the other end of the club, more stood grouped tightly, congregating at the stage’s edge. Thick arms swollen with muscles and tendons pumped the air in time with the driving beat that filled Irene’s body with a brutal pulse her heart tried to keep up with.
Her attention zeroed in on the stage as animals’ howls and growls filled the air and the audience cheered. Three men stood up there, Kalquorians.
She stared. Again, she was astonished into stillness, but not because of the sound, which for once in her life, took second place to sight.
The men were shirtless. Gleaming, muscular chests shone with perspiration, accentuating their brawn. The man beating a line of drums of various sizes and tones, which were set up on the left side of the stage, barely wore anything at all, not even shoes. His shorts weren’t skintight, unlike the pants the man screaming at the crowd wore, but they left little to the imagination. Irene gaped at the obvious bulges of the trio’s crotches.
Warmth that had nothing to do with the body heat of so many gathered people filled her. Her lower guts trembled.
She’d had crushes and fantasies, of course. The curious feelings which she knew were taboo on her home planet had driven her to touch herself in her narrow bed in New York and learn of carnal pleasure. She was naïve about much when it came to sexuality, but she wasn’t entirely clueless.
However, the blatant vision of so much naked masculinity was a revelation. She was seeing men, really seeing men, for the first time in her shielded life.
They were beautiful. Even the drumbeater, with his long, shaggy hair and beard dripping sweat, was brutally gorgeous. His feet pounded the gray-floored stage in time with his drumming, which he alternated between fists, open palms, and thin polished sticks.
The music began to creep back into Irene’s consciousness when she recognized the sheer technique of his work, the perfect timing he managed despite snarling at the crowd and snapping his head from side to side or back and forth. As untamed as his work had initially sounded, Irene easily determined the rhythm and how he varied the tone by softening or intensifying his approach. His fills appeared at the perfect moments, never stepping on the work of his companions.
End of Excerpt
Don't forget, Clan Companions: Matthew is now on sale!
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His past demons have returned, and only a Kalquorian clan can save him.
Matthew Larsen should be happy.
Reunited with the Nobek he fell in love with years ago, welcomed into a clan
determined to give him a better life, he has everything he never imagined
possible. However, he’s haunted by the hellish past and certainty it will
reclaim him.
Nobek
Kom spent years searching for Matt. Their reunion and his clanmates’ acceptance
of the troubled Earther seemed to be all that stood in the way of the perfect
future. His Earther love isn’t so easily rescued, however. Even a warrior can’t
protect someone against his nightmares.
Dramok Avir and Imdiko Masok are devoted to the beautiful Earther Kom brought home. Loving such a gentle soul isn’t a problem. Saving him from monsters, real and imagined, is another matter when Matt’s worst fears come true and the terrors of the past rise once again to drag him into the abyss.
Buy now:
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