A Life Through Books

Nootaikok is losing himself to his empathy. Can Amaruq call him back to love and to bed?

 

There’s a terrible loneliness in being surrounded by a million minds, none of which care a whit about you. With his empathic skills expanding rapidly, Nootaikok is struggling to hold onto his sanity. Only joining with Amaruq in bed play is sustaining him.

Both of them know bed play won’t save them forever. As the weight of Nootaikok’s psychic disability pushes down on him, he and Amaruq start fighting both each other and the world.

Can their love hold them together or will Nootaikok’s deception crush them?

 

EXCERPT

 

He couldn’t just hear the couple arguing in the hotel room next to the one where he lay with his mate. For Nootaikok, their anger, petty as it might seem to some, was real for them. He wasn’t quite sure what they had disagreed on. He wasn’t a telepath. However, as the hour crept on from nine to ten, their bickering increased in intensity even as their volume dropped. He read violence in the woman half of the pair’s building rage. Whoever said females were always the victims had their facts wrong.

He got silently out of bed, checking to make sure Amaruq had stayed asleep. His lover, exhausted from the psychic deluge he’d experienced over the last half dozen hours, probably wouldn’t wake if he was quiet.

Scooping up his tracker badge, which would show as police or hotel security or whatever he needed at the moment to humans, he dressed in cast-off clothing that he’d worn to SearchLight that day. Not bothering with shoes, he padded silently from the room.

The ebb and flow of their argument was cresting when he pounded on the door.

He felt their startlement and felt the relief from the male half of the pair.

She was the one who opened the door, though. “What?” she snapped.

He took in the belt clenched in her fist and the stench of alcohol on her breath. He held up his badge. “Security, ma’am,” he said. “Report was of some disturbing noises coming from this room.”

She snarled soundlessly at him, furious as a caged werewolf. “Go ‘way.”

“I can’t, ma’am.” He darted a glance over her shoulder as the man, who looked none too sober himself, drunk-walked a little closer to them. “Sir, are you hurt?”

“What’d you think I’d do? Drug him?” the woman demanded baldly.

Nootaikok felt the spike in her anxiety and met her gaze. “What did you give him?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Prove it.”

He wished he’d brought his cell phone. “I intend to.” He marched into the room, shouldering her aside almost gently. Her drunken state made her maybe more compliant than she would have normally been. Keeping an eye on the two of them, he called down to the main desk and made his report. That done, he ordered the two of them to stand out in the hallway until help could arrive.

She swung at him with the buckle end of the belt.

He caught it, the sting of the metal making him hiss. He jerked the makeshift weapon out of her hand and caught her, preventing her from falling when she staggered into him rather than let go willingly.

By the time security had arrived, he’d gotten them both to lean against the walls on either side of the corridor. The man was slumping there and the woman was glaring at him, her face alternating between fear and fury.

After they had been escorted away, he snuck back to bed. It was going to be difficult to sleep, even though the couple was gone. His empathy was fully awake now, and he could sense probably half the occupants of the hotel.

Amaruq rolled over, his eyes slitting open. “Still awake?” he mumbled.

“I’m all right,” Nootaikok lied.

His little white fib, meant only to send his lover back to sleep, backfired as Amaruq frowned at him.

“Don’t you know better than to lie to a werewolf?”

“Sorry,” Nootaikok said, meaning it. “I just…”

“Do you need me to massage your shoulders again?”

“Maybe you could just rub my back for a minute or two?” Amaruq’s touch usually helped him rest. It wasn’t magic but Amaruq’s gentleness came through in everything he did. It was difficult to dwell on all the emotions he couldn’t fix or completely understand while his mate caressed him.

That being said, what he felt still tried to invade his mind. He shoved it away over and over again until Amaruq’s fingers, digging deep, released his tension and he slept.

* * *

When Amaruq woke fully, it was morning and the clock on the nightstand told him it was a little after seven. He couldn’t believe he’d slept so long, not with Mark and Luke in peril. Still, as the guilt rose up to choke him, he forced himself to take a breath. He was managing it, he told himself, and even if he wasn’t, there was nothing to be gained from drowning in negativity.

Besides, he’d come back to the waking world with a sense of urgency and a hunch that something was about to change. He didn’t know what that meant exactly, but it definitely came from his precognitive sense, and he refused to ignore that part of himself any longer.

He rolled over to face Nootaikok, startled to find his lover huddled under the blankets. Narwhal shifters, at least from what Nootaikok had told him, were warm blooded and tended to struggle with getting overheated. His mate looked as though he was freezing. Or trying to hide.

Amaruq settled on his back, staring up at the ceiling. He wanted to reach out to Mark and get a better sense of the dragon’s location. He thought, I’ll ask him why it’s me he decided to reach out to once he and Luke are safe. For now… He dropped his shields.

Nootaikok seized his arm. “Don’t,” he mumbled.

Startled, Amaruq jumped and tried for something passing calmness. He knew he didn’t succeed because when Nootaikok opened his eyes, they were bright with anxiety. “What’s wrong?” Amaruq asked.

“Too many…” Nootaikok visibly stiffened and seemed to pull himself together. “I don’t want you reaching out to whoever’s sending you visions without medical assistance nearby.”

Amaruq nodded, his head moving on the pillow as he turned his face toward his lover. Nootaikok was still bundled up. Frowning, Amaruq said, “That’s a good point. I’ll wait until we’re at SearchLight. Now, what’s really wrong?”

 

About the Author

Emily Carrington is a multipublished author of male/male and transgender women’s speculative fiction. Seeking a world made of equality, she created SearchLight to live out her dreams. But even SearchLight has its problems, and Emily is looking forward to working all of these out with a host of characters from dragons and genies to psychic vampires. And in the contemporary world she’s named “Sticks & Stones,” Emily has vowed to create small towns where prejudice is challenged by a passionate quest for equality. Find her on Facebook at Shapeshifter Central or on her website.

 

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The Drag Queen of Faerie: The course of true love just won’t run smooth for hunk-next-door Will Taylor, who’s in search of that special someone. All that focused energy attracts the attention of Queen Mab’s less-well-known cousin Mabbey, the Drag Queen of the Faeries.

Valentine’s Vow: Friends and casual bed buddies Thom and Ryan don’t buy into the whole “true love” spiel. They have a good time together. Why would they want more? Luckily for this clueless pair, St. Valentine shows them how to appreciate a good thing when they’ve got it.

Independence Day: The boys are back -- and they’re at it again. Ryan and Thom have returned for some hot Fourth of July action, but their newfound romance may just hit the skids when it comes to coming out as a couple.

Straight Man and Coffee Guy: Straight Man is anything but. He just doesn’t have a sense of humor. And in a city with so many superheroes there’s no one left to rescue, his power is attracting the freaks -- like Coffee Guy from the diner across the road, who has the power of the never-ending cup. Misfits in a mad, mad, mad world, they’re pretty much perfect for each other.

Excerpt from Straight Man and Coffee Guy

Copyright ©2026 Will Okati

"So what would you say if I told you I was here to make every dream you've ever had come true?"

SM didn't even glance up from the magazine he was flipping through. Not that he'd been paying attention to the glossy pages. The skin magazine was designed for seriously lecherous and perverted types. Lots of pink, pouty things that kind of made his flesh want to shrivel up and his brain run away to hide. Still, better low-class reading material than none at all. Nothing else to do on the graveyard shift, was there?

"I'd ask if you were either AWOL from the City Genie conglomerate, wonder what you were selling, and pray you were the guy with the coffee I ordered --" he checked his watch -- "an hour ago."

"One out of three ain't bad." A cardboard tray smacked down on the hotel check-in counter. SM gladly abandoned his perusal of the so-called literature to reach up and grab a paper cup.

On his way, he spared a glance for the delivery boy. Not bad. Not bad at all. The kind of boy-next-door good looks that got his motor revving... or would if it weren't right around 3 a.m. Nothing short of an earthquake could get him excited enough to do much of anything this time of day.

He raised the lid and took a sip -- then choked. "This is cold!"

The delivery guy shrugged. "Well, you did it order a while back. Is it my fault it took this long to get away from the late-night crowd to bring the stuff over? And why did you order four cups, anyway? Have you got someone stashed under there?" He leaned over the counter, as if to check.

SM hastily knocked his magazine off into a trashcan. "No!"

"Come on, a hunk like you? There's someone under there." The coffee guy tilted up and over, resting his belly on the ledge, peeking. "Is that what I think -- no, just your shoe. Interesting. You dress like a wage slave drone, but those are some snappy sneakers."

"Sometimes I have to run to put out fires," SM replied dryly. Which was true enough. On more than one occasion, he had, especially when Combustion Man got too worked up. Oh, he didn't usually set more than the beds ablaze, but someone had to be quick on the draw with an extinguisher.

The truth was he wore the sneakers because they were comfortable, and it was one way of giving management the finger. Not that he'd admit it, of course, to a diner jockey.

He paused. "A hunk like me?"

"Well, yeah." Once he'd gotten up there, the coffee guy sat on the ledge, swinging his own sneakered feet back and forth. "You're a definite hottie. At least an eight on a scale of one to ten. Why do you think I waited to bring your coffee over myself?"

"To be annoying?"

"There is that," Coffee Guy agreed cheerfully. SM didn't see any harm in calling him that. It was neatly printed on his diner nametag, pinned crookedly on his tight-fitting T-shirt. "It's one of my better attributes."

"I'd hate to see the worse ones." SM took another sip of the brew. He blinked. "It's hotter."

"Thanks." Coffee Guy flexed his muscles. "I kind of thought so, myself."

"No, you dolt. I meant the coffee. It's not as cold anymore." SM took a careful sip and almost burned his tongue. He looked up accusingly. "Okay, give. How'd you do that?"

Coffee Guy shrugged. "It's a city full of real comic book heroes, right? Just about everyone and their brother has some kind of freaky power. I have dominion over the almighty bean, blessed be the name of Java. Behold." He pointed at SM's cup, which refilled the slight distance back up to the lid. "Talk about your never-ending pot."

"You're kidding me." SM drank again. "How'd you get a sweet talent like that?"

"As if it's special." Coffee Guy snorted. He started to flick through the check-in register. "All it gets me is the graveyard shift at a hotel diner. Or is this a motel? I can never keep it straight."

"Hotel. They have hallways and doors that open from the inside. Motels open onto the street."

"You learn something new every day."

"Keeps the brain active." SM peered at the cardboard tray with his other three, now steaming, cups of coffee. "Do you have the ability to summon cream and sugar as well?"

"Somehow I knew you'd be the kind of guy who had a sweet tooth." CG grinned at SM and reached into his pockets. "Wasn't room on the tray, but I came through in the clinch."

"Oh, God. You're an angel." SM groaned in pleasure as he cracked open two still-cool plastic cup-ettes of condensed milk and poured them in his cup. The sugar came next: three packets. "Swizzle stick?"

"They're not called swizzle sticks, moron."

SM cut CG a sharp look. "Oh, yeah? What's the right name, then?"

"Hell if I know." CG swung his legs a few more times while SM fixed his coffee to his pleasure. He even whistled a few bars of a tune, pretty badly off-key. In the middle of a bar, just as SM was recognizing the melody, he broke off to say, casually, "I kind of figured you to be the kind of guy who likes cream."

About the Author

Willa Okati (AKA Will) is made of many things: imagination, coffee, stray cat hairs, daydreams, more coffee, kitchen experimentation, a passion for winter weather, a little more coffee, a whole lot of flowering plants and a lifelong love of storytelling. Will's definitely one of the quiet ones you have to watch out for, though he -- not she anymore -- is a lot less quiet these days.

 

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In ‘80s London, the fantastical Julian Collier is a charismatic punk rock band frontman. Everyone is drawn to him, including Rahul, his best friend and bandmate, who has loved him for years.

When a mysterious upper-class stranger suddenly inserts himself into their lives, it becomes clear Julian isn’t entirely straight, and the two men struggle for Julian’s affections. But the best man might not win this fight.

 

 

Hoxton, London, UK

November 1987

The Barber & Pony was a poor excuse for a pub, as far as Rahul was concerned. The ancient booths held grime older than Rahul himself. The watery draught was just this side of unpleasantly warm. The air was so thick with smoke he could have cut it with a blunt butter knife and spread it on the pub’s stale pork scratchings. Even an oblivious bystander could have told you that Rahul Chaand detested The Barber & Pony; yet he had patronised the pub every single week since he had moved back to London three years ago. Sometimes more than once a week. Three, four times even. He came because of him.

He was at the bar tonight, as he was most nights, with his skinny elbows propped on the pockmarked mahogany, and head hanging between the sharp hillocks of his shoulders. Rahul came to The Barber & Pony because it was his boozer. Rahul would have followed him to the ends of the Earth, let alone a crummy pub in Hoxton. He knew it was pitiful. There was hardly anything about their relationship that didn’t paint Rahul in a distinctly desperate shade of pathetic. He’d come to terms with that long ago. It didn’t matter to him anymore. All that mattered to Rahul was that Julian Collier was upset. And he needed to be here for him, just as he always was.

“What’s this I hear about a row?” he said in a light, unthreatening tone as he slid onto the stool beside Julian.

“What’re you on about?” He was already slurring. That wasn’t a good sign.

Julian was, by nature, a sunshiny young man with few troubles to cloud his unburdened mind. He wasn’t a rich man. He wasn’t famous. He didn’t have a particularly successful relationship and his friend group was distressingly small. But he was beautiful, fashionable, and well loved. He was passionate about music, and the fact that he both sold records and played in a band did much to nourish his simple soul. But Rahul suspected the main reason that Julian was a happy person was because he was simply born that way. He came into the world with a sunny disposition that life and circumstance had often endeavoured to strip from him.

On occasion, however, a mood as heavy and dark as a storm cloud would settle upon his narrow shoulders, usually brought on by the emotional vampire he liked to call a girlfriend. Thankfully, these sulks tended to be mercifully short, and Rahul found himself to be adept at pulling his best friend out of them even quicker.

Having gotten word from Leroy about the positively massive row that Julian and his girlfriend had engaged in, Rahul had come as soon as he was able.

“He’ll cost me customers,” Leroy, the bartender, had told him after repeating some of the choice words that had been screamed. By the time Rahul had arrived, Aisling, the “girlfriend,” seemed to be long gone, though Julian remained at the bar, sullen and unmoveable as he sank deeper and deeper into his cups. Time for the ol’ Rahul-man to shine, eh? He fancied himself the Julian Whisperer. And it stood to reason. After all, no two people knew each other as well or as deeply as they.

“C’mon, small fry,” he began with the familiar nickname, one that was his alone to use. Julian, being of average height, was short to Rahul only, who at any given moment was the tallest man in the room. “I know you and Aisling have had it out again. What’s she think you’ve done this time? Ruined the economy? Started the Cold War?”

“Can’t do anything right, as far as she’s concerned,” he pouted self- indulgently.

“Tell me about it. It’s practically every other week she’s picking a fight. I’ll never understand why you put up with her and her nagging.”

“She’s not a nag, all right?” Julian contradicted. “She’s just got a point of view. She’s a modern woman.”

“All right, all right,” Rahul backed off, sensing they had not yet arrived at the well-worn territory of slagging off his girlfriend before they inevitably made up again. “A modern woman, sure. Do you want to talk about it? What happened? Maybe talk about it back at your flat?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he continued to pout, planting himself more firmly at the bar just as Leroy passed both Rahul and Julian fresh glasses of beer. Rahul shot the bartender an incredulous look to which Leroy only shrugged helplessly and retreated.

Rahul sighed and tried again. “Fine. We’ll stay right here. As long as we talk. You’re good at talking, Julesy. That’s what draws people to you. The Talker Extraordinaire, that’s what they call you. Silver-tongued. Couldn’t shut you up if I tried.”

“Wouldn’t let you try. I’d be too busy talking.” A smile threatened to break free, like the sun peeking out behind clouds. “You’d try to get a word in edgewise and bam, there I’d be, gabbing away.”

“Gabby Gabber. Gabriel Gabber to your friends.”

Just as Julian seemed ready to add another rung in the ladder of nonsense, his smile disintegrated like a sandcastle in the surf and the dark mood retook him. “She hates it when I talk like this, you know? Says it’s stupid. Maybe she’s right. I really am quite stupid.” His long, pale fingers fumbled out a cigarette, and, failing to find a lighter, let it hang limply from his lips.

Rahul sipped at his beer to cover his profound disappointment. He’d been so close to lifting his friend out of this funk. His fight with Aisling must have cut him deeper than he’d realised. They fought frequently, breaking up every other week only to make up again, but the fights seemed to Rahul to always be superficial things -- who left the toilet seat up and who used whose hair spray -- and the rows were just as easy to overcome as a result. Rahul blamed Aisling, mainly. Julian was as amiable as a fluttering butterfly unless he was provoked.

“She never did,” Rahul exclaimed, aghast. “Did she really say that?” And, in a softer, more serious tone, “You’re not, you know. Stupid.”

“Must be. Else why would I keep making her mad?”

Rahul took pity on him and finally extricated his own lighter from his jacket pocket, lighting Julian’s cigarette for him.

“Because she’s horrendous,” Rahul answered the rhetorical question. “And nothing could ever make her happy. Even you. Now why don’t you tell me what really happened, eh?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Sorry?” Rahul’s face scrunched in confusion, pausing with the glass halfway to his lips.

“S’your fault, innit?” Julian grumbled, pulling his own lukewarm pint closer. “Me and Ash falling out. She was right. It’s always your fault.”

Rahul knew he shouldn’t take it personally. These were the aftershocks of his row with Aisling. But he couldn’t help the curiosity that welled within him. “How is it my fault exactly?”

“Aisling and me’d be married already if it weren’t for you being all… third-wheel. Always getting in the way.”

The words hit him hard and sharp in the chest, threatening to puncture his heart. He doesn’t mean it, he tried to convince himself. He’s smashed. Aisling’s upset him. He’s just having a bit of a tantrum, that’s all. It was with great effort that Rahul trampled the well of emotion threatening to bubble over and plastered on a placid smile beneath his moustache.

“You don’t mean that.”

“Do too. I use up all the good part of me on you, and then I’ve got none left for her.”

“You’re talking nonsense, Jules. Obviously you’re upset. I can see that. Let’s just get you home and we’ll talk about it like adults.” He wrapped his fingers around Julian’s upper arm, but the shorter man shook him off, swaying dangerously on his stool as he did so. He turned eyes on Rahul that burned blue as an electrical fire.

“That’s just it. You’re always trying to control me. You think you’re so much better than me, don’t you? Just ‘cause you went to your fancy uni and I stayed back here. Just cause your dad owned shops and I never even had a dad.”

“How could you think that I…” Rahul trailed off, shocked into silence. He had never, since he’d met Julian as a child, thought himself better than him. They both came from nothing. It was one of the founding principles of their friendship. And they still had nothing. Nothing but each other. Julian knew this, consciously. This wasn’t him talking, it was the booze, and Rahul had to keep that in focus before he lost his temper.

“Look,” he began slowly, carefully metering out his words. “You’ve had a long day, yeah? I know I’m around a bit more than I ought to be sometimes, but that’s because I’m taking care of you. You know that. Mel knows that. She asks me to take care of you. I’m sorry that Aisling has a problem with it, but that can hardly be helped. Next time you see her, tell her I’m sorry. Now. Why don’t you come with me and we can forget all about it, yeah?”

He reached for Julian again but this time Julian’s hand struck first, finger extended into a sharp point that thrust into Rahul’s chest like a very entitled dart. He poked him. “No. No no no. You listen to me,” Julian slurred. His blue eyes that had once burned were now melted back into glassy puddles that couldn’t quite focus on Rahul. “You don’t come in here like a… a… a jumped-up ponce with an anaemic caterpillar on his lip and tell me what to do, yeah? I’ll leave when I wanna leave. And you don’t control me, like Ash says. I’m my own man. I do what I want.”

Rahul flinched from the poke as if he’d been pushed. Anger surged in him like an ungrounded electric current. He chugged the remainder of his pint to keep his ire from boiling over and slammed the empty glass down on the counter. The resentment from years of Julian taking their friendship for granted began to rise to the surface. It was with monumental effort -- a deeper tribute to his love for Julian than Julian would ever know -- that he reined that rage into a dull simmer, something that would burn but wouldn’t scald. But even the bravest of wounded animals still lash out.

“You do what you want, eh?” Rahul snapped. “Or you do what Aisling tells you?” It wasn’t fair, of course, but hurt people hurt people, or so they say.

“Least I have somebody who tells me what to do.”

Rahul’s chest tightened. Julian clearly wasn’t playing fair either.

“I’d rather be alone than shackled to that girlfriend of yours,” he ground out.

“Or you’re just jealous.”

“Or you’re just an entitled little twat that can’t tell when someone’s trying to help him.”

“Trying to help me? Some help. Who asked you?”

“No one. You know what? Absolutely no one.” Rahul threw up his hands and stood, his heart pounding in his ear. He and Julian hadn’t fought like this in… he could scarcely remember when. They hadn’t even fought like this back when they’d… Well. Back then. Pulse thundering, he donned his coat and took off for the cold, drizzly London streets, not stopping to check if Julian was following him.

He still felt himself choke with guilt, however, when he made it halfway down the street and realised his friend had stayed behind. He would be fine. Right? Surely he would be fine. He’d been drunker than this on his own and made it home all right. He’d be fine… Wouldn’t he?

No, it wasn’t Rahul’s problem. If Julian wouldn’t let him help, then there was nothing for it. He couldn’t help someone who refused to be helped. Until he begged Rahul’s forgiveness and of course Rahul buckled like a flaccid accordion. Like he always did. Because it was Julian. And he was Rahul. And that’s how they worked. Or didn’t.

 

 

About the Author

As a queer, nonbinary, person of color, Nicky Silber has made it their mission to bring diversity into all of their creative outlets. Born in New York, raised in Mexico, they studied fine art in San Francisco and have worked in the video game industry since 2012. They currently live in the wilds of North Carolina with their young son and too many pets. Their only two goals in life are to continue to tell queer love stories and, to a lesser extent, finally knit their own sweater.

 

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