Wealthy, attractive Lucas Reika treats life like a party, moving from bar to bar and man to man. Thumbing his nose at his restaurateur father's demand that he earn his keep, Lucas instead seduces a valued employee in the kitchen of their flagship restaurant, earning himself an ultimatum: lose access to his father's money or stay in the middle of nowhere with a man he has secretly lusted over from afar.
Quiet, hard-working Jared McFarland loves his farm on the outskirts of Hope, Arizona, but he aches to have someone to come home to at the end of the day. Jared agrees to take in his longtime crush as a favor. But when Lucas invades his heart in addition to his space, Jared has to decide how much of himself he's willing to risk and figure out if he can offer Lucas enough to keep him after his father's punishment is over.
Jared pulled at my heart strings. He's shy, gentle, a friend to all. So when party-boy Lucas lands in Hope, Arizona, Jared isn't quite sure what to do with him. Jared has always had a thing for his ex-brother-in-law but due to an accident when he was younger, leaving him scarred, he has always been the lonely outsider.
Lucas can't keep his thoughts off of the large and ruggedly handsome Jared. But he's having a hard time reading where the attraction is mutual. Even though he's been sent to McFarland's Farm as a punishment, it might be the one thing that changes his life around.
I loved this story and the way Jared and Lucas connect. You always leave CC's stories, wanting more. And that is certainly the case. I hope we get to see more of Jared and Lucas in the future Hope Series Novellas. 4.5 Stars!
Excerpt:
McFarland’s Farm by Cardeno C.
“Please tell me you can go again,” Lucas said
breathlessly.
“Won’t be a problem,” Jared assured him. “Just
give me a few minutes to recharge.” He flicked his tongue over Lucas’s lips,
pulling back with a grin when Lucas darted forward and tried to catch him.
“Come here,” Lucas said playfully. “I’m hungry.”
Jared chuckled. “I don’t think my tongue’s going
to fill you up.”
“Oh no?” Lucas leered at him and waggled his
eyebrows. “You have something else in mind?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.” Enjoying the game,
Jared took hold of Lucas’s hand and brought it between them, resting it on his
package.
“Mmm, I can see that.” Lucas gently cupped
Jared’s sensitive balls before running one finger up his satisfied cock. “This
is nice and thick. It’d really fill me up.”
“Why do I suddenly feel like I’m in the middle
of a cheesy porno?”
Scrunching his nose in an incredibly adorable
way, Lucas nodded. “You’re right. That last line was total Velveeta. I blame it
on the hunger.”
“You didn’t finish your dinner,” Jared said as
he rolled off Lucas and lay on his side. He grasped Lucas’s hip and tugged him
forward so they were chest to chest. “Do you want me to go get you a snack?”
“And where, pray tell, do you plan to find such
a thing?” Lucas draped his leg over Jared’s waist and played with the hair on
his chest.
“Uh.” Jared thought through the contents of his
kitchen. He wasn’t much of a snacker so he didn’t buy chips or cookies or
crackers. “I, uh, can heat up—”
“Let me help you out by giving you the answer to
my question.” Lucas paused and looked at him meaningfully. “If it’s food, we
won’t find it in your kitchen.”
“Oh.” Jared blinked in surprise. “Are we low on
food?”
“Low?” Lucas snorted. “Sure, we can call it
low.” He leaned forward and circled Jared’s nipple with this tongue. “Or we can
go with accuracy and call it nonexistent.”
Still satisfied from his orgasm, Jared enjoyed
Lucas’s attention without losing focus on the conversation. “When I got my
breakfast out of the freezer this morning, I could have sworn there were lots
of meals left in there.”
“Let’s take a moment to repeat what you said.”
Lucas cleared his throat. “When I got my breakfast
out of the freezer.” He arched his
eyebrows. “Why is your breakfast in the freezer? And your lunch? And your
dinner?”
“I’m sorry,” Jared said, immediately feeling
guilty about forcing a man accustomed to chef-prepared cuisine to settle for
Hungry-Man. “I know you don’t like the frozen meals, but I don’t have time to
cook, and even if I did, I hate doing it. Tomorrow’s Friday. How about we go
into town and eat at Jesse’s?”
“That sounds good. I called the grocery store,
and they’re open until nine. Do you think you can finish what you need to do
outside in time to get cleaned up, go to dinner, and still leave an hour or so
for shopping?”
“An hour?” Jared repeated. “What are we going to
do at the store for an hour?”
“Well, I’ve never been there, and I think it’s a
fair bet you’re not all that familiar with anything outside of the frozen food
aisle, so I want to leave us enough time to find everything on my list.”
“List?”
“Yeah.” Lucas nodded and moved his finger over
the same path his tongue had taken, tracing the perimeter of Jared’s nipple. “I
got all the urgent invoices, emails, and letters out today, so I had time to
poke around online. I made a list of meals to tide us over for a week, and I
need to stock up the kitchen.”
“You’re going to cook?”
“Like I said earlier, one of us has to and you
work longer hours. Besides, I think maybe I’ll enjoy it. I’ll for sure enjoy
eating food that’s not loaded with preservatives.” Lucas nudged Jared’s
shoulder until he tipped onto his back. Then he crawled onto his lap. “What do
you say?” he asked as he ran his fingers through Jared’s beard.
“Say?” Jared mumbled, distracted by how good it
felt to have Lucas touching him. “Uh-huh, sure. We can go to Smitty’s after
dinner.”
“Good.” Lucas grinned at him, a hint of mischief
in his eyes. “But that’s not what I meant.” He tilted his hips back and rubbed
his ass over Jared’s groin.
“It isn’t?” Jared asked hoarsely. “What did you
mean?”
“I meant, what do you say about going again?” He
moved back and forth, giving Jared delicious friction right where he wanted it
most. “You up for it?”
BUY LINKS
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My inspiration for Jared
My inspiration for Lucas
- Despite Jared being the shy introvert to Lucas’s party boy extrovert, Jared actually has much deeper connections with people
- McFarland’s Farm is the first novella in a new series of standalone novellas. The series name is Hope, both because of the hope the characters have in building happy futures and because the stories take place in the fictional town of Hope, Arizona.
-
Each
novella in the Hope series will focus on a new couple in town and we get the
first glimpse of the wonderful town and its unique residents in McFarland’s
Farm
Cardeno C. - CC to friends - is a hopeless romantic who wants to add a lot of happiness and a few "awwws" into a reader's day. Writing is a nice break from real life as a corporate type and volunteer work with gay rights organizations. Cardeno's stories range from sweet to intense, contemporary to paranormal, long to short, but they always include strong relationships and walks into the happily-ever-after sunset.
Cardeno's Home, Family, and Mates series have received awards from Love Romances and More Golden Roses, Rainbow Awards, the Goodreads M/Romance Group, and various reviewers. But even more special to CC are heartfelt reactions from readers, like, "You bring joy and love and make it part of the every day."
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