Welcome to Tuesday Teasers with ZA Maxfield! This week we have author JP Barnaby joining us!

Fans of Teaser Tuesdays know what’s going to happen here:

I’ll post a snippet from one of JP Barnaby’s books with the character names asterisked out.

Your mission is to guess which of JP’s books the excerpt comes from! Email your answer to ZAM,  zamaxfield (at) zamaxfield DOT com. Please be sure to put “Teaser Tuesday” in the subject line! She’ll draw a random winner each week. It’s that simple! Come play along… If you guess correctly, you’ll be entered to win a prize!

Here’s a little bit about JP:

Award winning romance novelist, J. P. Barnaby has penned over a dozen books including the Working Boys series, the Little Boy Lost series, In the Absence of Monsters, and Aaron. As a bisexual woman, J.P. is a proud member of the GLBT community both online and in her small town on the outskirts of Chicago. A member of Mensa, she is described as brilliant but troubled, sweet but introverted, and talented but deviant. She spends her days writing software and her nights writing erotica, which is, of course, far more interesting. The spare time that she carves out between her career and her novels is spent reading about the concept of love, which, like some of her characters, she has never quite figured out for herself.
Find out more about JP on her website, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Tumblr, Amazon.

HERE’s the snippet:

***’s sweaty T-shirt and come-stained boxers went into the bathroom hamper along with his favorite go-to pair of jeans. He’d have to do laundry sooner rather than later, but right then all he could think about was the beauty of hot water cascading down his body and washing away the sins of the day. God knew he had enough sins to atone for in his life.

I fuck up everything.

The sting of hot water against his abused flesh made him hiss out loud. Like he’d fallen asleep in the sun, his back flamed under the spray. More than anything, he wanted to turn away from the pain, but he couldn’t. He deserved it. It helped him remember. It stopped his heart from aching even for the second or so it took him to adjust. ****’s voice above the sound of the pounding water startled him, and his body wash slipped from numb fingers and slammed against the floor of the tub.

“Please tell me what’s going on, ***. If he hurt you, we need to go to the police.”

*** said nothing as his mind scrambled for a response that wouldn’t reveal all of the fissures in his sanity.

“Please, we’ve been friends for years. Why can’t you talk to me?” The toilet creaked, and *** assumed **** was sitting down for the heart-to-heart he wanted to have. *** ***t down and grabbed the errant bottle before pouring a bit of soap into his palm. God, he needed to get the come and sweat off his skin before he could deal with ****. Closing his eyes he put his head under the spray even as he swiped his soapy hands over his chest. Silence hung heavy in the steam while *** washed his body with practiced efficiency. The soap and water felt like heaven, though when he scrubbed his hands over his head and the soap cascaded down his back, the sting took his breath away.

“You’re really not going to talk to me? Don’t think this is over, ***. I can wait,” **** said, and before *** could say a word, the bathroom door slammed and the sand-colored shower curtain ruffled in its wake. The water scorched his back as he rinsed off quickly. He wanted to throw on some clothes and talk to ****—try to salvage the situation before things got out of hand. All he could think about was those weeks after they’d ended up in bed when they tiptoed around each other. A knot formed in his stomach as he thought about going through that again.

~ * ~ * ~

Thanks for joining us, JP!

If you think you know what book this excerpt came from, don’t forget to email ZAM at zamaxfield (at) zamaxfield DOT com with your guess!