Excerpt of A Wicked Beginning by Calinda B

Cameron Delaney Tyson awoke with a lurch and a start from another one of those goddamned nightmares he’d been having lately. This was not excitement by any stretch of the imagination. Shit. What the fuck was up with that? He didn’t usually dream; didn’t even believe in dreams as anything more than the daily recycling of garbage. But he’d been having this same dream now, for weeks, ever since he’d returned from San Diego last fall. The dreams were always the same. Black, gooey gobs shaped like, what was it, bats – these bat things were streaming after him like he was in some horror show. He’d be running and running and running. And there was always a woman, the same woman, in the middle of the goo, chasing him, like some hysterical wraith. She’d claw at him with long, pink fingernails. She’d try and wrap herself around him. She’d try to take his cock into her mouth while all the gooey fuckers would surround him, salivating and slurping as if they were hungry, and he was the main dish. That was the point at which he awoke, every single time.

Fuck. He couldn’t deal with this kind of shit. Flipping back the covers, he sat up, fully clothed. He hadn’t even bothered to undress last night. Yawning, he rubbed his stubble-lined face with his hands, raked his fingers through his blond hair, and surveyed his surroundings. He’d lived here for a few months now, but he just came and went – in and out the door…never really looked around. Today, he just felt like looking. The bed he was sitting on was a double – small, but it sufficed. There was a six-drawer dresser parked on the burnished oak wood floor, pushed up against an apricot painted wall devoid of pictures or art. On the opposite wall, double folding doors opened up to a fairly large closet, which held all his clothes, and most importantly, all his climbing gear. A door to a generous sized bathroom with a huge sunken tub and a separate glass-lined shower stall was on the facing wall. A window opposite his bed opened to Manoko’s amazing garden, which was flooded with bright morning sunlight. A door led to the yard so Cam could come and go in privacy. In addition, he had space enough in the garage for all his kayak gear. The only thing missing was Chérie Abella Manhattan…Cheerio…Chér…whatever she liked to be called, she was the one for him, Cam thought with a sigh. The things he could do to her in that big tub in the bathroom…