Welcome to #MidWeekTease again
So good to see you all here. This week My #MidWeekTease is from Secrets Dispelled, the six and final book in Diomhair, my BDSM series set in a Scottish Castle.
The rain had almost stopped when he got outside
but the bloody midges were out in force. Coll slammed the front door—he didn’t
want a houseful of the little blighters— and looked around. The area closest to
the castle was empty.
So which way?
Mindful that for some obscure reason it could
be a trap of some sort, although why, Coll had no idea, for life around Diomhair—as
far he knew—had been uneventful of late, he scanned the area carefully. Then he
moved towards the major driveway that headed direct to the main road, and
wondered, why now? Even the ubiquitous white van that had dogged the area on
and off like a bad penny and given several of them a bad time seemed to have
disappeared.
Nothing disturbed the midges or the mist and
as he rounded the first bend, Coll wondered if he should have headed in the
other direction.
Something under a tree caught his eye and he
veered towards it.
A quad
bike, old and on its last legs. As far as he could recall he'd never seen it
before. However a locked box welded to the back, made him think for a moment. A
Farmer? If so what the hell was he doing around here? And why leave his bike?
Coll circled it once and noticed that the engine was still warm.
Curiouser and curiouser. Oh he knew the
estate supported farmers and gamekeepers and such like, but why on earth would
one of them be around the main drive, in such weather?
A scuffling
noise alerted him to the presence of someone or something close and he spun
around on his heel. Well, as best he could in squelchy, muddy undergrowth. A thick,
thorny, wet branch missed his cheek by inches and a splatter of water tricked
over his face and down his neck.
Fuck, shit and double fuck.
The young woman—the muddy and bruised young
woman with deep green, and pain filled eyes—who pointed a shotgun at him
swayed.
"You
fucker what the hell is all this shit, eh? I should just shoot your balls off
and be done with it. In fact if you don't start taking pdq I might just do that."
Coll
froze and like all mistreated goodies in bad westerns, slowly put his hands in
the air, even though he really wanted to use them to cover his bollocks.
"Ha, see, a…" She blinked owlishly.
"A… oh fuck it, who are you and why did you knock me out? I guess I should
be grateful you didn’t half-inch Sean while you were at it."
Sean?
The gamekeeper? What had she got to do with him? No that couldn't be right,
there was no Sean working in the estate as far as Coll knew.
"My dog. Where is he?" She took one
step forward and went white. "If you've hurt him, I will kill you. Slowly.
Godalmighty do you know how dangerous it is to knock someone out while they
carried a loaded gun?" She swayed again and shut her eyes. Not long enough
for him to try any heroics though. She opened them immediately and he swore he
could see pain and confusion in her expression. She wasn't the only one in the
confused part of the equation.
"There was no dog here."
"Do you?" she ignored his comment
about dogs, spoke angrily, and then winced. "Hell so where's Sean gone… oh
no, that's right he's at Lachy's. I forgive you." She said that so stiffly
he could see how much she hated it. “But you didn’t know that.”
There was a bruise forming on her cheek, and
his mystery lady touched it briefly. "Shit and fuck a black eye as
well."
"I didn't. Knock you out. I'm as much at
sea as you are."
Coll
lowered his hands and took a step toward her. To do what? She waved the gun and
he stood still again.
"Ru…rubbish. No sea for miles." The
gun pointed at him, a tree and back at him again.
"Don’t you know it's dangerous to wave a
gun round?" he asked in as mild a tone as he could manage whilst castigating
himself for being caught like an idiot. "You might hit something."
Damn
he hoped his tone didn't make her think he thought that any other time it was
unlikely. He didn’t want her to prove herself.
"Exactly, so you better ho…hope…I've got
the safety on eh?" She blinked twice. "Do you think oh well, it's
only a girl…" she invested the word with scorn, "so she wouldn't blow
you brains out. You're wrong. That, in case you have enough no…nous to wonder
why, is because females have their brain in their head not in their go…gonads."
She seemed to have trouble formulating her
thoughts and words. Concussion?
"It's not loaded." Coll made his
tone as confident as anyone could with a gun pointed at their gonads. He had no
idea if it was or wasn't, but whoever she was carried it well enough to make
him think she was too experienced not to have the bloody thing unloaded.
He hoped.
His mystery lady blinked again. "Shwhat?"
She looked down at the gun, and shook her head. "Whosh says?"
"You did." Now he had to hope if
she was concussed as he assumed, she had no idea what she had and hadn't said.
"Oh bugger." She swung the gun
towards a tree a fair few yards away and pressed the trigger.
Coll ducked as bits of bark and leaves flew
in all directions.
She looked at the gun like she'd never seen it
before and broke it open. Then she stared at Coll.
"You lied."
Before he had a chance to reply, his mystery
lady slid like an over cooked noodle onto the wet ground.
Coll stared at the woman—no, girl he amended
as he took a proper look at the person slumped in front of him and wondered
what he'd done to deserve it. Or what she had either.
Something stunk, and it wasn't just the wet
vegetation. He studied the area they were in carefully, but nothing, or no one
disturbed the rain. Just him and an unconscious female.
At least it had stopped hailing and sleeting
but it was almost dark, murky and bloody miserable. The last thing he could do
was leave the girl outside in the damp and wait for her to wake up. She needed
warmth and dry as soon as possible.
Was it safe to move her? He shrugged
mentally. It was a lot safer than getting pneumonia, and he reckoned it should
be okay, especially after she'd been able to stand upright—sort off—and shoot.
Anyway he really didn't have much choice. He made sure she was in sight as he
picked up the shotgun, broke it open and checked it was empty. Now what? Coll
would be the first person to admit he knew about as much of guns as most people
knew about his personal preferences. To whit Shibari, scribing and clamps.
If you liked this excerpt and want to read more, you can preorder Secrets Dispelled-
on Amazon or ~ here ~
And read all the other #sexySnippets
happy reading,
love R x
