Tag Archives: fiction

‘ll be honest — I wasn’t sure what to expect when Grant Moss agreed to talk to me. The host of Irreverent — the podcast that has made three sitting congressmen sweat through their suits — is exactly as advertised. Sharp. Funny. Slightly dangerous. And absolutely not sorry about any of it. We met virtually, and he showed up exactly on time, coffee in hand, looking like trouble in the best possible way.

So Grant. Conservative conventions. You’ve been to a few.

More than I’d like to admit. My therapist calls it a compulsion. I call it content.

What’s the elevator pitch for people who’ve never been?

Imagine your most insufferable uncle’s fever dream brought to life in a convention center. American flags everywhere. Men in suits that cost more than my rent talking about the working class. Women smiling so hard their faces must ache by Tuesday.

Sounds exhausting.

Oh it’s exhausting AND illuminating. That’s the thing people don’t understand. These events are fascinating precisely because of the gap between the performance and the reality.

The gap.

(he smiles over his coffee cup)

Let’s just say the agenda and the after-hours activities don’t always align.

Meaning?

Meaning the same men thundering about moral decay at two in the afternoon are absolutely unhinged at the hotel bar by ten at night. I’ve seen things. I have receipts I’ll never use because I actually have a conscience, which frankly puts me ahead of most of the speakers.

Give me something. Anything.

(laughing)

Okay. Without naming names. I once watched a very prominent advocate for traditional marriage spend forty minutes at a hotel bar buying drinks for someone who was emphatically not his wife. And when I say emphatically I mean demographically, structurally, and in every conceivable way.

Oh my God.

And that’s a Tuesday. That’s not even the interesting stuff.

What’s the interesting stuff?

(pause)

That’s what I’m going back to find out.

Wait — you’re going back? To another one?

The Turning Tides USA conference. Next month.

Are you covering it for the podcast?

I’m going undercover. No press credentials. Just me, a hotel room, and a very open mind.

Undercover as what exactly?

(that smile again)

An attendee. A true believer. Someone who belongs there.

You. A true believer.

I can be very convincing when I’m motivated.

And what’s motivating you this time?

There’s a keynote speaker. Very prominent. Very polished. Very… vocal about certain issues that affect people I care about. And I have a feeling — call it journalistic instinct — that there’s a story there.

What kind of story?

The best kind. The kind where everything is not what it seems.

Should this keynote speaker be worried?

(long pause, something shifting behind his eyes that wasn’t there before)

Honestly? I have no idea anymore.

That sounds like there’s more to this than a podcast episode.

I think I’ve said enough.

Grant —

Order your copy. You’ll find out what happened.

Grant Moss’s story — and what really happened at the Turning Tides USA conference — is told in Original Sins: A Divine Gay Romance (Divine Temptations Book Five) by Ian O. Lewis and Luke Jameson.

Preorder your copy now. Some temptations were always meant to be surrendered to.

This chapter has everything: sweeping English countrysides, deep-seated family drama, and two men who are definitely not just talking about horses.

In this sneak peek of Making It Royal, Bryce and Arthur trade the stiff collars of the embassy for the rolling hills of Strathmore. But as the conversation shifts from riding techniques to the realities of growing up in the spotlight (and out of the closet), the air between them starts to spark.

Check out the full scene below, featuring a very competitive race, a centuries-old oak tree, and a moment that was this close to being perfect—until the rest of the world decided to crash the party.

The first thing that struck me was the smell—clean grass and loam and the faint, peppery sweetness of crushed clover. It lifted something in me I hadn’t realised was heavy. The embassy smelled like toner and coffee grounds, while London smelled like rain-slick pavement and someone else’s cigarette. But Strathmore smelled like childhood Saturdays, like the ring at Fairview Stables back in Richmond, like a part of me I’d filed away under before life got complicated.

The second thing was the sound: hooves in soft rhythm, two horses breathing like bellows, birds tick-ticking in the hedgerow. No sirens. No phones. No clatter of staff with agendas. Just the countryside and the slow pulse of two fine animals who didn’t give a damn that I was an ambassador.

Arthur took the lead at first, his mare—an elegant dark bay with a glossy neck—moving like a metronome under him. He sat tall, shoulders back, hips loose, hands steady—textbook, frankly, but not stiff. The kind of form you couldn’t fake if you tried, and it made me overly aware of his body inside those cream breeches and navy hacking jacket.

I let my gelding fall in a few lengths behind. He was a golden chestnut with sensible eyes, and a personality that said  I have seen absolute nonsense and survived it, sir. Each step loosened the knot at the back of my skull until I could almost pretend I had nothing waiting for me on Monday—not the briefing book with a spine like rebar, the inevitable memo from the Foreign Office about “expectations,” nor the delicate dance with a government that loved tea, tradition, and plausible deniability.

My eyes kept drifting to the line of Arthur’s back, to the clean angle where jacket met waist, to the way his calves gripped the mare’s sides. I was fifteen again, sitting astride an ill-tempered pony while my heart jump-started over Ben Morrow’s two-point position. My first crush, who had hair the colour of dark honey and a laugh that made me think of summer thunder. Nothing ever came of it, and after he started dating Caroline Fischer from the swim team he stopped noticing me completely.

The day Ben showed up at the stables with Caroline’s class ring on a chain around his neck, I learned two things at once: one, that my father would rather I focus on the family’s legacy—the Lewis name, the diplomatic tradition, the path that had been laid for me since birth—than dwell on whatever was happening in my chest; and two, that boys tilted my world in a way girls never would. After that, the barn was never just a barn. It was a place where adrenaline muddled with desire, where the sound of a boy’s laugh could set off fireworks in my heart. I hadn’t ridden much since I threw myself into the diplomatic corps. But the wiring I’d laid down as a teenager still hummed.

It was humming now.

Arthur slowed and glanced back, his smile easy. He half-turned, bringing the mare to a lazy trot until we drew shoulder to shoulder. The fields rolled away around us—green after green, stitched with hedges and drystone walls, the sky an old china plate. We moved as a pair without thinking, matching strides. My gelding blew softly, approving of this new arrangement.

“It must be lovely,” I said after a minute. “Having a mother who loves the same things you do. Mine never did. She wanted me to be a certain kind of man, you know? The kind who marries the right girl from the right family and produces two children she could spoil at Christmas.”

Arthur gave a little huff of laughter, very unprincely and therefore charming. “Mummy and I share horses and the family, certainly,” he said. His voice had that peculiar royal clarity—like a bell rung softly—but his tone was warm. “Beyond that, we diverge violently. She will tolerate a good, practical coat; she does not understand a bias cut. Fashion leaves her completely unmoved.” He tilted his head, lips quirking. “And as for women—”

He stopped. Not dramatically. Not with any flourish. But something caught in his voice, a tiny snag, and I felt my attention sharpen as if the whole field leaned toward him.

He resumed, carefully, almost wry. “Mummy knows they will never be a part of my life.”

I nearly fell off my horse.

My gelding flicked an ear back in my direction as if to say, Sir, perhaps not an ideal moment for theatrics. I re-centred my weight and found the reins again, heat flooding my face under the helmet.

Arthur’s eyes darted to me, concern flickering. “Are you quite all right?”

“Mm?” I tried for casual and landed in mortified. “Yes. Yes. The horse and I just had a small philosophical disagreement about gravity.”

“Good,” he said, amused, then—softer—“Mummy knew before I did, you know. About… what I wanted. Girls, beyond friendship, never looked like the answer.” He cut me a quick look. “I was dreadfully slow to admit it even to myself.”

“I wasn’t slow,” I said, and heard the old bitterness and tried to sand it down. “I was just… supervised. My mother—she wasn’t cruel. Just single-minded. Cotillions, Hunt Club dances, the right girl on my arm. When it dawned on her that I had no real interest in girls, she did what she always does when reality conflicts with her plan: she tried to manage me like a project.” I smiled. “And then I entered the diplomatic corps and she threw up her hands. Now she pours all that energy into my brothers’ wives. Poor women. They get smothered with monogrammed home accessories.”

Arthur laughed, music to my ears.

We rode in silence for a stretch, the horses content to follow the curve of a hedgerow. The sunlight came slanting in at that hour where everything looked briefly like a painting. I felt unravelled and stitched back together all at once.

“How did your family take it?” I asked carefully, because we were stepping onto something tender. “Your… preferences. Considering your family is the most famous one on Earth.”

He drew his mare to a halt so smoothly the animal seemed to pause mid-breath. I reined in too, and we faced one another. Arthur’s expression shifted; the humour slid away. “It hasn’t always been easy,” he sighed. “There were seasons that felt like weather one could not ride out—wind in one’s face, rain from all angles. But Mummy has been a rock. She kept me out of sight when she could, shielded me where she could not. I am not like my cousins. The Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex were born to be looked at. I was born to be useful. I’m not a working royal; the spotlight is not my occupation. It’s only by a string of accidents that you and I ever met.” He tipped his chin up. “Had Mummy not been ill on the night of your reception, I might have stayed home, and you would still be a photograph in the paper to me.”

Something went warm and ridiculous inside my chest. “Well,” I said, and heard the rush in my voice, “I am—ridiculously—grateful for Princess Anne’s ill health.”

Colour rose along Arthur’s cheekbones, quick as a match-strike. We sat there looking at each other, and I felt the moment gather itself the way the air gathers before a summer storm—pressure combining with searing heat.

It occurred to me—absurdly—that if I leaned forward and bridged the few inches between our horses, I could kiss a prince. The thought made my pulse leap. Then the more absurd thought followed, brighter and funnier: my father would die. Not of outrage—no, he’d be split perfectly down the middle, bursting with pride that his son was consorting with actual royalty and horrified at what the neighbours back in Richmond would say.

A laugh slipped out, undignified and juvenile, and I pressed my fist against my mouth. My gelding flicked his ear again.

Sir, please control yourself.

Arthur arched his brow. “What, pray, is so amusing?”

“Nothing,” I said, which was a lie, and looked wildly around for cover. Far across the field, a tree rose enormous and inviting, a knotted old oak with a shadow like a dark lake beneath it. “Except,” I blurted, “that tree is begging to be raced to, and I’m prepared to bet you a hundred pounds I can beat you to it.”

His lips parted, and then he laughed, pure delight. “A hundred pounds?” he repeated, teasing horror creeping into his voice. “Ambassador, you are shockingly American.”

“Stars and stripes, baby,” I said before my brain could strangle my mouth. “Well? Do you accept?”

He gathered his reins one-handed, mischief lighting his eyes. “Very well. But when you lose—and you will—you may pay me in suits from Clarence, not cash.”

“Deal,” I said. “On three?”

“One does not shout numbers across a field like a farmhand,” Arthur said, primly, and then ruined it with a grin. “We go on now.”

He touched his heel to the mare and shot forward, the bay launching with a power that made me swear. My gelding took half a heartbeat to realise what was happening, then surged after him. The oak swelled as we thundered toward it, and I measured distance and angle and the way his mare drifted left when Arthur asked for speed. I moved to the right, a clean line, the gelding stretching out the way horses do when they remember they were built for it.

We were neck and neck at the last, and we tore past the invisible finish line with a whoop that startled a flock of birds from the hedgerow. We eased down from our horses together, breathless.

“I protest,” he said between gasps, cheeks flushed, and eyes shining. “You had a superior line.”

“You had a superior horse,” I countered, grinning, and patted my gelding’s sweaty neck. “He’s just competitive. Won’t let anyone beat him.”

“Then we are three of a kind,” he returned with a wink.

We walked the horses in wide circles to cool them, the oak’s shade a relief from the unseasonable heat.

“You ride beautifully, Bryce,” Arthur said after a moment, eyes on his mare but his voice turned to me. “You don’t fight the horse. You persuade. That’s the mark of a gifted rider.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” I said, too briskly, because my heart had overreacted to the compliment. “And thank you. It’s been a long time.”

Arthur eased his mare a step closer until our stirrups almost kissed. Leather creaked; the bay flicked an ear. He looked at me the way sunlight looks at water—direct, unhurried, a little dangerous.

“Persuasion suits you,” he said, voice low. The corner of Arthur’s mouth tipped. “Competence is terribly attractive.”

My heart did a drum solo against my ribs. Shit. Is he flirting with me? What the hell do I say now? “Oh,” I managed, then added, “Well—good. I’m… wildly competent.”

Something like laughter shimmered in his eyes. He leaned in the smallest degree, a breath closer, and his gaze dropped to my mouth. He ran his tongue across his lower lip, quick as a cat tasting cream. I felt the ground tilt. Arthur was going to kiss me under a tree on a late-September afternoon and my mother would sense it from another continent.

Oh God, I’m about to kiss a fucking PRINCE.

My gelding stood like a saint. The world went silent, all the sound tunnelled into the space between us—the soft rush of his breath, the faintest click of his swallow—until, from across the fields, came the unmistakable thunder of hooves.

Both horses snapped their heads up. We pulled back instinctively, the spell shredding. Arthur’s jaw tightened.

“If that is Mummy,” he muttered, “we are going to have a very long talk.”

It wasn’t. A rider in Strathmore livery came pounding across the field. He reined in neatly beneath the oak, the horse blowing hard, and swung down in one fluid motion.

“Your Royal Highness,” he said, bowing to Arthur, then turned to me with crisp deference. “Mr. Ambassador—apologies for the interruption. A call just came through from the house. It’s the embassy. They said it’s an emergency and you’re needed at once.”

Making It Royal is available for pre-order now! Grab your copy to see what happens when the emergency call ends and the real games begin. The Preorder price is 3.99 but on release day the price goes up to 4.99, so lock in your savings today at your favorite online retailer. Click here to reserve your copy now.

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Lately, I’ve been living in black and white.

When I’m not writing, I’ve been watching old films from the 1930s—those moody, atmospheric pictures where shadows tell half the story and desire hums just below the surface. There’s something intoxicating about that era. The way the camera lingered on a trembling hand or a cigarette burning. The way emotion had to be suggested, not shown. It’s sexier because of what’s left unsaid. It forces the viewer to use their imagination.

I didn’t plan for it, but those movies have started bleeding into my writing of Devil’s Advocate. The story has that same smoky tension—two men circling something they both want and fear, trapped between sin and salvation. It feels like an old black-and-white film playing on a loop inside my head.

When I picture Lucien and Jimmy, I see them in that hazy chiaroscuro light:
Lucien framed in half-shadow, his eyes catching just enough glow to look dangerous.
Jimmy, trembling, the moral world he’s been raised in collapsing around him like a cathedral in flames.

Every whispered word, every near-touch feels cinematic—like one of those moments just before the censors cut away, leaving the audience to imagine what happens next.That’s what Devil’s Advocate is to me:
A love story shot in metaphorical black and white, where the sin isn’t desire—it’s denial.

The following is an excerpt from Devil’s Advocate, which releases on Halloween 2025.

Lucien’s arms were solid bands around my back, his chest a wall of heat I could lean into or break myself against, and for a second I forgot how to breathe. I pressed my face to the place where his neck met his shoulder and smelled only clean skin with something darker underneath: smoke, spice, and the faintest trace of kitchen grease, which somehow made him more real. The throb of my pulse synced to his heartbeat, steady and thunderous, and the world went quiet except for that sound and the tiny, ragged breaths scraping out of me.

I was grateful. God help me, I was so grateful he’d crossed that room and put his arms around me when I was shaking apart. A minute before, my daddy’s voice had been chewing me up from the inside, and then Lucien’s hold came down like shelter. He said nothing at first. He just gathered me in his arms like he’d been waiting to, like I’d fit there all along.

And I was embarrassed, too—humiliated that he’d seen me like that, weak and small and scared. I never wanted him to think of me that way, as the boy who flinched when a man raised his voice. I wanted him to see the good parts: the music, the patience, the part of me that showed up at the food kitchen because I believed kindness was holy. But there I was, clinging to him like a drowning man.

“Hey,” he murmured against my hair. “I’ve got you.”

Something broke open in my chest.

The gratitude spiraled into something else—something hotter, heavier. It started at the base of my spine and streaked forward, a live wire snapping under my skin. I became aware of everything about him at once: the width of his shoulders, the way his breath stuttered, the heat rolling off him like summer pavement. My fingers curled into the back of his shirt and felt muscle under the cotton. He was so solid, filled with promise and danger, and the nearness of him hit me like a storm.

My breathing went ragged. I tried to slow it, count it, hide it, but the more I tried to get a grip, the worse it got. Sweat gathered at my hairline and slid along my temple. My skin prickled like I’d stepped out of my body and every nerve had come alive. And then I realized—mortifying and undeniable—that I was hard. Not just a little. Not just that shy ache I knew how to will away. My dick was straining against the zipper, urgent, a pressure that bordered on pain, and I was pressed against him with nowhere to hide.

I told myself to think of something else. Math problems. Sermon notes. Hymns. I tried to hear “How Great Thou Art,” and all I heard was the steady drum of my pulse. And the feel of his hand rubbing circles at the small of my back, slow, steady, possessive in a way that made my knees weak.

Temptation wasn’t a whisper anymore. It was Lucien.

And then it hit me—Lucien was trembling. Just a little, but I felt it, a fine shiver running through him that set off a matching quake in me. His thigh shifted between mine, and I went dizzy. The world narrowed to the slide of his breath along my cheek and the hot, unmistakable pressure pressing back against me. 

Lucien was hard too. 

The knowledge lanced through me, sweet and terrifying. I’d never been more aware of another man’s need in my life.

“Are you okay?” he whispered.

I opened my mouth and found nothing but a sound I didn’t recognize leaking out of me—a broken little gasp that turned into a groan. It crawled out of my chest without permission, honest and helpless, and the second it left me, I felt him respond. His grip flexed. His breath caught. The hardness of him nudged against me, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut against the way it ricocheted through my body.

“Jimmy.” My name, dragged out of him like it cost. “I want you.” He said it haltingly, careful and fierce all at once. “I want you so bad it feels like I’m coming apart. But if you’re scared—if you don’t want to—say it. I’ll stop. I need you to want me too. This doesn’t go one inch further unless you want it.”

The floor seemed to tilt. A man like him, all hard edges and masculine, handing me the reins—I didn’t know what to do with the power of it. The ache in me swelled, thick and tidal. I clutched his shirt tighter, breathing open-mouthed against his throat. My heart hammered.

Not forcing. Not taking. Only offering himself.

My mind split clean down the center.

On one side was heat, near unbearable pressure, and a promise I could taste.

On the other side—memory. It rose up mean and bright, a projector bulb burning through the dark.

Saul’s laughter in our garage the summer I turned sixteen, dust motes floating like glitter in hot light. We’d taken apart the lawnmower because we were dumb and bored and everything felt possible. He’d had oil on his jaw, and I’d wiped it off with my thumb, and we’d paused like the air had gone syrup-thick. He’d said, “If you don’t want to—” and I’d cut him off with my mouth because I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to feel.

We were clumsy. It was nothing like the slick sin Daddy warned about from the pulpit. It felt like a firefly landing on your knuckle—shocking and wonderful, light with nowhere to go but inside your skin. Our teeth bumped. We figured it out, and the world didn’t end.

Until the side door slammed open. Daddy’s silhouette cut the light, and then his voice was everywhere, a flood that drowned me.

 “Abomination!”

He came at us so fast I didn’t have time to beg. Saul scrambled back, knocking the wrench set onto the concrete with a scatter of clanging metal. Daddy’s hand caught my arm, and I remember the shock more than the pain at first, the disbelief that this was happening, that my father’s hand could feel like a stranger’s. 

Saul ran. 

The sound of his sneakers slapping the driveway was the loudest thing I’d ever heard until the belt was louder. Leather and rage, over and over, a rhythm I still sometimes felt under my skin when I tried to sleep. Daddy panting, quoting scripture between blows like a man trying to baptize me with pain. 

“Better to enter heaven maimed—better to cut it out—better than hellfire!” The words tangled, becoming one long sentence that meant only this: You are wrong. You are broken. God hates what you are.

Afterward, there was the quiet. The slick mess of tears, the sting that didn’t stop, the coppery taste of blood in my mouth where I’d bitten to keep from screaming. Daddy kneeling beside me, gentling his voice, telling me he loved me, that he had to do it, that love corrected error, that he’d saved me from damnation. He prayed over me while my body shook. 

“You’ll thank me one day,” Daddy whispered, and I nodded because there was no other answer allowed.

The flash of memory snapped away, and I was back in Lucien’s kitchen, wrapped in arms that held but didn’t hurt, hearts colliding instead of fists. My skin burned with the echo of old pain and the fresh blaze of desire. I pressed closer, greedy for comfort, greedy for him, and hated myself for wanting this even as it made me feel alive.

“Tell me what you want,” Lucien said breathlessly. “You get to choose, Jimmy.”

Preorder your copy of Devil’s Advocate now. It’s available at all major online bookstores.