Bad Idea Read online

  Readers love Damon Suede’s

  A Romantic Times “Favorite Firefighters in romance” on 9/11/2012

  A Band of Thebes Best LGBT Book of 2012

  “Up front, this is one of the best M/M romances I have read lately … The story is simple but hot as hell … It had that level of romanticism that makes your heart ache good … I strongly recommend this novel to all romance lovers.”

  —Elisa’s Reviews and Ramblings

  “Magical and beautiful even when it gets down and dirty. Not only is there hot sex, but it is hot, emotional sex …The one thing this book has that no other does is Mr. Damon Suede and his unique and authentic voice … A raw, emotional, very hot, worth-every-penny read! Awarded the Golden Nib: for books that knock our socks off!”

  —Miss Love Loves Books

  “This is not your run-of-the-mill gay romance. All of the usual formulas apply: friends-to-lovers, gay-for-you, out-for-you, gay-for-money, all of this with the hottest, most steamy homoerotic sex scenes I’ve read, and yet… the story is about none of that and so much more than that … If you are ready to be scorched, read it!”

  5 Star Romance Read

  —Viv Santos, Queer’d Magazine

  “Grip-you-by-the-gut angst … and Mr. Suede’s unique, fascinating voice … Wildly entertaining and fresh … I just could not put this book down.”

  5 Gold Crowns and a Recommended Read

  —Laurel, Readers’ Roundtable

  “Four out of four stars! HOT! HOT! HOT! Damon Suede has a surefire hit on his hands with Hot Head. This book is sexy, fun, hot, interesting and the best book of my summer … Man, I couldn’t put it down … Talk about captivating! … I’m not going to tell you anything else except that you gotta buy it and read it!”

  —Stephen Jackson, TLAGay.com

  Red hot reviews for Damon Suede’s

  “A powerful, epic, bold romance. Very erotic. Very emotional. The unrequited love is so wrenching [and the] final union is so earned and worthwhile.”

  —Book Robot Reviews

  “Hot Head is a book you will want to savour … gritty … raw … delicious … more than a romance … Entertaining, vibrant and original … kept me on the brink and will stay with me for a long time. Highly recommended.”

  5+ stars Desert Island Keeper

  —Reviews by Jessewave

  “I really loved this book. It has it all … firemen, passion, humor, and an amazing love story to tie it all together. … I loved the writing style of Damon Suede. This is the first book of his I have read, and I promise it will not be the last. He has a way to do more than just tell a great story, he takes you on a journey you never want to end.”

  5 Stars

  —Guilty Pleasures Book Reviews

  “If you are looking for an emotional, unique story filled with hunky firemen, scorching hot sex that will blow your mind and romance that is based in friendship, then grab Hot Head. I do recommend you make sure you have eaten dinner, done the dishes or other house chores before starting because once you start this book, and you won’t want to put it down.”

  5 Hearts

  —Love Romances and More Reviews

  “Talk about steamy hot men and lots of emotion! You’ve got it and more in Hot Head. … If you want a heartwarming story, filled with lots of heat in all sorts of ways, grab a copy…”

  —Whipped Cream Reviews

  “Damon Suede has written Hot Head as a multi-layered novel that weaves multiple stories together. It is beautifully staggered and coiled so that the various tiers mesh and become one well-written narrative.”

  —BlackRaven’s Reviews

  Copyright

  Published by

  Dreamspinner Press

  5032 Capital Circle SW

  Suite 2, PMB# 279

  Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886

  USA

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

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

  Bad Idea

  © 2013 Damon Suede.

  Cover Art

  © 2013 Paul Richmond.

  http://www.paulrichmondstudio.com

  Illustration by Bill Walko

  Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

  All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. 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, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/.

  ISBN: 978-1-62798-171-2

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-62798-172-9

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition

  October 2013

  To everyone brave enough to let wrong turns

  take them the right way.

  1

  THE zombies weren’t scheduled to attack until three o’clock.

  “Trip!” Rina shrieked, but he could only see white lace arms above the mob. Central Park buzzed around him: a couple of news vans idled alongside a huge arch-banner that read “OUTRUN: ORGAN TRAIL. Zombie Runners This Way!” Trip tried to pick a path toward his friend through the costumes and New Year’s partiers starting early, but the insanity at the tents made navigation almost impossible.

  His armpits slid with sweat. For December 31, the muggy air felt unseasonably warm. Afternoon sun spilled across the concrete, gilding the bare trees. Trip’s nose ran and his eyes itched, looking at all that untamed Nature; a few of his allergies were already doing the tango.

  Finally, a petite hand grabbed the waist of his sweats and yanked: Jillian.

  “C’mon! They’re calling people to the starting line.” Jillian sported an iridescent pink dress with a ruched pouf skirt that reminded Trip of the prom in Westchester and blowing his lab partner. Jillian had pinned a scalloped rhinestone tiara aggressively atop her black bob. On her pale, pert figure, the getup made her look like Audrey Hepburn on crystal meth.

  The OutRun volunteers had set up base camp by the reservoir. An old Armenian man sold bright T-shirts to the crowds that had turned up to watch these jogging idiots gather to flee the undead beneath an upholstered winter sky.

  Jillian used her delicate elbows like meat hooks to clear a path through the boisterous, costumed mob to get to the changing tents. A squad of cheerleaders. A Spider-Man. Someone dressed as a slice of pizza. A compost heap of borrowed imagination.

  “We have a cameraman!” Jillian pushed him through a flap and to the left but then abandoned him and veered right to rummage out of sight on the other side of the tent.

  Rina lifted her pearl-studded veil and gave him the wet Brazilian doe eyes. At a stoop sale in Harlem, she’d bought a hoop-skirted horror of a wedding gown with fluttery lace panels that made her olive skin glow and hugged her bombshell figure. Sound logic: who didn’t want to watch a busty blushing bride hunted and dismembered by a flesh-eating horde?

  She rubbed his back in coaxing circles with her fingerless gloves. “You are my spirit animal, Trip! I swear.”

  “And I am her spirit litter box.” Jillian returned to their corn
er, dragging a suspiciously heavy tote bag. She looked like a pixie walking a dead mastiff.

  He consciously forced a hard sneeze back into his chest.

  “We’re gonna battle the living dead on video.” With Rina, business always came first. She tucked another sprig of baby’s breath into her brown tendrilly updo. “I got like two thousand people following my blog to watch.”

  “And I cannot run with a camera between my tits for three hours. The end.” Jillian didn’t even wheedle; her former life in musicals had worn her velvet away. “Where’s your Unboyfriend? Staplegun.”

  “Stapleton. He’s not a—” Trip scowled. “Stop calling him that. Cliff’s my friend. And my editor. We’re colleagues.”

  Holy crock of shit, Batman.

  Jillian and Rina raised their eyebrows at each other. Caught between them, he almost felt their scorn frying him like a poodle in a microwave.

  For four years, Trip had pined pointlessly over Cliff J. Stapleton. No secret. Just buddies. Cliff knew Trip was “like that,” and Trip hoped Cliff might be “like that” one day. “I didn’t drag my ass out here so you could talk shit about my—”

  “Unboyfriend?” Rina covered her sarcastic smile with a lacy glove.

  “Stop.”

  “Well, hun, Cliff ain’t your boyfriend. Did you spend the night on his couch again?”

  For a split second, Trip considered lying. He shrugged and held up his sneakers. “Yeah. We watched X-Men: First Class and I crashed.”

  True in its particulars. Actually, Trip threw a quilt over Cliff and resisted the urge to remove his boxer briefs, which had felt like a major moral victory.

  Pathetic.

  Rina wedged more baby’s breath into her chignon, then varnished with hairspray until the wisps looked crispy. “You spend every fucking weekend with him and draw his comic instead of your own.”

  “All of the dickiness, none of the dick. Ergo: Unboyfriend.” Jillian rummaged in the tote and extracted a pile of folded aqua cotton. “Costume.”

  “Costume?” Trip’s eyes bulged. Maybe he should bail. He unfolded a set of surgical scrubs, size large and stiff with newness. Even worse, Jillian had bought them for her husband, and Ben had about thirty pounds on him, easy. Great. “I’m too skinny to wear these. And I’ll freeze to death.” Total lie: the humid air smeared him with sweat.

  “No bitching.” Jillian’s pretty, angular features turned the demand into a children’s game somehow: Duck duck puke. She flapped her hands at his clothes. “Strip!”

  And then, somehow, he found himself standing in Central Park wearing a pair of striped lavender boxer briefs, clutching his munchables.

  At least he’d worn underwear.

  Trip glared at them. The good mood from waking up on Cliff’s couch had evaporated, and he felt like a credulous tool. He stuffed his legs into the stiff unwashed scrub bottoms. Now he wanted to be gone.

  Except Jillian and Rina had trained and planned for the zombie run for three months. They’d blogged and twatted all their preparations to the website fans. Then last Saturday, Jillian’s husband cracked a crown at a bat mitzvah.

  Exit coordinated cameraman. Enter spastic gay friend.

  Please don’t let me rupture something.

  Trip sniffled. “So… the humans all run and fake zombies chase us? Or is it like an obstacle course where they pop out?”

  “Both.” Rina crouched in her huge gown and stapled the scrub-legs shorter so he could kill himself more easily. “Ghetto hem.”

  He shrugged into the chest harness.

  “You don’t have to wear the surgical mask if you don’t want.”

  “I do want.”

  “Don’t you dare!” Jillian smacked his shoulder and snatched the cotton mask away. Of his two closest friends, she worried the most about his personal life. “There’s, like, a zillion hot fellas in the park.” She hooked an arm through his. “A fucking tsunami of geek beef. You can’t wear a bag over your face.”

  Funny thing: they wanted him to have a boyfriend way more than he did. Hell, they watched more gay porn than he did. As the gay friend in these situations, he always ended up in the corner holding someone’s purse.

  “Fine. No mask.” Fuck this.

  “Tons of comic buffs out here, too, y’know. Killer PR for you.” Rina finished stapling and stood, then wiped leaf mold off her hands onto her bodice, blinding white against her coffee-and-cream cleavage. “Who knows what you’ll catch?”

  “Malaria.” He scratched his arms.

  Jillian piped up, “A real boyfriend.”

  Trip examined the tent flap. He couldn’t walk out, but maybe he could miss the starting line. “I don’t want a real boyfriend.”

  “Which is why you have a fake one.” Jillian bent and snapped the digital camera in front of his sternum. “’Cause jerking off over your straight boss and waiting for him to green-light your comic is so fulfilling.”

  “Cliff is my editor, not my boss.” Trip scowled at the top of her head. “We collaborate.” He sniffed hard. By the end of the day, the pollen and mold would probably kill him. “Ugh. Nature.” I can’t cope. Would the girls forgive him if he just left?

  Rina wrapped a belt with Velcro flags around his waist. Ka-klamp, klamp.

  He peered down at the camera strapped to his chest like an electric barnacle. “Take the camera. Bladder break. I need a waz.”

  “Pain to reattach. Just turn it off.”

  Damn. Maybe he could “get separated” during the run and ditch.

  Jillian jabbed at the camera till it bleeped and tapped her watch mock-sternly. “Tickety-tock, biological clock.”

  Rina nodded, all business. “You got fifteen, and then we gotta get down to the start. New York One is shooting live.”

  He stepped into the mosh pit outside the tent and struggled upstream through the crowd. His throat burned. He should’ve taken a nuclear antihistamine before setting foot in the park.

  At the porta-pissers, the lines stood fifteen deep. He imagined a sprint through the crisp air with a gallon of coffee sloshing around in him.

  Fuck it.

  Trip veered toward a wide clump of forsythia. A ruptured bladder trumps a public indecency ticket any day. He prayed the muggers had slept in.

  “Should be in bed.” Trip grumbled. He couldn’t flee with their only camera. He’d double back and shuck the camera before the gun went off.

  He fished his dick over the waistband of his scrubs and did his thing against a scraggly oak that probably wished it had sprouted a hundred miles north. He muffled his sneeze. A twig snap reminded him his privacy was imaginary, even if he was hidden under the crest of bare branches.

  He would fake an asthma attack. That’s it. He’d go back, have trouble breathing, hand over the camera, and meet them at the finish line.

  The underbrush rustled. Hmmm. For all he knew, it was pigeons humping or a rat taking a stroll. Maybe another hyperallergic wuss trying to escape.

  He tucked his tool away and managed a casual glance over his shoulder.

  The bubble of silence seemed exaggerated. He heard the milling crowd and the faraway rumble of Central Park West. But where he stood, the cotton-ball quiet raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Was someone watching him?

  Jesus Christ, he’d end up mugged with no ID and borrowed hospital scrubs in broad daylight during a publicity stunt for his bestest fruit flies.

  Thhwwwwwip.

  Something ripped the seat of his pants. Trip spun to see a mangled, grayish hand holding one of his flags in its dead fingers. A beefy zombie knelt in front of him, grinning like a demented jack-o’-lantern.

  Oh yeah. The run.

  “Has it started?” Trip shook his head, confused.

  The zombie looked gigantic down there, shoulders like a prizefighter. He shook the flag and winked. He must have taken a shortcut, seen Trip, and crept in to attack. Graveyard humor. Har de har.

  Gray and olive shaded the undead face dramatically, really sub
tle even this close. One jagged foam latex cut stretched across his skull and up into his hairline. Bright hazel eyes. A square-square chin. Jinkies. His thick hands appeared tattered and gnawed open, but his meaty forearms glimmered a smooth silvery green that showed off the striations of muscle.

  I’m cruising a corpse. Again a sneeze tried to squirm out of Trip and he choked it back.

  Trip held up his hands in surrender, and the ghoul rose to his feet. Five ten and thickset under the tattered sport coat… like the Incredible Hulk in shades of grave. He had calico-colored hair, a springy dark-blond that probably went brindle in summer.

  The hot zombie fanned his gory fingers. His eyes were set just a little too far apart and slightly slanted under the arched brows, which made his smile look like a rakish invitation.

  The long forsythia stems screened the rest of the runners, hiding the two of them in their little bubble under the oak in the cold, bright air: fake doctor and fake zombie, ready to hit the Organ Trail.

  Mr. Monster scuffed closer and offered him the flag. A reminder to be vigilant during the run? His filthy split shirt exposed a rugged torso and some unbelievably realistic ribs with guts glistening behind.

  “Amazing.” Without thinking, Trip reached out and touched the painted wounds. “So beautiful.” He traced the trompe l’oeil heart with his fingers. The zombie flinched. Ticklish, apparently.

  “Oh!” Trip yanked his hand back and shook it as if he’d scorched his skin.

  “Thanks. Sorry.” Deep hoarse twang. Saw-ry. The zombie grimaced. His nipples had risen hard and small under the paint.

  Trip had almost forgotten he was touching a person. “I—that was rude. Airbrush?”

  The zombie smiled then and wagged his head. “We’re not supposed to speak. But I’m bad at rules.”

  Was he flirting? Trip squinted in confusion and struggled not to sneeze all over the most attractive man he’d spoken to in a year. Trip prayed his itchy eyes hadn’t gone bloodshot just yet. “Not airbrush? Are you sure?”

  “No, it is. I painted it. I was just… I saw you sneak off.”