Tackling the Tight End by Tara Lain: #Review #Excerpt #Giveaway @taralain

Tackling The Tight End

(Long Pass Chronicles, Book 3)

by Tara Lain

Length: 216 pages
Genres: Contemporary, Gay (M/M), Sports, Romance

Everyone wants the best for SCU student and tight end, Raven Nez—and they know exactly what that is. Enter the NFL draft, become a big football hero, promote his tribe’s casino, and make a lot of money to help people on the reservation. Just one problem. Raven really wants to work with gay kids, and while he loves his tribe and likes football, his visions for the future don’t mesh with theirs. Then the casino board hires a talented student filmmaker to create ads for the tribal business and asks Raven to work with him. But the filmmaker is Dennis Hascomb, a guy with so much to hide and a life so ugly it’s beyond Raven’s understanding. Still he’s drawn to Dennis's pain and incredible ability to survive. Captivated by Raven’s stories of the two-spirited and by the amazing joy of finally having a friend, Dennis knows he has to break free from everything he’s ever been taught was good—but that’s a struggle that could kill him and Raven, too. Is there a chance for “the great red hope” and the “whitest guy on earth”? A future for the serpent and the raven?

Raven laid out paper plates with pizza, two Cokes, and a bowl of potato chips on a box he used for a coffee table in front of the couch. He set them up so that Dennis either had to sit on the floor—not too comfortable, considering it was very worn carpet—or sit beside Raven. Maybe he could get Dennis to relax a little.

The movie started, and Dennis took a bite of cheese and artichoke hearts. He sighed and closed his eyes for a second.

Raven smiled. “Good?”

“Oh yeah. I always have dinner with my parents, which means I never get to eat anything normal.”

“They must really have bought into all that crap about eating together keeps the family together.”

“Yeah.” He pointed at the screen. “Okay, so you know this was partly an homage to the old western serials, right?”

Raven wrote in the air as he said, “Cowboooooys in Spaaaaaace.”

“Exactly. But it goes a lot deeper. It’s a real Biblical epic battle of good versus evil. I mean Luke, right? This is the book of Luke. And the Force. Interesting that most of the ordinary dumb bad guys make fun of the ancient religion, but Darth Vader knows and uses the Force. That’s what makes him so powerful. Darth, of course, is a play on Dark, and all the Darths in the series are the most dangerous villains.”

“Vader is short for invader?”

“I think that’s where it came from, but did you know that vader means father in Dutch?” He laughed. “They probably weren’t so surprised at the whole ‘Luke’s father’ revelation in the Netherlands.”

“No kidding?”

Dennis leaned forward for a piece of pepperoni pizza just as Raven grabbed for the same one. Their hands touched as they both held the crust. Raven grinned. “If they did this in a movie, you’d probably say it was contrived, right? Could never happen. The director should get a more original idea to get them together.”

“Yeah.” Raven heard Dennis swallow.

“So now that you have us here, director Hascomb, what do you plan to do with us?”

Dennis swallowed again, lifted his thumb, and gently rubbed Raven’s little finger.

Well damn, he’d had a fair amount of sex in his twenty-one years, but nothing had ever dived straight to his dick quite as fast as that gentle caress. “Man, you do it for me.”

“I-I do?”

“Yeah. That’s no demand or even request. I just want you to know.”

“What’s it like to kiss a guy?”

Their fingers stroked and twined. Nothing else moved if he didn’t count the expanding of cocks. “I don’t know. It’s great. Maybe not that different from kissing a girl. More stubble, I guess.” Raven wiped his other hand across his chin. “But not from me. No beard.”

“I’ve never kissed a girl. I tried to have sex a couple times but skipped the kissing part.”

“Well, hell, man. That means—”

On the screen, the 3-D projection of Princess Leia popped out of the communication device in R2-D2. Dennis stared at their linked hands. “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi—”

Raven joined in. “You’re our only hope.” He reached a hand around Dennis’s head and pulled him closer, then pressed half-open lips to Dennis’s closed mouth. Stroking gently, he persuaded those full pink lips apart and slipped his tongue slightly between. Dennis startled, but Raven held his head just tight enough to keep them in contact, but not so tight as to scare him.

Dennis shivered, made a little gurgling sound in his throat, brought his hands up against Raven’s shoulders, and then—some dam gave way. He dissolved in Raven’s arms, even wrapping his own around Raven’s chest, and oh God, his mouth opened, accepting all of Raven’s tongue. Sweet. As Raven’s tongue slid in, Dennis sucked. Jesus, Raven practically came just from the heat of that suction.

5 of 5 stars

I was so excited to read Tackling The Tight End. Long Pass Chronicles is one of my favorite series from Tara... okay, okay... they're all my favorites. = ) I haven't been a Dennis fan in the last few books and thought it was time for someone to do something about his attitude but, as always, things are not as they appear. Tara blew me out of the water with the depth and complexity of his character. 

Raven is a sweet-heart, and the perfect complement to Dennis, because he is both strong and open minded. Despite being under a lot of pressure from his family, he remains honorable and positive when a lot of people could have gotten angry or walked away.

I love Native American culture; it's richness and diverse. Tara does a wonderful job showing how important the traditions of Raven's tribe are to him and how they were passed down from his grandfather... who is pretty awesome!

Dennis and Raven's story broke my heart a little. Tackling the Tight End is drama, suspense, adventure and romance at it's best!

The Long Pass Chronicles Series

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Tara Lain writes the Beautiful Boys of Romance in LGBT erotic romance novels that star her unique, charismatic heroes. Her first novel was published in January of 2011 and she’s now somewhere around book 23. Her best­selling novels have garnered awards for Best Series, Best Contemporary Romance, Best Ménage, Best LGBT Romance, Best Gay Characters, and Tara has been named Best Writer of the Year in the LRC Awards. In her other job, Tara owns an advertising and public relations firm. She often does workshops on both author promotion and writing craft. She lives with her soul­mate husband and her soul­mate dog in Laguna Beach, California, a pretty seaside town where she sets a lot of her books. Passionate about diversity, justice, and new experiences, Tara says on her tombstone it will say “Yes”

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