Hair Balls - Tara Lain

Chapter 1

Hair Balls

A Balls to the Wall Romance

What happens when a blue-collar dude who hides behind his Sasquatch hair gets sheared by a toppy femme in pink lace bikini panties?

Contractor, Rick Ronconi can’t admit what he really wants because it’ll lose him his job, his father, his few friends, and maybe even the one thing he really cares about—his sister, Alice.

But for Alice’s wedding, he agrees to get his overgrown hair and beard cut at a ritzy Laguna Beach salon.

Hello, secret femme kink!

Stylist, Jimothy Castlemane doesn’t pretend to be anything he’s not. He doesn’t yearn for straight guys, and he does not—repeat, does not—date guys who are in the closet.

But a simple after-hours haircut uncovers more than Rick’s face—and Rick finds everything he’s dreamed of on the floor of Jimothy’s hair salon.

Immovable object, meet irresistible force. This is one colossal hair ball!

HAIR BALLS is an opposites-attract, coming out, toppy flamboyant femme vs tough blue-collar pretender, MM romance—with a lot of cats.

Note to Readers

It’s been a few years since I added a new story to my popular Balls to the Wall series. The first book in the series, Volley Balls, was created all the way back in my first published year, 2011, and was joined soon after by Fire Balls, one of the bestselling gay romances on Amazon in 2012. The series went on from there, racking up other bestselling reader faves.

When I decided to write a winter story this year (2020), I cast around for an idea and happened upon a comment from a reader on Goodreads from a few years ago saying that a character from the book High Balls had made a big impact in a short appearance. That was a voice from the blue and I decided it would be fun to start a new year with a story from one of my kindest, most seemingly sunny characters, Jimothy Castlemane. As it turned out, he didn’t end up as the main character of the story, but rather the exciting cause that changes my hero’s life.

I hope you love HAIR BALLS, and be sure to keep reading at the end for an excerpt from the book in which Jimothy makes his short, memorable appearance, HIGH BALLS. You can find the book on Amazon.

Chapter One

“Deck the halls with boughs of holly—”

Rick Ronconi cringed and suppressed the aching desire to throw his beer glass at the sound system. At least the shrieks of drunken laughter around him made the goddammed song almost indecipherable over the din—until Melanie, his date, threw back her head and sang, “Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.”

“Fuck, Mel, put a sock in it.” Rick slugged back a last mouthful of beer.

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Come on, Mr. Scrooge. This is my last chance to celebrate the season. It’ll all be gone tomorrow or the day after.”

“Can’t get here soon enough.” He thrust his chin, drowned in a blanket of dark whiskers, at her half-empty cosmo glass. “Want another one?”

“Sure. Why not? Can’t dance.” She gave him a look of pure accusation. She’d wanted to go to some big party in LA where they’d get all dressed up and dance with the other suckers dumb enough to shell out hundreds of bucks for tickets. Hell, she’d even offered to pay for them since Mel was a pretty successful makeup artist. That’s how he’d met her. She was doing the makeup for his sister Amy’s wedding. But the thought of the party had made him sick. Crowds, bodies, too much perfume. And he never seemed to fit into those ritzy events. He felt like a hairy bear in a china shop or some mixed metaphor like that. Yes, he was in danger of never seeing Mel again, but fuck it. Of course, Alice would be disappointed. She was all excited about him and Mel. Shit.

He grabbed his empty glass, scraped back his chair, banging into some girl dancing in the space between tables behind him, and made his way to the bar where he pushed his big shoulders between two dudes and waved at Joe, the bartender closest to him.

“Want another one, Rick?”

“Yeah, and a cosmo.”

Joe moved away, and Rick leaned on the bar, ran a hand through his thick, uncut hair, then looked up casually.

Oh yeah.

Quickly, he stared back at his hands, but his heart beat way too hard.

You don’t need to do this. Come on. Go home. You don’t need to do anything. Sleep. You’ll feel better tomorrow.

Joe slid the bottle and glass toward him, followed by the cosmo. “Here