Crawling Into Bed With Rio
Buchanan
____________
And a Good Book
Killer at Christmas by
Kera Faire
Important things first, are these sheets silk or
cotton?
Well hellooo Lee.
I’m a cotton sort of guy. Those blood…er blooming
silk things are just way too slippery. Wink You aim for a boob and end
up with an elbow! Or worse you end up with a foot and I don’t have a foot
fetish.
They should come with a government health warning.
Take care. Over energetic activity in
this vicinity may cause sex life deficiency.
Give me cotton every time. The very finest
Egyptian cotton of course.
What are you wearing?
looks down at naked body.
Hair. You caught me unaware. I’ve just pulled an
all nighter. Stop sniggering. Sheesh some people’s minds. I’m a government
operative and I drew the short straw to feed the pigs. (read the book, you’ll
see what I mean)
All you want to do when you get back, is shower,
sink into bed and sink into a willing partner. No need for clothes.
What are we snacking on in bed while we read
tonight?
Haggis, black pudding, and whisky (no E) Well, we
are on an island in Loch Lomond in Scotland. And I need to keep my strength up.
Can’t have Andie complaining I’m loosing my stamina.
If I open this nightstand drawer, what will I
find?
In Scotland? Whisky flavored lube. Shortbread, and
a torch. We get a lot of power cuts.
And under the nightstand, steel toe capped boots.
You never know when you’re gonna get called out in a hurry. Thistles are the
devil.
Do you roll up in the blankets like a burrito, or
kick the covers off during the night?
Like I said I live most of the time on an island
in the middle of a Scottish loch. Our first frost is in July and our last in
June. To sleep, I roll. With my lady. The only time we kick the covers off is
if we get over enthusiastic and the fire is lit. The fire is usually lit and we
usually get over enthusiastic.
Can I put my cold feet on your calves to warm them
up?
Not if you value your balls. Even Andie warms her
feet up on the hottie bottle first. I tend to react to cold badly. React first
think later. Which I guess brings me to wonder why the hell we live where we
do.
(Work of course)
What are we reading?
Killer at Christmas by Kera Faire
BLURB
A killer and a hooker? An
unlikely mix, especially, at Christmas.
Rio Buchanan, a Government
operative, and member of the Dispatchers specializes in seduction. He just
never thought his target would be his ex-wife. Andie might now be a hooker, but
there’s no way she’s a traitor.
There’s only one way to
get to the truth—kidnap her to keep her safe.
Andie doesn’t know what to
think when Rio disrupts her life again, let alone when she wakes up in a prison
cell shackled to him, and not in a fun, kinky way.
The secrets of his job
already ended their marriage. Will they now end her life too?
Imprisoned on the Dark
Isle they have to work together to catch a traitor, and discover if they can
forge a new life together.
And
a wee tease
Shit, his
head ached. He hated being cooped up in a flying tin can, dreaded what he would
find when he got to his destination and swore long and hard at the idiots who
had behaved so badly in the past that the airline didn’t serve alcohol before 8
a.m. Not that he normally drank at such a time, but he’d not been to bed, and
was squashed between an overweight Geordie and a chattering airhead whose leg
kept rubbing up against his thigh.
The guy
had snorted, farted, and snored his way through the flight. Once he’d drunk
three miniature rums he’d pulled out of his pocket—against the rules but the
crew didn’t see him—and eaten a selection of snacks so fast Rio felt sick on
the bloke’s behalf. The airhead—call me Cherine—had dropped her nuts and
fondled Rio’s nuts as she picked the
packet up with an inane giggle so often he was about ready to stuff both sets
down her throat and gag her. Except, he hoped to be able to fly commercial
again sometime, and being charged with attempted murder or disorderly behavior
on a plane wasn’t likely to help him in that quest.
“Look
sweetheart, if you do that again you might find I’ve accidentally broken your
fingers,” he said wearily as he lifted her hand and squeezed the digits
somewhat cruelly. “Once is an accident, twice is persistent, and times three to
now is a fucking annoyance. If you want your bloody nuts so much just eat them
and stop trying to finger mine. Okay?”
She went
the color of the plane’s logo, stood up and stalked down the aisle to the
lavatory. Someone behind giggled and the blond haired, stocky guy across from
Rio raised one eyebrow. “Bit harsh, buddy?”
“You sit
here then, and let Octopus Annie feel you up. I’ll have bruises where no bruise
ever should be. She’s got nails like talons, and grips like a bloody bird of
prey.” Rio grinned. “Apt description actually.”
The guy
nodded. “Point taken and no thanks. I’m off to visit my woman. I don’t think
Andie would be too pleased if I went with unusable assets.”
Andie? It had to be a coincidence,
surely? “That’s an unusual name for a girl,” Rio said with a non-committal
smile. ‘Short for Andrea?”
“Nope.
Her name is Sandie, but there were four Sandies in her class so she went for
Andie. She’s a sweet thing, not at all boyish if you know what I mean.” The guy
sketched an hourglass figure in the air. “I don’t know why she just didn’t use
her proper name, Sandrine, but hey—that’s women for you.”
Rio’s
breath left him. How likely were there two people named Sandrine who called
themselves Andie because of too many Sandies at school. But sweet? That didn’t
sound like his ex-wife? They’d split because they were both opinionated,
wouldn’t back down, and there was no give and take. He needed to probe more.
Because if this was the guy Darke spoke about, he, Rio needed to make plans.
“Yeah,
women, eh?” What else could he say? “So, she knows you’re on your way home?”
The bloke shook his head. “She’s expecting me
later, but it’s not home, she’s just working out there for a bit. I’m gonna get
there early, use the key she doesn’t know I’ve got, and surprise her. I’ll show
her what she’s missing. For some reason she won’t move in with me. God knows
why. I’m sure she would be the perfect Susie Homemaker.” He winked. “You know.
A lady in the kitchen and let me lead in the bedroom. A quick tweak here and
there and wham bam thank you ma’am every so often and she’d be happy. I get my
shirts ironed and my rocks off when I can’t get to my mistress.”
What a
fucking asshole.
“Everything
covered then.” Rio sat back and plotted. “Lucky bastard. I’m between woman and
I tell ya, my wrist aches. Hey what’s your name? I can keep calling you hey.”
The guy
guffawed. A bit like a hyena. “Anton Hoag. You?”
Anton Hogg? Ant… Hogg? Can’t be a
coincidence. Fuck it to hell.
“I’m
Ron.” Rio used the name he often did as an alias. “Ron Parker. Hey you want
another?” He pointed to the coke can in front of Anton. “I’m off to get one.”
“I’ll
have the rum to go in it.”
Figures. Rio nodded, walked to the
front of the plane, and purchased the drinks. He bet the guy got the time
alcohol was served down to the second.
Anton was
a bit of a contradiction. Killer or drunk? He didn’t seem the sort of bastard
who’d let his woman work as a hooker but who knew? Nor did he seem the sort to
kill women and do whatever it was that was dirty and underhanded. But then
didn’t most serial killers look like they kissed babies and helped old women
across the road?
Rio put
the rum down next to Anton and tucked his can of soda in the pocket of his own
seatback. The next few minutes relied on Anton the asshole not knowing where
Rio had stashed his carry-on, and not paying any notice to Rio’s next move.
A
diversion in the form of Cherine helped. She stomped down the aisle and glared
at Rio. “Will you get my bag down? There’s a spare seat at the back. I’m
moving.”
“My pleasure.” Her bag was next to Anton’s. Assholes of the world unite? Rio flipped
the catch of the overhead locker and handed down the case Cherine pointed to.
Barbie pink and sparkly. What else?
She tuned
without a word of thanks and Rio slid his fingers around the lock of a
nondescript black leather bag, and played around for several long seconds. Success. He moved the zipper, slid his
fingers inside the tiny gap until he found what he was looking for. Pulled it
out, relocked the zip, and moved away from the hold-all to the very end of the
locker.
“More
space now, I can put my backpack up and not have it squash my toes.” He bent to
his battered rucksack and slipped it in the space now vacant. Grabbed his
purloined treasure and shoved it deep inside.
Satisfied,
Rio settled back to endure the last hour of the flight. At least with Octopus
Annie aka Cherine gone he could stretch out a bit. Snoring, snorting, farting,
window seat man never moved.
The plane
landed, Rio grabbed his possessions and set off down the aisle and into the
terminal building as soon as he could. He needed to get away before Asshole
Anton realized that not only was his lady no longer his, his passport seemed to
have vanished out of a locked bag.
Sometimes the skills learned at Dispatcher
school came in useful. Even the non-killing ones.
Kera
Faire is Raven McAllan’s dark side.
(Raven/Kera
and Doris O’Connor fb group)
Twitter
@RavenMcAllan
Killer
at Christmas is the latest book in Kera’s Dark Isle series, about The
Dispatchers—Government operatives who work from an Island in the middle of Loch
Lomond in Scotland.
Tough
men with a soft side. If you can find it.
