Free Off the Page by Ryan Loveless

Off the Page
     
     
    S KIRMISHING winds battered the shutters against the manor house’s windows and emitted an awful caterwaul, but in his room the dashing ne’er-do-well and rogue Lord John Loring stared at the single red rose that had been left on his bed. He lifted it with thumb and forefinger, his touch gentle for a man of his strength, history, and supposed character. He paused to reflect on this as he examined its petals with callused fingers. He did not expect, after murdering his enemies by the dozens, that he still had that quality in him that would allow him to caress a flower without doing it damage.
    Christian stopped typing and reread what he’d written. He deleted ‘dashing ne’er-do-well and rogue.’ This was his third book featuring Lord John, so if the readers didn’t know he was a handsome devil by now, he’d been doing something wrong.
    “Might as well include his birth certificate and resume.”He glanced around to make sure no one had heard him muttering to himself. The motion was done out of habit. His wife had packed up her suitcase and driven away a month before. She’d sent a letter, not an email, to give him the news. “It’s not you,” it said. “It’s Lord Loring. How am I supposed to compete with him? When you’re ready to be with someone real, let me know.”
    The sorry thing of it was, he couldn’t tell Cindy she was wrong. Christian had created Loring using a mixture of all the traits he desired in a lover. He was stalwart, strong, and passionate; he had a good, if hidden, sense of humor. He never hesitated to jump into battle, be it on the field or in a pub, and he was loyal to the death to those he loved, just as he commanded loyalty in others. And yes, maybe Christian was a little in love with him, but he didn’t see anything wrong with that. Wasn’t an author supposed to love his characters?
    In the first book, Loring had gone on a spree of revenge following the murder of his wife and child, riding his steed Razorback across the Cotswolds, sword in hand, hacking down the nobles responsible. In his second book, Loring was almost hanged for his activities in the first book, but at the last moment reprieve came in the form of a masked man. At the start of book three, Loring was at home brooding because Christian hadn’t decided what adventure to send him on yet.
    When he told his agent this, she’d rolled her eyes (not that he could see her, but the tone of her e-mail heavily implied it) and said, “Love is the greatest adventure of all.”
    What she meant was, “Get him laid.”
    But Loring deserved more than a quick tumble. Christian wanted to give Loring someone who would pursue him to slowly and painstakingly win him over. Christian needed a heroine.
    He anticipated her background would involve a long and complicated lineage, a mislaid will, and a firm moral center that she would maintain even while sucking Loring’s cock, or in the parlance of his genre, “tasting the sweet nectar of her stalwart lover’s noble manhood.” He called her Christina. It didn’t occur to him until he wrote her first scene that he was self-inserting. However, once he reread it, the fact stood out like a flashing sign. He toyed with changing it, but something stopped him. It felt honest in a way his writing never had before. He wrote under a pseudonym, so it wouldn’t be obvious to his readers. For his friends and family, though, there would be no question. When he thought about it that way, it looked like in addition to this being the book in which Loring finally got some, it would also be Christian’s coming out. He was almost thirty years old. He figured it was about time.
    “Fuck!” His new roommate’s voice burst through the barricade of the door.
    Christian jerked backward at the shout. Getting up, he sprinted downstairs to see John glaring at the stove and rubbing his hand.
    "I thought you were still at work," Christian said. Hoping John hadn’t heard him talking to