Today's guest Jake Malden talks about himself, his writing, and gives us an insight into his new book The Jared Effect
But first a bit about the lovely Jake
Jake Malden is a freelance journalist and writer from Ireland, now living and playing in London, UK. He has been writing erotic fiction for several years, but 'The Jared Effect' is his first publication with Republica Press. He is currently redrafting his first novel, 'Nailing Neely Jordan', a wicked tale, full of raunchiness, religion and romance.
Here are some of his other books
And now, moving on to the book in question
The Jared Effect
Blurb
Jared Morgan dropped out of college, hitting the road with a Fender acoustic and a change of clothes. He's been blowing in the wind ever since, getting by on short-term gigs and shorter-term loving.
Artist Vanessa picks him on the Interstate, enlisting him to help rescue her lovelorn companion Mallory from a doomed romance; but she has no idea just how far he'll go to help.
Sasha steals him from her shy friend Libby at a funfair, setting the girls on course for a surprise that will rock them both.
Hot teacher Sylvia re-acquaints herself with him at a music gig, and finds their one-time classroom roles shockingly reversed.
The Jared Effect tells three stories of a charming long-haired rogue and the women whose lives he changes. And maybe of the woman who can change him in return. A laid-back joker with a mind infinitely raunchy and a cock permanently hard, he's the kind of trouble it's wise to steer clear of. But seriously-where would be the fun in that?
A Sneak Peek From
The Jared Effect
By Jake Malden
"You really think we should be doing this?" Mallory wrung her hands visibly as she spoke the words.
"Trust me, this guy's okay," Vanessa said to the younger girl. "And if he does try anything, I'll mace out his eyeballs."
Vanessa wouldn't have granted a ride to a long-haired drifter on a regular day, least of all with someone else in her charge, but she trusted her instincts and current circumstances demanded action.
She had first laid eyes on him back in the roadside diner hitting on a pretty blond waitress. "Wish I could serve you something in return," he'd said when the girl served him pie and coffee.
"I might let you, if you take me away from here." The waitress's glance was sweet and sly.
"Got no wheels, baby. We could always get acquainted round at your place. Might come back for you some day when I've hit it big."
"I'm not sure my mom would like it if I brought you back."
"Maybe I'm just the sorta guy she'd like you to take home. If you got your looks from her, it could be quite a party."
"I can't believe you just said that, mister. I'm definitely not taking you home now."
"Your loss, baby, your loss ." They were both laughing as she cleared away his plate and handed him the check.
Vanessa rolled her eyes and returned to her Caesar salad. The waitress's short-term loss perhaps, but she doubted this guy had returned for anyone in his life. Backpack, innuendo and guitar, he was strictly on a one-way-ticket. When she slowed her Ford Mustang to take him in, she knew what limited kind of trouble he might bring. The kind to be embraced far from home, at the end of a self-inflicted sex drought. Of course there was another factor in her decision. She glanced at the girl in the passenger seat.
Mallory toyed with her fiancé's bracelet as the hitch-hiker jaunted up to the car. He smiled and his angular features were instantly transformed. The warmth of his gaze drew a similar look from her, before she turned away embarrassed.
You checked him out in the diner along with me, baby, Vanessa thought. You were damn well fascinated. Only you didn't think I'd noticed.
"Goddamn, you two are angels of the freeway!" He blasted a grin through the passenger window Vanessa had partially rolled down, his ponytailed hair fluttering in the breeze. He was a rumpled kind of attractive, in beat-up denim and faded Metallica t-shirt. In his late twenties, Vanessa thought, but with a swarthiness to his features from hard-living or time on the road. His eyes took a quick tour of Vanessa's cleavage and her long body before checking out Mallory.
Vanessa applied a similar inspection to him. All compact and hard under the denim, as far as she could tell. Nothing to complain about. "Where you headed?"
"Chicago. How far can you take me?"
"All the way to the Windy City, that's if you behave. I've popped the trunk. Throw your stuff in."
"Sure thing."
With guitar case and rucksack swiftly deposited, the newcomer threw himself across the back seat. "Thanks. You're my kinda girls and that is my kinda music. Caught the Foos in concert last year at Radio City. They damn near blew the roof off. Love the ride too." He took instant possession of the space, the arrogant shit. It amused Vanessa, even as it disconcerted Mallory.
"My uncle saved this from the scrap yard and fixed it up for his favourite niece. But she wanted a Corvette, so he gave it to me instead," she said with a wink to him in the rear-view.
"Hey, I'll bet you just flashed those gorgeous emerald eyes, Red, and he made it all yours."
"That's Vanessa." She shot him a reproving look. "And Mallory, before you start with any choice nicknames for my travelling companion. Call me 'red' again, buster, I'll kick your ass out before the next intersection."
"But it's so you." He backtracked when she raised an eyebrow. "Okay, okay. Vanessa. And Mallory. Good to meet you girls. I'm Jared."
Jared. You so fucking are. No way you'd be Mike or David.
God, even the way he spoke his name made her wet.
They sped on through Pennsylvania's rolling fields towards the Ohio border, cloud hanging high and motionless in the deepening blue of mid-afternoon, while she drew out threads of his back story. "I'm from Maple City, Michigan," he explained. "Lived in Detroit for a while. Love the big city but just can't get tied down there. Unless the restraints are tight." She couldn't help but smirk at the comment. "So right now I'm on the road, savouring life."
"I'll bet. Beats getting a job, right?"
"I've had more of those than I can count. Construction, touring with the carnival, dish-washer . Whatever gets me to the next adventure."
"I hear you," Vanessa said. "I work short-term retail and promotions. My friend Sammy and I were decked out as fucking leprechauns for St Pat's. And I'm not even Irish, despite the hair."
"Sexy," Jared laughed. "Never had to stoop quite that low. But then I've always got the old six-string."
"Ah, yes, you're a troubadour. Headed for sweet home Chicago. Man of many talents."
"You have no idea the talents I could show you, Vanessa. Maybe I'll get to serenade you girls."
"What do you think, Mal? Should we let Jared serenade us?"
"Eh . I ." The younger girl had lapsed into silence, leaving them to flirt. "Yeah, sure, that'd be fun."
"Anyway," Jared said, leaning forward and propping his elbows on the front seats, "what has you two gals headed for the bright lights?"
"Well, I," Vanessa said, preening slightly, "am attending a collaborative art exhibit, of which my work will comprise one whole third."
"Ms. Rembrandt, I'm impressed."
Impressed my ass. You'd say anything to get your dick inside me. Although I'd be pissed if you didn't try.
"Too early to be impressed," she said. "One of the girls in my art course was Chicago-born and had the connections to get us a deal on renting some space. Give our stuff a little air."
"What kind of stuff? You got a website?"
Credit to him for showing interest. "Portraits mainly. Some nudes." She tossed out the reference casually.
"Self-portraits? Those I'd definitely check out."
"Private viewings only, buddy."
"We could arrange that. Maybe I'm a secret patron of the arts."
"Yeah. Maybe." Vanessa said coolly. "I don't think he deserves a private anything, do you, Mal?" Her passenger smiled a little but said nothing.
Jared collapsed dramatically onto the back seat. "Damn, too much, too soon. Always my mistake."
"And I'm guessing you make a lot of those."
"On principle, baby." His reflected glance showed pure carnality.
Vanessa let herself luxuriate in it a moment before returning her attention to the road. Mallory's gaze was flicking back and forth between them with anthropological fascination. Vanessa took another shot at drawing her into the conversation.
"Now Mallory here is a girl with a proper future. I went to school with her big sister Annie, but Mal outshines the both of us when it comes to education. You're breezing those finals aren't you, honey?"
"What?" Mallory said, straightening up. "Well, I suppose so."
"You'll do better than I did then." Jared turned his blue-eyed attention to the college girl. "Smart girl, sticking with your books."
Mallory fumbled for a response. "You didn't make it through college? Why not? Too much guitar?"
"Too much of a lot of things. I'm an eighteen-carat dropout. The only things I've given time to are the ones I picked up by trying. Me and studying didn't go together."
"Why not? You seem smart."
"You're a sweetheart to say it," Jared replied. "But I lacked dedication, so I was told. 'Jared, you're a waste of a perfectly good intellect. You lack all dedication.'" He'd adopted a prim feminine tone that made Mallory laugh.
"Who told you that?"
"Miss Steele, my high school history teacher. She dumped my ass in detention all the fuckin' time. I only took it because she was hot."
Mallory giggled, clearly warming to him. "You had a crush on your teacher? That's cute."
"Yeah, but tragically, Mallory, she didn't succumb to my charm. Not quite. Maybe this high school kid wasn't as charming as he thought."
"I don't know . Maybe she was just being professional. You don't know what she was really thinking."
"This is true. What about you, Mal? I'm sure you've had a few teachers' heads in a spin."
Mallory's cheeks reddened. It gratified Vanessa to see her flustered. "Oh, I don't know. I had a boyfriend, so I wasn't paying so much attention to hot teachers. I'm still with him. His name's Chad, he's in college in Chicago. That's where Vanessa's taking me."
Vanessa cringed. Chad. The jock-archetype. Daddy's pride and joy. Arm-candy for a high school princess, but fuck-all use for anything else. The guy had hit on Vanessa at Annie's barbecue the previous summer, while Mallory was on bun-duty. And he'd fucked around on Mallory with one of her high school friends. That much Annie had confided to Vanessa. But Mallory had taken him back against all advice to the contrary. To make matters worse she had brushed off two-college years' worth of male advances to be true to her high school sweetheart. Just a shame to see good faith wasted on a jerkoff. It was Vanessa's sister Laura all over again. Mallory would be married and knocked up before she realised her jock-husband was stuffing himself to the balls inside every willing girl with a pulse. The situation screamed for remedy.
"Can't you talk to her?" Annie had pleaded the night prior to the road trip. "She looks up to you."
Maybe, but sometimes love was blind. Sometime it was downright stupid.
"Yeah, Mallory's guy is a football hotshot at Northwestern," Vanessa said to Jared while flashing him some irony via the mirror. Here was a ball with which she hoped he would run. "He's working over spring break. I'm dropping her off so she can get caught up for a few days."
"Wow, Mal, your guy's one in a million," he smirked, and Vanessa knew her faith in this rogue would be rewarded.
Mallory peered around at him. "What do you mean?"
"He'll be the only dude on campus studying through the holiday. Academic high-flier?"
"Well, no, he wasn't an A-student, but he's changed, you know?" Oh-oh, the girl was getting defensive. "He's asked me to marry him. Said it was time to take his studies seriously and that was why we couldn't hang out as much."
"You're the one who knows him," Jared said. "Hey, I'm sure he's solid gold marriage material. Only, I remember what I got up to during my one spring break, and there weren't many books involved."
Mallory's cheeks scorched visibly. "Well, you said yourself where that attitude got you." She spun around in her seat.
"Don't mean to speak out of turn. Just strikes me that a pretty girl like you doesn't need to dangle on the end of some guy's string. I'm sure you're not short of attention."
Mallory dismissed his flattery. "I can't remember asking your opinion on . on a subject you know nothing about. I'd thank you to keep your remarks to yourself."
Jared raised placating hands and said no more. Mallory reached over and turned up the stereo, so that it pumped out a raucous Nickelback tune. Vanessa allowed her the liberty. She sensed that her front-seat passenger's anger was directed equally at her for taking the interloper on board. Jared shrugged at her with a nonchalant air in the rear-view. It was all she could do not to laugh.
God, you cocky bastard, I'd be all fucking over you if I had the chance.
For two months she'd scarcely seen outside her studio. Art and abstinence. Christ she'd have liked nothing better than to side-line Mallory and enjoy whatever hard length of cock the hitcher had on offer. But someone else's need was greater than hers. What a tiresome thing was a conscience.
They stopped for gas, bottled water and candy at a roadside station and Mallory strolled off around the side of the store, no doubt to make a call on her cell. Vanessa filled the tank and picked up the snacks. Jared tossed her some dollars for the gas and an eight-pack of bottled beers.
"Glad you can pay your way," she told him at the check-out, "since you'll be booking into your own motel room tonight."
"What, no space on your floor? Hey, I'm used to roughing it and I don't snore."
"Your nocturnal habits don't concern me," she said. "I just don't want you ripping me off like Brad Pitt did to Thelma in the movie. It's rent your own space, buddy, or the cold hard highway." She handed her card to the check-out guy.
"Vanessa, I'm hurt," he said, though he didn't sound it. "I've no designs on your personal property." He leaned close and dropped his voice. "It's a whole other kind of ripping off I have in mind."
"Is that so?" She stayed impassive, but she loved his gall. The thought of him popping buttons and splitting seams as he exposed her full breasts was wildly appealing. Lifting the grocery sack she turned heel and made him pursue her out of the store. "God, do a guy a good turn and his dick nearly bursts out of his pants," she said.
"I'm glad you noticed."
"Two pretty girls pick up a guy and he just thinks he's gonna bang them both."
"You picked me up, Red, not Mallory."
She paused outside the restrooms and poked a restraining hand to his chest. "Maybe, but it's Mallory I want to talk about-"
He grabbed her wrist and propelled her unexpectedly through the door of the mens' restroom, his expression hardening.
***********************************************************************************
Find details about all Jake's work on his blog
Great work as per usual, Jake! Loved the tease...now to go buy ;) xx
ReplyDelete