“Well, yes, but about burst?” She raised one eyebrow. “The loo?” Heat flooded her face and she groaned under her breath. Such a good look, she didn’t think. Red hair
and
red cheeks. However she didn’t have time to be embarrassed. For the last few minutes, the state of her bladder had been making itself known to her with increasing urgency.
“Oh, right. Poor thing. First rule of BDSM, even bondage like this, be open and honest.”
Bondage? Eh? Oh Lord, I guess it was. Does that mean I’m no longer a BDSM virgin?
She’d have sniggered except she was focused on controlling another part of her body and didn’t have any spare concentration available.
He lifted the covers, swung her into his arms, carried her across the room. Her state of undress registered and she squirmed. He looked down at her enquiringly. “What?”
“I’m naked and I don’t know your name.”
“Is it a prerequisite, pet? I don’t know yours but I know you’re mine. Or will be.” He deposited her on the closed loo seat. “Holler when you’re ready for me to carry you back to bed.”
“I can walk and what do you mean about… Argh, no, just go.” Her need for the loo was uppermost. With a grin, he left the room and closed the door behind himself.
Three minutes later and feeling a lot better, Finn looked at herself in the mirror above the sink and groaned. She looked like a scarecrow. A scary scarecrow with a lovely multi-colored bruise on her cheek. How not to look sexy in one easy lesson. What she’d do for a shower. She sniggered. That might not be the best thing to think. If indeed her Dom lived here.
My Dom? Hold on a bit. Who is he?
This man
might be a better way to think of him.
“Pet, are you all right in there? Answer or I’m coming in.”
Oh shoot, I’m still naked.
It might be okay in the books she read for the sub to be naked but she wasn’t his sub, he wasn’t her Dom, whatever she thought and no way was she staying naked. Finn grabbed an overlarge bath towel and wound it round her like a sarong.
“Fine, I’m just going to borrow a bit of toothpaste.” She tuned the tap on and rubbed minty fresh toothpaste over her teeth before she swirled water into her mouth. It made her feel two hundred percent better. “Coming out now,” she added before the door burst open. It was like knowing there was a fire-eating dragon on the other side. One who was friendly only for so long. Finn opened the door and almost fell over his feet.
“I have to be able to get out.”
“Yeah. What the hell do you have that towel on for?” He swung her into his arms again. “Humor me, I like this.” So did she but it seemed important not to show it or accept everything he said and did so easily.
“Are you something to do with my boss?” She asked the question that niggled her most. “You’re not him, I know that.”
“I’d like to be.” He tugged at the end of the towel she’d tucked under her arm and Finn batted his hand away.
“In your dreams.” She knew fine well he meant her to equate boss with Dom. Luckily she’d read enough books to blow that one out of the water. “A sub has the last word.”
“Clever, pet.” They’d reached the bed and without her having a chance to react, he’d twitched the towel away and put the duvet over her again. “Right, stay put and I’ll bring you a cuppa. Then we talk.”
His tone told her it was a certainty not just a possibility.
“It takes two to tango.” What a stupid thing to say. Finn wondered if she should just hide under the cover until her cheeks cooled.
“True.” He walked across the room like a tiger stalking his prey and picked up a kettle. “It’s a tea bag in the cup until I think you’re okay to go into the lounge or kitchen. And, no milk or sugar, I forgot to buy any. Sorry.”
“I drink it black. What’s your name?” God, that sounded a bit abrupt.
Stop tweaking the tiger’s tail. Tigers and Dom’s bite.
“Please,” Finn added hastily. “Where am I, why am I here and oh, I’m Finula.”
“Coll. I live here and it was the closest place to bring you to warm you up. I spoke to the doctor, who will be here as soon as possible.”
“I don’t need a doctor. I’m fine. I can only see one of you, my head doesn’t hurt anymore and…and…well, I am not going to hospital. End of.” She thought for a moment. “And Depp will need dinner.”
“Depp?”
“My cat. The dogs live at Lachy’s.”
“You said.” He looked at her steadily until she lowered her eyelids and then he laughed softly. “And if you try to say you’re no sub, we’ll take bets and I’ll win. Truce, Finula?”
She nodded. Why did he say she was a sub? Oh, she loved reading her books but to actually act out what she read? “As long as you agree no hospital.”
“That’s up to the doc.” A bell sounded somewhere and he moved to the door. “That will be her.”
“I don’t need…”
“A doctor, so you said. However we’ll let her be the judge of that.”
Why did she think she’d never win an argument with him?
Chapter Four
Five long hours later, Coll carried Finn, now covered by his dressing gown, into his lounge and put her carefully onto the big, squashy settee. He guessed she’d feel happier talking in there than his bedroom.
He hadn’t missed the way she kept looking at the chains and pulleys then at the doctor, who as a sub to her husband, just ignored them and Finn’s embarrassed expression. He’d been shooed out of the room whilst Emma Lynn had examined Finn, called back in and told all was well and she’d just had a nasty bump on the head.
“I can’t make her go to hospital but nor do I want her to be left alone tonight,” Emma said. “But If I’m honest, I’d prefer her to be seen in A and E.”
“I’ll take her and if they let her out, she can stop here,” Coll said immediately. “If she’s okay.”
Finn made a face. “Stop talking about me as if I’m not here. I don’t want to go.”
“Tough.”
“What about Depp?” Finn asked anxiously.
“The cat,” Coll said, straight-faced.
The doctor laughed. “I’ll go that way if you want and feed him? Then bring your key back. And as for okay? As sure as I can be. I’ve done all the obvious tests, and all’s well. I can’t force you to go to A and E, but I’d be a lot happier.”
“I’m fine, honestly. I’ve been concussed before—rugby—and this is nothing like that, I promise you. And about Depp, maybe we could just go there,” Finn said in a hopeful voice he knew he wouldn’t be able to resist. “Back to my home. Then I’d be in familiar surroundings.”
“You said you were okay,” Coll reminded her, and she laughed.
“Busted, but I’ve got clothes and stuff there.” She looked up at him. “Please?”
“After the hospital we’ll decide then.”
She huffed. “Bully.”
“Dom.”
“You’re still bullying me.”
“Worrying about you. Please?”
She sighed. “Oh, all right but then I’m back. I hate hospitals. Every time someone I know goes into one, they die.”
Ooops.
“Then you’ll buck the trend.” Damn, he was a sucker for big green eyes. “Right, so, I’m night watchman, until the real guy arrives around ten. I’ll ring him to come in now and to hold on until we get back. Emma will feed your cat and bring him here. Yes?”
She bit her lip and he saw Emma Lynn’s lips twitch. It was well known he wouldn’t have any lip biting in a sub of his.
“I guess,” she said at last. “But please leave him in the cottage for now. Then if I can’t go home, we can go and get him. He’d be totally confused here without me.”
“Fair enough then, that’s settled. Hospital and Egan will stop on. Sorted. Rest whilst I show the doctor the way out.”
Finn nodded.
He did as he’d said, all the while making her reiterate Finn was as well as anyone with a headache could be, and made his way back up to the lounge. In the end, he kissed Emma on the cheek. “I trust you, thanks for turfing out on such a miserable night.”
“No worries. I had company.” She nodded to the gleaming and mud-splattered Range Rover outside the door. From its interior, a big Alsatian dog waved its tail and a tall, dark-haired man grinned.
“You left them in the car? Why not bring them in?”
Emma laughed. “Sir is reading reports and Digby was asleep. And let’s face it, would you really want Digby and his ‘swipe and wipe every surface in the vicinity’ attitude, let loose in your flat?”
“You’ve got a point.”
Coll waited until the car moved off and went back inside, locking the door behind him.
“Now for A and E.”
Luckily the registrar at the local hospital agreed with Emma’s diagnosis and Coll and Finn were soon—well, if you called five hours soon—back at the castle. To his relief, Finn had agreed to stay there with him.
Now Finn was stretched out on the settee with her eyes closed. Her robe had slipped and showed one pink-tipped breast and a tiny hint of red-golden hair at the top of her legs. Even though he wasn’t a fan of a muff, it teased his cock into hardness.
She opened her eyes, blushed and pulled the edges together.
“No need, pet. I like it.”
“Yes, well.”
She was flustered and it showed. Surely not a virgin?
“Can we talk? Really talk now?” she asked him.
“I think we better,” Coll said slowly, but emphatically. It was about time she opened up. He didn’t think she was doing anything underhand, but he really needed to know what she was about. “How about you tell me who you are, why you were, where you were and what happened?”
“Okay.”
It seemed she’d decided he was trustworthy, because she swung her legs under her and sat curled up, relaxed with the robe tucked tightly round her. Did she not realize that only served to emphasize her curves? Coll tamped down his erection and his urge to stamp his authority on her.
“So, my name is Finula Baine, known as Finn if you value your bits, and I help Lachy manage the estate.”
“I know Lachy but I’ve never met you,” Coll said slowly and handed her a glass of juice. It sounded feasible, but…
Finn sipped the juice slowly. “So? I’ve never met you.”
Coll nodded. “Fair comment.”
She gave a gamine grin that made her look about sixteen. “I was here for around a month last year and loved it. Then I had to go home ’cause Mum had cancer.” Her face clouded and she sniffed.
Coll pushed a box of tissues across the table. Finn took one out, wiped her eyes then blew her nose loudly. She looked young and vulnerable, with red-rimmed eyes, a pink nose and dressed in a robe three sizes too big. It took all of his determination not to sweep her up and cuddle her. He understood that wasn’t what she wanted or needed at that moment.
“Thanks, where was I? Oh yeah, my lovely and brave mum. She died a wee while ago and as Jeff and Jess kept my job open, I arrived back just over a week past. I live in Keeper’s Cottage.”
Which was why it hadn’t been free when he’d enquired before he moved into the flat. He’d been taken with the look and the aspect of the tiny cottage the moment he’d seen it and had been gutted when Jeff had told him it was already rented out.
He nodded but didn’t speak. Now Finn had decided to confide in him, he didn’t want to say anything to spoil it.
“Anyway my immediate boss, who works for Lachy is a w—” She stopped speaking abruptly and colored. “Let’s say we don’t see eye to eye on everything. And something weird is going on. Hell, I’ve only been back in the swing of things a wee while and even I can see that. Last year it was poults—young pheasants,” she added.
Coll nodded again, he knew what she meant.
“Yeah, well, this year it seems to be sheep that are going missing.”
“Are you sure?” Coll asked neutrally. “They all look the same to me.” It was a lie, he had been born and brought up on a sheep farm in the lowlands, but it seemed a safer way to phrase the question and keep his body intact.
“Oh, I’m sure, but I’ve no idea what’s exactly going on or how. All I know is that I’ve spent the best part of the week moving sheep around at my boss’s behest. And I’m damn sure the numbers are going down.”
“They’re all marked, aren’t they?” His dad’s were and he was damned sure Lachy wouldn’t be so lax as not to do so. What he’d learned of Lachy, he was impressed by. Donny, whom he guessed Finn worked directly for, not so much. As far as Coll could see, Donny was a waste of space whom Jeff, Jess and Lachy were giving enough rope to drop himself in it. It seemed that for Finn’s sake, it couldn’t happen quickly enough.
She gave him a pitying look. “To a townie, maybe. But to be sure, I marked one of the ones I thought would be a prime animal to half inch, I mean steal, differently.”
“I know the expression. Reminds me of my mum’s mum.” He smiled as he remembered that formidable lady with fondness. “She was a cockney who used to say, ‘See that one over there, what a tea-leaf, he’d half inch your nose if it wasn’t attached’.”
Finn giggled, as he meant her to. “Exactly, it reminds me… Well, anyway. That sheep isn’t there today, and I was made to move the flock again and this time it’s to long acres, which is the big field near the road up the loch side. Oh shit, look, this isn’t sour grapes and I don’t have any proof, but I’m sure all this moving around is camouflage. And if it is, well…” She let her voice trail off.
“Have you told Lachy?”
Finn shrugged and looked embarrassed. “Tell him what? Why am I moving all the sheep every day? D… Ah, bugger it, why not be hung for a sheep as a lamb, now that’s an apt expression in the circumstances, isn’t it? He’d go to Donny, who would say it’s down to the grazing, which I guess in all fairness it could be, but I dunno.” She bit her lip. “Do you believe in the itch? Where you know something’s not right and you can’t quite say what?”
“Oh, yes.” He’d had it more than once, especially with regards to his lifestyle.
Finn let her breath out in one long whoosh. “Phew. Then you won’t think I’ve got a screw loose when I tell you I have the itch about this. Even more so since I’ve searched and searched and that blasted sheep is not on this estate. And I reckon we’ve lost a dozen or so since I came back, and that is not through natural wastage, believe me and I will not be blamed,” she ended fiercely. “So I decided to look around tonight. And, well, you know what happened.”