Judgment of the Moon and Stars (MM)

Suncoast Society 72

Siren-BookStrand, Inc.

Heat Rating: Sextreme
Word Count: 29,013
22 Ratings (4.7)

[Siren Sensations ManLove: Erotic Alternative Contemporary Consensual BDSM Romance, M/M, some spanking, HEA]

Noah’s deep in the closet partially because of his high-profile job, but mostly because of his ultra-conservative family. He’s never been with a guy before, until a night at the Toucan resort with Jackson turns his world upside down in the best way possible. Except a work emergency calls him away before he gets Jackson’s last name…or phone number.   

Jackson doesn’t know if the cutie ghosted on purpose or through a simple misunderstanding, but at least he has work to focus on. Except now that Jackson’s had a taste of Noah, he wants more—wants all of him.   
After a chance encounter in the unlikeliest of places, Jackson knows he’s willing to do whatever he must to convince Noah this could be for life. Except Noah’s family is a problem and could cause problems for both of them. Can Jackson convince his boy to trust him to fight for their love, or will Noah’s fear drive them apart?

 

Tymber Dalton is a Siren-exclusive author.

Judgment of the Moon and Stars (MM)
22 Ratings (4.7)

Judgment of the Moon and Stars (MM)

Suncoast Society 72

Siren-BookStrand, Inc.

Heat Rating: Sextreme
Word Count: 29,013
22 Ratings (4.7)
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Cover Art by Harris Channing
Reviews
Judgment of the Moon and Stars (Suncoast Society, Book 72). Can love, honesty, and trust break the cycle of the past and save the future?

Past trauma's a strange thing. It can make or break you. For Jackson Crowder, it's a double-edged sword. Destroyed by betrayal, he's moved beyond that deceit and made a life for himself. Teacher, head of the social studies department, and leader of Sorrellson Academy's development and expansion committee, he has everything he needs. Or does he? Being a Dom and kinky doesn't exactly fit his job description. Noah Mayes is a man in hiding. A homophobic family has pushed him deep into the closet. And while his job isn't threatened by the fact he's gay, he has no way of knowing how his submissiveness or kink would affect it. He's virtually no way of meeting other gay or kinky men. When both Noah and Jackson show up at the Toucan in St. Pete, it's kismet. The attraction is sizzling. They have a magical, perfect night. But when Noah's literally pulled out of bed by a phone call, the only one who can handle a work-related catastrophe, his focus is only on his job. There's just one problem. The only thing he knows about Jackson is his FetLife name. Last names and contact information fell by the wayside the night before. After all, there was plenty of time for that later, right? In the chaos surrounding the freak accident, Noah's forgotten Jackson's FetLife name. With nothing else to go on, Noah knows that one perfect night, the promise of something he craves, is now gone. Jackson made it very clear he does NOT chase after anyone. But Jackson's living in his own purgatory. Has yet another seemingly perfect man ghosted? He won't chase. His past's proven just how that will end. It's all or nothing. Is this the end for these two? When fate steps in once again, is it another chance? Does either have the ability to see beyond the obvious? Jackson's so sure he's put his past behind him. But will that certainty take away the man he can't forget? Noah's fear of coming out, his family, his terror at committing to the one man he could possibly love for life, have the potential to destroy him. One thing is clear. This relationship has virtually no chance of succeeding. The only thing that could possibly save it is truth, honesty, and most of all, trust. Is either even capable of that? If not, Noah and Jackson have lost the best thing ever to happen to them!

I loved Jackson and Noah. Over and above the BDSM that's integral to the story, these two are fascinating in completely opposite ways. Jackson's mysterious past has affected every portion of his life, his love life most of all. Trust is nonexistent. And that's what makes Jackson so compelling. He longs for love. He needs BDSM. Dominance is at the core of his very being. How do you reject what's soul deep? And while he knows exactly who and what he is, how do you deny a core tenet of BDSM? Noah's the complete opposite. Deeply in the closet, terrified of the losing his family but furious with their homophobia and religious fanaticism, craving love and the submission so crucial to him, he's torn in two. How does he find what he longs for? What options does he have? Just when all seems lost, these two find each other, a perfect fit. That they immediately lose each other with virtually no hope of ever reconnecting simply broke my heart. Once again, tissue alert! I cried throughout this book. It's just that heartrending and packed with emotion. Ms. Dalton has done it again. The story's complex. With never a dull moment, there are twists and turns you never see coming. And at the heart of it all, there's the one thing that pulls me into nearly every book she's written...the beauty, complexity, and infinite variety of the BDSM lifestyle. I absolutely adored this story! Thank you, Ms. Dalton! This book is captivating! I couldn't put it down. It deserves far more than five stars!

A final note. This is an ADULT book. It contains explicit language and BDSM sexual scenes. If you don't enjoy this genre, this may not be the book for you. There are book synopses and reviews available on Goodreads and all booksellers' websites. Use these resources. DON'T LEAVE A NEGATIVE REVIEW WHEN YOU KNOW YOU WON'T ENJOY THE BOOK. It's not fair to the author. She works hard to provide a quality work product. If you know you'll object to a book's subject matter before you buy it, you're doing yourself and the author an extreme disservice.

Thanks for reading my review and happy reading!
Pam S.
A story about two men who are afraid to go after love for different reasons. Noah has never been with a man and because of his very, very conservative family, won't take a chance. Jackson was hurt in the past and doesn't know if he wants to let his heart get involved again. When the two meet up at a club, sparks fly and before you know it, they end up spending the night with each other. When there is an explosion and Noah is called away, there are misunderstandings on both sides. Noah didn't get contact info and Jackson wonders if Noah skipped out on him after only one night together. When they find each other again, it's time to talk. As time passes, the guys get closer but what will happen when Noah's family finds out he is gay? I really wanted to reach through the book and just slap his mother!! This book was a quick read and I really liked it. I hope we will get to see more of Noah and Jackson in the future because I feel there is much more of their story to tell!!!
rhondavb

More From Suncoast Society

Excerpt

 

STORY EXCERPT

 

Noah swallowed hard, his cock throbbing in his shorts.

I’m forty-two. What the hell am I doing here?

Except he couldn’t use the age excuse. There were plenty of guys all around him, Tops and bottoms, who were obviously older than him. Despite his curiosity about the leather bar on-site, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be pulled into the orbit of one of the leather Tops tonight. He had a feeling that, despite his far deeper than passing fantasies about BDSM, the guys in the leather bar likely operated at a higher gear that his mental transmission didn’t even possess, much less shift into.

He didn’t even want a life-long relationship right now. He wanted fun, he wanted to prove to himself he could find a guy, and he wanted to extricate himself from his fear. He’d finally worked through the outer margins of a shitload of negative thought patterns about himself and was ready to push a little more. All he wanted to do this weekend was pop his cherry. In fact, it was probably better if it was a one-night stand tonight, because he wasn’t sure his nerves could handle more than that.

He damn sure didn’t want to tell someone he’d just met anything personal about him, like what he did for a living.

Sex.

He wanted sex.

Satisfying, ball-draining, no-strings-attached sex.

He hadn’t been laid in over ten years, and he wanted someone for a partner besides his own damn hands.

And he wanted an experienced guy to pop his cherry and give him a night to remember.

Is that too much to ask?

Working his way through the throng, he ended up on the outer edges of the primary mass of bodies, standing in the breezeway along the front of the pool-facing rooms on the north side of the lower level.

Studying it from this angle, it almost appeared as an impenetrable wall of flesh.

Might as well be a shield wall of hostile Vikings protecting their mead stocks.

You screwed up. You should have just knuckled under, stayed married to Meg, and kept your head down.

That was a mental admonishment of his own.

You’re going to burn in hell for this.

That was his mother’s voice.

Except she hadn’t said that to him directly.

Not yet.

She didn’t know the truth about him, or she likely would have said it to him a thousand times by now.

Eventually, he made his way over to the covered patio area outside the hotel’s restaurant and settled in a chair at a vacant table. There weren’t many men in that area, a few smoking cigars in a far corner, but it seemed the bulk of the attendees were either in the pool, or dancing or talking in the courtyard area around it, or had moved inside to one of the other bars and dance clubs in the complex.

This was a mistake.

He was kidding himself if he thought he was going to find someone here. That anyone might be interested in him. There seemed to be a literal code he was clueless about. Some guys sported bandanas of various colors in back pockets, or wrist- or armbands, some with color stripes on them. Or chest harnesses over bare flesh.

Here he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Although that wasn’t too out of place when compared to the guys in barely-there swimsuits, and even other guys dressed casually like he was.

Except the other guys apparently had no trouble meeting people.

He also didn’t have the emotional energy to force himself to wade through those people and…mingle.

Not again.

He’d almost decided to get up and return to his room when a voice spoke from just behind him.

“Mind if I join you?”

 

* * * *

 

Jackson had emerged from the restaurant with his burger and fries and thought he’d have a hard time finding a table to sit at. It’d not only surprised him to find there were plenty of seats available, but there was a fairly cute guy sitting alone at one of the tables.

Deciding to take a risk, he walked over to him. “Mind if I join you?”

The cutie had gorgeous blue eyes, neatly trimmed brown hair, and from his wide-eyed look of fear when his head jerked toward him, Jackson assumed the guy was probably new to the scene.

“Um…sure. Yeah.”

“Thanks.” Jackson settled into the chair next to him so they wouldn’t have to shout or repeat every other word over the increasingly loud music. “Glad my room’s not poolside,” Jackson said. “My first time here.”

“My second, but I…” He shrugged. “Might as well be my first time.”

He offered his hand. “Jackson.”

“Noah.” The man shook with a politely firm grip.

Now able to really get a good look at the man, Jackson read a slight air of borderline terror from him, scared rabbit.

Fresh meat.

But he was a cutie. He couldn’t tell how old he was for sure, maybe a little older than him if the lines around the outer edges of his eyes were a clue, and no idea if he was taller than him, either. Average build, but the man’s T-shirt could have been hiding the truth to one extreme or the other. It wasn’t exactly baggy on him, but it wasn’t form-fitting to show off his torso, either.

“So what happened your first time here, if you don’t mind me asking?”

He wanted to get the guy talking without pressuring him, if possible. Keep him talking, at least long enough for Jackson to finish his food.

Then he’d ask the guy if he wanted to go have a drink at one of the bars.

Or if he wanted to come back to Jackson’s room to talk alone.

“I just…” Noah shrugged. “I lost my nerve.”

“I’m guessing you’re single?”

He snorted and looked down at his hands, which now lay clasped on the table. “Yeah,” he softly said, barely audible over the music. “Over ten years now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t her fault. She treated me better than she might have during the divorce. We weren’t even married a year. She covered for me to my family.”

Ah. Another few puzzle pieces.

And more suspicion he needed to tread very, very lightly. Delicately, even.

“It can be hard meeting someone, especially if there’s family or job issues to deal with.”

The guy nodded, his brow lifting. “You can say that again.”

Bingo.

A guy who wanted to be cautious, careful.

Discreet.

That meant a guy who, hopefully, wouldn’t go batshit on him.

A guy he didn’t have to tell too much about himself right now.

“I’m the same way. My job’s not really at risk, but I need to keep some of my special interests…concealed.”

The guy’s blue eyes focused on Jackson again, and his cock reared up in his shorts and said hello, baby.

“Like what?” Noah asked.

Jackson glanced around the courtyard area, then tipped his head toward some of the guys off to the side smoking cigars.

“I’m a Dom. Not hard-core like those guys. I’m not a hard-core sadist. I mean, I do like to play, but that’s just one part of it, not my raison d’être. My problem is finding a guy who is willing to step back and let me be in control day-to-day when it comes to our relationship, but who is also an independent person outside the home. I need a guy with his own job, who, when he comes home, wants to put that aside, unplug from the world, and focus on us.”

He let that lay out there for a long moment before speaking again. “Anything in that interest you, even for just one night?”

Noah started to speak, licked his lips…and firmly nodded.

 

ADULT EXCERPT

 

Noah wanted to spend the whole night with the guy, quit being terrified, finally…live.

“I’ve been told I give great back and shoulder rubs,” Jackson said with a smile. “Also a great excuse to get a guy’s shirt off him. If you’d like. You can always say no.”

Noah didn’t hesitate. He peeled his T-shirt off and tossed it over onto the dresser, where his bag lay.

Jackson stood, kicked off his flip-flops, and pulled his shirt off, too. A light dusting of dark hair shadowed his pecs and abs, narrowing into a thin treasure trail that disappeared beneath the waistband of his shorts.

“Why don’t you lie facedown on the bed?” he suggested. “And, seriously, at any time while we’re talking or doing anything, if you need me to stop, just say red. Even for a back rub.”

“Okay.” He got situated on the bed, on his stomach, and Jackson straddled him. An involuntary moan escaped Noah at the feel of warm thumbs carefully digging into the muscles at the base of his neck on either side of his spine, pausing as he swept his thumbs out toward Noah’s shoulders and encountered the tight muscle knots he always developed there.

“Oh, dude. You really are tense.” No playful tone in his voice, either. “All kidding aside, if nothing else happens between us tonight, please, at least let me do this for you, okay?”

“Thank you.”

“Do you want me to turn on the TV for you? Will that help relax you?”

“Maybe.”

He felt Jackson stretch for the remote, followed by the sound of the TV coming on. After a few channel changes, he settled on NatGeo and a documentary about the Pacific Ocean.

“Something non-political, right?” Jackson joked, then his hands returned to Noah’s shoulders.

Over the next half hour, Noah winced and moaned and cried out in pain, and not because of anything sexy.

“I dated a massage therapist for a few months,” Jackson said as he worked on one knot behind Noah’s left hip that had nearly sent him off the bed when Jackson’s thumbs first dug into it. “He taught me a bunch of stuff. I don’t know what your income is like, but you should look into getting a massage every so often. I don’t mean a happy finish kind, either. This kind of stress isn’t healthy for a body to hold on to.”

“Maybe you can take care of that for me, Sir,” he mumbled into the covers before he realized what he was saying.

But calling him that felt…perfect.

Absolutely perfect.

Jackson paused, leaned in. When he spoke, his lips were next to Noah’s left ear. “If we get to that point, boy,” he whispered, “you’d better believe I’d take good care of you.”

Noah’s eyes popped open because, under him, his cock had suddenly roared to life and it took every ounce of willpower he had not to start grinding against the bed.

Jackson kissed his cheek and sat up, chuckling, to go back to working on the muscle knot.

But now Noah was acutely aware of every sensation, from the warmth of Jackson’s thighs straddling his own to the way the hair on his legs felt brushing against Noah’s.

Jackson moved on from that point, sweeping his hands up, along either side of his spine, down again and setting splayed over his kidneys with his fingers curling around Noah’s waist. “Do you have anything else you’d like rubbed, baby?”

Noah’s breath caught in his throat, fingers fisting the covers as he nodded. “Yes, Sir.”

“You need to ask me for it. I don’t play games. I won’t run, and I won’t chase. I won’t force you. I’ll stand here and let you come to me, but I won’t wait forever. That doesn’t only apply to tonight. It applies to me in a relationship, to life in general. Understand?”

When Noah went to roll over, Jackson rose up enough so Noah could do it, then settled over his thighs again once Noah made it onto his back. Jackson’s hazel eyes looked more brown right now, mocha, intense, like Noah could lose himself in them.

“Yes, Sir,” Noah said.

“Then tell me what you want.”

Noah knew Jackson had to feel his hard cock, the way it was pressing against the front of his shorts. “I’ve never been with a guy before. I’ve…I’ve used a butt plug but…” He didn’t know where to go with that.

Jackson stroked Noah’s chest, from his shoulders, over his pecs, pausing to brush his fingers across his nipples, and down to his stomach, stopping at his waistband. “How do you know you’d like a Dom?”

“I’ve…read stuff. I want someone I can turn myself over to outside of work.”

“Impact play?”

“I want to try it.”

“But you don’t know any limits you might have yet?”

“No, Sir.”

Jackson awarded him with another of those smiles and leaned in, kissing him. When Noah tried to wrap his arms around him, Jackson caught his hands and pinned them over his head, sitting up, holding them in place.

“Sex tonight,” Jackson said. “And I’ll see how you do with a little light bare-handed spanking. I didn’t bring any implements this weekend, anyway. Are you okay with unwrapped for oral? If not, that’s okay, too. Your choice.”

Noah nodded.

“You have to say it.”

“I’m okay with that, Sir.”

“Wrapped for anal. For now, anyway. If you still like me in the morning, we can talk and see where things progress.”

Noah nodded.

“Fair warning—I’m not poly, and I don’t swing. I’m monogamous. If we decide to see each other long-term, and I catch you cheating on me, that’s it. No second chances.”

“Yes, Sir. That won’t be a problem.”

“We’ll have a long talk tomorrow morning over breakfast about what we’ve done tonight. At that point, I’m going to ask you questions I expect to have answered honestly, like your name, where you live, things like that, because we have to start building trust. And I’ll answer your questions. We both seem to have jobs we need to protect. Nothing we do will interfere with the other’s job, on either of our parts. Hard limit that goes both ways.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Is there anything you’d really like to do tonight?”

It felt…strange to ask this, but if he was going to do this, he knew he had to push through that discomfort. “Yes, Sir.”

“Tell me.”

“I-I’ve never given a blowjob. I’ve…I’ve tasted my own cum, but I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to give one.”

Jackson’s wide smile made Noah’s cock hard, but then he released Noah’s wrists and climbed off him. He got out of bed and held a hand out to him, and Noah sat up, taking it, getting out of bed too.

Jackson pulled him in for a kiss, and this time it threatened to sear the ends off every nerve in his body.

“Go get your test results for me, the condoms, lube, and a towel. I’m going to have fun popping your cherries tonight, boy.”

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