Time Out of Mind Read online

  Suncoast Society

  Time Out of Mind

  Doyle Turner’s a psychologist specializing in addiction recovery and is a professional sober companion. He’s also a recovering alcoholic with over twenty years of sobriety under his belt. And he’s a Dom in his personal life, which he hasn’t had much of lately.

  Mevi Maynard not only tests Doyle’s infinite patience, the handsome rock star is testing his self-control, too. Mevi Maynard’s rock-bottom crash follows the discovery that his manager stole his fortune. Now, Mevi’s fresh out of rehab. But if he doesn’t want to file bankruptcy, he has to stay sober for the new tour, or he’s out of the band. But what he can’t admit to Doyle—and has never admitted to anyone—is that he’s gay.

  One patient Dom. One stubborn rock star. Both are really stupid men, according to their friend Tilly. Can she help the men get out of their own way and see the light, and their love for each other, before it’s too late?

  Genre: Alternative (M/M, Gay), BDSM, Contemporary

  Length: 88,631 words

  TIME OUT OF MIND

  Suncoast Society

  Tymber Dalton

  SIREN SENSATIONS

  MANLOVE

  

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Siren Sensations ManLove

  TIME OUT OF MIND

  Copyright © 2017 by Tymber Dalton

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-68295-820-9

  First E-book Publication: January 2017

  Cover design by Harris Channing

  All art and logo copyright © 2017 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Time Out of Mind by Tymber Dalton from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Tymber Dalton’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Tymber Dalton’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  To Hubby and Sir. And, while I doubt he’ll ever see this, to Lin-Manuel Miranda for giving the world Hamilton. That music is a gift, and has become a permanent part of my writing playlist.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  While all the books in the Suncoast Society series are standalone works which may be read independently of each other, the recommended reading order to avoid spoilers and to not miss any backstory information is as follows:

  1. Safe Harbor

  2. Cardinal’s Rule

  3. Domme by Default

  4. The Reluctant Dom

  5. The Denim Dom

  6. Pinch Me

  7. Broken Toy

  8. A Clean Sweep

  9. A Roll of the Dice

  10. His Canvas

  11. A Lovely Shade of Ouch

  12. Crafty Bastards

  13. A Merry Little Kinkmas

  14. Sapiosexual

  15. A Very Kinky Valentine’s Day

  16. Things Made Right

  17. Click

  18. Spank or Treat

  19. A Turn of the Screwed

  20. Chains

  21. Kinko de Mayo

  22. Broken Arrow

  23. Out of the Spotlight

  24. Friends Like These

  25. Vicious Carousel

  26. Hot Sauce

  27. Open Doors

  28. One Ring

  29. Vulnerable

  30. The Strength of the Pack

  31. Initiative

  32. Impact

  33. Liability

  34. Switchy

  35. Rhymes With Orange

  36. Beware Falling Ice

  37. Beware Falling Rocks

  38. Dangerous Curves Ahead

  39. Two Against Nature

  40. Home at Last

  41. A Kinkmas Carol

  42. Ask DNA

  43. Time Out of Mind

  Some of the characters in this book appear in or are featured in previous books in the Suncoast Society series. All titles available from Siren-BookStrand.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Author's Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  About the Author

  Landmarks

  Cover

  TIME OUT OF MIND

  Suncoast Society

  TYMBER DALTON

  Copyright © 2017

  Chapter One

  I hate LA.

  Over the Pacific Ocean, a haze bled out toward the western horizon, blocking a clear view of it. It didn’t help any that the sun rising behind him struggled to make its way through wildfire smoke
from the latest natural disaster.

  As Doyle stood on Huntington Beach early that Thursday morning and worked through his usual tai chi form, he ignored everyone around him. He’d been living in LA for five years now, transplanted from Sarasota, looking for a new start.

  Then again, that was the same reason a lot of people arrived in this town. Although he wasn’t interested in acting or being in front of a camera.

  And, mostly, he was still looking.

  Oh, for the most part, he had that new start professionally. He’d moved out here to work for a private addiction treatment facility as one of their counselors, until a lucky accidental encounter with the business manager of a Hollywood A-list actor ended up with him doing a four-month, all-expenses-paid stint as a private sober companion during their overseas movie shoot.

  At twice the salary he would have made working for the facility full-time for a year. He still worked for the facility part-time when between private SC assignments, as he was now, short hiatuses that rarely lasted longer than a month.

  He’d quickly found himself in great demand for his SC services. Someone with his particular training, as well as his unique… personality type, and his growing reputation for extreme discretion and carefully protected anonymity, meant he could practically write his own paychecks.

  The bigger the star, the bigger the check.

  Or, in some cases, the bigger the potential scandal, the bigger the check.

  Frequently, studios’ insurance companies wouldn’t cover an actor who had a troubled history with substance abuse.

  That’s where he came in. He was there to ensure the actor stayed clean and sober, made their call times, and didn’t get into trouble. He was their handler and silent shadow, allowed full access to everywhere on the set and off it that his client went. If they didn’t stick to that deal, their insurance could be pulled, it could void their contract, and possibly cost them a penalty.

  It didn’t hurt that Doyle was a recovering alcoholic himself, even though he’d drunk his way into recovery by the time he was nineteen and hadn’t touched it since. He knew the drill. He understood.

  It especially didn’t hurt that a majority of the celebrities he dealt with were, at heart, spoiled, narcissistic submissive little weenies who needed a calm, firm hand at the helm.

  That’s where being a Dom came in handy.

  * * * *

  When Doyle finished, he walked back to his tiny rented apartment a few blocks from the beach. This was his little bit of zen before he started his day, and a rare treat to be able to get to the beach and not have to do it indoors while working somewhere on location.

  The Pacific Ocean was nothing like the Gulf of Mexico, unfortunately. Even the water here was different, cold on the warmest of days. Couldn’t just jump in and paddle around and not freeze your balls off.

  Or if you did, you had to worry if there was a great white waiting out there to take a test taste of your drumstick.

  I wonder if sharks think people taste like chicken?

  Born and raised in Florida, he’d always felt like a fish out of water here. It’d started out more feeling like an outsider, and he thought as he met people that would change.

  It didn’t.

  He didn’t fit in with the social circles, he didn’t fit in even with his own peers, for the most part. He’d left his friends back in Florida, and while he kept in touch with them privately via Facebook and e-mail, most of them were kinky.

  Now, he kept to himself and had made a couple of acquaintances in the local kinky community, but due to his work he had to keep an extremely low profile. It wouldn’t do to have his clients’ trust in him ruined.

  He truly missed Florida, but after his divorce, he thought the opportunity to have a clean break would be even better if he’d made it a literal one and not just a metaphorical one. He’d made that decision after bumbling around a little and failing to find his focus, his center.

  Not to mention a couple of short-lived relationships.

  Plus the money had been damned good. He’d received the job lead at the rehab center from a former college buddy and had decided to go for it.

  After showering and fixing himself a breakfast smoothie, he dressed and headed down to his car to make the drive south. While many Angelenos were heading into the city proper for work, he was actually driving away from it.

  “The Compound,” as it was unofficially dubbed by the staff, was located south of Laguna Beach. The five acres were probably worth what someone could buy a subdivision-worth of land in Sarasota County for.

  Maybe in south or east Sarasota County.

  And it was one of the best-kept secrets in the area. Not one of those stupid wink-wink, the paparazzi knows you’re there before you even finish your intake forms kind of places, either.

  Cash-only, for starters, which helped protect their clients’ privacy from paper trails. No insurance accepted, because the people coming to them could afford to pay out-of-pocket.

  Rigorous background checks for all staff, right down to the maintenance crew. They had the best-paid housekeepers anywhere.

  Only certain clients were accepted. They couldn’t be raging public Dumpster fires, meaning their addiction had either been caught early, or had been kept quiet enough not to draw excess attention to it. The clients couldn’t be violent, or up on charges for serious crimes, or embroiled in a nasty divorce being fought as much in the press as it was in the courts. They couldn’t have a criminal history other than minor traffic infractions, or charges from an extremely short list of misdemeanors that weren’t violent in nature.

  They also had to be able to afford their services. And they had to be over eighteen years old.

  It wasn’t just celebrities they treated. Anyone able to pay their way in and meet the criteria could seek treatment there. They had clients fly in from overseas, especially people sent there by rich Japanese parents who wanted to keep a scandal literally far from their shores.

  He’d only been back at The Compound for five days now. It was nice to settle into a routine when he’d spent the last three months freezing his nuts off in fucking Norway babysitting a woman who was a frustrated, bratty submissive babygirl with severely undealt-with daddy issues.

  Once he’d pegged her particular niche in his undocumented personal categorization criteria of the people he dealt with, and treated her accordingly, she’d been easy to manage. Carrot and stick. She’d been starved for healthy attention and praise, and he gave that to her in a non-dysfunctional way, managing to get her through the shoot.

  And she’d set a personal best of never missing a day of shooting or being late for a call time and it being her fault.

  He couldn’t blame her for her only time being late, the flat tire and long, cold wait until someone on the production crew could come back for them. Especially since he’d been driving at the time and hadn’t seen the damn pothole in the fog and pre-dawn gloom.

  No, he didn’t get sexual, much less very personal with his clients, beyond what was required for his job. He never even mentioned BDSM to them.

  He didn’t need to. Most of them didn’t know much about the lifestyle beyond “the movie.” They didn’t have to. He took care of it—and them—for them. Resulting in happy directors and producers, happy business managers, talent who were on the road to rehabbing their lives and reputations, and his own bank account making him smile when he looked at the direct deposits.

  Too bad he couldn’t say as much about his personal life.

  Unfortunately, his professional life precluded him having a personal life. Which was okay, for now. He was socking away money for an early retirement and departure from California. He could return to Florida, since he’d maintained his license there, and start working for any number of high-end addiction facilities. Wouldn’t pay nearly as much, but the cost of living there was far less, and by the time he was ready to finally give up on California, he’d have what he needed to make up for what he’d lost in his divorce.
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  Well, except for his peace of mind.

  No amount of money could restore that.

  * * * *

  By noon, Doyle was pretty sure he wanted to bend at least three of the clients he’d seen over a spanking bench and paddle their asses red.

  Since he couldn’t do that, he satisfied himself with visualizing it while trying to pay attention to them.

  He got it. They were early in their recovery, still grasping at straws for excuses, and had not yet realized that the addiction was stronger than they were. It was easy to say it to someone from the other side, but another thing for a person new to recovery to actually internalize it.

  He’d internalized it as a kid, with a dying single mother, his father having died years earlier. A kid who finally woke up in his own puke one too many times and realized if he didn’t get his shit together, he might be dead, too.

  And he hadn’t wanted to die.

  At the time, he hadn’t known anything about twelve-step programs. He couldn’t have afforded a box of bandages, much less in-patient treatment. He’d just…tried.

  And kept trying.

  Until one day, the trying was a little easier, and he’d managed to stay sober for over a year. He’d also managed to pull his shit together in time to graduate high school just before his mother lost her battle with uterine cancer.

  He’d put himself through college and swore he’d stay sober and make her proud.

  Unfortunately, he’d stuffed some things about himself down deep, along with the addiction he’d forced himself to battle into a truce.