2021 Top Ten Gay Romance by J.M. Snyder (editor)

Author:J.M. Snyder (editor) [(editor), J.M. Snyder]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

THE END

Wake Him with a Kiss by Nell Iris

“Get your ass in here right this second, Lo, or I’ll drag you by the beard.”

All sounds stop in the tattoo shop as the loud and clear voice cuts through the ambient noise. My colleague Johnny’s machine stops buzzing, his client and her friend quiet in the middle of a sentence, Tanya, the shop manager, slows her rapid typing on the keyboard until she comes to a complete halt, and I look up from cleaning my station.

The speaker is a tiny Asian woman dressed in a fashionable power-suit, sky-high heels, and with the shiniest and sleekest ponytail I’ve ever seen. She has the person she’s addressing in tow, her fingers wrapped around his wrist in a secure grip. As someone with a beard myself, I’m happy she’s not following through on her threat.

I blink at the sight. He towers over her—even with the heels she reaches only to his shoulder—and he’s double her width. He could easily get out of her hold without breaking a sweat, but he follows her without objecting, with his fond gaze locked on her. His hair is fiery red, as is his well-groomed but longish beard. His face is a night sky of freckles, and his eyes are warm and dark, so dark they look black from where I’m standing.

“Don’t be so loud, Nina,” he rumbles, mouth twitching in a smile. His words wake up the shop. Johnny returns to work on his client, who goes back to chatting with her friend, but I ignore my cleaning supplies for a few more moments in favor of staring at the newcomers.

He’s probably only an inch or two south of my own six feet four and looks as though he spends even more time at the gym than I do; his wide chest and thick arms almost burst his stylish suit jacket by the seams. I estimate his age to be somewhere in his mid-thirties, so a bit younger than me.

A glance at his hands—big, with thick, long fingers—reveals more of those glorious freckles, and I snap my mouth shut before I start drooling all over my station, contaminating it so I’d need to start over with the cleaning process. Freckles have always been my thing; their irregularity and haphazardness are forever intriguing and make my fingers itch to pick up a paintbrush saturated with pigment and try to replicate the pattern on paper.

His freckles are mesmerizing; they’re more pronounced in a band across his nose and cheeks, only to taper off on the rest of his face. They’re a glorious mix of cinnamon and mocha and caramel on pale, luminescent skin, and as soon as I’m done cleaning, I’m going straight home to my palette to try to recreate the colors.

His coloring is the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, and I tear my gaze away from him before he notices my staring. I go back to wiping off my gear as the woman click-clacks her way to the counter and states loudly, “This is Lo.

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