Project Blue Rose: Human Touch
Sexy secret agents Joe Rivas and Kyle Jordan are back!
In this anthology of illustrated short stories, Jordan and Rivas investigate a watery mystery at a hair salon; Nick watches the world from his cell and waits for the day when he can be free; a high school girl with an unusual talent meets an unusual pair of secret agents; teenage Chely and Rivas discover a shared connection in a dark hour; and Rivas and Jordan go undercover at a leather bar where the lines blur between truth and disguise.
Yes, there is kissing. And bondage in black leather. Rivas wears a harness. Enough said.
Written by: Rachel Manija Brown, Stephanie G. Folse, Yoon Ha Lee, Juliana Matthews, and K. Joyce Tsai
Drawn by: Stephanie G. Folse
120 pages, 5 stories, 11 illustrations, wraparound cover.
Copies are seven dollars each plus $2.99 shipping to the US and Canada, and $4.99 shipping elsewhere (multiple copies, please add $1.00 for each additional copy). To order, please go to the storefront. Thank you!
The Best Disguise
By Rachel Manija BrownIf you want a lover, I’ll do anything you ask me to
And if you want another kind of love, I’ll wear my leather mask for you.
Leonard Cohen, “I’m Your Man” (live)So there I was, in the passenger seat of yet another crummy rental car. This one was parked with the engine running and the windows steamed up and my partner generating more heat than the engine. Rivas was wearing nothing above the waist but a black leather harness, his mirrorshades, and that plain steel ring that he never takes off or answers questions about. Plus a pair of black leather boots, extremely tight black leather pants, and a black jockstrap. I know, because I helped him dress.
I love my job.
“Rivas? Planning to spend the night behind the wheel?”
I wouldn’t have thought he could scowl any harder, but he managed it.
He’d worn a shirt while we were driving, and he’d left it crumpled in his lap. I grabbed it and tossed it into the backseat.
“Cause, you know, we could blow off the mission and just make out in the car. Did you ever do that when you were a teen–oh, oops, never mind, guess not. Well, it’s an American classic. Some people don’t like it because you always end up with the parking brake halfway up your ass, but personally, I think the awkwardness only adds to the teenage-flashback charm. My first time in a car–”
The driver’s door slammed in my face. I watched him stalk down the alley and up to the windowless industrial building, bootheels clacking against the dirty pavement. The leather pants outlined his ass like the cleft of a peach. He knocked on the door, then ducked inside a nanosecond after it opened. His “respectable businessman who doesn’t want to get caught entering an underground gay leather bar” body language was perfect. Then again, he was a less than respectable secret agent who didn’t want to get caught entering an underground gay leather bar.
Truth is the best disguise.
Continued in Project Blue Rose: Human Touch.
