The Many Muses of MaryLynn: Excerpt Dodging Eros by Cardyn Brooks

Title: Dodging Eros

Author: Cardyn Brooks

Series: Stand Alone

Genre: Erotica

Publisher: Private Moments Publishing

Release Date: Jan 21 2016

Edition: eBook & Print

Blurb/Synopsis:

When is love a safe haven, a shield or a launch pad? When is it a mine field or a trap?

Dodging Eros, Through Past, Present and Pleasure is something different about love.
Cupid is not simply a cherubic prankster.
Cupid is a tireless hunter. He’s dangerous.
While men and women bait and lure each other into the tricky gauntlet of attraction, Cupid circles, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
Siblings Danya, Monica, and Warwick Fullerton come from a family tradition of love that endures. They understand the risks and rewards of loving and being loved, but the intersection of the politics of pleasure with the evolution of 21st-century society versus entrenched ideas about who is expected to love whom challenges them to fight for their beliefs, which differ from their parents’ ideas.
Dodging Eros uses the early 20th-century past as prologue about the present day to frame the generational shifts in the risks of loving and being loved as the Fullertons confront their personal demons and battle The Fellowship, a secret society of power brokers conceived during the era of U.S. Prohibition now expanded into a modern international network of corruption.

Excerpt

Jane watched her husband chug his coffee and wondered for the thousandth time in the past two years what she could do to mend the widening rift between Glen and their son.
Some of it was due to Rick’s evolution from boy to man, where their son’s very liberal leanings clashed with Glen’s life-long conservative ideals. Jane suspected that a young man’s need to establish his own identity separate from his father’s was the source of most of their communication problems.
“Glen, Rick has strictly followed his punishment rules without any slip-us for the past month. Otherwise, Melissa would have told us since she never passes on an opportunity to torment her older brother.”
They both laughed.
When their shared amusement faded, she asked, “What if we allow him to drive to and from his jobs only? It worries me when he leaves before dawn to go to the bakery, and gets home from the gym after sunset. Darlingfield is a safe place, but criminals are opportunists and someone might view Rick as an easy target because he’s by himself--despite his size and obvious physical strength.”
Jane stopped talking even though additional arguments hovered on the edge of her tongue. She knew her husband well enough to understand that he had started this conversation so she could convince him of what he already knew: The severity of Rick’s penance had made its point.
They sipped their coffee in silence until Glen asked for a refill. While Jane stood and walked to the counter, her husband knocked his knuckles once against the kitchen table.
“You’re right, Jane. We’ll lift some of his driving restrictions. Let him drive directly to and from work. I’ll tell Rick when I pick him up tonight. What time’s he off?”
Jane glanced at her son’s work schedule taped to the side of the refrigerator.
“Ten.”
She brought the pot over to the table and half-filled both of their mugs. Once she’d placed the nearly empty pot on the trivet in the center of the table and reseated herself, Jane caught her husband’s eye as he sipped.
“After you tell Rick about his partially restored driving privileges, Glen, remind him to make sure he protects himself and his future every time he’s with a girl.”
Her husband paused, lowering his mug without breaking eye contact. “You think he’s fooling around with the Fullerton girl?”
Jane thought about the look on Rick’s face the few times he’d griped to her about Danya’s high expectations for his work performance at her family’s bakery. In Jane’s opinion her son’s attitude reflected more intrigue than annoyance.
“No, I don’t think he’s done anything with her. Yet. But I think he wants to.”