Dead Camp 3 is here!
Dead Camp book 3 took me six months to write. It was a tough one to balance, dealing as it is with a particularly contentious period of history. I nearly chickened out. It terrified me. Even though, two years ago when I sat down and planned out the books, it was always there, this idea, this key concept that connects the entire series through to the end. Dare I do it? Dare I connect the dots? I asked so many questions during the first two books, always with the intention of answering them on book three before hurtling you through to the last two books. As I started to write it, I knew that the original concept, the original idea I had for these characters had to follow through, so with a lot of coffee and chocolate, I stuck to my guns and wrote the book that will break open this entire series.
Am I frightened of the reaction to this book? Hell yes! Many may see this as controversial, but that is not the reason I wrote it. Dead Camp 3 is about love, it’s all about love and the lengths we will go to protect and cherish that love. As the pages of this latest volume in the Dead Saga turn, I will ask you another question. What would you do for love?
It is my pleasure to present to you an exclusive excerpt from Dead Camp 3
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Excerpt
When we first built the Apostolic Palace, the Cappella Magna stood an unassuming chapel of unremarkable stone and marble, but Pope Sixtus IV had a profound love for the renaissance movement, and his restoration work saw the chapel transformed with paintings of the most exquisite beauty. Botticelli, Perugini, Roselli, I met them all. Such was the profound impact of that Pope’s unrelenting search for artistic perfection that the faithful renamed the chapel in his honour, and history would forever know it as the Sistine Chapel.
Nothing, however, could compare to the genius of its most famed artist, brought to add his unique touch to the chapel in 1508 by the then Pope, Pope Julius II.
Michelangelo had a knack for making me laugh, and he turned out to be one hell of a good lover, passionate when I needed him to be, rough when I demanded it. He called me his muse, and there is much of me, or at least parts of me, scattered throughout his work. I used to stand and watch him paint for hours. I never tired of the sight of his muscles twitching beneath the fine olive skin of his arms as his brush danced across a canvas or caressed stone. He was a true Master, in every way that I needed him to be, but as with all those who crossed my path and dared to love me, I broke his heart, too.
I walked into the Sistine Chapel—the last time I would do so for many years—to the sound of whistling from the top of the huge scaffolding standing in the middle of the space. My Maestro lay up there, painting his magic onto the ceiling, creating a blaze of exquisite colour with every stroke of his brush. I smiled and climbed up the wooden structure with ease.
Michelangelo lay flat on his back, brush in one hand, and a wooden palette in the other.
“What are you so fucking cheerful about painter man?” He liked it when I called him that. It never failed to make him smirk, and he really did have one hell of a sexy smirk.
“I’m doing it, Gideon, I said I would.”
“You little fucking shit, let me see.” I crawled onto the platform and shimmied over to lie beside him. Above me, flesh already vividly realised, I saw two fingers painted with such perfection, two fingers reaching out across the void with the germ of a spark between them.
“The creation of Adam.”
I started to laugh—I really couldn’t help myself. That’s what I loved about him the most, his insane ability to make me laugh, a pleasure long forgotten in my bitter past.
“You fucking shit, why would you paint that cunt on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?”
“Language, Gideon, what would God say?”
“Fuck God, he’s fucked me over enough, thank you very much.”
Michelangelo laughed, and I turned over and rammed my tongue down his throat, pushing my length into his open mouth until his own wet organ embraced my tongue.
“Do you kiss God with that foul mouth of yours?”
“Shut the fuck up, painter man, and answer my question.”
“Well, you see that finger there? Well that’s my finger, and originally the other finger was going to be your ass hole, but somehow I didn’t think his Holiness would approve.”
My laughter shook the platform, and I couldn’t help slapping the wood surface with my hand, it made me laugh so hard.
“Hey, muscles, do you mind? You might be immortal, but if this bloody thing collapses I’m screwed.”
I turned to face him, my handsome, rugged painter.
“Then I would have to turn you.”
“Hey, the only thing I want to see turned is your ass. Stay still, I want to try something.”
Before I could say anything, Michelangelo shimmed down the deck and started to pull my already stiffening cock from my bulging linen trousers.
“What the fuck…ahh!”
His mouth wrapped around the girth of my cock, and his tongue flicked across its throbbing head, and I brought both of my hands to grip the top of his head, ramming my length deep into his throat.
Michelangelo took my hands away from the top of his head, holding them either side of my waist as he continued to swallow me, his warm, wet mouth moving up and down my shaft in long, deliberate strokes that made me gasp. His movement began to gain momentum, his tongue frantic against my head, licking, sucking, spit running thick down my cock, but he didn’t relent as I felt my balls tighten. I tried to move my hands, to stop him from bringing me to a climax, but he held my arms firm. I could have stopped him, easily, but already I felt my cock swell, and I gave in to his insatiable hunger. With a cry, I felt my spunk shoot from my cock, filling his throat and his mouth in great pumping waves of passion until I emptied myself completely into him.
“Fuck in hell, someone was keen.”
Michelangelo shimmied back up the platform, his mouth tightly closed, and then he spat my load onto his wooden palette and began to mix it into his oil pigments. As I watched, he coated his brush and continued to paint the fresco with the spunk and paint concoction.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Adding you to my masterpiece, of course. Now you will forever be a part of this space! If I can’t have your asshole up here, I can have your semen. Now, when I am long gone, every time you walk in here, you will think of me and this moment.”
“You are off your fucking head.”
“Yeah, maybe, but you love me anyway.”
Clapping echoed around the chapel, and then a voice bellowed upwards towards me, one that I had hoped never to hear again.
“Bravo, Barbarian, nice to see that you can still entertain.”
Before the last syllable left his filthy fucking lips, I fell from the top of the platform to land at his feet.
The bastard looked good, standing there in tightly fitted black leather pants that clung to his bulge and a white see through shirt that accentuated his erect nipples. He wore thigh length black boots, and his black hair lay slicked back across his magnificent head. I never thought to see those eyes again, to feel their yellow fire burning into my soul, but there they were, fucking me over yet again.
“I must say, Gaius, eternity suits you. Looking good!”
“It’s Gideon, you prick, what the fuck are you doing here? How did you find me?” I glanced up towards the platform and saw Michelangelo looking down on us. I shook my head at him, an urgent little gesture, praying that he would stay out of the way.
“Oh don’t stress out, Gideon, your little play thing means nothing to me, though I must admit, I have always fancied having my portrait done. What do you think? My left side? I always fancied that my left side is best, don’t you?”
“How did you find me, Melek?”
“Oh please, have you forgotten who I am? Really, dear heart, you’re not exactly discreet, are you?” He brushed the side of my face with a long index finger, and I could not help but shiver at his touch. “Don’t trouble yourself, Barbarian, I’m not here for the spear, not yet.”
“Then what the fuck do you want?”
“Something has…come up, something that I thought you should see. Come with me, there is someone I would like you to meet.”
Melek led the way, and the last I saw of Michelangelo was his confused face hanging over the edge of the platform. Yet another regret to add to my long, long list. I never said goodbye.
As we walked through the marble halls of the Vatican, I felt the chill of the stone permeate my hard flesh, or it may have been the presence of that creature walking next to me.
“What the fuck is all this about Melek? Where are you taking me?”
“Somewhere where Angels fear to tread, my strapping Barbarian, to meet an old friend.”
“I’m surprised you don’t wither away in here, or that God doesn’t shit on your head from a great height.”
Melek skidded to a stop, his yellow eyes blazing into my cold flesh. That had touched a nerve.
“Have you forgotten who I was? I was an Angel once, remember?”
“Thrown out by your own father.”
“Yes,” he boomed as he stormed ahead. “And I wasn’t the only one. Keep up, Barbarian.”
I had to wonder why he chose that direction. Every bit of stone, every step, every piece of marble ransacked from Rome, I knew them all, I had helped build it, so I knew exactly where his footsteps led, towards the Apostolic Palace.
“Why are you taking me to the Stanze?”
“Patience, dear heart. I must say, it’s so nice to be back. You know, I could tell you a story or two about this place. My, the Borgia’s knew how to party! The things that went on in that…”
“Raphael is working up there.”
Melek turned and grinned. “I gave him the day off. Come on.”
